Our last year charged as a member of the EU meant we paid them £17 bn in tax revenues. We got £4.4 bn back , making a net contribution of £12.6 bn. In practice UK taxpayers had to pay the £17 bn. The money back was meant to be for things the UK government would not normally pay for, directed by EU policies.
We are no longer making these large contributions. Every year that passes saves us more money, as the EU put the membership fees up.
More importantly since covid the EU has gone on a borrowing binge. By 2026 it will have added Euro 806 bn of extra debt, to be guaranteed by the member states. Our share of that assuming all members pay their way would have been around £110 bn. The EU is also borrowing to lend on to Ukraine, again with member states standing behind the debts.
The last thing we need is yet more state debt. The UK has been too ready to borrow directly on its own account. It would be bad news for taxpayers if we were also up to our eyes in EU debt. The side of the bus said we could spend more on the NHS when our EU fees stopped. That is exactly what happened, so the NHS is getting a lot more money and the UK debt is still going up.
January 30, 2025
Good morning.
So what of VAT ? This is an EU tax. Do we still give them this money and, if not, why has this not been cut / removed or reformed ? Why is it still on my energy bill and (hot) food ? These are not luxuries.
Leaving the EU meant we should have been free to alter our tax regime for better growth. Why was this not done ?
As I said before. We, the people, gave our government a gift – Self Governance. And they threw it back at us !
Reply UK government now spends all the VAT here. How do you think they paid those huge extra sums to NHS?
January 30, 2025
The Brexit settlement is being paid with £4.0 billion outstanding after the May 24 payment. This is payable in instalments up to 2065.
Although VAT was introduced while UK was in the EU it or a similar tax is not peculiar to the EU so strictly speaking it is not an EU tax, although the form of it in UK was decided by EU rules – except for education which is exempt in the EU but no longer in UK thanks to Starmer’s Socialist Gang’s hatred of private capital, private ownership and private education or anything that enables some people to do better than others.
January 30, 2025
Isn’t that just for pension commitments Peter?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/51110096
From January 2021, the estimated bill was £25bn left to pay by 2057, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), external, almost £18bn of which will be paid in the first five years.
January 30, 2025
We still pay annually into the EU and will continue until about 2050 i believe.
We can’t cut VAT on fuel bills because of the Windsor Accord which if removed on the mainland would not apply to Northern Ireland, thus exposing the fact we haven’t really left.
If we had someone like trump or Nigel incharge this would never happen
I see the latest polls put Reform in the lead with the tories are trailing third.
Reply In the last report we got a small bit back. We no longer make any new payments to EU. There is an overs and unders reappraisal of past years which we have already paid which are small sums.
January 30, 2025
John. The European court is still fining us on an annual basis for some infringement real or not. The latest to do with freedom of movement
We are shackled to the EU by the Windsor Agreement which was intended for that very purpose. A sovereign part of the UK ties the whole of the UK to EU rules.
January 30, 2025
Thank Sunak for the truly appalling Windsor Accord.
Has Sunak corrected his statement to the house that the Covid Vaccines were safe and effective yet? Or is he still refusing to look at the appalling statistics that very clearly say the complete reverse. The Covid Vaccines did huge net harm (and most people never even needed them even had they been safe and effective) and we do not even know all the harms done as yet.
Let us hope RF Kennedy Jn. is not blocked by vested interests in Big Pharma. I suspect he may well be.
January 30, 2025
Precisely. And it was the Treacherous Tories who did it.
January 30, 2025
Yesterday I had a taxi home from the airport. The driver was a 55 year old Romanian. He was very happy discussing his past and told me after trying to get work in Belgium and Holland, he had no tangible skills, he came to Britain and he and his wife were given a council house.
He works as a taxi driver and recieves a top up of benefits from the state. I was absolutely astounded at what he told me. These things obviously don’t happen in Belgium or Holland
January 30, 2025
If you spent more on the NHS, why is it still worse ? And I have seen this first hand.
