What do we get for 1.7B from the EU

Yves Geza said:
I'm following with interest, but 38 posts in and, apart from Alan Clogwyn, no one seems even to have attempted to give an answer to the original question.

On the other hand, let me pose a question ...



Is this because, although the economy is growing the population among whom it's divided is growing faster?
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So what. Some countries are richer than others. That doesn't effect relaxing trade boundaries. The fiscal state of each EU country is the business of that countries government and people.

What we have now is so far from what we originally as an electorate voted for it's time for us to ask the question? In or out.

Scotland got that say over the UK, the whole of Britain should get that over the EU
 
ST4 said:
It's also not the worlds only one. A fact worth IMHO remembering.

I assume you're older than me and will remember the original concept and member countries. I believe that was and is a good idea. There are countries in it now (Greece, Romania, Bulgaria) that really are fiscally so different to the original idea. The concept of the EU passing laws, having a government and military (Euro fighter) go so far and beyond what we as an electorate voted for that we IMHO as an electorate need to be asked the question in/out.

The original idea and original member states is/was a good idea but it's morphed into a dictatorial, bureaucratic expense we IMHO are better off without.

I ask you, and any other poster why does a free trade agreement need a government of it's own and fiscal demands over the members that are in the trade agreement.
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I`m not disagreeing with you Steve. I also believe that the Euro goverment is an utter waste of money. Have certain member states been allowed in that maybe shouldn`t have is a difficult question. Yes Greece,Romania and Bulgaria bring very little, but they are European Countries. Look at the mess Spain and Italy are in, do we throw them out until they sort their acts out,how could we.

Worryingly, I agree with your concept of the original idea being bastardised and we have nothing like what was originally intended.

But is leaving the answer,i`m really not sure to be honest.
 
Personally I am ambivalent about the whole "EU government" I doubt it is any better or worse than Westminster. Not exactly a great comparison, but to misquote Churchill it is the least worst solution to the problem of governance. Personally I am from a generation that takes the EU for granted many of my friend work in the EU and I work with many EU nationals and I view this as a good thing. I work for a University and much of our research funding comes from the EU, as do many of the students. The nature of modern science research means it has to be completed by teams of researchers and the EU provides a useful mechanism for this. As for the original question, I don't pretend to understand how this extra figure was calculated but seems to remember reading that the change to reporting regime was agreed years ago, so much of the urgency I assume is more pointless political posturing.
 
fracster said:
I`m not disagreeing with you Steve. I also believe that the Euro goverment is an utter waste of money. Have certain member states been allowed in that maybe shouldn`t have is a difficult question. Yes Greece,Romania and Bulgaria bring very little, but they are European Countries. Look at the mess Spain and Italy are in, do we throw them out until they sort their acts out,how could we.

Worryingly, I agree with your concept of the original idea being bastardised and we have nothing like what was originally intended.

But is leaving the answer,i`m really not sure to be honest.
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I am sure leaving is the answer, or strongly re-negociating terms.

Being "European" countries IMHO isn't a good reason to include then. I maintain the original idea of free trade with Italy, France, UK, Germany etc is a nice thought and a good idea, even Spain/Portugal. Bulgaria and Romania nope, sorry. I wouldn't want them in, particularly with this free passage of people stuff we are tied to as a part of it. Western Europe is compatible with us fiscally, Eastern Europe (I do include Poland in there too) much less so IMHO.

I still ask, why does free trade need a parliment of its own? The EEC, EEA and now EU has evolved into something grotesque, hence the whole UKIP movement we see now.

With our own tax revenues that we kick up the EU, we can fund our own science and research if/when we withdraw from it. Without the drain of the Brussells shake down, we would be in a better positiion to do so
 
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ST4 said:
I also have to say we're the only EU country with oil...
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Well Steve you can say it all you like but that won't make it true.
 
