+pitbullpappa afraid its not about maintaining anymore..its trying to get it back

+pitbullpappa Thanks for your kind words mate, I will be voting to leave. We colonised and conquered a third of the world not so many generations ago. These days the EU has convinced the people's of the UK that we're too small to make it on our own, let's see who lasts longer when we leave...

+pitbullpappa I beg to differ. You do have a dog in the race, you have your "special relationship" friend in the race. Actually if you look back, you will see a number of declassified documents stating, from then, that that is the only real reason that the UK is in the EU right now. It was at the behest of the US so that they had a party that they could control around the European table.

tonycodolo Link?

+blazednlovinit Unfortuniatly it will require a bit of reading on your part. But I am sure that it will be very informative and might just assist in making the correct decision. 1. Aitken, N (1973), “The Effect of the EEC and EFTA on European Trade: A Temporal Cross-Section Analysis,” The American Economic Review, 63(5): 881-892. 2. Darwin, J (2011), The Empire Project: The Rise and Fall of the British World System 1830-1970, Cambridge University Press. 3. Garavini, G (2012), After Empires: European Integration, Decolonization, and the Challenge from the Global South 1957-1986, Oxford University Press. Bayoumi, T and B Eichengreen (1997), “Is Regionalism Simply a Diversion? Evidence from the Evolution of the EC and EFTA,” in T Ito and A Krueger (Eds.), Regionalism vs. Multilateral Arrangements, NBER/University of Chicago Press.

+Dr Divago Yes his argument is exactly that one country will do better than many countries together. This is because the needs of the UK is different to the needs of the EU, and for the EU to do a deal all 28 nations have to agree to it. This means that any nation can hold the others to ransom. Let's say the UK wants to provide financial services to China through the strong links we have in Hong Kong due to their increasing economy. The UK can do this and it would be good for the UK. However within the EU they cannot as they have to have the EU do a deal. There is no appetite within the EU for a deal because if the UK can sell more to non-EU nations then the price for EU nations goes up. Even if there were appetite for it we'd need to appease (for example) the French people wanting their thing as well. For example when the EU were looking to do a trade deal with South Korea there was initial opposition from France and Italy, who were (quite rightly) looking to protect their automotive industries from Asian imports. So yes nations in a group can do better than a nation by itself, but only if all of the nations want very similar things. If they want different things and they can veto each others then they will do better going it alone and making deals specific to them.

+Sapiensiate A camel is a horse designed by committee, when you have too many people having their say on a vision, the vision becomes diluted. That's my go to metaphor/phrase with this kind of thing. Bespoke rules for each nation will always work better than a blanket rule across every nation. One example of this is how the Euro has fucked up Greece

why should there be a global economy anyway? Can you define a United Europe

if the EU works so well how come 20+ of the countries are net acceptors of cash?