I think this is a large part of why GB has a different relationship with Europe. In other European countries you can just jump in a car and drive almost anywhere else in Europe. For many people they can be in a couple of different countries in under an hour. Compare this to Gavin to book a flight or a ferry crossing, with the time and cost involved, and it's not too surprising that we're not as neighbourly as the other members of the EU.
Owning a car often gives you a lot of options you don't have without it.
Unless you live in NYC/similar.
"Unelected buerocrats"? You mean like the House of Lords which allows someone who wasn't elected to be a cabinet minister? (Lord Mandelson, Baroness Warsi, etc.)
"Haemorrhaging money"? Remember the UK MP expenses?
So ask yourself, is the UK Parliament more or less democratic than the EU?
The problem with concentrating power is that you have fewer representatives representing more people, which breaks democracy outright. We should be looking to localise power where we can, give people responsibility and a say in their lot.
Europe should be a framework and an enabler, not a system for centralising as much power as possible. Do we really want a federal Europe? Absolute power corrupts.
Even as children we're constantly fed war movies about the plucky Brits fighting against the evil Germans, so therefore most Brits hate Germans, and we've been at odds with the French forever. There are many English terms/phrases which are derogatory about the French. French kiss, French letter, French disease etc.
This is a very useful tool for the politician who wants to stir up a hornets nest of outrage or just shore up some votes by looking 'anti-Europe'. And it works.
Even myself -- someone who has friends in many European countries (Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, Serbia, Romania, Spain, Italy, Croatia, Austria, Slovakia - just quickly off the top of my head!) -- get caught up in it.
It's pure xenophobia, and it's frankly disgusting. We don't have the English channel and the North Sea around us, we have a moat.
However.
There is always the argument for a greater say from the people of Europe. It certainly seems there is a huge bureaucracy with very little public oversight. And it seems incredibly inflexible. The impression many have is that they can't vote the bureaucrats out, and there's very little to stop them haemorrhaging money/rights/power.
In an era where we have the technology to bring democratic decision making closer to the individual, the EU definitely seems to be moving in the opposite direction.
(Then again, this could just be the years of 'conditioning' that make me think this!)
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