Well done - a 60+ year definition that pre-dates the current day "benefit shopping" culture of not looking for immediate protection from war or oppression, but rather shopping for the best passport and best package for their new life.

Is France so terrible that they must camp out for the chance to move to the UK? Are they being bombed in Calais? No. Yet they are killing themselves trying to walk through the tunnel to get to the UK because of the huge pull-factor arising from naive idiots here offering them the moon while our ex-servicemen are sleeping on the street.

Wow, I didn't realise it was so easy to stem the tide of people coming here, just a bit of spitting and verbal abuse. Perhaps we should give them free tickets to Palace away games.

This is definitely agree with. We shouldn't be using Europe as a means of supply cheap labour to corporate interests over national ones. The EU should exist to prevent exploitation of EU citizens.

Immigration and Asylum are very different issues. In the later, I feel we have an obligation to decency and humanity to act. In acting on Asylum we're moving towards improving lives and preventing exploitation, where as with economic migration we're encouraging the exploitation of poorer nations.

"One Nation Under God, has turned into One Nation Under the Influence of One Drug"
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one thing that will be interesting to see is that in the days approaching the vote, watch for the likes of the Daily Mail et al printing stories blaming anything and everything on the next boat of refugees to cross the med, not that they'd be manipulating anything of course

Clinton is Clinton. I have known him for a long time, I know his mother... Simon Jordan

No, we should all limit ourselves to watching and listening to the totally unbiased BBC instead.

Quite right. And I voted UKIP to make my objection. I'd like to see Britain take more refugees but more and more on top of the more and more EU migrants is too much.

Local councils have said they are full to capacity. End result is people get placed in expensive B&B's and hotels.

Eastern Europeans are willing to go West to work but their governments who are appalled at our real EU reforms put up barbed wire to hold back refugees. Funny old world.

(our real EU reforms which Cameron really wanted but has conveniently forgotten)

COYP

Defence of the realm, manage the budget and balance the books, manage interests overseas.

I've come down on the Brexit side of the fence.

Dominic Lawson, in the Sunday Times, posed the EU question "The test we must apply is: who elected you and how do we get rid of you". A good test IMO.

Even those who favour remaining agree that 'The EU' in its current form needs reforming. 'Reforming' sounds sweet and dandy, but reforming the EU requires a EU consensus - and given reformation may go against self-interest, I can only see the EU ever 'tweaking' itself, as lip-service, and never fundamentally 'reforming' itself.

Cameron's much vaulted 'reform' (yet to be agreed by the EU) is an example of how to dress up chicken-feed as a 3 course dinner.

Paradoxically, the catalyst for meaningful reform may be a Brexit - so as to dis-encourage other countries from following suit.

As for the 'tell me what the UK would look like in 5 years time if we left' question...I haven't a clue... But then I also havent a clue what the EU may look like in 5 years time. It could be great, or a basketcase run by resurgent right-wing nationalist parties.

When the time comes, I want die just like my Dad - at peace and asleep.
Not screaming and terrified.
Like his passengers.

A bad one. Anyone from any country with a coastline could do so.

Optimistic as ever

That won't happen, barring some kind of economic crisis that would destroy the EU. The UK if it leaves, will join the ETA, like Norway. Even outside of an EU, the economic interdependence of EU member states like Germany, Holland and France, will be sufficient to prevent escalation into conflict.

The issues that resulted in the first world war rose from imperial tensions, and the restriction of German ambitions as an empire, by the established Imperial Powers.

The second world war grew out of the economic destruction of Germany from the demands of the victors, coupled with the disaster of the 1929 economic crises which created a fertile breeding ground for extremist totalitarianism (Fascism, Communism and National Socialism). Without the threat of communism, the likes of Hitler would never be able to have gained power.

Whilst not impossible, its very unlikely we'd see a full scale European conflict.

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