I'm sure it's already been said but here it is again anyway. The EU and our nice little island needed a bloody good shake up, and a vote either way would probably have accomplished both. I voted remain but I can see positives in leaving too, and at least as far as the EU is concerned, many leaders are now, finally, conceding that major changes are indeed necessary.

Visibility of the effects of the EU to the little people like me is seemingly quite limited. We see bananas of the “correct curvature”, apples with no blemishes, strawberries of a minimum size (I like them smaller). This is wasteful nonsense and should be stopped now.

We see massive perks claimed by our representatives in the EU (Neil & Glenys Kinnock being an excellent and well-publicised example). These are the people deciding how big our strawberries should be and whether or not we can buy/sell fruit and veg by the pound instead of by the kilo. It’s too late now to do much about these two thieving b******s but surely we can debride the rot so we’re left with a core of folk with only *useful* work to do – and who have an appetite for it without claiming hundreds of thousands of pounds a year in “allowances”.

We've seen the set-aside system abused by British landowners claiming EU farming subsidies for unfarmable land - and contributing significantly to the devastating floods we've suffered these last five years or so as a consequence of the EU dictating what constitutes set-aside and what does not. This is completely bonkers, it’s not news and it should be fixed *now*.

We've seen enough dead fish thrown back into the sea to feed the whole of Europe for twenty years whilst stocks of some species have plummeted to crisis levels. This is changing, not because our politicians fought for common sense, but because a celebrity chef began an appeal for public support of his efforts to lobby the EU for a ban on the practice. Our representatives mostly didn’t bother turning up!

Just some of the visible stuff. None of it is financially that important and most of it is only visible because someone chose to do the research and write about it. Immigration? These last 25 years there have always been Kiwis, South Africans, a few Indians and a nod of Europeans working in IT (in the Thames Valley). Nothing much has changed during that time, despite claims that London hosts 2 million EU workers. On the home front, the town where I choose to live has been attractive to Eastern Europeans since the 1950’s and during the ten years I've been a resident, nothing much has changed there either. Healthcare is a bit squeaky but that's our choice, not the EU.

It’s now up to our representatives at home and in Europe to recognise what should be improved, to distinguish between the important stuff and things that can wait, and bloody get on with it, whether they back leave or remain.