BREXIT? Am I just plain stupid?

Thanks JessM . That helps. Except what is ECJ?

Jess 1. Status of EU nationals in UK and UK nationals in EU.
The problem is Polly that none of it is simple. It is immensely complex, enshrined in years of legislation and covers hundreds of different areas. The Richard North blog posts, the evidence to and reports by select committees, plus the papers published by the EU on the Europa site provide the best evidence that I have found.
Maybe it would be helpful for others to add sources of evidence?

ECJ European Courts of Justice.

we get massive amounts of money from the EU ...any problems ith infastructure is the BRITISH governments failure to use the money as it was intended .Wait until the cash stops rolling in for areas such as Wales and Cornwall and see how they manage.Honestly do you believe the Tories will find money to replace those millions lost?Minniesmum

I find reading Bloomberg covers most of the main points without it being too partisan.

www.bloomberg.com/brexit

Good analogy, Nemo.

Whitewave - we do. Merkel "hopes to be able to make the full payment by 2020" - bearing in mind Germany's huge reserves, why not now?

mimms for someone with a double First, I am surprised at the amount of incorrect information you are basing your decision on.

Re -Germany I know that, but you are making the same mistake that Trump made.

I have been to a couple of talks about Brexit from academics specialising in European Law, trying to get an unbiased viewpoint, because all the newspapers of course have their own political slant. It seems that our affairs are so intimately entwined with the EU that to Brexit is unbelievably complicated and will tie up the civil service, the lawyers and an awful lot of time and money probably for about as long as it took us to get so firmly embedded in the EU in the first place. Hardly suprising I suppose. What I didnt realise is that the EU is a legal entity and not a sovereign one and that means it can only act within the legal framework by which it was set up. It wasnt set up to provide any half-way house, either you are a member or you are not (arguably it also wasnt really set up to provide an exit route either). Currently that means talk of transition or implementation whereby we can slide gently out of everything over a period of time to cushion the blow, doesnt actually exist legally. Whether the cliff edge departure would trigger a collapse of the pound is conjecture but I know where my money would go on that issue.

sunny yes all that information was out there before the referendum, but very little of it was covered by those wanting Brexit. Unfortunately most of the media supports Brexit

There is only one actual fact about leaving the EU and that is no one knows how it will all pan out, will it be better? Will it be worse? Depends on your point of view I suppose. Same as where would we be now if we hadn't joined the Common Market? What if we had come out in the 70s after the first referendum? It's all butterfly wings, chaos theory. We are coming out and that's that and we'll just have to get on with it whatever the outcome.

No missdeke there are choices. Broadly speaking:
1. Hard Brexit - no deal.
2. Canada deal.
3. EEA / EFTA.
4. Withdraw Article 50 and remain in the EU.

Which would people choose?

It doesn't matter now whether you voted Leave or Remain. It doesn't matter whether you made the decision on the toss of a coin or after analysing a spreadsheet of figures (utilising your double first from Cambridge). The referendum is over and responsibility for the future of our nation has been transferred back from the masses to where it belongs, Westminster. A referendum is the stupidest way of making any decision. It's as close to random as you can get. A decision based on a handful of leaflets and many hours of speeches that most people didn't want to listen to.

We got more money from the EU than we put in. Certainly Wales got far more money in EU grants than its people put in. All our dissatisfactions with the EU could have been negotiated. Instead, we had elections for MEPs who never told the electorate what they were doing or what they wanted to achieve, and we had UKIP MEPs who didn't even turn up for debates. As a nation, we were the disruptive kids at the back of the class, attention-seeking all the time. We've now given our government the perfect excuse to starve the NHS and our schools of funds. We can't afford it - because of Brexit. Maybe one day, in ten or twenty years, we'll be able to afford it again.

Oh dear, and the media and many public figures continue to say it's the Brexiteers who aren't very bright! Now Reminers are admitting for themselves they have no idea what they voted for either! Everyone I know who voted to leave has a degree and a LOT of common sense.

Basically, does it make more sense to pay a sh*t load of money to have a supposedly 'Free Trade deal' and be told what to do in almost every aspect of your life by a governing body that doesn't put your interests first or is it better for a country to make its own decisions just like the rest of the rest outside the EU does. Fancy that, being able to make your own decisions about things that affect your own country. What a novel idea!!!!

