A most informative article!
1 Nov 2010 Ashley Mote’s blog
Cameron fuss over EU budget is all smoke and mirrors
Why is anyone fussed over a 6% increase in EU spending voted by the EP, and now supposedly rejected by ministers?
And why has the media ignored the reality of the EU’s latest financial charade?
FACT : There is no direct connection between EU income and so-called annual budgeting.
I know – I was on that committee for five years.
The UK, like all other countries, pays a percentage of VAT, all customs duty collected (net) and a percentage of GDP.
There is no mechanism for refunding unused funds to member states. They just pile up in Brussels, hidden away by the bureaucrats who rightly guess that – most of the time – no-one will notice.
Well, a few of us did – years ago.
There are huge cash reserves in Brussels but even my sympathisers inside the Commission were unable to establish exactly how much. The EU’s accounts do not include a properly constructed balance sheet, and never have. Neither has the puppet EU Court of Auditors ever complained.
The EU has also admitted to running over 600 bank accounts all over the world, and has what it chooses to call “dealings with” another 214,000. All of which suggests to me that the EU’s cash pile must be huge!
The EP’s so-called annual budgeting is merely an exercise in the allocation of existing funds. There is no meaningful and controlled relationship between EU income and its expenditure, beyond not spending more than the gross sum available from existing cash reserves and the next year’s forecast income as per the formula above.
Businesses must control their spending, otherwise they will collapse. Most governments, but not all, try to control their spending, especially when faced with the necessity of seeking re-election.
The EU, on the other hand, can enjoy an irresponsible profligacy because neither of these dangers exists.
No wonder the EU felt free to waste £124,000 recently on a transgender conference for 200 homosexuals, bi-sexuals, trans-genders and what it described with breathtaking political correctness as ‘intersex’ activists.
Politically correct poppycock would have been a better description. It would have been hilarious except that we taxpayers paid for it!
More seriously, and much more alarmingly, the EU is now pouring more than £33 million into a fleet of armour-plated limousines for its so-called ‘ambassadors’ who will attempt to muscle in on the diplomatic services already established centuries ago around the world by most member states, including the UK.
Altogether these Johnny-come-lately bureaucrats masquerading as diplomats are going to cost us a tidy half a billion a year, not least when they are sitting in new embassies on chairs costing £800 each.
None of the decision makers who set up this new layer of bureaucratic inertia have ever stood for election in the UK. And the only person amongst them to win a seat anywhere was elected in Belgium to a parliament incapable of forming a government.
Meanwhile, the European Parliament has started to flex its Lisbon Treaty muscles by tinkering around the edges of the Commission’s budget as part of the democratic accountability charade. This year’s huffing and puffing about the Commission wanting a 2.9% increase and the EP wanting 6% is all shadow boxing. Pure humbug.
They all know there’s a bucket load of money just sitting there.
The essence of this sham argument is entirely presentational. The Commission knows even a 2.9% increase sounds too much for the UK and some others. The European Parliament, dominated by the left, thinks flinging money at every problem overcomes it.
They also believe that every desirable (to them) piece of social engineering should go ahead if the money is there. And they know they can always claim it will help stimulate recovery, whether or not it does. By the time the truth is known it will be far too late to stop the expenditure anyway.
So it matters not a jot in the real Brussels world what Cameron says or does. There would have been benign smiles from the EU professionals he left behind whilst boasting to the rest of us that his journey was a triumph. They knew he had achieved exactly nothing. They also now know that he has yet to understand how the EU actually works.
Meanwhile, the changes the Germans want to the Lisbon Treaty will be pushed through – just as I and dozens of others endlessly warned – under the catch-all clause that allows retrospective amendment without ratification. After all, THAT was precisely why it was in the treaty, for heavens sake!
I raised this potential combination of circumstances – which has now evolved for real - many times, asked countless written questions and said what needed saying in the parliament on numerous occasions. Those speeches are still on the net to this day, on YouTube and many other sites.
At the time, and as usual, the Commission’s answers were opaque without being a denial and – again as usual - no-one took the slightest notice, including the UK media.
The British sleepwalk into the EU goes on, regardless of who has the keys to No 10. The present incumbent chooses not to make the biggest saving of the lot by simply telling Brussels we are leaving. As friends and neighbours we will trade with you, and on our terms. Take it or leave it.
My five years in Brussels also convinced me they’d jump at such a deal. They know we don’t belong. Many of them openly admit it.
Oh boy, do we need a British Tea Party! Amateurs, maybe. But people who’ve had enough, run out of patience, and who are prepared to wait no longer. In the US they’re about to seize some of the controls.
