europe and bees

So Nigel Lawson has declared that when/if there is a referendum he will vote for Britain to come out of Europe. In the last referendum he voted for Britain to go into the EU while I was very grateful that I was away on holiday with friends (who I met at Assembly over the weekend). I remember it well - it was the same summer that snow stopped play at a big cricket match! I was 27 back in 1975, I knew how to sew and how to keep my sanity while bringing up two small boys but I didn't know whether it would be a good thing or a bad thing to go into Europe!
I am quite a bit older now, although I don't feel it inside and I am very fortunate to have a skeleton and muscles that still behave themselves even though other bits are not so good!
But I still would not know which way to vote. We don't know what life would be like if we had not gone into the EU back in 1975 and we don't know what would happen if we came out of the EU.
But I am very grateful that we are in the EU and I will now quote from 'Riverford', from whom we get a box of fruit and vegetables each week and who won 'Farmer of the Year' in 'Radio 4's Food Awards'.
"Hurrah! In a triumph for bees and the independence of science, our Environment Secretary and the chaps from Syngenta were defeated last week by an EU commission vote, which will now restrict the use of neonicotinoids on flowering crops. To descend to the Defra position, where nature is expendable unless it can be demonstrated incontrovertibly that it is worth saving on economic grounds, would be hugely depressing. It makes me ashamed to be human and even more ashamed to be British. Thankfully there was more enlightenment elsewhere in Europe - as well as a great number of passionate Brits campaigning here."