New Brexit polls suggest shift in favour of leaving the EU

[Johnyo]

I an not European, so take my opinion with a grain of salt, but some times an outside view can help separate the forest from the treas.

Pride is one of the seven sins, and it often leads people in to decisions they would not otherwise take.

Because of it some people are willing to cut their nose to spite their face. A Brexit is an emotional decision not a rational one.

IMO a Brexit it will be disastrous for the UK , I dont think it would also be good for the Brits living in LOS as the pound weakens,

As much as we might wish otherwise, globalization is our future , IMO , Britain has a better chance to compete with in the EU, than outside it.

The Brits and everyone else involved should be working in strengthening the EU rather than weakening it.

You make a good, reasoned post, but it would seem that, as a non-European, you won't appreciate all of the nuances

of the situation. British past glory (or "pride", as you put it), would come a long way down a list of reasons as to why

a majority of United Kingdom citizens would vote for Brexit.

For me it comes down to maintaining a democracy within a socially moderated capitalist system. Bluntly put, at least we can kick 'em out every five years.

Kick out labour to put in the Torys and viceversa doesn't sound much of a democracy to me. Democracy is an illusion. If voting actually mattered we wouldn't be allowed to vote. I don't like the UKIP but a party that gets 4 million votes and one MP in return shows what bullshit the " democratic" system is right now.

The fact that it is not a "pure" democracy (there is actually no such thing - anywhere! -) doesn't make it less worthy. It has served Britain well for over one hundred years. Your disparaging comment will fall on deaf ears. And a citizen of a country that gave the world General Franco and his regime should probably be more

measured, tempered and circumspect in what he has to say about British democracy.

Yes I guess it's better to get shafted by the devil you know. I'm Catalan so you can imagine what I think about Franco. By the way I'm on the leave side. We don't even want to be in Spain never mind the EU

[SgtRock]

MJP.

I think that this pretty much nails it.

Notwithstanding, that no matter what, there will always be a small amount of very vocal racists, who, to be frank, would not know their arse from their elbow anyway.

[MJP]

MJP.

I think that this pretty much nails it.

Notwithstanding, that no matter what, there will always be a small amount of very vocal racists, who, to be frank, would not know their arse from their elbow anyway.

Aye!

Far-right racists can F-OFF and DIE in my opinion.

[nontabury]

​The only thing that comes to mind as a Non Brit that the EU has done to benefit England is to stop them wrapping Fish n Chips in old Newspapers If you find that funny, its not intended As for my own Nation i cant think of Sod All.

On those occasions when I do return to the UK, One thing I do look forward to is Fish n Chips,and I have not noticed any improvement since they restricted the use of newspaper. Next they'll be prohibitatating the use of salt n vinegar. Talk about being over governed.

[FrankGers]

JP Morgan Analysts predicting 3% to 5% win for Leave - £ falling

[sirineou]

I an not European, so take my opinion with a grain of salt, but some times an outside view can help separate the forest from the treas.

Pride is one of the seven sins, and it often leads people in to decisions they would not otherwise take.

Because of it some people are willing to cut their nose to spite their face. A Brexit is an emotional decision not a rational one.

IMO a Brexit it will be disastrous for the UK , I dont think it would also be good for the Brits living in LOS as the pound weakens,

As much as we might wish otherwise, globalization is our future , IMO , Britain has a better chance to compete with in the EU, than outside it.

The Brits and everyone else involved should be working in strengthening the EU rather than weakening it.

You make a good, reasoned post, but it would seem that, as a non-European, you won't appreciate all of the nuances

of the situation. British past glory (or "pride", as you put it), would come a long way down a list of reasons as to why

a majority of United Kingdom citizens would vote for Brexit.

You are absolutely right, I also make the same argument when people outside the US make comments, though from their perspective it makes sense,The don;t understand the nuances , the undercurrent if you might , that makes their perspective incomplete. And as such I agree my perspective is also incomplete.

That is also why I read these Brexit threads with great interest, and rarely comment.

No doubt the Brexit side has legitimate concerns,

Globalization has removed barriers, and like water where when you remove barriers it will flow and reach its natural level. So does wealth.

The World is now in flux. water is flowing and the currents are creating problems. It is a natural reaction to want to re- erect these barriers, but I am afraid by friend, the genie is out of the bottle.

The World is flat is a good book on the subject by Thomas Friedman,( if interested available on audio book form on Youtube for free) and numerous talks concerning that.

Anyway, These things need to run their course , adjustment would need to be made to mediate some of the inadequacies, others would have to be tolerated.

The EU is at it's infancy, give it a chance yo grow. let's not throw out the baby with the bath water.

[allanos]

Got this through from a colleague. It's long but thought I'd share in any case.

THE EU ARE WE IN or OUT

Background

The European Union (EU) can trace its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and the European Economic Community (EEC), formed in 1951 and 1958 respectively by the Inner Six countries of Belgium, France, West Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.17 May 2016. The European Union was established under its current name in 1993 following the Maastricht Treaty. Since then the community has grown in size because of the accession of new member states. The latest major amendment to the constitutional basis of the EU, the Treaty of Lisbon, came into force in 2009. The European Union is an economic and political union of 28 countries. Each of the countries within the Union are independent but they agree to trade under the agreements made between the nations. Twenty two of the member states also belong to the Schengen Area, which is comprised of 26 European countries that have abolished passport and border controls at their common borders. Of the countries that are not part of it, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus and Romania all intend to join, while the United Kingdom and Ireland have opted out. The 28 countries within the European Union include Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Republic of Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The European Economic Area (EEA) includes EU countries and also Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. It allows them to be part of the EU’s single market.

So what is the purpose of the EU? The European Union itself states its formation was to operate as a single market which allows free movement of goods, capital, services and people between member states. By Definition: The common market is a stage in the multinational integration process, which, in the words of a Court of Justice ruling, aims to remove all the barriers to intra-Community trade with a view to the merger of national markets into a single market giving rise to conditions as close as possible to a genuine internal market.

In 1973 the UK citizens voted to join the Common Market which was to be an organisation which had trade agreements with the member countries and their companies. But over the last 43 years that Common Market concept has been taken over and developed into the European Union which has gradually taken control over more and more areas which have nothing to do with trade. The bureaucrats in charge have now forgotten the original concept of a common market and are pushing forward make the EU one federal state, with one currency, one tax system, one medical system, one pension system, one judicial system and one federal military service controlled by those in charge of the EU.

Please do not just consider the topical subject of uncontrolled immigration, but look at the wider implications detailed below before making your final decision. It’s your choice but remember that choice will affect the future of generations to come.

1. Why would you want to belong to an organisation that is going to manage your future and which is run by unelected, unaccountable, unapproachable, undemocratic predominately left wing socialists bureaucrats. Who are going to decide what you can do or not do in your future and your children’s future, that’s not democracy? If you have a problem in the UK you can write to your member of parliament, does anyone know who you would write to take up an issue on your behalf in the EU?

2. Why would you want to belong to a foreign organisation to which the UK paid in 2015 £17.8 Billion, got back £12.4 Billion in rebate, so UK paid Nett contribution of £12.9 Billion. That is currently £200 for every UK citizen, and could reduce the basic rate of tax by 3 pence in the pound. Yet this organisation is not accountable to any one and its account have not been signed off now for 15 years. So what do they spend our £12.9 Billion on, it’s your money being paid to this organisation but no one can tell you where and why it ends up where it does. If the EU was a private business it would face criminal charges and go into administration

3. Imagine what that money could have been spent on in the UK. More modern hospitals, care homes and medical services for all the elderly in this country, better schools and roads. And our budget deficit could have been reduced or eliminated.

4. By voting YES to remain in EU this will indicate the UK has accepted this corrupt mis-management of EU finances and accepts its ultimate aim of a federal state controlled centrally from Brussels

5. No one can give information of how much money pours into the EU coffers and where the money goes annually, and through the mad mismanagement of money, the better the country does financially the more money it has to pay to the EU

6. When the UK was instructed by EU to open its borders, on one told us the EU would be opening its borders to the world

7. Remember in recent conflicts and bomb attacks it’s was not the EU that has organised the protection of people it’s been NATO. What has the EU done about the ISIS issue-nothing? Remember Europe is protected by NATO not by the EU.

8. Our military, throughout an illustrious history, has always firstly pledged allegiance to Queen and Country and for the protection of its citizens. If we vote to remain in the EU, once the federal state and its federal state military is achieved, that allegiance to Queen and Country will be forbidden. The pledge allegiance will be to the federal state not the UK and this federal state would also control NATO

9. The EU insists on the freedom of movement for its 500 million citizens and they can all come to the UK without restriction. So if there is freedom of movement into countries, why is there not freedom of movement out of the country in the form of deportation of foreign criminals?

In the UK jails there are significant numbers (over 10% of the total amount of those in jail who are foreign nationals- predominately Polish, Albanian etc.). So why is it the UK cannot deport them after they have served their sentence. It is because the European Court of Justice opposes deportation and the country the criminal originated from apposes their return as it means another welfare payment to be made and housing to be found

10. 5 new countries are set to join EU, Albania, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia & Turkey (75 million people just from this country) all predominately Muslim residents, who when they have joined the EU, will in accordance with EU rules, will have the right to free entry to UK and all its services and benefits.

11. Be aware of the fact that if we remain in the EU we will become a member nation of a federal state. It is a known intention of the EU that once that federal state has been created then potentially all member countries will be called one name. Imagine the UK becoming known as Federal state No3-it could happen! And so would be lost the rich history of this country

12. Also be aware that by remaining in the EU, every UK citizen is liable under the European Arrest Warrant to be arrested by a foreign police force in the UK and can be judicially surrendered and be extradited, possibly on the most flimsiest charges. This without evidence being presented against them in a British court of law, as our court has no power to prevent that extradition back to another EU country to stand trial and a possible prison sentence in that countries prisons. This without support of the government (Tony Blair signed the UK up to this) and the CPS. You will be on your own! And not supported by your government

13. Under the EU current open door immigration policy it is now felt that due to the unsustainable numbers of migrants coming from EU and Non EU countries into UK eventually resentment and civil unrest is an alarming potential. If this open door policy is not stopped our service and benefits infrastructure will collapse under pressure

14. The EU wants the UK to be in the Euro, but the evidence of the failure of the euro can be clearly identified with the current problems in Greece, Spain etc. again another evidence of socialist mis- management

15. Mass immigration has led to the loss of the real true identity of the English Saxon person

16. Be aware of the EU pushing on for a EU one federal state, and one federal military service controlled by another unelected socialist bureaucrat named Miss Federicia Mogherini who has a left wing communist background and favours Russia. The European military will be run by this EU commissioner and not by competent military personnel.

17. The EU wants to align the UK health service to how it is managed in Europe. This could mean the end of the NHS as we know it.

18. The EU have stated that they intend to put a tax on every financial transaction undertaken within the UK

19. The UK cannot undertake international trade deals with countries within the EU but more importantly outside the EU unless it obtains permission from the International Trade Administrator-another socialist’s bureaucrat (an ex teacher-so has a lot of experience of international trade dealing!!). This is what we pay for in our membership to be prevented to do our own international trade deals

20. In the current Tata steelwork problem the EU has banned the UK from bailing out the company as it contravenes EU law regarding company assistance

21. If we vote to remain in EU then our elected democratic parliament and our MPs become subservient to an unelected body based in Brussels

22. By voting YES to REMAIN means voting for a loss of UK democracy, a democracy which is enshrined in the Magna Carta. It will also mean a loss of sovereignty.

23. All us pay taxes and those taxes go towards the upkeep of foreign nationals that you have never heard of

24. Under EU Common Fishing Policy. French fishing boats can trawl and keep 4000lb of haddock per day. But UK trawlers are restricted to 550lbs per month and the EU is now in charge of the UK 12 mile fishing limit. The main reason all our trawlers sit in harbour and watch foreign fishing fleets fish our waters. How is that a common fishing policy?

