OT. The futures Bright, the Futures Brexit!!!

[Andy_Faber]

Speaking as someone who gains double nationality on December 15th I see the EU as something to be dismantled as it is an unwieldy, undemocratic and out of control monolith.

Revert to pre Maastricht and the EEG (Common Market) when it was a free trade area.

What irks me is that they lied for 50 years about a US of E not being the end game when exactly that was the idea of the French and Germans from day 1.

They pooh poohed reports from conspiracy theorists about the advent of a European army but that is now being created.

It is, IMO, yet another step towards putting ore and more wealth and power into the hands of fewer and fewer people. A New World Order if you will.

The whole business of globalisation needs reversing to keep the top 1% from "enslaving" the rest of us.

Which one? I've opted for Irish, purely for ease of travel.

[MadAmster]

Which one? I've opted for Irish, purely for ease of travel.

Dutch Andy. Lived here for 33 years, married to a Dutch lady and have 2 kids born here. That ticks all the boxes. All I had to do was fill in a form and pay €182. As my UK passport is valid for another 5 years I won't be looking at a new one until March 2019 at the earliest. I will probably end up holding two passports for ease of travel.

[Andy_Faber]

Sorry to pop this one back to the top but I've just been putting a few ill-informed peeps right here in the 'real' world using the power of numbers, particularly regarding the 'Brexit exit bill'. I think.

There's been a 'bit of disagreement' about how much we 'pay' the EU at present - £350m a week quoted by the Leavers, £156m by the Remainers and £252m by BBC Reality Check, who I would usually trust as they have no political slant.

£350m is clearly a load of cobblers, only three people in the country accept that number, so lets ignore. For the sake of argument lets take the true number as something between the other two numbers, £200m seems reasonable. So that's 200m a week, which is £10,400m, or £10.4bn a year. Lets call it £10bn, whats £400m between friends?

The Brexit bill 'might' be £50bn

So on the basis of the above numbers, if we keep paying into the EU for 50/10=5 years, we're done.

Last night Kamal Woe Is Me Ahmed 'stated' that UK would be paying our weekly obligation 'beyond our lifetimes'.

Either:

1. I'm right and KA really is a prophet of doom
2. I'm missing something, or
3. Ramjet is already responding to explain how my maths is wrong, an ampersand or bracket in the wrong place maybe.

Massive simplfication applies as usual on my part.

Not making any point for or against, just grinding the numbers

[roger_ramjet]

You cant expect anyone from Rotherham to make sense. I cant argue with your numbers Andy save to say that I was reckoning around 40 billion as exit cost.

However it may be that we can negotiate "easy terms" and stretch the payment period over more than 5 years?? Hence he may be dead before the final instalment gets paid off.

My concern is more whether they honour the corrolary trade deals as I cant see that they can be made binding on EU members if it starts to fragment itself with Catalexit, Swexit or whatever. You can never trust johnny foreigner

[MadAmster]

How much a week? Interesting question. It is a gross £350M a week. That is correct but that is only a part of the story. We get some back in the form of grants and subsidies back from the EU so we have to subtract those from the £350M a week. We also get the annual £1Bn rebate Maggie negotiated. The actual cost is about half of what we originally pay in so, around £175M a week.

However, we should bill them for our WW1 and WW2 efforts for a start. That should deal with most of what they think we owe them.

Then you get the idiot that is Barnier accusing the UK of running away from ISIS when the EU needs to show solidarity. He forgets that the UK puts more in cash terms and in manpower into NATO than any other EU country. The man also thinks we will leave Interpol and probably the joint secret service conglomerate without a name that sees EU countries share intel. Why would we lave those two entities or NATO for that matter. Those organisations have been going longer than the EU. No reason for us to leave any of them..... apart from the EU.

Barnier's comments this week show what a joke it is.

Juncker's comment when asked why, when other countries have been fined for exceeding the 3% GDP overspend, France, despite doing it year after year, haven't been fined, answered "Because they are the French" shows what a farce the whole thing is.

[swaledale]

I suspect the economic loss to this country caused by Brexit will put any figure we pay or have paid to the EU in the small change category and I'm just glad i wont be the one explaining to those who voted leave because they thought they had bad deal in life, when they find their lives have not improved one iota.

[MadAmster]

I think a lot of people who voted OUT did so because they do not want to be sucked into a United States of Europe. One step closer to the conspiracy theorists theory of the New World Order with one "government" and all of us very stringently controlled in what we say and do.

A US of E won't work IMO because what the Greeks, Spaniards, Italians and Portuguese want out of life is light years away from what a Brit or a German or e Frenchman or a Dutch person wants. Therefore uniform taxes etc won't work. The Southern Europeans will want our level of benefits/life withour paying for it. trouble on the horizon.

[Romanis]

The Big question is whether the Irish will get screwed or if Theresa May will cave in. If she does, she should go immediately. We should know by Monday

[swaledale]

I think a lot of people who voted OUT did so because they do not want to be sucked into a United States of Europe. One step closer to the conspiracy theorists theory of the New World Order with one "government" and all of us very stringently controlled in what we say and do.

A US of E won't work IMO because what the Greeks, Spaniards, Italians and Portuguese want out of life is light years away from what a Brit or a German or e Frenchman or a Dutch person wants. Therefore uniform taxes etc won't work. The Southern Europeans will want our level of benefits/life withour paying for it. trouble on the horizon.

Well there were a lot of different views, many thought £350 million would go to the NHS, many wanted limits on immigration so that the foreigners doing jobs that the ones who voted leave didn't want to do would go.

All politics goes in cycles and the EU will certainly evolve, given the differing views held by various members, the U of Eu isn't a realistic proposition anyway and we had a powerful veto which stopped many things and kept us out of the bits we didn't like - losing that power and influence and the economic advantage will be a blow for sure - we could in any case avoid all that IF thats what is feared and remain in the single market and customs union, but those on the right that want a low wage, low regulation, low tax economy which they can profit from safe in their offshore bolt holes will be laughing all the way to the bank.

[swaledale]

I think a lot of people who voted OUT did so because they do not want to be sucked into a United States of Europe. One step closer to the conspiracy theorists theory of the New World Order with one "government" and all of us very stringently controlled in what we say and do.

A US of E won't work IMO because what the Greeks, Spaniards, Italians and Portuguese want out of life is light years away from what a Brit or a German or e Frenchman or a Dutch person wants. Therefore uniform taxes etc won't work. The Southern Europeans will want our level of benefits/life withour paying for it. trouble on the horizon.

Well there were a lot of different views, many thought £350 million would go to the NHS, many wanted limits on immigration so that the foreigners doing jobs that the ones who voted leave didn't want to do would go.

All politics goes in cycles and the EU will certainly evolve, given the differing views held by various members, the U of Eu isn't a realistic proposition anyway and we had a powerful veto which stopped many things and kept us out of the bits we didn't like - losing that power and influence and the economic advantage will be a blow for sure - we could in any case avoid all that IF thats what is feared and remain in the single market and customs union, but those on the right that want a low wage, low regulation, low tax economy which they can profit from safe in their offshore bolt holes will be laughing all the way to the bank.