In 2005, he agreed to cut the rebate secured by Margaret Thatcher every year until it eventually disappears. The rebate was negotiated because so much of the EU budget - around a third - goes towards the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Without the rebate, the UK is the largest contributor to the EU budget but benefits least from the CAP and even our masters on the continent had to grudgingly accept that expecting the UK to pay for the CAP was unreasonable.
The UK contribution to the EU budget was going to get more expensive anyway thanks to the erosion of the rebate and the ever-increasing bill for EU imperialism but Gordon Brown's expert steerage of the UK economy into recession is going to increase the bill even further at a time when we can least afford it.
The amount the UK has to pay for the privilege of having three quarters of our laws made by unelected foreigners is calculated and paid in euro and
the exchange rate is fixed at the prevailing rate at the end of the last year. This means that the bill for next year will be paid at an exchange rate of €1.4 to the £ instead of the current rate of €1.05 to the £.The upshot of this is that next year's €5.6bn contribution no longer works out at £4bn, it's now £5.5bn and that extra €1.5bn means an increased contribution of £18.75 for every one of the 80m inhabitants of these islands. The £1.5bn would pay the wages of 68,000 nurses or 35,000 police officers. It would pay for the English NHS to abolish prescription charges and hospital car parking charges in line with the rest of the UK three times over.
If the pound stays at parity with the euro then our contribution to the EU in 2010 will be £9bn instead of the £6.5bn the British government has budgeted for. The net cost of EU membership last year was £873 for every man, woman and child in the UK. The combined effect of the erosion of the UK's rebate, the devaluation of the pound and increased EU spending should push this figure beyond the thousand pound mark.
What will you spend your thousand pounds on when we leave the EU?
wonkotsane is an author at Bloggers4UKIP.
Posts
4 comments:
£1 billion would pay for also:
222,000 hip replacements Or 38,782 teachers
And more to the point by not paying for membership and just having trade agreements like we have done for many years, we would be able to decide what suits us as country and economically.
Well that's the thing with Norway and Switzerland - they get the benefits of the customs union and access to the continental work force without having three quarters of their laws made by unelected foreigners. The only member to leave the EU - Greenland - has never looked back, they're doing great outside of the EU.
When Tony Blair gave away part of our rebate he had no idea how much the pound would fall against the euro.
Gordon Brown started as a prudent Chancellor but ended a up as a squander bug.
This is why the pound has collapsed by a third in a month.
Post a Comment