25. UK justice systems are now subservient to the EU Court of Justice-another set of unapproachable bureaucrats. If you cannot make your own laws, control your own borders then you are not an independent sovereign nation

26. In December 2015 the EU told the UK banking system to reduce income paid by business to banks every time a credit card is used. So credit card loyalty schemes are being reduced

27. In 2015 EU instructed UK banks to reduce their liability to account holders from £85k down to £75K, no reason given

28. The EU has indicated that if we remain they will be looking at UK pension schemes and try and align them to European schemes which the City of London have already indicated this would be a disaster for the UK pension industry

29. To ensure a common federal policy the EU is intending to standardise the tax system across the EU so UK HMRC will be managed by Brussels and act as just a tax collector for a foreign power

30. When the UK government propose new laws they are debated within the House of Commons and accepted under majority voting by all our MPs, who have been democratically elected by the people of this country. Under EU control, the EU make the laws and then informs the 27 member nation’s via issued EU Directives they must implement those directives into their national law.

31. Only 6% of UK companies export to the EU but 100% of UK companies must comply with EU law

32. Remember it was the EU who gave Ford a big grant to move Transit Van production from Dagenham to Turkey

33. Big companies from the USA and Asia have already stated they will increase trade with the UK if it leaves the EU as there will be less trade and financial restrictions to deal with

34. Our parents fought in a world war to ensure our freedom and prevent world dominance by Germany, but again Germany is again trying for European dominance but via being one of the leaders of the EU

Does anyone know what the benefits are for belonging to the EU and what are the benefits for not belonging to it? Why has the EU not told us this?

So if you vote for Socialism then vote REMAIN, if you vote CAPITALISM vote to Leave

Wow! This is breath-taking. The posters favouring "remain" on this forum have been asking for detailed reasons for a Brexit vote. This quite eloquent

article should go quite a long way towards enlightening them.

The arithmetic and/or the supporting comments in point 2. do not gel. Perhaps the author can correct them?

I am not sure that I would support the summary. I do not see the forthcoming referendum as a Socialism v. Capitalism issue, as both sides support a

degree of each.

[Johnyo]

Got this through from a colleague. It's long but thought I'd share in any case.

THE EU ARE WE IN or OUT

Background

The European Union (EU) can trace its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and the European Economic Community (EEC), formed in 1951 and 1958 respectively by the Inner Six countries of Belgium, France, West Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.17 May 2016. The European Union was established under its current name in 1993 following the Maastricht Treaty. Since then the community has grown in size because of the accession of new member states. The latest major amendment to the constitutional basis of the EU, the Treaty of Lisbon, came into force in 2009. The European Union is an economic and political union of 28 countries. Each of the countries within the Union are independent but they agree to trade under the agreements made between the nations. Twenty two of the member states also belong to the Schengen Area, which is comprised of 26 European countries that have abolished passport and border controls at their common borders. Of the countries that are not part of it, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus and Romania all intend to join, while the United Kingdom and Ireland have opted out. The 28 countries within the European Union include Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Republic of Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The European Economic Area (EEA) includes EU countries and also Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. It allows them to be part of the EU’s single market.

So what is the purpose of the EU? The European Union itself states its formation was to operate as a single market which allows free movement of goods, capital, services and people between member states. By Definition: The common market is a stage in the multinational integration process, which, in the words of a Court of Justice ruling, aims to remove all the barriers to intra-Community trade with a view to the merger of national markets into a single market giving rise to conditions as close as possible to a genuine internal market.

In 1973 the UK citizens voted to join the Common Market which was to be an organisation which had trade agreements with the member countries and their companies. But over the last 43 years that Common Market concept has been taken over and developed into the European Union which has gradually taken control over more and more areas which have nothing to do with trade. The bureaucrats in charge have now forgotten the original concept of a common market and are pushing forward make the EU one federal state, with one currency, one tax system, one medical system, one pension system, one judicial system and one federal military service controlled by those in charge of the EU.

Please do not just consider the topical subject of uncontrolled immigration, but look at the wider implications detailed below before making your final decision. It’s your choice but remember that choice will affect the future of generations to come.

1. Why would you want to belong to an organisation that is going to manage your future and which is run by unelected, unaccountable, unapproachable, undemocratic predominately left wing socialists bureaucrats. Who are going to decide what you can do or not do in your future and your children’s future, that’s not democracy? If you have a problem in the UK you can write to your member of parliament, does anyone know who you would write to take up an issue on your behalf in the EU?

2. Why would you want to belong to a foreign organisation to which the UK paid in 2015 £17.8 Billion, got back £12.4 Billion in rebate, so UK paid Nett contribution of £12.9 Billion. That is currently £200 for every UK citizen, and could reduce the basic rate of tax by 3 pence in the pound. Yet this organisation is not accountable to any one and its account have not been signed off now for 15 years. So what do they spend our £12.9 Billion on, it’s your money being paid to this organisation but no one can tell you where and why it ends up where it does. If the EU was a private business it would face criminal charges and go into administration

3. Imagine what that money could have been spent on in the UK. More modern hospitals, care homes and medical services for all the elderly in this country, better schools and roads. And our budget deficit could have been reduced or eliminated.

4. By voting YES to remain in EU this will indicate the UK has accepted this corrupt mis-management of EU finances and accepts its ultimate aim of a federal state controlled centrally from Brussels

5. No one can give information of how much money pours into the EU coffers and where the money goes annually, and through the mad mismanagement of money, the better the country does financially the more money it has to pay to the EU

6. When the UK was instructed by EU to open its borders, on one told us the EU would be opening its borders to the world

7. Remember in recent conflicts and bomb attacks it’s was not the EU that has organised the protection of people it’s been NATO. What has the EU done about the ISIS issue-nothing? Remember Europe is protected by NATO not by the EU.

8. Our military, throughout an illustrious history, has always firstly pledged allegiance to Queen and Country and for the protection of its citizens. If we vote to remain in the EU, once the federal state and its federal state military is achieved, that allegiance to Queen and Country will be forbidden. The pledge allegiance will be to the federal state not the UK and this federal state would also control NATO

9. The EU insists on the freedom of movement for its 500 million citizens and they can all come to the UK without restriction. So if there is freedom of movement into countries, why is there not freedom of movement out of the country in the form of deportation of foreign criminals?

In the UK jails there are significant numbers (over 10% of the total amount of those in jail who are foreign nationals- predominately Polish, Albanian etc.). So why is it the UK cannot deport them after they have served their sentence. It is because the European Court of Justice opposes deportation and the country the criminal originated from apposes their return as it means another welfare payment to be made and housing to be found

10. 5 new countries are set to join EU, Albania, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia & Turkey (75 million people just from this country) all predominately Muslim residents, who when they have joined the EU, will in accordance with EU rules, will have the right to free entry to UK and all its services and benefits.

11. Be aware of the fact that if we remain in the EU we will become a member nation of a federal state. It is a known intention of the EU that once that federal state has been created then potentially all member countries will be called one name. Imagine the UK becoming known as Federal state No3-it could happen! And so would be lost the rich history of this country

12. Also be aware that by remaining in the EU, every UK citizen is liable under the European Arrest Warrant to be arrested by a foreign police force in the UK and can be judicially surrendered and be extradited, possibly on the most flimsiest charges. This without evidence being presented against them in a British court of law, as our court has no power to prevent that extradition back to another EU country to stand trial and a possible prison sentence in that countries prisons. This without support of the government (Tony Blair signed the UK up to this) and the CPS. You will be on your own! And not supported by your government

13. Under the EU current open door immigration policy it is now felt that due to the unsustainable numbers of migrants coming from EU and Non EU countries into UK eventually resentment and civil unrest is an alarming potential. If this open door policy is not stopped our service and benefits infrastructure will collapse under pressure

14. The EU wants the UK to be in the Euro, but the evidence of the failure of the euro can be clearly identified with the current problems in Greece, Spain etc. again another evidence of socialist mis- management

15. Mass immigration has led to the loss of the real true identity of the English Saxon person

16. Be aware of the EU pushing on for a EU one federal state, and one federal military service controlled by another unelected socialist bureaucrat named Miss Federicia Mogherini who has a left wing communist background and favours Russia. The European military will be run by this EU commissioner and not by competent military personnel.

17. The EU wants to align the UK health service to how it is managed in Europe. This could mean the end of the NHS as we know it.

18. The EU have stated that they intend to put a tax on every financial transaction undertaken within the UK

19. The UK cannot undertake international trade deals with countries within the EU but more importantly outside the EU unless it obtains permission from the International Trade Administrator-another socialist’s bureaucrat (an ex teacher-so has a lot of experience of international trade dealing!!). This is what we pay for in our membership to be prevented to do our own international trade deals

20. In the current Tata steelwork problem the EU has banned the UK from bailing out the company as it contravenes EU law regarding company assistance

21. If we vote to remain in EU then our elected democratic parliament and our MPs become subservient to an unelected body based in Brussels

22. By voting YES to REMAIN means voting for a loss of UK democracy, a democracy which is enshrined in the Magna Carta. It will also mean a loss of sovereignty.

23. All us pay taxes and those taxes go towards the upkeep of foreign nationals that you have never heard of

24. Under EU Common Fishing Policy. French fishing boats can trawl and keep 4000lb of haddock per day. But UK trawlers are restricted to 550lbs per month and the EU is now in charge of the UK 12 mile fishing limit. The main reason all our trawlers sit in harbour and watch foreign fishing fleets fish our waters. How is that a common fishing policy?

25. UK justice systems are now subservient to the EU Court of Justice-another set of unapproachable bureaucrats. If you cannot make your own laws, control your own borders then you are not an independent sovereign nation

26. In December 2015 the EU told the UK banking system to reduce income paid by business to banks every time a credit card is used. So credit card loyalty schemes are being reduced

27. In 2015 EU instructed UK banks to reduce their liability to account holders from £85k down to £75K, no reason given

28. The EU has indicated that if we remain they will be looking at UK pension schemes and try and align them to European schemes which the City of London have already indicated this would be a disaster for the UK pension industry

29. To ensure a common federal policy the EU is intending to standardise the tax system across the EU so UK HMRC will be managed by Brussels and act as just a tax collector for a foreign power

30. When the UK government propose new laws they are debated within the House of Commons and accepted under majority voting by all our MPs, who have been democratically elected by the people of this country. Under EU control, the EU make the laws and then informs the 27 member nation’s via issued EU Directives they must implement those directives into their national law.

31. Only 6% of UK companies export to the EU but 100% of UK companies must comply with EU law

32. Remember it was the EU who gave Ford a big grant to move Transit Van production from Dagenham to Turkey

33. Big companies from the USA and Asia have already stated they will increase trade with the UK if it leaves the EU as there will be less trade and financial restrictions to deal with

34. Our parents fought in a world war to ensure our freedom and prevent world dominance by Germany, but again Germany is again trying for European dominance but via being one of the leaders of the EU

Does anyone know what the benefits are for belonging to the EU and what are the benefits for not belonging to it? Why has the EU not told us this?

So if you vote for Socialism then vote REMAIN, if you vote CAPITALISM vote to Leave

Wow! This is breath-taking. The posters favouring "remain" on this forum have been asking for detailed reasons for a Brexit vote. This quite eloquent

article should go quite a long way towards enlightening them.

The arithmetic and/or the supporting comments in point 2. do not gel. Perhaps the author can correct them?

I am not sure that I would support the summary. I do not see the forthcoming referendum as a Socialism v. Capitalism issue, as both sides support a

degree of each.

UK pensioners can only wish they could align with EU pensions, point 28, but hey nice to get shafted by the devil you know.

[allanos]

JP Morgan Analysts predicting 3% to 5% win for Leave - £ falling

Whilst the conclusion may turn out to be correct, I wonder just how they were able to "analyse" this?

It will be self-serving, I am sure. They will have already sent out a "practice note" to their client base,

peddling some kind of in-house recommendation and coining it.

If they operate anything like Goldman Sachs, they will also be playing both ends against the middle,

selling one "product" whilst simultaneously betting against it.

This is more the unpleasant face of capitalism; the "egregious" aspects, if you will.

[FrankGers]

JP Morgan Analysts predicting 3% to 5% win for Leave - £ falling

Whilst the conclusion may turn out to be correct, I wonder just how they were able to "analyse" this?

It will be self-serving, I am sure. They will have already sent out a "practice note" to their client base,

peddling some kind of in-house recommendation and coining it.

If they operate anything like Goldman Sachs, they will also be playing both ends against the middle,

selling one "product" whilst simultaneously betting against it.

This is more the unpleasant face of capitalism; the "egregious" aspects, if you will.

Most likely mate. I got it off twitter of a journo.