The time is long overdue when we do the same. We need to become revolting.
Cameron fuss over EU budget is all smoke and mirrors
Why is anyone fussed over a 6% increase in EU spending voted by the EP, and now supposedly rejected by ministers?
And why has the media ignored the reality of the EU’s latest financial charade?
FACT : There is no direct connection between EU income and so-called annual budgeting.
I know – I was on that committee for five years.
The UK, like all other countries, pays a percentage of VAT, all customs duty collected (net) and a percentage of GDP.
There is no mechanism for refunding unused funds to member states. They just pile up in Brussels, hidden away by the bureaucrats who rightly guess that – most of the time – no-one will notice.
Well, a few of us did – years ago.
There are huge cash reserves in Brussels but even my sympathisers inside the Commission were unable to establish exactly how much. The EU’s accounts do not include a properly constructed balance sheet, and never have. Neither has the puppet EU Court of Auditors ever complained.
The EU has also admitted to running over 600 bank accounts all over the world, and has what it chooses to call “dealings with” another 214,000. All of which suggests to me that the EU’s cash pile must be huge!
The EP’s so-called annual budgeting is merely an exercise in the allocation of existing funds. There is no meaningful and controlled relationship between EU income and its expenditure, beyond not spending more than the gross sum available from existing cash reserves and the next year’s forecast income as per the formula above.
Businesses must control their spending, otherwise they will collapse. Most governments, but not all, try to control their spending, especially when faced with the necessity of seeking re-election.
The EU, on the other hand, can enjoy an irresponsible profligacy because neither of these dangers exists.
No wonder the EU felt free to waste £124,000 recently on a transgender conference for 200 homosexuals, bi-sexuals, trans-genders and what it described with breathtaking political correctness as ‘intersex’ activists.
Politically correct poppycock would have been a better description. It would have been hilarious except that we taxpayers paid for it!
More seriously, and much more alarmingly, the EU is now pouring more than £33 million into a fleet of armour-plated limousines for its so-called ‘ambassadors’ who will attempt to muscle in on the diplomatic services already established centuries ago around the world by most member states, including the UK.
Altogether these Johnny-come-lately bureaucrats masquerading as diplomats are going to cost us a tidy half a billion a year, not least when they are sitting in new embassies on chairs costing £800 each.
None of the decision makers who set up this new layer of bureaucratic inertia have ever stood for election in the UK. And the only person amongst them to win a seat anywhere was elected in Belgium to a parliament incapable of forming a government.
Meanwhile, the European Parliament has started to flex its Lisbon Treaty muscles by tinkering around the edges of the Commission’s budget as part of the democratic accountability charade. This year’s huffing and puffing about the Commission wanting a 2.9% increase and the EP wanting 6% is all shadow boxing. Pure humbug.
They all know there’s a bucket load of money just sitting there.
The essence of this sham argument is entirely presentational. The Commission knows even a 2.9% increase sounds too much for the UK and some others. The European Parliament, dominated by the left, thinks flinging money at every problem overcomes it.
They also believe that every desirable (to them) piece of social engineering should go ahead if the money is there. And they know they can always claim it will help stimulate recovery, whether or not it does. By the time the truth is known it will be far too late to stop the expenditure anyway.
So it matters not a jot in the real Brussels world what Cameron says or does. There would have been benign smiles from the EU professionals he left behind whilst boasting to the rest of us that his journey was a triumph. They knew he had achieved exactly nothing. They also now know that he has yet to understand how the EU actually works.
Meanwhile, the changes the Germans want to the Lisbon Treaty will be pushed through – just as I and dozens of others endlessly warned – under the catch-all clause that allows retrospective amendment without ratification. After all, THAT was precisely why it was in the treaty, for heavens sake!
I raised this potential combination of circumstances – which has now evolved for real - many times, asked countless written questions and said what needed saying in the parliament on numerous occasions. Those speeches are still on the net to this day, on YouTube and many other sites.
At the time, and as usual, the Commission’s answers were opaque without being a denial and – again as usual - no-one took the slightest notice, including the UK media.
The British sleepwalk into the EU goes on, regardless of who has the keys to No 10. The present incumbent chooses not to make the biggest saving of the lot by simply telling Brussels we are leaving. As friends and neighbours we will trade with you, and on our terms. Take it or leave it.
My five years in Brussels also convinced me they’d jump at such a deal. They know we don’t belong. Many of them openly admit it.
Oh boy, do we need a British Tea Party! Amateurs, maybe. But people who’ve had enough, run out of patience, and who are prepared to wait no longer. In the US they’re about to seize some of the controls.
The time is long overdue when we do the same. We need to become revolting.
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