Brexit. Why do Brits want Out of the EU?

29% who think it would do better if the UK voted to leave.

Why would anyone at all think that the UK would be better off outside the EU???

Do you have any sympathy for those Brits who feel dramatically removed from the direction of their own country?

There's no problem with the Communauté française, the Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa and even the relations with the Crown dependencies aren't disturbed (only certain aspects of the EU apply there).

Republican ideas or the tendency to kick off the queen as head of state aren't really EU-related.

You are not talking about the Commonwealth nations that trade with the UK (which is all I talked about). You are misconstruing what I said completely. I never mentioned the Queen nor Republican ideas.

More stupid bollocks from the troll Foofie, as we have come to expect. I at least, interpret her posts correctly. As trash.

[...]
Sure, our own natural habitats might suffer if we left Europe. Our wildlife, hardly any of it particularly novel or endemic, would undoubtedly decline and we might go back to being the “dirty man of Europe”. But maybe the EU would get more done without us and a whole continent of wildlife would thrive and the Earth would be the better for it. After years of frustration with this current government, I’m actually entertaining crazy ideas like these. A tiny part of me is considering Brexit, in order to help Europe do more for wildlife.

But how fair are his claims?
There was outcry in some parts of the press in 2014 about what was described as an EU ban on certain kinds of about 30 different electrical appliances – including vacuum cleaners, kettles, toasters and lawnmowers.

The ban is on appliances that use too much energy: for vacuum cleaners, for example, the maximum input power has been 1,600 Watts since 2014 and will be 900W from September 2017.

It is aimed at increasing energy efficiency – producing more effective vacuum cleaners that use less electricity. Similar rules introduced two decades ago for white goods mean fridges and freezers, for example, now use about one-third less electricity than they did then.

Vacuum cleaner makers backed the new rules when the industry was consulted before their introduction. And far from Britain “being told” how powerful vacuum cleaners could be, the UK government actively supported the measures and, like every member state, could have blocked them if it wanted to.

The claim that EU regulations cost British businesses £600m a week comes from the thinktank Open Europe, which calculated that the 100 most expensive EU rules cost UK companies and the public sector £33.3bn a year.

But as the InFacts website points out, the same study also found that quantifiable benefits from these rules were worth about £58.6bn a year, or £1.1bn a week: a net gain of about £487m a week.