Yves Geza said:
On the other hand, let me pose a question ...
Is this because, although the economy is growing the population among whom it's divided is growing faster?
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Yes, that is possibly a reason, though not as important IMO as the small (realtively) number of people who are benefitting from the economic "growth". I would also like to see this economic growth explained, and see the areas where we do well - arms sales (to despicable regimes), financial packages, property sales to foreign buyers/investors.
I personally feel that we joined the EU "Half cock", by not joining the Eurozone, thereby not having enough leverage when it comes to influencing important matters. However, the wonderful power of hindsight has shown us that the Eurozone is not all that it was cracked up to be.
I personally think that the current situation in Ukraine (tempting them to become part of the EU) is an absolute disaster, and will cost the WHOLE of the EU (including us, who were among the cheerleaders, along with the US) dear, because Ukraine will turn out to be a bottomless pit which gobbles up EU funds.
We then have the bail out of countries like Greece, who historically are extremely corrupt and lack any real kind of beaurocracy, thereby allowing large swathes of the population to avoid paying taxes. The same applies to a lesser degree with Spain, Portugal and Italy.
I agree with others who say the EU should become more streamlined, have greater transparency, more accountability, and most importantly every country should be using exactly the same methods to calculate the following - economic growth/stagnation/recession, immigration, unemployment (including all relevant data for students/training, economically inactive, welfare recipients, NMW - should be made compulsory IMO).
One of the things which I would like to see introduced, are standard benefits across the whole of the EU, and make that a condition of countries wishing to join the EU.
 
ST4 said:
I am sure leaving is the answer, or strongly re-negociating terms

With our own tax revenues that we kick up the EU, we can fund our own science and research if/when we withdraw from it. Without the drain of the Brussells shake down, we would be in a better positiion to do so
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If only it was that simple, its not just a finance issue. If we leave the EU we are not suddenly going to build own version of CERN or run our own space programme. Projects of this scale are beyond any single nation, both in terms of funding but also in term of the talent available.
 
Kaolin said:
If only it was that simple, its not just a finance issue. If we leave the EU we are not suddenly going to build own version of CERN or run our own space programme. Projects of this scale are beyond any single nation, both in terms of funding but also in term of the talent available.
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Given our fiscal issues and improvements to our own infrastructure (aging rail network etc) is a space program really something to be bothering about?
 
Nope I guess not... Then again GPS seems vaguely useful and the next generation of Galileo even more so with the added benefit that unlike GPS they won't belong to the US defense department. Weather forecasts based on Satellite images seem useful also. All these things are much more affordable if paid collectively.
 
We have GPS as it is
Kaolin said:
Nope I guess not... Then again GPS seems vaguely useful and the next generation of Galileo even more so with the added benefit that unlike GPS they won't belong to the US defense department. Weather forecasts based on Satellite images seem useful also. All these things are much more affordable if paid collectively.
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We have GPS already and great technology predicting weather. There is no need for the EU to exist for a few countries to arrange this. Nor does the the GPS belonging to the US defence department bother me.

Given our national debt, roads needing repair, NHS situation I think we have bigger priorities than seeing the weather forecast quality increase a bit.
 
We get the free movement of people and labour. That's worth it at any price. Also, the EU together form a (I hate this word) 'superpower'. Whatever that means of rather be a part of one. It's not the nineteenth century any more. We are a small island 'country' that would mean remarkably little of we weren't in the EU.
 
ST4 said:
We have GPS as it is


We have GPS already and great technology predicting weather. There is no need for the EU to exist for a few countries to arrange this. Nor does the the GPS belonging to the US defence department bother me.

Given our national debt, roads needing repair, NHS situation I think we have bigger priorities than seeing the weather forecast quality increase a bit.
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And leaving the EU will pay for a better NHS, fix the roads, clear the debt. Not a chance... But it will reduce the opportunities for all, put up the price of food and lead to years of pointless navel gazing. Isolation is never the cure. Anyway I guess we agree to disagree, it all depends on a persons previous interaction with the EU and mine have been first hand and positive.
 
norters said:
We get the free movement of people and labour. That's worth it at any price. Also, the EU together form a (I hate this word) 'superpower'. Whatever that means of rather be a part of one. It's not the nineteenth century any more. We are a small island 'country' that would mean remarkably little of we weren't in the EU.
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I fully agree with the freedom of movement invaluable. Really we have pulled off the perfect trick by exporting a load of OAPs and employing a significant number of generally young well educated people - whats not to like.
 
norters said:
We get the free movement of people and labour. That's worth it at any price. Also, the EU together form a (I hate this word) 'superpower'. Whatever that means of rather be a part of one. It's not the nineteenth century any more. We are a small island 'country' that would mean remarkably little of we weren't in the EU.
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Britain is still a superpower, and I strongly doubt the free movement of people benefits our people as much as it benefits those coming in from abroad. We've got a well educated people and plenty of vacancies for them.

But this thread isn't about immigration per se, its about being in control of this countries finance and destiny and IMHO we are paying too much to be a part of something that doesn't do a lot of good, IMHO. We can still trade with European countries without being in the EU and still do business with the world.

