Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

Thursday November 25,2010
By Daniel Hannan, Conservative Euro MP for South-East England Have your say(0)
HERES a nasty coincidence. All the welfare cuts put together will save 7billion: precisely Britains share of the Irish bail-out.


In other words, every penny we save from these painful benefits reductions will go to prop up the euro.

That 7billion is in addition to the 14billion which we pay into the EU budget every year: a budget that keeps rising.




Britains share of the increase for next year not our share of the budget, our share of the increase will be 435million: enough to pay for 12,000 nurses, 15,000 police officers or 22,000 Army privates.

But our direct contributions are only part, and not the most important part, of the overall costs of the EU.

The Common Agricultural Policy hurts our farmers and costs every household an extra 1,200 a year in higher taxes and higher food bills. The Common Fisheries Policy has wiped out what ought to have been a great renewable resource off our coasts.

Worst of all is the cost of red tape. Here, I can do no better than to quote a survey by the most recent internal market commissioner, Gunter Verheugen. He found that the cost of regulation in the EU was 600billion euros a year. On the European Commissions own figures, the advantages of the single market are worth only 120billion euros a year.

In other words, Eurocrats themselves admit that the costs of the EU outweigh the benefits by five to one.

What about commerce? We are often told that half of Britains trade is with the EU. True, but look at the balance of that trade. For most of the period of our membership, we have run a healthy surplus with the rest of the world but a deficit with Europe.



Since the financial crisis hit, we have run a small overall deficit on the non-EU share of our trade, too. Even so, our deficit with the EU last year was 14.4billion, as against just 1.1billion for the rest of the world.

Those figures are the answer to those who say that, if we left, our exports would suffer.

The other members benefit far more from cross-Channel commerce than we do. In any negotiation, the customer generally has the last word over the salesman.

In any case, we dont need to be part of the EUs political structures to be part of the single market.

Norway and Switzerland both sell around twice as much per head to the EU as we do.

They participate fully in the freedoms of the European market but are outside the CAP and CFP, police their own borders, settle their own human rights issues, trade freely with non-EU countries, and make only token contributions to the EU budget.

Oh, and unlike EU members, they pass the majority of their own laws.

Norway and Switzerland are thriving as independent states. So could Britain.


http://www.express.co.uk/ourcomments/view/213564/European-Union-Costs-are-five-times-the-benefits

RaW,
"
(I wonder how much British money contributed to the economic crash, which is occurring in Spain due to the housing bulge collapse.)"


Before you engage your fingers re-read my posting.

Not suggesting that "housing" was the only cause of Spanish problems.

I'm not really sure what's worse. The Euro-phobic idiots who write that nonsense, or the other idiots who buy the Express and believe the garbage they read!

You are the complete idiot if you think that being a member of the Evil Empire is what we should do. It is a matter of both our freedom and our prosperity.

http://cdn.images.dailyexpress.co.uk/pdfs/25noveuropecoupon.pdf

Fred

'Not suggesting that "housing" was the only cause of Spanish problems.'

(I wonder how much British money contributed to the economic crash, which is occurring in Spain due to the housing bulge collapse.)

There are some key words your statement ' British money, contributed, economic crash, occuring, Spain, due to, housing bulge crash.'

Engage your brain, re-read what you had written.

Somewhere in that statement I must have missed 'all that money we used to spend in Spain on our holidays every year!'

Fred doesn't have a brain and Hilary seems to have lost hers.

Raw,

I am not sure how much British money was "invested" in to the Spanish house market.

But that market was inflated for years and inflating more and more year by year, due to the "investors" a large number of them being British. They were being over optimistic, opportunist, greedy or just stupid.

Watching it as I passed through, was like watching an accident waiting to happen. (The same applied in Portugal, but I am told to believe to a lesser extent.)

The repercussions of the house building and sales are accompanied by unemployment and slowing down of the Spanish economy, with more dependency on the state.


Get a primer on economy.

Tim.

Buy yourself some chips, wrap them up in the Express and eat both.

I see Camerons pals are showing their true colours once again.

"Howard Flight rapped by PM over 'breeding' gaffe"

Making him a lord is true recognitions for services rendered.

Has he given money to the party funds or just served the party?

If this is the beginning of a tory maladministration, then I wonder what the corruption level of the country will be at the end.

Perhaps. Cameron could design a corruption index.

