UK contributions to the EU top £503bn since 1976

Research by the Vote Leave campaign has found that the UK has paid £503,000,000,000 in membership fees to the EU since 1976.

The UK's rapidly increasing EU budget contributions would have paid England's NHS cancer budget 56 times and is one and a half times the £340bn that the United Nations has spent worldwide in the 70 years of its existence.

Osborne declares victory over paying EU's £1.7bn bill

Only last week David Cameron was refusing to pay the "outrageous" £1.7bn bill the EU is demanding. This week George Osbourne was saying that we're going to pay but we're not going to pay it all. Yesterday he declared victory by paying the full amount.

The EU was demanding a £1.7bn payment to cover the extra amount we would have paid in membership fees since 1995 if they'd included prostitution and drug dealing in their calculations of the size of the UK economy like they are now. George Osborne has brought forward £1bn of next year's rebate to take £850m off the £1.7bn bill so it's still costing us £1.7bn.

While the Tories have been trying to spin this as a victory, the EU have said that this was the amount we were supposed to be paying and Osborne has achieved nothing. If they think we're going to be taken in by some dodgy maths, the Tories must think we're as stupid as they are!

Cameron talks tough but he will have to pay the EU's £1.7bn bill

David Cameron has promised not to pay an extra £1.7bn backdated membership fee the EU has demanded because the UK economy limped along at a slightly better rate than most of the EU.

While France is being given an £800m rebate, Germany £614m and Poland £250m, the UK is being told to pay £1.7bn extra whilst the Dutch and Italians are being told to pay £500m and £270m extra and bizarrely the bankrupt Greeks and Cypriots are being landed with a bill for £70m and £33m.

The EU has decided to recalculate EU membership fees since 1995 to take into account the effect things like drugs and prostitution have on the economy and have decided that the UK economy has been stronger than most of the EU as a result and we've therefore been underpaying. Sitcom writers get paid a small fortune to make stuff like this up - they just need a ticket to Brussels!

Nigel Farage told listeners on his LBC radio slot this morning that David Cameron can say what he likes about the £1.7bn bill but he can't do a thing about it. The cost of being a vassal of the EU superstate is partly based on the relative performance of the economy against the rest of the EU so if the UK economy has outperformed the disastrous eurozone then we have no choice but to pay.

EU membership fee now £50m per day

Analysis of figures contained in the UK balance of payments "pink book" by UKIP shows that direct contributions to the EU from the UK were £50,000,000 per day last year.

That £50m per day equates to £18.25bn (£18,250,000,000) per year.  That's £300 per year for every man, woman and child in the UK just to pay to direct contributions.  The extra costs associated with EU membership in terms of protectionist tariffs that make goods expensive, damaging environmental taxes, the burden of red tape that makes doing business expensive, etc. are on top of that.

Most of the population want to leave the EU, it is for the europhiles to make the case for continued membership.  The single market doesn't require £50m per day membership of the EU so what do we get out of the EU that's worth £18.25bn per year?  If the British government can't find anything then there's no excuse for keeping us in, wasting all that money.