Tag Archive for EU

British budget does nothing for England

June 30, 2013 Economy, Federal Europe, Scotland 2 comments

Telford Food BankThe British Chancellor’s spending review is nothing short of a disgrace and yet more evidence that the Brits have no idea how to solve the problems the country faces and no qualms about shafting England to pay for bribes in Scotland.

It is perverse that so many people in England are forced to turn to food banks – perhaps as many as half a million according to some estimates – but the British government is still desperate to ring fence the £11bn international aid budget.  We spend almost as much on international aid as we do subsidising Scotland!

David Cameron says we have a moral obligation to spend obscene amounts of money on international aid but your moral compass would have to be pointing in a strange direction to think that £11bn wouldn’t be better spent feeding people at home rather than subsidising the Indian space and nuclear weapons programmes, for example.

The Scots are getting more money to bribe them in the run-up to the independence referendum as well.  The capital and resource budgets for Scotland are being increased and extra spending cuts being inflicted on the rest of the UK aren’t being applied to Scotland.

Meanwhile, the British are still spending £9m an hour net on EU membership that nobody wants.

British government gives 11% of English EU funding to Scotland, Wales & NI

April 2, 2013 Apartheid, Federal Europe, Traitors 3 comments

When David Cameron secured his “historic” reduction of the increase in the EU budget it was on the condition that the UK ended up paying more whilst everyone else’s bill went down.

Thief

One of the mechanisms for making us pay more was a reduction in the amount of our money the EU gives us back as structural funding.  Predictably, the British government has found a way to make England feel a disproportionate amount of the pain of the increased membership costs of being in the EU by skimming 11% off the money allocated in the EU budget to England and sharing it out between Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to cushion them from the effects of the reduced structural funding.  As the only net contributor to the British Treasury, England is already responsible for paying a disproportionate amount of the cost of being in the EU making it doubly unfair for the hard working English taxpayer.

The Local Government Association have criticised the plans to deprive England of desperately needed structural funding and have predictably called for “devolution” of power and funding to local authorities.  The LGA is just one of the organisations that respond to the discrimination against the English with calls for the balkanisation of England and local government reorganisation as a weak and ineffectual English equivalent to the Scottish Parliament and Welsh and Northern Irish Assemblies.

This is yet more proof that the English just can’t trust the British to protect their interests or even just treat them fairly.  We need an English Parliament now more than ever.

Welsh MEP says English should give more money to Wales

March 24, 2013 England, Federal Europe, Labour, Wales 5 comments

But not for equal funding

Welsh Labour MEP, Derek Vaughan, has called for the English to give even more money to Wales to make up for a £400m cut in EU funding agreed by the British.

When the EU budget was “cut”, as well as our contributions going up the amount of money we get back from the EU was also cut.  As Wales is a net recipient of EU funding that means that the Welsh lose more funding per capita than the English and it’s this funding reduction agreed by the British government that Derek Vaughan thinks the English should compensate them for.

Wales already gets nearly £1,400 more in per capita public spending than England so Vaughan can sod off.  It’s about time the rest of the UK started paying their own bills and stopped leaching off the English taxpayer.

Virgin Money snaps up Northern Rock on second attempt at huge discount

November 20, 2011 Come the revolution, Economy 2 comments

I’ve written about Northern Rock quite a few times since they were brought down by Saint Robert of Peston in 2007 and looking back at what I wrote and what others said is quite interesting.

When Saint Robert of Peston whipped up a frenzy of consumer panic with his misleading reports on Northern Rock’s request for an emergency credit line from the Bank of England (misrepresenting it as a loan rather than the offer of a loan if they needed it) he caused a run on the bank which deprived it of its working capital.  The inevitable happened of course and the Northern Rock ran out of cash and was nationalised.

Northern Rock has now been sold to Virgin Money at a minimum loss of £400m but possibly as much as £653m on the amount the UK Treasury spent nationalising the bank.  Those of you who have taken an interest in the Northern Rock affair and with good memories for these things might be getting a touch of déja vu at the mention of Virgin Money and Northern Rock in the same sentence because Richard Branson tried to take over Northern Rock before it was nationalised and on much better terms for UK plc than what has just been agreed less than a fortnight after Saint Robert of Peston embarked on his career-making hatchet job on the bank.

The original Virgin Money offer was to buy Northern Rock’s entire operation, pay back £11bn of the £25bn Bank of England emergency loan that Northern Rock was forced to take immediately with the balance to be paid within 3 years.  The UK Treasury hadn’t spent any money nationalising the bank so the taxpayer’s exposure to Northern Rock would have been repaid within 3 years, Northern Rock’s operations would have remained intact, Northern Rock’s investors would have had a chance of getting a return on some of their investments and the ripples that Northern Rock’s collapse and nationalisation sent through the banking sector could have been avoided.  The UK Treasury instead chose to nationalist the bank, costing the taxpayer billions and contributing to the virtual collapse of the UK banking sector.

Whilst I hold Saint Robert of Peston significantly responsible for the collapse of Northern Rock, some of the blame has to fall on the EU because Saint Robert wouldn’t have found out about the credit line if it wasn’t for the EU Monetary Abuse Directive (MAD) that required the Bank of England to publicise the fact that it had been offered.  The previous governor of the Bank of England, Eddie George, said at the time that if he was still governor when the EU MAD was brought in he would have resigned over it.

Ed the Millibeast has had a pop at George Osbourne about him selling the Northern Rock off at such a loss for no apparent reason but it turns out that he had no choice because the last Chancellor, Alistair McDarling, had to agree to sell off Northern Rock within 3 years to get permission from the EU to nationalise the bank.  And which government department did Ed the Millibeast work in at the time of the Northern Rock nationalisation?  Erm, that would be the Treasury – he was a minister in the Treasury when his boss agreed to the 3 year restriction on the nationalisation!

Richard Branson’s purchase of Northern Rock is only for the “good bank” – the “bad bank” was merged with Bradford & Bingley which was also nationalised.  The “bad bank” is still slowly paying back the billions of pounds it owes the taxpayer.  What happened to the Bank of England loan is anyone’s guess.  Northern Rock has cost the taxpayer a lot of money – a lot more than necessary so far and the Virgin Money takeover will cost hundreds of millions more.  The mismanagement of the economy and the banking crisis is nothing short of criminal.

The whole Northern Rock saga started with gross incompetence and unnecessary wasting of taxpayers money and it’s perhaps a fitting end for the Northern Rock brand that it will finish with a loss-making sale to the bank that tried to buy it before it cost the taxpayer billions of pounds and precipitated the near collapse of the banking sector and at a snip of the price offered in 2007.

Come the revolution there will be a special part of the wall marked out for Saint Robert of Peston, Alistair Darling and all the other criminally incompetent and irresponsible idiots that have cost us so dearly.