Chutzpah, I think that's the word to describe taking your money then giving you some of it back and saying that it's being spent for your own good. No doubt there will still be recalcitrant remain minders, keepers of the dying flame (meeting in darkened rooms and secretly drinking to the bureaucratic kings over the water) who will point to this, wag the compulsory finger at us and say "look what you will be missing" come October 31st, Big Boris Day, le grand jour de départ (should it ever happen). But the EU simply gives us back some of our own money and, what's more, tells us how to spend it ... why any self-respecting people would put up with this crap I cannot imagine ... plus it's proposed new leaders (like the old lot before them) are unelected, unaccountable failed despicable politicians and crooks.
But ... taking your money and spending on projects that are supposed to be for your benefit is the nature of all government, I suppose. So you'll see a wee sign for "Northern Powerhouse". This is a quango more spoken of than existing in actuality. It seems to have mythic qualities in that it will regenerate the whole north of England without being a real entity. By merely repeating it three times it comes into being and renovates those parts that generations of neglect and disinvestment have ruined.
The Humberside Local Enterprise Partnership, another quango, was recently criticised for failing to deliver any jobs boost despite receiving millions of central government (ie taxpayers') money.
Hull City Council we have met many times over the years; it is led by simple folk with simple ideas, as in simply ridiculous ideas. One of the latest is to take over empty shops in Whitefriargate and give them to young entrepreneurs to start up businesses. This is so self-evidently bonkers it could only come from folk with no business sense: so, off the top of my head, for example, what about the existing shops that will have to compete with non-rent paying businesses? Hardly fair, is it? I'm sure the EU would have something to say about it (see, I can do irony ...) But then fairness is not something HCC is noted for. So then let us ask who gets the money, why it'll be the greedy landlords who would otherwise be sitting on empty units demanding too high rents for the market until the simpletons of HCC come along with an open cheque book and an account filled with taxpayers' money ... the party of labour subsidising the landlords is an irony seemingly too rich for the simple folk of city hall ... and why help only young entrepreneurs? why can't grey bearded loons drink at the deep well of municipal benefice?
Time limitations and good manners preclude me from expanding on the Environment Agency ... and Bmmjv are the recipients of all our money in case you wondered where it all went.
