Well, I guess we all knew that the figure wasn’t accurate, and certainly, by the morning after the referendum we knew that the £350 million a week wasn’t going anywhere near the NHS, but until now, I had no idea just HOW inaccurate Boris’s bus was.
According to the “Standard”: For the 12 months to March 2017, the UK made a net contribution of £8.1 billion or about £156 million a week – its lowest level for five years and nowhere close to the £350 million claimed by Brexiteers.
That figure includes the rebate that the UK gets and the money which is paid directly to the UK government. Again, from the article:
The rebate in 2016-17 was £4.8 billion. Subtracting this from the gross contribution gives a figure of £12.2 billion. A further subtraction of the EU’s payments to the UK public sector gives the final figure of £8.1 billion, or about £156 million a week.
But the EU also makes payments to the private sector and to universities, including funding for the Erasmus education programme. This is thought to amount to around £1.5 billion a year (around £29 million a week). So even the £156 million a week is not accurate.
Additionally, for the approximately £125 million a week the UK pays, the EU provides a large variety of regulatory services and organisations which will have to be replicated by the British government. The setup and running of them won’t be cheap.
It’s worth noticing that, contrary to popular notion here, the UK is not the top contributor to the EU, although it pays more than it gets out. Per capita (surely the only way to measure this) the UK pays less than The Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, Denmark, Finland, Austria and France. Not a bad deal for a country that likes to brag that it is one of the richest in the world and certainly one of the most important.
MUNGUIN'S NEW REPUBLIC 
Luxembourg?
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I was surprised by that. It’s probably the richest nation in the EU.
It may be that a vast amount of the money pumped into it is in the form of the EU civil service, rather than infrastructure, social or farming subsidies.
And that fact that the population is tiny.
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When the Fourth Estate turn themselves into slavish and subservient apologists and publicists for the regime, the regime’s politicians can lie with impunity, and opposition politicians can neither lie nor tell factual, actual truth without being rubbished, condemned, vilified and accused of treason, extremism, support for terrorism – the list of their “crimes” is open-ended. The net effect is to create a false reality.
In October 1932, at a time when the Soviet press was already under iron-fisted control, during a meeting with writers at the home of Maxim Gorky in preparation for the first conference of the Union of Soviet Writers, Stalin said: “The production of souls is more important than the production of tanks… And therefore I raise my glass to you, writers, the engineers of the human soul”. All workers in the creative and performance arts, as well as all the country’s assorted scribblers, had to kowtow to this idea, which eventually went by the name of “Socialist Realism”. That’s what our confrères writing in the Unionist press are doing: engineering Scottish souls to get them to believe to their marrow that we Scots are so crap and poor and wee and stupid that we can’t even run a railway service or organize farm payments properly ourselves, and we should therefore just go on cringing and not even believe we have the right to run our own country.
Please don’t bother attacking my interpretation of history, I know it’s broad brush, it’s just a snippet, and it has been many, many years since I was on top of my subject, which I was only because some bunch of barstewards were going to set me exams in it. What I mean is – the thing about Socialist Realism is that it wasn’t. It wasn’t real, I mean. It made a virtue out of lies and falsification. It was that context which provoked Orwell into producing 1984, and in today’s Surveillance State, Snoopers’ Charter, CCTV on every lamppost UK, we’re far further advanced toward Big Brother than any KGB chief could ever have dreamed of in his wildest, wettest dreams, because for the rest of us it’s a feckin nightmare.
When lies and falsifications are the norm, and facts and truth are traduced and deprecated, well, we’re in big trouble, aren’t we? I do think I’m right in saying too that those lies and falsifications are responsible to a huge extent for the Unionist mindset that perceives us independentistas as insane, and at the same time an existential threat to them. If we’d been in the old Soviet Union, we might have been banged up in a psychiatric hospital if our complete disappearance would cause waves internationally, and in the gulag or undergoing some lesser punishment if our absence wouldn’t be noted.
Thank all the gods that we’re not there yet, and pray we never do get there. But remember who invented concentration camps and remember who used them first.
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Sorry, I hope I wasn’t too far off topic there – it’s just that I see the lies of the likes of that bozo BoJo as part of a larger picture of State oppression and the glorification of wrong-headedness.
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It wasn’t really off topic as you say. In any case I’ve always said I have no problem with people going off topic as long as they are interesting, and you are.
