Britain is not the EU's equal in strength, and boy, does it show

rudeboy wrote:

sceptical guy wrote:

I assured you I’d answer.

Yet you still haven’t

what a jerk!

I’m writing it now.

He doesn’t want this answering, does he, but I’m answering it anyway because it trades on the prejudices of people affected by their living standards declining. I think this site is hard brexit, deeply prejudiced, but I’m posting this and the fact that people who have been condemning me for ‘slithering’ and avoiding facts are now attacking me for producing facts is neither here nor there to me. I’m posting it in the hope that some will read it carefully and consider it.

So let’s start with these two figures being used.  They come across as ‘facts’, and that makes people believe them. That’s what the Leave campaign rely on. They pick out odd facts and then use them to play on people’s fears.

A lot of people, me included, are very worried about the conditions of austerity which have led to crime, poorer health, lesser life spans and appalling real cuts in education and especially welfare.

So what do these hyenas do? They first pick out an EU contribution and then claim that they can solve the problems of the NHS by getting out of the EU and spending the budget on the NHS. I know from personal experience of talking to individuals around the country as much as reading the press at the time that this had an impact on people. Boris Johnson was travelling around in a bus with the figures all over it. One school cook, very active in the campaign in her school, assured me with a confident smile that the NHS would be safe now we had left the EU. What a cruel deception the rich swine like Boris and Arron Banks made on her through the campaign.

Let’s take the two ‘facts’. They are 1) Britain pays a net contribution to the EU budget of £8.5bn and 2) the cost of the NHS is £8.5bn.

The first fact surprised me. The liars of Leave have been peddling false figures about Britain’s contribution and they got told off for that. Too late, of course, so the hyenas laughed all the way back to their chateaus. But Mr Intelligent’s first fact was correct. The House of Commons Library has produced research showing that Britain, after receiving its rebate to offset the unfairness of making relatively large contributions to the Common Agricultural Policy (mainly) , and after receiving funds back in EU payments to our public services, ended up paying £8.9bn in 2017. So the net contribution is slightly larger than is given by Mr Intelligent  (though he doesn’t give us the actual year, (presumably because he doesn’t know!).

This can be found here – https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/CBP-7886

So thumbs up to Mr Intelligent on point 1. Of course, Britain’s contributions aren’t nearly as great as other countries. Germany is by far the biggest net contributor.  Germany paid more than the 19 lowest paying countries combined – http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8036097.stm

Fact 2 is where things start to go wrong. The NHS costs £8.5bn a month, and will get £5bn once the UK leaves the EU, we are told. Suspicious, I thought. The figures are about equal. The £8.5bn per year he claims is compared to the £8.5bn a month – a month – spent on the NHS. The figures are totally out of synch, but you need to have a good eye for figures to see that. Most people don’t have that.

And where in hell does he get the £5bn going to the NHS? He doesn’t say. Is he going to pay it out?  There was going to be no brexit dividend said the govt, before they backtracked pdq in the last few weeks as they sailed into deep doo-dah. Is he expecting to be in power or something?? Where does he get the figures??

In fact, after the Mr Big Deal’s harrying me for an answer, I found that the figure of £8.5bn seems to have been dreamed up.  The NHS annual cost has increased enormously, from nearly £79bn ten years ago to well over £120bn in 2016. In 2018-2019 it’s expected to cost over 123bn, though the actual projections have increased a lot since that calculation, I gather. The actual figure is over £10bn – a month. This can be found at http://www.nhsconfed.org/resources/key-statistics-on-the-nhs

So the 8.5bn contributed to the EU budget – and the £5bn promised by our generous Brexiteer, is almost like a pee in the ocean.

Doesn’t matter to our brexiteers, though, does it, and that’s the real meaning of the use of a figure like £8.5bn to the scoundrels who lead the campaign.

It’s about creating a prejudice.  The real numbers don’t matter one tiny bit.

Everyone knows that the NHS is in a real crisis. So if some scalawag comes along selling the elixir of everlasting life claiming that we are all draining so much money into the EU and getting nothing back, and we could cure the crisis of the NHS by transferring the money, then all will be resolved. The broad sunny uplands of a stable and prosperous NU will be assure.

As Tommy Cooper said – Just   Like   That!!!

But wait!!!

What are we doing paying all that money into the EU budget – think of it, £8.5bn a year – That’s £23 million a day. A day. My God!!  Think of what could be done with that money for our social problems.

What have we been doing? How could we be such fools as to join such a group???

Like I said, misleading. Extremely misleading!!

The figures above confirm prejudice.

But the real McCoy is very very dangerous – to you and I and everybody but Boris Johnson and the billionaire Arron Banks who has payrolled the Leave EU campaign and is now under criminal investigation.

Next part of the answer follows soon.

draculina wrote:

jamief wrote:

Dident know that much about Rees-Mogg.So went and had a speed read.

What i found was, He has lived a very privliged life.He wouldent have a clue how the common man on the street thinks or feels about living in todays Britan.He seems to come from a diffrent era.Very educated and very ritch,and takes for granted that he would know more how to run our lives for us than we could understand.Arragent,egotistical,very charming and witty though.Too much like Borros Johnson,a celbrety.Borris Johnson is shamles.He was sure that the British people would vote to stay in the Eu,and when they dident lol he did a compleat Turnaround.He has relyed on his common sence father to go in celeb jungle to turn things around for him,was very weasely.That is exactley what i thought when i read about mr mogg,weasely.I cant take him seriously at all.

My fiance is a socialist remain voter, she loves Mogg.

You’re a lucky gal, Drac.

She sounds interesting.

Why does she love Moggy though? He makes me giggle, and I respect his sense of principle,  but I don’t love him.