well that's it exactly Steve.

The insults and abuse just obscure what is a really difficult subject to comprehend.

I don't much like a lot of the brexit gang, but I'm deeply dissatisfied with the EU. I don't think its its capable of reform - I'm not sure it was ever the right place for England.

20/20 hindsight is a wonderful thing, but even so - i think many of us had grave doubts and felt we were abandoning firm allies in the commonwealth back in '74, for people who were frankly dubious.

Back in the 1960's, there was a forum on our projected possible membership of the EEC in Encounter magazine, which was THE intellectual forum for debate at the time. I remember John Osborne, the playwright putting it very succinctly. He said, the EEC may start out as an economic project - but it will of necessity turn first into a legislative body and then devolve into an international power bloc like Russia and America And this will mean Germany having a nucleat deterrent. And that will be the seeds of the WW3.

Osborne may have got the particulars wrong. But the emerging of the pacific markets show that the world is not developing as anyone predicted. The sheer unpredictability of the world make this EEC totally impractical. We have no right to tell Europe how to deal with their problems, and they don't care sufficiently about our very specific problems.

you may not understand my concerns, but they are real and they are sincerely held.