I am 100% behind leave. For me it's an absolute no brainer. No country in the worlkd should have people from another country controlling it. I don;t care what any MP, Businessman etc says. To me it's simple common sense. Control your own destiny, be able to voe in or out our idiot MP's

I do think the result will be "stay" though.

[allanos]

I an not European, so take my opinion with a grain of salt, but some times an outside view can help separate the forest from the treas.

Pride is one of the seven sins, and it often leads people in to decisions they would not otherwise take.

Because of it some people are willing to cut their nose to spite their face. A Brexit is an emotional decision not a rational one.

IMO a Brexit it will be disastrous for the UK , I dont think it would also be good for the Brits living in LOS as the pound weakens,

As much as we might wish otherwise, globalization is our future , IMO , Britain has a better chance to compete with in the EU, than outside it.

The Brits and everyone else involved should be working in strengthening the EU rather than weakening it.

You make a good, reasoned post, but it would seem that, as a non-European, you won't appreciate all of the nuances

of the situation. British past glory (or "pride", as you put it), would come a long way down a list of reasons as to why

a majority of United Kingdom citizens would vote for Brexit.

You are absolutely right, I also make the same argument when people outside the US make comments, though from their perspective it makes sense,The don;t understand the nuances , the undercurrent if you might , that makes their perspective incomplete. And as such I agree my perspective is also incomplete.

That is also why I read these Brexit threads with great interest, and rarely comment.

No doubt the Brexit side has legitimate concerns,

Globalization has removed barriers, and like water where when you remove barriers it will flow and reach its natural level. So does wealth.

The World is now in flux. water is flowing and the currents are creating problems. It is a natural reaction to want to re- erect these barriers, but I am afraid by friend, the genie is out of the bottle.

The World is flat is a good book on the subject by Thomas Friedman,( if interested available on audio book form on Youtube for free) and numerous talks concerning that.

Anyway, These things need to run their course , adjustment would need to be made to mediate some of the inadequacies, others would have to be tolerated.

The EU is at it's infancy, give it a chance yo grow. let's not throw out the baby with the bath water.

I read "The World is Flat" a few years ago, and started re-reading it recently. I spent good money on the book. It just goes to show how quickly

the world is moving, if it is now available in audio, for free!

I appreciate and respect your point of view. However, I believe it to be extremely naïve in the context of the United Kingdom's position within the

European Union. Despite the EU's rules, and what many of the "Remain" side would have us believe, Britain's influence in directing the course of

events within a future EU borders on impossibility.

The best that British citizens can hope for (the lesser of the evils) is to either "go it alone" (as other nations, big and small, do), or hope for a collapse

of the European Union following a Brexit (a not unlikely scenario, one even lately opined by some of the "big" voices within the EU). Should the EU

tumble, it would be possible to re-create a trading block, without political union.

[Mosha]

Got this through from a colleague. It's long but thought I'd share in any case.

THE EU ARE WE IN or OUT

Background

The European Union (EU) can trace its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and the European Economic Community (EEC), formed in 1951 and 1958 respectively by the Inner Six countries of Belgium, France, West Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.17 May 2016. The European Union was established under its current name in 1993 following the Maastricht Treaty. Since then the community has grown in size because of the accession of new member states. The latest major amendment to the constitutional basis of the EU, the Treaty of Lisbon, came into force in 2009. The European Union is an economic and political union of 28 countries. Each of the countries within the Union are independent but they agree to trade under the agreements made between the nations. Twenty two of the member states also belong to the Schengen Area, which is comprised of 26 European countries that have abolished passport and border controls at their common borders. Of the countries that are not part of it, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus and Romania all intend to join, while the United Kingdom and Ireland have opted out. The 28 countries within the European Union include Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Republic of Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The European Economic Area (EEA) includes EU countries and also Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. It allows them to be part of the EU’s single market.

So what is the purpose of the EU? The European Union itself states its formation was to operate as a single market which allows free movement of goods, capital, services and people between member states. By Definition: The common market is a stage in the multinational integration process, which, in the words of a Court of Justice ruling, aims to remove all the barriers to intra-Community trade with a view to the merger of national markets into a single market giving rise to conditions as close as possible to a genuine internal market.

In 1973 the UK citizens voted to join the Common Market which was to be an organisation which had trade agreements with the member countries and their companies. But over the last 43 years that Common Market concept has been taken over and developed into the European Union which has gradually taken control over more and more areas which have nothing to do with trade. The bureaucrats in charge have now forgotten the original concept of a common market and are pushing forward make the EU one federal state, with one currency, one tax system, one medical system, one pension system, one judicial system and one federal military service controlled by those in charge of the EU.

Please do not just consider the topical subject of uncontrolled immigration, but look at the wider implications detailed below before making your final decision. It’s your choice but remember that choice will affect the future of generations to come.

1. Why would you want to belong to an organisation that is going to manage your future and which is run by unelected, unaccountable, unapproachable, undemocratic predominately left wing socialists bureaucrats. Who are going to decide what you can do or not do in your future and your children’s future, that’s not democracy? If you have a problem in the UK you can write to your member of parliament, does anyone know who you would write to take up an issue on your behalf in the EU?

2. Why would you want to belong to a foreign organisation to which the UK paid in 2015 £17.8 Billion, got back £12.4 Billion in rebate, so UK paid Nett contribution of £12.9 Billion. That is currently £200 for every UK citizen, and could reduce the basic rate of tax by 3 pence in the pound. Yet this organisation is not accountable to any one and its account have not been signed off now for 15 years. So what do they spend our £12.9 Billion on, it’s your money being paid to this organisation but no one can tell you where and why it ends up where it does. If the EU was a private business it would face criminal charges and go into administration

3. Imagine what that money could have been spent on in the UK. More modern hospitals, care homes and medical services for all the elderly in this country, better schools and roads. And our budget deficit could have been reduced or eliminated.

4. By voting YES to remain in EU this will indicate the UK has accepted this corrupt mis-management of EU finances and accepts its ultimate aim of a federal state controlled centrally from Brussels

5. No one can give information of how much money pours into the EU coffers and where the money goes annually, and through the mad mismanagement of money, the better the country does financially the more money it has to pay to the EU

6. When the UK was instructed by EU to open its borders, on one told us the EU would be opening its borders to the world

7. Remember in recent conflicts and bomb attacks it’s was not the EU that has organised the protection of people it’s been NATO. What has the EU done about the ISIS issue-nothing? Remember Europe is protected by NATO not by the EU.

8. Our military, throughout an illustrious history, has always firstly pledged allegiance to Queen and Country and for the protection of its citizens. If we vote to remain in the EU, once the federal state and its federal state military is achieved, that allegiance to Queen and Country will be forbidden. The pledge allegiance will be to the federal state not the UK and this federal state would also control NATO

9. The EU insists on the freedom of movement for its 500 million citizens and they can all come to the UK without restriction. So if there is freedom of movement into countries, why is there not freedom of movement out of the country in the form of deportation of foreign criminals?

In the UK jails there are significant numbers (over 10% of the total amount of those in jail who are foreign nationals- predominately Polish, Albanian etc.). So why is it the UK cannot deport them after they have served their sentence. It is because the European Court of Justice opposes deportation and the country the criminal originated from apposes their return as it means another welfare payment to be made and housing to be found

10. 5 new countries are set to join EU, Albania, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia & Turkey (75 million people just from this country) all predominately Muslim residents, who when they have joined the EU, will in accordance with EU rules, will have the right to free entry to UK and all its services and benefits.

11. Be aware of the fact that if we remain in the EU we will become a member nation of a federal state. It is a known intention of the EU that once that federal state has been created then potentially all member countries will be called one name. Imagine the UK becoming known as Federal state No3-it could happen! And so would be lost the rich history of this country

12. Also be aware that by remaining in the EU, every UK citizen is liable under the European Arrest Warrant to be arrested by a foreign police force in the UK and can be judicially surrendered and be extradited, possibly on the most flimsiest charges. This without evidence being presented against them in a British court of law, as our court has no power to prevent that extradition back to another EU country to stand trial and a possible prison sentence in that countries prisons. This without support of the government (Tony Blair signed the UK up to this) and the CPS. You will be on your own! And not supported by your government

13. Under the EU current open door immigration policy it is now felt that due to the unsustainable numbers of migrants coming from EU and Non EU countries into UK eventually resentment and civil unrest is an alarming potential. If this open door policy is not stopped our service and benefits infrastructure will collapse under pressure

14. The EU wants the UK to be in the Euro, but the evidence of the failure of the euro can be clearly identified with the current problems in Greece, Spain etc. again another evidence of socialist mis- management

15. Mass immigration has led to the loss of the real true identity of the English Saxon person

16. Be aware of the EU pushing on for a EU one federal state, and one federal military service controlled by another unelected socialist bureaucrat named Miss Federicia Mogherini who has a left wing communist background and favours Russia. The European military will be run by this EU commissioner and not by competent military personnel.

17. The EU wants to align the UK health service to how it is managed in Europe. This could mean the end of the NHS as we know it.

18. The EU have stated that they intend to put a tax on every financial transaction undertaken within the UK

19. The UK cannot undertake international trade deals with countries within the EU but more importantly outside the EU unless it obtains permission from the International Trade Administrator-another socialist’s bureaucrat (an ex teacher-so has a lot of experience of international trade dealing!!). This is what we pay for in our membership to be prevented to do our own international trade deals

20. In the current Tata steelwork problem the EU has banned the UK from bailing out the company as it contravenes EU law regarding company assistance

21. If we vote to remain in EU then our elected democratic parliament and our MPs become subservient to an unelected body based in Brussels

22. By voting YES to REMAIN means voting for a loss of UK democracy, a democracy which is enshrined in the Magna Carta. It will also mean a loss of sovereignty.

23. All us pay taxes and those taxes go towards the upkeep of foreign nationals that you have never heard of

24. Under EU Common Fishing Policy. French fishing boats can trawl and keep 4000lb of haddock per day. But UK trawlers are restricted to 550lbs per month and the EU is now in charge of the UK 12 mile fishing limit. The main reason all our trawlers sit in harbour and watch foreign fishing fleets fish our waters. How is that a common fishing policy?

25. UK justice systems are now subservient to the EU Court of Justice-another set of unapproachable bureaucrats. If you cannot make your own laws, control your own borders then you are not an independent sovereign nation

26. In December 2015 the EU told the UK banking system to reduce income paid by business to banks every time a credit card is used. So credit card loyalty schemes are being reduced

27. In 2015 EU instructed UK banks to reduce their liability to account holders from £85k down to £75K, no reason given

28. The EU has indicated that if we remain they will be looking at UK pension schemes and try and align them to European schemes which the City of London have already indicated this would be a disaster for the UK pension industry

29. To ensure a common federal policy the EU is intending to standardise the tax system across the EU so UK HMRC will be managed by Brussels and act as just a tax collector for a foreign power

30. When the UK government propose new laws they are debated within the House of Commons and accepted under majority voting by all our MPs, who have been democratically elected by the people of this country. Under EU control, the EU make the laws and then informs the 27 member nation’s via issued EU Directives they must implement those directives into their national law.

31. Only 6% of UK companies export to the EU but 100% of UK companies must comply with EU law

32. Remember it was the EU who gave Ford a big grant to move Transit Van production from Dagenham to Turkey

33. Big companies from the USA and Asia have already stated they will increase trade with the UK if it leaves the EU as there will be less trade and financial restrictions to deal with

34. Our parents fought in a world war to ensure our freedom and prevent world dominance by Germany, but again Germany is again trying for European dominance but via being one of the leaders of the EU

Does anyone know what the benefits are for belonging to the EU and what are the benefits for not belonging to it? Why has the EU not told us this?

So if you vote for Socialism then vote REMAIN, if you vote CAPITALISM vote to Leave

Wow! This is breath-taking. The posters favouring "remain" on this forum have been asking for detailed reasons for a Brexit vote. This quite eloquent

article should go quite a long way towards enlightening them.

The arithmetic and/or the supporting comments in point 2. do not gel. Perhaps the author can correct them?

I am not sure that I would support the summary. I do not see the forthcoming referendum as a Socialism v. Capitalism issue, as both sides support a

degree of each.

UK pensioners can only wish they could align with EU pensions, point 28, but hey nice to get shafted by the devil you know.

NHS is the killer.

