Should we go back to the common market?

[ZedBloke]

Bojo thinks so...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-20592596

[cg51]

yes but it'll never happen

[VHG]

When I voted to go "in" way back in the 1970s I was happy to have a common market.

But I DID NOT vote to allow anyone and everyone from any EU country to come here, including criminals, rapists, murderers etc.

I DID NOT vote to give UK child benefit to children in Poland and other EU countries.

I DID NOT vote to be told who could live in my country and who could not.

I DID NOT vote for a huge bureaucratic machine in Brussels full of MEPs who spend most of their time claiming expenses and seeing how much they can fiddle.

I DID NOT vote to support an orgainzation whose accounts are so "corrupt" that the accountants have refused to sign them off for the last 12 years or so.

I DID NOT vote for an orgainization that is so blinkered that it wants to increase the EU budget, when countries like Greeece, Spain, Ireland (and others) are tettering on the brink of economic collapse.

These countires being lent billions of pounds just to stay solvent, when some of the money will be used to pay their EU contributions, which will make them more broke, so they need to borrow more money to pay more EU contributions and so on.

It is like some huge corrupt pyramid scheme that has gone out of control, and the quicker the whole EU collapes the better.

[youngmafbog]

The net cost of the EU budget to Britain in 2011 was £10.8 billion and rising. But the actual cost - direct and indirect - is much more than that.

Last time it was calculated, in 2008, the European Union was costing us £65 billion gross every year. That's about £1,000 each every year for every man, woman and child in the UK. It increases every year, so it will be a lot more now.
Estimates of the true cost of the EU are difficult to come by. MPs have called many times for a cost-benefit analysis, to prove or disprove the benefits of membership. Successive Governments, both Labour and Conservative, have refused, on the grounds that the "benefits" are self-evident. In truth they are afraid of what such a study would show. The Bruges Group finally produced an authoritative study in 2008.

(http://www.brugesgroup.com/CostOfTheEU2008.p
df)


The total gross cost to the UK of EU membership in 2008 they estimate at around £65,000,000,000* - including:

£28 billion for business to comply with EU regulations,

£17 billion of additional food costs resulting from the Common Agricultural Policy

£3.3 billion - the value of the catch lost when the Common Fisheries Policy let other countries fish in our territorial waters

£14.6 billion gross paid into the EU budget and other EU funds. (In 2011 this had risen to £19 billion)

It gets worse each year. Used better, this sum could transform the UK - increase pensions, recruit more doctors, nurses, teachers and police, build advanced transport systems and start paying off the national debt.

*Even allowing for the UK rebate, which the EU wants to stop. Sources: Bruges Group report: "How Much Does the EU Cost Britain?", UK Office of National Statistics, British Government Regulatory Impact Assessments, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, World TradeOrganisation, OECD, Eurostat, European Commission.

anyone still want to belong ?

[emmie]

VHG, well put and totally agree.

[New Judge]

You did not get a say on whether to "go in" VHG. The referendum called by Harold Wilson in 1975 asked whether we should remain in. The UK had joined the "Common Market" (which was then actually called the European Economic Community) on 1st January 1973, along with Denmark and Ireland. This was completed by the Heath government without a referendum.

[bazwillrun]

@VHG

you missed out "having my country subjugated and its sovereign nationality destroyed to become nothing more than a provincial region in a superstate"

[jake-the-peg]

Dear Mainland Europe

We'd like to opt out of any involvement or responsibility in the affairs of the rest of the continent.

Howevever we do rather like the advantageous commercial arrangement that being part of the EU gives us.

So if it's OK with you we'll just opt out, stop paying any money and keep all the good bits.

Lots of Love

Boris


I can't see any objections to that at all - can you?

[jake-the-peg]

it's a bit like:

Dear David Cameron

It's been nice being part of the UK but we really must be off now.

We have however become a bit fond of a few things like the NHS up here so we'd like to carry on with that after independence

Oh and the motorway system too and freedom of scots to come down south and work.

We'll let you know if we think of anything else

Alex Salmond

[New Judge]

Not quite the same, jake, but nice try.

The Union of Scotland and England formed a single sovereign state with one constitutional monarch, one government, one tax regime and (with a few minor differences) one set of laws. The constituent parties to the Union were fully aware that this would be the situation following the said Union.

The UK joined the EU (or the EEC as it then was) with no notion that it would be subject to common laws, common regulations and that it would have to resist attempts to impose common taxes, common government and a common banking regime. The clue was in the title of the organisation in 1972 - the European Economic Community. Nothing there about a Federal State or a single sovereign nation.

Only recently has the Union of Scotland and England been blurred by the ridiculous "devolution" arrangements introduced by the Blair regime. This has left some Scottish people with the mistaken belief that they are somehow an individual independent nation. But their situation has no parallel whatsoever with the UK's membership of the EU.

[askyourgran]

Ditto VHG. I vote BoJo for President.