Free of EU, controls, we can get back to business
For the past 25 years, I’ve taken advantage of the funding available from Europe to assist British businesses to prosper. I’ve raised more than £1.6 billion for projects from small owner-managed businesses to multinationals and, in doing so, created more than 15,000 jobs. I’m proud of my achievements.
The European Grant budget for 2014 to 2020 is a staggering €376 billion, spread around 20,000 different schemes. The UK’s portion exceeds €9 billion.
As with all European grants, 72 per cent is decided locally by our Government and distributed through various schemes. Wales and Scotland are the largest recipients.
My favourite client was a penniless start-up with an idea and years of experience, but no money. It required £150,000 fusty old financial dinosaurs who are happy to watch their 0.45 per cent per month drip into their coffers, but for anyone else it means missing opportunities to expand, to move into new markets, to take risks and to reap the benefits of meeting the 21st century head on.
Who loses when the markets take a downturn or the pound drops a few pence against the dollar?
When £1billion is wiped off the FTSE 100, it means that someone lost that money — and someone made it.
The banks are now going to have to get out and fight for customers, and having them at each others’ throats like no-frills airlines is going to be nothing but good for a burgeoning economy screaming out for development funding and loans.
The pampered and overpaid minions running our lazy, bloated financial funds are now going to find —– to their horror —– that they are going to have to start but had nothing to inject. Even now, 25 years later, it’s still considered unbankable. A grant was the solution: £35,000 of aid persuaded a collection of other finance sources to inject money.
Without grant aid the project would never have got off the ground but the company has continued to grow, its turnover reaching £14 million, providing employment to 120 skilled workers.
I even had the Inland revenue approach me to see if grant aid could fund its new offices in Nottingham.
Alas, the story has changed since the credit crunch. Fewer manufacturers are now receiving funds, the money is being diverted into central and local government coffers. of the £16.6million available in the East Midlands, little reached businesses as Nottingham council diverted working for a living, getting their hands dirty instead of swapping bits of paper about.
Whatever the politics of the Brexit campaign and the resulting referendum, we have an exciting, once in a lifetime opportunity to modernise and rejuvenate, to breathe some life into our economy, and we can now do it without having to service a mountain of red tape from the EU. Britain is a major player and always will be. Maybe we’re not always that brilliant at football — but if we play our cards right, we will beat the rest of the world in the only game that counts. aNGus GaFRaIDh, london
e11.
Cleaner diesel
I, Too, drive an ageing Toyota 1.4 diesel Yaris that returns in excess of 65mpg the money to pet projects controlled by it or its councillors.
For example, a £187,500 grant awarded to improve a park (before the Queen’s visit and renamed in her honour) was hijacked by Nottingham City Council which took a £90,000 management fee to oversee the works undertaken by its own staff.
Grant aid has now declined considerably with 37 per cent of the money paying staff salaries for the bureaucrats administering the scheme. This must stop.
With the UK voting to leave the EU and free itself from bureaucratic controls, the first step of the Government must be to revitalise radically its management of grant aid and reposition the funding towards re-establishing UK manufacturing.
Paul Belshaw, Clifton, Notts. (letters) but can’t understand why mention is rarely made of the nitrous emissions from lorries and buses.
These vehicles use an additive called AdBlue which neutralises a lot of their harmful emissions.
Some of the latest diesel cars are now equipped to use this so there is light at the end of the tunnel for us diesel lovers. DaVe OVeRTON, willoughby, lincs