Kaolin said:
I fully agree with the freedom of movement invaluable. Really we have pulled off the perfect trick by exporting a load of OAPs and employing a significant number of generally young well educated people - whats not to like.
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Yes, exporting lots of affluent people who spend and pay lots of taxes for people that don't often earn a lot (fruit pickers, labourers etc) and therefore cannot pay lots of tax isn't a great swap
 
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NikonKev said:
I can't get my head round this unless i liken it to the better i do in my Business the more Tax i will pay !
So if this is the case what did we get that initiated this large bill ? Can't imagine we were that better off financialy being in the EU that the 1.7b should be paid !
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What happens (simplistically) is along the following lines..
  1. The member states provide an estimate of how they think their economies will perform (GDP) over the next EU membership period.
  2. The projected EU budget for the membership period is divided up between members according to the GDP estimates provided and everyone pays their annual dues according to the estimate they provide.
  3. Periodically EU members submit their actual economic performance alongside details of the actual EU budget over the relevant period.
  4. Surchages/rebates are then applied based on the actual data to keep everything fair.
One of the problems is that the periods the estimates are applied seem to be far too long, and there's far too long a delay before the actual performance data is submitted and reviewed. So you can run with a bad estimate for several years and the errors resulting in surcharge/rebate get bigger and bigger. The £1.7bn surcharge relates to a UK underpayment over a period of many years.

Important things to note:
  • The UK unilaterally decided to change how we calculate our economic performance and this caused an artificial increase in our reported actual performance (who'd have thought the illegal economy was so strong? - one of several changes we chose to make in the calculation was to include the GDP effects of the illegal economy, e.g. prostitution and drugs). This was our own decision and UK government should have been aware of the effects.
  • In the past we have benefitted from rebates under the same rules. This time our estimate went the wrong way (when compared to the actual data we chose to submit) and we underpaid our subs by something like £150m per year over the last membership period.
  • There's a major CF in both the original estimate of economic performance and the effects of changing how we calculated the actual performance this time around. Responsibility for this FU firmly rests within the UK government.
  • The surcharge/rebate is based on data that was supplied by the UK government, this should not have been a surprise. Either Cameron/Osborne are dumber than a bag of spanners or they're faking surpirise and treating the UK public as if the public are dumber than a bag of spanners. I suspect it's both - i.e. they're both dumber than a bag of spanners and they treat the public like idiots*.

And regardless of the EU rebate/surcharge thing, there's also the seperate mystery of why the UK government haven't been releasing available EU-sourced grants/subsidies to UK business. It's there for us to take but the government hasn't made the necessary actions to release the funds. UK businesses get a lot of grant funding from the EU - and we could get more but succesive governments have chosen (for political reasons) not to make the decisions that would enable additional grants to qualify (apparently the worry is that by declaring an area an EU recognised economically deprived area it might upset the horses and damage house prices).



* to be fair, most of the public are dumber than a bag of spanners when it comes to international affairs.
 
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Duplicate post - too easy to select "quote" instead of "edit"
 
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And you really trust the corrupt eu to get the sums right? Probably decided that 1.7bn was a nice thing to ask for rather than work it out!
 
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cambsno said:
And you really trust the corrupt eu to get the sums right? Probably decided that 1.7bn was a nice thing to ask for rather than work it out!
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Given the inherent corruption in the UK government, I assume that Cameron/Osbourne take it for granted that both sides cancel each other out.

But the UK single-handedly managed to comprehensively f**k up its own calculations for the estimate to be so far adrift of the actual. And for the government to submit the figures to the EU knowing that this is what they were to be used for and then feign indignation a few weeks later when the bill is presented.. .. that's either treating the public with contempt or the cabinet/treasury is genuinely incompetent.
 
Alastair said:
Given the inherent corruption in the UK government, I assume that Cameron/Osbourne take it for granted that both sides cancel each other out.

But the UK single-handedly managed to comprehensively f**k up its own calculations for the estimate to be so far adrift of the actual. And for the government to submit the figures to the EU knowing that this is what they were to be used for and then feign indignation a few weeks later when the bill is presented.. .. that's either treating the public with contempt or the cabinet/treasury is genuinely incompetent.
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Given our treasurer has boroughs down national deficient whilst still maintaining a massive level of public welfare costs is no mean feat. Fiscally this has been a prudent administration.

I've not got that faith in the EU and resent so much British money leaving Britain.
 
