I have a deal for you, I think you'll find it very difficult to turn down

I have a deal to propose, one I think you'll find incredibly hard to turn down.

The deal works like this, you pay me £17 for 12 months membership of my club, you can pay by direct debit if you like, that's not a problem. For your £17, I will give you £8 back across the year, for you to use on projects, purchasing things, paying for services, etc. but ONLY, if you can also stump up 50% of each project, item or service you intend to buy, out of your own pocket. Now, the deal doesn't quite end there, I'm also going to make strong recommendations as to how you'll spend this money, where you'll spend it, with what retailers and service providers. In addition to this, I'm also going to make you abide by a strict set of rules, which I'm not going to lie to you, you won't like very much, but you HAVE to stick to them, or I won't give you the money you want. If you break the rules I set out, I'll take you to court and sue you for about 60p, plus the cost of the court proceedings.

So, how does this all sound? Sounds like a great deal right? At this point I imagine you're screaming at your screen, NO! Well now I'm going to let you into a little secret, it's not really a secret, because it's all written down, in the public domain, even reported on in the media, sort of, but it's been so obfuscated and so fragmented in it's documentation and reporting, that the majority of people haven't a clue that it's true.

If you take my little money making scheme above and add the letters (bn) to the end of each amount of money, or in the case of the 60p, change the p to an m and realise that bn means billion and m means million, what I've described, is our relationship with the EU. This is how we pay our membership, what we get back monetarily speaking, what the terms are for getting that money back and what happens if we break the rules of the Union (Ignore the smoking ban for example, or allow a bank to pay it's top staff whatever bonuses they want to, or refuse to give prisoners the vote). Believe it or not, we pay in £17 billion pounds per year and on average, we get around £8 billion back, that's a little less than half.

The way we get that £8 billion back is not straight forward, they don't just give it to us. We have to request it via 'grants' and 'subsidies' for specific projects and we also have to raise half (It's not always half, but it's easier here to say it is than explain the even more complicated bits) the cost of that project ourselves again, in order to qualify for the 'grant' or 'subsidy'. Now as if that deal doesn't suck enough, we also have to take recommendations on what 'grants' and 'subsidies' to apply for, we then have to take direction on how we will spend the 'grant' or 'subsidy' within the project and we have to abide by a very strict set of rules (regulations and directives) whilst carrying out the project.

By far the most astonishing thing about all of this, is that some people, do seem to support it! There are people who tell us this is a GOOD THING! To me, paying someone else £17 billion per year, to give me some of that money I gave them in the first place back, but only if I can raise half of it myself and meet the requirements they've laid out, whilst also having to stick to their rules whilst I do what they've suggested I do and if I slip up at all they'll sue me for even more money, sounds like a protection racket!!!!