Sent from my SMART_4G_Speedy_5inch using Tapatalk

[cumgranosalum]

Just brilliant, excoriating and true

"Brexit: AA Gill argues for ‘In’

We all know what “getting our country back” means. It’s snorting a line of that most pernicious and debilitating Little English drug, nostalgia

It was the woman on Question Time that really did it for me. She was so familiar. There is someone like her in every queue, every coffee shop, outside every school in every parish council in the country. Middle-aged, middle-class, middle-brow, over-made-up, with her National Health face and weatherproof English expression of hurt righteousness, she’s Britannia’s mother-in-law. The camera closed in on her and she shouted: “All I want is my country back. Give me my country back.”

It was a heartfelt cry of real distress and the rest of the audience erupted in sympathetic applause, but I thought: “Back from what? Back from where?”

Wanting the country back is the constant mantra of all the outies. Farage slurs it, Gove insinuates it. Of course I know what they mean. We all know what they mean. They mean back from Johnny Foreigner, back from the brink, back from the future, back-to-back, back to bosky hedges and dry stone walls and country lanes and church bells and warm beer and skittles and football rattles and cheery banter and clogs on cobbles. Back to vicars-and-tarts parties and Carry On fart jokes, back to Elgar and fudge and proper weather and herbaceous borders and cars called Morris. Back to victoria sponge and 22 yards to a wicket and 15 hands to a horse and 3ft to a yard and four fingers in a Kit Kat, back to gooseberries not avocados, back to deference and respect, to make do and mend and smiling bravely and biting your lip and suffering in silence and patronising foreigners with pity.

We all know what “getting our country back” means. It’s snorting a line of the most pernicious and debilitating Little English drug, nostalgia. The warm, crumbly, honey-coloured, collective “yesterday” with its fond belief that everything was better back then, that Britain (England, really) is a worse place now than it was at some foggy point in the past where we achieved peak Blighty. It’s the knowledge that the best of us have been and gone, that nothing we can build will be as lovely as a National Trust Georgian country house, no art will be as good as a Turner, no poem as wonderful as If, no writer a touch on Shakespeare or Dickens, nothing will grow as lovely as a cottage garden, no hero greater than Nelson, no politician better than Churchill, no view more throat-catching than the White Cliffs and that we will never manufacture anything as great as a Rolls-Royce or Flying Scotsman again.

The dream of Brexit isn’t that we might be able to make a brighter, new, energetic tomorrow, it’s a desire to shuffle back to a regret-curdled inward-looking yesterday. In the Brexit fantasy, the best we can hope for is to kick out all the work-all-hours foreigners and become caretakers to our own past in this self-congratulatory island of moaning and pomposity.

And if you think that’s an exaggeration of the Brexit position, then just listen to the language they use: “We are a nation of inventors and entrepreneurs, we want to put the great back in Britain, the great engineers, the great manufacturers.” This is all the expression of a sentimental nostalgia. In the Brexiteer’s mind’s eye is the old Pathé newsreel of Donald Campbell, of John Logie Baird with his television, Barnes Wallis and his bouncing bomb, and Robert Baden-Powell inventing boy scouts in his shed.

All we need, their argument goes, is to be free of the humourless Germans and spoilsport French and all their collective liberalism and reality. There is a concomitant hope that if we manage to back out of Europe, then we’ll get back to the bowler-hatted 1950s and the Commonwealth will hold pageants, fireworks displays and beg to be back in the Queen Empress’s good books again. Then New Zealand will sacrifice a thousand lambs, Ghana will ask if it can go back to being called the Gold Coast and Britain will resume hand-making Land Rovers and top hats and Sheffield plate teapots.

There is a reason that most of the people who want to leave the EU are old while those who want to remain are young: it’s because the young aren’t infected with Bisto nostalgia. They don’t recognise half the stuff I’ve mentioned here. They’ve grown up in the EU and at worst it’s been neutral for them.

The under-thirties want to be part of things, not aloof from them. They’re about being joined-up and counted. I imagine a phrase most outies identify with is “women’s liberation has gone too far”. Everything has gone too far for them, from political correctness — well, that’s gone mad, hasn’t it? — to health and safety and gender-neutral lavatories. Those oldies, they don’t know if they’re coming or going, what with those newfangled mobile phones and kids on Tinder and Grindr. What happened to meeting Miss Joan Hunter Dunn at the tennis club? And don’t get them started on electric hand dryers, or something unrecognised in the bagging area, or Indian call centres , or the impertinent computer asking for a password that has both capitals and little letters and numbers and more than eight digits.

Brexit is the fond belief that Britain is worse now than at some point in the foggy past where we achieved peak Blighty

We listen to the Brexit lot talk about the trade deals they’re going to make with Europe after we leave, and the blithe insouciance that what they’re offering instead of EU membership is a divorce where you can still have sex with your ex. They reckon they can get out of the marriage, keep the house, not pay alimony, take the kids out of school, stop the in-laws going to the doctor, get strict with the visiting rights, but, you know, still get a shag at the weekend and, obviously, see other people on the side.

Really, that’s their best offer? That’s the plan? To swagger into Brussels with Union Jack pants on and say: “ ’Ello luv, you’re looking nice today. Would you like some?”

When the rest of us ask how that’s really going to work, leavers reply, with Terry-Thomas smirks, that “they’re going to still really fancy us, honest, they’re gagging for us. Possibly not Merkel, but the bosses of Mercedes and those French vintners and cheesemakers, they can’t get enough of old John Bull. Of course they’re going to want to go on making the free market with two backs after we’ve got the decree nisi. Makes sense, doesn’t it?”

Have no doubt, this is a divorce. It’s not just business, it’s not going to be all reason and goodwill. Like all divorces, leaving Europe would be ugly and mean and hurtful, and it would lead to a great deal of poisonous xenophobia and racism, all the niggling personal prejudice that dumped, betrayed and thwarted people are prey to. And the racism and prejudice are, of course, weak points for us. The tortuous renegotiation with lawyers and courts will be bitter and vengeful, because divorces always are and, just in passing, this sovereignty thing we’re supposed to want back so badly, like Frodo’s ring, has nothing to do with you or me. We won’t notice it coming back, because we didn’t notice not having it in the first place.

Nine out of 10 economists say ‘remain in the EU’

You won’t wake up on June 24 and think: “Oh my word, my arthritis has gone! My teeth are suddenly whiter! Magically, I seem to know how to make a soufflé and I’m buff with the power of sovereignty.” This is something only politicians care about; it makes not a jot of difference to you or me if the Supreme Court is a bunch of strangely out-of-touch old gits in wigs in Westminster or a load of strangely out-of-touch old gits without wigs in Luxembourg. What matters is that we have as many judges as possible on the side of personal freedom.

Personally, I see nothing about our legislators in the UK that makes me feel I can confidently give them more power. The more checks and balances politicians have, the better for the rest of us. You can’t have too many wise heads and different opinions. If you’re really worried about red tape, by the way, it’s not just a European problem. We’re perfectly capable of coming up with our own rules and regulations and we have no shortage of jobsworths. Red tape may be annoying, but it is also there to protect your and my family from being lied to, poisoned and cheated.

The first “X” I ever put on a voting slip was to say yes to the EU. The first referendum was when I was 20 years old. This one will be in the week of my 62nd birthday. For nearly all my adult life, there hasn’t been a day when I haven’t been pleased and proud to be part of this great collective. If you ask me for my nationality, the truth is I feel more European than anything else. I am part of this culture, this European civilisation. I can walk into any gallery on our continent and completely understand the images and the stories on the walls. These people are my people and they have been for thousands of years. I can read books on subjects from Ancient Greece to Dark Ages Scandinavia, from Renaissance Italy to 19th-century France, and I don’t need the context or the landscape explained to me. The music of Europe, from its scales and its instruments to its rhythms and religion, is my music. The Renaissance, the rococo, the Romantics, the impressionists, gothic, baroque, neoclassicism, realism, expressionism, futurism, fauvism, cubism, dada, surrealism, postmodernism and kitsch were all European movements and none of them belongs to a single nation.

There is a reason why the Chinese are making fake Italian handbags and the Italians aren’t making fake Chinese ones. This European culture, without question or argument, is the greatest, most inventive, subtle, profound, beautiful and powerful genius that was ever contrived anywhere by anyone and it belongs to us. Just look at my day job — food. The change in food culture and pleasure has been enormous since we joined the EU, and that’s no coincidence. What we eat, the ingredients, the recipes, may come from around the world, but it is the collective to and fro of European interests, expertise and imagination that has made it all so very appetising and exciting.

The restaurant was a European invention, naturally. The first one in Paris was called The London Bridge.

Culture works and grows through the constant warp and weft of creators, producers, consumers, intellectuals and instinctive lovers. You can’t dictate or legislate for it, you can just make a place that encourages it and you can truncate it. You can make it harder and more grudging, you can put up barriers and you can build walls, but why on earth would you? This collective culture, this golden civilisation grown on this continent over thousands of years, has made everything we have and everything we are, why would you not want to be part of it?

I understand that if we leave we don’t have to hand back our library ticket for European civilisation, but why would we even think about it? In fact, the only ones who would are those old, philistine scared gits. Look at them, too frightened to join in."

[cumgranosalum]

Got this through from a colleague. It's long but thought I'd share in any case.

THE EU ARE WE IN or OUT

Background

The European Union (EU) can trace its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and the European Economic Community (EEC), formed in 1951 and 1958 respectively by the Inner Six countries of Belgium, France, West Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.17 May 2016. The European Union was established under its current name in 1993 following the Maastricht Treaty. Since then the community has grown in size because of the accession of new member states. The latest major amendment to the constitutional basis of the EU, the Treaty of Lisbon, came into force in 2009. The European Union is an economic and political union of 28 countries. Each of the countries within the Union are independent but they agree to trade under the agreements made between the nations. Twenty two of the member states also belong to the Schengen Area, which is comprised of 26 European countries that have abolished passport and border controls at their common borders. Of the countries that are not part of it, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus and Romania all intend to join, while the United Kingdom and Ireland have opted out. The 28 countries within the European Union include Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Republic of Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The European Economic Area (EEA) includes EU countries and also Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. It allows them to be part of the EU’s single market.

So what is the purpose of the EU? The European Union itself states its formation was to operate as a single market which allows free movement of goods, capital, services and people between member states. By Definition: The common market is a stage in the multinational integration process, which, in the words of a Court of Justice ruling, aims to remove all the barriers to intra-Community trade with a view to the merger of national markets into a single market giving rise to conditions as close as possible to a genuine internal market.

In 1973 the UK citizens voted to join the Common Market which was to be an organisation which had trade agreements with the member countries and their companies. But over the last 43 years that Common Market concept has been taken over and developed into the European Union which has gradually taken control over more and more areas which have nothing to do with trade. The bureaucrats in charge have now forgotten the original concept of a common market and are pushing forward make the EU one federal state, with one currency, one tax system, one medical system, one pension system, one judicial system and one federal military service controlled by those in charge of the EU.

Please do not just consider the topical subject of uncontrolled immigration, but look at the wider implications detailed below before making your final decision. It’s your choice but remember that choice will affect the future of generations to come.

1. Why would you want to belong to an organisation that is going to manage your future and which is run by unelected, unaccountable, unapproachable, undemocratic predominately left wing socialists bureaucrats. Who are going to decide what you can do or not do in your future and your children’s future, that’s not democracy? If you have a problem in the UK you can write to your member of parliament, does anyone know who you would write to take up an issue on your behalf in the EU?

2. Why would you want to belong to a foreign organisation to which the UK paid in 2015 £17.8 Billion, got back £12.4 Billion in rebate, so UK paid Nett contribution of £12.9 Billion. That is currently £200 for every UK citizen, and could reduce the basic rate of tax by 3 pence in the pound. Yet this organisation is not accountable to any one and its account have not been signed off now for 15 years. So what do they spend our £12.9 Billion on, it’s your money being paid to this organisation but no one can tell you where and why it ends up where it does. If the EU was a private business it would face criminal charges and go into administration

3. Imagine what that money could have been spent on in the UK. More modern hospitals, care homes and medical services for all the elderly in this country, better schools and roads. And our budget deficit could have been reduced or eliminated.

