I have to say I'm very cynical of figures like that because of the complex relationship between all the finances, spending, profits, costs and direct and indirect benefits involved. I mean how can you differentiate/pull apart the costs from how much the UK Gov pays towards one funding stream and another, and how much it may get back in say straight cash from (x) grant, a factory being build with matched funding, a free trade agreement which could give (x) amount benefits if (y) amount of trade takes place with (z) country. To be honest it always seems like you (and by you I mean the people compiling the stats) could easily look at this complex and huge amount of data and pull out the information you want and ignore the info you don't want to support the argument you want. Especially from knowingly biased (and generally not very trustworthy) sources like the Telegraph. For example I've seen reports that we get back a lot more from the EU than we put in - but how would you ever prove the exact monitory value as the money is impossible to track through so many different funding streams, collaborative programmes, European-wide social and research projects, Free Trade Agreements ect. One thing I will say is that I remember the effect of the last two Tory Govs (the Thatcher and Major govs) even though I was too young to understand at the time, and the devastating effect they had on Wales as a whole (it took nearly 20 years and huge amounts of European funding and investment to get Wales back to where it was in 2007/2010)). All the money was sucked from Wales, North England, N Ireland and Scotland and went to SE England. We had low wages (no minimum wage, the UK Gov at the time fought against Minimum wage), little worker protection, paternity leave, not as much disability or maternity rights. Our infrastructure was crumbling even worse than it is now and we had less Human Rights protection (something this gov want to do away with). The CAP is helping keep the majority of Welsh farmers competitive, and European investment in Research & Development and high tech industries in Wales is helping Wales compete on a global scale in certain industries.
Rather than the UK Gov waste billions on ID cards, MP expenses, privatising the public sector (contracts to ATOS, G4S, Clearwater ect) to do the same work at a lower standard for a higher cost. In the same way they are privatising the NHS? I suppose it is nice to know that the UK civil servants are wasting our money instead of EU ones, but having us stand alone in a global market without any of the support/links to other countries we currently enjoy as part of the biggest trading bloc in the world isn't so nice.
This isn't a Tory vs EU issue though, it's a the UK vs EU issue. If we pulled out of the EU our government could continue to fund all of the EU projects (if it chose to, this is the point it becomes about internal politics and people choosing the right government). In terms of the figures, what we pay in and what we get out as direct funding is pretty straight forward numbers, they're just the facts. Beyond that comes things like the trade benefits of being part of the EU which isn't taken into account when looking at the raw figures. That's a different argument to the one about funding though and isn't as simple as us losing out by leaving like one may assume. In terms of legislation, we don't need to overpay to the EU (see the admin budget, salaries, benefits packages and inefficiencies) to write legislation for us, we are perfectly capable of writing our own laws.
our MP expenses are nothing compared to MEP expenses! Also I'm not suggesting our governments don't make mistakes, im highly critical of labour and the Tories. That isn't the point. That doesnt justify giving billions away only to have a fraction of it back as a benefit to us. It's ridiculous to pay €17billion euros to the EU in the hope they will spend €6billion of that on us in a better way than our government would have spent the entire €17billion.... It's ridiculous. To think we wouldn't continue to hold strong trading connections with the countries we currently do is foolish, many of the large economies of Europe would be very keen to ensure trade wasn't adversely effected with the U.K. We would also open ourselves up to the ability to sign our own trade deals round the world. Australia have repeatedly said they would be the first country to look to do a deal with the U.K. if we pulled out and several common wealth countries would follow. Norway has far more free trade deals than the EU has for example. We wouldn't be standing alone at all.
A great example of how large economies of Europe will want to remain trading with us as freely as possible is the announcement of merger talks between the London stock exchange and the deutsche borse in the lead up to our EU referendum. Deals will be done and things reshuffled to enable business to continue as normal (or as close to it as possible).
The need to slash public funding would be reduced if we were to stop pouring billions in to the EU. queue the attacks by the wets.....
Not really. Because the Tories track record on public spending is one of cuts to the bone. So not only would we miss out on EU funding, but there's no guarantee that what was saved would be spent on public services anyway.
But we won't have a Tory government forever, it will, like always, rotate between labour and the Tories. I don't think the Tories being in power and having made cuts is a good argument against leaving the EU. In terms of direct funding it's a choice between having approx 17billion to spend ourselves, or paying the EU 11billion to spend 6billion of our own money on ourselves. You'd have to have really little faith in the UK and think the EU were fantastic at spending money to think they will spend 6billion better than we would spend 17.
That's the sad reality. One screws up and then the other takes over and screws up in a totally different way, and the cycle continues....
