In the often surreal discussions around Europe we seem to be ignoring the facts, and what Europe is doing for Britain now.
A few days ago, the European Commission announced the two projects that will receive up to €1 billion (£855 million) each over the next 10 years under the Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) programme.
2013 will see us unveiling our plans for how we can reunite Britain and create a One Nation country.
Under the Tories, we have become a divided country, with fragmented groups living side by side: the rich and the poor, the working and the out-of-work, the Brits and the non-Brits, the young and the old.
10 million people a year travel between Britain and the Continent using the Eurostar channel tunnel: we are in Europe and, despite the anti-Europe rhetoric, we benefit from it.
Britain’s economy is crumbling under the drastic choices of our Tory-led government, grounded only in the sheer ideology of austerity, with no grip on growth.
What is probably most worrying about the current situation in the EU is the intense focus on a long term roadmap to create a stronger banking union, without sufficient effort being given to measures needed to sort out the current crisis now.
The Greeks have voted, showing a country that is heavily polarised between pro and the anti-bailout opinion, with Pasok, the socialist party, in a very difficult situation, its consensus having reached an absolute minimum.
Pasok is guilty of having failed to manage a complex situation that it did not create.
It is intriguing to think that, dramatically, the future of the West depends on the future of the country where the West itself was born.
The decision of whether Greece will stay or leave the Eurozone will have a tremendous impact on Europe and on the United States of America.
The Fawcett Society says that we are at a watershed moment for women’s rights. Women are being pushed out of the workforce, with childcare costs soaring, and cuts to legal aid making women more vulnerable to violence.
Female unemployment has reached its highest level in two decades; beyond the 1.1 million mark.