4. By voting YES to remain in EU this will indicate the UK has accepted this corrupt mis-management of EU finances and accepts its ultimate aim of a federal state controlled centrally from Brussels

5. No one can give information of how much money pours into the EU coffers and where the money goes annually, and through the mad mismanagement of money, the better the country does financially the more money it has to pay to the EU

6. When the UK was instructed by EU to open its borders, on one told us the EU would be opening its borders to the world

7. Remember in recent conflicts and bomb attacks it’s was not the EU that has organised the protection of people it’s been NATO. What has the EU done about the ISIS issue-nothing? Remember Europe is protected by NATO not by the EU.

8. Our military, throughout an illustrious history, has always firstly pledged allegiance to Queen and Country and for the protection of its citizens. If we vote to remain in the EU, once the federal state and its federal state military is achieved, that allegiance to Queen and Country will be forbidden. The pledge allegiance will be to the federal state not the UK and this federal state would also control NATO

9. The EU insists on the freedom of movement for its 500 million citizens and they can all come to the UK without restriction. So if there is freedom of movement into countries, why is there not freedom of movement out of the country in the form of deportation of foreign criminals?

In the UK jails there are significant numbers (over 10% of the total amount of those in jail who are foreign nationals- predominately Polish, Albanian etc.). So why is it the UK cannot deport them after they have served their sentence. It is because the European Court of Justice opposes deportation and the country the criminal originated from apposes their return as it means another welfare payment to be made and housing to be found

10. 5 new countries are set to join EU, Albania, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia & Turkey (75 million people just from this country) all predominately Muslim residents, who when they have joined the EU, will in accordance with EU rules, will have the right to free entry to UK and all its services and benefits.

11. Be aware of the fact that if we remain in the EU we will become a member nation of a federal state. It is a known intention of the EU that once that federal state has been created then potentially all member countries will be called one name. Imagine the UK becoming known as Federal state No3-it could happen! And so would be lost the rich history of this country

12. Also be aware that by remaining in the EU, every UK citizen is liable under the European Arrest Warrant to be arrested by a foreign police force in the UK and can be judicially surrendered and be extradited, possibly on the most flimsiest charges. This without evidence being presented against them in a British court of law, as our court has no power to prevent that extradition back to another EU country to stand trial and a possible prison sentence in that countries prisons. This without support of the government (Tony Blair signed the UK up to this) and the CPS. You will be on your own! And not supported by your government

13. Under the EU current open door immigration policy it is now felt that due to the unsustainable numbers of migrants coming from EU and Non EU countries into UK eventually resentment and civil unrest is an alarming potential. If this open door policy is not stopped our service and benefits infrastructure will collapse under pressure

14. The EU wants the UK to be in the Euro, but the evidence of the failure of the euro can be clearly identified with the current problems in Greece, Spain etc. again another evidence of socialist mis- management

15. Mass immigration has led to the loss of the real true identity of the English Saxon person

16. Be aware of the EU pushing on for a EU one federal state, and one federal military service controlled by another unelected socialist bureaucrat named Miss Federicia Mogherini who has a left wing communist background and favours Russia. The European military will be run by this EU commissioner and not by competent military personnel.

17. The EU wants to align the UK health service to how it is managed in Europe. This could mean the end of the NHS as we know it.

18. The EU have stated that they intend to put a tax on every financial transaction undertaken within the UK

19. The UK cannot undertake international trade deals with countries within the EU but more importantly outside the EU unless it obtains permission from the International Trade Administrator-another socialist’s bureaucrat (an ex teacher-so has a lot of experience of international trade dealing!!). This is what we pay for in our membership to be prevented to do our own international trade deals

20. In the current Tata steelwork problem the EU has banned the UK from bailing out the company as it contravenes EU law regarding company assistance

21. If we vote to remain in EU then our elected democratic parliament and our MPs become subservient to an unelected body based in Brussels

22. By voting YES to REMAIN means voting for a loss of UK democracy, a democracy which is enshrined in the Magna Carta. It will also mean a loss of sovereignty.

23. All us pay taxes and those taxes go towards the upkeep of foreign nationals that you have never heard of

24. Under EU Common Fishing Policy. French fishing boats can trawl and keep 4000lb of haddock per day. But UK trawlers are restricted to 550lbs per month and the EU is now in charge of the UK 12 mile fishing limit. The main reason all our trawlers sit in harbour and watch foreign fishing fleets fish our waters. How is that a common fishing policy?

25. UK justice systems are now subservient to the EU Court of Justice-another set of unapproachable bureaucrats. If you cannot make your own laws, control your own borders then you are not an independent sovereign nation

26. In December 2015 the EU told the UK banking system to reduce income paid by business to banks every time a credit card is used. So credit card loyalty schemes are being reduced

27. In 2015 EU instructed UK banks to reduce their liability to account holders from £85k down to £75K, no reason given

28. The EU has indicated that if we remain they will be looking at UK pension schemes and try and align them to European schemes which the City of London have already indicated this would be a disaster for the UK pension industry

29. To ensure a common federal policy the EU is intending to standardise the tax system across the EU so UK HMRC will be managed by Brussels and act as just a tax collector for a foreign power

30. When the UK government propose new laws they are debated within the House of Commons and accepted under majority voting by all our MPs, who have been democratically elected by the people of this country. Under EU control, the EU make the laws and then informs the 27 member nation’s via issued EU Directives they must implement those directives into their national law.

31. Only 6% of UK companies export to the EU but 100% of UK companies must comply with EU law

32. Remember it was the EU who gave Ford a big grant to move Transit Van production from Dagenham to Turkey

33. Big companies from the USA and Asia have already stated they will increase trade with the UK if it leaves the EU as there will be less trade and financial restrictions to deal with

34. Our parents fought in a world war to ensure our freedom and prevent world dominance by Germany, but again Germany is again trying for European dominance but via being one of the leaders of the EU

Does anyone know what the benefits are for belonging to the EU and what are the benefits for not belonging to it? Why has the EU not told us this?

So if you vote for Socialism then vote REMAIN, if you vote CAPITALISM vote to Leave

I feel it needs to be pointed out that putting numbers by your arguments makes them neither more valid or true.

But I love the way that Brexiteers always bring it down to one thing - pure unadulterated xenophobia....the Germans indeed.....

[cumgranosalum]

Between 40 and 50% of ALL UK exports go to the EU........

[MJP]

Got this through from a colleague. It's long but thought I'd share in any case.

THE EU ARE WE IN or OUT

Background

The European Union (EU) can trace its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and the European Economic Community (EEC), formed in 1951 and 1958 respectively by the Inner Six countries of Belgium, France, West Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.17 May 2016. The European Union was established under its current name in 1993 following the Maastricht Treaty. Since then the community has grown in size because of the accession of new member states. The latest major amendment to the constitutional basis of the EU, the Treaty of Lisbon, came into force in 2009. The European Union is an economic and political union of 28 countries. Each of the countries within the Union are independent but they agree to trade under the agreements made between the nations. Twenty two of the member states also belong to the Schengen Area, which is comprised of 26 European countries that have abolished passport and border controls at their common borders. Of the countries that are not part of it, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus and Romania all intend to join, while the United Kingdom and Ireland have opted out. The 28 countries within the European Union include Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Republic of Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The European Economic Area (EEA) includes EU countries and also Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. It allows them to be part of the EU’s single market.

So what is the purpose of the EU? The European Union itself states its formation was to operate as a single market which allows free movement of goods, capital, services and people between member states. By Definition: The common market is a stage in the multinational integration process, which, in the words of a Court of Justice ruling, aims to remove all the barriers to intra-Community trade with a view to the merger of national markets into a single market giving rise to conditions as close as possible to a genuine internal market.

In 1973 the UK citizens voted to join the Common Market which was to be an organisation which had trade agreements with the member countries and their companies. But over the last 43 years that Common Market concept has been taken over and developed into the European Union which has gradually taken control over more and more areas which have nothing to do with trade. The bureaucrats in charge have now forgotten the original concept of a common market and are pushing forward make the EU one federal state, with one currency, one tax system, one medical system, one pension system, one judicial system and one federal military service controlled by those in charge of the EU.

Please do not just consider the topical subject of uncontrolled immigration, but look at the wider implications detailed below before making your final decision. It’s your choice but remember that choice will affect the future of generations to come.

1. Why would you want to belong to an organisation that is going to manage your future and which is run by unelected, unaccountable, unapproachable, undemocratic predominately left wing socialists bureaucrats. Who are going to decide what you can do or not do in your future and your children’s future, that’s not democracy? If you have a problem in the UK you can write to your member of parliament, does anyone know who you would write to take up an issue on your behalf in the EU?

2. Why would you want to belong to a foreign organisation to which the UK paid in 2015 £17.8 Billion, got back £12.4 Billion in rebate, so UK paid Nett contribution of £12.9 Billion. That is currently £200 for every UK citizen, and could reduce the basic rate of tax by 3 pence in the pound. Yet this organisation is not accountable to any one and its account have not been signed off now for 15 years. So what do they spend our £12.9 Billion on, it’s your money being paid to this organisation but no one can tell you where and why it ends up where it does. If the EU was a private business it would face criminal charges and go into administration

3. Imagine what that money could have been spent on in the UK. More modern hospitals, care homes and medical services for all the elderly in this country, better schools and roads. And our budget deficit could have been reduced or eliminated.

4. By voting YES to remain in EU this will indicate the UK has accepted this corrupt mis-management of EU finances and accepts its ultimate aim of a federal state controlled centrally from Brussels

5. No one can give information of how much money pours into the EU coffers and where the money goes annually, and through the mad mismanagement of money, the better the country does financially the more money it has to pay to the EU

6. When the UK was instructed by EU to open its borders, on one told us the EU would be opening its borders to the world

7. Remember in recent conflicts and bomb attacks it’s was not the EU that has organised the protection of people it’s been NATO. What has the EU done about the ISIS issue-nothing? Remember Europe is protected by NATO not by the EU.

8. Our military, throughout an illustrious history, has always firstly pledged allegiance to Queen and Country and for the protection of its citizens. If we vote to remain in the EU, once the federal state and its federal state military is achieved, that allegiance to Queen and Country will be forbidden. The pledge allegiance will be to the federal state not the UK and this federal state would also control NATO

9. The EU insists on the freedom of movement for its 500 million citizens and they can all come to the UK without restriction. So if there is freedom of movement into countries, why is there not freedom of movement out of the country in the form of deportation of foreign criminals?

In the UK jails there are significant numbers (over 10% of the total amount of those in jail who are foreign nationals- predominately Polish, Albanian etc.). So why is it the UK cannot deport them after they have served their sentence. It is because the European Court of Justice opposes deportation and the country the criminal originated from apposes their return as it means another welfare payment to be made and housing to be found

10. 5 new countries are set to join EU, Albania, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia & Turkey (75 million people just from this country) all predominately Muslim residents, who when they have joined the EU, will in accordance with EU rules, will have the right to free entry to UK and all its services and benefits.

11. Be aware of the fact that if we remain in the EU we will become a member nation of a federal state. It is a known intention of the EU that once that federal state has been created then potentially all member countries will be called one name. Imagine the UK becoming known as Federal state No3-it could happen! And so would be lost the rich history of this country

12. Also be aware that by remaining in the EU, every UK citizen is liable under the European Arrest Warrant to be arrested by a foreign police force in the UK and can be judicially surrendered and be extradited, possibly on the most flimsiest charges. This without evidence being presented against them in a British court of law, as our court has no power to prevent that extradition back to another EU country to stand trial and a possible prison sentence in that countries prisons. This without support of the government (Tony Blair signed the UK up to this) and the CPS. You will be on your own! And not supported by your government

13. Under the EU current open door immigration policy it is now felt that due to the unsustainable numbers of migrants coming from EU and Non EU countries into UK eventually resentment and civil unrest is an alarming potential. If this open door policy is not stopped our service and benefits infrastructure will collapse under pressure

14. The EU wants the UK to be in the Euro, but the evidence of the failure of the euro can be clearly identified with the current problems in Greece, Spain etc. again another evidence of socialist mis- management

15. Mass immigration has led to the loss of the real true identity of the English Saxon person

16. Be aware of the EU pushing on for a EU one federal state, and one federal military service controlled by another unelected socialist bureaucrat named Miss Federicia Mogherini who has a left wing communist background and favours Russia. The European military will be run by this EU commissioner and not by competent military personnel.

17. The EU wants to align the UK health service to how it is managed in Europe. This could mean the end of the NHS as we know it.

