Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Better off out

Well that's the findings of a survey done by Centre for Economic and Business Research though amazingly enough this has been rejected and smeared by bureaucrats in the EU, can't think why, perhaps it's because they don't like the idea of a net contributor simply leaving...
Express.
BRUSSELS bureaucrats were accused yesterday of trying to smear economists who proved that UK trade can boom outside the EU.
They were reacting to research from a leading think tank which showed that the UK exported more to countries outside the EU than those in the economic bloc for the first time in 40 years.
The figures, showing that 50.4 per cent of exports went to non-EU countries in the three months to the end of May, were highlighted in the Daily Express, which is crusading for Britain to quit the EU.
But Brussels chiefs urged the think tank to retract the research and published a series of messages on Twitter in an extraordinary bid to undermine it.
Jonathan Faull, director general for internal market and services at the European Union, said he hoped the think tank – the Centre for Economic and Business Research – “will correct with accurate data.”
He tweeted a journalist, saying: “Official data are better than a think tank blog as a source for far-reaching political assertions.”
The chief executive of the think tank, Douglas McWill­iams, described the attempts by the Eurocrats to rubbish the research as “bizarre.”
He said: “You would hope European officials would have better things to do than wasting their time trying unsuccessfully to smear people who point out inconvenient facts. The trade figure argument tends to be used by pro-Europeans to support Britain’s continued membership of the European Union.
“I can only assume that is why they responded so aggressively.”
Indeed you would think that bureaucrats would have better things to do, unless of course there's a problem in the fact that the figures being used are accurate and the report is truthful. If that's the case then you'd expect smears, rather than denials complete with differing facts and figures, something the EUrocrats often fail to produce as they tend to be good at bigging themselves up rather than producing the truth.
And there lies the problem for EUphiles as a whole, they've been caught rubbishing anything critical of the EU for so long that no-one believes them anymore. Yes, I know they say the same about EUsceptics, it's just that the sceptics tend to at least do their homework when it comes to attacking the EU and often enough produce facts and figures which are difficult to challenge unlike the EU ones themselves which often come under very close scrutiny.
However I do tend to trust figures by the Centre for Economic and Business Research, yes they have an axe to grind (or an agenda) but they have no reason to lie in this instance, it really seems as if we could do well enough on our own...
What a surprise.

3 annotations:

microdave said...

"Official data are better than a think tank blog"

And that coming from an organisation with accounts so bad the auditors have refused to sign them off for - how long is it now - 15 years?

Oldrightie said...

Great post. I just tweeted it!

James Higham said...

Wish you'd post something i could disagree with. Getting tired of saying Amen.