Brexit campaigners! - Don’t be fooled by Bo-Jo, the contemporary Don Quixote.

Those who advocate voting ‘Out’ of the EU, so often damage their cause beyond measure by their ignorant and ill-tempered demeanour on social networks. The intemperate language they adopt, the abuse they hurl at EU supporters, the defensive arguments they promote, all demonstrate an absence of a fuller understanding of the wider issues, and portray many of these otherwise probably genuine people as a bunch of swivel-eyed fantasists. 

However, in so many cases, they are ill-advised and factually bereft, because they are very badly influenced by people like Boris Johnson and other contemporary political EU-deniers, who use the wider referendum campaign as an opportunity to disseminate a wide range of self-serving lies, deceits, fantasies and half-digested theories, masquerading as fully-formed policy, but whose motives are entirely selfish and do not bear even the scantest searching review.

One has only to observe the posturings of people like Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg, William Cash, Liam Fox et al, to appreciate the degree of personal self interest given to these protestations. The first recognition is that they are all wealthy men, whose own financial interests are unlikely to be deeply undermined by their desertion of the EU cause. 

They have other agendas, in Johnson’s case, he is so desperate to become the next Tory Prime Minister, that he will do anything, espouse any cause, adopt any policy, if he believes it will ingratiate him with the Tory rump of mean-minded, mealy-mouthed, selfish and bigoted supporters of the right-wing ‘Little Englander’ tendency..

Nick Cohen, writing in the Guardian excoriates Bo-Jo and calls him a liar and a con-man. He says;

“...If countries get the politicians they deserve, the possibility of a Johnson premiership suggests that the British are now a nation of charlatans. No one who has studied him thinks he is telling the truth when he says he believes that it is in our best interests to leave the European Union. The reason why he must deceive reveals Johnson’s low character as clearly as his casual mendacity...”

Later Cohen points out Bo-Jo’s other shortcomings, identifying that; 

“...Any man with a functioning sense of shame would have worried about his long record of supporting the EU. As late as February, Johnson was saying that leaving would embroil

 “...the government for several years in a fiddly process of negotiating new arrangements, so diverting energy from the real problems of this country...”. And so it would. Elsewhere he acknowledged that we would not get free trade without accepting EU regulation and immigration...” 

I have adopted the image of Don Quixote for Bo-Jo, as a means of illustrating his tendency to see enemies where none exist, but which nonetheless, permits him to imagine them to serve his own ends. Cervantes describes how Quixote tilts at windmills which he imagines are giants.

“...Just then they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that rise from that plain. And no sooner did Don Quixote see them that he said to his squire, "Fortune is guiding our affairs better than we ourselves could have wished. Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, thirty or forty hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them. With their spoils we shall begin to be rich for this is a righteous war and the removal of so foul a brood from off the face of the earth is a service God will bless."

"What giants?" asked Sancho Panza.

"Those you see over there," replied his master, "with their long arms. Some of them have arms well nigh two leagues in length."

John Major had a word for these kind of people, coined in his nightmare moment during the debate on the Maastricht Treaty, he called them ‘bastards’, and he was right.

These people are happy to take everything out of the Union which they think will profit the themselves, but they do not want to part with one brass razoo, or make one penny contribution which they perceive might be of any benefit to any other EU citizens. That is why the debate so often polarises around the amount of money we pay to Brussels as our contribution, but never seems to recognise the amount we get back from the EU in wider benefits. 

The debate is all about ‘us’, it is rarely if ever about ‘all of us’. It is a discussion centred in the narrowest self-interest and a refusal to consider the wider benefit of other people in Europe with whom we must co-exist, co-operate and correspond if we anticipate a beneficial future, and it is an argument arrayed by a group of people who seem to know the cost of everything, but the value of nothing.

This state of mind flows over into discussions of wider policy and distorts the ambitions of those who want to leave.

On 11^th March 2016, Bo-Jo, when talking about EU trade options, opined; “...What I think we should do is strike a new free trade deal, along the lines of what Canada has just achieved...”

However, within days, on 23^rd March 2016, having realised that the Canadian model had significant drawbacks, the great windmill charger was saying; “...I don’t want to imitate the Canadian deal...”