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Totally agree. Eloquently expressed as ever.
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I do not wish to be subsidized by the English taxpayers. The Scottish Government should rescind the treaty for the union of the Scottish and English parliaments. The money the English Parliament will save can be used for the benefit of the English people. LOL.
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Like they wold use it to help the English people…
They’d give another of the royal palaces a good old renovation, and get a bigger and better prime ministerial jet.
The one thing they would not do was help in any way, ordinary English people.
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And remember what the inventors of the concentration camps did to the Kenyan indigenous population in the 1950’s and 60’s. Just a few years after some of the same soldiers had liberated the German camps.
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Crimes of the British Empire. Scary.
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There’ll always be an England …….
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Which, of course, is fine. As long as Scotland is quite separate from it.
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Quite so… during my time in Kenya, I had occasion to meet some old guys who’d actually been in the camps. A couple of them had even been castrated there, so I’m as sure as I can be that those stories are true. I don’t know how I would be feeling in their situation, but I found them remarkably forgiving, and they certainly had nothing against me. Rather the reverse: they seemed to like it that I had sought them out to talk to. Their welcome was helped along, I think, by some history I heard about Scottish missionaries, who (a) provided education, which the colonial authorities were not particularly interested in doing; and (b) protected people from the authorities and spoke up in their defence. Not that I’m a particular fan of missionaries, really, but I was pleased to hear that.
One of them said – I paraphrase – that hatred is corrosive to the soul. I heard that same sentiment from a Moroccan Sufi whose name means Servant of the Light, and from a Jewish survivor of the camps. So I rather think it must be true.
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Yes, and you can add to that a guy I knew years ago, who was a survivor of a Japanese POW camp. He didn’t hate either. Regretted maybe.
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Tris
The lies go on so much now that the media writing them believe them to be true and they are true because everything from everyone is a conspiracy and a lie. Just look at the WoS articles about Rail targets the last couple of days which eddjasfreeman response to you so brilliantly puts into context, sometimes you just wish you had written something like that :). I am at the point now where if it’s reported in the mainstream or by politicians I just assume it’s a lie and that’s from virtually all politicians, the SNP are certainly not the worst but also put their slant on things which can be a bit economical with the facts at times. Why can’t people just tell the truth and let the reader, viewer or listener make up their own mind, never happen I know too many agendas and ego’s to massage. I am sick of it though, my blog today about a guardian article highlights the problem for me. Where do we go, most of us don’t watch tv news now, most of us don’t buy a paper and they still don’t learn, in fact we are the problem because we refuse to believe them. Where does it end other than we wake up and find ourselves in the Victorian Age with the Tories delightfully happy, along with the other yoons, that the natural order is back.
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Tris
The lies go on so much now that the media writing them believe them to be true and they are true because everything from everyone is a conspiracy and a lie. Just look at the WoS articles about Rail targets the last couple of days which eddjasfreeman response to you so brilliantly puts into context, sometimes you just wish you had written something like that :). I am at the point now where if it’s reported in the mainstream or by politicians I just assume it’s a lie and that’s from virtually all politicians, the SNP are certainly not the worst but also put their slant on things which can be a bit economical with the facts at times. Why can’t people just tell the truth and let the reader, viewer or listener make up their own mind, never happen I know too many agendas and ego’s to massage. I am sick of it though, my blog today about a guardian article highlights the problem for me. Where do we go, most of us don’t watch tv news now, most of us don’t buy a paper and they still don’t learn, in fact we are the problem because we refuse to believe them. Where does it end other than we wake up and find ourselves in the Victorian Age with the Tories delightfully happy, along with the other yoons, that the natural order is back.
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Aye, Bruce. I often read what Mr Freeman has said and wish I had his style… and intellect.
I think politicians (of every colour) are likely to say what sell THEM best. Like car salesmen,, they aren’t going to tell you the miserable truth.
This car is overprice,; it has dodgy steering and it won;t pass its next MOT… a bargain though at £5,000.
I suppose I’m a bit frightened of the future. I’m desperately hoping that Scotland will be free of this backward looking union soon, or that at least, even for a sum, I can keep my EU citizenship, which I have done nothing to lose.
Every day we hear of some other disaster coming down the tracks towards us at breakneck speed, and May doesn’t seem to know where the breaks are.
