What would you do if we decided not to leave the EU?

jimmy I have a 19 year old son and I'm more worried about Trump than I am about Merkel. I truly believe that the idea of Merkel at the head of a European conscripted army is absolute rubbish.

Before the GE, my Conservative candidate (who has now been elected) stated that the UK would leave NATO if the UK didn't get the deal it wanted. I think she doesn't know what she's talking about (well, I hope she doesn't, although she's friendly with Boris, so maybe knows something the public doesn't), but if the UK really were to leave NATO, there's more chance our children will be conscripted.

The idea of an EU army any time in the near future is scare-mongering.

Oh dear me what a lot of rot about that army! It will take 27 /28 votes to agree to that!! Angela Merkel gets no more votes than anyone else and that is a bit of an exaggeration to say the least about the money we pay! Several countries pay more than the UK but the exact ones escape me at the mo.
Up until now the UK had a veto to things they did not wish to do and in fact it was often a veto for the whole EU - note when one area of I think Holland would not agree to the deal with Canada and it could not go through at all.
So many lies and anti EU reports over the years had people not knowing what was true. Many people are not that interested in politics etc and so would not read about things happening which is fine - but when false reports appear in the press which have some sort of axe to grind it is easy to believe things which are just not true.
I have grandchildren I would not like to see called up so you are far from alone. The EU would need a consensus of all the countries to go into any war.

Brilliant, daphne, May persuaded trump to stay in NATO so she could leave, did she?

We have in fact an export deficit with 21 of the European Union countries. So although it helps individuals trading in exports it doesn't help the country overall. Also my kids are all struggling. All have good jobs. But nowhere near as well off as we were at that age. Something has to happen. Do you want them to be worse off? There are no jobs . Everything is judged on London. Locals here do all the jobs. Globalisations needs to stop. Education for all needs to be top class. Our governments have blamed the EU. We had more control than certainly I thought. All this on the EU watch. We are taxed heavily. Don't believe we aren't. I feel the EU needs to be reformed. Our attitude towards how we live needs to change. The elephant in the room is over population. We are too overcrowded especially here but all over world. What disappoints me is the EU could do so much good. It let the banks run riot. Unfortunately the only thing you can rely on is greed. Sorry to be all over the place. So much more to say but the EU is not working. We pay a huge tariff to stay in. Unbelievable.

We don't pay a 'huge tariff'. It's about 1% of our annual expenditure. If you spent £100 would you call £1 of your expenditure a 'huge amount'?

I'd be relieved as I think so many people were encouraged to vote to leave because of lies in the Murdoch press, the result was very close and we weren't really told what we were voting for, many farmers in our area were in favour of leaving but now realise they are likely to go bust if we do, a few think they will be able to adapt and survive. Like anything jthere will be winners and losers but as the vote was so close and so controversial I feel that to come up with some terms we would leave on and have a referendum on that might be best, at lest we would know what we were voting for. We do, however, need to respect everyone even if their views are different to our own, presumably we all, or most of us, made our decision after much consideration of what we thought would be best for ourselves and our country, we just didn't all agree on what that was!

There will be less jobs when we leave the Eu as our greatest trading partnership will be gone. Almost 50% of UK exports goes to the EU and it is quick and easy to do.
The U.K. Is not as heavily taxed as some other countries and our payment to the EU is not that great - it is a small percentage of the GDP. The budget of a country is vast so it is often more beneficial to look at costings as a percentage of the budget rather than actual figures.
Once the migrants go home - and many EU migrants are making plans to go home - the UK will be short of people to do vital jobs from manning hospitals to picking and packaging food. Some jobs Britons could do if they are willing but many they will not be qualified to do them - and it will take many years to train people with the right initial qualifications such as A levels and degrees to do the jobs.

Nothing. Keep calm and carry on!

Maisie. People seem to have forgotten how much a billion pounds is. What we can do with it. We pay it. The government and media talk about a billion pounds as if it's nothing. Sorry I don't agree. I would be happy to have a fraction of it.

But your share would only be £15.

We have sooooo many indirect taxes. It's not just being taxed at source.

If that by the time you paid tax to HMRC!

Yes, I forgot about the tax, Welshwife. That's another £3-4 off, depending on your pay.

Grannypiper, I do believe in democracy --parliamentary democracy. That's our system, not referendums. I didn't understand a fraction of what would be involved in cutting ourselves off from the EU and , after talking to some of them, I don't believe the average Brexiteer did either.

I think that is the problem kathjohn people just did not know all the implications. I think this was both the Leave and Remain sides running dreadful campaigns which gave the electorate insufficient information or they lied.
Do you remember years ago we had public information adverts on the TV - had we had those every time the EU did something - most of which was to the advantage of the consumer - people would have been more informed when all this came about. Many people have busy lives and they did not have time to research as much as maybe they needed to to be properly informed.

I decided to investigate quizqueen's 'shouty post

Firstly, it's not shouty because she made it shouty it's shouty because it's been copied and pasted (she actually missed a bit off the end of it). I don't know where it originated though one of the many places I found it might give a clue

m.facebook.com/ukipgateshead/posts/2262834900523900

I googled every claim made in it.

