On Sun, 12 Jun 2016 21:40:35 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

I've tended to think kippers are evil or mad. This falls into the
mad variety.

A 'Vote to leave' leaflet posted through my door from Gerard Batten,
UKIP MEP for London.

Under 'how much does EU membership cost' :-

'The total combined cost (direct and indirect) have been calculated
as about £190 billion per annum'

Somebody has their Bs and their Ms confused...

Yes, you.

That figure can be justified.

Do go on...

But, hey, it's only a factor of a thousand away from reality.

No, its probably a factor of around 5.

Oh, well. There we go, then.

Only a factor of five out. So even you acknowledge that it's
exaggerated by one hundred and sixty billion pounds. £160bn.
£160,000,000,000... Or,
to put it another way, one pound in every four and a half quid the
government spends.

So you admit you lied when you said 1000 times out then?

No, but I did drop a bollock. I'd got the weekly figure in my head
instead of the annual. My apologies.

So that's only a factor of 40 out, then.

AS I said, you can argue it many ways, but its not three orders of
magnitude out.

Indeed. We're actually talking about somewhere a factor of five (your
figure, which you've not yet "justified", and a factor of forty
(documented reality).

Of course, that factor of forty is direct cost. The indirect cost is
impossible to calculate - but there's very strong evidence to suggest
that it's actually indirect benefit, not indirect cost, so taking the
figure further away from the obviously loopy £190bn than the provable
direct figure.

So you lied yet again

I've never lied once. You might disagree with what I've said, but I've
never once lied. OTOH, you've come out with a LOT of things that are very
easily disproved with actual facts.