Brexit - Part 6 A
Businessman's View
On Brexit, here are comments from Sir James Dyson (via
FullerMoney)...
Dyson exports far more to the rest of he world (81 per cent)
than Europe (19 per cent). “We’re very pleased with the European
market – we’re number one in Germany and France – but it’s small
and the real growing and exciting markets are outside Europe.”
He says the much-trumpeted single market isn’t really a single
market at all. “They have different languages which, for an
exporter, means that everything from the box to the instruction
manual has to be in a different language. The plugs are
different. The laws are different. It’s not a single market. The
only communality is that there’s no tariff, but the pound going
up against the euro is far more damaging than any tariff. If the
pound rises, £100 million is quickly wiped off.”
The problem with the EU’s free movement of people is that it
doesn’t bring Dyson the brilliant boffins he needs. “We’re not
allowed to employ them, unless they’re from the EU. At the
moment, if we want to hire a foreign engineer, it takes four and
a half months to go through the Home Office procedure. It’s
crazy.”
He produces another staggering fact. “Sixty per cent
of engineering undergraduates at British
universities are from outside the EU, and 90 per cent of
people doing research in science and engineering at British
universities are from outside the EU. And we chuck them out!”
So hiring a low-paid barista from Bratislava is no problem, but
a prized physicist from Taiwan is a logistical nightmare. The
Government claims that, if a non-EU citizen gets a job within
two months of finishing their research, then they can stay here
for two years. “The point is that it’s completely mad not to
welcome them,” he says, “why on earth would you chuck out
researchers with that valuable technology which they then take
back to China or Singapore and use it against us?
Softly spoken, Dyson’s Home Service Received Pronunciation tones
become incensed when he talks about what he sees as our
disloyalty to Commonwealth countries. “They fought for us in two
world wars. So that particularly upsets me. We’re missing out on
all those people who have helped us and with whom we have a
great affinity, often a common language.
"Culturally, it’s all wrong. We’re not only excluding them from
our country, we’re charging them import duty because we’re
forced to by the EU. And the food’s cheaper, too.”
His views on Brussels have been shaped by bitter experience.
Dyson sits on several European committees. “And we’ve never once
during 25 years ever got any clause or measure that we wanted
into a European directive. Never once have we been able to block
the slightest thing.”
john
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