January 30, 2025
Because the money always goes to the staff, who don’t do any extra work. That is almost a law of Goevernment economics.
January 30, 2025
Uncontrolled immigration.
January 30, 2025
They spent a lot more on the NHS. See The Kings Fund, but staffing costs take the most significant part of the payment, and they have gone up a lot. You need to ask the Trusts what improvements they’ve delivered for the extra £s.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-44495598
January 30, 2025
And they want all the fish in UK waters too.
January 30, 2025
They certainly do and who can blame them? UK’s waters are among the richest in the world. Edward Hetah gave the lot to the EU precurser EEC in order to get UK in. ‘Swallow the lot’ was his directive to his negotiators. The EC saw it coming and hastily put together the CFP in order to take UK’s fish. They won’t let it go without a fight. Most countries only win such riches after unconditional surrender in war.
January 30, 2025
Your last sentence sums up much about our nation now, as in all areas changes are taking place that would arise from the spoils of war.
January 30, 2025
We lost the whole country for 50 years! This was not a war fought by the people but one lost by the political class. They surrendered without a bullet being fired.
That’s why there is a ‘Versailles Agreement’ where we lose territory, treasure and status.
January 30, 2025
It was won by the political comprador class-at the expense of the vast majority of the population.
January 30, 2025
Ths last thing we need is more state debt, agreed, but those in power for the last 15 years are addicted to it.
Rachael from accounts was out yesterday mouthing what she judged people wished to hear, with the exception of the mad monk and his accolites, however the key is masses of cheap constant energy, which she has no plans to acquire. Prefering to block our first two gas fracking test wells with concrete. A more Luddite response to our lack of cheap energy would be hard to find. The inmates are in reallity in charge of the assylum. Interestingly the North of England seems no longer to feature in her musings. Even when Kemi pointed out the shotcomings of current policy at PMQs, the only response from SKS was playground name calling. That which we call a government is in a hole of its own making, but still sees fit to keep digging.
Wait for the implosion from the reallities of what they are not doing or internal blood letting give effect to it. The fuse was lit yesterday. Its length is an open debate.
January 30, 2025
Yes, sooner or later socialism runs into hard reality, the dreams evaporate and ruin comes into sight. Our work should be to mitigate the damage and remove the driving forces as quickly as possible. Labour is going to try to raise more taxes, but the economy is withering, the wealthy are leaving and there’s no ability to borrow much. Bad times ahead.
Why do we have to learn the same lessons over and over.
January 30, 2025
The answer is because of 14 years of Tory hopeless managment of just about everything. We are among many Tory voters who won’t ever go back to them. So many broken promises, UK and World political mess, hands over eyes immigration facts, street and business crime rocketing, Police neglecting their role, Judiciary failures, military budget and staff cuts, NHS descending into farce, transport grinding to a halt, local council mismanagement….I could go on. So now we have the ‘socialist’ policies that are intended to be destructive, diversive, wasteful and idiotic.
Thank you Tories, what a fine mess you got us into.
January 30, 2025
agricola: “Rachael from accounts was out yesterday mouthing what she judged people wished to hear, with the exception of the mad monk and his accolites, however the key is masses of cheap constant energy, which she has no plans to acquire.”
Correct.
Rachel from accounts made her speech knowing full well that her fifth column in Parliament, the Civil Service, the quangos, the regulators and the judiciary would never allow anything to get in the way of Net Zero and the country’s impoverishment. This was just distraction politics/rhetoric.
January 30, 2025
“It’s length is an open debate” Not really AG, I think it’s set to go off in April and then continue burning
Larger companies are already making pre-emptive headcount cuts but I’m certain that many smaller companies have less room to maneuver and are just hanging on in hope. Small business owners will do everything in their power to keep going but there’s always a limit, when the personal risks become too great. Many decades ago, your Bank Manager might have been supportive when a small business hit tough times but those days are long gone. Losing your business is terrible but losing your home is much worse. I think a lot of small businesses will be gone by the year end.
