Britain is one of the four largest contributors to the European Investment Bank, a bank owned by the EU itself which lends money to promote jobs and growth in EU countries and, bizarrely, to those just outside the EU borders as well. Those who think that increasing the amount the UK hands over to the Evil Empire each year need to read on as this tale is a disgrace.
Ford’s last UK factory near Southampton employs 500 folks who each year make 28,000 Transit vans. The UK market for Transit vans is c60,000 a year and from now onwards they will all be imported.
Ford also co-owns a factory in Turkey which produces 210,000 Transits a year. This factory at Kocaeli is apparently very profitable. And it wants to expand. Step forward the EIB which has handed over £80 million on an eight year loan with a two year repayment holiday and interest payable at 2%. Given that inflation in Turkey is running at 9% this is effectively free money. A commercial loan to this factory would be at 12% or more. The (profitable) Turkish factory will use the EU cash to expand output and hire workers and so by 2014 will be producing 290,000 Transits a year many of which will be shipped to Britain.
In case you missed the point here. Your taxes have been sent off by the Evil Empire via a dirt cheap loan to a country which is not even in the EU. That has allowed Ford to expand that factory creating jobs and wealth in a non EU state while closing a factory back in the UK so throwing 500 folks on the dole.
Had Ford funded the Turkish expansion itself and shut what was, I am sure, a high cost UK operation I could not have, as a believer in market forces, objected. One of the facts we must all face up to is that if the UK is to remain competitive in a global economy we will have to adjust to a reduced standard of living, i.e. lower wages. But this is not just about Ford cutting costs. It has been subsidised to make the move by cheap debt provided in large part by the very country where the jobs are being lost.
Presumably if the deluded Guardian journalist who wants bankrupt Britain to push for a quadrupling of the EU budget and other deluded lefties got their way we might see many more such schemes go into operation. Good news for non EU countries like Turkey and for the overpaid tossers in Brussels who administer such madness. Not quite such good news for Britain, I suggest.