Except, no one expects that this will happen. The pound is expected to stay at this level or lower until at least the end of the year.

The commission isn't perfect, but it isn't undemocratic, at least relatively speaking.

Let's do some comparisons:

British PM: appointed by the queen (in practice taking the parliament results into account), cannot be subject to motions of no confidence as being the PM is a royal prerogative. In practice the PM candidates are known during the general election campaign.

Commission president: proposed by the European Council (where all members are directly or indirectly elected, except for the British PM), elected by the directly elected EP. The european parties pick candidates for a commission president and the European Council must pick the one with the most amount of parliamentary support.

British PM: Selects ministers, ministers not subject to parliament vote.

Commission president: Selects commissioners for their portfolios, commissioners are proposed by the member state governments and are subject to parliamentary scrutiny. The whole commission must pass vote in EP to be approved, the EP have defacto powers to get rid of individual commissioners.

The point with this is that the commission is elected directly and indirectly in the same way that the British government is. That is the candidate for the PM/president post is de-facto picked from the one the parties propose.

I have met several imigrants who are highly qualified people and who are not able to get a job. The high jobless rates in some of the groups is to a large extent simply based on racism (some times not intended).

One friend of mine, a guy of Iranian decent was sending out his job applications after graduating. After just getting the hand for 20 graduate level positions (not even an interview), he decided to not write his last name in the application and only used the initial (he was lucky to have a European first name). The result was 3 interviews on 3 applications and he was able to choose from the 3 jobs he was offered.

Unfortunately for the UK, due to the fall of the GBP, it is no longer the 5th largest economy.

Cheaper flights, phasing out of roaming fees, environmental protection,... lasting peace on the continent.

Indeed, nothing useful at all.

In the UK case, as they where the first, the outers could easily dismiss everything as scaremongering, however, as the predictions are pretty much coming true:

- Massive losses in the financial sector
- Scotland will have second referendum
- Northern Ireland may try to have a referendum
- Etc

Further, the EU will not give a good deal in order to make an example of Britain. Other countries will not get any good deals either. The only option the UK has in order to preserve full internal market access is to join the EEA (which includes the free movement provisions).

Thus, the fallout on the UK will be massive in the end as the EU is a lot bigger than the UK.

The point is, the cost for leaving will be massive and it will be clear to anyone who attempts the same thing.

Yes, it would likely stop a lot of shootings, but obviously not all of them.

Murder rate US: 3.9 / 100k
There is only one place worse in the EU: Lithuania with a whopping 5.5 / 100k, on average the EU is a lot less than the US.

Taking the listed countries you end up with the following.
Austria: 0.5
Belgium: 1.8
France 1.2
UK 1.0
Germany: 0.9

All which are significantly lower than the average of the US.

Are you sure they can be trusted with your money when not shielded under EU law.

Probably, your money will lose the deposit guarantee (I would not be surprised if the UK will make it only applicable to resident citizens). They will probably leave the SEPA framework completely, so all your transactions to the eurozone will be charged 30 GBP fees. Sounds like a good deal...

Note the "probably" here, that is the key in this thing, uncertainty. I am uncertain I will ever get my pension payed out if it stays in the UK after an exit, hence the funds will be relocated.

Even in the story, they quote text which can only be interpreted in a certain way and the story makes the opposite conclusion of what even a 5 year old would be capable of doing.

There is no proposal to force citizens to use their eID (which aren't universally available in any case), to be able to log in to any website. It is a preliminary letter about investigating whether there should be regulation or directives to mandate that websites support this as an alternative log in mechanism.

Again, bullshit, the letter simply talks about investigating what the impacts are of introducing an eID acceptance requirement on online services. These services are going to continue providing normal login systems would this even make it to a directive or regulation.

I worked in the UK for a couple of years. If "brexit" happens, my British pension funds will be moved out of the UK very quickly. Do you think I am the only one considering this? How many more are contemplating this?

> "consumers should be able to choose the credentials by which they want to identify or authenticate themselves"

This basically means that "it would be nice if online platforms accepted government eIDs for logging in", it does NOT mean "all citizens must comply and use government eIDs for using the Internet or online services". What they are talking about is mandating that online platforms such as facebook, google, amazon etc accepts eIDs as credentials. This is in an exploratory phase, and is likely that it will never fly and make it as a directive in the end.

In the UK, where the eIDs do not exist, for better or for worse, such a directive would in any case have zero impact on citizens. Maybe it would have an impact on online services (i.e. forcing a web developer to add the support for this way of logging in). Thus, such a directive may be criticised as being too much red-tape for web developer, but hardly as something Orwellian. This said, they havn't even proposed a directive yet, just written a public letter saying that they are investigating it. It may turn out that the investigation leads to status quo where no directive or regulations are proposed.

Regarding the Swiss, the deal is basically, they get access to the internal market (and Schengen) on the condition that they 1. allow for freedom of movement (also apply to Swiss who can move freely) and 2. they have to follow certain rules related to the internal market that the European authorities make up without input from the Swiss. Now that the Swiss voted against no 1, they are likely to be kicked out of the market as well.

Chile and South Africa is outside the EU and there will be tariffs. If you had ever had to deal with exports, you would have seen the use of the EU, even with free trade agreements, the paper work for sending a shipment of goods to outside the EU compared to within is quite staggering (export, import clearance documents, etc).

Two parties will not work it out themselves in the case of disputes, and as basically all treaties have some type of third party court or arbitration capability associated with it, you are disproven by facts! Your made up world where everyone gets along without independent courts or arbitration is kind of cute and would probably be a nice place to be in, but it really does not have anything to do with reality (look up ISDS as an example).

Assume you are country A, your language is Alish, you negotiating with country B about a trade agreement, in country B they speak Balish. You now start discussing how to settle these disputes. People from B are not interested in resolving issues in the courts of A in Alish, country A is neither interested in resolving disputes in the courts of B in Balish. Picking one of the languages over the other, would give the advantage to that country, so we start looking at whether we can resolve things in the local courts.

Secondly, the general procedures of the courts of A is better known for companies registered there, and vice versa. Thus, there are unfair advantages depending on where you file your cases. It is also virtually impossible to guarantee consistency between rulings in A and B if they run their own courts for settling treaty related issues.

So we have now established, the need for third party independent arbitration.

Exactly my point, you need to have a third party provide either formal court proceedings or arbitration to determine this.