Britain asked to cough up £1.9 billion to the EU

robgmun · 28 Oct 2014 at 20:56

D.P. said:
Then perhaps it is time to reduce the size of the army!

You'd love that so Putin can roll in a take over wouldn't you?

Kamerad · 28 Oct 2014 at 21:01

robgmun said:
inversely i hear a lot of stories where our underpaid lads having to buy most of there own equipment such as boots, fatigues and body amour.

No we don't.

ubersonic · 28 Oct 2014 at 21:01

OldCoals said:
This probably couldn't have come at a worse time for Cameron.

Actually quite a good time, he doesn't really have any option because if he pays it he will haemorrhage so many voters to UKIP that it will cause another Labour landslide in 2015. So his only option is to refuse which coincidentally is the option that will cause him to stop losing anti-EU voters to UKIP.

D.P. · 28 Oct 2014 at 21:05

robgmun said:
You'd love that so Putin can roll in a take over wouldn't you?

What??

D.P. · 28 Oct 2014 at 21:09

Kamerad said:
No we don't.

yeah, i would love a link to that!

Craterloads · 28 Oct 2014 at 21:10

D.P. said:
What??

Putin is on his way riding a horse and in full camo bare chested and you want to disband the army, you monster!

E: ohh and also vote UKIP

mmj_uk · 29 Oct 2014 at 13:38

robgmun said:
You'd love that so Putin can roll in a take over wouldn't you?

If you actually listen to some of Putin's recent speeches and not just western media propaganda he's one of the few leaders in the world still fighting to protect the sovereignty of individual nations, all of the western leaders/stooges are aiming for a world without borders which is why huge mass immigration and things like the European Union have been forced onto us all.

Schlong&Stable · 29 Oct 2014 at 14:09

mmj_uk said:
If you actually listen to some of Putin's recent speeches and not just western media propaganda he's one of the few leaders in the world still fighting to protect the sovereignty of individual nations, all of the western leaders/stooges are aiming for a world without borders which is why huge mass immigration and things like the European Union have been forced onto us all.

Is this a joke? Georgians, Ukrainian and Belarusians might disagree. Not to mention the pressure he's applying the central Asian states.

Mr Jack · 29 Oct 2014 at 15:35

ubersonic said:
Actually quite a good time, he doesn't really have any option because if he pays it he will haemorrhage so many voters to UKIP that it will cause another Labour landslide in 2015. So his only option is to refuse which coincidentally is the option that will cause him to stop losing anti-EU voters to UKIP.

Cameron will pay it.

He'll probably negotiate a bit of a reduction and an agreement to pay it in a few instalments and try to trumpet that back home but there's flip all chance of him actually refusing to pay. Ultimately Cameron is not willing to have the UK renege on this kind of commitment - he may be an incompetent diplomat but he's not quite that stupid. He cannot afford the consequent risk to the UKs standing as a country that honours its international commitments and pays its debts.

ubersonic · 31 Oct 2014 at 00:18

Mr Jack said:
Cameron will pay it.

He'll probably negotiate a bit of a reduction and an agreement to pay it in a few instalments and try to trumpet that back home but there's flip all chance of him actually refusing to pay. Ultimately Cameron is not willing to have the UK renege on this kind of commitment - he may be an incompetent diplomat but he's not quite that stupid. He cannot afford the consequent risk to the UKs standing as a country that honours its international commitments and pays its debts.

Yesterday you may have been correct, but according to today's Scotland poll Labour is dead to them, they have previously benefited greatly from being the only UK party to get many MP's in Scotland (in 2010 it cost the Tories a majority government) and now that is out the window all Cameron has to do to get a majority in 2015 is fight off UKIP stealing his voters, standing up to the EU is a make or break moment and he knows it.

achitophel · 31 Oct 2014 at 01:20

Mr Jack said:
Cameron will pay it.

He'll probably negotiate a bit of a reduction and an agreement to pay it in a few instalments and try to trumpet that back home but there's flip all chance of him actually refusing to pay. Ultimately Cameron is not willing to have the UK renege on this kind of commitment - he may be an incompetent diplomat but he's not quite that stupid. He cannot afford the consequent risk to the UKs standing as a country that honours its international commitments and pays its debts.

