A call for a return to imperial measurements?? thats not a saracstic joke?really??? When i lived in the UK, i was tired of all the European interference, bureaucracy and petty laws imposed on the UK, but for the UK to go back to the imperial unit of measurement is madness. Im all for national identity and patriotism but thats really is just preposterous.

With the exception of the US the world is now metric and the US will eventually switch (no idea when) but they will.

Some post brexit suggestions and actions will be good for Britain with regards to getting its identity back but that wouldnt even make it into a serious debate..... would it....?

Which petty laws, European interference,and bureaucracy were you thinking of that so tired you?

The bananas that weren't curved enough!

I can. A free trade agreement is not the same as a single market.

True, but given the UK kept sterling, it's participation is somewhat analogous.

Any real examples?

But that wasn't the topic at hand.

The question asked was why, when Canada had a trade agreement with the EU, they "didn't allow unbridled movement of workers between the two?"

I added the notes to the map to show there were some reasonable, relatively long standing, associations already linking European countries with each other that would explain why people were already living and working in each others' countries with a whole bunch of similar rights - including many about standards and equality.

Since when did serious debate have anything to do with it?

You mentioned the myth about the bananas. That's the level of debate that cause anti-EU feeling. Just like the myth lie about the £350m.

And stuff like 'taking back control' and then when the British judges made their ruling under British law in a British court apparently that wasn't the kind of control meant.

No the Imperial Measurements thing was not a sarcastic joke. I don't "do" that kind of stuff:

sorry that link doesn't work. Try this or google Simon Heffer Imperial measurements

http://toptwitter.com/uk/Simon-Heffer

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017...mperial-units/

Cucumbers.

That's the rhetoric that some of the more rational Brexiters are expounding, and who knows, maybe in a couple of decades Britain will be a Singapore-style powerhouse in an even more integrated world. It's a nice vision, especially as we have already achieved that once (in the 19th century). However, there are plenty of reasons to doubt that far flung trade will not replace European trade, not least because there is an established strong correlation between trade and geographical proximity. There's also the weaker trade negotiating status by not being part of a block: we're simply less important, despite the politicians bravado.

Nope, still not real.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euromyth

Are you seriously suggesting that, post Brexit, the UK will not trade with EU members? Have you told France, Germany et al about this?

This may come as a surprise to you, but it perfectly possible to buy Australian, Canadian, American, Argentinian, etc. goods in the EU.

No, it's not binary. Trade continues, just less efficiently (tariffs and trade barriers). The question is whether the incremental non-EU trade will make up for EU trade loss. Probably not.

That's what's so disheartening, that so many people voted on spurious reasons. Not everyone. I accept that there are many with cogent economic and social arguments that voted Brexit, but the 'crooked bananas swing vote' was sufficiently large to knock us out of the EU.