By Richard Corbett MEP
1. Labour MEPs believe in fairness. The common market needs fair rules if it is not to be an unregulated playground for short-term commercial interests at the expense of workers, consumers and families.
2. Labour MEPs work to ensure protection of workers rights in the European market. We introduced measures to give part-time and temporary workers the same rights as full-time workers as regards training, pensions, maternity rights and leave.
3. Labour MEPs are committed to protecting consumers. We have, among other things, introduced fines for airlines when they deliberately overbook and doubled cash compensation for stranded rail and airline passengers. We adopted measures to prevent mobile phone companies from charging exaggerated amounts when using your phone abroad. We also introduced a two-year guarantee for shoppers on new electronic products. We have brought in clear labelling for food and drink products.
4. Labour MEPs are committed to stringent emission targets in order to fight climate change. We secured a plan to cut CO2 emissions across Europe by at least 20% by 2020. We will ensure that energy efficiency, recycling and protecting the environment remains at the top of the EU agenda.
5. Labour MEPs work to secure more jobs and EU funding in Yorkshire. Since 2000 more than £1.5 billion of European funding has been invested in the region. This has helped to deliver 40,000 new jobs, helping business increase competitiveness and stimulating the training of employees and young people in schools.
6. Over 60% of Yorkshire & Humber’s exports are to the rest of the EU some 350,000 jobs here depend on that. We will defend our corner to safeguard those jobs in setting the common rules for the common market.
7. Labour MEPs work to enhance the EU’s overseas development programme making the EU the largest donor of development aid in the world. We have made poverty reduction the main focus of EU development policy. Exports from the least developed countries are allowed duty ad quota free into the EU thanks to the work of Labour MEPs.
8. Labour MEPs work to improve human health. We have been at the forefront of calls to ensure safer and better-labelled food. Labour MEPs secured the compulsory labelling of GM foods and more informative packaging on food additives.
9. Labour MEPS support enhancing parental rights and protecting children. We ensured both parents have the right to time off work when they have children or adopt. Labour MEPs called for a Europe-wide Amber Alert system for children who are missing and set up the 116000 missing children hotline to speed up the vital response by national authorities if a child goes missing.
10. Labour MEPs secure Europe-wide rules to help fight crime. We adopted the European Arrest Warrant, which means suspected criminals cannot avoid arrest by moving between EU countries. We have also approved a scheme by which victims of crime travelling between EU countries are eligible for compensation.
11. Labour MEPs defend animal welfare. We have banned the testing of cosmetics on animals and the marketing in Europe of any new cosmetics tested on animals outside the EU. We are currently working to reduce the hours animals are transported for to eight hours maximum. We banned the sale and imports of cat and dog fur into the EU and at present we are pushing for a ban on all imported seal products into the EU.
12. Last but not least we need to Stop the BNP threat in Yorkshire. If Labour voters do not turnout on 4th June we risk losing Richard Corbett MEP’s seat to the BNP. If Labour does well, we could replace UKIP’s Godfrey Bloom (famous for saying women should stay at home and council house tenants are ‘ASBO-carrying monsters’!) with our dynamic third candidate, Emma Hoddinott. Not voting Labour means keeping Bloom and possibly letting in the BNP. Don’t let it happen by forgetting to vote!
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I would be extremely grateful if our Labour MEPs started fighting for getting our individual freedoms back...
You claim to be open and transparent about your expenses but never give a figure, just a cordial note telling that its "OK"
His biography tells us that he is a member of the Fabian Society and that he is a socialist and a fanatical pro EU federalist None of these are qualifications for representing his constituency nor this country. It is at best a minimal and fanatical stance.
We want a referendum, you give us a sneaky treaty. You treat us like the US colonialist army and government treated the Sioux and the Cheyanne, the Blackfoot and the Navajo... and when your tricky words won`t do you make new laws .. How many new laws has your party introduced in this tenure? Hard to keep count, its in the tens of thousands. and not any for the good.
But now we see you for what you are.
You speak highly Richard of your aspirations for us, yet do not ask if they are our needs and aspirations, which they are not. Your aims are redundant and repugnant. Your aims will only lead us to a Europe wide police state and the people are wakening to this. You are defending a flawed and lost cause, and you know it. But all you and your kind can do is cling to desperate sound bites, Climate change fantasy, Jobs, ( as if you could create any)" Fairness? You mean dilution of difference........Thats not fairness, thats control. Change? The only change you want is that people are not allowed the temerity to question or criticise you.
Minimum wage? Why not a cap on maximum wage to restrain your ilk? Or is it just what you say and not as you do? You destroy more than you create and your pedigree and credentials, your rhetoric, your tired rallying calls are now all wasted, because the people are waking, and you and your colleagues are in the light, and seen for what they are...
and its the end Richard,Labor, Nulabour, call it what you will, its just a dark stain on history now, But also a new beginning. and it will begin without you and your party with its malicious impositions and incompetence and that can only bode well.
The people will decide. Not you.
are those are the rules that allow someone in this country to be arrested and taken to another EU country when accused of an offence which is not a crime in this country?
isn't there also something about the warrent not being first subject to scrutiny in this country?
so habeas corpus so EU !
wish i could believe that
Richard, I'm sure your aims are noble but you are part of the shysters and liars that think the electorate are stupid enough to believe the Treaty is not a Constitution.
You are part of a political party that reneges on its promises.
So you can forget SISO and start signing on because the people are not voting for you.
Sadly, though, the people aren't so keen on helping you keep your snout in the trough. It's too much to hope that you, personally, will lose your seat. But because you are one of the most enthusiastic promoters of the creeping Euro state, my fingers are crossed.
And where is our referendum which will stop Blair becoming our first unelecetd president.
I disagree. The only thing that is important is getting rid of this incompetent Government with their muddle-headed fickle crypto-fascist agenda (last seen abandoned in a ditch en route to the last populist spasm that failed).
The second most important thing is ensuring that the wall-eye'd Scots poltroon Gordon ****ing Brown goes down in history as the most shamefully inadequate Prime Minister this country has had the misfortune to have since Charles I was executed. Imposed on an unwilling public by the lack of cojones among the leadership of a once honourable political party.
This is a good article and before the usual suspects pull it apart, at least think about what your MEP is doing and how they are campaigning. Richard is going for it on issues that are important, not what is viewed as currently the 'in' thing or on bashing other people for their personal views.
And Richard, head back to Merseyside asap where you are sorely needed.