Quote Originally Posted by 9goals2hattricks3pen View Post
Oh dear 123 you do leave yourself wide open with such wildly incorrect figures. So yes I do refute your opening statement. Where do you get your figures from a European, 2 Europeans or perhaps one of them had a dog because yours is certainly is a shaggy dog post.

The EU economy is NOT 10 times the UK it's about 7 times. Just a small matter of $7.7 million wrong.

The EU population is NOT 8 times the UK its about 6.1/2 times bigger. That's all but 100 million wrong.

When you get such simple stuff so horribly wrong (always on your side of the argument) you make it very difficult for me to take anything you say seriously. Are you sure the figures in your user name are correct?

I thought we had already debunked the 'EU bought better because of its buying power myth' The EU bought Moderna cheaper because it invested heavily in its research. Turns out they chose the expensive option we chose Oxford the cheaper one.

Irrespective of the accuracy of the figures if you believe just because an organisation is big makes it an efficient buyer you are a fool. Three of the biggest procurement teams in the UK must be the NHS, MOD, and Goverment all of them amongst the very worst. Give me a small motivated buying team against these huge outfits any time.

As regards the EU I'm not sure what they purchase as a whole except for 5* hotel rooms, 5* meals, paper, office space and first class return rail tickets from Brussels to Strasbourg.

The EU have not been more efficient handling Covid than us because they haven't done anything (except badly buy the vaccine.) The individual states have all gone their own very different ways.

Just thought of something else the EU buy. They are The World's largest consumer of red tape 46 times the UK. Hope they have a good deal on it!
A bit pedantic this isn't it?

And only because the figures I was looking at included the UK in the EU.

Either way, the original point still remains. You can point at individual examples if it makes you feel better about yourself. But the fact is, the EU will always have better negotiating power than we will because their economy and population is much larger than ours.

As for your final statement, ask any business owner (and there are some who regularly post on here) about the red tape they have now in comparison to when we were an EU member.

The EU isn't perfect, but we were an influential cog within it and we had the best deal for trade we could have when we were a member compared to now.