EU Referendum – are you in or out?

@igm we discussed the £8.5bn vs tax take a few times, some perspectives

Total tax take is £530bn (income tax about £165bn)

£8.5bn is the equivalent of 2% on VAT, so 18% vs 20% for example
£8.5bn is about 80% of total Stamp Duty collected in 2016
£8.5bn is 90% of Tobacco duty
£8.5bn is 90% of combined duty on beers, wines and sprits
Labour fought the 2015 GE on basis of a bankers bonus tax raising £2bn and that was their “we’ll rescue the NHS” pledge

Page 7 of this https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/539194/Jun16_Receipts_NS_Bulletin_Final.pdf

The French net budget contribution over time has been zero

Of course £8.5bn is just 10% of the annual budget deficit Labour left us with in 2015 😯

b r there is a world of difference betwen a student exchange programme costing £20m and the leviathon the EU has become swallowing a net £8.5/£10bn/….

We are always hearing about how the PM makes £150k pa but Junker is on £400k and pays just 10% tax plus a whopping pension and a golden parachute of £500k when he leaves 😯 That’s just one cushy EU job, there are 10’s of thousands

Jambas – what percent of national income goes on our net (or even gross) contribution?

Some ‘cushy UK jobs’ (old 2010 data) :

https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/may/31/senior-civil-servants-salaries-data

Of course, there will need to be more, post Leaving the EU.

there are 10’s of thousands

An ACTUAL FACT.
For real!
Fantastic.
More of this please.

Now, when we no longer have accessed to these 30k+ EU civil servants, how many more UK civil servants will we need, and will that result in a greater or lower cost to the UK tax payer?

Well stick smiley on your next failed attempt at humour, THM. Then we won’t have insults running through our head when we read your trashy posts(edit: as opposed to your serious, perceptive ones because there’s no way of telling the difference).

Humour is far from obvious when you state you’re against Brexit then spend your time producing posts to support it, just like TM does in real life.

This forum is complicated enough without you contradicting yourself in the name of humour.

Ooh Jamba a bit political there.

Of course £8.5bn is just 10% of the annual budget deficit Labour left us with in 2015

Particularly as Labour left office in 2010.

Anyway you failed the exam question as (thoughtful though your answer was) you only answered the first half.
I assume that is because you know the cost of the EU trade deal, but not the value.
What does it increase our tax take by?

I’ll allow ridiculous answers but I will mark you accordingly.

“Particularly as Labour left office in 2010.”

🙂

Dont behave like an ar$e. I have been a consistent opponent of Brexshit. What I have defended recently is the decision to respect the result. That’s how it works unless you are a whiney bad loser. Sorry if that simple distinction is too challenging for you to get your head round. Yes, TM has behaved is a similar fashion albeit she was a less vocal remainer than me. Ditto Jezza, but in that case a very weak remainer.

Admittedly “irritant” was not the smartest choice of word. I was taking the piss given that the overall size of the EU contribution is <1% of GDP so costs associated with Erasmus are nothing of substance. In fact, as I have said many times, Erasmus is something to support strongly.

when you state you’re against Brexit then spend your time producing posts to support it

To be fair, I knew it was sarcasm, and I also understand his position because I’ve been reading the thread for ages and because he’s made it explicitly clear a few times.

He’s saying he’d rather not have Brexit, but given that we don’t appear to have a choice, better get it done to avoid any uncertainty for businesses. A bit like ripping a plaster off.

A bit like ripping a plaster off.

I’m not sure the stinging sensation is going to wear off though.

Hi mods, THM has decided to make me his latest target and we all know how that ended when his target was TJ, so I’m out of this thread for a self-imposed three-day break as it’s turning unpleasant.

How were we supposed to know THM was as he stated himself state himself “taking the piss” – with no smiley. He can be extremely provocative, a troll even, but here we were supposed to reach the conclusion he was being humourous – how?

I’m making no threats, he is:

So wind it in, unless you are just trying to lose the “reformed” tag.

He is regularly derogatory and insulting towards those that hold alternative views:

That’s how it works unless you are a whiney bad loser

Sorry if that simple distinction is too challenging for you to get your head round.

Then he agrees I’m right in my observations comparing his position to TM even though a few posts above he found it insulting.

Yes, TM has behaved is a similar fashion albeit she was a less vocal remainer than me.

And then I have.

Dont behave like an ar$e.

When it all started with him posting:

Erasmus is merely an irritant

But didn’t you hear? The great British public voted with one voice to leave Erasmus. At least, they might have done, we’ll have to wait to see what mayhem decides…

Edukator – I was tempetd to say that you are flattering yourself, but that would be churlish! 😉 see what I did there.

