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It's not free now, it's never been free. It cost us that magical figure that escapes me £360billion or so minus the rebate.

In fact some things will be much cheaper from around the world as we can decide what tariffs to but on other goods and not the EU tariffs.

what's going to be pillaged?

and we'll be free to buy elsewhere.

you sound like a battered wife in an abusive relationship.

We will get to decide what tariffs, to whom and how much instead of being told what to do.

ramblings

---------- Post added at 13:03 ---------- Previous post was at 13:01 ----------

Weapons grade? ramblings of a madman/woman

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Interestingly, I was looking at the audit numbers earlier. Here's the latest 'in brief' report - https://www.eca.europa.eu/Lists/ECAD...ef-2016-EN.pdf . The error rate was 3.1% in 2016 which is above the 2% threshold. It is going in the right direction though;

2016 - 3.1%
2015 - 3.8%
2016 - 4.4%

Direct payments and administration are below the material threshold at 1.3% while reimbursements are at 4.8%. This is partly why the EU anti fraud agency is busy! Unfortunately, the biggest fraud so far was by the UK at €2.7bn...

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Exactly.

You have no idea? trade is very simple, someone has something sell, someone has money to buy. As ass the sellers terms and the buyers terms are met they will trade. I believe it has been going on for many thousands of years now.

Not sure what that point is?

And the evidence for this is, please see your first statement, you don't know - until it happens.

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That has nothing to do with the EU. It sticks it’s nose in to things which should not concern them. This is how unbearably the EU are bureaucratic and they have become.

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Can I ask . . at what age do 'Judges' retire in the UK?

and what would you think is a 'reasonable' age for someone in that profession to retire, those making decisions that affect many things.

Just curious given some posts on here regarding the 'elderly' as 'past it' :D

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Trade agreements are not that simple though which is why they take so long to create. The bigger the parties involved the more complicated it gets. It's not just a case of 'we'll sell you Scotch, in return we'll buy Levi jeans' although that gets incredibly difficult as different industries within the respective nations jockey for protections e.t.c. It's also demanding political action from the governments involved. So maybe we want to ensure 'Scotch' is a protected term and want legal assurances from the other nation that their government will take action against anyone within their country from using that term for their own, non-Scottish, whisky makers. Maybe a nation wants copyright laws toughened, almost certainly regulations need to be changed and so on.

It's all very well saying 'I have something to sell, you have money to buy it' but we're dealing with billions of pounds worth of goods moving back and forth between different regulatory and legal environments. Especially when governments don't want their citizens buying from foreign rivals but simultaneously want to protect the right of their businesses to sell to foreign governments.

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It is obvious, and has been for sometime, that the EU do not want a bespoke deal.

They want us to remain in the CU and or the SM and therefore shackled to the ECJ.

Neither of which are compatible with the result of the referendum.

It doesn't matter what max-fac - or max-fcuk we come up with, they wont agree to it.

So we should prepare for the no-deal because that is what is going to happen, and it's not because of any particular failing of the UK government, it is because the EU do not, cannot, and will not give us a decent bespoke deal.

Junckers himself said at the very beginning "brexit cannot be a success"

If we want to make brexit a success it will have to be despite the EU, it will be hard work and difficult, but it shows you the vindictiveness of the institution and our former European partners.

I voted remain, but this whole period post referendum has ended up turning me into an ardent leaver. If there was another referendum I would now vote leave. I would suggest there are many others like me.

---------- Post added at 13:21 ---------- Previous post was at 13:19 ----------

You don't need trade agreements though, which why the WTO is there.

We don't have a trade agreement with China, yet our market is flooded with Chinese goods

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We haven't prepared for no deal though and time is running out and we haven't made it clear what 'bespoke' deal to ask for. We have had vague intents but nothing concrete. We don't even have an answer of it it's more of a closer relationship or just a trade agreement. We're 'apparently' deciding that on Friday, less than a year from Brexit Day.

You don't need one to buy good or sells goods no but we can do that now with these countries. What we're doing here is losing the ability to sell into the EU with no tariffs and the same legal/regulatory environment. One of the arguments of Brexit would be that we can arrange such things with other countries instead, it wasn't let's add WTO tariffs to the EU too.

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Fair enough, I am not an accountant (my experience of audits are quality system ones) and assumed that financial audits take samples and extrapolate from that (much like quality audits) rather than going line by line through the whole account book.

Of course, if the auditing methodology is incorrect, then any conclusions including "They are corrupt because the European Court of Auditors have found regularly that billions of Euros have not been paid in accordance with rules" cannot be factually correct either.

I didn't accuse the UK of committing fraud BTW, OLAF did this. However, the government is quibbling on the value, not the facts. I am concerned that, if this is true, then the trust for a new trading agreement is somewhat eroded.

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In the spirit of Mrs May's compromise at all costs approach to negotiation can we refer to them as weapons grade ramblings :D

---------- Post added at 17:46 ---------- Previous post was at 17:42 ----------

Not to mention the supply chain which will get messed with, the obvious solution to me would be to remove us from the chain, the consequences of which will be devastating for a lot of homes I'd imagine

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First, a solid doffing of the cap for the research, thanks for bringing links, it's always appreciated!!

As I said, I am not a finance person, I'm a scientist so I guess I took this at face value. Is the methodology used different from that used elsewhere, i.e. commercial auditing or other governmental audits? I had a brief look and it seems sampling is used a lot but I am not familiar with what is good practive.

On the trust issue, as a member of the EU, we have a mutually agreed remedy for disputes in the ECJ. We of course don't want any of that going forward so along with a trade deal, there is going to be a strong remedial/governance system going forward, especially if there is evidence or suspicion of wrongdoing by one party beforehand.

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There is sampling in audits of companies and organisations as you obviously can't check everything. You're looking for differences to previous years, have issues from previous years been rectified, differences to similar organisations, anything unusual and obviously there's a degree of proportionality so you focus on large amounts and high risk areas. If your organisation did 20% of its business with Nigeria and 30% with Germany, for example, you may look more at the Nigerian transactions as the country is a higher risk country.
There's a good fact-checking article on the EU accounts here https://fullfact.org/europe/did-audi...ign-eu-budget/