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E.U: Leave or Stay? Your thoughts.

Discussion in 'Serious' started by TheBlackSwordsMan, 22 Feb 2016.

  1. Corky42

    Corky42 Where's walle?

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    From what i gather the EU has a pretty good handle on what's going on, unlike us they're not willing to sacrifice their union in order to save political parties from themselves, we're more than happy to flush our country down the pan if it means the Conservatives don't split or Labour gets into power.
     
  2. Risky

    Risky Modder

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    There are a lot of people now believe that the is an element in the EU that wants a disaster pour encourager les autres. But no deal unravels the divorce bill which has allowed them to kick the can down the road on how much more the contributor nations are going to have to put in once Britain isn't paying in...... hopefully the headbangers can talked down by cooler heads.
     
  3. Nexxo

    Nexxo * Prefab Sprout – The King of Rock 'n' Roll

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    I'm sure there are; the EU is a traditional scapegoat after all. But the EU has always stated that both sides were going to lose from Brexit, only the UK would lose more. So the EU's view is that it doesn't need to punish the UK; leaving the club is self-inflicted punishment enough. There are, however, people on the EU side who will have plenty of schadenfreude. Psychologically and economically, the EU is more prepared for a no-deal than the UK is.

    As for the Brexit bill: the Office for Budget Responsibility set out a total bill of £37.1 billion, extending out to 2064 as pension liabilities fall due. Around half of payments would be made during the transition phase (2019 and 2020), followed by net payments of €7.6bn in 2021, €5.8bn (2022) €3.1bn (2023) and €1.7bn (2024) before falling away to €0.2bn in 2028. The liabilities, net of assets, that then remain to be paid amount to a total of €2.7bn over the period 2021–45. So it is not like the EU will suddenly see a big hole in its budget next year.

    Also keep in mind that Germany alone has a budget surplus of €36.6 billion just for the year 2017. The tiny Netherlands clocked one of €2.4 billion in 2017 alone. Several other EU member states are in surplus. Even if those members may not be happy about paying up more, if push comes to shove, I think the EU can cover its losses.
     
  4. Risky

    Risky Modder

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    The fact that Germany has a large budget surplus is unlikely to be sufficient to convince the average German voter that they need to increase their contribution to the EU. I suspect you know that.
     
  5. Nexxo

    Nexxo * Prefab Sprout – The King of Rock 'n' Roll

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    I certainly know that is the sentiment in the Netherlands. But the EU will simply cut its coat to suit its cloth.

    Also, let's put this amount into perspective. The EU budget for 2018 alone is set at €160.1 billion. The UK Brexit settlement bill is €41.7 billion (at current exchange rate). Half of that is to be paid during the transition phase; that is €10.26 billion per year (6% of the total annual budget) in 2019 and 2020, followed by €7.6 (4.7%) billion in 2021, €5.8 billion (3.6%) in 2022, €3.1 billion (2%) in 2023 and € 1.7 billion (less than 1.1%) in 2024 before falling away to €0.2 billion (0.1%) in 2028. Keep in mind, by the way, that the EU annual budget, being 1% of the entire EU GDP, also increases every year (it is estimated at €167.6 billion by 2020), so these percentages are even smaller, and suggests that the budget increase due to EU GDP growth will already exceed the loss of the UK Brexit bill by 2021.

    It really is not as big a deal as the UK government likes to tell itself and its electorate, to hold on to the belief that it actually has some leverage in these negotiations. Certainly not enough to compromise the Single Market over; the EU will rather do without the money.
     
    Last edited: 2 Oct 2018
  6. Corky42

    Corky42 Where's walle?

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    I'm fairly sure that's not how the EU budget works, it's a percentage thing, IIRC it's set every seven years at something like 1% of each nations gross nation income so Germany won't pay any more or less because the UK is leaving, it will pay more or less depending on how much their yearly income is.

    We saw a perfect example of that when Cameron, the media, and eurosceptics threw their toys out of the pram a few years ago when they realised that because the UK decided to include the illegal drugs trade in our GDP figures they had to cough up more money in contributions.

    If anything people within the EU will be paying less when the UK leaves because there will probably be a small drop in some nations GDP, in the same way as you'd pay less tax or NI contributions if you had a pay cut.
     
  7. Risky

    Risky Modder

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    Corky, Not really, the EU budget does not fall in a downturn. Even when there was austerity all over the EU it managed a healthy rise.

    The contribution are in proportion to the countries VAT base and GNI which is fair and good, but the spending is mainly on "smart and inclusive growth" and "sustainable growth: national resources". The first is what was "regional funds", transfers to mostly poorer areas and the second is the CAP. Some countries don't see that much of the spending and some do. Hence the net contributions can be a bit skewed. It's hard to get clean figures but try https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_the_European_Union#EU-28_contributions_(2014)

    No the UK leaving isn't going to bankrupt the EU at all, but the politics of net contributions is sensitive so no-one wants to have to go for quick whipround for next years budget.
     