18. The EU have stated that they intend to put a tax on every financial transaction undertaken within the UK

19. The UK cannot undertake international trade deals with countries within the EU but more importantly outside the EU unless it obtains permission from the International Trade Administrator-another socialist’s bureaucrat (an ex teacher-so has a lot of experience of international trade dealing!!). This is what we pay for in our membership to be prevented to do our own international trade deals

20. In the current Tata steelwork problem the EU has banned the UK from bailing out the company as it contravenes EU law regarding company assistance

21. If we vote to remain in EU then our elected democratic parliament and our MPs become subservient to an unelected body based in Brussels

22. By voting YES to REMAIN means voting for a loss of UK democracy, a democracy which is enshrined in the Magna Carta. It will also mean a loss of sovereignty.

23. All us pay taxes and those taxes go towards the upkeep of foreign nationals that you have never heard of

24. Under EU Common Fishing Policy. French fishing boats can trawl and keep 4000lb of haddock per day. But UK trawlers are restricted to 550lbs per month and the EU is now in charge of the UK 12 mile fishing limit. The main reason all our trawlers sit in harbour and watch foreign fishing fleets fish our waters. How is that a common fishing policy?

25. UK justice systems are now subservient to the EU Court of Justice-another set of unapproachable bureaucrats. If you cannot make your own laws, control your own borders then you are not an independent sovereign nation

26. In December 2015 the EU told the UK banking system to reduce income paid by business to banks every time a credit card is used. So credit card loyalty schemes are being reduced

27. In 2015 EU instructed UK banks to reduce their liability to account holders from £85k down to £75K, no reason given

28. The EU has indicated that if we remain they will be looking at UK pension schemes and try and align them to European schemes which the City of London have already indicated this would be a disaster for the UK pension industry

29. To ensure a common federal policy the EU is intending to standardise the tax system across the EU so UK HMRC will be managed by Brussels and act as just a tax collector for a foreign power

30. When the UK government propose new laws they are debated within the House of Commons and accepted under majority voting by all our MPs, who have been democratically elected by the people of this country. Under EU control, the EU make the laws and then informs the 27 member nation’s via issued EU Directives they must implement those directives into their national law.

31. Only 6% of UK companies export to the EU but 100% of UK companies must comply with EU law

32. Remember it was the EU who gave Ford a big grant to move Transit Van production from Dagenham to Turkey

33. Big companies from the USA and Asia have already stated they will increase trade with the UK if it leaves the EU as there will be less trade and financial restrictions to deal with

34. Our parents fought in a world war to ensure our freedom and prevent world dominance by Germany, but again Germany is again trying for European dominance but via being one of the leaders of the EU

Does anyone know what the benefits are for belonging to the EU and what are the benefits for not belonging to it? Why has the EU not told us this?

So if you vote for Socialism then vote REMAIN, if you vote CAPITALISM vote to Leave

I feel it needs to be pointed out that putting numbers by your arguments makes them neither more valid or true.

But I love the way that Brexiteers always bring it down to one thing - pure unadulterated xenophobia....the Germans indeed.....

Not my numbers, I just posted up a piece sent to me by someone else and decided against editing it beforehand. I do agree, putting numbers to it is a bit daft, but the basic premise of loss of sovereignty and democracy isn't.

[KhonKaenKowboy]

I would be all for leaving, but according tot he oddsmakers; it's not going to happen, this time. I'm surprised the financial news channels are still calling for a potential exit. I think I will be buying the XLF the night before the election (Financial S&P ETF in the US). It has been getting beaten up, along with most of the banking stocks over worries of leaving.

[allanos]

Just brilliant, excoriating and true

"Brexit: AA Gill argues for ‘In’

We all know what “getting our country back” means. It’s snorting a line of that most pernicious and debilitating Little English drug, nostalgia

It was the woman on Question Time that really did it for me. She was so familiar. There is someone like her in every queue, every coffee shop, outside every school in every parish council in the country. Middle-aged, middle-class, middle-brow, over-made-up, with her National Health face and weatherproof English expression of hurt righteousness, she’s Britannia’s mother-in-law. The camera closed in on her and she shouted: “All I want is my country back. Give me my country back.”

It was a heartfelt cry of real distress and the rest of the audience erupted in sympathetic applause, but I thought: “Back from what? Back from where?”

Wanting the country back is the constant mantra of all the outies. Farage slurs it, Gove insinuates it. Of course I know what they mean. We all know what they mean. They mean back from Johnny Foreigner, back from the brink, back from the future, back-to-back, back to bosky hedges and dry stone walls and country lanes and church bells and warm beer and skittles and football rattles and cheery banter and clogs on cobbles. Back to vicars-and-tarts parties and Carry On fart jokes, back to Elgar and fudge and proper weather and herbaceous borders and cars called Morris. Back to victoria sponge and 22 yards to a wicket and 15 hands to a horse and 3ft to a yard and four fingers in a Kit Kat, back to gooseberries not avocados, back to deference and respect, to make do and mend and smiling bravely and biting your lip and suffering in silence and patronising foreigners with pity.

We all know what “getting our country back” means. It’s snorting a line of the most pernicious and debilitating Little English drug, nostalgia. The warm, crumbly, honey-coloured, collective “yesterday” with its fond belief that everything was better back then, that Britain (England, really) is a worse place now than it was at some foggy point in the past where we achieved peak Blighty. It’s the knowledge that the best of us have been and gone, that nothing we can build will be as lovely as a National Trust Georgian country house, no art will be as good as a Turner, no poem as wonderful as If, no writer a touch on Shakespeare or Dickens, nothing will grow as lovely as a cottage garden, no hero greater than Nelson, no politician better than Churchill, no view more throat-catching than the White Cliffs and that we will never manufacture anything as great as a Rolls-Royce or Flying Scotsman again.

The dream of Brexit isn’t that we might be able to make a brighter, new, energetic tomorrow, it’s a desire to shuffle back to a regret-curdled inward-looking yesterday. In the Brexit fantasy, the best we can hope for is to kick out all the work-all-hours foreigners and become caretakers to our own past in this self-congratulatory island of moaning and pomposity.

And if you think that’s an exaggeration of the Brexit position, then just listen to the language they use: “We are a nation of inventors and entrepreneurs, we want to put the great back in Britain, the great engineers, the great manufacturers.” This is all the expression of a sentimental nostalgia. In the Brexiteer’s mind’s eye is the old Pathé newsreel of Donald Campbell, of John Logie Baird with his television, Barnes Wallis and his bouncing bomb, and Robert Baden-Powell inventing boy scouts in his shed.

All we need, their argument goes, is to be free of the humourless Germans and spoilsport French and all their collective liberalism and reality. There is a concomitant hope that if we manage to back out of Europe, then we’ll get back to the bowler-hatted 1950s and the Commonwealth will hold pageants, fireworks displays and beg to be back in the Queen Empress’s good books again. Then New Zealand will sacrifice a thousand lambs, Ghana will ask if it can go back to being called the Gold Coast and Britain will resume hand-making Land Rovers and top hats and Sheffield plate teapots.

There is a reason that most of the people who want to leave the EU are old while those who want to remain are young: it’s because the young aren’t infected with Bisto nostalgia. They don’t recognise half the stuff I’ve mentioned here. They’ve grown up in the EU and at worst it’s been neutral for them.

The under-thirties want to be part of things, not aloof from them. They’re about being joined-up and counted. I imagine a phrase most outies identify with is “women’s liberation has gone too far”. Everything has gone too far for them, from political correctness — well, that’s gone mad, hasn’t it? — to health and safety and gender-neutral lavatories. Those oldies, they don’t know if they’re coming or going, what with those newfangled mobile phones and kids on Tinder and Grindr. What happened to meeting Miss Joan Hunter Dunn at the tennis club? And don’t get them started on electric hand dryers, or something unrecognised in the bagging area, or Indian call centres , or the impertinent computer asking for a password that has both capitals and little letters and numbers and more than eight digits.

Brexit is the fond belief that Britain is worse now than at some point in the foggy past where we achieved peak Blighty

We listen to the Brexit lot talk about the trade deals they’re going to make with Europe after we leave, and the blithe insouciance that what they’re offering instead of EU membership is a divorce where you can still have sex with your ex. They reckon they can get out of the marriage, keep the house, not pay alimony, take the kids out of school, stop the in-laws going to the doctor, get strict with the visiting rights, but, you know, still get a shag at the weekend and, obviously, see other people on the side.

Really, that’s their best offer? That’s the plan? To swagger into Brussels with Union Jack pants on and say: “ ’Ello luv, you’re looking nice today. Would you like some?”

When the rest of us ask how that’s really going to work, leavers reply, with Terry-Thomas smirks, that “they’re going to still really fancy us, honest, they’re gagging for us. Possibly not Merkel, but the bosses of Mercedes and those French vintners and cheesemakers, they can’t get enough of old John Bull. Of course they’re going to want to go on making the free market with two backs after we’ve got the decree nisi. Makes sense, doesn’t it?”

Have no doubt, this is a divorce. It’s not just business, it’s not going to be all reason and goodwill. Like all divorces, leaving Europe would be ugly and mean and hurtful, and it would lead to a great deal of poisonous xenophobia and racism, all the niggling personal prejudice that dumped, betrayed and thwarted people are prey to. And the racism and prejudice are, of course, weak points for us. The tortuous renegotiation with lawyers and courts will be bitter and vengeful, because divorces always are and, just in passing, this sovereignty thing we’re supposed to want back so badly, like Frodo’s ring, has nothing to do with you or me. We won’t notice it coming back, because we didn’t notice not having it in the first place.

Nine out of 10 economists say ‘remain in the EU’

You won’t wake up on June 24 and think: “Oh my word, my arthritis has gone! My teeth are suddenly whiter! Magically, I seem to know how to make a soufflé and I’m buff with the power of sovereignty.” This is something only politicians care about; it makes not a jot of difference to you or me if the Supreme Court is a bunch of strangely out-of-touch old gits in wigs in Westminster or a load of strangely out-of-touch old gits without wigs in Luxembourg. What matters is that we have as many judges as possible on the side of personal freedom.

Personally, I see nothing about our legislators in the UK that makes me feel I can confidently give them more power. The more checks and balances politicians have, the better for the rest of us. You can’t have too many wise heads and different opinions. If you’re really worried about red tape, by the way, it’s not just a European problem. We’re perfectly capable of coming up with our own rules and regulations and we have no shortage of jobsworths. Red tape may be annoying, but it is also there to protect your and my family from being lied to, poisoned and cheated.

The first “X” I ever put on a voting slip was to say yes to the EU. The first referendum was when I was 20 years old. This one will be in the week of my 62nd birthday. For nearly all my adult life, there hasn’t been a day when I haven’t been pleased and proud to be part of this great collective. If you ask me for my nationality, the truth is I feel more European than anything else. I am part of this culture, this European civilisation. I can walk into any gallery on our continent and completely understand the images and the stories on the walls. These people are my people and they have been for thousands of years. I can read books on subjects from Ancient Greece to Dark Ages Scandinavia, from Renaissance Italy to 19th-century France, and I don’t need the context or the landscape explained to me. The music of Europe, from its scales and its instruments to its rhythms and religion, is my music. The Renaissance, the rococo, the Romantics, the impressionists, gothic, baroque, neoclassicism, realism, expressionism, futurism, fauvism, cubism, dada, surrealism, postmodernism and kitsch were all European movements and none of them belongs to a single nation.

There is a reason why the Chinese are making fake Italian handbags and the Italians aren’t making fake Chinese ones. This European culture, without question or argument, is the greatest, most inventive, subtle, profound, beautiful and powerful genius that was ever contrived anywhere by anyone and it belongs to us. Just look at my day job — food. The change in food culture and pleasure has been enormous since we joined the EU, and that’s no coincidence. What we eat, the ingredients, the recipes, may come from around the world, but it is the collective to and fro of European interests, expertise and imagination that has made it all so very appetising and exciting.

The restaurant was a European invention, naturally. The first one in Paris was called The London Bridge.

Culture works and grows through the constant warp and weft of creators, producers, consumers, intellectuals and instinctive lovers. You can’t dictate or legislate for it, you can just make a place that encourages it and you can truncate it. You can make it harder and more grudging, you can put up barriers and you can build walls, but why on earth would you? This collective culture, this golden civilisation grown on this continent over thousands of years, has made everything we have and everything we are, why would you not want to be part of it?

