Well, the UK has been outvoted on 58 issues in the last fourteen years but has agreed on over two and a half thousand issues. Most of those 58 issues have hardly been life-threatening. Pretty good for a club now with 28 member states. The basis of peregrina's statement on wars is bloody obvious. The two biggest wars of all time by a country mile were between European states, at least at their outsets, and the Common Market's forerunner was set up with the express aim of preventing such conflicts in the future. Irrelevant bluster about unrelated wars elsewhere does not dilute that point. And you fail to inform us that Norway must comply with rules on free movement of people, the numero uno campaigning gambit of the racist "out" campIgn. As for workers' pension funds, we have one of the worst state pension provisions in Europe and we have arseholes like Philip Green sucking money out of pension funds. Nothing to do with the EU one way or the other. As for unelected officials, you appear to be resoundingly silent about the half-dead, the unelected party lackeys and the men in frocks who infest the Lords. Last I heard, they were heavily involved in making our laws...