£1.7 bn for the Brussels Begging Bowl
It is an outrage that Brussels has ambushed the British Prime Minister with an unexpected demand for an extra £1.7 billion — based on their re-assessment of Britain’s economic growth. And David Cameron is not a man to trust on the issue. He should just say NO.
(You can’t trust the Tories in Brussels either. Last week on the vote to approve the new European Commission, they split three ways — for, against and abstain. Needless to say, UKIP MEPs all voted against).
In this country we don’t allow HMRC to come back retrospectively and change the rules, and demand money from previous years. We can’t accept Brussels doing that either.
What this amounts to is a deliberate policy of punishing success (the UK), and rewarding failure. Apparently France will receive nearly £800m. But even in its own terms, this EU initiative isn’t working. It’s taking money from Greece, which is nearly bust, and giving it to Germany, which was doing relatively well until recently.
Of course we in UKIP don’t want to be in the EU’s inward-looking, protectionist club in the first place. We don’t want to be giving Brussels £10 billion net a year to start with, never mind the extra £1.7 billion. We don’t want British industry burdened by the dead hand of Brussels regulation, estimated by some to be ten times the direct budget contributions. We want Britain to be free to make its own trade deals with the world. We want to focus on growing markets in the Americas and Asia, not on a declining Europe.
So we are adamantly opposed to this extra impost, at a time when real wages in the UK are stagnant and public services are desperate for funds.
The timing of the demand, just weeks ahead of the Rochester by-election where UKIP is leading the Tories in opinion polls, has suggested to some that there might be dirty work at the crossroads. One suggestion: maybe Brussels thinks (wrongly in our view) that a success for UKIP will lead to a Labour Prime Minister, who would not agree to an EU referendum. So was the timing deliberately designed to help UKIP in Rochester?
Or maybe they want to help Cameron and block UKIP. Will they climb down a couple of days before polling day, so that Cameron can come back from Brussels waving a piece of paper and declaring “Peace in our Time”? We’ll see. Cameron insists he won’t pay on December 1st. But December 2nd? One thing’s for sure: he won’t pay before the Rochester by-election on November 20th!
Roger Helmer MEP 
“In this country we don’t allow HMRC to come back retrospectively and change the rules, and demand money from previous years.” They do. But you can’t prove they’ve changed anything.
But with the EU:-
We don’t actually know whether they’ve changed any rules though do we?
We don’t know the period over which this calculation is based do we?
We don’t know the way it was calculated and the criteria used do we?
Why?
Simple, they threw away the fag packet.
I often wonder about the stability of HMRC. I worked with one of their agents who I considered very good. Until I queried VAT payments. They had to get a much higher officer to tell me by phone that I was not to pay VAT. Nobody was sure when I challenged. Surprising that was.
Got it in writing and saved in a bomb/fire proof case. Waiting for someone to put a wrong variable in their computers and have it send billions of retro payment letters. Just waiting….
Its true though, we the ordinary people have no idea what goes on in Brus/Stras as regards anything at all. Their accounts I assume are still not signed off for instance? Just something I stumbled on some years ago.
Anyway, if you sign the club subscription rules, you get the bill delivered….whenever? Suppose you get kicked out for not paying….?
I do hope so. That would save a farcical referendum.
Cameron doesn’t have the round bouncy things to stand up and tell them to bugger off, you are not getting this money. He will cave in, this is why this government is a laughing stock, have no credibility and have lost any tiny amount of respect they might have had at the beginning. Osborne would have us believe the country is still struggling with austerity so how come this extra demand/theft is because the country is so doing well financially? Someone here is lying……now I wonder who that could be?
If a country is truly struggling through austerity then doesn’t it make sense NOT to give away billions in “overseas aid”? We have been lied to so many times we no longer believe anything this shambles of a government say. We actually have the intelligence to connect the dots which is more than I can say for these expensively educated idiots in charge of the ruination of a once great country.
Newsflash Jane, they aren’t round, certainly not spacehoppers and the image your first sentence brings to mind is painful in the extreme.
However I do agree with the sentiment.
Me-Again. I think you are talking a load of balls!!! He he…..
Ex-pat Colin, you said “Their accounts I assume are still not signed off for instance? Just something I stumbled on some years ago.”
Absolutely right and Jane and Me-again have got the answer.
It’s in the BOOKS, The double crossing double LL. Try it ! Put it where it is.
To save a lot of time wasting the second word is off
Sorry, although I’m a member of UKIP I disgree with your’s and Farage’s “tell them to get stuffed” attitude. Have our elected representatives not signed up to the treaties and implemented the EU directives, regulations and whatever that make this demand possible? Yes it is fair enough for Cameron to ask for an independent audit of the calculations, although I understand the treasury may actually have carried out the calculation, but to refuse to pay the bill will destroy the UK’s financial credibility. This bill should be paid forthwith and the included in the envelope with the cheque should be an Article 50 notification of withdrawal.
None of us like the idea of having to pay bills, whether they be taxes or otherwise and especially large bills that arise because of an adjustment. However this additional £1.7bn is an amount that is properly due by the UK because of previous underestimates of the size of the UK economy. I dare say that all of you would be rejoicing were the adjustment to be the other way, but sadly it is not. See this which gives an independent analysis https://fullfact.org/europe/uk_pay_eu_budget_gni_economy-35944
At the moment Brian, we do not know the basis on which this ‘unprecedented’ sum is based.We don’t know the criteria used in the calculation nor the range [time] which it covers.
They have plainly lost the fag packet on which they did the sums since no one appears keen to come up with anything other than the bottom line.
I would not rejoice if the adjustment were the other way simply because it would mean our economy was tanking -just like the eurozone countries. I’d rather not pay anything at all to this 50’s kids club.
” I don’t want my country to be just another star on someone else’s flag”
Don’t want anyone else’s money FFS. Too much debt in UK and its UK that has to pay that down, let alone giving borrowed money to France et al. The EURO is Europe’s problem not ours.
Quite handy with fining folk aren’t they. We didn’t get a slice of the sex and drugs action, so pay more if your’e late on that.
I suspect a good few people in UK are wondering how this all come about. And likely will not follow the gravy train logic. I hope so, I really do!!
Good on you spot on
Who do you think you are kidding Mr Cameron?
Himself?!!!!
Mrs. Merkel Says …..
With all the ****************** ups he is making maybe even that is too good for him!!!!!!!!!!!
Why are we so bedevilled by leaders who have no backbone and submit to (con) or (liblab) outright support the EU ahead of their own nation despite its repeated economic attacks on the UK.
If I were Cameron I’d set my researchers to root out as many instances as possible where France and Germany (and others) have flaunted the rules and got away with it – a target-rich environment surely?