Britain asked to cough up £1.9 billion to the EU

I don't know very much about this story yet but to me is seems ridiculous that countries have even signed up to some sort of contract of this nature. Fees on a re-calculable and retrospective basis over long periods? Eh?
 
FirebarUK said:
I don't know very much about this story yet but to me is seems ridiculous that countries have even signed up to some sort of contract of this nature. Fees on a re-calculable and retrospective basis over long periods? Eh?
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Blame the Greeks! They put the idea of retrospective tax deductions into everyones head! :p
 
FirebarUK said:
I don't know very much about this story yet but to me is seems ridiculous that countries have even signed up to some sort of contract of this nature. Fees on a re-calculable and retrospective basis over long periods? Eh?
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Maybe the wonga bosses helped em :p
 
robfosters said:
Can I ask, do you have a personal reason like your job or something, why you are such a proponent of the EU?
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Nope.
You and me and rest of society are not educated enough on eu. To make a choice. I would say I know more than most of the public oh eu and how it works, I still say I know less than a fraction of 1% of what eu does/work etc.

Nothing but sensational headlines, just like ever eu thread and media report. Just like the hoover thread. Where if you actually read the report it makes perfect sense.

Oh and lets not forget the majority of this thread is full of hypocrites. Tax the rich, tax the rich. Now they are part of the rich. Its unacceptable to tax the rich.
 
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scorza said:
In the UK there is no higher law making power than the UK parliament. All these laws that the EU comes up with, they have to be passed and signed into law by parliament. No parliament is bound by the laws passed by a previous parliament, which means there's nothing to stop us from repealing all or any laws that came from Brussels, though of course you'd have to be stupid to ignore the consequences.
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Ah. Sadly, this is not the case. Legislation is written (presumably in crayon) by the EU. We then have a period of time to write legislation ourselves interpreting whatever they've put forth. There's some room for manoeuvre, primarily because the original stuff is vague, but if we stray too far the findings of our courts are escalated to the EU and overruled. Likewise if we fail to implement their law, or if we repeal it. Our court of appeal is below theirs in authority.

There's an unfortunate tension between traditional UK law, which aims at being precise, minimal and enforceable, and the EU approach which is rather cruder. In the general fashion of "we shall state than men and women are equal in every way, and the individual countries get to work out what the hell to do with pregnancy".

There's an especially beautiful piece which contains the declaration that increasing the number of women on boards of directors increases competitiveness and that this must be forced on every company to prevent the male dominated ones having an unfair advantage. That's paraphrased, but the inherent contradiction isn't mine - it's in the law that gets to override our own.
 
BuffetSlayer said:
Yup, about that. Like I said earlier swings and roundabouts :)

But it is estimated it would be around 6 billion a year if Tony Blair had not made his ill fated agreement :)
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Even with the rebate we are still a massive net contributor. We should be a much smaller amount to ensure free trade, and nothing else.
 
In the UK many businesses have to pay tax up front, if at the year end profits are below prediction you get a rebate, if above prediction you pay extra.

Considering the UK is supposed to have a keen sense of fair play I'm surprised so many are up in arms. I know it's an emotive political subject at the moment but it wasn't a political decision or a personal attack. Just like the embarrassment of UK MPs when, during public cut-backs, the appointed watchdog decided they should get a big pay rise.

But there was nothing they could do, it wasn't a political judgement by that point, it had been passed to bean counters years before.
 
Glaucus said:
Nope.
You and me and rest of society are not educated enough on eu. To make a choice.
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I will take issue with that. I was in the diplomatic service for 6 years, although I was more involved in European consular issues than political issues. Although the two did overlap quite often.

But I consider myself educated enough. I just can't be bothered to sit writing out long, drawn out diatribes on a computing forum. There are much more important things in my life to spend my time on.
 
delta0 said:
Punish success and reward failure. That is the complete opposite of what should be done.
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and yet it seems that's how the financial industry works in the uk. Or at the very least reward failure continually.

The UK goverment have poured 46 billion of our tax pounds into RBS alone and they have continued to post losses year after year. Yet the directors carve up millions of pounds amongst themselves.

1.7billion is a drop in the ocean.
 
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