£1.7million. What are we actually paying for?

[3littlefrogs]

Please can someone explain what this bill is for?
Goods?
Services?
I genuinely don't know, so would be grateful if someone better informed could explain.
Thanks

PigletJohn ... I don't understand what you are trying to say, I'm a simple person, please spit it out.

For a start, please explain "calculated as 1% of the Actual".

Actual what, the cumulative 10-years of annual Inland Revenue Tax Returns, dutifully filled out by every UK prostitute, pimp, drug addict and pusher?

The UK calculated the figure.

Clearly the UK would have to have given over actual and assumptions on data, so what is your point, never give the bastards from Brussels, data?

BTW, I'm sorry I said 'bastards'...it should have been 'thieving bastards'.

Here's the thing.

The UK joined an organisation.

The UK and all the other members agreed what the contributions would be.

The UK calculated the figure for their contribution.

You and Mr Cameron think it is unfair that the UK should pay the contribution which it calculated.

Incredible that they can talk about 'suddenly being hit with a bill' when they knew it was coming all along. Arses.

Applauds piglet.

We knew this was coming! So mock outrage is wasted on me quite frankly.

Suck it up.

It won't happen. If Cameron hands this money over, he will never get back in.

Who ever calculated the "bill", surely if a country is having trouble paying a bill then the rest of the EU should look at ways of paying a bill in installments just like happens in the UK if self assessment produces a huge tax bill that someone is struggling to pay. Other countries like Greece, Cyprus, Italy and Holland have been presented with huge bills and little time to pay them. It is a matter of various countries managing payment rather than refusing payment.

It's not that we actually can't pay the bill ReallyTired. The amount is actually tiny. In 2013, our government spent £637 billion pounds. So whilst £1.7 billion sounds like it will break us, in reality it's less than 0.2% of our annual budget.

The problem here is purely political. Right now none of the major parties can be seen as being weak on Europe since UKIP has done a sterling job in pinning the all the blame on immigrants.

Forget the fact that most immigrants that come here are net contributors to our economy. They make for a convenient scapegoat and you have to really admire the way they've managed to do it. Even if I completely disagree with the actual message.

So if the EU were to be politically sensitive they should have watered down this demand. Maybe offer to split it over a few years so it's an amount the press can't even be bothered to write about. But instead they present it as a one off and ask for it within 4-6 weeks. That was bound to be explosive.

On Germany at the end of the day the EU has some core principles and freedom of movement is one of them. Us going in demanding that we tear that up is the total thin end of the wedge. Germany is actually sympathetic to our reasons but they can't give in on this one. To do so would invite other countries to just demand to change the things they don't like.

It's the whole "Well if you won't change the rules for me then I'm taking my ball home!" argument. At some point you just have to say "Ok. If you have to then you have to." which is exactly what Merkel is saying.

We're an important member of the EU but we are 1/28. We're not so fucking important that they'll all jump through hoops for us. We're not even the biggest economy!

Piglet John …. Whats a dodgy £1.7 billion EU demand, when you already have over £2.5 trillion of debt/liabilities, eh?

Thank you, I now know where you are coming from, even though you still don’t seem to get ‘the type’ of growth they are, in effect, charging us for – when we the taxpayers, are heavily being penalized for that ‘wrong type of growth’ – and will be for decades to come..

Re the organisation we are in, for how many years, over four decades(?), can you please tell me when they last hit us with a retroactive bill going back 10-years? Maybe when there were previous attempts from the UK to curb the EU never audited/signed off upon, EU spending/accounts?

Re the type of UK growth the UK taxpayer enjoyed. that the EU feels it has the right to add EU fat government insult, to fat, incompetent, UK government injury - by punishing the UK taxpayer with another tax bill’, for a UK government that took its tax/spend/national debt policies, to bananna republic levels.

These are the ‘benefits’ most of us remember over the retro bill period, grinding the UK private sector economy slowly into the ground.
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-389284/The-80-tax-rises-Labour.html

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1266662/The-man-stole-old-age-How-Gordon-Brown-secretly-imposed-ruinous-tax-wrecked-retirements-millions.html

www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/million-factory-jobs-lost-under-labour-6150418.html

www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-1541302/Business-pays-16315bn-red-tape-bill.html

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/7539343/Labours-planned-National-Insurance-increase-will-cost-jobs-Alistair-Darling-admits.html

Here are the benefits for the ‘few’ that enjoyed UK debt/spending, as the the bills/taxes went up.
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1214001/The-cost-quango-Britain-hits-170bn--seven-fold-rise-Labour-came-power.html

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1358144/Labours-3m-town-hall-jobs-bonanza-employed-deliver-frontline-services.html

This £1,450,000,000,000 National Debt and rising figure (below), is a DIRECT result of the so called economic growth the UK supposedly enjoyed at the time, that could have been used for tax cuts, paying down the then national debt, or built infrastructure like homes, power stations, an airport, more train lines or ANYTHING tangible – as other EU countries did,_ but we did NONE of the above.
www.nationaldebtclock.co.uk/

But before the above figure levels out, never mind falls, we are currently paying over £60 billion annual interest on that National Debt, coming out of our annual budgets, that could be better spent on more productive things..

