Brexit Anyone?

Quote: DaveO "The point being you clearly don't know what you are talking about. The EU commission is made up of 1 President , 7 Vice Presidents and 28 members, one from each state. The president is elected by the European Parliament which is of course made up of elected M.E.P's. The president then chooses the 28 commissioners based on nominations of the elected national governments of the member states but the final makeup of the commission must be approved by the Council - which is made up of 28 ministers from national governments who are of course elected and it must also approved by the European Parliament which as I said is of course made up of elected M.E.P's.

Law making in the EU is now undertaken by what is known as the "ordinary legislative procedure" which works on the principle that consent from both the Council and European Parliament are required before a law may be adopted. The EU Commission may propose a new law but it must go through this process to become law.

So to summarise neither the EU Commission nor Council are unelected, the EU commission cannot pass laws only propose them (EU parliament can and does also propose laws) and laws can't be passed without the agreement of the elected representatives of the Council and EU Parliament.

So your suggestion we turned law making over to an unelected body is complete and utter hogwash. It's also ironic since we in the UK have an unelected House of Lords and government often does appoint unelected Lords as government ministers. The EU is far more democratic than our own government.

So what do you expect to happen? We close the borders? Well you were told today by Davis he expects to see “pretty free access” to the UK for skilled labour and also that we allowed in 289,000 migrants from outside the EU. The government's own target is 100,000 net.

Unless you naively think the UK can function with closed borders you are going to have to accept some migration to the UK. How many will you accept? Do you think all EU migrants are low skilled fruit pickers (they aren't) and don't bring skills we need?

The latest OBR prediction of the cost is based on less pessimistic assumptions than all the other economic bodies. It is still a disaster waiting to happen. On what do you base your prediction that "Long term, however, we will reap the benefits"?

You should have realised by now freedom of movement or not, you are not going to see a significant reduction in migration and if we want to retain access to the EU single market we will pay for it and obey its rules (David Davis again) and that the government wants to do this because it knows the alternative is to put it mildly, not good. You have been well and truly conned.

The Euro is complete irrelevance.

We aren't in it because G Brown had the sense not to join and I just can't believe people ignore the outright corruption of Goldman Sachs's fiddling Greek books and Greek incompetence where basically paying tax was voluntary! The mess many of these countries are in (including Italy) is as much their own doing as anyone else's. But like I said we are not in the Euro so it is irrelevant to the Brexit debate.

As to Turkey you are making that up from start to finish. It is nothing more than UKIP inspired lies.

Good grief you must have been watching too many reruns of Dad's Army. Germans are stubborn? Really? What about the rest of the EU nationalities? Do they not have a say in matters (of course they do just as we do). Are we going to start vetting the racial characteristics of the countries we want to make trade deals with outside the EU when we leave?

Perhaps many Europeans like the EU and see it as a positive? Recent polls suggest so. It's probably got a lot to do with their own governments not blaming the EU for everything that goes wrong unlike our own which has always used it as a scapegoat for its own incompetence.

The original concept never was limited to free trade. It was always a political union as well as a free trade association. Very early concepts such as the common agricultural policy were designed to tie its members together and to try and ensure Europe didn't starve (thus avoid promoting unrest) for example. It has always been about cooperation with a view to avoiding rivalry, conflict and wars. Seems to have worked. Did you know 13 of its current members were former dictatorships? You can't be an EU member and a dictatorship so the aim of EU membership and the EU's direct assistance in this process has helped democratise many countries.

Finally what laws/initiatives the EU has had a hand in do you object to and do you think a UK government would have done as much or had the legislative capacity to do so

Wow this European Union sounds really great. So great that more people voted to leave it than have ever voted for anything....ever.......