AliasAggers wrote:medsec222 wrote:how many leavers, perhaps like myself, just wanted to be free of the EU and voted with a gut instinct that here was an opportunity of a lifetime of regaining our Sovereignty and re-gaining control of our borders, making our own decisions rather than having the collective decisions of the 27 other member States filtered down to the UK. In my opinion everything else pales in comparison.
I don't know how many, Medsec, but those were certainly
my reasons. I certainly couldn't put it better.
Well it’s easy isn’t it. If you can’t destroy the argument, dumb down those who voted for it.
That is how the Race and Equality (lack of) debate goes so why shouldn’t it work to make the minority viewpoint beat Brexit?
It was £350M a week meds. Let me tell you where the figure comes from.
Farage estimated (from European Parliament internal figures), that the direct cost to the UK, of the EU, was £9bn per year. He also estimated that the cost of administrating the EU directives, decisions and other “commitments” the EU kept dragging us into, was about the same again. So £18bn. £350m per week is £18.2bn.
Farage was rubbished, told he did not know what he was talking about, reality was.. .well… something very different. Figures varied but the general consensus was that the net cost of the EU, to the UK at £4.5bn per year.
Let us subject that to a litmus test.
Before the Brexit vote the £-€ value was around €1.35 to the £ and this is what Farage based his figures on. £9.1bn (the direct cost of the 18.2), translates to €12.3bn at that exchange rate.
Recently we got the unvarnished truth on the true cost of the EU, net, to the UK. From the UK government? Not a chance. It came from the Commission itself who were left in the unedifying position of having to calculate the EU budget without the UK contribution; BEFORE the UK had actually finished leaving.
The Commission calculation? Somewhere between €12bn and €13bn had to be found, every year, to cover the shortfall of UK funds.
But there is another story here. That budget was calculated Including the £39bn the UK has committed to pay to the EU. This makes it rather harder to calculate because that £39bn includes pensions which will be paid for quite a long time. However we can safely assume that the UK will be paying less than £1.5 bn in pensions by 2060. We never had more than 76 MEP’s and many served multiple terms. We have had two commissioners for every 5 year term, so that needs to be calculated in and we have some from the Council of Europe, Judges on the ECJ etc, but, still, not more than £1.5bn by 2060.
So we can assume that some £37bn of that money was factored into the budget for the next 7 years. That adds £5.2bn to the total.
Now we are only looking at the cost of Administrating the EU directives and other costs and we have some £3.8bn to find per year.
Even without the additional £3.8bn, we are now looking at £275m per week.
Looking like a lie? It’s not a lie, it was just disingenuous to suggest that the Government would actually take the full cost of the EU and put it into the NHS. That was never going to happen, but, then, people are supposed to have a brain. £350m per week was a very close estimate as to what the EU costs us. For what? To sell more goods and services outside the EU than we do inside it? As for imports, they become cheaper outside the EU than in it.
So when we look at that bus and the £350m on it. Forget the NHS, that was just an example. Look at it as a price of being in a club we don’t really want to be in. We joined when it was something else, we stayed when it changed into what it is. Now most of us don’t see the benefit and want to get out.
This is where we are. Just as with benefits, the most vocal tend to be those who are most wedded to the situation. But, like benefits, they are not the majority. They do have a vote though. The interesting thing is that those who don’t want the EU are normally so fragmented that their voice can’t be heard. The referendum created a rallying point and it worked.
So now we leave and we ARE going to leave. Whether the Politicians vote down the “deal” or not, we will leave.
Why are we going to leave no matter what? Because the only party which does not stand to lose massively from failing to enact the will of the people is the Lib Dem party. They have been decimated already!
UKIP did its job. But it stands there, waiting, for the politicians to renege on the Referendum result. Ready to disrupt the nice cosy three party politics and the comfortable elections which swing gently between Tory and Labour.
In short, the Politicians are scared to death. As they should be. The politicians should always be scared of the power of the people and their vote. It keeps them in check.