Brexit, the economy and house prices part 5

Moby

I wonder if people would have voted for brexit had they known the cost to us as taxpayers! A German parliamentarian close to the chancellor, Angela Merkel, has confirmed that the European Union wants the UK to agree to pay up to €100bn (£89.4bn) to settle the Brexit divorce bill. Michael Fuchs, vice chair of the of Merkel’s CDU/CSU group in the German parliament, said the €20bn (£17.9bn) so far offered by the UK was inadequate. Asked by ITV’s Good Morning Britain how much the EU was demanding, Fuchs said: I cannot give you the final figure, but there is a figure of between €100bn and maybe €60bn [£53.7bn]. Something in between these two numbers should be the right point. This is what the negotiations have to do at moment. I hope David Davis is coming up with decent proposals, €20bn is definitely not enough. Fuchs also confirmed that money was the major sticking point in the stalled negotiations. He said: There is an offer of €20bn which is obviously not enough. You can just calculate all the pensions and it’s very obvious that the Europeans don’t want to pay the pensions for the Brits which are living in Brussels.

cogito

Moby wrote: »

He said: There is an offer of €20bn which is obviously not enough. You can just calculate all the pensions and it’s very obvious that the Europeans don’t want to pay the pensions for the Brits which are living in Brussels.

The most recent EU accounts show outstanding pension liabilities of €67.2bn. There Re 1730 UK citizens receiving pensions out of a total 22000 retirees.

The UK is not disputing that there is s financial liabilty but the EU are using an artificially low discount rate and coming up with a UK share of €11bn. The UK position is that a realistic discount rate would put their liability at about €3.5bn.

Eric_the_half_a_bee

cogito wrote: »

The most recent EU accounts show...

They also show an overall total of assets minus liabilities of around €70bn, our share of that is less than €10bn. Instead the EU has asked us for ten times that, €100bn.

The EU describes the remaining €90bn as liabilities. They are not. They are aspirations for future spending that the EU is unwilling to moderate in a post-Brexit world, and wants our help in funding. Well sorry, but partnerships don't work like that.

cogito

Eric_the_half_a_bee wrote: »

They also show an overall total of assets minus liabilities of around €70bn, our share of that is less than €10bn. Instead the EU has asked us for ten times that, €100bn.

The EU describes the remaining €90bn as liabilities. They are not. They are aspirations for future spending that the EU is unwilling to moderate in a post-Brexit world, and wants our help in funding. Well sorry, but partnerships don't work like that.

Unfortunately they are rather more than aspirations as the EU has agreed to fund various future projects which it won't be able to afford without UK money. If they decided to do what any sensible person who suffered a paycut would do and cancelled their spending plans, they wouldn't have a problem but if they did that, the Poles and others would scream loudly. If they don't do it, the Germans would refuse to open their chequebook. That is why they are so desperate for our money.

Google "reste a liquider"

Arklight

I'm beginning to think that Brexit will be a success after all


https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/19/theresa-may-brexit-britain-brussels

Another Brussels dinner tonight, another impasse. Yet Theresa May will face 27 people more enviably united round the dinner table than any group of 27 people she could assemble from within her own cabinet or party.
So mad is the Tory box of frogs that she has had to withdraw the EU withdrawal bill for the second time...
Her party’s no-dealers are daily ramping up the rhetoric; Owen Paterson told her this morning: “Walk away!” The sheer philosophical impossibility of their position makes your head ache. Which is the wrong box, the one marked “bad deal” or the one marked “no deal”? The bad deal, by definition, sounds worse.
But when Alice looks inside the no deal box she finds World Trade Organisation rules imposing 45% tariffs on her cheese, 37% on meat, 10% on clothing and footwear, and 10% on cars – while inflation caused by the Brexit plunge in the pound already runs at 3%, with earnings squeezed to less that they were in 2006.

Brexit will be awful at first, it will be painful, and impoverishing and divisive, and even it's biggest proponents will realise that economically destroying the people who pay for their pensions and nursing homes and whom they expect to buy their houses, has a knock on effect.


But it will mean a Labour government. Millions of people will be born and grow up with the same impression of the Tories as the boomers seem to have of Labour. If they follow the boomer lead, it won't matter what the Tories ever do again because the electorate's mind will be 100% closed. Made up in 2019 as synonymising Toryism with poverty and chaos.


The Tories and their awful media empire out of the way we can go back to having news that isn't oriented around curtain twitching misanthropes, a nationalised rail system that runs on time, a health service that is designed to make people healthy, not enrich corporate PFI providers. We can have a welfare safety net which isn't expressly designed to punish the poor.


With all this in place we'll look so much like France, Germany, or Scandinavia that we will probably just rejoin the EU anyway.


And it will all be thanks to the Brexiteers.


Thanks Brexiteers.

Eric_the_half_a_bee

cogito wrote: »

Unfortunately they are rather more than aspirations as the EU has agreed to fund various future projects which it won't be able to afford without UK money.

If my wife and I agree as a couple to give £5,000 to charity, and then we get divorced, no reasonable divorce settlement will require my wife donate her £2,500 share of that £5,000 to charity.

cogito

Arklight wrote: »

But it will mean a Labour government. a health service that is designed to make people healthy, not enrich corporate PFI providers.

Remind us which government it was that did this.

LHW99

Millions of people will be born and grow up with the same impression of the Tories as the boomers seem to have of Labour.

Many of those in the generation you seem to blame for voting for Brexit were born and grew up under a Labour Government. As they became older, they began to vote Tory. Additionally according to a University of Warwick study, it was not older voters that primarily were the ones causing the referendum result.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/finances-key-predictor-vote-brexit-eu-referendum-result-older-voters-a7981121.html

fewgroats

Depends on how you define an older voter. Under 30 year olds seem quite pro-remain.

Ballard

Eric_the_half_a_bee wrote: »

If my wife and I agree as a couple to give £5,000 to charity, and then we get divorced, no reasonable divorce settlement will require my wife donate her £2,500 share of that £5,000 to charity.

I suspect that had you signed a legal document with the charity that as a couple you would donate the money then you would remain liable.

I am not a lawyer, though, and don't know the ins and outs of the agreements that the UK has signed with the EU. Surprisingly, most other posters on this board appear to be fully aware.