Mick

iTrader: (1)

I don't understand this...
Most of the richer countries including us pay in about £1 Billion more than they take out...
Now everybody (not surprisingly ) thinks it is a good idea for the UK to pay £4 Billion pounds a year more in to the EU, than we take out! - I know it 'only' works out at about £50 for every man woman and child on our island, but strewth mate - you don't see the Germans and the French rushing to donate an extra £3000,000,000 out of their own budgets!
Might be different if the French and Germans had led the way - generously donating extra funds to help out the smaller poorer countries... We could still do this on our own anyway if we had cash to spare...

Do I not understand this correctly?

Please share your insights...

Cheers

Mick

Suresh

Unless France wants to address its unnecessary €7bn benefits from the CAP, I see no need to review UK contributions. I take my hat off to Thatcher for negotiating the rebate in the first place!

I'm sure Tony won't let us down and give it away for nothing.

Suresh

Jap2Scrap

How sure?

I'm not sure at all to be honest. The bloke is a sneaky gimp and anything that will land him a cushy EU job when he quits the PM job is likely to get the go ahead from him.

Leslie

Stuff 'em and the creepy Billy and his mates too!

Its all a big smokescreen to take our attention off the Dutch and French rejection of the flawed constitution. The French premier is looking like losing the protection from prosecution for all the big fiddles he alledgedly did when he was Mayor of Paris which is why he is all twitched up. maybe they will get Billy's friend Berlusconi whose past is also reported as not standing too much close investigation.

They are all a bunch of fiddlers and grafters and they don't give a damn what happens to the electorate either.

Kick them into touch!

Les

Suresh

Blair rejects rebate freeze plan
The prime minister and Mr Chirac are set to clash over EU issues
Tony Blair has turned down a formal plan to freeze Britain's £3bn EU rebate, Downing Street has confirmed.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4090274.stm


Blair wants the rebate to grow!


To be honest, I don't understand why Ireland (a.k.a the Celtic Tiger) continues to get hand-outs even though they are doing quite nicely now (thanks to the handouts)???

Suresh

CrisPDuk

Actually, to be historically acurate the initial abatement was negotiated by Jim Callaghan as a direct result of the UK not doing as well out of the CAP scam as the French, Dutch & Germans did. Margaret Thatcher's contribution was to make sure the abatement became permanent for as long as the above three continued to milk the CAP.
As there is no way on this earth that Chirac is going to concede their farmers' gravy train, there is no way Bliar should concede our compensation, simple as!

Dr Hu

what I dont understand is - we are ALREADY the biggest contributor to the EU, yet take the least out.

If the capping was scrapped we would pay 15 - yes that's *15* times more than France

Now does that sound fair to you?

The french unemployment benefit is 4 times the average wage of hungary.......

Basically they invited loads of 'fiscal black hole' states to join europe - its like pouring money down a drain - see the france/hungary note above!

The french & dutch saw europe expanding ever eastwards with no money coming in, just them paying out and said NON

Europe also want flat rate taxation across all the countries...like thats gonna work

I say get the **** out - and stay OUT!

ahhhhh - feel better now......

Dr Hu - Rabid anti eu UKIP voter

Brendan Hughes

About six months ago I heard that there was technically no more need for the rebate, as the amounts had been restructured, I think with the 2002 budget renegotiations. However, I haven't been able to find this anywhere since, so either the journalists have decided to bury it to keep a good old anti-EU argument going, or it wasn't accurate at the time.

Mick

iTrader: (1)

Actually it's worse than I thought already...
From the bbc link Suresh gives...


Mick

RedFive

Long live the Sun

Germany is and always was the biggest contributor as a country. Per capita, it is Luxemburg, followed by The Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, Belgium and the UK. Biggest "small poor countries" (cough) that get money out of the EU are Spain, Latvia, Griece, Portugal and Ireland.

There are enough reasons to be anti-EU, but spouting bollox alas is not one of them.

Oh, and if you *do* want to get out of the EU, please do agree with the "constitution" (which it is not), as there are opt-out possibilities in there, which were/are not available under the Nice treaty. I'm sure the nice UKIP people have told you that

Personally, I'd rather kick the UK out of the EU, but hey, that's personal

EiW

Yeah, and Bliar has no track record whatsoever of saying one thing to the public (via his favourite mouthpiece, the BBC) and doing something else in private, has he??!?!?

Anyway, I'm just off to save up for my son's tuition fees using my income which hasn't been affected by any tax rises, as he promised in 1997, 2001. http://www.labour-watch.com/brokenp.htm

"Faith in your chosen leader" - he's not mine, nor that of about 65% of the population.

RedFive

This BBS, with all respect dudes, is dead as a doornail And no, you have no idea how much that pains me really. Oh well, I'll get over it.

Glad the ""Here's a Pic of Me"" thread still works. The "Luurrvvv" thread on the other hand still confirms most of you aren't getting in each other's nickers Then again <Bubble voice> Most af ya are rrreaally ugley</Bubs>

GC8

Speak for yourself; Im foxy I am!

RedFive

Yeah, but then you are one of the nicer guys on here really Still a newb mind

Mick

iTrader: (1)

I don't understand 'the poorer countries paying part of the UK rebate' either... It's all politic speak. If we pay in, more than we take out (inc rebate) NOBODY pays us anything!

Have I missunderstood?

Mick

unclebuck

He *is* Blair. He *will* sell us down the river.

Wait and see.....

Adrian F

He is already spinning it to sell us out! i bet if the French agree to reduce CAP by 0.0000001% and Blair will roll over and give up our money.

r32

I thought that there were only two countries that were net contributors to the EU budget, Germany and us (even with the rebate) all the others make a profit, in France's case a very tidy profit....

Leslie

Billy has now decided to do a tactical U-turn and appear to be a Eurosceptic after all he has said to promote Federation (purely as a tidying up operation of course!).

He knows how to drum up some support over here alright!

Les

carl

Although there are 60 million residents of the UK, only around 30 million are taxpayers (see http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/stats/tax_receipts/table1-4.pdf). So that's £100 each per year. Which equates to a reduction in your tax code of around £450. Would you be happy with that?

Or, since a 17.5% VAT rate gave us total receipts of £71.853 bn in 2004, we could increase the VAT rate to 18.3% to give us £75.138 bn which is about right.