I understand that if we leave we don’t have to hand back our library ticket for European civilisation, but why would we even think about it? In fact, the only ones who would are those old, philistine scared gits. Look at them, too frightened to join in."

Overly verbose. No points of any substance. Summed up nicely in the author's phrase that "he is pleased and proud to be part of this 'collective'".

The word "collective" harks back to the Soviet era, the EU move toward emulating which appears to be among the "darker" aspects of what the

European Commission has in store for the future.

Nice try, though, Cumgranosalum. Clever tactic, but wrong ammunition. Do not take a knife to a gunfight!

[FrankGers]

Overly verbose. No points of any substance. Summed up nicely in the author's phrase that "he is pleased and proud to be part of this 'collective'".

The word "collective" harks back to the Soviet era, the EU move toward emulating which appears to be among the "darker" aspects of what the

European Commission has in store for the future.

Nice try, though, Cumgranosalum. Clever tactic, but wrong ammunition. Do not take a knife to a gunfight!

I stopped at "Nostalgia"

[cumgranosalum]

I see the Brexiteers still can't tell the difference between sovereignty and democracy.....but this is new second place to immigration...neither have more than a tentative connection to EU.....but why let common sense get in the way?

I wrote a few days ago, I never thought I'd see UK descend into such bigotry as we have seen from the far right and the Brexiteers - and now we have football hooligans and homicidal loonies all cashing in on the Brexit bandwagon of bigotry.

[FrankGers]

I see the Brexiteers still can't tell the difference between sovereignty and democracy.....but this is new second place to immigration...neither have more than a tentative connection to EU.....but why let common sense get in the way?

I wrote a few days ago, I never thought I'd see UK descend into such bigotry as we have seen from the far right and the Brexiteers - and now we have football hooligans and homicidal loonies all cashing in on the Brexit bandwagon of bigotry.

The "bigorty card" So sad

[cumgranosalum]

Just brilliant, excoriating and true

"Brexit: AA Gill argues for ‘In’

We all know what “getting our country back” means. It’s snorting a line of that most pernicious and debilitating Little English drug, nostalgia

It was the woman on Question Time that really did it for me. She was so familiar. There is someone like her in every queue, every coffee shop, outside every school in every parish council in the country. Middle-aged, middle-class, middle-brow, over-made-up, with her National Health face and weatherproof English expression of hurt righteousness, she’s Britannia’s mother-in-law. The camera closed in on her and she shouted: “All I want is my country back. Give me my country back.”

It was a heartfelt cry of real distress and the rest of the audience erupted in sympathetic applause, but I thought: “Back from what? Back from where?”

Wanting the country back is the constant mantra of all the outies. Farage slurs it, Gove insinuates it. Of course I know what they mean. We all know what they mean. They mean back from Johnny Foreigner, back from the brink, back from the future, back-to-back, back to bosky hedges and dry stone walls and country lanes and church bells and warm beer and skittles and football rattles and cheery banter and clogs on cobbles. Back to vicars-and-tarts parties and Carry On fart jokes, back to Elgar and fudge and proper weather and herbaceous borders and cars called Morris. Back to victoria sponge and 22 yards to a wicket and 15 hands to a horse and 3ft to a yard and four fingers in a Kit Kat, back to gooseberries not avocados, back to deference and respect, to make do and mend and smiling bravely and biting your lip and suffering in silence and patronising foreigners with pity.

We all know what “getting our country back” means. It’s snorting a line of the most pernicious and debilitating Little English drug, nostalgia. The warm, crumbly, honey-coloured, collective “yesterday” with its fond belief that everything was better back then, that Britain (England, really) is a worse place now than it was at some foggy point in the past where we achieved peak Blighty. It’s the knowledge that the best of us have been and gone, that nothing we can build will be as lovely as a National Trust Georgian country house, no art will be as good as a Turner, no poem as wonderful as If, no writer a touch on Shakespeare or Dickens, nothing will grow as lovely as a cottage garden, no hero greater than Nelson, no politician better than Churchill, no view more throat-catching than the White Cliffs and that we will never manufacture anything as great as a Rolls-Royce or Flying Scotsman again.

The dream of Brexit isn’t that we might be able to make a brighter, new, energetic tomorrow, it’s a desire to shuffle back to a regret-curdled inward-looking yesterday. In the Brexit fantasy, the best we can hope for is to kick out all the work-all-hours foreigners and become caretakers to our own past in this self-congratulatory island of moaning and pomposity.

And if you think that’s an exaggeration of the Brexit position, then just listen to the language they use: “We are a nation of inventors and entrepreneurs, we want to put the great back in Britain, the great engineers, the great manufacturers.” This is all the expression of a sentimental nostalgia. In the Brexiteer’s mind’s eye is the old Pathé newsreel of Donald Campbell, of John Logie Baird with his television, Barnes Wallis and his bouncing bomb, and Robert Baden-Powell inventing boy scouts in his shed.

All we need, their argument goes, is to be free of the humourless Germans and spoilsport French and all their collective liberalism and reality. There is a concomitant hope that if we manage to back out of Europe, then we’ll get back to the bowler-hatted 1950s and the Commonwealth will hold pageants, fireworks displays and beg to be back in the Queen Empress’s good books again. Then New Zealand will sacrifice a thousand lambs, Ghana will ask if it can go back to being called the Gold Coast and Britain will resume hand-making Land Rovers and top hats and Sheffield plate teapots.

There is a reason that most of the people who want to leave the EU are old while those who want to remain are young: it’s because the young aren’t infected with Bisto nostalgia. They don’t recognise half the stuff I’ve mentioned here. They’ve grown up in the EU and at worst it’s been neutral for them.

The under-thirties want to be part of things, not aloof from them. They’re about being joined-up and counted. I imagine a phrase most outies identify with is “women’s liberation has gone too far”. Everything has gone too far for them, from political correctness — well, that’s gone mad, hasn’t it? — to health and safety and gender-neutral lavatories. Those oldies, they don’t know if they’re coming or going, what with those newfangled mobile phones and kids on Tinder and Grindr. What happened to meeting Miss Joan Hunter Dunn at the tennis club? And don’t get them started on electric hand dryers, or something unrecognised in the bagging area, or Indian call centres , or the impertinent computer asking for a password that has both capitals and little letters and numbers and more than eight digits.

Brexit is the fond belief that Britain is worse now than at some point in the foggy past where we achieved peak Blighty

We listen to the Brexit lot talk about the trade deals they’re going to make with Europe after we leave, and the blithe insouciance that what they’re offering instead of EU membership is a divorce where you can still have sex with your ex. They reckon they can get out of the marriage, keep the house, not pay alimony, take the kids out of school, stop the in-laws going to the doctor, get strict with the visiting rights, but, you know, still get a shag at the weekend and, obviously, see other people on the side.

Really, that’s their best offer? That’s the plan? To swagger into Brussels with Union Jack pants on and say: “ ’Ello luv, you’re looking nice today. Would you like some?”

When the rest of us ask how that’s really going to work, leavers reply, with Terry-Thomas smirks, that “they’re going to still really fancy us, honest, they’re gagging for us. Possibly not Merkel, but the bosses of Mercedes and those French vintners and cheesemakers, they can’t get enough of old John Bull. Of course they’re going to want to go on making the free market with two backs after we’ve got the decree nisi. Makes sense, doesn’t it?”

Have no doubt, this is a divorce. It’s not just business, it’s not going to be all reason and goodwill. Like all divorces, leaving Europe would be ugly and mean and hurtful, and it would lead to a great deal of poisonous xenophobia and racism, all the niggling personal prejudice that dumped, betrayed and thwarted people are prey to. And the racism and prejudice are, of course, weak points for us. The tortuous renegotiation with lawyers and courts will be bitter and vengeful, because divorces always are and, just in passing, this sovereignty thing we’re supposed to want back so badly, like Frodo’s ring, has nothing to do with you or me. We won’t notice it coming back, because we didn’t notice not having it in the first place.

Nine out of 10 economists say ‘remain in the EU’

You won’t wake up on June 24 and think: “Oh my word, my arthritis has gone! My teeth are suddenly whiter! Magically, I seem to know how to make a soufflé and I’m buff with the power of sovereignty.” This is something only politicians care about; it makes not a jot of difference to you or me if the Supreme Court is a bunch of strangely out-of-touch old gits in wigs in Westminster or a load of strangely out-of-touch old gits without wigs in Luxembourg. What matters is that we have as many judges as possible on the side of personal freedom.

Personally, I see nothing about our legislators in the UK that makes me feel I can confidently give them more power. The more checks and balances politicians have, the better for the rest of us. You can’t have too many wise heads and different opinions. If you’re really worried about red tape, by the way, it’s not just a European problem. We’re perfectly capable of coming up with our own rules and regulations and we have no shortage of jobsworths. Red tape may be annoying, but it is also there to protect your and my family from being lied to, poisoned and cheated.

The first “X” I ever put on a voting slip was to say yes to the EU. The first referendum was when I was 20 years old. This one will be in the week of my 62nd birthday. For nearly all my adult life, there hasn’t been a day when I haven’t been pleased and proud to be part of this great collective. If you ask me for my nationality, the truth is I feel more European than anything else. I am part of this culture, this European civilisation. I can walk into any gallery on our continent and completely understand the images and the stories on the walls. These people are my people and they have been for thousands of years. I can read books on subjects from Ancient Greece to Dark Ages Scandinavia, from Renaissance Italy to 19th-century France, and I don’t need the context or the landscape explained to me. The music of Europe, from its scales and its instruments to its rhythms and religion, is my music. The Renaissance, the rococo, the Romantics, the impressionists, gothic, baroque, neoclassicism, realism, expressionism, futurism, fauvism, cubism, dada, surrealism, postmodernism and kitsch were all European movements and none of them belongs to a single nation.

There is a reason why the Chinese are making fake Italian handbags and the Italians aren’t making fake Chinese ones. This European culture, without question or argument, is the greatest, most inventive, subtle, profound, beautiful and powerful genius that was ever contrived anywhere by anyone and it belongs to us. Just look at my day job — food. The change in food culture and pleasure has been enormous since we joined the EU, and that’s no coincidence. What we eat, the ingredients, the recipes, may come from around the world, but it is the collective to and fro of European interests, expertise and imagination that has made it all so very appetising and exciting.

The restaurant was a European invention, naturally. The first one in Paris was called The London Bridge.

Culture works and grows through the constant warp and weft of creators, producers, consumers, intellectuals and instinctive lovers. You can’t dictate or legislate for it, you can just make a place that encourages it and you can truncate it. You can make it harder and more grudging, you can put up barriers and you can build walls, but why on earth would you? This collective culture, this golden civilisation grown on this continent over thousands of years, has made everything we have and everything we are, why would you not want to be part of it?

I understand that if we leave we don’t have to hand back our library ticket for European civilisation, but why would we even think about it? In fact, the only ones who would are those old, philistine scared gits. Look at them, too frightened to join in."

Overly verbose. No points of any substance. Summed up nicely in the author's phrase that "he is pleased and proud to be part of this 'collective'".

The word "collective" harks back to the Soviet era, the EU move toward emulating which appears to be among the "darker" aspects of what the

European Commission has in store for the future.

Nice try, though, Cumgranosalum. Clever tactic, but wrong ammunition. Do not take a knife to a gunfight!

" Do not take a knife to a gunfight!" - an unfortunate choice of words considering the events of the last few days in the UK, but somehow not unexpected?

[RuamRudy]

I see the Brexiteers still can't tell the difference between sovereignty and democracy.....but this is new second place to immigration...neither have more than a tentative connection to EU.....but why let common sense get in the way?

I wrote a few days ago, I never thought I'd see UK descend into such bigotry as we have seen from the far right and the Brexiteers - and now we have football hooligans and homicidal loonies all cashing in on the Brexit bandwagon of bigotry.

I guess they are still hoping to recapture 'peak blighty' ...

[allanos]

Just brilliant, excoriating and true

"Brexit: AA Gill argues for ‘In’

We all know what “getting our country back” means. It’s snorting a line of that most pernicious and debilitating Little English drug, nostalgia

It was the woman on Question Time that really did it for me. She was so familiar. There is someone like her in every queue, every coffee shop, outside every school in every parish council in the country. Middle-aged, middle-class, middle-brow, over-made-up, with her National Health face and weatherproof English expression of hurt righteousness, she’s Britannia’s mother-in-law. The camera closed in on her and she shouted: “All I want is my country back. Give me my country back.”

