Friday, October 24, 2014

Sex, drugs and Cameron's £1.7 billion headache

When I issued the warning that drugs and prostitution would add to Britain’s EU contributions, it never occurred to me Brussels would try to back-date the bill.
But it seems the Commission is demanding £1.7 billion on the grounds that our GDP has been under-stated since 1995 thanks to the black economy.
We should not have agreed to measure this in the first place when it was patently obvious the net result would be to cost the taxpayer more money. And we certainly shouldn’t accept any back-dated demands from the EU.
This ludicrous farce is all our own fault for allowing illegal activities to become part of the official GDP calculations in the first place. David Cameron must reject it but he can’t possibly claim any credit if he does refuse to pay up because he allowed this situation to develop in the first place.
Why can’t we be more like the French and simply refuse to take illegal activities into account in the first place? And as for expecting penurious Greece or Italy to cough up more because of the Mafia, it’s a joke.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-29752613