the UK should remain part of the EU

First of all I"ll tell you a little about where I"m from and the effect the EU has had on my town. I"m from a small town called Fleetwood, a once thriving fishing town. Ever since the start of the EU's common fisheries policy that industry has steadily declined leaving the town on it knees. It is thought that if Britain did not abide by the common fisheries policy we could reassert control of our waters out to 200 miles and give us 65% of North Sea stocks. This is obviously a bias reason to be for leaving the EU due to how their policies have directly affected the livelihood of my town and my own family who worked in the fishing industry. There are more reasons to want out. Firstly the cost. Britain pays a varied amount into the EU every year so there is no single figure of how much it is but it ranges from 8 to 14 billion. Some of the money comes back but, to use a recent analogy, if I give you "20 and you give me "10 back I"m not better off. What we do know is that not once, in the 36 years we've been paying into the EU, has the UK received back more than we put in. Never. The amount paid in is incredibly unfair, in 2007, 5 countries (UK one of them) contributed half of the EU budget all on it"s own! (1) My opponent sees this as a good thing however. In his last paragraph he points out that all this money the wealthier countries pump into the EU helps out the poorer countries. This may be true but this debate is about weather it is in the UK"s interest to do such things. How can it be? To take money out of the UK and have it spent on another country is of absolutely no benefit to the people of the United Kingdom. The EU is also notorious for wasting vast amounts of money also, such as "300,000 to redesign the EU logo, "1.6 billion on a road in Reunion (a French territory island of the coast of Madagascar, that's right in Africa), "1,600,000 to the the King of Sweden to cover his financial losses and "44,000 on a cocktail party to celebrate "Europe Day" whatever that is. (2)(full list) The trouble is that the people at the top are totally unelected, they are nominated, so the people have no say. How is that democracy? Now let's go through a few things seen as advantages by my opponent. The Free Trade Agreement. A free trade agreement IS actually very useful. In fact when the British public voted on weather to join Europe or not it was solely to do with this very issue. They thought they were voting on weather to join the single market and instead they got everything else. So if we left the EU would we lose the Free trade? No probably not. There is actually a huge list of non EU countries that enjoy a free trade agreement with the EU and most of them aren't even European countries. You can see a list here (3)(4). If the UK leaves it would simply need to renegotiate this agreement and seeing as though, as my opponent points out, 50% of British trade is done in Europe we would not be disappointed because the EU wants it as much as us. We would also be free to trade with the rest of the world without restriction from the EU. We could set up our own free trade deals with other countries, don't forget that the Commonwealth was created for this and is still in existence. PRO credits the EU with getting the UK GDP to rise by "25 billion from 92-06. This unfounded credit is forgetting that there was a recession in the early 90's. Not only in the UK but in many different parts of the globe. The boom ended and we went into a bust and the world climbed out of it together. (5)(6) As for being able to travel anywhere within the EU I can travel almost anywhere in the world if I want to. Is it so hard to fill a small immigration form on the plane where you have nothing to do anyway? As for being able to live and work in another EU country I am living/working abroad right now. In fact I have lived in 3 different countries (not including the UK) and non of them were EU members. The first of which, Norway, it was as simple as being offered a job, moving to Norway, filling in a couple of forms, and handing them in. Done. I have never studied abroad but I"m sure you can do anywhere if you get accepted in and either pay for it or get a scholarship. The same way it works in the UK. Finally, PRO mentioned the ability to prevent criminals from escaping a single countries grasp. By this he's referring to the European arrest warrant where police from one country can make arrests in another. There is such a thing as extradition treaties which the UK has in many countries all over the world. Most countries agree to these as it is in their best interest to have criminals removed from their country. The European arrest warrant is just a classic example of the Federalization of Europe. My opponent sees this as a good thing evidently as he is also sounding quite excited about the EU's ability to step in when a foreign country misbehaves. But wait...when did they ever do that? Oh that's right, never. They can't even agree to the type of sanctions on Russia. The are more issue's of course such as immigration, the amount of European laws enforced on UK nationals, the public's disengagement from politics especially European politics. But I'll leave it there for now as to not make it too long to read. (1) http://news.bbc.co.uk... (2) http://www.openeurope.org.uk... (3) http://en.wikipedia.org... (4) http://ec.europa.eu... (5) http://www.economicshelp.org... (6) http://en.wikipedia.org...