If you eat the cake, you no longer have it
Cornwall voted to leave but hey don’t take away its EU subsidy ok?
The Cornish council has issued a plea for “protection” following the United Kingdom’s vote to leave the European Union.
Cornwall, which has a poor economy and as such has received millions of pounds in subsidies from the EU each year for over a decade, voted decisively to Leave.
But this money is now threatened following the severing of ties with the EU.
Well it would be, wouldn’t it.
John Pollard, the leader of Cornwall council said: “Now that we know the UK will be leaving the EU we will be taking urgent steps to ensure that the UK Government protects Cornwall’s position in any negotiations.
“We will be insisting that Cornwall receives investment equal to that provided by the EU programme which has averaged £60m per year over the last ten years.”
I see. And by the same token we all want to pay zero tax while still collecting all possible subsidies and benefits.
But a statement on the council website posted on Friday said prior to the referendum said the county was reassured by the Leave side that withdrawing from the EU would not affect the funding already allocated by Brussels.
Leave campaigners also promised the county would not be worse off in terms of the investment it receives. “We are seeking urgent confirmation from Ministers that this is the case,” the statement added.
So the county assumed the Leave side was telling it the truth?
Bad move.
In 2014, Jonathan Lindsell, author of a report on industries benefit from the EU, told the Western Morning News: “Cornwall is a major beneficiary of EU spending so if Britain were to leave then the Treasury would have to take great care in ensuring its local economy was not crippled as a result.
“Not only do Cornwall’s many farmers and fishermen benefit from the Common Agricultural Policy and Common Fisheries Policy respectively, but the county receives tens of millions of pounds a year in structural and convergence funds to support local economic growth and communities.
“In the 2014-2020 budget, Cornwall has been allocated 592 million euros from the convergence fund to assist with further development. If Britain leaves the EU before 2020 the government should seriously consider keeping this fund up.”
Oh well – at least they gave those filthy foreigners a good poke in the eye.
Makes me think of the farmers around these parts. Don’t give any federal aid for anything…oh, but wait, don’t take away my subsidies. I’m entitled to those.
(I suspect a large part of this is racism; the farmers around here are white, and think almost all other forms of government aid go to ‘undeserving’ people of color).
Reminds me of a story on the podcast Reveal a couple of weeks ago that talked about a community in Oregon, who refused to raise taxes to fund the police department. For years, they had subsisted on logging money and then federal subsidies when that went away. Now both are gone, crime is rising and the police can’t get adequate personnel because every tax levy is voted down.
I don’t get people who vote against their own interests time and again.
I understand, from someone who lives in Cornwall and posts on another blog I read, that Cornwall voted heavily in favour of Leave. Um OK.
Yep. See my first sentence and the first quoted para.
‘voted decisively to Leave.’ Oops, missed that. I guess it’s just too hard to believe.
Same with Wales. Nett EU beneficiary and voted overwhelmingly to leave. What goes through their heads. For the record, my view is the EU is far from perfect, but any organisation that seeks dialogue and compromise, rather than division and conflict is better than a whole bunch of separatist states.
It’s bewildering. The phrase “talk about poking an elephant’s arse with a stick and pretending not to know what would happen” springs to mind.
Numerous obvious lies from the leave campaign were revealed literally the day after the vote. The one that’s received the most publicity is a poster from the leave campaign that pretty much claimed that the money we currently pay to the EU would be used instead for the NHS.
Now, obviously this wasn’t a promise that the leave campaign was in any position to make, but it seems likely that it helped some people decide which way to vote. The day after the vote, Nigel Farage first denied that the campaign had said any such thing and, when forced, said that it was a mistake on behalf of whoever made the poster, as though it wasn’t something produced and approved by the highest level of the leave campaign.
The leave campaign also said that this money saved would be used to pay for the increased taxation on exports that we’ll have to pay now. The remain campaign should have been all over this as being both a contradiction and a promise that couldn’t be guaranteed anyway. But it wasn’t.
We’ve let ourselves be suckered into a bad idea which was both unsupported by evidence and plainly orchestrated – at least in part – by a few individual politicians using people’s disgruntlement and insecurity as a tool for gaining personal power. We deserve it.
Yorkshire is doing the same: http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/politics/guarantees-wanted-over-the-future-of-european-millions-1-7982120