January 30, 2025
Funny isn’t it? We live frugal lives and our household is not indebited. But we have to pay massive debt is incurred by every level of Government above us. The Council is in massive debt, the government is in massive debt – we managed to get rid of the EU and it’s massive debt but the political class want it restored to crush us completely.
Why do they think they will not be similarly crushed?
January 30, 2025
Onward brothers and sisters ‘to the revolution’ – never thought I’d ever say that or mean it.
Just hope our grandchildren still have time to get skills and depart this miserable country society filled with losers, and anarchists (feels like i’m joining them).
Well Sir John will you publish or fear the plain speaking is too near the knuckle?
January 30, 2025
Facts like these need to be widely publicised. Most people, particularly Remainers, really know very little about membership of the EU and are highly susceptible to the fear-mongering and falsehoods of Remainer propagandists. It seems that the less they know, the keener they are to rejoin the EU.
January 30, 2025
I doubt very much that the British public is aware of the points you make though, rather they see the country is going through tough times and assume Brexit contributes majorly to that, disregarding the malaise affecting the Evil Empire. It is a misconception and ignorance the Establishment is content to foster.
January 30, 2025
I’m certain that many do not know of the points raised. How could they, on a diet of BBC/C4 and assorted others from the vast and powerful propaganda machine. The EU has served many within politics/media among other spheres very well, quite lucrative, and they were never going to give that up without a fight.
It matters not to them if the truth is smothered at birth, or if fair and honest debate becomes a casualty.
January 30, 2025
They lied to us in unison before the Brexit vote, but the people knew. They believed their own eyes. They might not be able to crystallise the details as JR can, but they know.
The political class is on very thin ice.
January 30, 2025
Don’t forget that escaping the EU’s attacks on individual freedom is a hugely important factor in making us “better off” in the wider sense.
More narrowly, the EU needs us back for our money. The institution is facing a Trump peace deal on Ukraine. The leaked version is: EU membership to Ukraine but no NATO memberhip, EU pays for the reconstruction (mainly to US companies), EU pays for Ukranian defence (agin, money to US interests), EU slowly allowed to buy Russian oil while being promised secure supplies from US, and Russia to keep its captured territory plus sanctions all gradually lifted. Great deal for Ukraine and the US and Russia!
The cost to the EU nations will be massive, so Brussels will have to assert more control over errant members, which suits it just fine. Still, they will be desperate to get the UK back in, or hope we are dumb enough to “support Ukraine” from (nominally) outside the EU.
January 30, 2025
ResponsibleStatecraft.org,24/1/25,Ian Proud:”Russia Races for Ukraine’s Mineral Wealth Before a Potential Ceasefire.”:
“Moscow is targeting Ukraine’s rich mineral reserves,crippling steel production efforts and jeopardizing its ability to pay war debts.Russia has spent the past five months swallowing up ever bigger tracts of Ukrainian coal,lithium,uranium,etc in the Donbass.Yet western politicians cling to the belief that they will be able to tap these resources to repay Ukraine’s ever mounting debt pile.This is economic madness.”
The whole article is well worth a read.
And what about the UK-Ukraine 100 year partnership?
January 30, 2025
And another excellent essay from Responsible Statecraft,just in -“Right Now NATO Could Not Win a War with Russia”by Steve Jermy,rtd Commodore,RN,29/1/25.
“Of course NATO was never the ‘most powerful military alliance in history’,that accolade surely goes to the WWII allies……..since the Berlin Wall’s fall though it’s record has become tarnished.Satisfactory in Kosovo,humiliated in Afghanistan,strategic failure looming in Ukraine…”He highlights the fact that there would be no effective defence against a Russian missile attack on crucial infrastructure,particularly the LNG terminals that Europe is increasingly dependent on.
