Cycling UK Forum

horizon wrote:

roubaixtuesday wrote:For Mick: it's about 4 billion euros.

https://europa.eu/european-union/about- ... kingdom_en

But it's economic benefits of single market membership far outweigh this.

Am I right in thinking that the GDP of the UK is around £2tn? Which makes our net contribution about half one thousandth of GDP. Not bad for 70 years of peace.

PS Please check my maths!

Correlation is not causation. Any even if it is the EU which has kept the peace, a debatable point to say the least, why should we need to pay millions of pounds a week to other Europeans just to keep them from waging war? Can't they be peaceful without getting our cash? I haven't heard any Remainers predicting a resumption of the traditional Franco/German bellicosity after Brexit. And even if Europe breaks out in war after Brexit that would not be our fault. [post edited by moderator]

PDQ Mobile wrote:

Mick F wrote:

Oldjohnw wrote:And Farage et al can send back all the cash they received. And the farmers. And communities all around the UK.

Not taking sides here, and not making a point.

Question:

There's only so much money about.
If we pay the EU our dues, and we get money back for fishing and farming and Objective One etc, what's the balance?
If the balance is zero or thereabouts, why pay out and then receive?
Are we financially in profit or loss?

Not counting other benefits with respect to free movement, free trade, free anything etc etc etc.
Just payments versus receipts.
Are we in profit are are we in debt or are we balanced?

Does anyone know?

This was asked several times particularly in the run up to the referendum.
Have you forgotten?
"About balanced", seemed to have some consensus but one should not overlook benefits to being a member of course.
Like subs when you were in the scouts.

Tarif free food imports being an important one.
But there are plenty of others.
Cornwall (and parts of Wales), of course, had a bit more than their "fair" share of funding for various projects/schemes on account of them being relatively poor.

If we didn't pay so many billions to the EU every year with so little in return we'd have more money to help poorer regions in the UK. At the moment we pay billions to help poorer areas in other EU countries. Why? I don't mind giving money to people in need, such as the starving in Africa, but I see no reason why one single penny of my pay should end up in the pocket of someone in Poland or Greece where they might not be as affluent as we are here but they are certainly not poor.

Mick F wrote:

Oldjohnw wrote:And Farage et al can send back all the cash they received. And the farmers. And communities all around the UK.

Not taking sides here, and not making a point.

Question:

There's only so much money about.
If we pay the EU our dues, and we get money back for fishing and farming and Objective One etc, what's the balance?
If the balance is zero or thereabouts, why pay out and then receive?
Are we financially in profit or loss?

Not counting other benefits with respect to free movement, free trade, free anything etc etc etc.
Just payments versus receipts.
Are we in profit are are we in debt or are we balanced?

Does anyone know?

The UK is the second biggest net contributor to the EU, lagging far behind Germany but well ahead of third placed France. This goes a long way to explaining why the bloc is so reluctant to see us leave. Brexit will leave a large hole in the EU's finances, one which will have to be filled by the taxpayers of the other net contributors of which there are only a few. They'll have to pay more from their paypackets so that Brussels can send the same money to the majority of members who get more from the EU than they pay in. Meanwhile, we in the UK will gain billions from Brexit when we stop sending money to Poland, Bulgaria, Belgium etc via the middlemen in Brussels. As far as I know people are not starving the death in those countries, so I expect they'll manage without our money. It is strange how Remainers never seem to mention just how much cash we send to Brussels compared to how little we get back, while they are forever going on about how much money the EU gives to us, as if it is some sort benevolent organisation which is helping us out, doing things we couldn't otherwise afford, and which we'll miss when we leave.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-48256318

roubaixtuesday wrote:

andrec wrote:

Oldjohnw wrote:
Mr Farage is not an MP. Nor does he lead the largest party in the house.

Those things can change. Boris needs to perform, and quickly.

The mind boggles.

What kind of performance do you have in mind?

Brexit by Oct 31. What else? If possible I'd like it backdated to 24/6/16 so we can send Brussels a bill for all the cash we've sent there since then.

Oldjohnw wrote:

andrec wrote:Boris had better live up to expectations or Mr Farage could be the next person to go to the palace to see the queen about the job of prime minister.

Mr Farage is not an MP. Nor does he lead the largest party in the house.

Those things can change. Boris needs to perform, and quickly.

Boris had better live up to expectations or Mr Farage could be the next person to go to the palace to see the queen about the job of prime minister.

mercalia wrote:

Cyril Haearn wrote:JoJo and BoJo look very similar, I can hardly tell them apart
I think JoJo might sneak into Number Ten and save us from This Madness

no such luck the anti-christ has won - we now also have a clown as PM.

