Rather UK kept its own money

OMG! Stephen Hardy’s EU-logies are bad enough, but to have them reproduced in stereo (Rye Observer letters pages 30/6/17) is too much!

Stephen tries hard to kid us that Locate East Sussex will continue to be generously part-funded through EU philanthropy until 2020, despite Brexit in 2019, yet he is fully aware this is a contractual obligation between the 28-EU members to distribute the seven-year (2014-2020) EU budget as agreed in 2013. Arguably, Britain will be owed a rebate for 2019-2020, but Britain honours its obligations while the EU reinterprets its Treaties to their benefit by demanding an onerous divorce bill outside of Article 50.

From whose pockets do these ‘EU funds’ come? As Stephen knows, the EU has no money of its own. The EU budget is funded entirely by its 28 member states’ ‘own resources’ (levies on GDP, VAT and import duties).

Britain is one of a tiny handful of EU nett-contributors, so ‘EU funds’ we receive effectively come from our own pockets. It may make economic sense to Stephen to give £14bn p/a to the EU to get back £4bn in ‘EU funding’ – spent as the EU dictates – but to any normal, right-minded person it makes more sense to put £14bn into Britain’s piggy-bank from which to invest as Britons see fit.

Indeed, such an UK own-resource policy should satisfy both Lib-Dem and Labour demands to greatly increase public spending, yet both are hell-bent on remaining in the EU by over-turning the legitimate referendum result and planting CAP-funded money-trees.

The fact that 93 per cent of the electorate did not recently vote Lib Dem shows Britons have a very positive attitude.