Brexit or Britin

[Worthy4England]

Between £150-250m nett a week to be told what we can't do and generally be told we're a bunch of w@nkers has always seemed quite a lot to me.

Indeed, unlike the same amount and more to be told what we can't do and generally be told we're a bunch of w@nkers by the current government (whichever it is in the UK), not elected by 65-70% of the voters and masquerading as "democratic"....

Funny that, innit?

[Bijou Bob]

The Guardian are quoting an even smaller figure of 120 million per week, yet the question remains as to how much this could increase by if Turkey, Albania etc are allowed to join or what the knock in effects might be. Granted 1% of our entire budget sounds trivial, but when hospital wards have no nurses, cancer patients can't get life extending drugs and I haven't seen a copper in my town for over a month, I can see an argument for the other side.

[Worthy4England]

If you were looking to find 1% extra to spend on those things, you really wouldn't start your search in the bucket that only had 1% in it. If the accession countries doubled what we pay now, which I don"t advocate, then you'd still only be at the alarming figure of 2%...

[Lord Kangana]

As I recall it, the NHS spends billions in a week. Defence isn't far off. The net £160m a from the EU that's "left over" includes farming subsidies that our farmers receive, and business grants and initiatives that our businesses also receive, so being polite about this it would be incredibly naive to suggest we could just "give it all to the NHS". There'll be an awful lot of demand for it. And I would personally question the wisdom of handing over yet more wads of cash to the now fully privatised and inefficient NHS.

Of course, that doesn't even cover the cost to business of closed borders - at the moment this reduces the cost of trading within Europe by reducing bureaucracy on transactions - and also aligned VAT rates, which again actually reduces (get ready budding tabloid hacks) red tape for our businesses.

From a purely economic standpoint, we're getting more out than we put in. Not directly as taxpayers on public services - I'd happily vote for that if I even had the slightest inkling that the money would really go there - but through the expanded size of our economy.

I really worry that people haven't got to grips with how much the world has moved on, or indeed how many empty, unfulfillable promises being made by the leave campaign.

[Abdoulaye's Twin]

We also get a lot of our scientific research money from the EU, which somehow I don't think our government would replace much of that money, meaning we'd likely lose a very important industry.

The other thing that is probably isn't widely known is that the European Medicines Agency (EMA) is based in Canary Wharf (a decentralised agency of the EU) it is largely funded by the EU but does generate some of it's own funding through fees to the pharmaceutical industry. One of the things this agency does is harmonise the entry of pharmaceuticals to the EU, ensuring everything from product safety, information and marketing is correct and to standard. It also receives reports of adverse affects for pharmaceuticals across Europe (hospital in Stockholm or doctor in Madrid or wherever), which is critical for safety. Now, the UK has the MHRA which before the existence of EMA had to coordinate this stuff. It now is woefully set up to carry out the work of EMA should we leave the EU. It would also need a massive increase in funding and recruitment of expertise. Additionally, it is questionable whether the MHRA would benefit from EU wide adverse affect reports in as timely a fashion and would rely more on the pharama companies to release such data (do you trust them to?). The other major benefit the EMA does is harmonise the administration to bring a product to market. 1 process to put your product into 28 markets (plus EEA) rather than one for each country. The EMA also supports over a 1,000 jobs and further jobs within other companies providing services to the EMA. However you look at it, losing the EMA would be a big loss to the UK

There are many other decentralised EU Agencies covering food safety, aviation, security and much more (based around the EU). It is debatable how valuable each of them is, but the loss of each of them will result in significant increase in UK government spending to make up for the loss of access to them. I know the Leave argument is getting rid of red tape, but some and I might argue quite a bit of it needs to be retained. So, even if the EU is costing us 120m or whichever net figure you wish to believe, a fair chunk of that wont be going to the NHS as suggested by the Leave campaign - it'll be paying for the things we currently don't have to do.

There is no doubt that we could take back all these functions, but the cost and time to do so will be dear - not to mention Boris will want to outsource it all so it ends up costing more and means taking money from the NHS etc that they are trying to hoodwink you into thinking they'll spend more on.

[Bijou Bob]

The lies, disinformation and scaremongering isn't limited to one side. Such has been the scale of it that it has raised people's suspicions about there being a hidden agenda. Less than 3 weeks and it's all over and done with and either way, I suspect it won't make much difference to me.

