Tell me, Guest Jim, how your views on Europe have changed over the last few years. My views only appear "intransigent and myopically entrenched" because those I debate against produce (almost) no argument: there's been, until now, little better than a jejune "The euro will make European holidays easier." I am quite willing to change my position if you present unassailable pro-EU arguments. You may not believe that, and I admit that I myself am not too sure, because I've never yet seen such an argument and cannot conceive of one (surprise me, please do). Notice that I'm not asserting that every aspect of the EU is bad, only that the balance of argument makes me wholeheartedly against Britain's joining the EMU and (rather less wholeheartedly) in favour of her leaving the EU. And I dispute that my posts have ever been "anti-European" -- anti-euro, yes; anti-EU, possibly; but not anti-European. (Well, you introduced the pedantic element).

Unless you've spoken to every citizen of every European country to garner their views, that is an absurd and (if I might add) stupid thing to say. This is the pedantry I refer to above. You've obviously never come across the concept of "poetic licence", have you? Of course I realise that, if taken literally, my statement is untrue, but it was never intended to be taken literally. Why, only a fortnight ago my Parisienne hostess told me that she felt European before she felt French.

You ask, What is your country? It is England, though I acknowledge that I am also British. I feel English first, British second and European a poor third. But I don't see the relevance of that to the current debate.

Wilfried does introduce a new argument (to these threads), that the EU has kept the peace in Europe since 1945. But I (like later posters above) question its validity: it seems to me that a common enemy to the East (up to 10 years ago or so) has had much more to do with having kept the peace than the EU has. It is logically fallacious to assert "There is peace; there is an EU; therefore the EU has caused peace" - to see that, just consider "There is peace; every house in Europe [note the poetic licence, again] has a television set; therefore universal television has caused peace" (actually, there may be some truth in that, after all **BG**).

The EU is however a great improvement over European relations 100 ... years ago. I'm not even sure about that. 100 years ago was the beginning of the long hot summers of the Edwardian period; war in Europe was unthinkable. But...