Thank you TTT and SandyR. My sister will not spend untold unnecessary hours completing forms that have nothing to do with their little MOT garage. Everyday life will be impacted in a million small ways. Importantly, we will pass our own laws and will have representation on them. If we want to deport a convicted criminal we will be able to do so. If we see an opportunity to make a deal with another country in some innovative area, we will be free to do it.
Z-M you are seizing on individual small things, but small things add up. 'Great oaks from little acorns grow', remember? I would love chickens to come with their giblets inside for instance - makes wonderful, nourishing stock.
There is a sense of a heavy, deadening hand pinning us down. I found it in action in France - where the helpful fonctionnaires spend most of their time trying find ways to get past the beaurocracy. The unhelpful ones sneer. Did you know that ex-pats were suddenly excluded from the French health system even if they paid the same into it as their French neighbours? Well it's true. A friend of mine killed himself over it, having fought and pleaded as hard as he could. Boxes had to be ticked. -- He hanged himself outside the front door, from the cherry-tree we had sat under so often. That is the heavy hand of EU beaurocracy….he was a Yorkshireman, by the way.