Brexit

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

We will see. The difference is we will have a choice if to join in or not, before what Brussels said happened. I personally think we will get *some* independence and a choice. Others will be jealous I predict.

There is much good stuff involved with being part of the EU that we can stick to, or replace with the same thing in UK law.

[zebbo]

Talking to lots of people. No one is anti France apart from finding them a bit arrogant and smelly Germans apart from being robots (hence Kraut Rock) Italians apart from being too attractive to our women (there are obvious exceptions ) Spanish apart from keeping trying to nick Gibraltar back, Greeks apart from them being crooks etc, etc. Everyone I speak to reserves all their disdain and dislike for the knob heads at Brussels. Get rid of them, save everyone a fortune, force them to get proper jobs, shut their arrogant supercilious faces up for ever - now wouldn't that be nice and we can all live happily ever after with each other.

Absolutely.
I find it a bit strange how some people assume everything has to be 100% or zero. Take immigration, the way some go on about how the NHS would grind to a halt without immigrant workers assumes that we will be throwing them all out and bolting the door, why the hell would we do that? We WANT some immigrant workers but what we certainly don't want any more is the open door immigration we have now allowing all the waifs and strays to gravitate here and take up residence! The bottom line is that it MUST be our choice and ours alone.

[Fretless]

The UK is not included in the Schengen zone that allows for free access across borders.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Area



Britain already has control over its own borders and immigration policy - the only difference that Brexit makes is being able to refuse entry to anyone with an EU passport.

[zebbo]

Yes, and there's plenty of waifs and strays in the (mainly Eastern) EU!
If they want to come here to work or to live they should need to apply for the relevant visas etc and we'll pick and choose who we let in and how just as they do outside of the EU.

[antonio66]

Don't upset me zebbo, we should have been checking on who's been coming in to the uk for years.

[zebbo]

Of course we should, but if they have an EU passport and don't flag up as a mass murderer they're in, sprogged-up within the year and here to stay.
TBH immigration is pretty low on my list of priorities. My main concern was the way it appeared we were being fast-tracked into some European superstate.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

This is the problem, and why they (Brussels) will try to make life as hard as they can for us. They are not sensible people, they have a mind set, a brainwash, to create a federal states called the United States of Europe. For the core countries in Europe - France, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Lux (if you can call it a country) it makes some sense, but the further you get away from the core the less sense it makes, and the outside ring only come in to get out of it what they can in terms of slurp. Ireland and Greece wouldn't be in if they couldn't stitch the place up with subsidy. It is an idea that is being taken too far and too quickly, for the benefit of hubris and power trips in Brussels.

EU - the executive is a joke, the Parliament is a very expensive joke, a waste of time and money, all to try and prove an elitist bunch of knobheads to be right. For the UK it would make a lot more sense culturally, economically, emotionally to become a State in the USA than a state in the EU, yet that would still not be a good idea. Ireland nations are different, we have far more in common with Japan than any other country in those terms, and the relationship between Japan and China would mirror our relationship with Europe, history has shown this over and over again.

[George Hincapie]

I have to say that from my perspective I feel we haven't taken the right attitude to the negotiations. We are a nuclear super power FFS, we should be far more aggressive, rather than simply rolling over and accepting what they want. The EU can't hurt us without hurting themselves.

[antonio66]

Although we are a nuclear power, super might be in question, especially when we rolled over to Russia at the end of WW2. We needed the US to back us up, they didn't. Having said that we shouldn't just give in to the EU proposals, although it's going to cost us a few billion, separations are costly.

[George Hincapie]

I'm not suggesting we shouldn't cover the budget shortfall caused by our departure, but don't bend over so they can take us roughly from behind.

I don't accept super is in question; we are a tiny country and still project power massively in excess of our size. Look at our defence spending for example:



Then there is our hardware. Yes, our surface fleet is depleted, but the new Guided Missile Destroyers are stupidly capable, we have the Apache, World Class armour etc. I actually don't think we spend enough on defence; we should spend more and be more aggressive on the World stage.