You should be asking Teribus and/or Keith, Iains, not me. Sorry mate. They are the can't-back-up-what-they-say merchants.

Keith, your silly, tedious hotel metaphor doesn't hold water, so do us a favour and give it up, will you. When I book into a hotel it's a mutually-beneficial, time-limited arrangement with all parameters amically agreed in advance. I book to stay for a specified period of time, after which I check out in an orderly and timely manner. I do not suddenly jump ship half way through my stay, leaving the hotel in the lurch, expecting them to handle all the losses they incur by my suddenly vacating my room. I should not expect to be able to leave paying nothing towards the previously-agreed part of my stay that I've welched on. Yes I know that there is no agreed time factor in the agreement regarding our EU membership. But, by suddenly deciding to leave, we are dumping on them. Not as much as we seem to think. But they are well within their rights to charge us a hefty fee for leaving. And we need to be humble and we ought to hear what they say and be extremely polite about any efforts to reduce the sum. Any other attitude to the situation would be us thinking Queen/Empire/who won the bloody war anyway/we're the dog's dangly bits and who are these Johnny Foreigners demanding money off of us. Not only that, the attitude would result in an adverse outcome for us. Davis and his motley bunch of hubris-laden little Englanders have got a lot to learn. At the moment they are being laughed at and pissed on, deservedly. Be honest and drop the Colonel Blimp shite. Once we leave, which I hope we never will, we'll soon find out what small fry we really are in this big wide world of ours. Actually, it may do us good. But I'd rather be where we are. I like the hotel, in spite of the ants in the bedroom and the skidmarks on the towels. It's warm and cosy and the view is to die for.