Brexit. Why do Brits want Out of the EU?

Thank you. I'll follow your remarks.

Don't you mean "how much British taxpayers money taken by the EU has been returned to Britain, now to be spent with EU strings attached?"

After all, at the end of the day, the EU takes a massive amount more from us than we get back.

You somehow make the EU sound magnificently charitable.

Is a neoliberal anything like the kind of economic liberal Margaret Thatcher was (a liberal of the Manchester School)?

Cameron and Obama strolled within yards of the end of my garden yesterday, apparently.

After telling us about being back of the queue and other bits and pieces, he and Cameron had a round of golf at The Grove.
I was out walking the dog at the time, and wondered what all the bloody helicopter noise was about.
My neighbour saw them and gave them a wave as he passed on the way back from completing his round, but armed police asked him (politely) to move on.

Another mate saw the motorcade go through town. Very over the top if you ask me.

The Grove had the massive Bildeberg meeting a while back, and our local Rugby Fields were absolutely awash with police and their vehicles for a whole week.

I'll never understand this argument.
But that must have to do with a different understanding of the European Community and EU, and because we grew up it.

Similar it's with 'health':
Brexit campaigners say EU nationals cost NHS £732m a year.
That can be true or might be false, I have no idea.
But what I know is that all the members of the British forces and their families, insured by the Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust - Germany go to German hospitals and specialists.
They (and any other EU-citizen) get "Kindergeld" here.
That's €190 per month for each of the first two children, €196 for the third child and €221 for each subsequent one.

But that will stop in 2018, at least for those units, which really leave Germany.

You can never understand the argument.

Tell you what, Walt......you give me a hundred pounds, and I'll return £50 to you as long as you spend it how I tell you.

And then you act all grateful, and consider me benevolent.

Deal?

You want a community with me? We should sign a kind of Rome treaty, additionally one similar to Maastricht treaty at first!

There's even more what I can't understand:
anti-EU campaigners in Britain see it as an intolerable assault on national sovereignty what the European Court of Human Rights rules regarding the UK.
That court isn't an EU.institution at all but established by the European Convention on Human Rights in 1959, signed by Britain and much influenced by British jurists. (The Council of Europe is not part of the European Union either.)

Seriously: the UK certainly is a major contributor to the EU budget .... because it is one of the four largest economies in that community.
But has consistently paid less than France and ( Italy, not to speak about Germany. As a share of gross national income, the UK pays the least of all Member States into the EU budget (Hint: Thatcher/UK rebate, implemented since 1985)

Here we go with the so called facts and graphs. Prepare to be dumbfounded everyone.

Last year we, I believe, made a larger net contribution than France, no?

Rebate (our grossly overpaid money being returned as per proper EU negotiation and agreement) included.

Who is talking about the human rights?

Why are you quoting me on this?

See the downthumbing army has arrived.


Here we go.

I quoted you because of what you wrote in that post.

You certainly can give a source besides your belief, no?

But if true, that certainly is a reason for a Brexit - one year more that France, imagine!

Walter wrote :"Seriously: the UK certainly is a major contributor to the EU budget .... because it is one of the four largest economies in that community.
But has consistently paid less than France and ( Italy, not to speak about Germany. As a share of gross national income, the UK pays the least of all Member States into the EU budget (Hint: Thatcher/UK rebate, implemented since 1985)"

----.

So basically, Walter, your argument seems to be that although Britain pays in a massive amount of money more than it gets out, other countries, including your own, pay more proportionately.

We kick up a fuss about the cost, corruption and waste, and question how the money that finally reaches the end user is spent. And you (other eu members) then kick up a fuss because WE dare to kick up a fuss!

I scratch my head at this.

For instance, you very helpfully provided a chart and graph re. Payments, now please can you also provide a chart and graph to tell me the last audit date when Brussells had its books checked and "signed off", ie shown to balance.

We are talking billions and billions of euros sloshing about, unaudited and potentially going to some very dodgy recipients.

The British Government and its people then have the temerity to query all this.

Just because your country and others happily pay more and play along with it all like good little boys and girls, you don't need to get all huffy with the Brits because we dont want to join in.

What I can't understand is why you abd the others are so docile and accepting of such a system.

Unbelievable.


I have absolutely no objection to the rich paying more to help the poor develop and prosper, but the way that the EU puts tbis into practise would
even make a Mafia Don blush.

I once went to Rhodes (Greek Island for anyone wondering) and had a friendly chat at the bar with the Hotel owner.
He was born in Rhodes and left in his twenties to live and work in London.
He had returned "home" after making enough money to buy the Hotel and was making a fair living.

He told me that all the major roadworks outside was an EU initiative, whereby every single square inch of road on every single Greek Island (and there are hundreds) was being tarmaced.
By the end of the year, he told me, Rhodes would be covered in black, smooth, shiny roads, all paid for by the EU.

This included every single farm track, some in the middle of nowhere, some leading to derelict farns.
He said that the big "families" (Greece has its Mafia too) had divided the work up between them, set their own highly inflated prices and employed their own people.
He estimated that the family who controlled Rhodes would pocket at least a million euros before an inch of tarmac had been laid.
The first "roads" to be tarmaced on Rhodes were four that were especially created that ran to four separate building plots in the middle of various fields where the Don intended buiding four luxurious houses for his sons and daughters.


Why is it seemingly only the Brits who get mad about how all this money is wasted?

Should we all learn to turn a blind eye like the rest of Europe?

Eh?


Lost me, I'm afraid.


You placed a quote box for me against your rant about human rights. I have not entered into a discussion about human rights other than query why you quoted me.
It makes it look like it is a query or objection that I have raised.

Scratches head.

Getting back to the subject in question, I restate my concerns and objections as per my opening posts.

Whether Germany and Germans are happy with paying in billions of euros each year to a totally corrupt or inept (or both) organisation, so that they can have that organisation interfere with their self government is entirely up to them.

As far as I am concerned, I want out and am prepared to bet that the EU will certainly stil want to do business with us if and when we leave.

They export far more to us thsn us to them, so business is business. Good business sense will win out in the end, of that I'm certain.

I don't know if there's a chart and/or graph of the audits, but that's done by the European Court of Auditors every year. (That's all regulated in the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, but the UK had an opt-out here.)

There are thousand stories from all the other EU-countries (excluding the UK, of course) where EU-money is wated.
Perhaps we (Germans) are used to it, since it's done in the opinion the one and the other by the Federal and State governments, by districts and municipalities too often as well.
I don't know the reason.

Since you gave an anecdotal report - when I stayed at a Cornish farm (cow breeding and wool production), I was honestly astonished when the farmer told me that 70% of his income came directly or indirectly from the EU. (The only subsidy for the new house for his son was completely EU-mone, otherwise it couldn't have been built)
I'm sure, it's the same/similar here.

It couldn't be people disagreeing with you, of course. Or agreeing with Walter.