From your post peregrine I take it that you are not a UK resident and posted what you did from complete and utter ignorance.

Oddly enough we actually managed to survive on our own for over a thousand years before it became part of what the British electorate thought was a trading partnership.

If Britain does not have a democracy then there are many countries in trouble as it was upon the British model that their systems were formed.

Since the end of the Second World War Britain has been under Labour Governments for as long as it has been under Conservative Governments, so do not for one second attempt to land all the country's ills on the shoulders of one political party - it doesn't wash.

Talking of non-democracy care to tell us who is responsible for introducing legislation in the EU? - Rhetorical question - It is the EU Commission, a group of unelected officials - EU legislation "involves the passing of laws written by people whom no one in Britain elected, no one can name and no one can remove."

Norway complies with less than 20% of all EU legislation and it's Parliament has the final say on whatever it does accept from Brussels. Norway does pay into the EU's coffers but Norway also makes a profit from the EU.

"The small landmass of Europe had one of the bloodiest more war-ridden histories of any corner of the earth for many centuries"

Really peregrina? The basis for that statement is what exactly. Care to tell us about wars on other continents over the same period or are you trying to tell us that elsewhere in the world was all sweetness and light, remembering of course that Genghis Khan eliminated the entire population of Afghanistan when he invaded. That Shaka raided and slaughtered subservient tribes each year in southern Africa enslaving those he did not kill. Various states in what is now known as India were almost permanently at war with one another. Or were you not aware of those facts peregrina?

"getting out will not lead to freedom or prosperity. It will remove some of the few
checks that help peace, human rights, social justice and other humane values and lead to untrammelled progress towards an ideology of cuts, austerity, profits for the rich, selling off of public assets, zenophobia, racism and worse."

Of course it will peregrine, the very second we vote to leave children will be forced up chimneys and slavery will be reintroduced. The profits you witter on about pay peoples wages and secure their employment, they ensure that workers pension funds are able to secure the old in their retirement. Of course we could always learn and follow the example of the "workers paradise" that was the Soviet Union. Now oddly enough I do not see hundreds of thousands lined up on the borders of Russia begging to be allowed in - care to tell us why that is?