Watched this the other day. Clive is very pro EU, he posted about it on his blog before and he was very in favour of staying in. My opinion is that now we are out of the EU we won't have to battle against all the other member states.
The viewpoint that we are better in and making our voice heard doesn't hold with me. The UK was never listened to before when in the EU so to think we could make the difference when it comes to discussions about vaping is a bit fanciful. Yes, we will need a deal with the EU and we will need to comply with some regs to gain access to the open market. But the big point is that we will be able to lobby our government much harder when we know what is going on.
Clive asks where we think the gov's priorities will be when it comes to negotiating this agreement. We need to make sure vaping is high on their agenda - the likelihood is that the advocacy groups out there will be letting everyone know when it is time to write letters and harangue our MPs again and ask that they make the right choices. The number of vapers in the UK is growing each day and the evidence is mounting about its effectiveness as a way of getting off cigarettes. We will just need to put the pressure on at the right time again.
And let's face it, it's going to be a good few years before we leave. So it may well be that we can start putting the pressure on sooner rather than later. This regulations only came into effect a few weeks before the vote. Unfortunately yes, we have ASH lobbying the other way which buggered up the Lords vote. So we aren't there yet but I think we are better off out still in terms of getting only the UK gov to see sense rather than the whole of EU, where some of the countries have politicians who are more easily swayed by brown envelopes than our own.