So here it is with the results of my googling:

The HIDDEN Funding Costs of the EU?
Here are just some of the long list:-

1)- £2.4 BILLION in VAT paid direct to Brussels.

This is actually part of our annual contribution to the EU, not an additional cost

2)- £1.7 BILLION "punishment for success" because we had higher growth than expected

Our Eu contribution is based on the expected performance of our economy. In actual fact, because the calculation for our rebate applied to this we only paid half of it.

3)- £642 MILLION Fine for "poor Accounting" on Farm Subsidies.(from YOUR money)
This amount covered 10 years, 2005 - 2010. So not an annual cost (as the list implies)

4)- £1 BILLION Towards Bail-Out of Greece

We didn't actually pay anything through the EU to bail out Greece. The only bail outs we have contributed to through the EU were earlier,for Ireland and Portugal. We did loan Greece some money through the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which is an institution entirely independent of the EU.

5)- £150 MILLION fine for not flying the EU flag on projects partly funded by the EU with YOUR money

This is Fake News.

Several schemes that received European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) money were also penalised for failing to use the EU flag on letterheads, according to a Daily Mail report.
However, the EU completely denied the report.
A spokesman said: "The EU has not fined the UK GBP150m and most definitely not for 'not displaying the EU flag'.

6)- £250 MILLION To Turkey and Albania to help them join the EU.

This is very confused. The EU did give financial assistance to several countries to help them with creating jobs and enterprises but anything we 'paid' would have been from our normal contribution. We did, however, pay Turkey £250 million for dealing with refugees.

7)- £300 MILLION fine a year until we meet 'Pollution targets' set out by the EU.

The only figures and reports I could find for this were from 2010 and 2014. It was reported that the UK was to be taken to the ECJ re fines for failing to meet EU targets on pollution. I couldn't find anything to say that the case had been processed or that we had yet paid any fine.

On the other hand I did find a report that calculated that in 2010 premature deaths caused by air pollution cost our economy £3.7billion. So a possible fine of £250million p.a.seems very small in comparison.

7)- £900 MILLION a Year to treat EU tourists on NHS

According to Full Fact health tourism costs the NHS about £260million p.a.. This is, of course, not specifically EU nationals, it's people from all over the world and there's no record of precise numbers of EU nationals contained in that figure.

As far as 'normal' NHS use is concerned there are reciprocal arrangements within the EU for costs to be refunded by the EU national's country of origin. We are not particularly good at doing this, that's hardly the fault of the EU.

8)- EU gifted £22 BILLION of your taxpayers money to boost French economy

This came from our normal contribution; it's not an extra cost.

^9)- £300 MILLION costs to businesses for EU Red Tape
I couldn't find a definite figure for this but, in or out, if we want to continue to trade with EU countries we will still have to comply with EU regulations, whatever cost that might entail.

10)- £40 MILLION in lost revenue in EU student Loans which are unpaid and the students have disappeared back to the EU

Last figure I could find was for 2010, before the imposition of student fees. And let's not forget that our students are able to attend many EU universities free of charge.

^11)- £250 MILLION towards helping with costs of migrant crisis in Europe.

As far as I am concerned that is just pure UKIP nastiness. Many of those refugees want to come here (though most prefer Germany) so we're paying for our perceived success as a good economy. We attracted them (and we helped to b*gger up some of their countries), we have a responsibility to help them.

When I added it all up it came to £8.73billion, less than one year's annual contribution to the EU, but bear in mind that some of the figures were for more than one year, very few of them were payments over and above our annual contribution and one of them (no. 5) was a complete fiction.

On the other hand, the highly respected IFS calculates that leaving the EU will cost us at least £20billion a year in fall in GDP (yes, I blinked a bit at that figure!). And, there's likely to be a £60billion exit bill. It makes moaning about a mythical figure of £8.73 billion look a bit silly.

Wow, Maizie. Respect for doing that.
I looked at the list and thought about it, but then thought anyone who wants to believe it will do so no matter how much you disprove the figures.

MaisieD - respect. Unfortunately there are just too many people that only read the headlines of the gutter rags and don't bother to do any real research to dispel the myths being spewed out and shout down anyone who tries to put forth any valid facts and figures.

Well done maizied. A classic piece of debunking!

Thank you for that checking and research Maizie

Interesting that when I was googling the phrases from the list the first results that came up were usually The Telegraph or The Express! Though, to be fair, the extract about the 'fine' for not displaying the EU flag actually came from the Telegraph.

They're not always bad

Celebrate wildly with family and friends! Put out our bunting.
Look forward to my husband not being depressed by it and be totally relieved not to see our agricultural industry going down the pan - just for starters !

Awesome Maizie! I considered debunking it, but am just too lazy and have other things going on at the moment.

Chewing Would "Remoaners" get an invite to the party? I'd bring my own bunting and celebatory fizz.

If not, I'll just sit at home and breathe a big sigh of relief that the country has escaped self-imposed suicide.

Flipping heck. Just heard that David Davis could be considered interim leader if May resigns.
That's after watching the programme about how May became leader, as well.