Referendum and Rugby League

Found this on internet.....very interesting if you read it all. Many with a fixed position won't of course...but for those wavering it should be read.

Liars, damned liars and statisticians politicians .....

It’s the final few days of the EU in/out decision. I am frankly appalled. I have never witnessed such an unethical and downright despicable campaign waged by both sides of any socio-economic political argument. So many distortions, scare tactics and outright bare faced lies are being promulgated on both sides of the fence. Both sides are playing on fear rather than fact and the worryingly widespread public ignorance of and blind indifference to those facts. The result, whichever way it turns out, will be a reprehensible travesty of honest, rational, mature, properly informed debate and an insult to the democratic process itself.

I’ll give two examples of untruths on both sides , one socio-political and one economic

The “IN” crowd are saying our national security would be undermined by Brexit. False. Our membership of NATO and our ability to share security related information have absolutely no connection whatsoever with our membership of the EU. In any case it would clearly be entirely contrary to any EU member state’s interests to exclude us from the multilateral pan-European exchange and collation of information about and co-operation in , for example, counter terrorism.

Income tax would have to rise sharply the day after a vote for Brexit due to the shock contraction in GDP. False. Firstly our trading (and fiscal relationship) with the EU would carry on exactly the same for several years while our membership was being ramped down and new trade deals were being ramped up. So any potential GDP impact would be slow burn, be that negative or indeed positive. But even if a tax rise was necessary there’s no reason whatsoever why it couldn’t be deferred and/or be gradually phased in over a period of years ( and would arguably become unnecessary as our GDP stabilised) or be brought about passively by what’s technically called “fiscal drag” (freezing or raising personal tax allowances , NI thresholds etc. much more slowly than inflation) as indeed it frequently has been in the past. Secondly we have in any case recently been through one of the most severe global economic shocks to our GDP in history and yet for all of us our income tax bill has been falling(and in real terms to boot). Thus there is absolutely no contemporary empirical evidence whatsoever for even a large transient GDP negative shock necessitating an immediate income tax increase (nor indeed an interest rate rise - quite the opposite in fact !). Moreover suddenly reducing what punters have in their pockets to spend and pushing up the cost of credit would actually make the economic situation very much worse rather than better.

The “OUT” crowd are saying we send £350Million a week to Brussels. False. We actually hand over about £265M/week because we get a discount at source , furthermore we get about £100M/week back in grants and subsidies so the true net cost of our EU membership is around £160M/week . To put that number in context it equates to about 0.5% of total government spending. The government can’t reliably control/forecast its spending even to within plus or minus several percent so 0.5% is just “fiscal noise” ; our EU membership actually costs us virtually nothing in the grand scheme of things hence whether we pay into the EU pot or not won’t make a blind bit of practical difference to the exchequer’s coffers.

Our laws would be freed up from the rulings of the European Court of Justice. False. They already are. The ECJ has absolutely no power whatsoever over our national laws set out by our elected Parliament, only over EU law (and it’s vital here to distinguish between “law” and “regulation” – relatively speaking there are a few EU laws and a lot of EU regulations). In other words the ECJ can rule only on those laws applying between member states as opposed to the sovereign laws applying solely within a member state. What that means is the ECJ can only act (i) when a member state challenges the interpretation of an EU law or (ii) when a member state fails in its legal obligations to the EU or to another member state. Furthermore a citizen in an EU member state cannot appeal to the ECJ for a ruling on matters of their own national law. For that matter neither is the European Court of Human Rights an EU institution (it’s a Council of Europe institution – out of the 47 ECHR signatory member states only 28 are in the EU ) .

Many of the other OUT/IN arguments are more matters of subjective opinion and speculation than of evidence or of indisputable fact. Would the EU give us an overall better trade deal as outsiders than we currently have as members ? Why would they do or not do that ? Would a more favourable trade deal for us open the floodgates for other member states to call a referendum to try the same trick and in the limit lead to the collapse of the entire EU project ? Would any trade deal make us still subject to EU free movement laws ? (we’d certainly still be subject to EU regulation e.g. there’s no way could we export cars that didn’t meet EU safety and emissions standards). Would the WTO force us to renegotiate all our 106 existing trade agreements to our detriment if we leave the EU or would we be in a much stronger and more flexible negotiating position outside the EU’s constraints ? Would large non EU companies (e.g. Honda) , who use a nifty intellectual property licensing trick which enables them to use manufacturing in the UK as a tariff free back door into the EU marketplace, pull up the tent pegs and go to Spain or Portugal or would they stay put ? Why would other countries, who presumably are quite happily importing some of what they need from elsewhere, suddenly start buying those things from us instead if the EU imposed a protectionist style post-Brexit trade tariff on us making our exports to the EU less competitive ? We are one of 28 ; would it be more detrimental to the EU if their exports to us declined or would it be more detrimental to us if their imports from us declined ? Would we have better control over our borders if we’re outside the EU ? Why wouldn’t the French simply open the gates to Le Chunnel on Brexit Day +1 and solve their migrant problem at a stroke ? Where is the EU heading ? Is it better to have a voice in the EU and accept or try to correct its faults or place ourselves outside its direct sphere of influence yet still be subject peripherally to some of the knock-on effects of the EU’s global influence on trade, human rights, migration and legislation with no say whatsoever in any of that ? Which is better : a small say in a big effect on us or no say in a small effect on us ? Would our day to day lives change, for better or for worse, or stay more or less the same if we come out ?

