There's a paradox at the heart of Brexit.

Leaving the EU saves the UK government our membership fee.

It costs individuals and companies much much more than that saved fee. But they're bearing the cost in a distributed way. (Less trade, higher prices, less choice of work etc.)
So the UK government's balance sheet improves by the value of the EU membership fee that's no longer being paid.

But every single one of us and the organisations we work for are effectively being stealth-taxed by Brexit much more than the saving recorded by the UK government.
The UK government can semi-truthfully say "there's more money for us to spend after Brexit" (though the amounts it quotes are wholly fanciful, and don't account for its own extra costs because of Brexit).

And yet as a nation we're still MUCH poorer as a result.
In practice it's worse than that because as Brexit tears chunks out of the UK economy, there's less revenue and income to be taxed, therefore less tax levied, so the UK government has less to spend.

That further erodes the government's own "saving" from not paying EU membership.
There are also all the costs of the UK government replicating certain aspects of EU membership.

Even accounting for all the above, Brexit might (perhaps) leave the UK government with a few quid compared to staying in the EU.

But it costs the UK £billions and £billions overall.
EXAMPLE

Part of our EU membership fee went to participating in Horizon Europe.

The UK government "saves" that money by pretending that British boffins working alone can achieve more than the best minds of a continent can together in the world's largest scientific collaboration.
Which appeals more?

Brexit: The UK government has a tiny bit more money to spend. You're poorer.

EU membership: You and the organisation you work for have more money coming in, and enjoy many more benefits than the UK government can ever hope to provide you by going it alone.

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More from @uk_domain_names

Feb 4
The Brexit effect, hurting a business badly.

(Problem is EU students can no longer travel on ID cards because the UK now requires passports, but kids don't need passports because they can go all over the EU on IDs. Catch-22.)
Read 4 tweets
Feb 3
Look at the scam in this Treasury press release.

They've called the £200 loan towards energy bills a rebate. It *isn't* a rebate because consumers must repay it in 5 instalments.

Then in the next paragraph there's a council tax rebate that *is* a rebate.
gov.uk/government/new… Image
It's also referred to as a discount.

Can you imagine if Tesco or Amazon applied the same logic?

We'll give you £20 off your shopping now, but you'll owe us 5 legally binding payments of £4.

You'd be livid if they tried to claim that represented a discount.

It's a 0% APR loan.
And here's the really devious part: the Tories are buying voter goodwill now using money that will largely need repaying after the next GE.

So if Labour win, they'll be left with the ticking time-bomb of Tory debts, and a legally binding obligation for *consumers* to repay them.
Read 4 tweets
Feb 2
According to the Daily Mail, the Tories have indicated they plan to plunge us all into the dark on the pandemic in April by giving up publishing daily stats.

This on a day that saw more than 500 deaths announced.

Could they gaslight us any harder? Genuinely hard to think how. Image
The whole article is grim. Apparently Boris Johnson plans to bin every single protective measure on March 24, including the requirement to self-isolate if you test positive.

How can the several million extremely vulnerable people ever be safe after that?
dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1…
The excuse given is that it's becoming "like the flu" and we don't shut down the whole country over that.

A) Covid killed more people in 2 years than flu did in the last decade.

B) Flu is very seasonal. We've had a high covid death rate since August, with no sign of slackening.
Read 6 tweets
Jan 31
Banging the populism gong wildly, Boris Johnson's apparently going to try and change the EU system of flight compensation for a home-grown alternative.

Of course, the effect is predictable: if this costs airlines more, they'll raise the cost of flights to the UK to compensate.
Remember, the UK's sovereignty stops at our borders. So any change can at best only affect two categories of flights:
A) Flights by UK-registered airlines
B) Flights originating from or ending up in the UK

A) will encourage more airline firms to move domicile away from the UK.
Going back to the Express article, it's vital to note that all that's actually been announced is the start of a consultation process.

So UK consumers will see zero benefits "now" and the compensation scheme remains exactly as it was.

Journalists? Liars.
express.co.uk/news/uk/155832…
Read 4 tweets
Jan 30
The Daily Mail health reporting team are a real piece of work.

Yesterday, there was a throwaway comment about Scotland's missing covid stats (invalidated the entire article) and today both NI and Scotland's stats are missing - the latter unacknowledged.

And look at the wording!
NI and Scotland are running at about 8,000 new daily cases at the moment, meaning the Daily Mail disregarded the missing 8,000 cases to calculate its nonsensical statistics and produce an utterly false headline.

It's not a secret that the data is delayed (see below) - just LOOK!
So it wasn't "the lowest tally since December 14" at all, because that involves an 8,000 case fiddle factor.
Read 6 tweets
Jan 29
This is a verified blue tick Times columnist still spreading the discredited false claim that Brexit somehow advantaged the UK when it comes to the vaccine.

Has long since been fact checked to death and found false by many separate sources.

Status: Flat Earth.
Here's the Channel 4 Fact Check team...
channel4.com/news/factcheck…
BBC Fact Check

"But the idea that Brexit enabled the UK to press ahead and authorise [a vaccine] is not right.

It was actually permitted under EU law, a point made by the head of the UK's medicines regulator on Wednesday."

bbc.co.uk/news/55163730
Read 7 tweets

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