Well, what is it Boris, make your mind up, man. Your legions of supporters are hanging on your every word!

What politicians of this type forget is that their intemperate mouthings become perceived ‘words of wisdom’ to a certain kind of voter, and those who espouse the ‘Let’s all leave now’ brand of political chicanery, take these words at face value. And in so doing, they are very badly served.

Johnson and his fellow travellers should realise, (indeed I suspect that they know only too well) that by creating a set of misguided expectations and raising a number of false flags among the intellectually challenged, they will create a distorted political agenda, which will be seized upon, and used as justification for even louder demands for leaving the EU.

Take such concepts as ‘securing our borders’, or ‘retaining our own sovereignty’! 

Do those who parrot these hackneyed old mantras truly believe that any meaningful changes will be generated by clinging to these worn-out shibboleths? Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of MI6, albeit 17 years ago, has said that by being out of the EU we would have greater control over our ability to deport criminals. 

What utter tosh, only last week the Home Office was forced to admit, in a report from MPs on the Committee of Public Accounts, who said there had been a "complete failure" by the Home Office to deal with the problem of removing foreign criminals from this country. This has got nothing to do with the EU, it is our own home grown failure to deal with the problem through lack of staff and political incompetence and it is about to get worse as the Government withdraws even further funding from the Borders Agency.

Politicians who continue to use these phrases, perpetuating these untruths, as a means of dragging in support from the uncertain and the insecure, are laying the groundwork for future disappointment and disillusion, but why should they care, as long as they get their own way?

And that is the major problem. Our whole debate on the EU Referendum is badly distorted and ill-informed. There is great disagreement over even the smallest issues, we cannot discuss our future inside or outside the EU because of the polarised attitudes of the Brexit promoters who form opinions and deliver judgements based upon no knowledge, information, facts or logic. They can do no less, because they have no evidence on which to act or judge, so everything they postulate must be the worst form of hypothesis, or worse, prejudice, inflamed and inflated by the intemperate words of the mendacious politicians who seek to use the voters to do their dirty work for them in the hope that they will deliver a result which while it may be of end-use to the politicos, will serve no useful purpose for the individual voter in the longer run..

Those of us who keenly promote the EU status-quo do so because we know what we get from our membership. We have got 40 years of experience to work on and we can recite the benefits that accrue to us through our membership. We have facts, and knowledge, the Brexiteers have an empty vacuum, and in that unpopulated space, confusion is inevitably generated.

Through all this uncertainty and doubt, this huge confusion exists in the minds of many hundreds of thousands of people. Every night the news programmes are crammed with commentators debating and disagreeing. The politicians slink around the studios, pushing their competing agendas, more and more conflicting statements are made, the tv pundits float more and more misleading assertions as a means of promoting ‘edgy’ debate, and the public are left even more confused than ever.

This doubt is not just felt in the UK, it is also felt, most keenly, in the EU. There is almost universal unwillingness among our other fellow EU members to see the UK leave the Union, but at the same time, there is significant dissatisfaction and frustration at the British Brexit posturing over their future membership status.

In the last week I wrote an opinion piece in which I pointed out that it was not surprising that at a time of significant upheaval, when ordinary people’s minds were being distracted by this hugely unnecessary disagreement over our EU membership, and that the communities of the EU more generally were being conflicted by these debates, that ISIS terrorists should choose to ‘seize the time’ and engage in a series of ‘Situationist’ style outrages and attacks.

Terrorists are arch masters at exploiting insecurity and indecision. Their actions are not necessarily intended to have any specific pre-programmed outcome, they will, in many cases, conduct operations simply to amplify instability, to take advantage of any perceived lacuna in security, to exploit any weakness or agitate any form of distraction in the body politic.

It is done with the primary aim of asserting their autonomy, of demonstrating their ability to hit at any place and at any time. In a way, terrorism of this type is defined as ‘theatre’, designed to send a series of messages and to sow the seeds of confusion, doubt and uncertainty, and these latest outrages in Paris and Brussels have certainly succeeded in achieving those ends. 

