Snatching money off other forces is not the way forward, infighting only reduces the pressure on the gov. to up our gross budget.

We just need more money.

Where does this figure of £60 billion come from? Is it a total of all the gross contributions, net contributions or annual contributions to the EU?

In 2000 Britain contributed £11billion to the budget compared with Germany (21billion or 25% of the EU budget that year)
www.politics.co.uk/bri...366699.htm
Furthermore if we take Government Spending and net EU budget contributions:
Government spending 2008-09: £623bn, net EU contribution: £3bn
Government spending 2009/10: £671bn, net EU contribution: £4.1bn (i.e. 0.6% of total government spending)
wantagelibdems.org.uk/...udget.html

Wiki puts it at £13billion or so
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...statistics
Even the Telegraph know that £60billion per year is ball-cocks
Net contribution 2008/9: c. £2billion
Net contribution 2010/11: c. £6.5billion

The 2009 EU budget is: €116.096 billion, (£99.6724billion) with commitments of €134.845billion (£115.773billion)
www.europarl.europa.eu...17IPR45133

Fair enough we make a yearly net contribution but not in the sums you suggest, which would only be applicable with regards to a period of at least a decade, probably two decades.

Are you suggesting we paid nearly 2/3s of this years budget???????????

I am not sure. The fixed share MOD budget has bedevilled us for years. More should go to the sharp end.

£48 million...but the Red Book says different ?

www.ukpublicspending.c...009_3.html

The Boxheads, Frogs and half of Europe have been hiding behind the generosity of our UK taxpayers defence spending for 64 years because we want a seat on the Security Council to 'punch above our weight' - why ?

In the meantime they have built excellent infrastructures, have old age pensions, schools, hospitals, roads, railways to put ours to shame, we have bred an ungrateful feral youth whose parents do not care for them properly because they are too busy chasing two jobs just to pay overpriced houses and living expenses.

I can't see the package my elderly parents (who worked & paid taxes ALL their lives) bearing comparison with other European countries ..........who on the war & who were the mugs ?

So how do we get about?

Tickets on BA for trooping, DHL for freight and Bristows for helicopter support?

I was under the impression that the Germans pay a LOT more into the EU pot than us, nd possibly the French as well.

Slash back bureaucracy.

There is far too much money awash in local and central government despite cuts in frontline services.

Go onto any public procurement website (as I unfortunately have to do) and you will see the waste-of-money contracts that are put out to tender....fire service diversity DVDs, corporate leadership training, studies into the glaringly obvious that languish on shelves, sham consultation exercises.

Most public procurement involves a lengthy questionnaire and evidence process that asks for dozens of ISO certificates and equal opportunity policies...and that's before considering the London Boroughs, who have reams of pages asking for workforce ethnic breakdown. All of these certificates and systems are generated and monitored by legions of audit staff...who generate even more certificates and systems at the slightest opportunity.

Consign all this to the dustbin - the waste of money on frivolous expenditure and the labyrinthine compliance regimes. Replace the compliance regimes with a legal system with proper teeth to deal with breaches....how many workers have died in the last decade in spite of all this certification and how many organisations or directors have actually been charged and found guilty of breaches? Apparently, after a derailment not so long ago, the rail accident investigators were struggling in the face of official and contractor obstruction to pin the blame on anyone....documents missing etc. If breaches were actually punished in the courts then there wouldn't be any need for this ineffective bureaucracy in the first place!

Tear out layers of governance and time-serving bureaucrats and replace them with properly elected officials accountable to voters...as in France and the US.

Scrap the ridiculous assessments that are box-ticking exercises, take literally years and cost hundreds of thousands of pounds....it takes years before a road or rail scheme even gets off the ground, based on quasi-scientific assessments.

I'm not for unrestrained development as this would be even worse, but the various systems of public policy implementation need to be radically slashed back and clarified.

Only the UK, Germans, Dutch and Finns pay more in than they get out - everyone else gets far more out esp the ClubMed countries, Portugal & Eire.

The original trade agreement was set up to protect the interests of the French farmers (who get a disproportionate amount of the CAP to subside uneconomic farms and for the 'Iron & Steel' of Germany (the two original architects) who get a pan-European market for everything from Bosch, to Porsche (& much more) - well worth their investment. What do we in UK now produce to sell abroad- have a look around your house ? Very little.

Someone earlier quoted the Defence Budget at $48bn - I just wanted to make sure they knew the facts & were not over-egging it.

