Membership Fees -Simply being an EU member has cost the UK £25,000 million since 1973. This is money given directly to the EU and is swallowed up by the organisation. In 1973 the UK was the 3rd richest EU member state but in 1996 it was the fourth poorest - yet it is still the second largest contributor to EU funds.

Trade Deficit - Before joining the EU the UK had a trading surplus with other EU countries. Today we have a visible trading loss of £100,000 million. Between 1973 - 1993 EU trade registered a £70,000 million loss. Fortunately the UK was able to offset EU losses with an £80,000 million surplus on world trade.

Single Market - A strangely naive Mrs Thatcher said that The Single European Act (1985), leading to The Single Market in 1993, would "dismantle trade barriers". But EU standards (often inferior) replaced UK standards (which led the world) causing huge new costs. EU standards (often irrelevant to normal trading), threaten firms with criminal sanctions. EU standards are already used in other EU countries so their firms now set up in Britain knowing they can easily undercut our home industries.

When the £ crashed out of ERM in 1992 it cost Britain £50 billion in just one day. Then, as the UK economy improved, increased UK sales to the EU matched increased sales worldwide - no thanks to any 'Single Market'. But EU exports to Britain soared from £106 billion for four years 1989-92 to £165 billion for four years after. Nearly half our £130 billion trade loss over the last decade is due to The Single Market. The EU clobbering UK industry!

Directives - It took 1368 EU Directives to create the Single Market. One directive can cost Industry £1,000,000,000 (e.g. Waste Monitoring. 94/62 - official estimate!). Such EU law is uniquely, and savagely, enforced by huge new armies of UK bureaucrats. Costs and threats of criminal sanctions ruin many small to medium sized firms. For example, 400 abattoirs (half the industry total) only serving local areas, never exporting, were forced to close!

VAT - The 6th EU VAT directive/EU COM 328/96 says full VAT must be put on EVERYTHING (food, travel, books, funerals, childrens' clothing, - you name it!) by the year 2002. A VAT burdened UK economy must lose exports!

Common Agricultural Policy - (CAP) soaks up half of EU cash (subsidies 40%, administration & fraud 60%). EU quotas stop us producing 30% of the food we need; the rest is imported from other EU countries. CAP costs the average family £28 a week on food bills (put another way it costs UK families £560,000,000 each year!).

Common Fisheries Policy - EU law is destroying UK fishing. UK waters now belong to the EU. Quotas supposedly to "conserve" fish stocks are an environmental disaster as more fish are thrown back dead into the sea than are landed. Norway has a strict rule - dead fish catches must NOT be thrown back into the sea.

Common Oil Policy - This is next! No timetable yet but EU treaties so far mean the UK has even signed away her oilfields! (Common Laws? Yes. - Common Cause? Maybe. - Commonsense? Only to a Common idiot!!).