Brexit Lies

Remember that promise of what we could do as a nation with all that money we would save if we left the EU? All those billions (or was it trillions) of pounds being wasted on Brussels Bureaucrats and needless regulations? Such a massive drain on our resources!

Remember the big red battle bus with its promise of £350 million a week extra for the NHS all from the Brexit Bonus we would save?

How different the facts are!

I got my tax summary for last year today. Here is how my tax, as a pensioner with an NHS former manager's pension, plus a state pension, plus a small income from my books sales, was spent. It contains an interesting breakdown of what my personal contribution to UK Government tax revenue was spent on so I can see exactly how much it costs me personally to be a citizen of the European Union, with all the privileges that gives me.

I've converted it to percentages of total contribution below, so this should represent the proportion of their tax paid by the average taxpayer that is spent on different things.

How your tax contributed to public spending

Purpose	Percent*
Welfare	23.8
Health	19.9
State Pensions	12.8
Education	12.0
National debt interest	6.1
Defense	5.3
Public order and safety	4.3
Transport	4.3
Business and industry	2.9
Government and administration	2.1
Housing and utilities eg street lights	1.6
Culture eg sports, libraries, museums	1.6
Environment	1.6
Overseas aid	1.2
UK contribution to the EU budget	0.7
*May not total 100% due to rounding

See that figure right at the bottom of the list? Less that three quarters of one percent of UK spending goes on our contribution to the EU. For me, this represents about the cost of a bar of chocolate a month or maybe a couple of bottles of medium-priced wine a year.

And what is this 'massive saving' going to cost if we have a no deal Brexit?

Our goods will be less competitive in our largest market; we will face difficulties recruiting staff in the care and catering industries, including the NHS. We will lose the additional tax revenues contributed by EU migrant labour who, despite the propaganda, take less in welfare and pay more in tax than the average UK-born adult. We will lose the income generated by the young migrant population that supplements the loss to pension funds from an increasingly aged population.

We will be leaving an organisation that has contribute to three generations of peace in Europe. My father's, grandfather's and great grandfather's generations, and generations before them, all saw wars in Europe whilst me, my children and their children have seen peace and prosperity. A hundred years ago the flower of British manhood was slaughtered by the million on the same battlefields as Agincourt and Poitier 500 years earlier.

We have been free to travel; free to work; free to live and receive healthcare anywhere in the EU. The former Communist dictatorships of Eastern Europe have been replaced by stable democracies. Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Greece have seen huge changes in their living standards and former border disputes that once plagued Europe have paled into irrelevance.

The EU is unique in human history in that disparate people with different languages, cultures and traditions have freely joined together the work together in peace; to do things a better way; to put aside differences and ancient enmities and build a better future. The EU is the only political union of independent nations that has ever expanded and grown by consent, not by conquest. Never before have free peoples applied to join an expanding 'empire' and asked for terms and conditions for joining, not of surender after fighting to remain free.

And we are about to turn our back on all that, somehow deluded that the old way was better - and that the cost of a couple of bottles of wine a year is well worth it.

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