January 30, 2025
The WWII Allies were fighting a great evil. It took all of us – (I believe Trump was referring the The Aliies when he said ‘Russia helped us beat the Nazis’) and of course Russia did its part. Those countries which were invaded suffered most – massive civilian losses. The USSR – the leading country was of course Russia, paid mightily. Invaded through Ukraine –
Russia is. Ow Christian, Democratic, Capitalist – a natural partner for the English Speaking World – anathema to our “European partners’.
‘Twas ever thus!
January 30, 2025
Utter rubbish.Were you asleep when Presidents Xi and Putin signed their ‘no limits partnership’ in February 2022 and when Xi,visiting Putin in Moscow in March 2023,bade him farewell with:”Right now there are changes,the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years-and we are the ones driving these changes together.”Or when the former Chinese ambassador to Russia repeated Mao’s dictum:”Russia and China are the lips and the teeth;when the lips are gone,the teeth will feel cold”.Or when the Chechen general ,Apti Alaudinov,highly placed in the Russian military,said- on multiple occasions during the current war-:”This is a war of the united armies of Jesus and Mohamed against the Satanic west.”
You really are a fantasist and totally ignorant of geopolitics;there has never been a significant period of time when Russia and the British ruling class were on the same page except when fighting a mutual enemy.Trump,whilst a more sympathetic figure than Biden, is trying to break up the Russia-China-Iran axis-no chance!
January 30, 2025
Don’t forget the over 6 billion pounds a year the British taxpayer as to fund the asylum and illegal migration bill , so effectively we are still giving a major EU country over £6 billion by the back door to take these illegals off there hands , the sooner we have a General Election the better to get this shower of s@:t out of office
January 30, 2025
To be slightly fair even after the flow to UK France has about three times the level of illegal immigrants we have.
January 30, 2025
How is that ‘fair’?
We want none of the illegal immigrants who came from France. Send them back to France. They are a French problem.
January 30, 2025
the ‘problem’ totally caused by Merkel and freedom in Germany to bully the EU for everybody come there and now here!
January 30, 2025
Most of them queing up in Calais and along the French coast for a chance to cross the channel.
January 30, 2025
Many of the problems which the UK is currently suffering are the fault of the British Establishment and the Westminster Uni-Party – primarily joining in with the Covid Tyranny and over-enthusiastic participation in the UN/WEF’s Climate Change scam. They could have been avoided if we’d had a Government which put the interests of the British people first and which governed in OUR interests.
Many of our other problems have been caused directly by our membership of the EU and the fact that we are still not free of their control, despite the largest vote in the country’s history to restore our independence. Clinging to nurse is never a good idea; it indicates weakness and a lack of confidence.
Attempting to cling to a nurse which is obviously in a state of collapse is beyond weak and cowardly; it’s stupid. Let’s see the outcome of the German elections in April. I doubt if the Remainers / Rejoiners will be so keen on being part of the dictatorial club if Marine Le Pen becomes French President and the AfD are part of a coalition government in Germany.
January 30, 2025
All of the problems …. ?
Then I agree.
January 30, 2025
On the contrary, Donna , they will be keener than ever to rejoin in order to “save” their precious EU and to try and rescue France and Germany from what they will believe is a terrible fate.
In reality, the rise of the AfD and National Rally has only happened because the previous mainstream parties and Brussels have totally failed to listen to voters and control immigration. This is not restricted to just those countries, : almost all states are shifting sharply to the right having experienced all the problems caused by unrestricted inward migration of millions of Islamic people with totally different values to ours. This has been going on for 40 years but has been exacerbated by the arrival into Europe of millions of young males in this decade.
We are experiencing all the same problems here but there has been a conspiracy of silence by almost all politicians at Westminster (except Reform), who have covered up what is happening. This can no longer be sustained, given that everyone can now see in the news the kind of people in our society who are responsible for the majority of violent crime, in particular knife crime, rape and murder.
January 30, 2025
As an avid comment watcher on various sites covering all views, it never ceases to amaze me how those of the ‘we are better informed and more intelligent than you’ brigade have little knowledge of the money handed over to EU and how membership affected everything here from the outset.
