Indeed, this kind of political fear mongering is a disgrace to the idea of democracy. Nothing is sadder than watching highly educated and capable individuals stoop to base oratory. Next it'll be justification through rhetorical arguments and so on.

In fact arguably, I don't believe that the political parties and media should even be commenting on the in or out vote, or trying to sway opinion, in an referendum as its a vote of the people themselves, and not decided by their representatives.

Personally, I'm more inclined to an out, primarily because it gives the UK several options in terms of changing society to societies benefit and because ultimately it also delivers the best option for entirely redefining the idea of a 'European Union' in the future.

I don't think that the idea of the EU is necessarily fundamentally bad across the board; only it needs to be defined, in my opinion, not as a means of directing European countries towards corporate agendas, but delivering shared needs from a union that could benefit countries as a whole; rather than exploiting them for the benefit of a minority of another.

"One Nation Under God, has turned into One Nation Under the Influence of One Drug"
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I think if the out vote wins... the rest of the EU will wake up and realise what is going on.

A vote to stay in will only make the EU worse... a sort of "Mandate" for them to take things further and get us to pay!

I would be all for the EU if it was reformed and fair.

At the moment we are paying far more than every other member nation in % terms (and will continue to do so whilst our economy does better than the EU). Also we cannot sustain immigration levels at the rate they are arriving. Geographically there is a limit on space and infrastructure that has probably been exceeded already.

The idea of the EU doesn't faze me at all, but the experience is not acceptable and we must vote out to reshape our future.

The European Convention on Human Rights does mean we can't can't talk about Hugh bonneville, though.

The truth is a bit more complicated. The UK collects data on criminal records internationally, but the existing system of passport control was not sufficiently robust to maintain an index, largely due to the failure of the e-borders project meaning that the UK passport control system, in 2014, was the same system due to be replaced in 1996 (in fact it couldn't handle searches on whole names.

The UK as such, had problems when it came to Free movement, because it was possible to find details of undesirables on visa applications, this wasn't possible with the technology in service for border control.

Of course obtaining the data on criminal records and then translating them into a warning index to run on border and passport control is itself as difficult as the source in which the data is made available (as it has to be sanitised, translated and then migrated into the format for the system).

I know this, because I helped rescue a project that effectively made the new system viable within the updated home office systems. Of course the problem now is that you have to obtain, translate, sanitise and migrate the criminal records of each EU member state going back at least 25 years. Which is an expensive undertaking (bear in mind some of these may well be entirely manual systems).

Where the EU would have been more astute, would have been implementing a project for the rationalisation of the its member states into a single solution defined for and shared by member countries; which included internal border controls and monitoring.

"One Nation Under God, has turned into One Nation Under the Influence of One Drug"
[Link]

I make no "claim" - I am quoting verbatim the words of one of the (if not the) most instrumental players in the GFA. Feel free to disregard what he says then. What does he know, after all.

I'd argue that a war among the European nations, on the scale of WWII, would be more like using something like format c:*.* but yeah...

Also, the EU has nothing to do with the prevention of war in Europe, arguably the establishment of the lasting piece was the threat of the soviet union.

Common enemies tend to be greater forces for peace, than even mutual benefit. Its usually how mutual benefit comes about.

"One Nation Under God, has turned into One Nation Under the Influence of One Drug"
[Link]