Gina Miller always insisted that she wasn’t trying to stop Brexit, merely interested in the proper democratic process…hence she is now trying to buy up that democratic process and rig the election in order to get anti-Brexit placemen shoehorned into Parliament so that they can vote for her pet project…stopping Brexit. At least one BBC journo, Andrew Neil of course, called her out on it…
A question Neil didn’t ask was where is all her money came from originally…a type of question that the BBC is often very keen to ask….such as when Leave put that famous wording on the side of their bus….
A stupid mistake to make…how could they not foresee being hung out to dry for such a claim? However having been taken to task by the BBC in a relentless witch-hunt over this claim in a way that the BBC does not do for Remain’s highly alarmist and exaggerated claims, the BBC then does exactly the same….and claims money coming back to the UK is ‘from the EU’.
Even this morning the BBC were at it as they discussed farming subsidies…Sarah Montague told us, several times, that farming only exists now in the way it does because of the money that the EU sends us, the £3 billion that comes from the EU.
So now the BBC tells us that we do send money to the EU and it becomes the EU’s money, even though we get it back…whereas when the BBC wants to undermine the Leave campaign Leave are lying when they say we give the EU the money…because we get it back…so the BBC tells us it cannot be counted as money we have given to the EU….unless it suits the BBC agenda…in this case farming will collapse without the benevolent EU handouts.
If Leave were misleading people before the BBC is just as guilty of doing exactly the same here.
“A stupid mistake to make…how could they not foresee being hung out to dry for such a claim? However having been taken to task by the BBC in a relentless witch-hunt over this claim in a way that the BBC does not do for Remain’s highly alarmist and exaggerated claims, the BBC then does exactly the same….and claims money coming back to the UK is ‘from the EU’.”
I don’t want to change the subject of this thread from BBC hypocricy, but I think the Leave campaign’s use of the £350 million claim was a way of playing the media. If Leave had used the net figure the BBC would have reported the story once and then buried it under Project Fear in the expectation that by the the day of the vote most people would have forgotten the key point that we send billions of pounds to the EU every year.
By using the gross figure of £350 million per week the Leave campaign tempted the BBC with a supposed weakness in their argument and the BBC sought to exploit this by going on and on about how the quoted figure was too high – and every time they did so they reminded everyone that we were paying in billions more than we were getting back. Whenever the BBC challenged a Leave spokesman with £350 million it was an opportunity to agree that £350 million was the gross figure, but that although the net figure was lower it was still amounted to around £10-12 billion per year, and that the difference was spent on what the EU wanted it spent on not on the priorities we might want to decide for ourselves – leading neatly back to the theme of us taking back control.
The best put-down of the BBC’s challenge was by Daniel Hannan on Toady. When asked to agree that the £350 million figure was a lie he responded with a question about the basic rate of income tax. Humphrys replied 20%, to which Hannan responded that the BBC position had to be that it was nil, because 20% was the gross figure and that all the money raised from the people was spent on providing services to them, so the net figure was zero. Humphrys changed the subjest.
I think that Leave deliberately used the gross rather then the net figure to tempt the BBC to fight on Leave’s chosen ground. Leave seemed to have exposed a weakness that the BBC couldn’t resist attacking, but it was a weakness deliberately created to involve the BBC in unwittingly spreading Leave campaign messages. Essentially the BBC was persuaded to attack into an ambush, and they fell for it.
Yep….the £350 million was meant to be provocative but a mistake to add the suggestion that it all could be spent on the NHS…the Leave official figure was to spend £100 million….so why give the likes of the BBC an ‘in’…the £350m claim was justifiable and true and so could be argued in good faith and would have been quite sufficient on its own as part of an argument to leave the EU…the NHS allusion was a foolish mistake that has now become the backbone of any argument about the referendum from Remainers.
This is what Dominic Cummings [head of the Leave campaign] said...
‘The official bill of EU membership is £350 million per week – let’s spend our money on our priorities like the NHS instead.’ (Sometimes we said ‘we send the EU £350m’ to provoke people into argument. This worked much better than I thought it would. There is no single definitive figure because there are different sets of official figures but the Treasury gross figure is slightly more than £350m of which we get back roughly half, though some of this is spent in absurd ways like subsidies for very rich landowners to do stupid things.)
Pundits and MPs kept saying ‘why isn’t Leave arguing about the economy and living standards’. They did not realise that for millions of people, £350m/NHS was about the economy and living standards – that’s why it was so effective. It was clearly the most effective argument not only with the crucial swing fifth but with almost every demographic. Even with UKIP voters it was level-pegging with immigration. Would we have won without immigration? No. Would we have won without £350m/NHS? All our research and the close result strongly suggests No. Would we have won by spending our time talking about trade and the Single Market? No way (see below).
