European Politics

"Think labour protection, enhanced social welfare, smoke-free workplaces, equal pay legislation, holiday entitlement, and the right not to work more than a 48-hour week without overtime."

There are people who don't agree with some of those things, of course. Same goes for health and safety and wider human rights legislation. People complain there's too much of that and consider it an EU imposition. One of the first things to go if/when we leave the EU will be the Human Rights Act. The Government have said they'll replace it with a specifically British Bill of Rights, but that will most likely be the creation of the current Conservative government and could end up suiting their agenda rather than the general public good.
 
Brigantium said:
"Think labour protection, enhanced social welfare, smoke-free workplaces, equal pay legislation, holiday entitlement, and the right not to work more than a 48-hour week without overtime."

There are people who don't agree with some of those things, of course. Same goes for health and safety and wider human rights legislation. People complain there's too much of that and consider it an EU imposition. One of the first things to go if/when we leave the EU will be the Human Rights Act. The Government have said they'll replace it with a specifically British Bill of Rights, but that will most likely be the creation of the current Conservative government and could end up suiting their agenda rather than the general public good.
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Anti smoke laws went fiasco in Croatia, the law said some absurd A/C systems were required if you allowed smoking in bars. Nobody gave a shit, people even physically confronted the inspectors. It's a part of daily culture to get a cup of coffe in your local bar and most of the bar visitors actually smoke. 1/3 Croats smoke. Fortunately the gov't adapted the numbers regarding A/C so small shops could do it, now it's actually normal to breathe there even if you're a non smoker, so I guess that's a good compromise. I'm a smoker myself but not a critical one and I for one cannot tolerate a lot of smoke around me.

What pleases me is that, considering the fact that if you own a private enterprise nobody can stop you from smoking inside office space, actually nobody does it. We have a fairly big staff and a proportional amount of smokers (33%), and nobody would even think of lighting up a cigarette inside. Actually the only guy who did it, rarely, on an open window in 3rd shift, was our patriot that returned from Australia :D So I guess even without straight out repression you can make smokers realize the benefits.

We have laws that say that if you work in office you have right to take a 5 min break from your workplace each hour. And we have nice weather, so it's your state given right to get up, take a walk, smoke, chat and catch sun.
 
Of course people don't want it that bad as in Turkey (I hope), but too much of health, safety and human rights legislation, in a Western European nation?
Yay, let's go back to the stone age...
 
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Brigantium said:
"Think labour protection, enhanced social welfare, smoke-free workplaces, equal pay legislation, holiday entitlement, and the right not to work more than a 48-hour week without overtime."

There are people who don't agree with some of those things, of course. Same goes for health and safety and wider human rights legislation. People complain there's too much of that and consider it an EU imposition. One of the first things to go if/when we leave the EU will be the Human Rights Act. The Government have said they'll replace it with a specifically British Bill of Rights, but that will most likely be the creation of the current Conservative government and could end up suiting their agenda rather than the general public good.
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Blaming compensation culture on EU law puzzles me slightly, because I don't get the impression people in France, for example, are anywhere near as litigious as in Britain. Public attractions, events organisers and authorities aren't hypervigilant about making sure there's no way members of the public can injure themselves and sue.

@Forostar - it's not clear if you mean you think H&S and human rights law is excessive, or if you think it's idiotic to get rid of it. ;)
 
Brigantium said:
Blaming compensation culture on EU law puzzles me slightly, because I don't get the impression people in France, for example, are anywhere near as litigious as in Britain. Public attractions, events organisers and authorities aren't hypervigilant about making sure there's no way members of the public can injure themselves and sue.

@Forostar - it's not clear if you mean you think H&S and human rights law is excessive, or if you think it's idiotic to get rid of it. ;)
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The latter.
 
My edit only made my tone slightly milder.

I am honestly surprised you two don't get what I mean. There was no word of Spanish.
 
Forostar said:
I am honestly surprised you two don't get what I mean. There was no word of Spanish.
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Forostar said:
Of course people don't want it that bad as in Turkey (I hope), but too much of health, safety and human rights legislation, in a Western European nation?
Yay, let's go back to the stone age...
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To be honest with you Foro, I didn't think the first part of the post immediately above was particularly clear (hence why I asked you to clarify); and quoting Brigs wholesale, with no further comment by yourself, didn't really clear it up. I could have guessed your view anyway; just wanted to be clear though.

I think the problem, generally, is criticizing or praising "Human Rights" legislation & not being clear about what particular part of Human Rights legislation you're referring to. It's pretty broad. It's not contradictory to disagree with some aspect of it (or how it's implemented) but to still broadly support most of the legislation as it currently stands. From my own perspective I believe too many people focus on unimportant minutiae & conveniently forget the benefits that they personally gain from their country adhering to them e.g. (as Brigs points out) employment rights, which most people now take for granted. The present UK government have made it abundantly clear that they view most of these employment rights as a hindrance to economic growth (citing a lack of flexibility etc) & not something they're interested in preserving in their current form (if they had the choice). I find this totally unacceptable.
 
Parliamental elections here are on 24 April. There are 20 lists and I can't decide which one to vote for, since the situation is way different compared to last elections. I'm not a fan of the party in power at the moment, however, they decimated the opposition after the last elections when they won more than 50%. The opposing parties either split up in multiple smaller parties or changed multiple leaders and teamed up with other parties. I just made a list of all the lists and I'm eliminating them one by one. Criteria for elimination:
- if the leader is a previously known idiot
- if the party is super religious and pro-Russian (these usually go hand in hand)
- if the party is anti-EU
- if the party is from a minority group (like the Hungarians) (they will end up in the parliament no matter the result, by default, plus I don't really see a point in voting for them if I'm not minority).
And I've ended up with 3 lists + the one currently in power... And I don't feel like any of them are any good <_< But IMO elections should be mandatory so I'm gonna have to pick something.
 
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