[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by denphone

We are also reducing our Armed Forces at a time when the world is increasingly becoming a dangerous place and we don't even have a Aircraft Carrier until 2020.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukne...ly-matter.html

Other matters aside what does this have to do with the EU? How does our being in the EU assist with our defence and/or projection of military power?

As far as purely defensive matters go we have nuclear weapons and are a founder member of NATO.

As far as projecting power goes we have airbases throughout the world we can use via bilateral agreements, absolutely nothing to do with the EU.

The total lack of a converged response on things like Ukraine, Ebola and ISIL show how unfit for purpose the EU would be on these things as member states concern themselves with their own national interest first and foremost.

The EU is a collection of states that are too different economically, socially, culturally. The sooner people stop obsessing over trying to homogenise very different states on all these levels the better.

This wasn't actually as much of a problem originally but of course the EU decided to become aggressively expansionist with predictable results.

---------- Post added at 10:52 ---------- Previous post was at 10:43 ----------

Originally Posted by denphone

On his first point there are more benefits to staying in the EU rather then being on the outside looking in in my book as pointed out in this article.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk...u-9213131.html

Written by a pretty serious Europhile.

Contrary to popular belief, EU membership doesn't cost us much, either. Our annual budget contribution, after taking account of money transferred back to the UK, is £8.3bn. That's around half a per cent of our GDP, or £130 per person.

It's half a percent of our GDP, but over 1% of our entire tax take, and would plug the funding gap for the NHS.

When the Confederation of British Industry surveyed its members in 2013, it found overwhelming support for Britain to stay in the EU among both big and small businesses: 78 per cent wanted to stay versus only 10 per cent wanting to quit.

Same CBI that wanted us to join the Euro and prophesied doom if we didn't. Ya.

We'd also have to negotiate with the EU, whose economy would be six times our size after we quit.

We buy more of their goods than they buy of ours. Regardless of whose economy is largest they have more to lose from being tools.

A good part of the rest of the article is operating on the presumption that the EU will, after following basically nothing but dogma for years, suddenly embrace common sense, after following protectionism embrace competition, and after embracing subsidy and 'solidarity' work on competitiveness.

There is absolutely no indication that any of this will happen. The EU occasionally makes the right noises but doesn't budge and remains an example to the rest of the world of how not to do things, which is why nowhere else has. Elsewhere free trade is free trade, not a political union complete with a parliament, a whole bunch of commissioners who propose the laws and who the public never get to vote for, and designs on becoming a superstate.