I have no qualm in asserting that the level of disinformation and political chicanery which has been practised by unscrupulous politicians who have deliberately manipulated the mind-sets of hundreds of thousands of British citizens, has had a direct knock-on effect in rendering a level of instability and uncertainty to thrive and this has led directly to a situation where we are placed at greater risk because of the likelihood of terrorists seeking to exploit the unsettled situation created by these unscrupulous politicians, around an issue which is of such importance to so all of us.

The Referendum offered by David Cameron is completely unnecessary, and has merely been introduced as a feeble exercise by an uncertain politician in a futile attempt to get his right-wing rump of backbenchers off his case. It has backfired spectacularly and we are now faced with a period of huge instability, insecurity and uncertainty, pending the outcome.

The end result will be to generate even more silliness.

It is in circumstances such as these that our politicians must realise that their casual words cannot be sprayed around indiscriminately. They influence people, and in a febrile atmosphere, where there is very little information or evidence on which to make an informed decision about leaving the EU, they owe a greater duty of care to choose their words with caution, and not unnecessarily arouse false expectations.

Listening to so many of these commentators talking about the UK status in Europe after Brexit. I get the overriding impression of a man deciding to divorce his wife, all the while congratulating himself that he will not have to pay her any more housekeeping money, which he will be able to spend on himself. 

The Judge, not unreasonably points out that while this may be true, he’s going to award the wife a similar sum for maintenance, which the man must pay, if he wants to see his children “What’s more”, says the judge, you must stay on your side of the fence and if you want to go to your wife’s house to see your children, you will have to get special permission in writing to be allowed in before you go. However, if strangers and friends of your wife want to come to your house, you will still have to answer the door and spend time and effort deciding if they can come in, which will take time and cost you more money.

The man says; “...Well, I will be financially worse off by getting this divorce, I will gain no benefit...”

“...Yes...” says the judge. Perhaps you should have thought of that before you started this nonsense in the first place. 

Perhaps those who are campaigning so hard for the rest of us to leave our responsibilities in the EU, should first consider the words of the poet John Donne when he wrote in 1624;

“...No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee...”     John Donne, Meditation XVII

The politicians are doing none of us any good service by their weasel words and their fantasies. They are causing great dissension, and they do not have the best interests of UK plc in mind!

Let us debate the EU issue with all the powers at our disposal, but let us do so armed with facts, with informed views and with logic. Let us do so above all, with good grace, and with good manners.

If you are unable to adopt these simple requirements, please do not bother to engage on this site, I respect your right to hold your views, but I don’t have to read them on my own web page. If you want to be abusive, rude and intemperate, then go and do it on another page of your own.

We must ensure that the facts about our EU membership are described fairly.

“...I hold there is no sin but ignorance...”  Christopher Marlowe

This EU Referendum campaign is being marked out by the extraordinarily high level of lies, distortions and untruths being peddled by the agents of BREXIT, and these are having a deleterious effect upon the minds of those who are ignorant of the facts and short of proper information on which to make up their minds.

This is one of the major concerns of those, like me, who oppose the use of referenda to determine democratic policy, because too many voters are insufficiently provided for with necessary information, and instead, tend to be influenced by those mendacious politicians who campaign to appeal to their prejudices and inflame their ignorance.

As a result, we are in some danger of the Referendum being sidelined by apathy as many voters decide it is all too much trouble to vote on the day because they simply don’t have enough information on which to make an informed judgement.

It is in the interest of the BREXIT promoters to maintain this state of affairs. They themselves cannot say what life will be like if the UK is forced out of the EU, because they don’t know. They are instead calling for the British voters to make a huge leap in the dark, but because they do not have any facts on which to base their arguments, they are forced back on appeals to the voters’ prejudices, while making sure not to enlighten their ignorance.

Then, having manipulated various polls to meet their own ambitions, they then publish these analyses as empirical evidence. 

But in virtually every example, the answers are based entirely upon ignorance, prejudice and fear. One thing certainly becomes obvious and that is the British middle-aged xenophobic prejudice against foreigners. Foreign migrants suddenly become the butt of virtually any hysterical prejudice that masquerades as fact.

