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A Short History of Britain's relationship with the EU:

UK: We want a rebate on the fees
EU: OK
UK: We don't want to be in the Euro
EU: OK
UK: We don't want to be in Shengen
EU: OK
UK: We want a restriction on benefits until people have worked here for some time
EU: OK
UK: We want to stop child benefit for children who aren't in the UK
EU: OK
UK: We want to kick out people who come here but don't work aand can't support themselves
EU: That's fine. You already can.
UK: We want loads of preferential treatment that other countries don't get
EU: Err, can't give that without everyone agreeing
UK: Don't give us what we want and we'll leave
EU: That's a bit of an overreaction, but your choice
UK: OK. Were leaving then
EU: Bye then
UK: Now we're leaving, we want all the things we had before
EU: Err, no, it doesn't work like that
UK: Don't give us what we want and we'll leave with nothing
EU: (Scratches head) OK, umm, well, yeah
UK: We're serious, we'll walk away with nothing to teach you a lesson
EU: Bye then

What about the bits about farming whereby the EU rules and subsidies favour micro-farms like they have in France which doesn't suit the British style of farms hence the rebate.

Despite the rebate the UK still finances the EU more than any other country apart from Germany. Being an Island makes Britain more expensive to run but no allowance is made for that.

If the UK had joined the Euro, not only would the UK have collapsed by now, it would have probably taken the EU with it, the only alternative would have been substantial support from the IMF which would have had no choice but to have broken up the EU as part of the financial re-establishment.

Also forgotten is:

EU: We want you to hand over your sovereignty and most of your veto rights. We know your populace doesn't want this and they voted to have them but stuff the people.
UK: Government Ok

quote: "UK: We want to stop child benefit for children who aren't in the UK
EU: OK"

Only in four other EU countries were payments like this made, it was the exception rather than the rule yet still the EU fought us tooth and nail over it.

quote: "UK: We don't want to be in Shengen
EU: OK"

We are an Island, being part of the Schegen area would have cost us money and been pretty pointless as we have no shared borders other than Ireland who also decided being a Schengen-Island would be pointless. Its whole purpose was to get rid of shared borders to save money. In fact it shows how silly the EU is to even think we should be in the Schengen area, they let us opt-out because it was the obvious thing to do.

quote: "UK: We want loads of preferential treatment that other countries don't get
EU: Err, can't give that without everyone agreeing"

We are hardly the only country in the EU with opt-outs, also many rules are written to favour certain countries. In fact some other countries don't even bother to opt-out, they just ignore the rules and sometimes ignore the fines.

quote: "UK: We want a restriction on benefits until people have worked here for some time
EU: OK"

This already happened in other EU countries like Spain (and even Germany iirc), yet again the EU wielded the hammer over the UK for something that was commonplace elsewhere.

Given the readiness with which the EU has agreed to various demands, I don't see you can claim it is any threat to 'sovereignty'. And your claim that we always follow their 'orders' owes more to tabloid headlines than the facts. We have ignored the EU working time directives, the rules about allowing prisoners to vote, rules on car emissions, clean beaches etc. etc.

But I suggest you look at the last four lines of my post and address your comments to those.

This, it seems is where we are now, with a baffled EU faced with the UK threatening to shoot itself in the foot if it doesn't get what it's already got.

We have not ignored the EU working time directives even if it was a pointless bit of paper. UK companies have been prosecuted for breaches of the working time regulations.

It was a pointless directive, what proportion of the population are going to turn round to their employer and refuse to sign the waiver, I signed it when I was working 67 hour weeks although I will admit this was willingly as it would increase my pending redundancy and future pension.

The European Constitution was brought in through the back door (virtually solely by Germany) by ignoring the will of the people. It was virtually just renamed and became the Treaty of Lisbon, this gave a lot of our sovereignty away. The concept was to create one democracy (the United States of Germany) which is effectively what it achieved, there are a lot of areas where the EU can overrule our Government and what's more it can introduce as many as it wants. There some power of sovereignty remaining and that was to leave the EU, no doubt that door will effectively be closed before long.

The EU are experimenting in how impossible and awkward that they can make it for anyone to leave while of course smiling and blaming it on the UK.

The UK is a full member of the EU and is following the EU's own rules, we are not doing anything wrong and yet they are trying to penalise us. We are part owners of all the EU's assets, they will not offer one Euro towards buying those assets off us, indeed they want even more money of us, for what? What are they selling to us, what are we buying?

When any form of consortium breaks apart, future expenditures are either taken on by part of the consortium, someone else or just brought to a halt.

