It said in the press today that the government is fighting to retain the way with which we pay surgeons. As far as I know this is the only country in the EU that has a national health service, so what the EU is making a fuss about is illogical, because, if I’m right, all the surgeons in the other countries will be individually making their own arrangements. I never approved of joining the EU for the simple reason that the French don’t like us because they reckon that we cleared off at the time of Dunkirk, and forget that we stood firm for all the following years. You can understand Germany’s point of view. As to the other countries, Italy, Spain and all the other smaller countries that have since joined the EU, it would seem that they are flouting the rules with very little redress.
We are an island nation with only one land border, and even that is under some stress. We are insular by nature, and none too quick to adapt to other people’s ways. In the days of the Raj, when we conquered a country, we didn’t try to understand their ways and adapt ourselves while living in their country, we tried to turn the whole country into a little Esher, with cricket clubs and afternoon tea. I have never understood why we went into the EU, we were told it would enhance our trading prospects, something which I also thought to be illogical. If you are producing products or intellectual properties, they have to stand on their own merits, and if people want them they will find them irrespective of where they come from. If they’re not up to standard they will not sell. That is standard trading practice. Recently I have discovered that a large number of the young people today don’t need to advertise, word-of-mouth provides as much work as they can handle. With a credit crunch we haven’t got that level of product production we had when we joined the EU, and I believe that this is another reason why our manufacturing base should be given high priority, then perhaps we could leave the EU to flounder in the way it is, at incredible cost to the taxpayers, and go back to trading like we did in the old days.