My point though is these figures are anything but straightforward, a quick google search indicates a variety of different figures from David Icke ridiculous figures and Farage banding around £55m a day, to articles like this saying it's actually more like £33m a day we pay in (up until 2014), and I've seen figures saying we pay anything from £6bn to £11bn. That's not saying anything about the true figure about how much we actually get back in monetary, tangible and intangible benefits. I'm questioning your 6bn and 11bn figures basically. I'm not talking about the main benefit of being in the EU being them writing Legislation. I'm talking about the main benefits of the EU being it allows us to remove trade barriers, make trading cheaper, improves cooperation (much closer cooperation between high tech start ups, universities and research bodies across Europe), and gives us much stronger safeguards for the general public against a right-wing extremists taking government (which you might have noticed are getting a lot of power in the UK and across Europe) - safeguarding Human Rights, Workers Rights, Environmental Protection, green spaces ect. I'm just using the current Tory government (who aren't even as right wing as some of the possibilities we could have) and their policies as the very real dangers our basic rights are under.
I am finding it difficult to see the argument for staying in based on the economic arguments put by your good selves. Whichever way you look at it we appear to be contributing more that we benefit from and I am pretty sure that is not the case across ALL member states. On another point of confusion (for me at any rate) is how legal issues will be affected. Any suggestions as to where I can get reliable information from?
I have no idea with the legal implications - there's going to be long running contracts written based on EU funding, there's going to be numerous Free Trade Agreements. Then there's the EU funded projects (typically between 4-10 year projects) running and all the contracts for people associated with those. It'll be a minefield! All I know is that Wales, the NI and Scotland heavily rely on the EU and it's funding and a lot of people have jobs paid for with EU money, and a lot of businesses rely on EU grants and investments in these areas. - Organisations such as WEFO (Wales European Funding Office) which is based in Merthyr Tydfil - hardly a high employment area, and which must have at least 500+ high paid people working there, would be wiped out, as would the Knowledge Transfer Network, many University and Public Sector run programs. Not to mention the biggest thing the CAP. It'll be an economic nightmare for us. Though I suppose some parts of England might be fine...
I didn't mean these type of legal implications, a potential nightmare indeed. I meant co-operation between police forces, Interpol etc. and the actual set of legal processes between differ nation's judiciaries.
Ahh I see, sorry - yes an equal legal nightmare - though I think Interpol (as an isolated issue) is something totally separate from the EU and is and International body, but yes if we do exit it'll be an unavoidably messy divorce as things are so complicatedly linked.
That's the problem with democracy. It's impossible to plan anything in the long-term unless all of the major parties agree. One group like big government? They get in and spend their time and our money investing in it. The other lot don't? They get in and immediately spend a load of money reversing all of those decisions. Then we're back to square one, but we've lost loads of cash. Brilliant. The other obvious one is that the information given to the voting public is being increasingly controlled by certain groups and individuals. Would it be a democratic vote if the people of North Korea voted for their Exalted Leader, having been told that he's a living god for decades? Not in my opinion.
Just seen Nigel Farage saying on BBC News that immigration should be a tenth of what it is and that immigration wasn't an issue at all in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s or 90s until Blair got into power. He seems to have forgotten the 'Rivers of Blood' speeches about the immigration from India/Pakistan and the sub-continent, the National Front marches of the 70s against immigration from the West Indies and other such far right demonstrations. And while cutting immigration to a tenth of what it is now sounds great to some people, what it actually means is we'll be losing huge amounts of people from this country without replacing any of the working age people - meaning we'll basically be a nation of kids and OAPs! (as our migration isn't that far below our immigration currently, us being the biggest immigrant nation out of all large nations on the planet!)
I haven't seen the piece you're talking about but my assumption would be that he is saying the numbers prior to Blair were not a problem, based on them being previously in the tens of thousands and then jumping to the hundreds of thousands. I don't imagine he was trying to suggest there has never been any issues surrounding immigration! Edit: also in terms of our migration not being far below our immigration, the net figure is about 330,000 for the latest year, with only the previous year having a higher net figure since records began.
Hypothetically if we leave Europe and close our borders, how long will it take for this to come into action?
We wouldn't close our borders if we left the EU! Europeans just wouldn't automatically qualify to migrate here through freedom of movement.
Farage has always been an old school Tory. This is just his way of sticking a foot in that door. Immigration levels won't drop significantly if we leave the EU, but his party will be dead in the water. He'll need a new job or two and will probably just turn blue. The Tories are pro-immigration. They like to pretend otherwise, but they won't do much about the current levels. Their backers demand competition for jobs and they do what those backers want.