@ST4 explain to me in small words that I can understand, how Britain is still a superpower.
 
ST4 said:
Given our treasurer has boroughs down national deficient whilst still maintaining a massive level of public welfare costs is no mean feat. Fiscally this has been a prudent administration.

I've not got that faith in the EU and resent so much British money leaving Britain.
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National deficit may be down, but national debt is up and overall the country is less well off - as can be seen by reduced revenue from taxes, increased part-time working and declining income levels against a picture of an increased wealth gap. Whilst the reduction in deficit can be seen to be prudent from some points of view, the toll that an austerity-only approach has taken on government income (tax receipts) will have in the long run we can only wait to see. That no effort has been made to increase taxation amongst high earners whilst the percentage of income paid as tax has increased amongst the lowest paid. And by high earners I don't mean the current higher rate tax bracket which whilst high against minimum wage levels is no longer excessive - but that one tax bracket can include someone on £60k and someone on £6m annual income now seems overly simplistic.
 
norters said:
@ST4 explain to me in small words that I can understand, how Britain is still a superpower.
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The UK hasn't been a superpower since about 1910.
 
ST4 said:
Britain is still a superpower, and I strongly doubt the free movement of people benefits our people as much as it benefits those coming in from abroad. We've got a well educated people and plenty of vacancies for them.

But this thread isn't about immigration per se, its about being in control of this countries finance and destiny and IMHO we are paying too much to be a part of something that doesn't do a lot of good, IMHO. We can still trade with European countries without being in the EU and still do business with the world.



Yes, exporting lots of affluent people who spend and pay lots of taxes for people that don't often earn a lot (fruit pickers, labourers etc) and therefore cannot pay lots of tax isn't a great swap
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Still a superpower - really just because will still have some large (and expensive) bombs can't see any other metric than would make us a superpower... And we have exported lots of economically inactive people, rich or poor is kind or besides the point mostly they are not tax payers but they are big users of the NHS. Most of the EU workers are young so unlikely to cost much and are tax payers. Being that we pay most of our benifits and pensions from the tax take and not from savings (each generation pays for the next) we need lots of people paying tax.
 
ST4 said:
Given our treasurer has boroughs down national deficient whilst still maintaining a massive level of public welfare costs is no mean feat. Fiscally this has been a prudent administration.

I've not got that faith in the EU and resent so much British money leaving Britain.
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And yet as a percentage of GDP public sector debt is still rising - he must be a very clever fellow George... The cuts are still to come if the debt is actually going to fall.
 
I half read an article yesterday that put an estimated gain of £5-6 billion each year as a result of being in the E.U.

Consider also most (all???) big business want to remain part of the E.U it seems fairly logical.

So - If we assume the above figure is correct (and I have no idea if it is) it seems silly, illogical and somewhat childish to get upset about having to pay back £1.7billion.

Edit - no no longer a superpower - we can argue when exactly we stopped being one (I would go with the end of WW2)
 
Kaolin said:
Still a superpower - really just because will still have some large (and expensive) bombs can't see any other metric than would make us a superpower... And we have exported lots of economically inactive people, rich or poor is kind or besides the point mostly they are not tax payers but they are big users of the NHS. Most of the EU workers are young so unlikely to cost much and are tax payers. Being that we pay most of our benifits and pensions from the tax take and not from savings (each generation pays for the next) we need lots of people paying tax.
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How are affluent rich people ecomically inactive - they spend and have incomes that often attract the higher rate of tax. Retired or not, they're paying tax. Never mind their spending.

I'm not saying not all immigrants are bad but working in Lidl, Aldi and picking fruit aren't jobs that will pay enough to cover a big tax liability. Nor I bet couldn't they be filled by British people. The movement of people argument is a tenuous one.

I'd rate nuclear defence abilities as being a key indicator of your superpower status.
 
Kaolin said:
And yet as a percentage of GDP public sector debt is still rising - he must be a very clever fellow George... The cuts are still to come if the debt is actually going to fall.
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Much more cuts are needed. The lib dems have held back the true potential of a conservative government. Great things will happen next time
 
tijuana taxi said:
Without knowing the facts I don't feel properly qualified to comment.
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But this is the internet!!

ST4 said:
The lib dems have held back the true potential of a conservative government. Great things will happen next time
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Some of us can remember the true potential of a conservative government from Margaret Thatcher's time in office. Next time? No thanks!