Any loss of farming capacity/products or fishing as an example was never according to them down to any EU directives but all down to a lazy workforce, the usual slur.
According to them the boats arriving are because we are no longer in the EU, but the boats were arriving while we were in the EU and returns were minimal.
Some even try to shoehorn in the NHS problems being down to Brexit. The NHS was on its knees while we were in the EU and not least when Blair opened the borders to add to the numbers using it.
It has to be said that many of our problems with the EU stemmed from the governing class, who followed every rule to the letter regardless of the damage caused, in a way that other member states just would not do.
That brings us back to who benefited from membership, and who put themselves first before the nation they were entrusted to look after.
January 30, 2025
And they are still doing it, Michelle !
The blame lies with the leftie liberal civil service which is overwhelmingly staffed by Remainers.
Add to that many useless and ineffective Conservative ministers over the last 14 years who have clearly never stood up to the Manderins to defend their own policies which as a consequence have been watered down or otherwise rendered ineffective.
This is why we have not made much progress in taking advantage of the benefits of Brexit. The Civil Service has been fighting an effective rearguard action to keep us closey aligned with Brussels.
Of course, they are now in their element with a leftie liberal bunch of equally ineffective ministers.
If Nigel and Richard don’t take the firmest of stances when they get into Downing Street, we will be totally shafted.
But can we really wait until 2029 ? How much damage can TTK and Theeves do before then ?
January 30, 2025
exactly – last line says it all.
January 30, 2025
Every time I open our kitchen cupboard I see a Freedom Association “BETTER OFF OUT” carrier bag with traffic lights hanging up on the door, still useful for storing plastic bags, and I find that on April 26 2006 I circulated an email about the launch of that campaign to over a hundred recipients, many of whom are no longer with us.
Ten years later I had concluded that probably we would be better off economically outside the EU, but only marginally so, and that the economic impact of EU membership one way or the other was not as important as the political and constitutional impact, and “TAKE BACK CONTROL” was a better campaign message.
So just on the economics I can’t agree with your headline “The UK is much better off out of the EU”, at least so far. We may be marginally better off but either way it is only marginal, and especially compared to the persistent damaging effects of the 2008 global financial crisis which are an order of magnitude greater:
http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2025/01/29/government-imposed-barriers-to-growth/#comment-1496260
Without that collapse, or if we had bounced back from it, per capita GDP would now be 42% higher.
https://globalbritain.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Ewen-Stewart-Chart-1-UK-GDP-per-capita.jpg
January 30, 2025
The real problem is Parliament has fought tooth and nail to remain in the EU, its as if they prefer to take orders from a higher power rather than think for themselves.
Cameron walked because he knew he wouldn’t be able to cope, may fought every which way to stay tied. Then those that followed have kept up the fight, by refusing the Sovereign right of an independent country to have its own democratic Legislators, its own laws and regulation to be self Governing. Starmer keeps reminding us it is appeasing and working with the WEF and the EU that is more important than the UK’s democratically elected representatives.
Kate Hoey (Labour) reminds how bad, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01/29/labour-eu-remain-northern-ireland-referendum-protocol/
Whether its the economics of the Country, NetZero, high energy costs, off-shoring Industry, importing criminals, the EU, even the UN we have a Parliament that fights the People at every turn. They refuse to work with us to help the country and its people prospers. This Uniparty(under the banners of Labour, Conservatives, Liberal Democrats – you cant separate any of them) shower are the most destructive ideological terrorists we have ever seen. A one party State ensuring a destruction of a people and a country.
January 30, 2025
A very accurate and succinct analysis
January 30, 2025
Don’t worry John, we’re not going back into the EU. I know I keep saying it – the Maastricht Treaty stipulates debt to GCP ratio no more than 60%, and there’s no way the UK is going to pay off its debt to that degree. On the contrary, I fully expect it to tick up. Neither is there any prospect of the EU revoking the Treaty just to accommodate little Britain.
I’ve not seen any dispute to this conclusion.
