Latest moan from you and me 2026

Just had a call from a mate telling me he's now gone digital on the phone line.

He said its a pain having now put in the area code on all calls he makes, I'm not sure he has worked out that he can save numbers in a contacts list, which I assume you can.
Or is that only possible due to the hand set?
He probably still has one of those 1960s phones.

 

Excellent that you are happy with the EU, @Obelix-Vendée, given you are stuck with it.

Have living standards risen, or has the clever embedding of personal debt given the impression that things have improved? Certainly inequality between the wealthy and everyone else has expanded hugely, so those at the top have definitely seen an improvement in their quality of life.

But every euro spent running the EU's bureaucracy comes from the tax payers and could have been spent on things that benefitted them more. Every building, every gold-plated pension, every journey made by officials, every biscuit consumed in meetings (and there are many, many meetings), every paperclip, every translator, every starred blue flag, etc, has cost money. Large bureaucracies are never good at accounting for the money they spend or cutting waste. You can have trading standards and a shared currency zone within incurring all those overheads.

 

One of the biggest scandals about the EU was the amount of expenses paid to MEPs, another level of government that is not really need, Farage milked the system at the time, to make a point, but he was only doing what 100s of others were doing, and probably still are.

There is no way you can expect a large amount of diverse countries to agree on anything, either the top countries get their way, (usual), or you end up with a compromise that is bad for everyone.

 

@pete Farage did not milk the system to make a point. That specimen is all about lining his pockets every which way he can and hang his constituents.

@ViewAhead there is corruption at every level of politics from parish councillors to PMs and presidents. It all depends on the characters in those posts. When the EU started to need its own premises and a more involved administration they set up in Brussels and used a lot of local hire Belgians for the day to day posts.

Historically, Belgium has been an occupied teritory from Roman times, passing thru French, Dutch, Burgundian, Spanish, Austrian and Napeolonic rule before gaining independence in 1831. It was ingrained in their psyche to hide personal wealth from whoever was governing and to take advantage of every means of cheating the taxman. Added to that basic culture was the need to tempt officials and representatives from all the member countries to spend their working year in Brussels, hence the fat expenses and long holidays for MEPs and EU civil servants.

There has been a marked improvement in terms of reducing the black economy in Belgium and it is now rated just below the UK with a one point difference. 8 EU countries are above the UK in terms of corruption levels - ie, with a higher degree of honesty and transparency.

As for living standards, absolutely better when you consider the levels of poverty in countries like Ireland, Italy, Spain, rural France to name obvious examples. The EU invested billions in the UK - Liverpool area, north east England, Wales, south west to improve housing, jobs and transport infrastructure. Since Brexit the south west and Wales have hardly recieved a peny form the UK government and the great northern levelling up project has died a death.

 

Sorry but if Farage was simply milking the MEP expenses system to make a point, how come he didn't put the money to one side and then offer to repay it ? That would have been the correct thing to do and had he made enough fuss about it, he may possibly have shamed the other gravy trainers to do the same?
Plenty of corruption,both local and national tho usually hidden from the general public, is still going on in the UK too and little real effort being made to reform the practice.

 

OK, so he did what all other MEPs are doing, lining their pockets, but I'm sure all the others are snow white and not a bad one amongst them.
He and the others were probably the only ones that wanted out, lining pockets would have involved staying in.

Just from the UK, Kinnock and his wife were probably really upset when the EU gravy train finished, but they had made their pile by then.

 

Believe it or not @pete there are some politicians and officials who work hard and are as honest as you or I. They just don't get the same publicity.

 

But even for the honest ones, the EU bureaucracy is incredibly generous to those who work within it ... and the people who pay for it all have absolutely no say in that. Where there is no accountability, you always get this problem.

 

Yes but do we really need so many, its bad enough paying for your own government without paying another lot for running roughshod over your own lot.

In the EU your own government becomes a slave to the EU and blame them for everything, not heard an MP over here lately using the, "well we have to do what the EU tells us",so we have no choice, when things go wrong.

 

Neil Kinnock and his wife did a lot of work to stop corruption overspend , and waste in the EU . Unfortunately they were battling against the tide.

 

@pete UK governments blame everything on the previous government even when they've been in power for years! Even more so now they can't pretend their unloved regulations and policies have come from the EU.

Polls show that overall the EU population has 60% approval for what the EU is doing and has done. They may not like certain measures and rules but they recognise that overall it's been good for peace and prosperity. EU Earns Steady, High Approval Across the Bloc

Any UK government can only dream of such approval ratings.

 

I doubt that. They wouldn't work as far as I know with our new system that we have for some years now.

 

But this could be due to people assuming A causes B just because A is in place when B occurs. Say the EU had not existed. Which European countries would have gone to war with each other since the 1960s? Has war not happened because of the EU or because two truly devastating wars within 25 yrs of each other made a prolonged peace more likely? Has any rise in the standard of living been because of the EU or, as the rise has been pretty much worldwide, is it because of something else? And is it a rise at all or economic smoke and mirrors?

And if lack of war and a rise in living standards are not likely to be sustained in the near future, then what is the point of the EU? What else does it do if not those things that makes it worth the huge cost of supporting its bureaucracy?

The point re the EU pouring money into areas of Wales etc misses the fact that we paid that money to the EU in the first place, contributing more than we got back. So cutting out the middleman and using our own money in a way we want makes much more sense.