Off Topic UK / EU Future

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oldfrenchhorn said:
So the six month limit on finding work, that you argued against is worse than the twelve month limit that is now proposed.
You also realise that the normal cycle of time that a government stays in power is coming to and end. A future government could well say the country needs loads more immigrants. Still it seems that it is not numbers that worry you, but just where they come from.
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You are slowly getting the advantages of being a sovereign nation, it can decide its own immigration policy. I much prefer the UK being able to chose labour from the whole world not having to take all and sundry from a particular region.

Your faith in the Labour Party taking over is looking increasingly shaky, unless you are again predicting a 'macron' type new middle party? Not worked out too well so far.
 
Having had the unfortunate experience of having to administer EU funded projects I have the following observations:

1 Funds are awarded to projects based on what the EU deem to be acceptable, not always what a particular country may need. The availability of EU funding often justified starting projects that often would not have got off the ground economically if the funding were not available.
2 Administering the funding for these projects is highly bureaucratic and inefficient and it takes an immense amount of human resource to comply with the EU's onerous compliance requirements
3 Financial control of these projects requires each claim to be audited locally by chartered accountants, they can also be subject to audit by the local funding body, the national audit commission and the EU commission, usually at short notice (4 audits potentially!). Given that the EU auditors are unable to sign off the EU's accounts, I find this laughable.
4 Unless it has changed in the last 5 years, EU conditions require that only paper documents will suffice as audit evidence, digital copies are unacceptable.
5 Project paperwork must be kept until the end of the funding cycle, ie until every project funded during that cycle is complete and signed off. In my experience it meant keeping paperwork for 10-15 years after the project closed!

If we left the EU our government could fund projects that we need and administer them with financial transparency much more efficiently.

Then there is the question about whether we should have government support for projects that divert resources away from areas were they could be used more efficiently (I would concede that there are exceptions to be made here).
 
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yorkshirehornet said:
Given the complete failure of Brexiters on here or anywhere come to think of it.... to provide any material projections:
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It's so good you had to paste it twice. Of course, you missed the source and where any of the numbers came from....poor effort
 
Scullion said:
Having had the unfortunate experience of having to administer EU funded projects I have the following observations:

1 Funds are awarded to projects based on what the EU deem to be acceptable, not always what a particular country may need. The availability of EU funding often justified starting projects that often would not have got off the ground economically if the funding were not available.
2 Administering the funding for these projects is highly bureaucratic and inefficient and it takes an immense amount of human resource to comply with the EU's onerous compliance requirements
3 Financial control of these projects requires each claim to be audited locally by chartered accountants, they can also be subject to audit by the local funding body, the national audit commission and the EU commission, usually at short notice (4 audits potentially!). Given that the EU auditors are unable to sign off the EU's accounts, I find this laughable.
4 Unless it has changed in the last 5 years, EU conditions require that only paper documents will suffice as audit evidence, digital copies are unacceptable.
5 Project paperwork must be kept until the end of the funding cycle, ie until every project funded during that cycle is complete and signed off. In my experience it meant keeping paperwork for 10-15 years after the project closed!

If we left the EU our government could fund projects that we need and administer them with financial transparency much more efficiently.

Then there is the question about whether we should have government support for projects that divert resources away from areas were they could be used more efficiently (I would concede that there are exceptions to be made here).
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Of all the jobs I've had in the civil service over 30 years, dealing with EU grant schemes was definitely the most frustrating. The UK quite often doesn't use it's full allocation (and it isn't alone in that) because of the Kafkaesque processes you describe. I know of a number of schemes that were set up to help smaller businesses apply for funding which isn't the best use of money. The most annoying thing was seeing applications that were fully merited being turned down whilst less deserving ones got accepted because they had the resources to get the paper work right.

It's changing and as per usual the UK has been a major driving force in achieving that. But, and this would be my biggest criticism of the EU, everything takes so long to change because of the various stages you have to go through to get 28 individual Member States to agree it. Obviously I'd prefer to push that change from within but I believe I lost that argument!

It's refreshing to see a genuine and specific example of why people get annoyed by certain areas of the EU that have a genuine impact on them or their business though <cheers>
 
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wear_yellow said:
It's so good you had to paste it twice. Of course, you missed the source and where any of the numbers came from....poor effort
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Well at least you replied to me. I have invited you to engage with me several times in the last year. To have not done so and have preferred to post personal posts about the so called clique..
So here we go.. You provide the Brexit argument to counter what I have posted.
I can assure you I have no axe to grind. I honestly believe that Brexit is one of the worst moves this country has been involved in..

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Dan Starkey 2 said:
Of all the jobs I've had in the civil service over 30 years, dealing with EU grant schemes was definitely the most frustrating. The UK quite often doesn't use it's full allocation (and it isn't alone in that) because of the Kafkaesque processes you describe. I know of a number of schemes that were set up to help smaller businesses apply for funding which isn't the best use of money. The most annoying thing was seeing applications that were fully merited being turned down whilst less deserving ones got accepted because they had the resources to get the paper work right.