[Worthy4England]

I think I'm reasonably comfortable with the figures of net £8.5Bn, from Full Fact.

https://fullfact.org/europe/our-eu-memb ... 5-million/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

So starting with that £8.5Bn...

VAT receipts on fuel are £2.3Bn. Brexit have said they could take this away.
We also get private sector funding of £1.4Bn through private sector research grants.
They've mentioned £100m per week for the NHS - £5.2Bn

To my mind that's already bust the £8.5bn without all the other promises. I think Bijou, you're fcked on extra policemen, we're already in more debt..

[bobo the clown]

Between £150-250m nett a week to be told what we can't do and generally be told we're a bunch of w@nkers has always seemed quite a lot to me.

Indeed, unlike the same amount and more to be told what we can't do and generally be told we're a bunch of w@nkers by the current government (whichever it is in the UK), not elected by 65-70% of the voters and masquerading as "democratic"....

Funny that, innit?

Hysterical. But that is our system. The EEC is the other one we opted to join but that seems to have gone missing.

.... & we could always chose to have a PR system where the balance of power parties with their 3% & 4%''s dictate the detail. Maybe we should ask people.


Oh. We did.

[Worthy4England]

Between £150-250m nett a week to be told what we can't do and generally be told we're a bunch of w@nkers has always seemed quite a lot to me.

Indeed, unlike the same amount and more to be told what we can't do and generally be told we're a bunch of w@nkers by the current government (whichever it is in the UK), not elected by 65-70% of the voters and masquerading as "democratic"....

Funny that, innit?

Hysterical. But that is our system. The EEC is the other one we opted to join but that seems to have gone missing.

.... & we could always chose to have a PR system where the balance of power parties with their 3% & 4%''s dictate the detail. Maybe we should ask people.


Oh. We did.

I'm fine with "we did" - around 28% of our registered voters, felt strongly enough to retain the status quo (vs 14% who'd rather change it), just don't masquerade it as somehow a paragon of democracy. That's less votes cast in favour of FPTP, than were cast for MEP's at the 2014 European elections. Not many more in total voted on alternative vote, than for the last European elections - 16.5m v 19.2m - you know, that really undemocratic thing...

[bobo the clown]

Well unless you want to force people to vote ... in which case a "none of the above fckg options" box needs to be added then that's what we have.

[Worthy4England]

Well unless you want to force people to vote ... in which case a "none of the above fckg options" box needs to be added then that's what we have.

I'm fine with us sticking with what we have - that's what the vote said do. Let's not pretend that a significant minority vote is somehow democracy in action. Blair's 2005 government got 355 seats (55%) on a 35% share of the vote (22% of the electorate). Cameron's just won 330 seats (51%) on a 37% share of the vote (25% of the electorate)..

So our really accountable governments win half the seats on the basis that 75%/80% of the voters didn't vote for them. That is apparently accountability and democracy. Not at all like the unaccountable EU. Nosiree.

[TANGODANCER]

The whole in/out thing is worse than the pea-souper fogs pre the nineteen-sixties. You could stand there totally lost and not knowing which way to turn. Good thing was the fog would clear eventually, or you'd stumble across a landmark to guide you home. Neither of those things look like happening here. It'll be proven eventually that some voted right, some wrong and some not at all. I'm betting the non-voter percentage is getting higher by the day because there's no clear answer to be had by agenda led politicians that nobody really trusts. Privatise the government and let Sky, Virgin, McDonalds and all the rest of the moguls fight it out. Richard Branson for prime minister, Bill Gates for Chancellor. That should do it.

[thebish]

Fairy Nuff. Are you trying to tell me that 161 million plus is still peanuts? I'm still on the Remain side, yet even I think that's a heck of a lot of money.

aye - yeah - it is. It looks like a big number - but in the grand scheme of what the UK weekly budget is - it IS peanuts... (It wouldn't be peanuts in the Bijou Bob family budget - but is IS peanuts in the UK economy budget!)

and - as I said - though we are a net contributor, that cash buys us into the club that gives us economic benefits related to trade that we wouldn't otherwise have - so it is (in my opinion) worth it.