NB. Unlike most of those on our side the IN campaign realised the effectiveness of this, as Cooper, Coetze and others said after 23 June. E.g. ‘The power of their £350 million a week can’t be overstated.’ Andrew Cooper, director of strategy for the IN campaign.
Some people now claim this was cynical and we never intended to spend more on the NHS. Wrong. Boris and Gove were agreed and determined to do exactly this. On the morning of 24 June they both came into HQ. In the tiny ‘operations room’ amid beer cans, champagne bottles, and general bedlam I said to Boris – on day one of being PM you should immediately announce the extra £100 million per week for the NHS [the specific pledge we’d made] is starting today and more will be coming – you should start off by being unusual, a political who actually delivers what they promise. ‘Absolutely. ABSOLUTELY. We MUST do this, no question, we’ll park our tanks EVERYWHERE’ he said. Gove strongly agreed.
‘Let’s fund our NHS instead’.
Nothing in that statement implies spending it all on the NHS. I’m surprised none of the Leavers used the verbal reasoning argument to expose the BBC-Remainers for the dimwits they are.
Spent the £350 million on the NHS sorry but the NHS has more than enough money if the NHS was effectently run rather than being saddled with a top heavy management thanks to blair and was not servicing billions in PFI debt thanks to the incompetent brown….Now remind me which politicial party blair and brown are members of……Greens nope, UKIP nope, Conservatives nope, Lib-Democrats nope, Why blair and brown are members of the joke that is the labour party led by the gardan gnome corby. Sorry labour but we are not buying your NHS sob stories
To me the £350 million was just an example to try to get across to people that you could spend money on A, if you weren’t spending it on B.
No different from saying to a gambler or an alcoholic ‘if you didn’t waste all that cash on the dogs or the bottle, you could take your kids on holiday or buy that car’.
It also made sense to use the other thing that you could spend it on the most emotive, touchy subject closest to the UK’s heart – our complete devotion to the NHS.
My other thing with the rebate is why the Leavers didn’t push further the fact that it was the bigger figure that we had to provide.
Before the referendum I obtained this from the BBC website “The UK’s gross contribution to the EU was £18.8bn in 2014, the most recent year for which we have the final figure. That’s equivalent to £361m a week.”
Now I am well aware of the rebate and that we don’t send all of the above to the EU. However, why then is the official figure £18.8bn and not £14.4bn? Why do we have to allow for the larger amount? If the rebate is guaranteed and the EU doesn’t have control over the bigger amount, why isn’t our official amount the reduced figure of £14.4bn? It’s all very well saying that we don’t pay the higher figure of £18.8bn (and I recognise that we don’t) but why is the higher figure even being referenced?
Why are the official figures for 2014 £18.8bn if we only paid £14.4bn? The reason of course is that they didn’t want us to forget that we get the rebate (which of course they have previously chipped away) and hence want us to be reminded that they still have an element of control over the greater figure.
If it isn’t then why didn’t the EU simply scrap the rebate and just move forward with us paying in full the reduced sum as opposed to being presented with a higher figure and offered a reduced payment?
I don’t suppose BBC employees, or a good many public sector workers, give much thought to where their money really comes from, nor do I suppose they care, as long as it keeps flowing.
Their wages are just something that magically appears in their bank accounts each month, regardless of the hours they’ve put in.
Just look at some of the signs being carried at the ‘March For Science’ today.
We don’t need to be governed by remote, unelected foreigners in order to cooperate and participate in scientific research with other countries.
Sorry a bit long this!
Brillo exposed this poised and prissy woman for manipulative con artist we all know her to be when he said “You have turned tinkering with democracy into a rich womans hobby” What he got wrong was that for the likes of her and her backers = it is a way of life not a hobby. Oozing entitlement from every well manicured pore. She and her ilk will never take no for an answer. She represents the vested interests that have broken nations and destroyed economies. She comes across as so silky and reasonable but in reality she is the deceiver and in my opinion is more reptilian in nature than human. Certainly if I shook hands with her I would be counting my fingers afterwards and probably wondering where my wallet had gone!
Unfortunately these days democracy can always be bought for the price of an expensive lawyer and doesnt Gina and her rich friends know it. What in effect this woman is saying is that our opinions and votes count for nothing – the only thing that counts is money and power.
I think we need to realise that these sort of elite rich, manipulative scum have spent a whole lifetime profiting from the systems that they have set up. And they will not give it up without a fight. They in effect have created a system so complex and difficult to understand that it becomes self selecting in that that only those with the money and correct contacts (such as Gina) can ever profit from it.
They are used to getting their own way by tying and untying these self same gaudion knots and have the time and the money to manipulate the democratic system to achieve their own selfish globalist ends and lets face it most clever lawyers are able to prove anything if paid enough. Not surprising since it is lawyers that set a lot of these systems up.