The only way the EU are baffled is that the UK has managed to act as a democracy and seen through all their smokescreens. The same as any con-merchant, the EU are in one heck of a panic to take control again.

An example of loss of sovereignty is that the EU says it does not interfere with an individual nation's tax but look at VAT, that is now officially EU VAT, no individual member state are allowed to make their own VAT rules, it is governed by the EU. The EU is also proposing an EU wide income tax system, we do not have the power of veto to stop this, we have lost an important part of our sovereignty.

The EU (read Germany) are keen to get more poor countries in the EU, it weakens other richer member state power and the weaker states are going to agree to anything that gives them a net gain of money, the UK is a major financier of the EU, that money is coming from us.

Whilst our Government might have "sold" the employee UK-opt out of the Working Time Directive as their own, it is far from a "UK thing", the majority of the EU states have an opt-out system.

18 EU states have an employee opt-out system.

6 EU states (including Germany but not the UK) are still not compliant with the Working Time Directive.

11 EU states have a potential loophole in place which hasn't been tested in court as yet (even though its an obvious breach of the purposes of the directive).

Reading UK news makes us look different to other EU states but quite often we are only doing what is normal, its just not promulgated that way by the UK media.

*figures used are from a 2017 EU report on the subject HERE

Ive heard this bandied about. Who thinks it holds water?

UK. , We would like back please our share of EU assets that we have majorly helped to fund) --like the £50m House of European History museum and the £300m Europa Building , the £15m each wine cellar and modern art collection and other vanity projects, not to mention cash reserves etc .

EU NO, these things are not part owned by EU participating countries , the 'EU' body owns them .

UK So If all assets are owned by the 'EU' body and shares cannot be passed on to a leaving member , will you accept then that likewise so must all liabilities fall into the same category?

EU NO

Precisely, the EU wants it both ways in their favour.

I have - like you - only the vaguest notion of what sovereignty is, and how it affects me anyway. It makes little or no difference to me whether laws are passed by clowns in London or Brussels, and indications are that the EU is far more concerned with doing things for poorer regions like ours than London ever was or is.

The sad fact is that the UK - for absurd nationalistic reasons - is preparing to do a great deal of damage to its economy. What I find irritating are the attempts made by those who advocated this foolishness to blame the EU for their folly. And it is even more pathetic that so many people have swallowed it hook line and sinker.

There is a clear procedure for nations who wish to leave, and the EU has stuck to it. The UK - if it leaves - should adhere to these rules too. It has after all accepted them as full members. Right or wrong, those are the rules. The UK should have challenged them as full members before signing article 50, not now. We could - as advocated by the extreme leavers - simply refuse to pay anything and walk away, but what sort of trade deals would we get then? What non-EU country is going to trust any deal with a country that doesn't pay its obligations?

We are likely, anyway, to lose all of our financial services industry and much of our manufacturing will slowly relocate to the EU after brexit leaving us with an even bigger trade deficit than we have now. The pound will go through the floor, and we shall see horrific levels of inflation. All this is 100% self-inflicted damage. It is nothing to do with the EU, and everything to do with our apparent inability to appreciate the reality of the situation.

The EU will manage without us just fine. Indeed the European economy is already doing better than we are. The UK's departure is a relatively minor blow which the EU will weather. The departure of our banking industry to it is actually very much to their advantage, and they will welcome the movement of companies like Nissan from the UK to the EU. This will be achieved by investing more in EU factories than UK ones, which will be reduced to manufacturing for the UK market only.

You wanted all this, and it is looking as if you will get it; made worse by an incompetent bunch of 'negotiators'. See how you like it when it comes.

Sovereignty....that which Hitler tried to take away from us and our fathers and fore fathers fought and died for..That's why to some its important.
The original common market we joined was a reasonably good idea but since then its been a drip drip followed by behind the scenes wheelings and dealings to bring about the ideological, political EU and the intended United States of Europe without the people of this nation agreeing to it.

"United States of Europe" or of Germany!

Look at the damage to the economy of Greece, if we had been in the Euro that would have been us. Handing power to Germany is madness, it is walking straight down their planned route.

The Common Market was fine, that was a virtually simple trade deal, just question at what point in time that became loss of sovereignty (self-governance) by political manipulation by Germany, you will find that dates back to the 1940s.

We know the way Germany works, we made mistakes with them before and we still do not learn. It is not the German's fault, it is ours for our own stupidity.

The EU is an Empire and Germany are in charge of it.

Nationalistic rubbish!