But actually, sorry, I overreacted earlier. Had a really crap afternoon. The intention behind my post was easy to miss, due to a weak choice of term (irritant), fair does, easy to misinterpret, even in a manner that goes too far. Apologies for my part.

Thank you mol – an interesting analogy!

Bear in mind that Edukator’s not British there might be some cultural traditions that don’t quite come across in text form.

Damn your attention to detail @igm 🙂

As for the second part ask an Economist and he’ll give you 2 or 3 different answers, it’s all theoretical what-iffing. You have to set the benefit of traiff free trade with the EU against the opportunity cost of not being ale to negotiate our own trade deals globally. Look at growth in the EU and elsewhere – the EU is yesterdays news imo. My point about trade value is that the EU should be oaying the UK for access to our highly valuable market given we are a net importer.

see what I did there.

Used a smiley. 8)

I dip in and out of this thread and don’t remember all of what I read even if some think I have a file on everyone. “irritant” was the perfect choice of word to provoke a reaction from me, I was irritated.

Apologies for my part (it take two to Tango) *shrugs and smiles*

But we do negotiate deals – and have them with @90% of our trade partners – often on better terms for the simple reason the they are negotiated as part of the EU. As I posted above we also negotiated deals with India which led to a 5x increase in trade between 2010-15.

It’s deliberately misleading to argue that the EU inhibited our ability to trade. It facilitated and accelerated it in the EU and outside it.

“Particularly as Labour left office in 2010.”

#jambafact

Don’t be putting 😆 it spoils the fun.

😀

Alls well that ends well

Hands duly shaken!!

I’m dual national, Molgrips, with very little time in the UK in the last 30 years. You’re right, I miss some things and react less/stronger than you’d expect to others. An example of where being dismissive of important things can get you around here:

Le Pen’s use fo the word ‘detail’ to mean unimportant resulted in prosecution.

Sarcasm is a national speciality after all 🙂

*sigh* my French really needs work.

Good article from today’s FT.

https://www.ft.com/content/fde7616a-e6cf-11e6-967b-c88452263daf

Care to summarise for us tight-arses?

For the most ardent supporters of Brexit, the election of Donald Trump was a mixture of vindication and salvation. The president of the US, no less, thinks it is a great idea for Britain to leave the EU. Even better, he seems to offer an exciting escape route. The UK can leap off the rotting raft of the EU and on to the gleaming battleship HMS Anglosphere.

It is an alluring vision. Unfortunately, it is precisely wrong. The election of Mr Trump has transformed Brexit from a risky decision into a straightforward disaster. For the past 40 years, Britain has had two central pillars to its foreign policy: membership of the EU and a “special relationship” with the US.

The decision to exit the EU leaves Britain much more dependent on the US, just at a time when America has elected an unstable president opposed to most of the central propositions on which UK foreign policy is based.

During the brief trip to Washington by Theresa May, the UK prime minister, this unpleasant truth was partly obscured by trivia and trade. Mr Trump’s decision to return the bust of Winston Churchill to the Oval Office was greeted with slavish delight by Brexiters. More substantively, the Trump administration made it clear that it is minded to do a trade deal with the UK just as soon as Britain’s EU divorce comes through.

But no sooner had Mrs May left Washington than Mr Trump caused uproar with his “Muslim ban”, affecting immigrants and refugees from seven countries. After equivocating briefly, the prime minister was forced to distance herself from her new best friend in the White House.

Related article

May finds goodwill from Trump visit draining away

White House wrongfooted Britain’s PM within hours of first meeting’s success

The refugee row underlined the extent to which Mrs May and Mr Trump have clashing visions of the world. Even when it comes to trade, the supposed basis for their new special relationship, the two leaders have very different views.

Mrs May says that she wants the UK to be the champion of global free trade. But Mr Trump is the most protectionist US president since the 1930s. This is a stark clash of visions that will be much harder to gloss over — if and when Mr Trump begins slapping tariffs on foreign goods and ignoring the World Trade Organisation.

In addition, any trade deal with the Trump administration is likely to be hard to swallow for Britain and would involve controversial concessions on the National Health Service and agriculture.

The British and American leaders also have profoundly different attitudes to international organisations. Mrs May is a firm believer in the importance of Nato and the United Nations. (Britain’s permanent membership of the UN Security Council is one of its few remaining totems of great power status). But Mr Trump has twice called Nato obsolete and is threatening to slash US funding of the UN.

The May and Trump administrations are also at odds on the crucial questions of the future of the EU and of Russia. Mr Trump is openly contemptuous of the EU and his aides have speculated that it might break up. This reflects the views of Nigel Farage and the UK Independence party — but not of the current British government.

Mrs May knows that her difficult negotiations with the EU will become all-but-impossible if member states believe that the UK is actively working to destroy their organisation in alliance with Mr Trump.

