Re: Britain outside the EU
 

some idiots,and those with a political agenda

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

I was going to say well he is a professional politician, but I don’t really know his income and to the extent it’s something to do on the side while writing books, preparing for a speaking tour, comedy sketches, advisory boards of international conglomerates etc.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

As Cameron will testify, the real pay-out for Eton PMs begins when you step down from being PM.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Well, the war criminal does not too bad for himself too. Although I accept in a way that is less overly corrupt.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Cameron's shown the rest up as mere amateurs! The combination of his Eton Filofax and his ex-PMs What'sApp is gold dust and some.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

He also said the next massive political scandal after mp expenses would be lobbying. What shocks me is how cheap they are, if you've got 250k spare you can get millions worth of taypayers money in contracts. The PCR tests are 20 times the fair price apparently for instance

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

2016: It's not the EU's money that's funding the poorer areas of the country, it's the UK's. That will continue. All Project Fear.
2021: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...9.html?r=20848

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

Interesting how you chose to frame your post as if this is the normative situation post-Brexit, whereas in fact even the article you linked to is eventually forced to admit that the promised Shared Prosperity Fund is due to begin in April.

Meantime, I would hazard a guess that the interim Community Renewal Fund has been hampered more than a little by other pressing political priorities over the last year or so.

Nice try though, and thanks for the link - the Independent’s persistent remoaning is always good for a giggle.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

You talk about April as if it's next month. The article states that a year's funding will have been lost as a result of inaction so it acknowledges that something might indeed happen next year.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

The article is a thinly-veiled opinion piece that makes more than a few assumptions based on figures handed to the news desk by the Labour Party. It also stretches credulity somewhat by claiming that the current financial year is almost halfway through when in fact we’re barely past the one-third point, and also in the middle of the long summer recess when nothing happens anyway. So you and the independent need to make up your minds whether April 2022 is fast approaching or not - you can’t have it both ways. ;)

Notwithstanding any of that, come the next general election, if there has been a failure to adequately fund regional development that will have been a failure of British politicians, who can be handed their P45s by British voters. Again, not for the first time, you appear not to have understood this simple, elegant truth of Brexit. Accountability. That is a good thing.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

I might be aware of funding failures and successes but such matters are pretty opaque to most people. If a council cuts back services or improves them then it tends to get blamed or praised, not the government funding the council. It's an unfortunate truth and is not a good thing.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

And adding a layer of money-splashing bureaucracy over which British voters had no effective influence was better?

(Answer: no it wasn’t, which is why we binned it in a referendum in 2016).

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

It was better because the money was actually allocated.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

No, it was not better because it was beyond our democratic control. That’s a fundamental principle for me and for a great many long-time Eurosceptics.

You claim to have understood the point yet you’re still attributing the question of whether or not development funds are properly allocated this financial year to the wider and altogether more permanent issue of EU membership. You are plainly wrong about this. Regional development is now the remit of the UK government and if it does not adequately deliver the sanction lies in the hands of UK voters. That is a fundamentally better state of affairs, regardless of how well (or not) cash is allocated over the next 8 months.

The logic behind your position is that our own government and our own democratic processes are not to be trusted and we need a remote organisation to do these things for us in order for them to be done properly. That’s a position I find rather worrying.

Re: Britain outside the EU
 

I'm taking an evidence-based approach and not the ideological one which you espouse. The funds were allocated before, a promise was made that this would continue and it's not happened in this financial year. That's clearly not better. Councils and development agencies need to fund projects with cash not political ideologies.