As an illustration, a poll of 5,828 over 50s, albeit published in that well-known, intellectually honest, pro-European comic, the Daily Express, reports that 65 per cent of people who responded, want Britain to ‘throw off’ Brussels. 

This is a classic finding. It is highly doubtful whether those responding negatively had sufficient knowledge of facts to come to such a decision, but it is entirely sure that their answers were solicited through the use of emotionally-charged statements which were predicated by falsehoods.

As an example, and ostensibly damningly for the Remain campaign, a third of those who backed staying in the EU in 1975 now allegedly want to change their vote and quit. 

Do we know why they want to leave? We are not told! But many people to whom I have put this question have said back then, they thought they were merely joining a Common Market for goods and services in 1975. And that is what indeed, they did join.

But then the respondents will pull out the usual shibboleths which they have heard used by people like Nigel Farage and Jacob Rees-Mogg, and which sound quite clever if they were true, which maintains they did not vote for ever closer union with Europe.

Well, I must have been one of the very few voters who in 1975 actually went and read the Treaty of Rome, first published in 1957, before I made my mark on the ballot paper?. Those who did read this document would have quickly observed the statement made in a short clause in the EU's founding document, wherein the signatories pledged to work towards “an ever closer union”.

If you were one of those who voted in the 1975 Referendum without having read the Treaty of Rome, then you only have yourselves to blame, because the full realisation of the EU was there for all to see, and if you voted without knowing the facts, or appreciating their meaning, then you were as ignorant then as you probably are now.

So, I thought it would be a good idea to look at the results of this survey, and then see if I could throw any genuine and honest light on the concerns, to establish whether they were based on logic or prejudice and ignorance.

The survey by ‘Silversurfers.com’ has shown that the biggest concern is immigration and the lack of control on Britain's borders, with 93 per cent giving it as a major reason to leave the EU while 74 per cent are worried about the drain on welfare from foreign migrants. 

Well, first of all, what does ‘control of our borders’ mean?

You see, this is another one of those highly emotive statements closely allied to the wholly mistaken one about the loss of our sovereignty!

Loosely translated, it means the right to determine who can enter Britain freely and legally and who must be denied such access! But put like that, it loses all its xenophobic appeal.

So who comes to the UK?

In the 12 months to September 2015:

617,000 people arrived in the UK. This is up 0.3 per cent on the previous year, but 294,000 left at the same time.

257,000, or 42 per cent, arrived from the European Union. This figure is up 4 per cent on the year.

130,000, or 21 per cent, arrived from the 'EU15' group of countries: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. This figure is up 5 per cent on the previous year.

69,000, or 11 per cent, came from the 'EU8' group of countries: Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. This figure fell on the year by 9 per cent.

55,000, or 9 per cent, came from Bulgaria and Romania. This was up 38 per cent on the year.

The remaining 2,00 (0.3 per cent) came from Malta, Cyprus and Croatia. This figure was down by 60 per cent on the previous year.

Every single one of those people has a legal right to come here under the free movement of people principle in the EU charter, so why do we worry so much about them? This figure is not even worth discussing as they have the same rights to come here as any other EU citizen, so why the panic?

Total immigration to Britain in the year to the end of September was 617,000 - off set by emigration of 294,000 people – making a total of 323,000 staying here..

In the detail of its analysis, the Office of National Statistics said the total level of EU immigration was largely unchanged - but did note a 'statistically significant' rise in the number of Bulgarian and Romanian migrants of 15,000 to a total of 55,000.

Of these, 28,000 had a firm job to go to while 45,000 of the group were in Britain for work-related reasons. 

So, what about Non-EU immigrants?

Well, the total of non-EU immigrants amounted to a paltry 66,000.

A large percentage of such immigrants are here on short-term student visas.

Student visas is essentially the big statistic here and this is the only area in which the government have been able to make a difference, and The Home Office has implemented stricter entrance criteria and other limitations to the student visa system since early in 2011, as part of a pledge to reduce net migration to less than 100,000. 

The government won’t cap the number of foreign students, because that would cause trouble for the higher education sector, but it does want to tighten the system by which universities are certified to admit them. 