This Public Sector (unfunded) Pension liability of £1,000,000,000,000 is separate bill payable by the taxpayer, from the National Debt figure of £1.450,000,000,000 above
www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14134847

So in conclusion, the UK taxpayer has had ENOUGH of fat socialist governments screwing the taxpayer many, for the relative few in their vision of sustainable ‘growf’, so I find the notion that we should sit back and get rear ended by some EU tax, now and in the future, thinly disguised as a bill for economic growth few of us enjoyed, as frankly offensive.

Cameron has to stick up for the UK taxpayer, as if we leave it to fat, sympathetic socialist governments, they only GIVE BACK hard won rebates..

I agree with the sentiment but not the rhetoric Isitmebut.

Do you really think Cameron is the man to be able to stick up for the UK taxpayer? The guy is useless. The only thing he has going for him is that Miliband is worse.

I honestly don't know why this oft-repeated but totally erroneous claim that EU funds aren't audited/aren't signed off on persists. A quick google would show it to be wrong

commonslibraryblog.com/2014/06/24/auditing-the-eu-accounts/

www.libdemvoice.org/opinion-auditors-refuse-to-sign-off-eu-accounts-the-latest-untruth-from-the-antieuropeans-37130.html

Niceguy2....Useless for trying, useless as 20 odd other countries vote against him, useless for keeping the City away from Brussels 'reforms', taking away any UK advantages, in trying to push EU reforms having shown they work here, what?

Useless because Farage has a bigger gob, and has achieved nothing in 20-years (even within his EU specialist subject) other than building a UKIP with over £2 million of expenses/taxpayers money, so other than feathering his own nest and ambitions to be in Westminster?

UK income/business Taxes are lower, NI rises cancelled, Council Taxes frozen after going up 110% under Labour, all rather useful in a 'cost of living crisis - all would have gone up, and then some under Labour, who in 2010 TOLD US they were going to cut less, spend and tax more, with details AFTER the 2010 General Election.

Look at the high tax rates in 1979, look at how low they were in 1997, and the taxes that were raised by 2010 - the Conservatives/cameron have tax cutting direction of travel, form.

Iceland decided today to withdraw its application to join the EU.

Iceland considers its future will be better if it remains outside the EU.

There are numerous examples of the EU waste of money. They wate quite against on propoganda to brainwash people into having a positive opinion of them.

They gave the BBC 14million, as though that spendthrify organisation hasnt snaffled enough UK licence payers money altready. I expect the EU wanted the Beeb to say nice things about them. Money well spent.

Yes, the UK is tightening its belt while the EU gravy train rolls on. And the harder the UK workforce works the more the country will have to hand over to the EU.

The EU will bleed this country to death. And Cameron is too spineless to stop it.

WetAugust where did you get that figure for the BBC funds received from the EU? I can't find it after searching. I can see a lower figure of £3.65 million over three years. Less than 1% of its annual revenue.

School

The EU should not be funding any % of the BBC's budget. The BBC's charter demands that it is unbiased. If someone bunged me a few millions I would probably think quite favourably of them. I might even treat them rather nicely in the hope they will bung me more in the future.

The almost 4m over 3 years is the amount the BBC was forced to divulge following an FOI submisssion.

It's actually around 20M that we know of

www.britanniaradio.com/bbc-eu-grants-the-20-million-sting-global-governance-policies-for-the-birds-ukraine-a-russian-footprint/

WetAugust the vast majority of those payments were to BBC World Service Trust and BBC Media Action, which are registered charities, for development projects in a number of countries around the world.

Not quite the same as funding the BBC annual budget.

And on Iceland, lets see what Peter Andre has to say about that.

What are we paying for? To prevent a country with over 50% youth unemployment, from which we in the UK are taking many of the young workers with qualifications funded by their own government, from collapsing and going over to a dictatorship, perhaps?

We are impoverishing those countries that are exporting their brightest to us instead if using their talents to develop their home countries.

While the UK had a trending up 16-24 year old unemployment rate; over 500,000 in 2004, over 700,000 pre 2007 financial crash, and over 900,000, past over to the coalition in May 2010.

...or 'passed over to'. D'oh.

There's certainly a lot of vociferous anti-EU talk around.

Luckily we aren't in Russia, where talk of secession can land you in prison, so just as the Scots can vote on leaving UK, UK can vote on leaving EU.

If the citizens of UK want to leave, nobody will force them to stay.

It was only a matter of time before Peter Andre entered politics.