A breakdown of the UK's membership fee of 19.5 Billion pounds in 2015 is interesting. Firstly Britain doesn't pay the full fee - it gets back 4.9 Billion because of a rebate negotiated by MT. in 1984. It receives 3.9 Billion from the EU. for public spending and 1.4 billion for private sector spending. 1 Billion is designated as foreign aid, which Britain is allowed to count towards the UK. government target of 0.7% of GDP on aid - in other words, it would be spent anyway. The rebate is deducted at source - it never reaches Brussels. So the real payment is not the 19.5 Billion quoted by the Brexiters - but rather 8.4 Billion, a sum which is more than counterbalanced by the benefits of the single market. In fact it's a sum which is only about a 5th of the revenue from EU. tourism in the UK. These are the real facts SH. away from the comics you read.
Try to understand him Yorkie - he's desparate. He uses figures in the same way a drunkard uses lamposts ie. for support rather than illumination, and he will jump at the first comic which provides these.
Looks tonight that the government is going to cave in over keeping these assessment documents secret. Listening to the debate the minister waffled on at length, but admitted they would not oppose the motion presented by the opposition and supported across the house. If the information shown is as bad as suspected then it really does need the MPs to take a hold on the situation.
Tonight I watched Jacob Rees-Mogg say in the commons that he supported the Labour motion to release the assessment documents. However he went on to say that if the government wished to oppose the motion he would vote with the government. Surely this is a clear case of a MP not doing what he believes is right for the country. In the same debate there was a government stooge on the backbenches receiving texts on his mobile. On three occasions he tried to get the Labour party to drop the motion without success. Why is the government trying to stop this information being released to parliament? One can only assume that they contain bad news. The motion was passed without a division.
Exceptionally bad news for both Scotland and the NE part of the 'Northern Powerhouse', if the rumours are to be believed. Independence-triggering news I suspect.
I see Bercow had said they would have been liable for contempt if not released.... they had no choice it seems
Seems tonight that these documents might not actually exist. From what Davis has said today they might not be much more than a batch of newspaper cuttings stored in a box file. He has tried to get a week before meeting with Benn to sort something out, but the Speaker, (a Tory) has told him that is not acceptable. Even Rees-Mogg wanted Parliament to know what was in them. Meanwhile Wilbur Ross, the US commerce secretary, has said to the CBI, that he hopes that it might be possible to do a trade deal with the UK in less than TEN years.
"But he said it would not be possible to identify specific points of contention until the shape of the divorce deal is known and insisted he hopes a UK-US free trade agreement will take less than 10 years to negotiate."
Both the Telegraph and the Independent quoted him as saying a deal could be done in a matter of months. He stated any delay problems would be down to the usual protectionist policies of the EU which he prefers the UK to not emulate once Brexit is completed. He clearly listed the areas of likely contention. As usual you have chosen to put a negative spin on a piece of news for God knows what reason, desperate stuff again.
Not at all. He said that passporting for US banks would have to be preserved. He said that the UK would have to ditch the food standards they currently enjoy. He said that we must drop our medicine standards and adopt the US ones, plus plenty more. These things will not happen, which is why he talks in more realistic terms about the time span involved. Drop our food standards and we could no longer export our farm produce to the EU, which is where the bulk of our farmers send their exports to. Drop our medicine standards and there would be long delays in selling drugs to the EU, where the bulk of those exports go to. Since Trump started mucking about with their trade agreements exports of farm products have dropped by 9%. Any agreement would be out to dump this surplus in the UK to the detriment of the home farmers. In fairness to you you do mention that if we adopt EU standards, which the plans are to do, then no quick deal will be done. If you say that the government is saying one thing, but planning something different, then perhaps you have some evidence for it.
Liam Fox said in his Today interview that the British public will not accept the diluting of animal welfare standards, a day after Donald Trump’s most senior trade adviser said a US-UK trade deal hinged on scrapping EU food standards regulations, including on chlorinated chicken. This is a news item, not my opinion SH.
Come on play it fairly now............ Frenchie engages you fairly in a discussion and you always rubbish it when he comes back again for detail. The devil is in the detail as we know and no broad brush stroke is going to cover that up.
He's like all of the bombastic Brexiteers, thin on detail, they don't do detail, they don't do reality either it seems. They like soundbites and meaningless hyperbole though.
It saddens me that on a subject as difficult and complex as Brexit, people do not want to explore what is being said in news items. Sad when someone comments on a news item, that someone with a different perspective is unable, unwilling, I don't know, to put forward a reasoned opposite view of what the news actually means. This is what debate should be about, but there is none when one party doesn't engage.