8-) %

Are they even good enough to wrap chips in?

Cutting edge journalism under Desmond

In 2000, Express Newspapers was bought by Richard Desmond, publisher of a range of magazines including the celebrity magazine OK!. Controversy surrounded the acquisition because, at the time, Desmond also owned a selection of pornographic magazines such as Big Ones and Asian Babes which led to him being nicknamed "Dirty Des" by Private Eye. He is still the owner of the most popular pornographic television channel in the UK, Television X.

Express Newspapers left the National Publishers Association in 2007 over unpaid fees. Since payments made to the NPA fund the Press Complaints Commission, it is possible that the Express and its sister papers could cease being regulated by the PCC. The chairman of the Press Standards Board of Finance, which manages PCC funds, described Express Newspapers as a "rogue publisher".

The Express group lost an unusually large number of high-profile libel cases in 2008-2009; it was forced to pay damages to people involved in the Madeleine McCann case, a member of the Muslim Council of Great Britain, the footballer Marco Materazzi and the sports agent Willie McKay.

The string of losses led the media commentator Roy Greenslade to conclude that Express Newspapers (which also publishes the Star titles) paid out more in libel damages over that period than any other newspaper group; although most of the individual amounts paid were not disclosed, the total damages were disclosed at 1,570,000. Greenslade characterised Desmond as a "rogue proprietor".

In late 2008, Express Newspapers began a redundancy plan to cutting 80 jobs, with the aim of reducing costs by 2.5 million; too few staff were willing to take voluntary redundancy. In early 2008, a previous cost-cutting exercise by the group triggered the first 24-hour national press strike in the UK for 18 years. In late August 2009, plans for a further 70 redundancies were announced, affecting journalists across Express Newspapers (including the Daily and Sunday Express, the Daily Star, and the Daily Star Sunday).

Also in August 2009, the Advertising Standards Authority criticised the company for running advertorials as features alongside adverts for the same products. The ASA noted that the pieces were 'always and uniquely favourable to the product featured in the accompanying ads and contained claims that have been or would be likely to be prohibited in advertisements'.

In January 2010, the Daily Express was yet again censured by the Advertising Standards Authority over a front-page promotion for "free" fireworks". This led to comment that the Express has become "the Ryanair of Fleet Street", in that it is a "frequent offender" which pays little heed to the ASA's criticisms".

Hi Hilary,

I usually believe about half of what I read in newspapers, and I agree that they often stretch the truth, but in this instance, I know that all those figures posted from the newspaper article are correct, or if not exact, just about right. Reason being it is difficult to know exact figures, is that the EU itself admit to not knowing the exact figures, on many of their expenditure programs.
For years I have studied what EU account figures I have been able to peruse, you know those accounts that have not been signed off for 14 years. But signed off or not, they do give figures that baffle common sense when you see what the money is spent on.
I would also like to recommend a book to you, or anyone else who doubts the high cost of membership and the huge amount of figures that appear to have an infinite number of zeros.

The Great European Rip-Off, by David Craig and Matthew Elliott.
A story of Bureaucracy, Hypocrisy and Kleptocracy.
All facts and figures given are backed up by evidence from official papers or/and reports. Those that have been released, that is.

Well before you get half way through the book, you keep thinking, 'I though I had an idea what was going on but had no idea of the scale of monetary misuse and out and out fiddling'.

The EU Dictators are as corrupt as any foreign government, as long as you include the actions they take that are not easily found in the public domain.

I am a member of The Tax Payers Alliance, an independent body that looks for waste in the EU and any tax raising body, as well as corruption. It is free to join and is a very prominent organization that is often mentioned and speaks in the media.
They often give facts/figures of such practices very early on, when they are prominent news items.

.

Greekman,

I'm guessing you don't subscribe to am's pay per view, otherwise you'd probably know my feelings towards Europe's "One size fits all" ethos. They're quite well documented.

It's not actually the figures that I'm disputing, anyway. Rather it's the manner in which the Express have finally latched onto a story at the eleventh hour, when that story has been headline news with every respectable news agency for months. And what's the Express's answer to it all? A petition to get out of Europe! As if that's going to work with their readership of, errr, one.

