Why should UK get more back in terms of £££ than we put in? A fundamental pillar of the Treaty of Rome was the concept of leveling the playing field. We should be paying more because we can afford to, if our economy was weaker it would be the other way round.

It is not the fault of the EU that we have an almost obscene income and wealth inequality - something that ERDF and ESF and other cohesion funding went some measure to address.

As a result of EU interventions, in particular RECHAR, regions impacted by the decline of mining were able to economically restructure. As a result of ADAPT, there was investment to allow people working in SME's to have the skills to work in changing industrial environments. There are many other programmes the UK has benefited from INTEGRA, LEONARDO and others that escape my memory.

And levelling the playing field isn't just about 'giving our money to someone else'. it is about raising the whole of Europe to the level of a world-class economy - clearly not an overnight job as individual member states' economies are at different levels due to their own historic domestic policies.

The upshot is that as economies develop, all of the EU, including UK benefit from innovative, high quality and competitive production sectors, through expansion of world wide trade, internal supply chains, and social policies help ensure that those who are individually disadvantaged are not left behind.

What makes me angry is those in the UK who believe that those who (currently) have the wealth in income should be able to just pocket it without any responsibility to our neighbors. It makes me more angry that the likes of May, Johnson, Gove and many people on this thread are so arrogant that they think the UK (and UK trade and industry) deserves a single iota of benefit from EU markets in preference to the rest of the world. If/when UK leaves, the EU has amoral DUTY to do absolutely nothing in UK's favour to its own detriment.

The exit bill is too low - UK should be forced to continue paying into the EU budget until such time that EU 27 are collectively able to fill the contribution gap. This can be done by setting tariffs at a high enough level to meet this, pull investment out of UK supply chain component producers, place economic pressure on the rest of the world to not put access to the EU27 market in jeopardy for the sake of dealing with 5% of the European population.

Finally, as this has been a major issue in the news. EU members must have a collective responsibility to deal with refugee and asylum seeker settlement. Internally, it is the responsibility of the first border point of arrival. However, it is unfair to place the economic burden on those states that have a border, or are closest to where people are seeking asylum from. There are two ways of dealing with this - co-location across all EU states - and area in which UK is among the states that have a disgraceful track record in meeting its responsibilities, or distribution of cohesion funding per capita based upon the number of people seeking settlement. In either case UK must be forced ad infinitum to meet its share of the costs and/or obligation before any benefit from trade with EU is allowed.