Nobody knows the answers to any of those questions and many more besides. They’re what N.N. Taleb (top notch mathematician/logician) calls “known unknowns” ; we know that all of those are important facets conveying either benefits or risks but we can’t know which or how they are weighted a priori ; we can only discover that a posteriori. That applies equally to OUT and to IN because we don’t knowwhere the EU is heading in the medium and longer term. All we can reasonably and impartially infer is that an IN vote carries some degree of short term certainty, an OUT vote carries some degree of short term uncertainty and both votes have potential risks and potential benefits.

So to my mind one can distil all the facts, opinions , speculations and threats down to one simple question :

Would we be better off, in the broadest and in the most holistic sense of that phrase, coming out and being less overtly influenced by EU laws and regulations or would we be better off staying in, being directly influenced by EU laws and regulations and having some influence over those

I am pretty well convinced that OUT would be a significant economic negative. 40% of our exports go to the EU. True we import near enough the same in value from the EU BUT that’s from the entire EU. On a country by country basis none of the other 27 would even blink if we stopped buying their goods. Therefore there is no good reason to give us a favourable trade deal. They will screw us mercilessly on tariffs and regulation for the simple reason that we need them a lot more than they need us.

We already have hard won privileged status in the EU with a rebate, guaranteed opt outs on closer integration and bail outs, don’t have to join the Schengen (“open borders”) region, we have a special border arrangement with France which allows our border service to stop illegal immigrants on French soil at the French end of Le Chunnel, we don’t have to join the Euro etc. We’re already in a better position than most other EU members. We’d be daft to chuck that away. The idea that they’ll somehow treat us even more favourably if we come out is frankly preposterous. They don’t need us, we have few natural resources, we can’t even feed ourselves.

We couldn’t control immigration in the 1960s and 1970s pre-EU so why should we be able to do it post-EU. Anyway there are about 1.2 to 1.5 million ex-pat Brits living in the EU . That’s about 2.5% of our population. Roughly 3Mill non-Brit EU nationals work and /or live here. That’s about 0.6% of EU population. Ergo we’re a far bigger (pro rata) exporter of people to the EU than they are to us ! We’re a rapidly aging population- we need youngsters to come and work here,be productive and innovative, pay their taxes and pay for our pensions ! Germany is in an even worse state in that respect (second only to Japan in fact) which is why Mrs Merkel welcomes immigrants.

Much of our major manufacturing (and financial services – representing about 15% to 20% of our economy) is non-EU foreign owned and is only based here for two reason (i) easy, free access to the EU and (ii) EU employment law (which overall is pretty good legislation).

Not all EU derived stuff is at all bad – e.g. employment law. EU control over food quality and grading etc. is overall a good thing for us consumers because it ensure consistency.

If we leave and the pound falls our exports get cheaper. Great. But our imports get more expensive .We don’t produce enough food or gas/elec or fuel of our own so day to day essential living costs would rise.

I’m not quite sure what you mean by retaining national identity ; the Germans are no less bombastic Teutons for being in the EU and the French are still ....well ....the same bloody minded French buggers they always were (bless ‘em ) and the Italians still drive like suicidal idiots (especially in Rome)

I’m a whole hearted Europhile but I don’t feel any less of a “Tyke” (note that I put being a Yorkie above being English !)

But to return to your point about costs :

The EU is hopelessly inefficient ,overstaffed and costs a fortune to run. Or is it and does it ? To decide that we have to crunch some data.

The EU has a population of 500M spread over 28 countries. The EU administration for all of that employs 55,000 civil servants (sources : EU budget document). The salary bill is about 8Bn Euros , say £6.4Bn. That’s 6% of the entire EU budget. But that includes on-costs , buildings maintenance, employer’s pension costs etc. etc. Only 3% of the EU budget actually goes directly into paypackets, so that’s about £3.2Bn p.a.

Numbers mean little in isolation so let’s try to put that in context.

The grand total for each of the 28 member states of their own national Civ Serv costs is about 2,300 Billion. So 28 countries together spend around 700 times as much administering themselves as the EU spends on administering them.

UK Civ Servs are paid on average about £25 to £29K (senior management grades get £77K) they all pay typically 7% towards their Civ Serv pensions.

A typical EU Civ Serv salary is around £25K- about the same as ours if not a bit less – they all pay (all the way up to and including the President) 11.6% towards their Civ Serv pensions.

94% of the entire EU budget goes back to the member states in grants, subsidies and investments etc.

How many other large organisations spend 3% or less directly on pay ? They even put our charities to shame in that respect.

The Governor of our BoE gets a salary of £880K p.a. plus pension etc. The President of the EU gets about £245K pa. in salary and benefits INCLUDING pension etc.

In 2014 the EU Civ Serv retirement age was raised to 63. An EU Civ Serv needs to pay in for 37 years to get a full EU Civ Serv pension. The figure for our state pension is 35 years.

EU senior officials pay a 6% tax surcharge in addition to their income tax of typically 45%.

The City of Birmingham has a population of just over 1M . Guess how many civil servants work for Birmingham ? 60,00. That’s one medium size British city with more Civ Servs than the entire EU administration for 28 nations.

In 2015/16 our NHS spent £3.3Bn just on agency staff alone (source; NHS pay review body ). That’s about same as the EU spends directly on total pay.

Conclusion : The EU administration is jaw-droppingly efficient at what it does.

I just so wish the IN campaign would focus on the facts !.