[AnthonyDunn]

@ SimonS1 – 23/03/2013 07:35 GMT

And in the interests of accuracy, that Channel 4 News broadcast stated that:

Of the 5.5million currently claiming working age benefits, some 6.4% were originally from abroad when they first got National Insurance numbers, equating to 371,000.

Of those: about one-quarter (some 93,000) are EU citizens and thus entitled to claim (this is a reciprocal right for UK nationals in EU countries). That leaves some 278,000 originally non-UK/EU citizens claiming some kind of benefit. Of those:

Some 150,000 (40.4% of the 371,000) have since become UK citizens (iaw UK immigration and naturalisation law).
Some 81,000 (21.8% of the 371,000) have indefinite leave to remain (iaw UK immigration law).
Some 54,000 (or 14.6% of the 371,000) have refugee status (iaw with the UK’s signature to UN Refugee Conventions).
Some 27,000 (or 7.3% of the 371,000) have time limited leave to remain (iaw UK immigration law).
That leaves some 5,500 (or 1.5% of the 371,000) who are believed to be illegal immigrants.

Your original comment was/is highly tendentious and sadly straight out of the Daily Mail school of fact misrepresentation. Are you trying to suggest (a) that the UK should renege upon treaty/convention obligations? and (b) that it should breach its own domestic laws?

Thanks for the HMRC statement re: employee use of Air Miles etc as I will now be passing that onto someone who was digging me out on the matter. But I also note that whereas in the Civil Service (iaw its standard penny pinching attitude) you are required to give up any Avios etc, in the private sector, you normally are not. It can and does cut both ways – not that you would ever admit as such.

[SimonS1]

So Anthony, just to be clear, you are saying you would rather travel economy up to 6 hours and keep the Avios, than travel first class on Eurostar or business class on flights over 2.5 hours (or if you are big, or tall, or pregnant, etc etc.). Very noble of you if so – maybe have a word with the DfT as it might save the taxpayer some cash.

I don’t recall using the term “illegal” so I presume you are agreeing that 370,000 of the people on benefits and being looked after at taxpayers expense are indeed immigrants to the UK.

The business about 93,000 being able to claim benefits simply because the UK is in EU is a complete joke, in my view if you have no job in the UK you should go home and claim benefits in your home country. Otherwise surely the government should be encouraging any UK unemployed to move to Spain and make their unemployment someone else’s problem. This is precisely why many people in the UK are concerned about Romanians/Bulgarians coming here – day 1 arrive, day 2 visit the benefits office and the local housing department.

Exactly the same way as we apparently believe it is a EU requirement to shell out £1m a week in child benefit for 40,000 odd children not even resident here yet only 4 of 22 EU countries seem to believe that is the case and the other 18 refuse the payments. What nice chaps we are.

What I do agree with is the UK withdrawing from the EU treaty and convention. Just like Teresa May apparently. Although following the maxim of ‘never trust a Tory’ I am sure we will find out she is all mouth and trousers and this is another example of gesture politics closely followed by Cameron telling her to shut up and presumably eventually demoting here a bit like Justine Greening was when she dared to disagree with the great Etonian.

[canucklad]

I’ve posted this link before, well worth another watch, especially the bit about names….

High grade structured credit strategities fund or even better
High grade structured credit enhanced leverage fund =

Unemployed black man in a string vest fund !!

And hence the reason, why I think its a big con……if the money didn’t exist in the first place…how could we ” all in it together” lose it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzJmTCYmo9g

[AnthonyDunn]

@ SimonS1 – 24/03/2013 19:36 GMT

I had thought that this thread was about Air Passenger Duty but you have elected to take it off in a completely divergent direction and I am entirely happy to take issue with some of the points you’ve raised:

(i) Beyond your attempting to put words in my mouth, as I have not been a Civil Servant since 1993, my view has as much or as little bearing on CS travel and subsistence rules as yours does. If you don’t like the CS rules, you are perfectly at liberty to write to the Head of the Home Civil Service via the offices of your MP to complain and suggest a change, explaining the rationale for these.

(ii) The term “illegal” cropped up in the C4 News reporting of the DWP findings.

(iii) Like you I find it utterly bizarre that if you cannot find a job (for whatever reason) in another EU country, that you are then not required to return to your home country. I could not/would not ever dream of pitching up somewhere else simply to “sign on”. But to follow that to its logical conclusion would mean that if you cannot find work and are unable to afford the roof over your head, then you are required to return home to live with your parents! But it may be that the Prime Minister may be about to announce something significant in this regard later today.

