| Two views of the world and our place in it |
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| Written by Tim Worstall | |
| Sunday, 14 October 2007 | |
There's one way of looking at it :The MPs says that the problem lies with the Charter of Fundamental Rights – which is part of the treaty – and which says: "Every worker has the right to limitation of maximum working hours, to daily and weekly rest periods and to an annual period of paid leave."And there's another way: British workers could lose their right to work more than 48 hours a week and have to forfeit lucrative overtime because of the EU Reform Treaty which Gordon Brown is due to sign next week.Around here we side with liberty and freedom: it's what being a good little liberal means. Thus we tend to take the latter view of the various working time directives. If consenting adults wish to work more than 48 hours a week, what business is it of the State's to make it illegal for them to do so? The whole notion rather betrays two inimical ways of looking at the world. Adults may only do what we, the rulers, think is good for them, or adults may do as they please, subject only to their effects on others. My own vehement opposition to the European Union (I am so extreme as to insist that its very existence, whether the UK is in or out of it, is a problem) is based in part on the fact that the entire ethos seems to be that former one: that adults should not be allowed to do as they wish, that only one vision of society is to be allowed, the one that the State will insist upon by law.
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