You're clearly showing your zero knowledge of all EU related topics. How many EU countries excluding the UK have you actually lived in for any length of time? Me?, 5 countries, minimum stay 2 years and that gives me experience of how other EU countries view the EU and the UK and their local cultures. Believe it or not, the UK rarely comes up in any conversation on the continent among ordinary citizens, they get on with their lives and enjoy visiting one another, trading with one another and generally enjoying life. Whenever I visit the UK, people are generally moaning about the cost of everything, property prices, pensions, leaving the EU etc. Depressing.

Well don't visit the UK then and you wont have to listen to all of our moaning and we wont miss you. I lived in Malta for three years and it is not what I call a modern country as they tend to live in the past and rely solely on tourism and fishing. Really Nice people but do not really know a lot outside their little bubble I am afraid.

Supported Palace for over 69 years since the age of 7 and have seen all the ups and downs and will probably see many more ups and downs before I go up to the big football club in the sky.

What hurts is the fact that some would be Prime Minister comes out with stupid platitudes about the need to further 'tighten our belts' and 'make efficiency savings to public services' on top of the already substantial cuts, and oldies fell for it and voted for her.

I would have hoped the 'wisdom' of the older generation would have had the common sense to see that further needless austerity while slashing taxes for the rich and corporations was ridiculous and see through the ideological stupidity on offer by May.

Really? Well, you must have been one of the British expats we see here (although less and less as each year goes by), they frequent the Irish pubs, frequent cafes that serve English breakfasts and generally try and keep their lives as 'British' as possible. That of course means they learn little about the culture, history or real day to day life here. If you had, you would know that it's a big financial centre, is the biggest centre for English language training in Europe and over 100,000 divers come here every year , a huge industry. Not bad for a country with a population of only 420,000. Malta never suffered in the 2008-2011 recession as it's economy is very robust. GDP growth 'slowed' to 4.2% in Q1 this year, a rate the UK can only dream about:

"Economy slows, but growth remains more than double eurozone average GDP grew by 4.2 per cent in Q1, NSO figures show"

[Link]

So, yeah a little bit more than fishing and Tourism but while on the subject of fishing, it has the largest fish farming industry in the Mediterranean, exporting €millions of bluefin/yellowfin Tuna to Japan where only the best quality is accepted.

Edited by europalace (13 Jun 2017 1.18pm)

Wrong again I was out there as Marine in 41 Commando sorting out Mintoff for the Maltese people when Gadhafi was trying to take over the Island. You really do come out with some cr@p most of the time. As I said all Malta has is the fishing and the tourism.

Supported Palace for over 69 years since the age of 7 and have seen all the ups and downs and will probably see many more ups and downs before I go up to the big football club in the sky.

Malta has a flourishing business community including IT and has benefited from its EU membership.

You may have been there 25 years ago but its quite different now not that there is anything wrong in tourism or fishing anyway.