what is practical in paying millions in to a club with no benefits and who wants to rewrite our laws..
It has plenty of benefits like access to the single market and customs union, freedom of movement, guarantees of workers rights. If you seriously think we, as a nation, will be financially better off outside, you are deluded - the only question is how much worse off we'll be. It is a layer of democracy that (in some respects) is above our own and that is all for the good, as far as I can see. The UK is a dismal example of democracy with its undemocratic FPTP election system and the absurd anachronism of the House of Lords.
I value my EU citizenship far more highly than my UK citizenship yet I'm being stripped of it by idiots and the uninformed and naive who were lied to.
This about sums it up...
In 2016 our then Prime Minister David Cameron caved in to pressure from his backbenchers to hold a referendum on British membership of the EU. This was a question of immense complexity involving sophisticated economic ramifications, the full extent of which became only too apparent later in the year when prodigal regiments of lawyers and civil servants had to be employed to cope with the administrative and legal load. If ever there was a matter for lengthy parliamentary debate and cabinet discussion heavily informed by advice from highly qualified experts, it was membership of the EU. Could there be a question less suited to a single plebiscite decision? And yet we were told to mistrust experts (‘You, the voter, are the expert here’) by politicians who presumably would demand an expert surgeon to remove their appendix or an expert pilot to fly their plane. So the decision was handed over to non-experts like me, even people whose stated motives for voting included ‘Well, it’s nice to have a change,’ and ‘Well, I preferred the old blue passport to the European purple one.’ For the sake of short-term political manoeuvring within his own party, David Cameron played Russian roulette with the long-term future of his country, of Europe, even of the world.
And so, to the precautionary principle. The referendum was about a major change, a political revolution whose pervasive effects would persist for decades if not longer. A huge constitutional change, the sort of change where, if ever, the precautionary principle should have been paramount. When it comes to constitutional amendments, the United States requires a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress followed by ratification by three-quarters of the state legislatures. Arguably that bar is set a bit too high, but the principle is sound. David Cameron’s referendum, by contrast, asked for only a simple majority on a single yes/no question. Did it not occur to him that so radical a constitutional step might merit stipulation of a two-thirds majority? Or at least 60 per cent? Perhaps a minimum voter turnout to make sure such a major decision was not taken by a minority of the electorate? Maybe a second vote, a fortnight later, to make sure the populace really meant it? Or a second round a year later, when the terms and consequences of withdrawal had become at least minimally apparent? But no, all Cameron demanded was anything over 50 per cent in a single yes/no vote, at a time when opinion polls were yo-yo-ing up and down and the likely result was changing day by day. It is said that a leftover statute of British common law stipulates that ‘no idiot shall be admitted to parliament’. You’d think at least the stricture might apply to Prime Ministers.Dawkins, R (2017). Science in the Soul: Selected Writings of a Passionate Rationalist. Transworld. Kindle Edition.
Topic: How did you vote in the EU referrendum - and do you regret it? (Read 3398 times)