[Abdoulaye's Twin]

Fairy Nuff. Are you trying to tell me that 161 million plus is still peanuts? I'm still on the Remain side, yet even I think that's a heck of a lot of money.

aye - yeah - it is. It looks like a big number - but in the grand scheme of what the UK weekly budget is - it IS peanuts... (It wouldn't be peanuts in the Bijou Bob family budget - but is IS peanuts in the UK economy budget!)

and - as I said - though we are a net contributor, that cash buys us into the club that gives us economic benefits related to trade that we wouldn't otherwise have - so it is (in my opinion) worth it.

And by being in the 'club' we're spending a lot less on things like the MHRA and other regulatory bodies than we otherwise would have to.

[TheHeatonWanderer]

I'm probably going to vote in even though both sides have been pathetic. Just been scaremongering and making up stuff.

[thebish]

Between £150-250m nett a week to be told what we can't do and generally be told we're a bunch of w@nkers has always seemed quite a lot to me.

so - made up your mind yet, or still undecided?

[bobo the clown]

Well unless you want to force people to vote ... in which case a "none of the above fckg options" box needs to be added then that's what we have.

I'm fine with us sticking with what we have - that's what the vote said do. Let's not pretend that a significant minority vote is somehow democracy in action. Blair's 2005 government got 355 seats (55%) on a 35% share of the vote (22% of the electorate). Cameron's just won 330 seats (51%) on a 37% share of the vote (25% of the electorate)..

So our really accountable governments win half the seats on the basis that 75%/80% of the voters didn't vote for them. That is apparently accountability and democracy. Not at all like the unaccountable EU. Nosiree.

Well .... they are "really accountable" & the system is what it is & it's better than letting the fringe parties have control which is what the alternative offers.

But this is a "yes/no" decision so all pretty irrelevant in this instance.

[Hoboh]

Aye, in reality, it's only about 250 million quid or summat. Peanuts..

Care to corroborate that?

it'sa less than £250million if you net out what we get back...

thus:



and that does not take into account the trade benefits of being in it...

in short - the £350million is sheer bollox and the £250million figure is slightly less sheer bollox...

Yeah just bollox isn't

These are 2015 figures

The UK pays more into the EU budget than it gets back.

In 2015 the UK government paid £13 billion to the EU budget, and EU spending on the UK was £4.5 billion. So the UK’s ‘net contribution’ was estimated at about £8.5 billion.

Each year the UK gets an instant discount on its contributions to the EU—the ‘rebate’—worth almost £5 billion last year. Without it the UK would have been liable for £18 billion in contributions.

So in effect your 'rebate' figures are more than we paid in

The above figures don't include btw the billion odd surcharge we paid for being a 'successful' economy.

[thebish]

(HM Treasury's figures - not mine!) They're the ones that do the actual paying in...

[Hoboh]

As I recall it, the NHS spends billions in a week. Defence isn't far off. The net £160m a from the EU that's "left over" includes farming subsidies that our farmers receive, and business grants and initiatives that our businesses also receive, so being polite about this it would be incredibly naive to suggest we could just "give it all to the NHS". There'll be an awful lot of demand for it. And I would personally question the wisdom of handing over yet more wads of cash to the now fully privatised and inefficient NHS.

Of course, that doesn't even cover the cost to business of closed borders - at the moment this reduces the cost of trading within Europe by reducing bureaucracy on transactions - and also aligned VAT rates, which again actually reduces (get ready budding tabloid hacks) red tape for our businesses.

From a purely economic standpoint, we're getting more out than we put in. Not directly as taxpayers on public services - I'd happily vote for that if I even had the slightest inkling that the money would really go there - but through the expanded size of our economy.

I really worry that people haven't got to grips with how much the world has moved on, or indeed how many empty, unfulfillable promises being made by the leave campaign.

Like in terms of low/no skilled labour moving where the fancy takes them, subsidised states that have fancy capitals and countryside towns and villages that resemble pre-historic times, first and second generation populations who think it's fine to fight wars for a sky pixie and countries they don't even belong too.
To belong in a group of nations who make rules then break them 'because it's the French'.
Yeah the world has moved on a hell of a lot, most of it backwards, who ever would have thought of a free Europe forming a new soviet union type block?