Delusions of power

Many of my Tory friends used to say, "Wait until Dave gets in, you'll see we will roll back the power of Europe".
We he is in, and the powers of Europe are not being rolled back. But what is really odd, is that the actions of his goverbnment seem designed to highlight its own impotence.

So far the classic case has been the prisoner votes charade, where hundreds of Tory Back benchers have voted to prove their own impotence.

Next up is on issues surrounding maternity leave. Here again the Tories are attempting to steal a UKIP policy (just as they keep on doing, and I see that the SNP are doing similar (thanks Peter)) but this time it is one of the policies that only UKIP can achieve.

You see these ideas trailed in the Sunday Telegraph, just won't work while we remain in the EU.

The strategy is expected to include proposals aimed to address the staffing problems caused to such firms by strict maternity leave laws. In the future, companies with 10 or fewer employees could be given the right to negotiate maternity and paternity leave “deals” directly with their workers.


Mark Prisk, the deregulation minister, will meet business leaders in the next few days to discuss the plans, this newspaper understands. The Budget will be announced by Mr Osborne on 23 March.

Currently a women is allowed up to a year’s statutory maternity leave if she is an employee, no matter how long she has had the job, how many hours she works or how much she is paid. Her employer is also forced to give her old job back to her, or offer her a similar post, on the same salary and conditions, if she wishes to return.

Furthermore, under changes to take effect in April, if a mother returns to work without taking a full year’s maternity leave then the father will be able to take the remaining time, up to a maximum of six months – another moved opposed by most business leaders.

Marvellous, excellent, good on you Mr Prisk. And why not go a little further, for example our Small Business Policy.

But anyhow we are not the only ones who have noticed that this idea has one overweaning problem. The EU.

Plans to exempt small firms from onerous new maternity leave rights are being stymied by Lib Dem ministers.
Tories want to give bosses of businesses with ten or fewer employees the right to negotiate parental leave directly with staff.
But the move is being opposed by Lib Dems who have warned that any move to water down protection for workers at small firms would flout EU laws

So what are the Tories up to? I would guess that a significant majority of Tory backbenchers would like to see SMEs released from the spring tide of regulations drowning out their entrepreneurship.
What is more they would happily vote it through the House.

Only to be brought up sharp by the first employment tribunal which will make it clear, as plain as a pikestaff that the UK no longer legislates alone on employment regulation. It is at least in part an EU competance.

Yet again it appears that they Conservatives are merely underlining their impotence.

I am beggining to feel that they actually believed their own rhetoric. They actually thought that by getting into power it would mean that they were in power. I don't think that they have the first idea quite how much control has been passsed across the Channel, both on their own watch and the watch of the Blair/Brown years. All they are doing is reminding people that the EU is in control.

Which in turn drives people to UKIP.

"It is the state and not employers who takes on the costs"

So says Myria Vassiliadou of the European Women's Lobby (EWL) of the latest tranche of legislation on maternity leave.

It is almost a perfect expression of the economically-illiterate, rent-seeking attitude of those who already receive their wages from the greater European Taxpayer. But there again looking at her proffessional background one shouldn't be too surprised about her lack of knowledge of basic stuff like this,

Myria Vassiliadou holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in Sociology and Social Research and a doctorate in Sociology from the University of Kent at Canterbury, UK. For over a decade, Myria worked as an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Nicosia in Cyprus and taught undergraduate and graduate classes in Sociology, predominantly in the area of gender.
She has worked extensively in the area of gender as this relates to questions of identity politics, migration, ethno-political conflict, and the media, published in several books and journals, conducted workshops and seminars, and has been actively involved in various non-governmental organisations.

She obviously is unaware that 'States' don't have any money that they don't take from individuals and businesses. In her slightly warped world, the massive increased cost to businesses, (estimated at £7000 for small businesses by the FSB) will not affect them. The money to cover these costs will just magik into the air and fall upon their grateful heads.

Of course in reality the money will be taken from them and recycled through the apparatus of the state and be given back to them (having first had amounts rubbed off for better and wiser purposes along the way).

As the FSB makes clear,

the additional cost to the UK - estimated to be £2.5 billion - will be passed onto small businesses and could act as a deterrent for small firms to take on new members of staff.

This naturally isn't a worry for Ms Vassiliadou. Why? Because she gets her money from the EU,

For the year of 2010, the EWL’s core budget is €1.024.231,29. The EWL receives 81.65% of this amount as a grant fromt the European Commission under the PROGRESS programme. The remaining 18.35% is made up of membership fees and other independent sources of funding.

Or in other words from the taxpayer. As UKIP's Godfrey Bloom puts it,

"If this legislation had been specifically designed to discourage the employment of young women, the EU could not have done a better job.

"The costs to business will simply serve as a further reason to not employ young women of child-bearing age."

Absurd legislation such as this closes the door on opportunities for young women and consigns them to a role as second class citizens, trapped at home by the stupidity of legislators. "

It will single-handedly turn back the clock to the 1920s by forcing employers to avoid exposure to the penalties by not hiring young women."We know that these plans will cost billions but what is unquantifiable is the damage they will do to women's job prospects."