Reply If the UK agreed to pay enough of their debts and subs they would waive that requirement. None of the main member states are below that target.
January 30, 2025
On Tuesday it was the good people of Tenby in Wales being told that “the average person in the UK is now £2,000 worse off as a result of Brexit”, today it is the Scots being worked on:
https://www.insider.co.uk/news/brexit-trade-barriers-hit-scottish-34576579
“Brexit trade barriers ‘hit Scottish economy by £4 billion'”
In which case they would be doing much better than the UK average claimed by the “Economic Cost of Brexit project”, as £4 billion divided by 5.5 million comes to only £727 per head.
However, confusingly, only £3 billion of that alleged £4 billion Brexit hit to the Scottish economy actually relates to a reduction in exports to the EU, and dividing that by £218 billion, the estimated Scottish GDP in 2023:
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cdp-2024-0126/
gives the erosion of GDP to be 1.4%, compared to the 1% suggested by the recent LSE study.
Which is not so much “catastrophic” as “marginal”, and to try to rectify that minor loss by removing the EU’s largely unnecessary impediments to our goods exports we would have to pay about £351 per head into the EU budget, about half of what the Scottish government thinks the average Scot might gain …
This is what it is really about, which could lead to suspicions that the economic analysis has been skewed:
“The Scottish Government has been clear that Scotland’s place is in the EU and the huge European single market, but we are also a voice for greater co-operation with the EU right now and we urge the new UK Government to forge a much closer relationship with our fellow Europeans.”
Reply More nonsense.
January 30, 2025
Which bit was nonsense? It all sounded plausible to me.
January 30, 2025
And it is becoming blatantly clear to almost everyone now, except the political class and its hangers on, that the extra borrowing for the NHS was totally wasted, as it was bound to be, in the absence of any thought as to why, if at all, it was the way to deal with the NHS’s problems.
As for the Reeves dash for growth, Mr O’Leary of Ryanair appears to have said it all.
January 30, 2025
“It would be bad news for taxpayers if we were also up to our eyes in EU debt.”
That’s why our “Make Britain Pay” PM wants us back in the EU, as does of course the other side of the Uniparty. Both sides are fully signed up to EU membership, Net Zero, mass immigration and high wasteful spending to justify high taxation.
Any voter who does not agree with these policies but continues to vote for the Uniparty is exhibiting Einstein’s definition of insanity.
January 30, 2025
The Labour Party seem to be under the illusion that the private sector is sitting on billions and not ‘sharing’ because we are mean and nasty.
So you might hope that they will learn the lesson when they test us to destruction – again.
But they will NOT.
The State must be cut to the bone. That includes the NHS. My friends with private healthcare can’t access it because it’s been ‘reserved’ for the State, they wonder why they pay, and intend to stop!
January 30, 2025
It’s another one of those back to front concepts that drive the socialist imagination — It makes us all equally poor.
They think by putting more money into the system that they can buy themselves out of trouble – how perverse is that?
Our governments have worked very hard since Brexit to increase our debt to such high eye watering numbers. The daily interest alone is almost beyond comprehension.
All of that debt has done us no good at all and yet it increases. That is not incompetence, it is policy to break the country economically. Just imagine how much worse off we’d be inside the EU. What with their excessive spending and oppressive legislation that our PM is doing his best to emulate.
Yes oh Yes, we are much better off outside the EU, I just wish we had a government that didn’t want to copy everything that is bad about the EU. However did we reach this point where our own government is doing so much harm to the people of the UK!
January 30, 2025
Not since Brexit, since 2008 when the Labour government had to borrow one pound in every four that it spent.
January 30, 2025
Despite the clear advantages of us having left the EU, it was reported earlier this week that a majority of voters would prefer to rejoin!
Brexit supporting politicians outside Reform, with almost the sole exception of our host, totally fail to make the case while Remainers like Alistair Campbell, ably supported by the likes of the BBC, are out there every day arguing for us to rejoin. This has been going on since 2016. Is it any wonder they are winning the argument ?