It's changing and as per usual the UK has been a major driving force in achieving that. But, and this would be my biggest criticism of the EU, everything takes so long to change because of the various stages you have to go through to get 28 individual Member States to agree it. Obviously I'd prefer to push that change from within but I believe I lost that argument!

It's refreshing to see a genuine and specific example of why people get annoyed by certain areas of the EU that have a genuine impact on them or their business though <cheers>
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I think most of us have some 'problems' with the politics of the EU. Dan. However that is different to thinking that the UK. would be better off outside of it. For me it is humiliating to think that Britain was not able to help and form the EU. as an equal partner of France and Germany - with just as much opportunity to influence as either of those countries has/had. For me running away from our responsibilities and our European destiny is slightly unpatriotic (unusual language from me). I would like Europeans to reclaim their Europe because it does not belong to the bureaucrats in Brussels - it belongs to us, and I would have liked to have seen Britain involved in this. The EU. needs a constitution which has the mandate from the people, which establishes exactly which powers lie at the national, and which at the supranational level - a bit like the USA. has with it's states. My problem with the EU. is that it is wedded to the idea of being made up of nation states, and excuses too much by not wanting to get involved in the internal affairs of its member states. During the Catalan crisis the silence from the EU. was deafening - would the Spanish have had to send in tanks before the EU awoke from its inertia and complained ? Why does the EU. have a phobia about separatism - be it Catalan, Scottish etc ? They also are EU citizens with a right to protection. I also had problems with the way Greece was treated, and have reservations about the role of Germany within the EU due to its export surplus. But these are problems which can only be addressed from within - if my roof is leaking I would rather mend it from within than standing balanced on the roof in the rain.
 
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colognehornet said:
I think most of us have some 'problems' with the politics of the EU. Dan. However that is different to thinking that the UK. would be better off outside of it. For me it is humiliating to think that Britain was not able to help and form the EU. as an equal partner of France and Germany - with just as much opportunity to influence as either of those countries has/had. For me running away from our responsibilities and our European destiny is slightly unpatriotic (unusual language from me). I would like Europeans to reclaim their Europe because it does not belong to the bureaucrats in Brussels - it belongs to us, and I would have liked to have seen Britain involved in this. The EU. needs a constitution which has the mandate from the people, which establishes exactly which powers lie at the national, and which at the supranational level - a bit like the USA. has with it's states. My problem with the EU. is that it is wedded to the idea of being made up of nation states, and excuses too much by not wanting to get involved in the internal affairs of its member states. During the Catalan crisis the silence from the EU. was deafening - would the Spanish have had to send in tanks before the EU awoke from its inertia and complained ? Why does the EU. have a phobia about separatism - be it Catalan, Scottish etc ? They also are EU citizens with a right to protection. I also had problems with the way Greece was treated, and have reservations about the role of Germany within the EU due to its export surplus. But these are problems which can only be addressed from within - if my roof is leaking I would rather mend it from within than standing balanced on the roof in the rain.
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It is not possible to mend roofing problems from the inside, this also applies to the EU.
 
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superhorns said:
It is not possible to mend roofing problems from the inside, this also applies to the EU.
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I must admit that the roofing example was not the best - however, this is the only thing we have ever agreed on. I would, however, be interested to know how you think Britain can possibly influence the EU. from outside.
 
colognehornet said:
I must admit that the roofing example was not the best - however, this is the only thing we have ever agreed on. I would, however, be interested to know how you think Britain can possibly influence the EU. from outside.
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Any influence will be minimal, similar to the present relationship with the EU.
 
I guess it might depend on where you live, but my experience of applying for and receiving EU grants was actually better than trying to deal with funding that was supposed to be available through the UK. Apply for a UK grant, and you had to jump through similar hoops to when you applied for a EU one. The big difference was that you could wait for a year to find out if you were going to be put on a list, find out that you were successful, then find out there was not going to be enough central UK government funding. Total shambles when you were using the money to employ people. At least once your scheme was approved through the EU social fund, you could tell the people you wanted to employ that they had a job for the next one, two or three years.
On my travels around France I frequently see plaques that tell how a project has come about with the aid of EU funding. It certainly keeps people informed that many improvements have come about because of regional funding. Why do you rarely see such things in England? Is it because they do not apply for funding as we are told, or because the government of the day wants to take total credit. My experiences over 35 years leads me to be certain that the government will not fund the regions to the extent that they are, or could be now. If they are prepared to cut back to the extent that County Councils cannot provide any services, it doesn't bode well.
 
yorkshirehornet said:
Interesting that w y only seems to post on these boards when Toby does... And it is only ever destructive...

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He's just bitter, I try to ignore him. He claims to hate everyone on this thread but still comes back to fire off ****ty comments at people, instead of just putting me on ignore and posting on the rest of the threads.

It's quite childish and pretty pathetic for a 'grown' man.
 
Toby said:
He's just bitter, I try to ignore him. He claims to hate everyone on this thread but still comes back to fire off ****ty comments at people, instead of just putting me on ignore and posting on the rest of the threads.

It's quite childish and pretty pathetic for a 'grown' man.
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Really crazy.. As we used to have some great banter on these boards...

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