All these foreign students are paying the top rate of fees for their education and get no state help in costs or expenses. They represent a real level of financial benefit to UK plc, and many want to come back to the UK to undertake important post-graduate research which in turn finds its way in many cases into the EU business sector.

The most important immigrant requirement is identified in the medical sector, particularly in finding sufficient trained doctors and nurses to help staff the NHS. Every single voter in the forthcoming Referendum needs to factor in that any medical treatment he or she receives in the future, will almost inevitably be provided by the reviled foreigner. The UK relies on these people to maintain her NHS staffing levels.

Up to 3,000 doctors have been hired from overseas by the NHS in the past year, as the service battles to tackle staff shortages that medical professionals say are serious and growing.

They came from at least 27 countries, including India, Poland, Australia and Greece – but also even Iraq, Syria and Sudan – according to 32 of the 160 hospital trusts in England who responded to requests from the Guardian for details of their recruitment.

Dr David Rosser, medical director of University hospitals Birmingham, one of England’s biggest trusts, said: “The NHS doesn’t have the number of doctors it needs. The shortage is real. We aren’t training enough doctors in this country, and so we are dependent on foreign-trained doctors. 

Painting a picture of how wide the NHS is having to cast its net for doctors and other clinical staff, the research shows that:

• University hospitals NHS foundation trust in Southampton recruited the highest number of foreign doctors – 113 in the last year.

• The service is struggling to find enough doctors to work in particular medical specialities, including A&E, radiology, ophthalmology and general medicine.

• The 23 foreign medics hired by the University hospitals Bristol trust included six Greeks, three Pakistanis, two Hungarians, two Romanians, two Sri Lankans and one born in Sudan with British nationality.

• Five of England’s 10 regional NHS ambulance services are also pursuing new recruits abroad. More than 100 of the 200 paramedics the London Ambulance Service is hiring before the end of March will be from Australia and New Zealand. 

• NHS trusts in England said they had hired just over 1,000 nurses from overseas, with experts warning that hospitals were competing with each other for overseas talent.

Overall figures from the General Medical Council show that the number of foreign-trained doctors on its register rose by 2,957 between 31 December 2013 and 6 January 2015. They made up two-fifths – 39.4% – of the 7,500 year-on-year increase in the overall number of doctors, which rose to 267,150. Of the 267,150 doctors of all types registered with the GMC on 6 January, 97,915 (36.6%) were foreign-trained, including 34,120 (41.2%) specialists. 

When our British Xenophobes are recuperating from their hip replacement operation, they won’t care one jot about the nationality of the man or woman providing their highly expert care!

As for the second element of the irrational fear of immigrants, their drain on the welfare system? Well, contrary to popular belief, most non-EU migrants can't claim benefits. They can use the NHS (with a surcharge) and schools (depending on residence), but they have no access to JSA, disability allowance, tax credits, or housing benefit. 

EU migrants can claim certain benefits, but a major report by University College London demonstrates that such immigrants who arrived after EU enlargement in 2004, and who have at least one year of residence – and are therefore legally eligible to claim benefits – are about 60% less likely than natives to receive state benefits or tax credits, or to live in social housing.

Comparing the net fiscal contribution of these immigrants with that of individuals born in the UK, in each fiscal year since enlargement in 2004, the immigrants made a positive contribution to public finance.

In the fiscal year, 2008/09, immigrants paid 37% more in direct or indirect taxes than was spent on public goods and services which they received. This is even more remarkable because the UK has been running a budget deficit over the last few years. 

The study also shows that on average, immigrant workers have a better educational background than UK-born workers, but receive lower wages - especially in the period immediately after coming to the UK. Despite this disparity, these immigrants are net contributors to the public finances.

The main reason for this is that they have a higher rate of labour force participation (increasing the number of fiscal contributors), and make less use of benefits and public services.

For example, in 2008/09, immigrants represented 0.91% of the total UK population, but contributed 0.96% of total tax receipts and accounted for only 0.6% of total expenditures.

The author of the study says: “Our research contributes important facts to the debate on the costs and benefits of EU immigration. It shows that these immigrants are far less likely to live in social housing or to claim benefits. We were surprised about the large net fiscal contribution made by these immigrants, given their relatively low wage position in the UK labour market.” 

