[QUOTE=lordsummit]Steve, I don't think it'll get any worse, it'll simply be a matter of one Quango replacing another[/QUOTE] Just to be clear, I was comparing the bureaucracy of being in the EU with not being in it. So, to that way of thinking, we're not replacing one with another but adding many extra layers. It's not possible for any country to be successful in the long term, either socially, commercially or militarily, with a large, inefficient and expensive bureaucratic government. Members of the EU have an [i]additional[/i] layer of government, which by its nature is larger, less efficient, more expensive and more bureaucratic than the government of almost any country in the world. This is just one of my many objections to the EU, which, I remain convinced, is ultimately doomed to failure, in much the same way that the bureaucratic strictures on the Soviet Union contributed to its own eventual catastrophic failure.