ST4 said:
The original idea and original member states is/was a good idea but it's morphed into a dictatorial, bureaucratic expense we IMHO are better off without.
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I do agree with this. I remember the original intent of the Common Market and that was a good idea.


Steve.
 
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Alastair said:
What happens (simplistically) is along the following lines..
  1. The member states provide an estimate of how they think their economies will perform (GDP) over the next EU membership period.
  2. The projected EU budget for the membership period is divided up between members according to the GDP estimates provided and everyone pays their annual dues according to the estimate they provide.
  3. Periodically EU members submit their actual economic performance alongside details of the actual EU budget over the relevant period.
  4. Surchages/rebates are then applied based on the actual data to keep everything fair.
One of the problems is that the periods the estimates are applied seem to be far too long, and there's far too long a delay before the actual performance data is submitted and reviewed. So you can run with a bad estimate for several years and the errors resulting in surcharge/rebate get bigger and bigger. The £1.7bn surcharge relates to a UK underpayment over a period of many years.

Important things to note:
  • The UK unilaterally decided to change how we calculate our economic performance and this caused an artificial increase in our reported actual performance (who'd have thought the illegal economy was so strong? - one of several changes we chose to make in the calculation was to include the GDP effects of the illegal economy, e.g. prostitution and drugs). This was our own decision and UK government should have been aware of the effects.
  • In the past we have benefitted from rebates under the same rules. This time our estimate went the wrong way (when compared to the actual data we chose to submit) and we underpaid our subs by something like £150m per year over the last membership period.
  • There's a major CF in both the original estimate of economic performance and the effects of changing how we calculated the actual performance this time around. Responsibility for this FU firmly rests within the UK government.
  • The surcharge/rebate is based on data that was supplied by the UK government, this should not have been a surprise. Either Cameron/Osborne are dumber than a bag of spanners or they're faking surpirise and treating the UK public as if the public are dumber than a bag of spanners. I suspect it's both - i.e. they're both dumber than a bag of spanners and they treat the public like idiots*.

And regardless of the EU rebate/surcharge thing, there's also the seperate mystery of why the UK government haven't been releasing available EU-sourced grants/subsidies to UK business. It's there for us to take but the government hasn't made the necessary actions to release the funds. UK businesses get a lot of grant funding from the EU - and we could get more but succesive governments have chosen (for political reasons) not to make the decisions that would enable additional grants to qualify (apparently the worry is that by declaring an area an EU recognised economically deprived area it might upset the horses and damage house prices).



* to be fair, most of the public are dumber than a bag of spanners when it comes to international affairs.
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Thanks Alastair thats most helpfull.
 
Steve Smith said:
But this is the internet!!



Some of us can remember the true potential of a conservative government from Margaret Thatcher's time in office. Next time? No thanks!



I do agree with this. I remember the original intent of the Common Market and that was a good idea.


Steve.
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Thatcher was probably the finest prime minster we ever had. She had backbone
 
NikonKev said:
Thanks Alastair thats most helpfull.
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It is a perhaps slightly over-simplistic summary.. the object of Steve's BILF desire made it all far more complex than that with the CAP rebates. Wiki has quite a good and impartial seeming account of the UK rebate situation (at least that prior to recent developments).
 
ST4 said:
Wealth, perception, military forces are all top rate.
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Hahahahahaha do you really think the rest of the world views the UK as a superpower???? You truly have NO idea whatsoever! To claim that is just hysterical. We are small, almost inconsequential collection of islands that only has any influence because a) the USA can rely on us to support their War of Terror and b) we are a member of the EU.
 
Ricardodaforce said:
Hahahahahaha do you really think the rest of the world views the UK as a superpower???? You truly have NO idea whatsoever! To claim that is just hysterical. We are small, almost inconsequential collection of islands that only has any influence because a) the USA can rely on us to support their War of Terror and b) we are a member of the EU.
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Why then is the EU so keen to keep us and people from all over the works try immigrate here?

Our military capability is world class
 
ST4 said:
Why then is the EU so keen to keep us and people from all over the works try immigrate here?

Our military capability is world class
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The EU would not want any member to leave, and people emigrate to all EU member countries. That last fact really doesn't seem to sink in with you does it?
 
cambsno said:
Norway and the Swiss cope. Non EU countries cope. Do you think if we left we would not be allowed to trade?

These days business is global, and you could argue that businesses are bigger than many countries.
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Norway and Swiss pay all EU taxes and fees, but have no say about anything. Hardly a way to go...
 
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