ALL too often romantic ideals and political reality clash, forging a schism between voters and politicians alike. What would be nice or traditional, may not be practical.
It was a shock, but perhaps shouldn’t have been, that the European Commission’s review of the Working Time Directive, in which EU chiefs want to limit the working week to 48 hours, should include proposals to introduce work free Sundays.
There is definitely a section of society that lament the loss of the traditional Sunday, when families were together and all one could do is go for a drive, or spend hours on a roast dinner.
But there are an equal number of people who would find closed shops, limited services and a day spent stuck at home not only a bore, but a burden.
Sunday trading was made legal in Wales in 1994, with earlier attempts to introduce it in the 80s blocked by Church groups. Since then, we’ve come to accept it and in many cases appreciate being able to visit the cinema or do a bit of DIY.
Turn the clock forward 20 years and the same situation is emerging in Brussels.
Pressure groups, largely representing the Church, have asked the Commissioner for Employment and Social Affairs, Laszlo Andor, to put forward work free Sunday proposals.
Is there really room in a global economy to outlaw productivity on Sunday when in Europe, one in four people practice a non-Christian religion? Or when other global economies function as normal?
For most of us, Sunday is still a day of rest, but also a day when you can get on top of things that have built up during the week. If everything shut down, we’d be forced to do the same.
Across Europe there’s a growing view that society is broken and values lost. But is legislating upon values right? Should we not be asking what the fundamental cause of disillusionment is? We might find it rooted in the sense that we live in an over-governed, Big Brother world. Compacted, I would suggest, by the 120,000 EU directives that control your life on a daily basis.
You might hope the UK Government puts national interests before European ones.
But just last week Gordon Brown voted with other EU heads of state to stop money to the UK’s poorest regions and give EU funding only to the poorest member states. Yes, your Prime Minister voted in support of your taxes improving the lives, not of British people, but of those living thousands of miles away, meaning Wales, one region to benefit from EU funding, is less worthy of help than Romania and Bulgaria.
I am sure if you check the manifestos, not one party recommends recouping some £120 billion a year on EU membership and red tape and instead suggest finding the finances to fix UK debt from your pay packets and public services.
The only figure we’ve been given is £6bn by the Conservatives, some 20 times less than annual savings if we left Europe.
Not only would we be able to redirect vast amounts of money into our hospitals, schools and roads, but we’d lose the straightjacket of red tape that restricts business from thriving and sends manufacturers running to the Far East.
Perhaps if we were to leave Europe, we could once again be a country that makes and sells things, with stable industries forming the backbone of proud communities.
Perhaps if we shed the burdens of health and safety, political correctness, mass immigration, fishing quotas, agricultural directives and so forth, and let people get on with their lives, we’d have breathing space to remember who we are, and what we are good at.
Perhaps if we left Europe, that alone would be enough to make the UK a happier, more liberated and prosperous place to live in.