Should I stay or should I go now?
BMJ 2016; 353 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.i3337 (Published 16 June 2016) Cite this as: BMJ 2016;353:i3337
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You too Eh? My wife and I will emigrate to Scotland in anticipation of independence if Brexit occurs.
A non-EU England - and it will be that isolated after all the provinces absquatulate - will have all the geopolitical consequence of a gnat on an elephant's arse.
For all our sakes, a continuously improving federal European superstate cannot come soon enough, with one currency, political and economic union, unified security and defence systems – the whole nine yards. The USA’s success, which many claim to wish to emulate, is due in no small part to being a federal superstate - one of those states is thousands of miles away in mid-Pacific and another wholly separate from the main group. How trivial La Manche seems in comparison.
I envy you your fate in Germany - ' beer and schnitzels longa, vita brevis' - as someone ought to have said.
Steve Ford
Competing interests: No competing interests
Life is full of unfinished business. We're all burdened with a backlog of unsolved mystery and unresolved history. How do we balance this backlog with the pressures of the present? We should peruse the past, in order to prepare ourselves for projecting the present into the future. But sadly, we're never finished with the past, and must live with it forever. To quote Kierkegaard, "Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards."
Competing interests: No competing interests
Saying goodbye is awkward. We never know how or when to say it. It’s always too soon or too late. It’s never the right time. What should we do? We should realize that it’s always the right time, because once we’ve shared a heartfelt goodbye, we're ready to embrace each other with a real hello, and face a final goodbye. To quote Tennyson, "It's better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all."
Competing interests: No competing interests
Re: Should I stay or should I go now?
As I previously stated my reasons are simple
.
From Dilnot’s letters
“the gross contribution to the EU in 2014 was £19.1 billion “
and
“net contribution by the UK public sector was £9.9 billion[6]. Taking an “estimate” of receipts to non-public sector bodies into account produces an estimated average of £7.1 billion[7 ] for the period 2010-2014..[8] “
True, the NET contribution is by this £7.1 billion but this £12 billion is simply returning UK tax payers’ money without any UK parliamentary control.
Furthermore, the remain-in camp are claiming it as EU money including research organizations. Either the UK subscription is £19.1 billion or it is a NET contribution with refund of UK taxpayers’ money. But it cannot be EU money as wrongly claimed. Personally I would prefer to see the £12 billion returned (under the guise of EU MONEY) properly administered by the UK parliament as it should be in a sovereign nation.
I am aware that medicine is rife with conflicts of interests relating to money and status but to find that it is involved in political conflicts of interests as well horrifies me.
Personally I was born British and I hope to British, not as an EU citizen of some servile region.
Competing interests: A British subject/citizen with ancestry checked back several centuries