Not only are these people demonstrably not a drain on welfare benefits, they are net contributors to the UK economy. 

I suggest that taken as a whole, these researched figures overwhelmingly demonstrate that any fears of immigration that the over-50s in the UK manifest, are wholly over-amplified, and are simply inflated by xenophobic fears aggravated by the inflamed rhetoric of people like Nigel Farage, Iain Duncan Smith and other Right-wing politicians whose best interests lie in spouting lies, untruths and distortions about immigrants and the EU right to free movement! 

Go figure!

Why we must all work so hard to protect our membership of the EU!

On Sunday morning, 6th March 2016, Boris ‘Bo-Jo’ Johnson appeared on the Andrew Marr show.

He was there to speak against Britain’s continued membership of the EU, and he made a complete arse of himself.

Johnson likes to give the impression that he is a voice for Britain, that somehow he ‘speaks for England’. Quite where this self-anointed mantle of authority has come from is a mystery to me. As far as I am concerned, Johnson is a buffoon, a charlatan and a ‘little englander’!
However, that is not to say that he is not a very dangerous commentator.

He possesses that style of speaking which many uninformed British observers mistake for deep knowledge trying hard to appear as the voice of the common man.

In reality, Johnson is a composite ‘chancer’ who has seen an opportunity to set his cap at becoming the next Prime Minister, and he is using the excuse of ‘Brexit’ as a means of promoting his own campaign for PM.

The really evil element to Johnson’s rhetoric is that no-one exactly knows quite what he stands for. Frankly, I doubt whether Johnson himself knows who or what he is and what he stands for, apart from the best interests of Bo-Jo!

Nevertheless, he may have influenced a lot of watchers, and particularly, the old guard of the Tory party, none of whom have ever really reconciled themselves to being part of the EU.

The primary problem with all the EU ‘Nay-sayers’ is that none of them has the slightest clue what will happen when and if this country were to stupidly decide to vote against remaining a member.

They do not have any idea how or what will happen to our existing membership status, and as a result, they have no practical suggestions or recommendations to make, apart from a generic catch-all ‘we must leave the EU’!

On the Marr programme, Bo-Jo characterised the EU as a ‘prison’. He then proceeded to shamelessly mix his metaphors, (which is something that Bo-Jo does with impunity), by saying that Britain had lost a golden opportunity to get out of the prison because Government lawyers had recently vetoed a plan to assert that Parliament could overrule EU law.

Ignoring the fact that the UK Parliament cannot overrule EU law when it does not suit them, Bo-Jo disingenuously treated this non-sequitur as a terrible lost opportunity, claiming that it was his road to Damascus which had converted him to a Brexit believer.

He described the facility to get out of this prison thus;

“...Actually, it will be wonderful, it would be a huge weight lifted from British business...”

Here is a typical Bo-Jo, and by default, very common feature of these pro-Brexit clowns, who steadfastly refuse to see the many benefits that membership of the EU has brought the UK, and who then engage in a piece of special pleading on behalf of ‘British business’. This is entirely contrary to the views of the vast number of established British businesses who have voiced their opinions that remaining in the EU is by far the better option for this country!

It is this shameless appeal to some form of petty patriotism which so identifies the Bo-Jo tendency (along with Nigel Farage, Jacob Rees-Mogg, M.P for the Eighteenth Century, Iain Duncan-Smyth et al). Clearly these men have not appreciated Dr Johnson’s (no relation) observation that patriotism was the last refuge of the scoundrel!

It all stems from the idea that somehow, by aligning ourselves with the EU, we have somehow lost a chunk of our much vaunted Sovereignty, and that Johnny foreigner is making laws which we must obey, but in which we have had no chance of debate!

Well, what is the reality of the laws which the EU enacts with which we have to comply?

First of all, all EU laws debated in the EU Parliament have a UK component participation from our MEPs. Sadly, too many of them are members of UKIP whose actions are aimed at constantly disrupting and obstructing the EU process, rather than working in an harmonious and practical manner.

1: Acts put in place by UK Parliament with EU influence — account for between 10-14% of our laws.

2: Regulations influenced by or related to the EU — account for 9-14% of our laws.

