Speaking to East Yorkshire Conservatives

Last night I was the speaker at a supper club meeting of East Yorkshire Conservatives in Bridlington, on the subject of Quangos.   Most people there were genuinely shocked at the amount of money being spent by Quangos and how much our membership of the European Union costs us each year. I quoted the following from Dr Lee Rotherham’s book, Ten Years On: Britain without the European Union.

While you were watching the last Harry Potter, £1,891,998 was transferred to Brussels.

During the England footy match, £1,113,000 left the British bank account for good.

In the time that it took you to boil an egg, £37,098 was surrendered to the EU.

£12,366 in one minute.

£206.11 in the heart pump of a second.

Another £206.11.

And then another.

It made no sense at all. It was like forming a human chain to pass gold bullion down Blackpool pier and to dump a brick off the end every hundred seconds.

Every hour was a new Angel of the North being built by British taxpayers in another country.

The bill for just two days paid for the whole Royal Family.

Three days would have kept your local community hospital running for a year.

Five days of EU membership would have covered all the repairs needed to every cathedral in England, or paid for a new Kew Gardens.

Ten days would have bought a new Belmarsh prison.

Why not just cut out the middle man? Instead of handing over three and a half weeks of net payments, you could have simulated the financial loss by cutting down all the trees in England looked after by the Forestry Commission and ploughing salt into the soil.

For the equivalent value effect of five months of fees, you could have just burned every picture and every painting in the National Gallery. Or the Treasury could have taken revenge on international bankers, and paid the annual deficit by just handing over all the revenue of the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man.

Food for thought? The statistics are breathtaking when stated in a way we can all relate to. I would like to thank East Yorkshire Conservatives for their very warm welcome and excellent hospitality. I had a very enjoyable time in Bridlington and look forward to returning.