Of course you are right Art, I was being wilfully naive.

But the parallel is not entirely without foundation. We return elected members to the European Parliament and the laws passed there become statutes on the books of the member states when ratified. In relevant matters, ratification is a treaty obligation on member states. The only retention of sovereignty are on matters of defence, the fine detail of social policy, tax and expenditure - but decisions on the latter two are limited if you happen to be in the euro currency.

How I wish we had the Euro now; Brown and Darling's freedom to fuck us over with the banks are going to cripple this country for generations. Eurozone nations are going to get through this mess a lot quicker than us.

The freedom to migrate and settle across the EU is one of the rights all EU citizens have (except citizens of the 8 accession countries, but that is a time-limited restriction)and the European law granting those rights is enacted in all the member states so in some ways to, say, turn away the French from Great Britain would be quite a lot like the CA / NJ comparison I made.

I know, this is really off-topic - if anyone wants to take this further, please start a new thread.