Democracy has spoken well 92,000 out of how many milion have

That's quite a few more than the number who got a vote in the election to decide the new president of the EU, Ursula von der Leyen. She got 383 votes.

horizon wrote:Quite an interesting assessment from a relatively independent (Irish) source here:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... k-brussels

I would value a response from Leavers on this.

An Irish person trying to talk up the UK's influence over the EU because he knows how damaging Brexit will be to his own country. Ireland freely chose to join the EU and must face the consequences of our departure.

bovlomov wrote:

andrec wrote:It'll be good to have a Brexiter in number ten.

Who's that? Neither Johnson nor Hunt is a Brexiter.

Oh, I didn't realise, and neither do many of the Remainers here judging by their comments about him. Thanks for telling us.

It'll be good to have a Brexiter in number ten.

Mike Sales wrote:

Bonefishblues wrote:

Mike Sales wrote:
He made absolutely no move to stop it. "He said" I could look up the number of documented lies he has told, but should not need to. He is a world class liar.
His subsequent tweets wriggle and squirm.

Redefining the art.

In his brazen face and lack of shame at being caught.

In stark contrast to all those other politicians who readily admit their lies, hang their heads in shame and beg the electorate for forgiveness?

NUKe wrote:

andrec wrote:

NUKe wrote:Hate speech is not free speech ....

Those who warn us of fascism are often very eager to circumscribe and restrict debate and to legally classify more and more free speech of others as hate speech, an approach which is little different from fascism where dissent from the official line is punished in order to discourage it. Beware of people who claim to want to prevent fascism in this way. They are very probably fascists themselves, though they'll claim they are acting for the general good and from the most sensible of motives, just as the recent fascists in Europe did a few decades ago. As Mencken noted 'the urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.'

Your point being?
I don't want to rule anything ? But I do see parallels with history and what is currently happening in the USA. telling people to go home and allowing the crowd to shout send em back. And as for Mencken his better quote was “
On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.“

Allowing the crowd to shout send 'em back? Who can disallow it? They still have free speech in the USA. much more so than in the UK. The people of the USA have not allowed their government to inhibit their right to to say what they like. Restricting free speech prevents some people from publicising their views, contributing to debate and being elected to office because of these views if they appeal to voters. For these reasons it is very bad for democracy and can only be supported by undemocratic people who seek to limit debate to views they think people should be allowed to express. Do we want to end up like China,Cuba or Soviet Russia where dissenting from a state approved set of opinions can land a person in very serious trouble?

NUKe wrote:

andrec wrote:Wouldn't it be terrible thing if fascism did come back having crept up on us because everyone ignored the constant warnings made by people with the ability to spot fascism in others even where it doesn't exist? The boy who cried wolf. I am reminded of my student days when we all laughed at people who could spot fascists and fascism with unlikely regularity, always in people whose opinions they didn't like. Over the years the practice has become increasingly fashionable, and with people of all ages. I've also noticed that some of them have little tolerance for the views of others and welcome the state's attempts to limit free speech, remarkable traits for people who claim to dislike fascism.

Hate speech is not free speech ....

Those who warn us of fascism are often very eager to circumscribe and restrict debate and to legally classify more and more free speech of others as hate speech, an approach which is little different from fascism where dissent from the official line is punished in order to discourage it. Beware of people who claim to want to prevent fascism in this way. They are very probably fascists themselves, though they'll claim they are acting for the general good and from the most sensible of motives, just as the recent fascists in Europe did a few decades ago. As Mencken noted 'the urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.'

Cunobelin wrote:

661-Pete wrote:The error in the predictions of opinion polls, as compared with the actual result in June 2016, wasn't as great as all that. It may have been bigger than the sampling error in some cases, but not by many sigmas.

It may be that the actual number of mind-changers - from Leave to Remain - is not as great as some polls predict. But I still maintain that there are a significant number.

And don't forget that the pollsters in USA correctly forecast that Clinton would get the larger number of votes. They didn't correctly account for gerrymandering of course...

The US Presidency and the number of votes have not correlated for may years

The US presidency is decided by the number of votes in the electoral college, not the popular vote. I've no idea why some people have such trouble accepting this as the leader of the government in many countries is decided by a vote of a small number of people - the UK (where it is decided by the party with the most seats in parliament in a manner decided by that party), Germany, Japan and India are a few examples and there are many, many more. And the EU decides it leaders in that way too. The people do not vote them into office, and this causes no complaint from EUphiles who tell us that the EU is very democratic.

Paulatic wrote:This sums it up...
F140877F-4C87-4E88-9E06-F827D1306211.jpeg

She's going to lose everything she has? I doubt it. She'll lose her local MEPs and that's about it, and if I'd asked her the name of those MEPs five years ago I'd be have been willing to bet she couldn't name them. She is obviously one of those apocalyptic Remainers with no sense of proportion or perspective.