vvv What they said

Solicitor (commercial/IT)

I only really have a surface knowledge of what it does, and even then it's only really in areas that I come across professionally (or from having a slightly-more-than-passing interest in politics).

In my line of work a fair amount of the law is influenced by the EU - data protection, TUPE, public procurement, competition law, agency/distribution law etc - so I see some of the benefits/burdens of it all in 'real life' as it were.

It gets a lot of bashing in the press, but some of the things it tries to do - for example there's going to be a big push on digital commerce so that it's easier to buy goods online across Europe as a consumer, and know that you have the same rights wherever your stuff is bought from - are a genuine step change in the rights that we as individuals have.

As a Tory that looks back on the age of Empire with rose-tinted glasses, I surprise myself by being quite pro-EU. Two examples:

My last job was working for an outsourcing company, and life for low skilled employees in the service sector would be a hell of a lot more uncertain if it wasn't for EU regulations and directives. A lot of the employment rights we take for granted started life in Brussels.

I shudder to think what the age of 'big data' would be like if it wasn't for the data protection act (some of our clients sail a bit close to the wind as it is), and in an age when more and more of our lives are international - whether its the food we eat, our power supplies, where the data centre is that hosts the website we do our online banking on - we are much better off trying to establish international rules and protections as a large trading bloc than we would be on our own. That's something that UKIP misses entirely.

Not that it's beyond criticism, of course.

Posted By: CWC, May 23, 22:10:52