(iv) Having been a local councillor, it really is a hoary old myth perpetuated by the gutter press about Romanians/Bulgarians or any other foreigners waltzing straight into social housing. It’s not there in the first place and the rules determining eligibility focus (rather too much in my view) on those with “dependency” issues such as drugs or alcohol abuse. Translating to social housing becoming over-populated with “problem” households. But that’s a whole different issue. Social housing eligibility rules are also changing to focus on longer term locals getting priority.

(v) Completely agree about payment of child benefits when they’re not even here – ridiculous and it should be stopped. Wait on “Call me Dave’s” speech later today.

(vi) Your point was not entirely clear but if you are advocating a Brexit, then withdrawal from the EU would translate to our paying more for single market access (the example is Norway), whilst being required to submit to all single market directives (the example is Norway & Switzerland) whilst having precisely no say whatsoever in the formulation of those directives (the example is Norway & Switzerland). The EU has made it clear that they simply will not countenance another Swiss deal with literally hundreds of separate agreements subject to negotiation in return for their membership of the European Economic Area. But I rather doubt that Call me Dave is likely to be PM to attempt to renegotiate EU membership after 2015.

Which “convention”? The Council of Europe/ the European Court of Human Rights (promoted by Churchill after WW2) is completely separate from and has no relationship whatsoever to the European Union. The CoE’s members include (don’t laugh!) Russia…. Were the UK to walk away from the CoE, forget any pointing of fingers by any UK politicians in future about other countries’ human rights abuses because the UK will simply be told “who are you to talk, you don’t even sign up to the Human Rights’ Convention….”

Interesting couple of items on this morning’s BBC Radio 4 “Today” programme. Interview with Emma Bonino – former President of the Italian Senate and a possible contender for the Italian Presidency – was talking about immigration and unemployment in Italy where graduate unemployment has risen by 45% over the last year and 140,000 young people fell compelled to leave the country to seek work elsewhere last year. She was talking about Italy having 5 MILLION immigrants – and that figure did not include the illegals… So, it’s very clearly not just the UK that is grappling with this issue.

Separately: Jonathon Portes of the National Institute of Economic & Social Research stated that EU nationals are significantly less likely (as in 1/2 as much) to claim benefits than UK nationals. EU nationals are twice as likely to be working here than are UK nationals and they pay far more into public funds than they take out but this is because they are predominantly young and in-work. The bulk of our public expenditure goes on pensions and the NHS which goes to the elderly rather than the young.

What would be interesting to learn is how many UK nationals are claiming welfare benefits in the various EU countries in which they reside? And also what experience other EU members states have of foreigners’ “welfare tourism”….

Air Passenger Duty?

[Bucksnet]

Why would withdrawal from the EU ‘translate’ to our paying anything?

Norway and Switzerland are EEA/EFTA members and so bound to do what you mention, but we don’t have to join the EEA/EFTA. And before someone mentions trade, the EU is a German planned and German controlled political project for the control of Europe by stealth, and no we don’t need to be a member of anything to trade.

We have a massive trade deficit with the other EU member states, and had a surplus before we joined. How in fact did we trade at all before we were members? Very successfully thank you very much, so no membership of anything is required.

Also, Mexico and South Korea have simple free trade agreements with the EU, and they are not part of it, nor members of the EEA/EFTA, or even in Europe. They are on opposite sides of the planet from Europe and doing well.

[Henkel.Trocken]

Bucksnet, why are you so paranoid about Germany and Germans? It is a recurring theme in anything you post about the EU.

I think quite differently that if we were at the heart fo the EU alongside Germany it would be a much better place, much better run and much more beneficial.

If we were to leave the EU everyone assumes that we would benefit from trade agreements, what if we didn’t? I don’t hear that question being answered no matter how often it is asked.

[Bucksnet]

I’m not paranoid at all. The Germans published the plans for the EEC in Berlin in May 1942, the EEC was formed and is now the EU.

As regards trade, we simply do not need to be part of a corrupt and undemocratic political project of ‘ever closer union’ whether German controlled or not to trade with anyone. If we had a trade surplus then I could understand to a certain extent fears of a loss of trade if leaving the EU single market, but we have a massive trade deficit.

[AnthonyDunn]

@ Bucksnet – 25/03/2013 10:26 GMT

Sorry Bucksnet, I realise that there are certain issues that dyed-in-the-wool Europhobes really do have an awful lot of difficulty with. But access to the European Union’s single market, if you are another European country, has a price tag attached. Sure Mexico, South Korea etc have access but they also have tariffs for certain products too. You have either one or t’other.

That we once had a trade surplus but no longer owes itself not to EC/EU membership but 100% to our own disdain for manufacturing industry and our obsession with services, particularly banking and financial services.

