Johnson

the hero of the Brexit campaign, Boris Johnson

Why did Britain vote for independence from the EU?  A few reasons as sent to us by a reader:

  • Cadbury moved factory to Poland in 2011 with a EU grant.
  • Ford Transit moved to Turkey in 2013 with a EU grant.
  • Jaguar Land Rover has recently agreed to build a new plant in Slovakia with EU grant, owned by Tata, the same company who have trashed our steel works and emptied the workers’ pension funds.
  • Peugeot closed its Ryton (was Rootes Group) plant and moved production to Slovakia with a EU grant.
  • British Army’s new Ajax fighting vehicles to be built in SPAIN using SWEDISH steel at the request of the EU to support jobs in Spain with EU grant, rather than Wales.
  • Dyson gone to Malaysia, with an EU loan.
  • Crown closures, Bournemouth (was METAL BOX), gone to Poland with a EU grant, once employed 1,200.
  • M&S manufacturing gone to the Far East with a EU loan.
  • Hornby models gone. In fact all toys and models now gone from the UK along with the patents, all with with EU grants.
  • Gillette gone to eastern Europe with a EU grant.
  • Texas Instruments Greenock gone to Germany with a EU grant.
  • Indesit at Bodelwyddan Wales gone with a EU grant.
  • Sekisui Alveo said production at its Merthyr Tydfil Industrial Park foam plant will relocate production to Roermond in the Netherlands, with EU funding.
  • Hoover Merthyr factory moved out of the UK to the Czech Republic and the Far East by Italian company Candy with EU backing.
  • ICI integration into Holland’s AkzoNobel with a EU bank loan and within days of the merger, several factories in the UK, were closed, eliminating 3,500 jobs
  • Boots sold to Italians Stefano Pessina who have based their HQ in Switzerland to avoid tax to the tune of £80 million a year, using an EU loan for the purchase.
  • JDS Uniphase run by two Dutch men, bought up companies in the UK with £20 million in EU ‘regeneration’ grants, created a pollution nightmare and just closed it all down leaving 1,200 out of work and an environmental clean-up paid for by the UK taxpayer. They also raided the pension fund and drained it dry.
  • UK airports are owned by a Spanish company.
  • Scottish Power is owned by a Spanish company.
  • Most London buses are run by Spanish and German companies.
  • The Hinkley Point C nuclear power station to be built by French company EDF, part owned by the French government, using cheap Chinese steel that has catastrophically failed in other nuclear installations. Now EDF say the costs will be double or more and it will be very late even if it does come online.
  • Swindon was once our producer of rail locomotives and rolling stock. Not any more, it’s Bombardier in Derby and due to their losses in the aviation market, that could see the end of the British railways manufacturing altogether even though Bombardier had EU grants to keep Derby going which they diverted to their loss-making aviation side in Canada.
  • 39% of British invention patents have been passed to foreign companies, many of them in the EU The Mini cars that Cameron stood in front of as an example of British engineering, are built by BMW mostly in Holland and Austria. His campaign bus was made in Germany even though we have Plaxton, Optare, Bluebird, Dennis etc., in the UK. The bicycle for the Greens was made in the far east, not by Raleigh UK but then they are probably going to move to the Netherlands too as they have said recently.

Anyone who thinks the EU ha been good for British industry or any other business simply hasn’t paid attention to what has been systematically asset-stripped from the UK. Name one major technology company still running in the UK, and now we don’t even teach electronic technology for technicians any more, due to EU regulations.

I haven’t detailed our non-existent fishing industry the EU paid to destroy, nor the farmers being paid NOT to produce food they could sell for more than they get paid to do nothing, don’t even go there.

I haven’t mentioned what it costs us to be asset-stripped like this, nor have I mentioned immigration, nor the risk to our security if control of our armed forces is passed to Brussels or Germany.

Find something that’s gone the other way, I’ve looked and I just can’t. If you think the EU is a good idea:

1. You haven’t read the party manifesto of The European Peoples’ Party.

2. You haven’t had to deal with EU petty bureaucracy tearing your business down.

3. You don’t think it matters.