EU to increase budget by £7.4 billion

[Sirius]

Originally Posted by Alan Fry

United States of Europe

The United Fantasies of Alan Fry

Originally Posted by Chris

Sarko has made EU budget restraint a central plank of his re-election campaign. *If* the UK and France both stand up and say no, then we might see the Commission reigning its plans in a bit, but I don't know about an actual freeze.

Sadly I don't think there is anyone on either front bench in the Commons with the 'nads to flat refuse to increase our contributions.

and here's me thinking Cameron had grown a pair when he used the veto ,obviously not so basically we are getting shafted on two fronts .

Seems the EU is hellbent on getting as many europeans as fed up with it as they can, at this particular time to be asking for more money shows how completely ridiculous the whole thing is. Sadly our government will not tell them to take a long walk off a short cliff because every politician in the EU has their eye on the next trough to get their nose into when their national electorate have enough of them. It is well past the time for the UK to leave this completely discredited shower and resort back to a purely free trade arrangement with the EU nations.

As for talk of war if the EU vanishes most of the conflict in europe in the last few decades has come about because of nationalist groups wanting out of larger federations which is exactly what will happen if the fantasists in the EU got their way and there was a united states of europe anytime soon. All the nations of europe have long standing and different cultures and attitudes overcoming that for a successful integration cannot be done in a few short decades it has to happen over a much longer period and only if the will of all the people concerned is there to do it.

Get out of it keep the money we throw into the EU pot here helping to ease the pain for UK nationals and lets just trade freely and fairly with the world a far better position then the one we currently have and pay a fortune for.

[Osem]

The Eurocrats clearly inhabit a world all of their own. The most remarkable and worrying thing for me is that some people still have faith in them in spite of all the evidence we see before us...

[budwieser]

All of this sounds like a plot for a really good film.!
Lets get back our indepedence and stuff the rest of them.
For what we put in money wise we get sod all back!

Whilst i agree with the points of most posters regarding the EU budget at least,its always amazed me as a so called Euro-Sceptic country UKIP are the only party i think that have said they will give the UK another referendum on Europe,yet they cannot gain a single seat in parliament,i was a little surprised i must admit that in the last election Nigel Farage could not unseat the popular/unpopular delete as necessary speaker John Bercow.

Originally Posted by richard1960

Whilst i agree with the points of most posters regarding the EU budget at least,its always amazed me as a so called Euro-Sceptic country UKIP are the only party i think that have said they will give the UK another referendum on Europe,yet they cannot gain a single seat in parliament,i was a little surprised i must admit that in the last election Nigel Farage could not unseat the popular/unpopular delete as necessary speaker John Bercow.

That's down to their ability to bring their policies to fruition .It's all well and good saying that they will set the tax threshold at minimum wage levels or abolish VAT ,but if the electorate don't feel they have the expertise to do that and make all the sums add up they will not get into power.Having one good policy that most of the country may agree with does not guarantee seats

Originally Posted by martyh

That's down to their ability to bring their policies to fruition .It's all well and good saying that they will set the tax threshold at minimum wage levels or abolish VAT ,but if the electorate don't feel they have the expertise to do that and make all the sums add up they will not get into power.Having one good policy that most of the country may agree with does not guarantee seats

Indeed not that i agree on, but to not get one seat in parliament when there are apparently so many Eurosceptics in the uk is amazing.

Not that i am a big supporter of UKIP but if the uk electorate votes and continue to vote for the big three they will get more of the same,as senior politicians of all parties have a vested interest in a second career,on the gravy train.

It really is of no use people complaining of the EU budget and then voting for more of the same in my view.

Originally Posted by richard1960

Indeed not that i agree on, but to not get one seat in parliament when there are apparently so many Eurosceptics in the uk is amazing.

Not that i am a big supporter of UKIP but if the uk electorate votes and continue to vote for the big three they will get more of the same,as senior politicians of all parties have a vested interest in a second career,on the gravy train.

It really is of no use people complaining of the EU budget and then voting for more of the same in my view.

All three of the main parties have promised referendums on the EU of one sort or another but then reneged on the promise as soon as they got into power .

Originally Posted by richard1960

Indeed not that i agree on, but to not get one seat in parliament when there are apparently so many Eurosceptics in the uk is amazing.

Not that i am a big supporter of UKIP but if the uk electorate votes and continue to vote for the big three they will get more of the same,as senior politicians of all parties have a vested interest in a second career,on the gravy train.

It really is of no use people complaining of the EU budget and then voting for more of the same in my view.

At a general election, people generally vote for a government, not single issues. There are exceptions to this of course - Martin Bell did well out of the 'sleaze' issue in 1997, but only with help from Labour and the Lib Dems who stood aside to allow him to scoop up all the anti-Hamilton votes in what would otherwise still have been a safe Tory seat. There have been one or two other recent examples.

Caroline Lucas has won the Greens a seat because Brighton has something of a unique demographic. If they were ever going to win a FPTP seat it would always have been somewhere like that, because it has what you need to win a vote under that system - sufficient concentration of support within one constituency to ensure you get more votes than the candidate who comes in second.

UKIP's Westminster election problem is twofold. They are perceived as a single issue party (which basically they are, no matter what they put in their manifesto). This does not commend them to what is a relatively sophisticated electorate. Second they have broad support, but nowhere do they have concentrated support. If they want a Westminster seat they would be best served in identifying the largest concentration of potential voters and then concentrating all their efforts on just a handful of likely targets.

[Osem]

Originally Posted by martyh

All three of the main parties have promised referendums on the EU of one sort or another but then reneged on the promise as soon as they got into power .

Could that be because our glorious leaders rather like having 'someone' else to blame for 'all our ills'?

Originally Posted by Osem

Could that be because our glorious leaders rather like having 'someone' else to blame for 'all our ills'?

My aren't we cynicle this morning

[Sirius]

Originally Posted by martyh

My aren't we cynicle this morning

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by Osem

Could that be because our glorious leaders rather like having 'someone' else to blame for 'all our ills'?

Sadly no that isn't the case. Our glorious leaders adore the EU so much even when issues are actually the EU's fault, such as the 'pasty tax', a result of EU VAT regulations, or the Royal Mail being forced to charge more as a result of the forced deregulation of our postal market and foreign operators hoovering up the most profitable parts and leaving RM with the chaff they still don't blame the EU but take the hit themselves.

Honestly there really is the world of Westminster along with trendy politico Islington where Guardianistas live in their bubble where the EU is great and good and then there's the real world where the EU is making us poorer, less free and making a mockery of what's left of our democracy.

The European Commission brings legislation to the European Parliament, our representative on it has never stood for election to office. Truly a post-democratic era, a collection of appointees deciding on the direction of a continent and having that direction rubber stamped by a parliament where there's no real opposition but a collection of EU federalists and those who oppose them getting shouted down and silenced by an absurdly Pro-integration EU Parliament President who regularly accused those who oppose federal Europe as fascists.

That's not considering Guy Verhofstadt and Herman van Rompuy, both non-entities from the non-entity that is Belgium, a forced state that doesn't really want to be a state.