Happy Keith:
I was too young to be politically aware as a 14 year-old, but how can today’s subscription of £48 million a day ever be ‘…benefitient…’?
Because you got much more in return as a benefits from common market and stuff. You pay 8-9 billion per year - which comes to about 15 pounds per citizen, but according to your own goverment estimates, you “earn” around 2500 pounds per household from the benefits of single market - as EU is your biggest export market, and, unlike like with China, you don’t have export deficite there…
Just for Poland - you export 3 times more stuff to Poland today that you did in 2003.
Norway is not in EU, and it’s very often given as an example of what Britain should do. But to be allowed to benefit from the signle market Norway pays proportionally much more than Britain - as this is the deal: “you can be part of our signle market if you put some money into EU funds”.
I got a feeling that this 48 milion a day is a very populist argument - because it’s much easier to show how much you PAY into the common jar, than to show all the benefits you got from being an EU member…
We now know that my parents generation were denied being told the fact that Federalisation was the covert ambition of today’s EU. That is the essence of today’s argument and is incompatible with Britain being able to do what it does best, ie, whinge, take in strays, win wars against tyrants on it’s own fair & decent terms and not those of meddling, fight-shy foreigners.
Ah, so you just miss the good old times when you were a nation that was putting others into their place, deciding who is tyrant and who is not, and when you were important and people in other countries cared about you? In simply words: you blame EU for that you are no longer Great and you are “just Britain”?
Britain has solidarity with many nations world-wide and is broadly seen, proven and respected as a fair & decent nation.
Or you just like to think so. If you only spoke other languages and were able to read what other nations think about you…
The fact today is that because Germany & France once needed coralling (Federalising!) from repeating their regular & historic fisticuffs (originally by a common 1950’s bond always referred to here - albeit informally - as a ‘Common Market’) into being friends together, the EU now forbids the UK from trading direct with the rest of the world. How is that a winner for Waitrose or Britain?
You have a choice: you can trade direct with the rest of the world, but not with EU, or you can trade freely with the rest of EU, but not with the rest of the world. Recent data shows that your trade just with Ireland is bigger than that with China, Brazil, India and Russia put together… Feel free to abandon EU rules and try luck in the world market, competing with China and other cheap countries…
I think this is exactly the confirmation of my feelings after I read your previous post: you are happy from benefits, but you are not happy when you have to sacrifice something. You would like to keep cookie and eat it. That’s your problem, I think.
Greece lied to get into the EU and the ‘eager-to-please’ auditors were hastily ordered to let them ‘in’ were clearly negligent. Why has no-one been jailed for this? Maybe the rampant ineptitude of unaccountable, EU civil-servants and undemocratic politicians are exempt from accountability 
What would happen if, as a driver under EU regulations, you committed similar, professional negligence 
Why is the EU administration immune from accounting for it’s foul-ups? Would Waitrose tolerate such dismal performance from it’s executives, clerks or drivers?
Here we agree in full.
I understand that the fortunes of Greece are doomed whatever they do for the foreseeable future: Their (sad?) destiny is to recover to average (not a bad thing) - but hey, at least they remain free to avoid paying tax on their unfinished house extensions that we’ve all seen and always accepted as Greek state sponsored & nationally inept corruption.
I was talking about British fortunes. I am of the similar opinion when it comes to Greece.
Maybe we Britons as a whole are not overly bothered because we’re tired, disenfranchised and far too busy to swallow the truth (thanks to smoke & mirror (Olympic?) type diversions) and that burying heads in the sand is a perfectly adequate short-term solution. That’s fine until our children wake-up - like they now are - to realise that playing at ultra-liberalism with Britain’s previous high standards has come at a cost to them. Maybe if Waitrose gets bought out by Primark or Starbucks (an easy tax-dodge lesson for the retarded EU to bumble over?) the Lib/Lab/Con ultra-liberals will be happy
The problem here is that most of the people, as you say, are not bothered to dig the truth, and the few who are bothered, are happy with just some populistic crap - like this “48 milions per day” without broader view of all income and spending that comes with your membership in the EU.
The problem, in my eyes, as the oustide observator is, that your goverment is balancing between not doing anything to change the things and doing some half-way moves to please populists. If Britain was still Great, you will go to one of this European summits, hit your fists into the table, and told Merkel and co “stop doing circles, I know that you are too afraid to do some BIG CHANGES, but EU needs big changes, and if you are not up to this BIG CHANGES, we are leaving!”.
Britons almost know the EU will blank us - or when pushed, they’ll tell us off in front of their ‘King’s-new-clothes’ mates (ie, the ‘happy-to receive’ new Eastern member states?) whilst hitting Britains EU puppet Government with a fine for insubordination and Waitrose with a directive to employ people they don’t particularly wish-to 
The mistake in that thinking is typical for Britain. Suprisingly there is no such thinking in France or Germany for example. You think that Eastern Europe is some poor guys from outside who might beg you for membership in Europe and you can let them in at your will… You are forgotting, that Eastern Europeans have the same rights to be part of Europe as you have (well, until we speak about Geography, then they are more in Europe than you are). They weren’t begging to be allowed to Europe, they are in Europe for 1000 years or more. And common Europe is in the interest of everyone, as the small European countries are already being marginalized on the world market - we need to stick together to have our voice heard in China, USA or Latin America.
I’d be happy to be kicked out (they’d be £48 million per day poorer, so it’s not likely) and am gagging to learn what undemocratic, unaccountable, poorly managed, EU sponsored Utopia anyone can envision lying beyond my nose-end, please.
Well, they would get much more from the taxes and customs from your companies exporting to EU 
Clean, fresh and healthy air, perhaps - or another bullying Directive: I’d prefer it to be the Waitrose model - as envied by many as a lesson-for-Britain - but it’s the one which many are determined to choke out 
Everyone would prefer Waitrose type of business - when the wages are high, working conditions comfortable etc. But then, suddenly, when they go shopping, they all go to Tesco, because Tesco is cheaper and Waitrose is expensive. That’s why Tesco is blooming and keep opening new shops at every second corner of the street every week, and Waitrose is not.
This is how it works on a small scale, and how it works on the biggest scale.
As for people’s opinion on it, sometimes people are surprised with the unusual colour of my counterpart, as it’s slightly different to the one that British photocard holders get. Apart from that I read several comments on trucknet that it has to be worse because it’s Polish and I heard two comments - one from my employer, other from my employer-to-be that never happened due to other reason. They both said that I propably know how to drive better, because I made my driving license in Poland (sadly, they were not willing to pay me more than to my British collegues for that 