  8. Nexxo

    Nexxo * Prefab Sprout – The King of Rock 'n' Roll

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    My point is that they won't have to.

    The UK, meanwhile, has bigger financial problems:

    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: 3 Oct 2018
  9. Corky42

    Corky42 Where's walle?

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    Austerity is how much governments choose to spend, GNI is basically a slightly more complex version of GDP, the two things are completely different.

    Anyhow the wiki article you linked to explains how they set their budget..
    There is no whip around for next year budget as the budget is set after contributions are calculated and made, 2019's spending is based on 2018's contributions, 2020 will be based on 2019's and so on and so forth.

    As Nexxo said they cut their cloth to suit, they don't spend money they don't have, and the money they do have is based on various percentages of a nations 'earnings' just like your taxes are, the more or less you earn the more or less you contribute.

    And just as an FYI the EU budget fell shortly after the 08 crash due to declines in GNI, not because of austerity, austerity is basically a political choice, not a financial one.

    EDIT: At first i thought this was satire or one of those joke website stories that had gone mainstream but apparently not, Mrs Foster has said the DUPs red lines are blood red, that's not disturbing in the least. o_O
     
    Last edited: 3 Oct 2018
  10. Nexxo

    Nexxo * Prefab Sprout – The King of Rock 'n' Roll

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    Yeah, she did say that. Not the best choice of words, given the context.
     
  11. Anfield

    Anfield Multimodder

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  12. RedFlames

    RedFlames ...is not a Belgian football team

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    I see Maybot failed the Turing test again.
     
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  13. Corky42

    Corky42 Where's walle?

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    To be fair the GFA can and has been amended if everyone agrees to a change, i get the impression though that she's laying the groundwork for laying the blame at the Irish governments door when they refuse to capitulate to the DUPs red lines, in the same way as the UK government has been laying the groundwork for blaming the EU.
     
  14. Anfield

    Anfield Multimodder

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    A bit of a tweak that everyone agrees on here and there is one thing, messing around with core principles of it due to a cult like loyalty to England by the DUP (the only big NI party with paramilitary links that never signed the GFA in the first place) just to make it slightly more compatible with brexit red lines would be another story.

    Either way, back to mocking May for now:

    Appearing to an Abba tune?
    I'm sure the ERG loved her for using an EU import for that.

    Strange moves that where apparently supposed to represent dancing and happened supposedly spontaneously?
    See Turing Test joke from earlier on this page.

    Boost Council House building by scrapping one specific council borrowing limit?
    Council House building collapsed decades before said borrowing cap was ever introduced, so I don't see how getting rid of that would fix it, also with several councils on the brink of financial ruin allowing them to borrow anything doesn't seem like the best idea.

    End austerity?
    One can think of austerity whatever one wants to of course, but the Tories seem to have embraced it as their party motto or something like that, so will May come out and say she lied about ending it or will she risk opening yet another battle line between herself and her party?
     
    Last edited: 4 Oct 2018
  15. Corky42

    Corky42 Where's walle?

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    That proclamation came with a caveat, she said it would end if we get a brexit 'deal' and with another four years of spending cuts penciled it's probably best not to hold your breath.
     
  16. Fingers66

    Fingers66 Kiwi in London

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    "And if wobbly May thinks she can make the DUP see reason she might want to consult the history of Ulster politics"

    There, FTFY.

    Hell, the DUP is of the same mindset that locked children's playgrounds on Sundays until the mid-sixties so they couldn't enjoy themselves on a "holy" day. They didn't even allow Sunday league football (soccer) until 2008.

    To paraphrase Dara O'Briain on Mock the Week (from 05:53 in transcript) - the UK is not ready for the DUP.

    A pox on all of them.

    /rant
     
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  17. Risky

    Risky Modder

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  18. RedFlames

    RedFlames ...is not a Belgian football team

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    ...she'll have pulled off a miracle bigger than those depicted in the bibble.
     
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  19. Risky

    Risky Modder

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    So the EU will block anything that doesn't have NI completely in the single market, which means either the rest of the UK is inside it which means we are essentially a non-voting member of the EU again which will be blocked by the eurosceptics, or NI is treated differently which the DUP will block and Labour will vote against all of them as they want a new election and don't want pesky state aid rules affecting their plans for nationalising any businesses they don't plan to tax to death.
     
  20. Corky42

    Corky42 Where's walle?

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    It's difficult to tell satire from reality these day but that reminded me of this newsthump article.
    I wouldn't say blocking in the same way as i wouldn't say Sony is blocking my access to free games because i cancelled my Playstation plus account, them's the rules, we were in with loads of opt-outs and now we want out with loads of opt-ins and that's just not how it works.

    Labour, IMO, want anything that means they've got a higher chance of getting into power, if that means half the country are destitute then so be it, at this stage I'm not sure who's worse, the Conservatives being driven by hard brexiteers who want to enrich themselves of the back of normal people or Labour for wanting the country to go down the pan so people will turn to them out of desperation.
     
    Last edited: 4 Oct 2018

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