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> The £1.66m project largely was financed by the European Union’s European Regional Development Fund This should be mentioned in the opening paragraph.

sulley_long 10y ago
Why?
- smcl 10y ago
  Because we literally handed over a piece of paper yesterday formally starting the process whereby we'd leave the EU. I suspect the parent feels like this is a project that might not have had access to this kind of funding outside the EU in an independent UK
  - sulley_long 10y ago
    Where do you think the money for the funding came from? Net contributors to the EU, like the UK. We gave the EU more than they spent on us (of course, because there are poorer European countries). You make it sound like you think EU funding money was a gift from other people. It was them doing us the favour of giving us some of our own money back. If we choose to, we can spend exactly the same money in exactly the same way. Or we could democratically decide amongst ourselves to do something different with it.
    - smcl 10y ago
      It is my opinion that a small-scale renewable energy project on an island community of <100 people would be unlikely to get 1.66M GBP from the UK government. Perhaps the Scottish government would want to, but have considerably less means to do so as they still have a relatively modest budget.
      - sulley_long 10y ago
        You're telling me that the benefit of the EU was that it was an effective way to bypass the people's democratic representatives when they won't do what you personally want? > would not get 1.66M GBP from the UK government They did get 1.66M from the UK government. It just went involuntarily via the middleman of the EU.
        smcl 10y ago
        There's countless areas where the national govt has shown no interest in for decades, which have now received development funding from the EU. If that's what it takes to help these places I frankly do not care that was allocated by someone in another country. However don't try to make it like this is my single pro-EU issue. This is just one small example of a thing I like.
        pbhjpbhj 10y ago
        >the benefit of the EU was that it was an effective way to bypass the people's democratic representatives // The EU is democratically representative too, in a very similar way to the UK parliament. They have the same shortfalls. It just happens that across the EU there is more support for solving the energy crisis than there is in UK Conservative government. In part that's because IMO the EU looks more long term whilst the UK government appears only to be concerned about getting through the next one election. In part it's because the liberal and green elements that aren't properly represented in the UK, because we lack proportional representation, don't get to pressure our government locally but do get to represent the demos in the EU. It's the EU's better, ie more representative, democracy that causes the leap-frogging. >They did get 1.66M from the UK government. // Not really, sure the UK provided their part share of that, but they were forced to by the elected EU layer of government. The major share came from the other EU countries. Germany pays around twice the contribution of the UK and with France, Italy, and Spain we pay about 50% of the contribution. So the money is about 0.83M from these 5, perhaps about 0.2M from the UK government. >involuntarily via the middleman // The UK voluntarily, through a democratic process, joined the EU. The nation chose to put itself in the position where it would contribute the 0.2M and the other countries would add their 1.5M to enable projects such as this all across Europe.
    - Accacin 10y ago
      Like that extra funding for the NHS, what was it? £350million? The EU has given funding to areas that the UK government has neglected for years. Why are they going to start giving the money to them now?

sulley_long 10y ago

Why?

smcl 10y ago
Because we literally handed over a piece of paper yesterday formally starting the process whereby we'd leave the EU. I suspect the parent feels like this is a project that might not have had access to this kind of funding outside the EU in an independent UK
- sulley_long 10y ago
  Where do you think the money for the funding came from? Net contributors to the EU, like the UK. We gave the EU more than they spent on us (of course, because there are poorer European countries). You make it sound like you think EU funding money was a gift from other people. It was them doing us the favour of giving us some of our own money back. If we choose to, we can spend exactly the same money in exactly the same way. Or we could democratically decide amongst ourselves to do something different with it.
  - smcl 10y ago
    It is my opinion that a small-scale renewable energy project on an island community of <100 people would be unlikely to get 1.66M GBP from the UK government. Perhaps the Scottish government would want to, but have considerably less means to do so as they still have a relatively modest budget.
    - sulley_long 10y ago
      You're telling me that the benefit of the EU was that it was an effective way to bypass the people's democratic representatives when they won't do what you personally want? > would not get 1.66M GBP from the UK government They did get 1.66M from the UK government. It just went involuntarily via the middleman of the EU.
      - smcl 10y ago
        There's countless areas where the national govt has shown no interest in for decades, which have now received development funding from the EU. If that's what it takes to help these places I frankly do not care that was allocated by someone in another country. However don't try to make it like this is my single pro-EU issue. This is just one small example of a thing I like.
      - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
        >the benefit of the EU was that it was an effective way to bypass the people's democratic representatives // The EU is democratically representative too, in a very similar way to the UK parliament. They have the same shortfalls. It just happens that across the EU there is more support for solving the energy crisis than there is in UK Conservative government. In part that's because IMO the EU looks more long term whilst the UK government appears only to be concerned about getting through the next one election. In part it's because the liberal and green elements that aren't properly represented in the UK, because we lack proportional representation, don't get to pressure our government locally but do get to represent the demos in the EU. It's the EU's better, ie more representative, democracy that causes the leap-frogging. >They did get 1.66M from the UK government. // Not really, sure the UK provided their part share of that, but they were forced to by the elected EU layer of government. The major share came from the other EU countries. Germany pays around twice the contribution of the UK and with France, Italy, and Spain we pay about 50% of the contribution. So the money is about 0.83M from these 5, perhaps about 0.2M from the UK government. >involuntarily via the middleman // The UK voluntarily, through a democratic process, joined the EU. The nation chose to put itself in the position where it would contribute the 0.2M and the other countries would add their 1.5M to enable projects such as this all across Europe.
  - Accacin 10y ago
    Like that extra funding for the NHS, what was it? £350million? The EU has given funding to areas that the UK government has neglected for years. Why are they going to start giving the money to them now?