EU Must Be Joking

I love Martin Kirby's

weekly column. There. I said it. He's predictable inasmuch as he will

almost always spend at least half of his allocated wordcount on some right-wing

crusade or other, but he still has the capacity to surprise his readership,

sometimes by coming over all reasonable, or, as is the case in his latest column, by somehow leaping onto a bandwagon that many

thought had already sped by.

When I saw that MK was

attacking the EU and Britain's role in it, I considered that I may have

inadvertently been transported back to the year 2001, but alas not.

I don't intend going over

all of the old arguments for or against our membership, although I will

declare, for the record, my largely pro-European stance. As a civilising force

that has potentially prevented wars, not to mention a whole raft of rights

afforded to workers, there are plenty of positives I could point to in favour of both

the EU's existence and British participation. Martin is quite correct in his

assertion that Britain is a net contributor to the EU purse, and it is fair to

question this, as would be the spending of any public money. When people

attempt to justify our contribution by pointing to the grants claimed by

regions such as the South West and Wales, even I fail to see the logic in

passing money to a third party that we could have spent directly in improving

the infrastructure of these areas. Surely the European Union was never meant for

this purpose.

The issue we have is that

the two major political parties in this country have a fundamental problem

being honest about Europe. The current batch of Tories are more in favour of EU

integration than they dare let on, which is why they dangle the referendum

carrot every so often, primarily to keep their own back-benchers and core

voters from joining UKIP en masse. Labour in power are always less pro-European

than their educated middle-class 'politico' members and voters (but maybe more

so than their traditional working-class core), as they struggle to balance a

mindset of harmonious integration with the steely pragmatism expected of a

British government negotiating in the European arena. The Liberal Democrats are

honest enough in their federalist European ideals, but virtually nobody wants

this, and UKIP is a one-trick pony that struggles to convince anyone that they wouldn't

be completely irrelevant once they had managed to achieve their key aim of taking

Britain out of the EU.

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Back to Martin's column,

and I too could not fail to notice the recent influx of betting shops in

Gloucester's centre. Only last weekend my father said to me that in times of

hardship, the businesses that traditionally endure are pubs, pawn shops and

bookies, not to mention the tobacco industry. Pubs maybe don't belong on that

list any longer, not with the number of them closing, but that's more down to

the unique circumstances of the smoking ban and the availability of cheap booze

in supermarkets. Certainly the vices of betting, drinking and smoking are still

very profitable. I don't mind a bet on the football or the boxing every now and

then, and maybe a trip to a racecourse once a year, but I do think that an

increase in betting shops indicates a wider malaise in society, not to mention

a blight on our town centres. Not so long ago, it seemed as though betting was

set to become an internet only phenomenon, but all of a sudden that's not the

case. Maybe when gambling was out of sight it was also a little too much out of

mind, so perhaps the visibility of the high street bookie is a good thing if it

leads the powers that be to question why they are so readily springing up in

our towns.