OK class – yesterday we looked at what money the British government pushed our way, and how slippery it is to put an exact figure on it. But the sum we can say with some certainty is not the trumpeted figure of £23.8 billion – it’s somewhere between £18billion and £19 billion.
Today let’s consider how much lovely lolly we push towards Britain – what revenue we here in the north generate. The bad news first: theres no definitive, black and white statement of revenue from here. But if we take 20111-2012, the figure from the Department of Finance and Personnel (DFP) is £14.1 billion. This, though, is probably an underestimation. Why? Well for starters, it doesn’t include the income tax, the corporation tax and the VAT which is generated by big British and international companies here. But let’s say it’s accurate. Then the Brits give us – let’s be generous with the figure – £19 billion. We give them back at least £14 billion. So now it looks as though what we’re getting from Britain each year – maximum – is 19- 14 = 5 – £5 billion. No small sum, but just about half the figure that’s touted at every opportunity by unionist politicians – £10.2.
So listen boys and girls – it’s a nice sunny day out there and I know you’re dying to get out and play football or torment small animals. But before you go, cement into your heads that fact: at most, Britain furnishes our tormented little corner with an annual subsidy of around £5 billion. NOT £10 billion. And if someone tells you differently, tell them they’re an economic illiterate.
Class dismissed.
“Keep the company of those who seek the truth;
run from those who have found it.” Václav Havel
Land ownership in the nine counties of Ulster might also be worth a blog. Even more interesting is the NAMA sale of a property portfolio reported to be in the region of €4.5 billion to Cerebus Capital Management for a reported figure of €1.5 billion. The Audit Office has identified irregularities with at least 27 land deals. Evidence given in Dublin yesterday featured all the old clichés, “This must never happen again…lessons have been learned… .”
The ‘flegs’ are a convenient distraction from a modern plantation.
Out of that £5 billion they take a contribution to defence and the upkeep of Windsors
You’re spot on (as ever) PJD. I know there are a few little extra slices removed but I thought I’d keep it simple: repeat after me – 5 not 10, 5 not 10…
As an economic illiterate,not unlike, come to think of it, M. Noonan, former teacher of the Q’s English, Esteemed Blogmeister, one trusts you will not object to a short (optional) class in backslang for the backward / innumerates.
After hours, as it were.
Yennep, for example, is the backslang for penny. This is well known to all those loyal folk from Londonderry to Londonbridge Road in Dublin 4 who still look longingly to Threadneedle Street to have their raggy, shaggy britches stitched.
Backslang evolved like its near neighbour, Cockney rhyming slang back in the early 1800s to enable a particular community to converse with itself in a secret or private way. (Think: Galway Bay: where the the natives spoke a language the stranger did not know).
The communities in q. on Thameside ranged from butchers to greengrocers to costermongers; today, their equivalent,on Liffeyside and doubtless, Laganside or Foyleside itself, would be: economists and other dismal scientists. All part of the same ‘professional’ conspiracy against the laity and other illiterates / innumerates.
Yennep, curiously enough, was not the only Y-word which was, erm, upfront down here in the FSS this morning. From Yanis to the Yawnaiste.
Yanis Varoufakis (for it is he !) is the Minister of Finance in Greece but more to the point, one of the great hate figures of the procured press in that great centre of excellence for love and inclusivity (soi disaant): the Free Southern Stateen.
No doubt he’ll be an even bigger whipping boyo after his guest appearance on Moaning Ireland, the flag ship prog of RTE, this morning. Not least after dumping so suavely on one of the The Woodman’s interchangeable little helpers.
One wondered at .the absence of The Woodman / Cathal Mac Coille, giolla. The usual suspects suggest he got word of Yanis’ imminent appearance and took the necessary evasive action.But Perkie is not one of those cynics. No doubt the Woodman had a good excuse and true for his absence.
Yanis grew up in an Grecian house where ‘Ireland was very close to their hearts’. As a clue to which side they took re. the Troubles in Norneverland it may be deduced from the following line: ‘I grew up singing Irish rebel songs’.
Perhaps, even, this evergreen hit of Tommy Davis, Jnr: ?
‘ When boyhood fire was in my blood
I read of ancient freemen;
For Greece and Rome bravely stood
Three hundred men and free men’.
Yanis (born Yannis, but later dropped an n, for ‘aesthetic’ reasons’ and not fiscal ones, such as a desire not to make, erm, n’s meet) went on to become an active supporter of the Troops Out Movement (TOM).
The Yawnaiste, who would have been, and still is, an active supporter of the Uncle TOM movement, was also prominent in the pages of (gulp) The Unionist Times this morning.
According to the paper of record, Joan Burton (for it is she ! who is also a T.D. of T.D. Hall, aka Dail Eireann) ”recalled the IRA’s killing of a Belfast woman during a heated exchange with the deputy leader of Sinn Fein during a debate on the cutback of the lone parents’ allowance’.
The ‘Belfast woman’, alluded to had the initials JC (no, not her namesake Joan Connolly, which tickedboth the boxes of her own and her party’s name) but rather than of Jean McConville. Why was this? We are not told.
Perhaps because the former was unfortunately killed by the Parachute Regiment while the latter was delibearately murdered etc. Perhaps,because the former was but a mother of eight and the latter a mother of ten. Thereby, reminding us that the Yawnaiste, as befits her exalted position, is a Macro rather than a mere Micro-economist.
Whatever, dismal in the extreme.
Curiously enough, Joan Connolly was a casualty during an Operation of those noted Hellenic scholars, the Paras, an Operation indeed named after an Athenian, Operation Demetrius.
Tis a small world, surely, till one starts to walk it.
You can say that again, Perkie. I love it that Cathal took the back door on the day Yanis was heard. I suspect the hatred of him is in direct proportion to his large brain and total unflappability. Btw, did he really say he was introduced to ‘Irish rebel songs’ in his youth? Meltdown at RTÉ!
According to the Great God Google, Esteemed Blogmeister, Yanis certainly did.
And no more nor Perkie, well, GGG would not a porkie tell.
Yanis the Unflappable – ar fheabhas !
Leag tu do mhear air.
Human nature being what it is , you certainly wouldn’t keep something that is a financial sinkhole and with the exploding truth about Britain’s real ” modis operandi ” here , this would certainly dispel any belief in benevolence regarding our welfare …..no we’re certainly operating in the black , but where do we get ALL the relevant information from …..I certainly would not trust ” Perfidious Albion’s ” version of accounts. When I try to rationalize their continued presence here and their thriftiness with economic facts, I’m drawn to wonder….are we sitting on , or surrounded by , untold bounties .
If it really was costing the Brits an arm and a leg to keep this place, they would be gone tomorrow.