You appear not to recall the experience 1979-82 when the Thatcher government drove Sterling up to £1:$2.40 in a matter of months. Whilst the massive appreciation in Sterling drove down import prices and domestic inflation, it drove up exporters prices with the consequence that over 10% of manufacturing capacity disappeared in under five years. Remember Ted Heath’s accusation of Thatcher playing “one club golf” and not giving exporters a chance to adjust to an appreciating currency? I do as I was one of the 3 million “a price worth paying….” It left the bitterest of tastes in my mouth that I have neither forgotten nor forgiven.

I find myself in the very strange situation of agreeing pretty much completely with everything that HenkelTrocken has written about our relationship with Germany and the EU. If we had had the humility to put aside our fixation with UK house prices and learn from Germany about what a balanced economy (public-private, manufacturing-services, debt-investment etc.) means, then we would not now be in the position we are with a ballooning trade deficit. This is because we no longer have the companies (our own fault – we shut them down!) to produce the goods to export. This country is due a reality check and some basic self-honesty after 30-40 years of drivel and delusion about a UK “economic miracle” that was, in reality an “economic mirage”.

Time for you to start taking a cold hard look at yourself and your attitudes.

[Stringfellow]

“The Germans published the plans for the EEC in Berlin in May 1942, the EEC was formed and is now the EU.”

That’s just silly and on many levels quite offensive. This is not the Daily Mail

[Bucksnet]

Anthony, the fact remains we have a massive trade deficit, and not a surplus we need to worry about being put at risk.

During the period you mention we had a trade surplus almost every month, and never forget more manufacturing jobs were lost under ‘new’ Labour’s 13 years of misrule than under the previous 18 Tory years.

[Bucksnet]

Maybe you should read this Stringfellow: –

http://www.campaignfortruth.com/Eclub/101002/germaneec.htm

“Heydrich also drew up “The Reich Plan for the Domination of Europe”. This proposal was published and circulated in 1942 and bears a striking similarity to the 1957 Treaty of Rome, on which the European Union is based today.”

“Heydrich’s plan coincided with a conference organised by the University of Berlin in 1942, entitled “Europaische Wirtshaftgemeinschaft” – the European Economic Community (or EEC).”

Or this: –

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1179902/Revealed-The-secret-report-shows-Nazis-planned-Fourth-Reich–EU.html

Wake up mate!

[Henkel.Trocken]

“Bucksnet – 25/03/2013 10:40 GMT

I’m not paranoid at all. The Germans published the plans for the EEC in Berlin in May 1942, the EEC was formed and is now the EU.”

Are you serious? Just think of the Germany that was there in May 1942, can you really believe that the plans which led to the EU were formed by the Hitler government and the Nazi Party?

Plot, lost and paranoid are the only words that can explain that sort of thinking.

[Stringfellow]

Bucksnet – posts like that are just silly.

Speaking as somebody who is British but does an extensive amount of business in Germany I can tell you that the German attitude to the Nazi period and the EU project is so far at odds with what the Daily Mail thinks it is beyond sight. Take a look at the German economic performance over the past twenty years and tell me if they really need the EU ?

[AnthonyDunn]

@Bucksnet – 25/03/2013 10:50 GMT

You could do with some basic reading in economics. Our trade deficit is 100% made in Britain. We slipped into trade deficit in the mid-1980s and we have not, barring the very exceptional month here and then, ever recovered our trade surplus. I recall Heseltine opining that the lost capacity and products would return at some point – but he never stated in which millennium this would happen.

The rate of loss of manufacturing capacity set off by Thatcher/Howe/Lawson continued under NuBluLabLiar simply because they continued the Tory/Daily Mail fixation with (a) UK house prices (b) the Tory expenditure plans and economic policies during their first term and (c) the clear bias towards banking and financial services that the Tories promoted from “Big Bang” onwards. Do you not remember Brown’s Faustian pact with the City with the tripartite “loose touch” regulatory regime in return for “loadsmoney” in taxes?

The problem we have in the UK is our inability to recognise what we’ve been getting wrong for decades and learn from what others have been getting right. Instead, across the past 30-40 years, every time that there has been an increase in inflation, we have routinely turned to interest rates to jack up the value of Sterling, drive down import prices, ramp up our exporters prices and conspire either to prevent our exporters from exporting – or wipe them out completely. I am astonished, after this use of wilfully self-destructive economic policy, that we have any internationally trade-able goods sector left.

If, as you observe, the balance of trade is a key indicator of economic performance, then surely we should be looking to emulate Germany rather than denigrate that country?

[Stringfellow]

“AnthonyDunn”

Excellent post – you said I what I was thinking.

Working with Germans I can tell you a number of areas where we could learn from them:

1 – they simply don’t care about house prices
2 – executive and blue collar pay is far closer together
3 – they save A LOT
4 – engineering is respected
5 – banking is suspected

[Author]

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