EU worse than it seems
I linked to a peice in the FT yesterday about the costs of the EU. It looks like the FT made a mistake, and it's even worse than they claim. Here is the correct values from EUReferendum:
The information is based on an EU report which is still available on the EU website (see page 36) and, by the way, the figure is not 600 billion euros – but pounds. The cost to Britain is in the order of £120 billion or nearly £4,000 a second – the true cost of EU membership.Some people obviously think that the EU is worth this, I obviously don't. Perhaps this is a good thing, knowing the costs we can use a demand revealing referendum to decide whether membership of the EU is really worth it. So any pro-EU people out there want to give me the £2000 that the EU costs me every year and I don't think it is worth? Mat? Nosemonkey? Anybody?
posted by chris at 10/13/2006 01:28:00 pm
4 Comments:
36 pages (minimum) of PDF to wade through, most of it turgid crap?
The cost to business of the bureacracy. Sounds like one of those estimates that could go either way. No idea, will need to read it properly. May get around to it at some point.
Well I haven't read the report, but bureaucracy associated with the single market would not disappear if we were not members. We would just be our own sad single market, probably complying like Norway does, but without any say in the outcomes of the legislative process.
I am a european investor in the UK. Over the last 20 years my family's companies have invested £75 million. We provide employment with decent (european style) conditions to our 328 employees. In recent years (particularly when the UK didn't set a course to join the euro) we stopped our investment as we now perceive the UK economy as a lopsided bet on a japan-circa-early-90es-style property bubble.
Accordingly we have divested any real estate in the UK which we feel is "irrationally exuberant" and is very likely to crash. We feel that this is true even with the stimulus of running a very aggressively competitive tax and worker rights regime within the single market in effect taking investment which would otherwise be in other european countries to the UK.
Given this fact we are alarmed by the hysterical quality in British euroscepticism. We feel there is a public hysteria whipped up by the Murdoch press which may sell newspapers but its not in the interests of this country. The influence R Murdoch has over Britain via the Times the Sun and Sky over Britain is of Berlusconian proportions.
We have already drawn plans to reduce our exposure to the UK for purely economic reasons, we may well relocate entirely in Bratislava, Slovakia if the same nationalistic rhetoric persists in making us feel that there is a risk of withdrawal. So far we have found that new europe has much better educated and productive people and policies that are in line with reality.
The UK is becoming bureaucratic not due to Brussels, its the unresponsive overpriced and low quality services and property but also there is widespread dishonesty in Banking and insurance and business services, it is generally bad value for money. Banks in particular are a law on to themselves. The personal loan bubble is likely to burst along with the housing one.
The fact that UK employees have much less security and rights than the rest of the EU has made up for the currency risk so far, but if this overpriced and overconfident country continues its direction in pulling out of the EU project this will give us reasons to pull out our investments from the UK altogether to avoid the results of the dangerous direction that pandering to anti-eu-populism prevalent in both parties of government.
It is obvious that mr european investor in the UK. is the one who the media has got to, his drivel is common amongst those with an inflated opion of themselves. A large number of uk citizens would be glad to exit the happy eu family, also for somebody who chucks millions around he is very ignorant of world markets,and is bitter because he bent over for an eu spanking
while we in the uk said **** you get over it.
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