Emma Pullen
frozen rivers. It is a quintessentially British invention.
Our company name is one of the best decisions we ever made. Foreign clients tell me the word British says to them quality, reliability and trust because British engineering is admired around the world.
But my company does not need the EU. In fact we would be much better off without it. For us to be free to fulfi l our full potential we need trade deals with countries that matter. Wealthy countries, countries with growing economies, emerging nations and our friends in the Commonwealth.
We lose so many sales to these countries because the EU has failed to negotiate suitable trade deals. Last year I had an inquiry from a Brazilian businessman who wished to order fi ve small hovercraft for an activity centre in Sao Paulo. Purchase price £ 50,000 – plus duty on top of £ 42,000 because Brazil is not an EU- approved country. Needless to say the deal did not go ahead.
Britain is simply not allowed to make its own trade deals and this prevents us from selling our products, bringing money into the UK, growing the business and employing more staff.
Ignore the scaremongering. Leaving the EU is an incredible opportunity for UK business, one that we of all nations can exploit so we thrive in a fastchanging global marketplace.
We can do this! We have the world’s fi fth largest economy and we are the 11th biggest manufacturing nation. British products and services are in demand all round the world so we must make it cheaper and more straightforward for our trading partners to deal with us.
But it’s not just about business or economics. I have watched horrifi ed at the mishandling of the migrant crisis, seen the misery, economic damage and discord it has caused between the nations of Europe. I have watched it lead to the rise of far- Right parties in countries such as France, Greece and Finland and I fear the demands made of this country by the EU could see similar parties gain momentum here. It frustrates me to see the EU waste vast sums of our money on ridiculous laws and directives, vanity projects and mind- boggling corruption.
Every year we send billions to an organisation that has not been audited in more than 20 years. I am absolutely at a loss to understand how the Remain campaign can live with themselves in defending this.
LET US save our money and spend it on hospitals, schools and the most vulnerable in society. The EU makes our laws, takes our money and does so with no accountability to the British public. This is what we have our own MPs for and if they get it wrong we can kick them out after fi ve years.
We’ve done pretty well on our own since the Romans went home and we’ve written the democratic blueprint for much of the modern world.
How dare Brussels steal that democracy away from us? British MEPs are powerless to infl uence the myriad laws that issue forth from Brussels – they are defeated and outvoted more than 86 per cent of the time.
The Common Market a great idea and if it remained simply as a market I wouldn’t campaigning to leave.
But this power creep, this erosion of our democracy and sovereignty, isn’t what we signed up for and we need to get out while we still can. was had free
be