Her official position is that Britain wants to work with a strong EU. She probably even means it, given the economic and political dangers that would flow from its break-up.

Not the least of these dangers would be an increased threat from a resurgent Russia. The British government worked closely with the Obama administration to impose economic sanctions on the country after its annexation of Crimea. But Mr Trump is already flirting with lifting sanctions.

The reality is that the UK is now faced with a US president who is fundamentally at odds with the British view of the world. For all the forced smiles in the Oval Office last week, the May government certainly knows this. For political reasons, Boris Johnson, the British foreign minister, is having to talk up the prospects of a trade deal with Mr Trump.

Yet only a few months ago, Mr Johnson was saying that Mr Trump was “clearly out of his mind” and betrayed a “stupefying ignorance” of the world.

Were it not for Brexit — a cause that Mr Johnson enthusiastically championed — the UK government would be able to take an appropriately wary approach to Mr Trump. If Britain had voted to stay inside the EU, the obvious response to the arrival of a pro-Russia protectionist in the Oval Office would be to draw closer to its European allies.

Britain could defend free-trade far more effectively with the EU’s bulk behind it — and could also start to explore the possibilities for more EU defence co-operation. As it is, Britain has been thrown into the arms of an American president that the UK’s foreign secretary has called a madman.

In the declining years of the British empire, some of its politicians flattered themselves that they could be “Greeks to their Romans” — providing wise and experienced counsel to the new American imperium.

But the Emperor Nero has now taken power in Washington — and the British are having to smile and clap as he sets fires and reaches for his fiddle.

gideon.rachman@ft.com

For those frustrated by the lack of economic rationale from Brexshiteers, it is illuminating from Bank’s book and the importance of ‘abstract messages’. They chose to focus on three issues: controlling borders; keeping money at home and making our own laws. All (BS but) had 70% of people finding the arguments convincing – post truth at work. In contrast, remain focused on economics; security and risks of leaving which all scored lower than 70%.

Alternative facts work….

Careful, the FT monitor cutting and pasting closely and can get quite shirty about it. They have v accurate stats on when and how it is done.

It is also unashamedly pro-EU !

Sorry FT, mea máxima culpa.

They normally warn your first – they are not ogres. Merely firm on C&P policy!

Looks like article 50 is a shoo in now anyway. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jan/30/brexit-bill-to-pass-without-amendment-as-tory-rebels-back-off

We are always hearing about how the PM makes £150k pa but Junker is on £400k and pays just 10% tax plus a whopping pension and a golden parachute of £500k when he leaves That’s just one cushy EU job, there are 10’s of thousands

C’mon Jamba we both know that these salaries (or costs if you double it, as the PM’s pension contributions will be equally as huge) are pennies compared to those in industry etc – and we need to attract the equivalent type of folk.

And to put it into perspective, an IT contractor working in FS can earn what TM does, and no doubt you and your compatriots in FS earn what Junkers does easily. Nevermind all the folk working in professional services firms on public sector contracts will be also earning the same if more.

considering how quickly Mays dash to suplicate herself before tiny hands has turned into a PR disaster

Im confidant that she can catastrophically screw up the A50 procedure

Kimber remember how she was also scorned for being down the telephone list and therefore unimportant. Remarkable consistency, hey??

teamhurtmore – Member
Kimber remember how she was also scorned for being down the telephone list and therefore unimportant. Remarkable consistency, hey??

All she had to do was offer to pimp out her Maj and his ego couldnt resist, which seemed cunning at first

but trump was happy to use her for his own ends, he managed to grab her hand before letting her fly into meet Erdogan as he signed his muslim ban, where she duly got skewered by the press.

Remarkable consistency, hey??

Got to call it at the time though, at this time being the first to endorse Trump in person was desperate, her hand was a little forced by gove and farage getting into the trough early. However given the way every other leader is letting him stew a little it would have been sensible to.
If the aim was to talk trade waiting until his trade guy was appointed would have been sensible.
The real undoing was her statement about standing up to his bat shit crazy ideas then being the last one to half heartedly do so.

Yeah she was obviously put out by farage and gove, worried about her own legitimacy.

She has to make Brexit look like its going to work, wasnt her constiuency 60% remain?

Nipper I wondered where that partisan bollix came from, I see TMH gave us the answer.

Trump’s election is a massive boost for Brexit. Even without a UK/US trade deal he is going to put enormous perhaps even terminal pressure on the EU who’s position re Brexit has been materially weakened. We don’t need a free trade deal with the US, its already our greatest trading partner (country by country). The EU responded very favoirably to Theresa May’s encouraging words, they need her to calm The Donald. The EU needs to keep on the UK’s good side.

Trump’s election is a massive boost for Brexit.

It’s a bloody good reason to stay in Europe. Who wants to fall into his sphere of influence?