Barrhead News | Opinion | EU costs contributed to collapse

Saturday, 22nd November, 2008

Published: Thursday, 25th September, 2008 08:15

EU costs contributed to collapse

"NO matter how they get their money, the more people spend the greater the wealth of the country; and the higher the cost of property, the wealthier the country".

So we were told by BBC’s Dan Snow on 4th January last year; and people were being encouraged to borrow huge amounts they could never repay, for hyper-inflated house prices and anything else that took their fancy, leading to thousands of bankruptcies and repossessions of homes. Furthermore, the banks lending this money have themselves run up enormous debts.

The stupidity of this has been demonstrated by the collapse of the property market and some banks in the US and here; but this is masking the fact that UK as a country is doing the same sort of thing by importing increasingly greater amounts of goods from the EU which it cannot match with its exports to them.

We have had an escalating manufacturing trade deficit with the EEC/EU ever since we joined in 1973, which reached £38 billion per year in 2006, and services trade was also in deficit. This means that since joining the EEC we have transferred £38 billion worth of jobs to the EEC/EU, causing thousands of factory closures and hundreds of thousands of lost jobs. This has led to a ‘goods and services’ deficit with the rest of the world of £16.4 billion in 2006. Also, it has been estimated that EU membership is costing us over £150 billion per year, including £6 billion net payments to the EU Institutions.

It is not unreasonable, therefore, to think that the lost jobs (1.72 million unemployed in July 2008) and the enormous costs resulting from EU membership, have contributed to the collapse of the housing market in the UK, and will make it very hard for the UK to recover.

Also, it seems logical that our escalating trade deficits, mainly with the EU, could well cause collapse of the pound, which is already losing value in relation to the euro. This is a disaster waiting to happen, but strangely, it does not seem to occur to media analysts to consider the effects of our EU membership on our economy.

To make matters worse, Gordon Brown is going to lock us into this situation next month by ratifying the Lisbon Treaty, which creates a vast European empire, with rigid control of almost all aspects of life, by people we have not elected to office and could not remove.

Worse still, it gives this empire the power to make laws without consulting member parliaments.

John G Greer-Spencer,

20 Touch Wards, Dunfermline

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