I’ll be over at yours later. 🙂
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I have heard from a number of No voting people that the UK contributes more to the EU than we get back.
On the surface of things that appears to be the case.
However,the contribution to the UK economy in being part of the single market must be quite substantial and that is what is worrying the Tory money men.
Unfortunately,by the time we find out just how much that is,it will be too late.
It is unlikely that trading with Trumpland will make up for the deficit.
Also I don’t think a loss of £8b to the EU budget will be too significant for them,despite the rhetoric from the Brexiteers.
There is no doubt that the main losers from this process will be HM treasury and,of course,us.
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Well, it is true. But like so much of what happens in the UK, everything is thrown out of balance by the disparity of wealth.
The South East of England is a wealthy place. The North East of England is dirt poor, as are parts of Wales and all of Northern Ireland.
Without EU subsidies NI is going to be in dire straights, and it doesn’t look like Westminster will be able to bail them out by shaking the magic money tree for a billion every year.
As I understand it, Scotland more or less breaks even from the EU. What our taxes pay we get back in grants. Wales makes a small profit, as does the North of England.
The South pays more and gets less back, because it is well off.
And remember a vast number of the population of the UK union lives in the south-east.
Trade deals with America (which will be on American terms) will do little for us, except chlorinated chicken and eggs that have to be kept in refrigeration for fear of salmonella (I won’t eat them).
Australia and New Zealand aren’t saying no, but they are not that interested, because they trade locally and are going into this big trading group of Pacific rim countries.
They’ll do deals of course, eventually, but I wonder what good that will do us.
What do we make that we can sell them? What do they make that we can afford after it comes all the way across with world?
Unless they start producing stuff at Chinese type prices, not a lot, I venture.
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Have a look at the labels on the processed/ prepacked foods most people eat. Often the chicken today comes from Brazil or Thailand. Then there’s the restaurant trades. You might think you will get a choice in whether you eat GM corn, or chlorinated chicken, but if its in your curry how do you know where it comes from? How do you know whether its even chicken at all?
What will happen if the Brits whore themselves to American agribusiness is not what you will have a choice as a consumer to resist. It will be supplied up the “food” chain. You won’t even know its there.
There are problems with fraud and dodgy practices throughout the food business already. The EU regulations are enforced at the moment, for example, by say a team from Poland inspecting a slaughter house in the UK which exports to their country ( and I know of exactly this example happening ). Do you imagine that UK inspectors will be welcome in the USA?
Animal welfare standards are high in the UK. The opposite of good welfare is low prices. We cannot compete on a global free market where food is produced intensively at very low prices because of antibiotic abuse, battery poultry production, veal crates, hormone injection and concrete pig pens. Inside the EU market – protected as it often is – we can influence the other members to gradually outlaw cruelty. Outside the EU our standards will be swept away.
The best thing for Scotland and for the rUK is to stop this stupid rush to Brexit. There are few people who will be better off in any form by the madness of it.
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I think that the UK will comply with all American requirements. I think the USA will walk all over them. Donald Trump is, if nothing else, a deal maker. He knows May is desperate to get someone somewhere to sign a trade deal, quickly…any trade deal will do.
England and Wales voted for this, albeit on the back of a pile of lies. Scotland NI and Gibraltar did not. We shouldn’t be forced into it.
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Sorry to be picky but the chart does not tell us which year it is for, or if it is an average of several years.
Also, if this is the 2016 figure, the total may not take into account payments which will come from sources like the EU Solidarity Fund which although incurred in 2016 will not be paid out in that year.
The UK is notorious for holding back the application for such funds till the last possible moment – frequently the day of the deadline. By the time the reduced contribution figure information is published, it is no longer news and can be ignored by the press.
I am not sure, but I think you will find that if you use the adjusted figures, the UK has never actually paid the 10 Billion figure that the EU supposedly cannot do without.
Oh and you might want to look at the figures for our contribution when the government was Labour. You will find it interesting.
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I think it’s worth noting too that off the top of my head I can remember two occasions when the UK turned down funding from the EU.
I think I’m right in saying that after particularly viscous flooding there was a disaster fund available, but the UK said it preferred to look after its own people, which of course it didn’t really do. And then there was money for feeding the poor who were using foodbanks, which was turned down by the UK government.
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