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CAN WE PLEASE HAVE SOME OF OUR MONEY BACK?
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Speaking up for working women and small businesses
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In view of the seriousness of the underlying point I was making about discrimination against women in the work place, I intend to concentrate here on the relevant basis for my argument. I do not intend to appease the professionally morally outraged, the humourless, or those with a not so well hidden Europhile agenda. The media seems to have started to swing around to my message although it clearly distresses them to have it delivered by a white, middle class businessman with a bowler hat. Let us leave aside shooting the messenger and listen hard to the message.
For many years more and more employment legislation has spewed out of Brussels and Strasbourg. Much of it is policed by Whitehall with the dedication of the Gestapo. The end result, not just for women, but for everyone is discrimination in practice. Young women have been covertly discriminated against for years by small businessmen and women, because of the impossibility of complying with ever more expensive regulations.
Paternity leave is the next piece of nonsense on the agenda as gender discrimination will soon also be illegal under new European Laws. There is no point in piling more and more obstacles in front of employers, who actually are desperate for good quality, hard working and committed young people of both sexes. What use are scores of employee protection regulations if they make it too expensive to employee people? Rights are not much use if you haven’t got a job in the first place.
It might give politicians in Strasbourg a warm, self righteous feeling drafting it but if it means no job for a receptionist in Hull or Sheffield because she is young and married, what purpose does it serve? “Protection” starts ever earlier in the employment and is extended to part-timers, it is abused daily as my massive supportive post bag shows. Damnation to political correctness, it is my job to speak up for my Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire constituency. Growth in the Eurozone is virtually nil, job growth in the UK is largely restricted to the public sector. Manufacturing jobs emigrate to the Far East almost daily.
The inflexibility of labour markets in Europe means 10% permanent unemployment. Nearly 30% amongst the under 25s in France, Italy and Germany. The black economy thrives. Mercedes make cars in South Africa, BMW in America, Dyson makes his vacuum cleaners in Malaysia and Hayters lawnmowers in China. Financial services and call centres go to the Indian subcontinent. All this goes on while our politicians maniacally produce yet more regulation. Only this weekend there was a call to double the number of health and safety inspectors. Point all this out and the best the media can do is shout sexist! Pathetic. I intend to stifle the nonsense from Brussels as best I can. Pending gender discrimination laws will soon force up car and life insurance premiums for women. It has to stop and soon.
One of the saddest, if not most frightening aspects of this whole affair is the secrecy demanded by my email and post bag. Scores of small businessmen and women support my point of view but are too afraid to go public because of victimisation from the authorities or past and future employees. Let me urge those voices to go public or at least write to the press with their view. Help me to help you. I will campaign for the American system where small family businesses are exempt from federal regulation and we can make England a land of opportunity for hard working, self reliant people and employers can once again welcome young women with open arms.
By Godfrey Bloom MEP Yorkshire & The Humber
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