BJ is 56 so six years older than me. He's old enough to remember pre EU UK. The UK joined the EC in 1973 and then we all moved towards the EU. I remember some of the teething troubles: Maggie getting a rebate coz "reasons". We got Concorde (with an e) off the ground with la belle France, etc etc.
There were endless discussions and hand wrangling over wine and grain lakes, butter mountains and other rather rubbish efforts to make inefficient forms of farming work by throwing money at it and storing a huge surplus until it was thrown away. The CAP was not exactly the EU's most glorious achievement. The UK as a manufacturer had already failed to adjust and improve in that area but services found its feet here instead. The old, failing ruler of a massive empire eventually found some peace with her neighbours with some forms of integration. We tried to join the ERM as a prelude to a single currency and that was a bit of a buggeration - it was Black Tuesday (can't remember the day) and we sank millions or billions into that experiment.
The UK is legendary when it comes to creating a massive bureaucracy, add a dash of our EU allies and between us we can create an edifice of truly grand proportions with the worst of all worlds. To cater to the usual prejudices: Instead of getting Germanic efficiency with UK innovation, and French magic and Italian flair and Spanish/Portuguese passion etc etc, we ended up with infighting, intrigue and bitching.
I voted "remain" but now I think that I was wrong. We - the UK can be a far better friend than a SO.
You are not from these parts: a clown is not a proper noun (hence the initial letter is not upper cased), you don't know what a colon is and a see is a form of government and not the big blue wobbly thing that I call a sea. I can't be arsed to comment on your last sentence.