Yes, it will be a rocky road ahead for a few years as the EU has no intention of giving the UK any sort of decent deal before we leave because they are terrified that other countries will wake up and want to leave too. We can just trade under World Trade rules at first just as all the EU States currently do at the moment with all countries they do not have any free trade deals with ( that's most of the world actually), ... and, guess what, nobody has to buy any foreign goods if they think they are too expensive. With the billions we save from not paying into a Customs Union club the UK can decide whether it gives that money to the NHS, farmers, researchers, small businesses, reduces VAT, pays off the deficit quicker etc. and we can start to open trade talks with the rest of the world.
Conversation with the world on day 1 post Brexit. 'Would you like a reciprocal Free Trade Agreement with the UK? Please tick the box- Yes/No?' So let's get on with it.

Mamie

5. Leave with a deal.

Oh dear quiz the box ticking won’t take very long. There is only one other country in the world who will be able to do that.

Reply to Mem above....We certainly do NOT get back more from the EU than we contribute. The UK, along with France and Germany, are net contributors to the EU budget. Look up your facts before you spout such rubbish, please.

POGS I am reading this morning that sources are saying the only possible deal outside CU / SM is the Canada deal.

www.politico.eu/article/brexit-trade-barnier-dashes-britains-hopes-of-something-better-than-canada-deal/
Here.

We also voted to remain but trying to find out the pros and cons presented in an objective way was impossible, just a lot of unrealistic promises. In the end we felt we should vote in the interests of the young since our membership means/meant they have/had many opportunities to travel and work freely within the EEC.

I feel we shouldn’t have been given this decision to make since very few members of the electorate understood the issues, including us. I am old enough to remember the referendum to join the EEC and felt the same way then.

I don’t understand the following:

Why the financial implications of leaving and staying weren’t researched by experts and presented to us before the referendum. We have been told what we pay in every week but it turns out this is a gross figure. We should have been told the nett figure and how this would be spent.

Why an impartial team of experts aren’t handling the negotiation process.

Why Mrs May stated at a very early stage what we wanted from the negotiations. She has obviously never been through a divorce.

Why politicians are happy to let it go ahead when the pound has plummeted and there are predictions of food prices rising by 20%.

It feels as if somebody is steering a bus towards a cliff and nobody is prepared to put the brakes on.

Jaycee5, I don’t know about every individual Brexiter, but Liam Fox said doing a deal with the EU would be the easiest ever. Many other Brexiters repeatedly made the argument that the EU wants to export BMWs, prosecco, etc to us and that would result in it being easy to do a deal. That always ignored the fact that exporters in the EU place value on the single market and are prepared to make sacrifices to prevent it being destroyed. So it was never true that the deal would be easy, as is now being proved.

Amt101, all I see here from “remainers” are rational arguments based on fact. Is that something that Brexiters don’t want to deal with?

MinniesMum, no reason why integration means we would be subsidiary to France or Germany. We are, for now, a leading member of the EU. It’s likely to be a lot better finding ways to get along with our European neighbours than trying to deal with the USA and China on our own. Nobody pays into NATO, countries control their own defence forces. Anyway, the world would be a better place if people spent less on so-called defence.

Quizqueen, it’s not really about free trade at all, it’s about being in a single market where goods can be sold to hundreds of millions of consumers without any regulatory barriers. It’s how we can remain competitive with the USA and China. Outside the EU, we’ll be bullied by the large trade blocks, and all this taking control will turn out a fantasy. Just look at the Bombardier affair. I’ve yet to hear a Brexiter explain what, specifically, has been decided by the EU against UK preferences that is the least bit important.

I am surprised the Brexiteers are arguing that we can just trade under WTO rules- isn't that another outside body we pay money to? Whatever happened to sovereignty and making up our own rules? and as for the EU telling us what to do " in just about every aspect of life" ! Really?? 4% of our legislation came from the EU, that leaves 96% from our own dear parliament. And what a great job it does.

There will be campaigns to leave the WTO next when Brexiteers realise its an international body we are a member of along with loads of" foreign countries"

The New Statesmen is reporting that Farage is worried about the U.K. crashing out of Europe. He was critical of Gove and Johnson’s latest interference - letter to Maybot