Given that the UK have already spent a lot of money in bailing out RBS and Lloyds and given that those banks have large exposures to Ireland (and other European sovereign debt too), I don't really see it as being in the UK's best interest for Ireland to fail. Gordon Brown has already invested taxpayer's money in bailing out the banks, so it's important that we do the right thing now so that we can make a graceful (and hopefully profitable) exit in the future. The right thing is to lend Ireland the money.

N
The rules of the legislators of any organisation should be reviewed and examine and updated at regular intervals.

I also "feel" that all information, on which a public body's decisions are made should be open to examination or public scrutiny after a 10year period.

That may reduce the number of dubious actions which taken by governments.

Hilary,

I agree that it is not in the best interests of Ireland to fail as that would lead to a piecemeal of a EU break up. What we need is a swift but as organized as possible total break up of the EU, whereby all members agree to a day and date.
At the moment there is no stopping its death, but a swift deep cut is the best scenario, which is far better than where we appear to be heading, a death by a thousand 'cuts' (no pun intended).
I also appreciate and agree with your views re the media.
As an example, many years ago I was in a 'unit' that was often tracked by the media of TV. Many times we gave figures/facts to these organizations, only to be stood out of camera shot whilst the news reporter did his bit. If you informed them an incident took 1 hour, 20 personnel and so on they broadcast that if took 2 hours and 40 men.
I got the distinct impression they just double everything.
At one incident an attack by a springer spaniel resulted in a siege. The spaniel was killed.
Of course a spaniel does not conjure up an images of, 'Big Bad Vicious Dog, so the reporter substituted an Alsatian. This was done whilst we were within a few feet of the camera, with the reporter glancing at a paper on which we had noted certain details. A not to rare case of bare faced Lying.

Note.. I have just come back to MoneyAm as a subscriber after a few years away.

We need to get out of the Evil Empire to become a free independant country again. I am British, not European and even if it cost me money (which it certainly will not) I would still insist in escaping the clutches of the Evil Empire. I sincerely hope that the current problems will enable people to see that we need to be masters of our own destany as far as possible.

It is in our country's best interest to let Ireland fail. This madness of bailing out bust organisations has to stop. There is no way that the likes of Spain, Italy and Portugal can afford the payments to bail out the Greeks and Irish. This is going to send them under too.

People should look at history.
Republics that contain people of different cultures/religions don't tend to work.
Probably the two better recent examples are,

1 Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
2 Break up of the old Soviet Union.

We are often told that unions prevent war. Well they certainly did not in these cases. I appreciate we still have our own government with many powers of control, but the aim of the EU is to rule everything from Brussels, and degrade all independent powers, part from minor local issues.
Tax, Commerce, Law, Education to name but a few areas where we are heading to loose power of control.

It seams strange to me that we are racing at full speed toward a system that within the last few decades, other countries have fought wars over to leave.

We are not yet in the positions of the aforementioned unions, but it is not stretching imagination too far, to see such a future.

I thought many years ago that the EU would not work, mainly for cultural/religious reasons. I had not considered monetary issues as the Euro was not then in existence.

As George Santayana, a Spanish American philosopher and writer said, 'Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it'.

Yesterday ECJ Judges in Luxembourg decided that officials working for the EU should receive their full 3.7% pay rise, even after national governments mounted a legal challenge.
Of course the ECJ Judges themselves being EU officials will receive the rise that they sat in judgment on. So all of you out there who would like higher pay, raise your hands now!
I appreciate that our government has only just gone down the independent route regarding their salaries, by allowing a totally independent body (yer sure) to decide on their pay awards.
But that don't make it right.
At least our Honorable (sic) members of parliament are accountable to the general public, even if that accountability is very weak.

Yes, the forcible union of disparate peoples and economies under a corrupt bureaucratic tyranny is a great way of ensuring that they learn to live in peace and harmony. That's why the USSR and Yugoslavia never broke up, and there was no fighting between their component parts when they did. It's why the number of silly little sovereign states is constantly declining- oh no, hang on a minute, there's never been more of them.
Yes, if we in this pathetic little anachronistic UK don't let ourselves be herded into an 'ever closer union', we'll wind up poor and marginalised like Norway and Switzerland, instead of rich and booming like Ireland and Portugal.

Hilary is a fascinating specimen: a vintage-1960 'progressive' who thinks history is proceeding serenely towards the World State.She should have a preservation order slapped on her; there aren't many left who are so impervious to actually existing geopolitics since the Cold War ended.