I wouldn't be so sure - this is not a capital markets commitment, so it's not like Argentina. He could after all point out that just about all of the Eurozone countries are in constant breach of the annual deficit requirements, which doesn't seem to have directly impacted on their ability to borrow just yet.

robgmun · 31 Oct 2014 at 07:01

And what's stopping the EU just taking it out of our rebate if we don't pay? Genuine question by the way.

John40 · 31 Oct 2014 at 10:35

robgmun said:
And what's stopping the EU just taking it out of our rebate if we don't pay? Genuine question by the way.

As we're heavily net payers into Europe we're always in the box seat, they can fine us all they like if we simply stopped paying in we can't lose, not that it will happen of course.

Mr Jack · 31 Oct 2014 at 16:54

ubersonic said:
Yesterday you may have been correct, but according to today's Scotland poll Labour is dead to them, they have previously benefited greatly from being the only UK party to get many MP's in Scotland (in 2010 it cost the Tories a majority government) and now that is out the window all Cameron has to do to get a majority in 2015 is fight off UKIP stealing his voters, standing up to the EU is a make or break moment and he knows it.

If Cameron thinks that playing to his Eurosceptic wing is going to help him beat UKIP he's totally misguided. Instead, he would be playing directly into their hands by singing from their songbook.

D.P. · 31 Oct 2014 at 17:27

robgmun said:
And what's stopping the EU just taking it out of our rebate if we don't pay? Genuine question by the way.

Probably not much which is why it should be paid since Britain agreed to the changes anyway.

The rebate is proportional to the our GNI, as is our contributions, so we can't claim reduced contributions but increased rebate.

One thing I would like to see is that since the changes to contributions are being retroactively applied, then the implied changes to the rebate should also retroactively apply. This will largely reduce this one off sum.

robgmun · 31 Oct 2014 at 19:10

Oh i'd love it if we ended up paying, UKIP would rocket the polls if that happened

jas72 · 31 Oct 2014 at 20:22

scorza said:
I heard that one of the reasons why we've been lumbered with this bill is that we had to adjust our GDP to account for prostitution and drug taking (because these are legal/semi-legal in some EU countries). So our wonderful establishment did a thorough analysis on how much prostitution and drug taking goes on using the latest crime surveys and reports and came up with a reasonable estimate. Meanwhile the French just said because these things are illegal in France no-one does them and so they only add an insignificant amount to their GDP.

Seems like once again we're being punished for being honest in the EU.

What's the source for this ?

Sounds like something you hear in the pub.

jas72 · 31 Oct 2014 at 20:36

This is a crazy arguement yes the UK pays the most but arguably with one of the bigest economies they also make the most from free trade.

the UK's percent of income is the least so quit moaning

It's like the guy earning 2000 quid per week inviting the guy earning 200 quid per week for a meal, the bill costs 100 quid should they pay 50 each?

If you are capitalist and expect the guy at 200 a week to be pemanently skint then split it 50/50.

However when you introduce this into trade expect the guy to say hold on you are rich so while greece has no money and can export for 2% YOU are rich so you export for 20% fees.

This is how it used to be.

scorza · 5 Nov 2014 at 12:38

Here we are:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...more-than-100billion-of-its-own-spending.html

The European Union is accused of “breathtaking hypocrisy” for continuing to demand that David Cameron pays a £1.7 billion bill despite its own auditors failing to give a clean bill of health to more than £100 billion of spending by Brussels.

According to the annual report of the European Court of Auditors, seen by The Telegraph, £5.5 billion of the EU budget last year was misspent because of controls on spending that were deemed to be only “partially effective” by experts.

The audit, published this morning, found that £109 billion out of a total of £117 billion spent by the EU in 2013 was "affected by material error”.

It means that the Brussels accounts have not been given the all clear for 19 years running.

How about instead of Britain giving the EU £1.7bn we send some Treasury Officials (the most miserable ones) over there to sort out their accounts for them.

mmj_uk · 5 Nov 2014 at 13:37

robgmun said:
Oh i'd love it if we ended up paying, UKIP would rocket the polls if that happened

We won't, even if it ends up costing the country double it'll be put off until after the elections when it will probably go completely off the radar. Like you say Cameron will get slaughtered and UKIP will be laughing now that such a big deal has been made about it.

I suspect it's only front page news for pre-election reasons, we pay the EU £20b annually what's another £2b? it's probably just an opportunist ruse to gain support from UKIP voters, if not for the coming elections they'd have probably payed it no questions asked and the media wouldn't have even mentioned it.