The irony of this nineteenth-century tribalist view of the world - little England against the rest - is that it was precisely the same argument that Hitler (see Fish's post) used to mobilise Germany.

The world has changed and you have the choice of embracing it or be left behind. It is interesting that these fears of German domination seem to be confined to the old, those who grew up before cheap jet travel opened up the world. Today's young people travel the world, communicate with other countries, work there, holiday there, make friends and meet lovers there and have no time for the inward-looking paranoia that seems so prevalent here.

Like it or not, the nation-state is on its way out, and I for one will not mourn its passing.

But as I said above, you voted for brexit. See how you enjoy it when it happens!

There is a huge difference between the normal populace and the senior politicians. I've been to Germany and loved it, I've also been to Austria and seen their distrust of Germany although its not a subject that is spoken about in the open. Its not about the people, its about their power and money hungry leaders.

Just look at Germany's history and how many times people ignored what they were doing until it was too late, they all considered it too audacious to be true until the big whoops moment when it dawned on them.

We have two world wars in living memory and they were only 30 years apart. Despite Germany being on heavy restrictions between those wars the second one still happened because most believed it wasn't going to happen and the others were considered paranoid.

Every historical empire has collapsed, humans are far too tribal for there to be one tribe. The number of countries in the world is increasing, not decreasing so the concept that national-states are on their way out is flawed.

If the purpose of the EU is not to create an Empire, what is its purpose? Every Empire has a leading country and nobody can doubt which country will be the lead.

I imagine it has many purposes.

As I see it it is a community of nations that cares for each other and the people in them. It has been set up democratically so that no one nation dominates, despite your paramoia about Germany. The biggest advantage I see is that it allows people to come and go from one country to another without having to piss about with passports and visa - asking for permission from 'leaders' to travel is not my idea of freedom.

Another way of looking at is as a trading bloc that has recognised that together they can be stronger than separately.

Or you can look at it as a way of defusing the sort of arguments between nations that have so often led to war.

Or it is a way of cutting through the sort of red tape that bedevils trade across borders.

It is not a nation, and appears to have no ambitions to become one. It cannot make laws for any of the nations without the agreement of that nation's government. The fact that member nations do not HAVE to use the EU's currency is further evidence that it is NOT an organisation based on compulsion.

Ken Clarke asked today in Parliament if any brexiteer could think of a single law that had been passed against the will of the government at the time. It was a rhetorical question. Such laws do not exist, so there was no great surprise that answer came there none.

I like the fact that although it doesn't stop any member nations running armies, it doesn't have one itself, and is reluctant to waste money on weapons. And I like that fact that it is prepared (unlike Westminster) to spend big money on poorer member nations as its primary objective.

At any rate, it has been highly successful and within a few years there will be another half a dozen or so countries that will join. I note also, that 'despite' the UK's departure, the EU's GDP is now growing faster than the USA's (and much faster than ours)

The UK will undoubtedly inflict severe economic damage on itself by leaving, and - probably worse - will become a resentful, inward-looking illiberal right-wing dominated country that blames the EU for its own folly. I hope you like it. I am sure I won't!

We don't need a passport to travel between the UK and Ireland, its not a big thing to negotiate and certainly doesn't need the numerous other political arm-wrenching caveats that goes with it like the EU has.

The EU as a trading block is a disaster, sure the overall GDP increase looks good but there are far more individual EU states that are in trouble than those that aren't.

An interesting statistic is that the four biggest net contributors to the EU also have the the four largest debts ie, they are borrowing the money that they pay into the EU. All EU countries are in debt.

The EU is desperately fighting to have an army, 23 members have agreed to it so far, its only a matter of time, especially after Brexit. It already has direct control over a small number of forces.

The GDP statistics for one quarter hardly constitute a trend, ours has dipped partly because we are coming to the end of our monetary stimulus, the same thing will happen within the rest of the EU.

The EU has already inflicted severe economic damage on us and would continue to do so. Our net EU contribution was about to leap up by 25% next year which maybe what Brexit is partly about in some politicians eyes even though this is unspoken. This would need another £2bn in austerity measures.

The USA, China and Japan are not members of the EU and are doing better than Germany and us. The EU has lost market share of world GDP ie its failing on the international market, Brexit will release us to increase our international trading.

Yes, Brexit will be painful but so are tooth extractions. One thing that desperately needs sorting out is the distribution of wealth, virtually every country has a major problem with this and the situation is getting worse by 25% each year. It is only a matter of time before there will be civil uprisings in many countries, there's a limit to how many distractions the Governments can invent before the penny will drop.