Britain asked to cough up £1.9 billion to the EU

ebilcake · 24 Oct 2014 at 14:17

Refuse to pay, what's the worst that could happen?

UKIP will love this.

pitchfork · 24 Oct 2014 at 14:18

JonJ678 said:
Only a select few are doing so well.

The reason a select few are doing so well is because the government has dreadful economic and business policies that stifle entrepreneurs and warp market forces so rich greedy people can take over the market. There's so much corruption in politics it's laughable, we're ruled by a government ruled by big business.

People are working harder than ever but having less and less and less every year. I wouldn't say we're doing so well and I wouldn't say said select few particularly deserve or have earnt their extra cash.

LOAM · 24 Oct 2014 at 14:21

D.P. said:
In countries like holland prsotitution and legalized drugs are taxed.
Anyway, the illegal activities in other countries can be fairly accurately estimated by defined metrics

And thats great for the Netherlands, but what percentage in tax does the UK government get from drugs and prostitution?.

D.P. · 24 Oct 2014 at 14:26

You also have to put this 1.9billion into perspective. It sounds. If and scary to those who have no clue about the economy, but that is just 0.007%

In comparisons it spends 2.4% on defense, or 342x that amount!

anything I don't mind · 24 Oct 2014 at 14:28

We also have a trillion debt it doesn't make 1.6 billion any less valuable. That is just a poor argument.

D.P. · 24 Oct 2014 at 14:30

LOAM said:
And thats great for the Netherlands, but what percentage in tax does the UK government get from drugs and prostitution?.

Tax is fairly irrelevant here, the additional money owed to the EU has nothing to do with tax but gross national income. If a country receives significant income due to illegal drug trade then it seems fair to include that income. This is something Britain agreed to, it could have negotiated changes to the reform at the time.

Nothing prevents the Uk from legalizing and taxing drugs and prostitution, or cracking down harder to minimize the effect on gross income.

D.P. · 24 Oct 2014 at 14:31

anything I don't mind said:
We also have a trillion debt it doesn't make 1.6 billion any less valuable. That is just a poor argument.

A tiny cut in defense budget would cover the costs and free up more resources in the UK to improve health and reduce the debt.

Mr Jack · 24 Oct 2014 at 14:31

D.P. said:
You also have to put this 1.9billion into perspective. It sounds. If and scary to those who have no clue about the economy, but that is just 0.007%

0.007% of what? It's not 0.007% of GDP, GNI or government revenues?

deuse · 24 Oct 2014 at 14:32

D.P. said:
things is tiny compared to the economic benefits.

Can you show me these please. Or is this just your own opinion as it's been stated many many times that the UK
has gained nothing from being in the EU.

Tom_ed1987 · 24 Oct 2014 at 14:36

D.P. said:
You also have to put this 1.9billion into perspective. It sounds. If and scary to those who have no clue about the economy, but that is just 0.007%

In comparisons it spends 2.4% on defense, or 342x that amount!

Regardless of what else we spend money on, it's still an enormous amount of money, and i'm not sure I want it just given to France and Germany.

Glaucus · 24 Oct 2014 at 14:41

Tom_ed1987 said:
Regardless of what else we spend money on, it's still an enormous amount of money, and i'm not sure I want it just given to France and Germany.

It is not going to France and Germany.
It's going to the EU who spend it on running the EU from research, education, infrastructure, grants and the such like.

robfosters · 24 Oct 2014 at 14:41

Cameron appears to have told em to stick it where the sun don't shine until he gets an investigation as to where this has come from and all the figures.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-29754168

SciNeT · 24 Oct 2014 at 14:42

D.P. said:
You also have to put this 1.9billion into perspective. It sounds. If and scary to those who have no clue about the economy, but that is just 0.007%

In comparisons it spends 2.4% on defense, or 342x that amount!

£1.9bn was likened to an extra 65000 nurses for the NHS with lifetime salaries & pensions on the Jeremy Vine R2 show earlier, not sure if that's correct but it was mentioned.

jsmoke · 24 Oct 2014 at 14:46

Glaucus said:
It is not going to France and Germany.
It's going to the EU who spend it on running the EU from research, education, infrastructure, grants and the such like.

It is partly going to France, Germany, every EU country get a cut, the poorer countries obviously more. I found a breakdown from 2012.

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/nov/22/eu-budget-spending-contributions-european-union

One problem looks like though that certain EU countries could be managing it so that the poorer countries that get larger sums are doing more trade with them.

Freakbro · 24 Oct 2014 at 14:46

robfosters said:
Cameron appears to have told em to stick it where the sun don't shine until he gets an investigation as to where this has come from and all the figures.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-29754168

He hasn't really said that...

ElliorR said:
That's not what he said exactly. He said he would not be payng it in December and never once said he would not pay it. Remember the government signed up to this and when this story is forgotten, it wouldn't surprise me if the bill was paid.

Politicians saying something to appease the masses and going back on that at a later date isn't unheard of.

More like this...so the headline of the speech is just soundbytes to make it sound all tough to the anti-EU masses back home....like yourself

Glaucus · 24 Oct 2014 at 14:48

jsmoke said:
It is partly going to France, Germany, every EU country get a cut, the poorer countries obviously more. I found a breakdown from 2012.

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/nov/22/eu-budget-spending-contributions-european-union

One problem looks like though that certain EU countries could be managing it so that the poorer countries that get larger sums are doing more trade with them.

No it is not going to them in any such way.
It is no different to income tax you earn more you pay more. You earn less than expected you get a rebate.
In no way is it effectively going to them at all.

Looking at those charts we give them the least per % if GDP and are contribution of € per person is also pretty low compared to others.

jsmoke · 24 Oct 2014 at 14:52

Glaucus said:
No it is not going to them in any such way.
It is no different to income tax you earn more you pay more. You earn less than expected you get a rebate.
In no way is it effectively going to them at all.

So explain where it goes then, you say it goes into agriculture and research that is still part of a countries economy, it's not a charity. Are you saying that Germany in no shape or form receive any EU membership fees/donations?

platinum87 · 24 Oct 2014 at 14:53

SciNeT said:
£1.9bn was likened to an extra 65000 nurses for the NHS with lifetime salaries & pensions on the Jeremy Vine R2 show earlier, not sure if that's correct but it was mentioned.

So roughly, each nurse would be getting a yearly salary of £750?

NexusK · 24 Oct 2014 at 14:53

The point is that you don't just suddenly demand nearly 2 billion and give a month to pay it. I don't think there's any question that it won't be paid, it's the way they've went about the whole thing that is the issue.

Dave M · 24 Oct 2014 at 14:55

NexusK said:
The point is that you don't just suddenly demand nearly 2 billion and give a month to pay it. I don't think there's any question that it won't be paid, it's the way they've went about the whole thing that is the issue.

1) It isn't sudden
2) It almost certainly isn't 'them' that have gone about it this way.