January 30, 2025
Alistair Campbell asserts that he has mental illness problems. Who would argue?
January 30, 2025
Not me, that’s for certain !
January 30, 2025
Starmer and Reeves are the pinnacle and manifesting of the metropolitan elite’s non-thinking and delegating the UK Westminster government 100% to Brussels EU (as the fountain of intelligence) plus the WEF Davos leading lights plus “Modern pragmatic Marxism” thrown in.
Instead of preparing for government they spend all their time focused on just winning the election. They have no new ideas of what to do and seen to have followed the script of the 1972 political comedy drama “The Candidate” where the final scene where Robert Redford asks his running mate
“What do we do now?” The media throng arrives to drag them out, and McKay never receives an answer.
January 30, 2025
Europe was far better before the EU messed it up.
Each country was an independent nation with its own local laws and sensible border controls. British people could live and work there. Switzerland was more restrictive, cutting 10% of non-Swiss employees, year on year.
The iron curtain places had tougher limitations. Yugoslavia was one country under Tito.
I had a worn out 17-year-old car destined on driving my girlfriend from London to see Baghdad. Syria regarded us British as an enemy owing to being friendly with Israel after the 6-day war, refusing entry. I had to drive all around Turkey and Persia just to reach the Iraqi border, much of it on ‘roads’ like donkey tracks. Similarly, returning home had to be the same long way.
The current EU resembles Syria in several ways: Obstructive, unfriendly and anti-British.
January 30, 2025
There were a lot more wars before the EU.
Reply Plenty of wars in Europe since the EU formed. Terrible wars informer Yugoslavia and now in Ukraine. The EU unable to keep the peace.
January 30, 2025
There have been “wars” by other means since the EEC/EU started, just not involving the use of physical violence.
January 30, 2025
Reeves was high on the power of spin yesterday especially after her and Starmer ‘s recent photo shoots and PR photo calls on their “World Tours” rubbing shoulders with China, EU and Davos WEF big wigs, not to mention Taylor Swift red carpet.
They both do double speak about growth and Rachel is floundering from high lit uplands to blackholes and back again to 3rd runways now she has tested the lure of world travel.
I think red Ed stayed away from this announcement yesterday to avoid awkward questions when Pressed especially as he too was planning to upstage them going on holiday to Brazil.
January 30, 2025
Politicians are principally there to facilitate the creation of wealth. Without wealth no political regime left righf or centre can function effectively.
It is my belief that politicians should be confined to essentials , Defence, Health, Civil Order, Education, Infrastructure, because they all have a bearing on the creation of Wealth. I see no way in which politicians should be allowed to sell projects for ribbon cutting based on the falsehood that they are investments, without a convincing projection of future profitability.
The people across the the population should be the beneficiaries of that wealth, measured as personal GDP. Within Health , Education and their lives people should be free to choose how they spend or save that wealth. Said because whenever politicians take that wealth to social engineer, they make a disasterous pigs ear of it.
Political government, has in the UK reached the point , or beyond it, where their avarice has destroyed any incentive there may have been to create Wealth. This tide must ebb and soon.
January 30, 2025
We are to be the EU’s dumping ground.
January 30, 2025
The problem is that the media do not report the truth about the EU and our advantages by leaving it. People are equally ignorant about the climate change scam for the same reason. The programme about heat pumps on TV this week was a classic example. One couple spent 20,000 installing a heat pump and are saving about £200 a year on their heating bills!
As for Rachel, from accounts, talking about growth, it is nonsense, she does not have a clue. The simple way to generate growth now, not in ten, fifteen or twenty years’ time, is to raise the tax-free allowance to £20,000 for everyone. At a stroke, the majority would have £1500 extra in their pocket, and all pensioners whose income is over the £12.5k tax allowance would also be better off! If necessary, cut some government t spending to afford it.
That would immediately increase spending, cheer people up, and make a difference now.