The question to most of us was only ever black or white either leave or stay – if we stay we accept all the EU rules if we leave we are free to trade where and with whom we like and also control our own borders. But heres the point WE VOTED LEAVE.
Yet they have created these strange mutant children called soft brexit (nice) and hard brexit (boo hiss!) At the end of the day day these chimeras do not exist they are purely creations of the political/globalist class to try and muddy the waters and create confusion and false debate. There is only brexit and no brexit. But the evident truth of this will never be admitted by the remoaners and their globalist friends as this would illuminate the fact that all their arguments are illusionary and are built on sand.
Will leaving be easy – of course not. We will be made an example of and punished and then beckoned back, because in truth they need us to help bail them out – but also want to make an example of us at the same time.
What the EU in effect has done is make most EU nations lazy, dependant and lose self confidence. The truth is that the EUs waste, corruption and over complex system have made its own demise inevitable And when the rest of Europe realises this fact our orderly leaving will turn into a EU wide stampede.
I think it is also interesting to look at some of the personalities in the unholy alliance that is pitted against brexit.
We have a selection of crooked and tainted politicians such as Blair and Mandelson, You have the likes of Gina Miller, George Soros, Branson. So called celebs such as Lineacre and Saint Bob. Current politicians such as Milliband, Cleggy, Timmy, Paddy pantsdown, Wee Burnie, Fatbot, Sourface, Heselswine, Osborne, Call me Dave, The London Emir and of course various “SJW” groups such as Hate not Hope” etc And last but not least The BBC and of course Jean Claude Drunker!
Talk about a rogues gallery – you could not make this shit up – And yet they say represent the voice of reason and sense and are doing it all for us. Its a bit like saying Hitler initiated anti semitism for the jews!
At the end of the day The people (us) have voted and therefore it is the people who should decide. And if these devious bastards do manage to rob us – then I say bring on the pitchforks and barricades.
Perfect summary.
Great post! I enjoyed every word, so no need to apologise for its length :).
Gina Miller actually won her court case to put Brexit to parliament. You would think therefore that she would be satisfied, especially given that most of parliament opposed Brexit. Instead, she’s trying everything she can to get the answer she wants – a classic Europhile tactic. She must be a masochist because she is going to fail with every other attempt she makes, or at least she’d better hope she does, lest she become the most reviled person in the UK.
Round here busy husbands keep their bored TaiTais occupied by buying them daft boutiques in the high street. They spend all day shunting between each other’s, seeing and being seen.
This is actually a pretty decent vanity investment in comparison, as each idiot ploy gets her on the BBC again.
ALM – She will never be satisfied because that is how people like her amass the amount of money and power that they do. If they see an opening they will exploit it and pillage it again and again until the pips squeak.
In their world greed is good, and they probably despise the rest of us as weaklings for having interests other than power and money.
As for being reviled why should she care. She lives in a different world to the rest of us Money, power and probably in her case fame are her god, her country and her lover. This is why she does not care what happens to our (and not her) country – as long as she gets her way in the end.
We must not make the mistake of judging her as normal people she is not. That is why she attracts support from other abnormal, cynical people (like her) and the naive who are easily exploited.
Oak,
Perfect summing up. She represents everything that is vile in human nature. A disgusting creature.
You all need to look closely and research the background people behind her. Particularly her husband and his hedge fund company that mysteriously became suddenly successful. George Soros in the shadows as usual and pulling the strings and making the puppets dance to his tune.
Exactly. She is part of the Agenda 21/Common Purpose*/One World/Open Borders elite, shilling for the EU because, as Barroso once famously said ‘The EU is the blueprint for a future world government’.
And Miller wants to be part of that unelected government, sitting in her remote hideaway with her wealth and the rest of the ‘We know what’s best for you’ Club of Rome gangsters, issuing their latest eco-socialist edicts from their lavishly appointed, remote seat of power whilst countries like the UK descend into energy-starved chaos.
I predict before long she will be given some globetrotting role by the UN, spreading her poison like the sly, slithering reptile she truly is.
*When she first appeared on the scene I looked up the website of her ‘charity’, which amongst its self-congratulatory, patronising drivel contained the phrase ‘Working towards a common purpose’, which I brought to the attention of this site. Mysteriously, that phrase vanished not long after. Makes you think, eh?
The BBC is not exactly open about their own dodgy dealings to extract money out of we the plabs ,all kept in the background while they pay themselves huge salaries. They only want transparency when it suits them and fits their agenda.
Gina Miller needs to get a proper job. She is going to run out of rich husbands sooner or later.
Actually the £350m a week claim isn’t so far off the mark. £350m is the gross amount the UK pays to Brussels, whereas the net amount is only about £175m. However if the government spent £350m a week on the NHS, a large part of that would come straight back into government coffers as PAYE tax and NI, so the net cost would only be about £250m, which isn’t far off the net amount being sent to Brussels