No. I would think you could easily cut the RAF budget hugely without cutting back on the thing we need most - more support for the Army. Their sharp Mach 2 pointy things like Typhoon are a waste. Tornado is far too hazardous to fly against defended targets. We could dramatically beef up the helicopter force but put it under the MOD Army control operationally. And a huge increase in drones plus the infrastructure to process the info in real time. Air Trooping I would sub contract to Virgin. The major function of the RAF currently is training pilots for civil airlines. That can't be right.

Oh dear you're back.

Oh dear. You are still here.

Yes, let's bin the only new CAS-capable aircraft the RAF is likely to get in the next 15 years.



Quite. Which is why it wasn't used in Granby, Allied Force, Telic as a res... Hang on .... (and before claiming that Iraq lacked any AD capability in 2003, investigate the super-MEZ and the various joys that caused)



Agreed. Perhaps we might stretch it to include the RN helicopter chaps and recognise the contribution of the RAF personnel, though? Call it Joint Helicopter Command, perhaps?


See other threads on the fact that UAS are not quite the panacea that manufacturers would like us to believe. More needed,yes, huge increase at cost of imbalancing force structures, no thanks.



Good idea. Would they be expected to bring their aircraft to theatre entry standards out of their own pocket, or would the MoD pay (at an inflated cost, no doubt)? Or perhaps having Branson dangling stark-b0ll0ck naked from a long wire dangled beneath the aircraft with a large, ignited flare clutched between his buttocks would be your solution to the need for an anti-MANPADS DAS? And who would underwrite the insurance required for the airframe and crew? That'd be the MoD budget, then...



You have evidence - as opposed to long-standing and frequently-expressed anti-crab prejudices - to support this?

Lets get back to complaining about the pond life.....Ha who wrote that bit about "no more houses for the local bike" where have you been living?? the little darlings are being taught in school that its good to have a couple of orgasms a day....they are all bikes round here...and they have babies at 12 years old.....what are we going to do? shoot them all.?...which county are we going to put aside to pile the bodies in????? (What the cfuk are they doing at Porton Down?? why can,t they come up with some sneaky bug that only kills chavs/pond life/benefit cheats etc!!! because thats about the only way we will get out of this in my life time.

My local council has a vacancy currently for a 'Scrutiny Support Officer'.

what is the job spec?

I ask because councils have a committee called Scrutiny, which checks various council functions including the accountancy.

Last edited by Whet on Tue Aug 11, 2009 9:20 am; edited 1 time in total

Description:
What is the job?

An exciting opportunity for a scrutiny support officer to be at the forefront of delivering scrutiny support to reviews dealing with a wide range of topics across a variety of areas including Health, Traffic & Environment, Economic Development, Education, Housing and Finance & Resources, which will positively influence service delivery and policy development.

As part of the Democratic and Community Engagement service within Portsmouth City Council, this post offers the successful candidate a unique opportunity to be at the heart of local government scrutiny.

Ideally, you will also have some experience of supporting regulatory committees, as you will be expected to work across both the scrutiny and democratic support teams.

You will have the opportunity to have a direct impact on how the service develops and use your innovation to achieve results.

Sounds a real exciting opportunity, does it mater if one is a member of the PC brigade?

Bring back bloody workhouses for the idlers on benefits and chavvy single parents.
Theres plenty of work in the community that benefit scroungers can do. Mowing elderly peoples lawns, weeding etc. Make them bloody work for the food on the table.
I would also cut back on the NHS, making it a service which was set up for its original intention, to treat ILL people, not someone who wants a few kids or a new set of chebs! Get rid of the numerous penpushers too. They aint needed. Why would one chief exec need 24 bloody secretaries ffs??
Prisons? Hah, if i was bloody running them, the inmates wouldn't want to come back for a second go. Bare concrete cells, just enough food to keep them strong enough for the hard labour they would have to do 7 days a week. They wouldn't have the bloody energy to protest, let alone anything else!
MP's expenses? They can go too. Give them a train ticket and a night in a travelodge when they have to attend commons. No bloody second homes etc. By the time half of them had left because they aint saucing the goose anymore, it would save even more money.
Money saved in these directions could be ploughed into HMF.

Sorry, I missed out the vital line 'from now until 2012', to bring it onto a par with the Olympics, the EU will have cost the UK taxpayer c.60 Billion in the same timescale as the Olympics have cost us 12billion(so far), found at www.openeurope.org.uk .... though it's unashamadely a eurosceptic site.

Where have you been HMP Wakefield?