They are all almost exclusively focused on areas of administrative reform and designed to bring us into common parity with other members of the EU. They are one of the costs of belonging to the EU Club!

All these laws have to be debated in the UK Parliament before they can be enforced in UK law and they have to be passed just like any other law.

The EU cannot change our tax laws or our criminal laws. So where is our much vaunted sovereignty being impacted?

What else does the EU effect?

Free trade - The EU is a trade bloc which means there are no quotas or tariffs for companies exporting goods and services within the EU. This makes it easier for UK businesses to trade across the EU's 27 states.

Common commercial policy - these are rules put in place to protect EU businesses using things like tariffs, subsides and quotas on imports from outside the eurozone.

EU competition law - this means that if you have a company you should have the opportunity to do business across the EU.

The law is designed to stop bigger firms abusing their power by setting up cartels and monopolies.

The internal market - the single market means UK citizens are free to move, live, study and trade anywhere within the EU.

This also affects you when you go on holiday within the European Union because there are no customs limits.

There are also no border controls across most of the EU either - the UK is one exception to that rule, because we have refused to adopt the Schengen Principles.

Trans-European networks - many areas of Europe have benefited from this policy with new roads and transport networks designed to make it easier for the different countries to transport goods and services across the EU. Hence the suggestion that the Cross-Rail link be made larger to accommodate German trains!

Energy - this is a common policy for European energy needs and proposals for making energy greener.

EU energy labels have also been introduced on all electrical goods like washing machines and even light bulbs to try to make us all more aware of what energy we're using.

Area of freedom, security and justice - this is designed to make it easier for police across the EU to cooperate but also to ensure fair treatment in different judicial systems for all EU citizens.

There is a European arrest warrant that means you can be arrested anywhere in the EU for more serious crimes committed in another EU country.

Common fisheries policy - every EU state must stick to rules on fishing set by Europe. This affects fishermen in the UK, who are only allowed to fish for certain types of fish at certain times of the year to conserve stocks. This has had a hugely beneficial effect on conserving Cod stocks in the North Sea.

There are also understandings on public health, the environment, consumer protection, transport, social policy, plus economic, social and territorial cohesion.

There are common foreign, security and defence policies which run alongside the policies of member states although there is no European army or single European foreign policy.

Euro MPs don't set our taxes or decide if a local school or hospital's going to close, but they can have an influence on how we live our lives.

MEPs passed a law a few years ago significantly cutting the cost of texting from abroad. Roaming rates were also cut.

The Working Time Directive - which gives workers the right to certain amounts of rest, stops excessive night work and gives people a minimum amount of holiday every year – It also that means nurses and doctors are limited to a 48-hour working week.

Of course Bo-Jo just failed to mention that even if we do leave the EU, we will still be expected to pay a significant contribution to Brussels in order to be allowed to trade with the market, and on less favourable terms. Somebody tell me how that is beneficial to us in any way?

We will also be required to allow free movement of people in order to trade with them, so in fact nothing will have changed, except it will have cost us a great deal of money in terms of lost opportunities. The Pound will have suffered badly on the world’s markets while all the uncertainty about our future commercial stability was debated, and we will be in exactly the same position, except this time. outside the Market.

It is vital that we keep in mind at all time that the vast majority of those in Parliament who are shouting for Brexit, have alternative agendas. Bo-Jo believes he can use this destabilising process to undermine David Cameron and thus promote his own case for Prime Ministership.

We have been members now for 40 years and we have become, or so we are told the 5th largest economy in the world. How is that going to be enhanced if we cut and run from our primary trading market?

Ordinary people must consider that outside the EU, we will be cut off from all those provisions that protect our rights, rights which have been protected by EU involvement. At the same time, we will still be subject to immigrants seeking to come here, they aren’t going to stop and go elsewhere.

We must demand that those who oppose our rights ro remain within the EU, tell us exactly what they propose will be the way in which we will function in the future. Most of the loudest nay-sayers (Bill Cash, Liam Fox et al, ) are wealthy men to whom the protections afforded by Brussels do not matter. But they matter to me and to you, and I am not going to lie down and let these rights get taken away from me by a clown like Bo-Jo!