Blusterometer
Stretching the facts
Straying from the facts
Facts? What facts?
Like his Brexiteer peers Michael Gove and Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson’s contributions to the referendum debate have frequently strayed from the facts. From the grossly exaggerated to downright nonsense, InFacts is compiling the definitive collection of Boris claptrap. Keep watching this list and you might just see it grow…
Economy
- Fiction: “Our gross contributions to the EU budget are now running at about £20 billion a year … the net contribution is £10 billion.”
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- Fiction: “Measures to prop up the euro … will embroil us further in fiscal harmonisation.”
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- Fiction: “claims made for the Single Market are looking increasingly fraudulent”
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- Fiction: If we left the EU “we could strike free trade deals with America, with China, with the growth economies around the world”.
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- Fiction: “The EU has done trade deals with the Palestinian Authority and San Marino. Bravo. But it has failed to conclude agreements with India, China or even America.”
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- Fiction: “The EU budget is so wasteful and so corrupt that the Court of Auditors has not signed off the accounts for the last 20 years.”
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- Fiction: “The United States of America have access” to the single market
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- Fiction: “The demented Common Agricultural Policy, massively over-bureaucratic and prescriptive, adds about £400 to the cost of food for every household in this country.”
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- Fiction: “The objections of Brussels to anything that looks like state aid” stop us cutting power costs for heavy industry
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Migration/NHS
- Fiction: “We find ourselves hard pressed to recruit people who might work in our NHS, as opposed to make use of its services.”
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- Fiction: Migration imposes “huge unfunded pressures on the NHS and on other public services”.
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Red Tape
- Fiction: “The House of Commons Library has repeatedly confirmed that when you add primary and secondary legislation together the EU is now generating 60% of the laws passing through parliament.”
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- Fiction: The EU is responsible for “£600 million worth of extra regulation per week for UK businesses”.
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- Fiction: The EU has rules on “how old a child has to be before he or she can blow up a balloon”.
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- Fiction: “As far as I can see we still have not secured consent” to cut VAT on tampons
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Security
- Fiction: “We would retain the ability to work with our European friends and partners in all the areas of EU cooperation that matter greatly to this country and Europe. On the Common Foreign and Security Policy, or home, justice and criminal affairs, we would remain active partners, but it would all be done at an inter-governmental level.”
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- Fiction: “They restrict our ability to deport criminals and people who are a threat to the security of this country.”
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- Fiction: Brexit would leave arrangements on the Irish border “absolutely unchanged”.
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- Fiction: “The European Court of Justice .. [is] now freely adjudicating … whether or not this country has the right to deport people the Home Office believes are a threat to our security.”
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Sovereignty
- Fiction: Britain will be dragged “willy-nilly” into a European superstate if we stay in the EU.
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- Fiction: “We are outvoted far more than any other country – 72 times in the last 20 years.”
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- Fiction: The UK gives the EU “£20bn per year, half of which [it] spends in our own country. Brussels bureaucrats deciding how to spend UK taxpayers’ money in the UK.”
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- Fiction: By leaving the EU we will recapture or secure our voice in international bodies such as the WTO or the IMF
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- Fiction: “This thing has moved on from what we signed up for in 1972.”
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- Fiction: Britain would be “the frog in the boiling saucepan of water”.
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- Fiction: We should “take back control” over LGBT issues “and everything else”, by leaving the EU
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- Fiction: Would the US, he asks, “submit to a NAFTA court of justice – supreme over all US institutions – and largely staffed by Mexicans and Canadians whom the people of the US could neither appoint nor remove?
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- Fiction: There was “nothing we could do” in 2013 to bring in better-designed cabs for lorries as the French were opposed
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- Fiction: “This is like the jailer has accidentally left the door of the jail open and people can see the sunlit lands beyond.”
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Beyond categorisation
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Fiction: The EU wants a superstate, just as Hitler did
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Edited by Alan Wheatley
2) The immigrants (Eu and also non EU ones) are not seen by the Leave camp, but also by the Remain camp in their entire role as economic contributor in the UK. I mean: immigrants, by their number, not only work and get money (and the vast majority pay taxes) but also spend their money in Uk shops (British and/or non British ones) therefore bringing more revenues to the domestic businesses which will generate more tax receipts for the HMRC. If, for example 2 million EU immigrants, would be removed from the UK, also their spending power will be removed: Uk shops will have 2 million less customers who buy food, goods, etc. If we assume that, for example, each EU immigrant will spend (only for essential needs – excluding rents) 500 pounds/months = 6000 gbp/year (extremely low estimate), multiplying this by 2 million others will mean 72 billion pounds in potential loss income for domestic UK economy (British and non Britis but both UK shops). 72 billion pounds in revenues how much revenues for the HMRC would produce? Again, extremely low estimate: 72 billion x 0.20 (20%) = 14.4 billion pounds for the UK coffers. Now removing all these immigrants from UK, will mean removing customers from the UK businesses and shops and ultimately removing an amount of revenue for the UK coffers well over the potential saving from the EU budget the UK would make after brexit. Has anyone though about this?
Another point is the war that will happen inside the Leave factions in case of either a big win for Remain or a win for the Leave itself. Why that? Well because already there was the threat from Arron Banks to sue after his faction has not been officialy designated but also because the “big 6” tory politicians leading the Leave campaign won’t allow Farage and UKIP to take credit from them for thei campaign (if Leave wins) but Farage and Banks will definitively do not want or accept to be sidelined (thus more economic and social uncertainties and shameful image of a quarreling UK in front the world audience), or conversely Farage, Banks et al. will be recriminating till the end of days about the conduct of the campaign (if Remain wins and the more it would win, the more recriminations there will be among the Leave factions).
Errata corrige: in my calculation: 6000 gbp/year x 2000000 eu immigrants is a total revenue of 12 billion gbp (not 72). HMRC rvenue (at the extremely low estimate of 20%) is 2.4 billion pound/year (not 14.4). Apologies. However such estimates are taking extremely low figures (starting from the only 500 pounds expenditure from each EU immigrant a month for essential needs – excluding rent/accomodation costs)-.
Boris Baffles Brains
Brexit Baffles Brains
Old Army saying :
Bullshit Baffles Brains.
As an old soldier I cry BBB!!
Enough said.
I’m unsure if Boris is stupid or if it’s a clown act to get away with telling Tory lies, as on the same show everybody made a fuss because he said Germany never used chemical weapons in wars, he said an even bigger lie that nobody seems to have noticed, because he said there wasn’t a vote on the 2nd war against Iraq, when more Tories voted yes to it than other Parties. He either doesn’t know what the party he belongs to does, or it’s an experiment to see if all most people really remember about politics is last Tory propaganda headline they read.