It was a heartfelt cry of real distress and the rest of the audience erupted in sympathetic applause, but I thought: “Back from what? Back from where?”

Wanting the country back is the constant mantra of all the outies. Farage slurs it, Gove insinuates it. Of course I know what they mean. We all know what they mean. They mean back from Johnny Foreigner, back from the brink, back from the future, back-to-back, back to bosky hedges and dry stone walls and country lanes and church bells and warm beer and skittles and football rattles and cheery banter and clogs on cobbles. Back to vicars-and-tarts parties and Carry On fart jokes, back to Elgar and fudge and proper weather and herbaceous borders and cars called Morris. Back to victoria sponge and 22 yards to a wicket and 15 hands to a horse and 3ft to a yard and four fingers in a Kit Kat, back to gooseberries not avocados, back to deference and respect, to make do and mend and smiling bravely and biting your lip and suffering in silence and patronising foreigners with pity.

We all know what “getting our country back” means. It’s snorting a line of the most pernicious and debilitating Little English drug, nostalgia. The warm, crumbly, honey-coloured, collective “yesterday” with its fond belief that everything was better back then, that Britain (England, really) is a worse place now than it was at some foggy point in the past where we achieved peak Blighty. It’s the knowledge that the best of us have been and gone, that nothing we can build will be as lovely as a National Trust Georgian country house, no art will be as good as a Turner, no poem as wonderful as If, no writer a touch on Shakespeare or Dickens, nothing will grow as lovely as a cottage garden, no hero greater than Nelson, no politician better than Churchill, no view more throat-catching than the White Cliffs and that we will never manufacture anything as great as a Rolls-Royce or Flying Scotsman again.

The dream of Brexit isn’t that we might be able to make a brighter, new, energetic tomorrow, it’s a desire to shuffle back to a regret-curdled inward-looking yesterday. In the Brexit fantasy, the best we can hope for is to kick out all the work-all-hours foreigners and become caretakers to our own past in this self-congratulatory island of moaning and pomposity.

And if you think that’s an exaggeration of the Brexit position, then just listen to the language they use: “We are a nation of inventors and entrepreneurs, we want to put the great back in Britain, the great engineers, the great manufacturers.” This is all the expression of a sentimental nostalgia. In the Brexiteer’s mind’s eye is the old Pathé newsreel of Donald Campbell, of John Logie Baird with his television, Barnes Wallis and his bouncing bomb, and Robert Baden-Powell inventing boy scouts in his shed.

All we need, their argument goes, is to be free of the humourless Germans and spoilsport French and all their collective liberalism and reality. There is a concomitant hope that if we manage to back out of Europe, then we’ll get back to the bowler-hatted 1950s and the Commonwealth will hold pageants, fireworks displays and beg to be back in the Queen Empress’s good books again. Then New Zealand will sacrifice a thousand lambs, Ghana will ask if it can go back to being called the Gold Coast and Britain will resume hand-making Land Rovers and top hats and Sheffield plate teapots.

There is a reason that most of the people who want to leave the EU are old while those who want to remain are young: it’s because the young aren’t infected with Bisto nostalgia. They don’t recognise half the stuff I’ve mentioned here. They’ve grown up in the EU and at worst it’s been neutral for them.

The under-thirties want to be part of things, not aloof from them. They’re about being joined-up and counted. I imagine a phrase most outies identify with is “women’s liberation has gone too far”. Everything has gone too far for them, from political correctness — well, that’s gone mad, hasn’t it? — to health and safety and gender-neutral lavatories. Those oldies, they don’t know if they’re coming or going, what with those newfangled mobile phones and kids on Tinder and Grindr. What happened to meeting Miss Joan Hunter Dunn at the tennis club? And don’t get them started on electric hand dryers, or something unrecognised in the bagging area, or Indian call centres , or the impertinent computer asking for a password that has both capitals and little letters and numbers and more than eight digits.

Brexit is the fond belief that Britain is worse now than at some point in the foggy past where we achieved peak Blighty

We listen to the Brexit lot talk about the trade deals they’re going to make with Europe after we leave, and the blithe insouciance that what they’re offering instead of EU membership is a divorce where you can still have sex with your ex. They reckon they can get out of the marriage, keep the house, not pay alimony, take the kids out of school, stop the in-laws going to the doctor, get strict with the visiting rights, but, you know, still get a shag at the weekend and, obviously, see other people on the side.

Really, that’s their best offer? That’s the plan? To swagger into Brussels with Union Jack pants on and say: “ ’Ello luv, you’re looking nice today. Would you like some?”

When the rest of us ask how that’s really going to work, leavers reply, with Terry-Thomas smirks, that “they’re going to still really fancy us, honest, they’re gagging for us. Possibly not Merkel, but the bosses of Mercedes and those French vintners and cheesemakers, they can’t get enough of old John Bull. Of course they’re going to want to go on making the free market with two backs after we’ve got the decree nisi. Makes sense, doesn’t it?”

Have no doubt, this is a divorce. It’s not just business, it’s not going to be all reason and goodwill. Like all divorces, leaving Europe would be ugly and mean and hurtful, and it would lead to a great deal of poisonous xenophobia and racism, all the niggling personal prejudice that dumped, betrayed and thwarted people are prey to. And the racism and prejudice are, of course, weak points for us. The tortuous renegotiation with lawyers and courts will be bitter and vengeful, because divorces always are and, just in passing, this sovereignty thing we’re supposed to want back so badly, like Frodo’s ring, has nothing to do with you or me. We won’t notice it coming back, because we didn’t notice not having it in the first place.

Nine out of 10 economists say ‘remain in the EU’

You won’t wake up on June 24 and think: “Oh my word, my arthritis has gone! My teeth are suddenly whiter! Magically, I seem to know how to make a soufflé and I’m buff with the power of sovereignty.” This is something only politicians care about; it makes not a jot of difference to you or me if the Supreme Court is a bunch of strangely out-of-touch old gits in wigs in Westminster or a load of strangely out-of-touch old gits without wigs in Luxembourg. What matters is that we have as many judges as possible on the side of personal freedom.

Personally, I see nothing about our legislators in the UK that makes me feel I can confidently give them more power. The more checks and balances politicians have, the better for the rest of us. You can’t have too many wise heads and different opinions. If you’re really worried about red tape, by the way, it’s not just a European problem. We’re perfectly capable of coming up with our own rules and regulations and we have no shortage of jobsworths. Red tape may be annoying, but it is also there to protect your and my family from being lied to, poisoned and cheated.

The first “X” I ever put on a voting slip was to say yes to the EU. The first referendum was when I was 20 years old. This one will be in the week of my 62nd birthday. For nearly all my adult life, there hasn’t been a day when I haven’t been pleased and proud to be part of this great collective. If you ask me for my nationality, the truth is I feel more European than anything else. I am part of this culture, this European civilisation. I can walk into any gallery on our continent and completely understand the images and the stories on the walls. These people are my people and they have been for thousands of years. I can read books on subjects from Ancient Greece to Dark Ages Scandinavia, from Renaissance Italy to 19th-century France, and I don’t need the context or the landscape explained to me. The music of Europe, from its scales and its instruments to its rhythms and religion, is my music. The Renaissance, the rococo, the Romantics, the impressionists, gothic, baroque, neoclassicism, realism, expressionism, futurism, fauvism, cubism, dada, surrealism, postmodernism and kitsch were all European movements and none of them belongs to a single nation.

There is a reason why the Chinese are making fake Italian handbags and the Italians aren’t making fake Chinese ones. This European culture, without question or argument, is the greatest, most inventive, subtle, profound, beautiful and powerful genius that was ever contrived anywhere by anyone and it belongs to us. Just look at my day job — food. The change in food culture and pleasure has been enormous since we joined the EU, and that’s no coincidence. What we eat, the ingredients, the recipes, may come from around the world, but it is the collective to and fro of European interests, expertise and imagination that has made it all so very appetising and exciting.

The restaurant was a European invention, naturally. The first one in Paris was called The London Bridge.

Culture works and grows through the constant warp and weft of creators, producers, consumers, intellectuals and instinctive lovers. You can’t dictate or legislate for it, you can just make a place that encourages it and you can truncate it. You can make it harder and more grudging, you can put up barriers and you can build walls, but why on earth would you? This collective culture, this golden civilisation grown on this continent over thousands of years, has made everything we have and everything we are, why would you not want to be part of it?

I understand that if we leave we don’t have to hand back our library ticket for European civilisation, but why would we even think about it? In fact, the only ones who would are those old, philistine scared gits. Look at them, too frightened to join in."

Overly verbose. No points of any substance. Summed up nicely in the author's phrase that "he is pleased and proud to be part of this 'collective'".

The word "collective" harks back to the Soviet era, the EU move toward emulating which appears to be among the "darker" aspects of what the

European Commission has in store for the future.

Nice try, though, Cumgranosalum. Clever tactic, but wrong ammunition. Do not take a knife to a gunfight!

" Do not take a knife to a gunfight!" - an unfortunate choice of words considering the events of the last few days in the UK, but somehow not unexpected?

Along with the "Remain-supporting" press, you also choose to make capital out of the unfortunate and sad events which led up to the

demise of Jo Cox?

You should be ashamed of yourself!

[JB300]

I an not European, so take my opinion with a grain of salt, but some times an outside view can help separate the forest from the treas.

Pride is one of the seven sins, and it often leads people in to decisions they would not otherwise take.

Because of it some people are willing to cut their nose to spite their face. A Brexit is an emotional decision not a rational one.

IMO a Brexit it will be disastrous for the UK , I dont think it would also be good for the Brits living in LOS as the pound weakens,

As much as we might wish otherwise, globalization is our future , IMO , Britain has a better chance to compete with in the EU, than outside it.

The Brits and everyone else involved should be working in strengthening the EU rather than weakening it.

I am European (& a Brit, English to boot) & you summed it up perfectly for me [emoji1303]

[cumgranosalum]

whatever anyone says - Brexit is an ENGLISH campaign - it is not supported by the 3 other main nations in the UK.

If UK does pull out it is a certainty that Scotland will as soon as possible leave the
Union and join the EU - they have historically always had very strong ties with Europe -

The Irish Nationalists will also campaign for Northern Ireland to join with the South - something that is more attainable if the UK leave ...

As for Wales - who owe much of their infrastructure to the Eu - well ....I guess they have a population similar to Norway so I'm sure they can negotiate a deal to join the EU too.

Really the referendum should have asked if you want to take ENGLANd out of the EU -= because that's how it will end up.

[MJP]

I see the Brexiteers still can't tell the difference between sovereignty and democracy.....but this is new second place to immigration...neither have more than a tentative connection to EU.....but why let common sense get in the way?

I wrote a few days ago, I never thought I'd see UK descend into such bigotry as we have seen from the far right and the Brexiteers - and now we have football hooligans and homicidal loonies all cashing in on the Brexit bandwagon of bigotry.

The "bigorty card" So sad

Indeed.

I can't make the connection between people wanting to prevent the further accumulation of power by an unaccountable, unelected few with bigotry.

I'll post it again because this sums the whole thing up for me . . . .

“The most puzzling development in politics during the last decade is the apparent determination of Western European leaders to re-create the Soviet Union in Western Europe.” - Mikhail Gorbachev.

[FrankGers]

whatever anyone says - Brexit is an ENGLISH campaign - it is not supported by the 3 other main nations in the UK.

If UK does pull out it is a certainty that Scotland will as soon as possible leave the

Union and join the EU - they have historically always had very strong ties with Europe -

The Irish Nationalists will also campaign for Northern Ireland to join with the South - something that is more attainable if the UK leave ...

As for Wales - who owe much of their infrastructure to the Eu - well ....I guess they have a population similar to Norway so I'm sure they can negotiate a deal to join the EU too.

Really the referendum should have asked if you want to take ENGLANd out of the EU -= because that's how it will end up.

I laughed...a lot.

[cumgranosalum]

I'd also like for someone to tell me a period in history when UK wasn't actually in or part of Europe?

[MJP]

I'd also like for someone to tell me a period in history when UK wasn't actually in or part of Europe?

It's not about Europe, it's about the EU.