[Margaret Pilkington]

You do not need to be in the club(the EU) to be friends....and I think things would be much friendlier if the bonds were loosened(or even) broken. You cannot force people to be your friends(any more than you can force someone to love you)....and this kind of friendship isn't the kind that Facebook has....it is the friendship of mutual respect for one another.....for the differences in culture, differences in the way people live their lives. It is a cameraderie where people help one another during hard times, purely because they are friends .......not because someone in a faceless bureaucratic dimension tells them that they must do this.

While I am sorry if our discussions have caused you some upset, I think you have to be a realist and see that the will of the few is being imposed on many.......and they do not like it, but are given no course of redress.
If I chose to live in Europe, then I would have to live by their rules. It doesn't mean I would have to wear blinkers and ignore where Europe is being the bully.

If I were younger, I would move out of the northern hemisphere for good. There is no way that I can envisage Australia being called Europe.