January 30, 2025
Notwithstanding the facts, it appears the vast majority regard Brexit as a mistake. Why would this be? The same majority regard the media as powerful in forming public opinion – yet the media, apart from the Guardian and BBC, seem pretty anti EU. Why do so many people think it was a mistake to leave?
January 30, 2025
If you trumpet lies often enough and loud enough the dimwitted get to believe it.
What’s in it for the liars? I really don’t understand it.
January 30, 2025
The road to bankruptcy would be paved with increasing public sector expenditure and borrowing to fund more debt, as Starmer and his amateur band of questionable talents would have known instinctively, had they any common sense.
If only they would take heed of the warnings of vintage Jim Callahan, Labour PM 1976 –
“We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists, and in so far as it ever did exist, it only worked on each occasion since the war by injecting a bigger dose of inflation into the economy, followed by a higher level of unemployment as the next step”.
James Callaghan
January 30, 2025
I don’t recall the last government which came in on the promise of leaving the EU ever promoting the benefits so it is no surprise the EU lackeys currently in power would promote our independence either.
January 30, 2025
It has always been the same. From August 2017:
http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2017/08/05/the-importance-of-property-to-a-democracy/#comment-882760
“Off-topic, JR, I’ve finally come to the end of my patience with David Davis and his now massive department and so I’ve have just send this email to the so-called “media unit”, copied to him and to the “correspondence unit” in the Cabinet Office:
“Hello, anybody at home?”
“Day after day, week after week, I see pro-EU, anti-Brexit propaganda flooding into the mass media, but I never see any response from you lot.
This morning the BBC had that old euromaniac Peter Hain on its breakfast “news” spouting rubbish about Ireland, and did they also have somebody from your department there to rebut what he was saying? Of course not, there never is.
It is official government policy that the UK shall leave the EU, and leave the EU Customs Union, and leave the EU Single Market, so why as a media office are you not actively, publicly, defending that government policy at every turn?”
Well, of course some would question whether any of that really is the official government policy or it is just a pretence to string the voters along, and that is why they are happy to stand by and hopefully see public support for Brexit fading away.”
Which it has, and how happy that must make the upper echelons of all the old political parties.
January 30, 2025
The Brexit issue should be taught in schools by people who fought to get us out (me being one them). There are more issues than money. For starters I never forgave Heath for allowing the Commonwealth to be trashed by the EU (our trade was outlawed) to join them and take their goods. Then they ruined out fruit orchards/steel industry/meat industry by not taking our products for years after BSE etc/carpet industry by taking cheap imports from them. The list goes on but the young are being spoonfed lies about how much better we would be in paying loads of money (borrowed by government which we have to pay back via our taxes). The government and Civil Service only want to be back in so that they do not have to make decisions (work?) and take what the EU tell them to do. They are nothing more than benefit scroungers taking money but not doing a proper job.
January 30, 2025
the UK government is going to underwrite car loans for electric cars
you could not make it up
January 30, 2025
The EU is first of all a common market that if you are living in you can freely sell goods in and out of with minimum of fuss and tariff free. Secondly there is the free movement of its peoples so all the better to track services and finanicals etc and then lastly as far as I am concerned and now that I am retired with a EU passport I can move easily to Spain or South of France and enjoy the winter sunshine hassle free – so what’s so terribly wrong with that? Don’t know what’s the matter with you British you were in the EU then you thought you’d be better off out and now that you’re out you’re still not happy alway’s complaining – you should be away now making all of those new trade deals with countries far away.
January 30, 2025
Nightmare time of Rachel as Chancellor
Country needs urgent growth. She responds with Heathrow 3rd airport.
– Will be years before runway built. She’ll be long gone as a politician in power.
– Won’t bring real growth. 28% of Heathrow uses are business.
– Will lead to the opposite of real growth. With more aeroplane noise pollution, less people will want to work and live in the City of London and in London in general (like the Frankfurt effect where some / many people don’t want to work and live there because it is a boring city to). Whilst doing damage to our beautiful city London, affecting tourism too.