Seriously, if you think the current leader of the Labour Party is a solution to anything, get in your car and drive in any direction for an hour and talk to an ex Labour voter
Right now the UK needs 21stC Aneurin Bevan, not De-caff Neil Kinnock
Showing posts with label EU vote. Show all posts
Showing posts with label EU vote. Show all posts
Saturday, 25 June 2016
JEREMY CORBYN CAMPAIGNING FOR REMAIN IN EU REFERENDUM
Seriously, if you think the current leader of the Labour Party is a solution to anything, get in your car and drive in any direction for an hour and talk to an ex Labour voter
Right now the UK needs 21stC Aneurin Bevan, not De-caff Neil Kinnock
Friday, 24 June 2016
HM The Queen could provide an escape route from Brexit UPDATED
Ultimately Britain is a constitutional monarchy as well as a democracy. This provides a potential escape route from the Brexit disaster which would break up UK and EU.
It could justified by the fact that Leave won the vote with an extremely small margin
The Monarch functions as a major force for national cohesion. Not only does this give her the right to intervene on this extremely divisive issue, she would probably be the only voice that the Leave campaign would respect.
It would also be one in the eye for the tabloid newspapers which have falsely claimed she backed Brexit, and which have been the bane of the lives of the Royal Family for some time.
"A vote for Brexit will not be determinative of whether the UK will leave the EU. That potential outcome comes down to the political decisions which then follow before the Article 50 notification. The policy of the government (if not of all of its ministers) is to remain in the EU. The UK government may thereby seek to put off the Article 50 notification, regardless of political pressure and conventional wisdom."
FT.com
There is an incredible theory that a Brexit won't actually happen even if the public votes for it
BusinessInsider.com
UPDATE
After a nights sleep I can't see a way of avoiding Article 50. The way the vote was formulated, with a simple majority required rather than 60-70%, was a recipe for disaster and national division. Even if the vote had gone for Remain with this margin I think we could still have been looking at serious disaffection and trouble (but without the massive worldwide political and economic consequences).
I can see a case for having Article 50 implemented by a new government in a hugely changed situation. Not a new government formed by a treasonous political entity which has no mandate to govern whatsoever.
It could justified by the fact that Leave won the vote with an extremely small margin
- Reigning Monarch dissolves current government (whose sitting PM is about to resign anyway)and calls for a general election
- New government after election refuses to invoke Article 50 kicking off the process
- Brexit never happens (unlikely - see bottom)
CORRECTION
"The Queen previously wielded the power to dissolve Parliament and call a general election, but the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act put an end to that in 2011. Now a two-thirds vote in the commons is required to dissolve Parliament before a five-year fixed-term is up."
but
"While the overwhelming majority of the Queen's prerogative powers are devolved to her ministers, there is one exception that allows her to wield power herself. Only "in grave constitutional crisis," the Sovereign can "act contrary to or without Ministerial advice." With no precedent in modern times, it's not clear what would actually constitute this, but the possibility remains."
The Monarch functions as a major force for national cohesion. Not only does this give her the right to intervene on this extremely divisive issue, she would probably be the only voice that the Leave campaign would respect.
It would also be one in the eye for the tabloid newspapers which have falsely claimed she backed Brexit, and which have been the bane of the lives of the Royal Family for some time.
"A vote for Brexit will not be determinative of whether the UK will leave the EU. That potential outcome comes down to the political decisions which then follow before the Article 50 notification. The policy of the government (if not of all of its ministers) is to remain in the EU. The UK government may thereby seek to put off the Article 50 notification, regardless of political pressure and conventional wisdom."
FT.com
There is an incredible theory that a Brexit won't actually happen even if the public votes for it
BusinessInsider.com
UPDATE
After a nights sleep I can't see a way of avoiding Article 50. The way the vote was formulated, with a simple majority required rather than 60-70%, was a recipe for disaster and national division. Even if the vote had gone for Remain with this margin I think we could still have been looking at serious disaffection and trouble (but without the massive worldwide political and economic consequences).
I can see a case for having Article 50 implemented by a new government in a hugely changed situation. Not a new government formed by a treasonous political entity which has no mandate to govern whatsoever.
If you claim to stand for the United Kingdom but enact measures which you know will break up the United Kingdom (via Scottish independence) you are nothing but an English National Party in hiding.
Thursday, 23 June 2016
The Engine Behind Brexit
I highly recommend this from Tuesday 24 March 2015 by Nicholas Watt and Patrick Wintour
to foreign readers bemused by the forces driving Brexit. It's a Long Read article from the Guardian, hardly a xenophobic tabloid. It would seem there are a large majority of Labour (and Conservative) people who have yet to read it.
I do still consider myself a Labour voter by the way.
Highlights
"In the wake of the party’s defeat in the 2010 election, there was a brief mass mea culpa about immigration, but even now Labour struggles to explain to a core part of its electorate the decisions that were taken on its watch."
"Between 1997 and 2010, net annual immigration quadrupled, and the UK population was boosted by more than 2.2 million"
" In the early years of the Blair government, income levels in most of the 15 member states were on a par with UK levels. Migration from the three poorer EU members at the time – Greece, Spain and Portugal, which joined in the “southern enlargement” of the 1980s – was relatively low, thanks in part to the generous EU funding of infrastructure projects in those countries."
"In 2004, 10 more countries – eight of which had been part of the eastern bloc during the cold war – became members of the EU." ..." In anticipation of the enlargement of the EU, Blair’s government took the precaution of asking academics to assess the likely levels of immigration from countries in central and eastern Europe that were noticeably less well off. Per capita GDP, as measured in purchasing power parity, of the eight new member states was less than half the EU average.
The report that was produced by the Home Office, published in 2003, did not predict a dramatic increase in immigration from Europe."
"The projection of 13,000 net migrants per year over a decade"...." was based on the assumption that all 15 EU countries would open their labour markets to the newcomers, ensuring that the migrants would be reasonably evenly distributed across the EU. In the end, just Britain, Ireland and Sweden opened up. "
"Virtually all politicians now agree that the failure to impose transitional controls was a mistake."
"“The research looked well founded and evidence based,” ...(Former Minister John Denham)... "says of the Home Office predictions. “It is what government is supposed to do. The whole irony of this is that in some respects Tony Blair was obsessed by immigration, particularly about illegal immigration and abuse of the asylum system, but on EU migration there was a catastrophic failure of the civil service machine.”
"The response from the Whitehall machine to Denham’s memo was largely indifferent. “I sent a warning message to government about the impact of immigration in Southampton, saying Whitehall was not picking up quickly enough what was happening on the ground, or what the wider electorate were saying in response,” he recalls. “To be fair to government, it was probably true the impact at the time varied enormously from area to area, and there was real uncertainty about how long the impact would last. The reaction to migration was seen very differently in London, for instance, to other places.”
"Outlining the impact on the everyday lives of his constituents, Denham argued at the time that resentment of immigration would grow. “One of the problems was that people were supposed to register if they were employed but many came as self-employed,” Denham says. “The biggest impacts were in self-employed trades like construction, where you didn’t have to register.” In the memo, Denham stated that the daily rate for a builder in the city had fallen by 50% since 2004. He also noted that hospital accident and emergency services were under strain because migrants tended not to use GPs as a first port of call. It also turned out that the local further education college had to close its doors after 1,000 migrants attempted to sign up for an English-as-a-second-language course on one day. Whitehall, Denham argued, was wholly out of touch with the concerns of his constituents."
"Jacqui Smith, who was home secretary between 2007 and 2009, when the financial crisis began, agrees with Denham that Whitehall appeared out of touch. “I can remember seeing Treasury papers that said if we limit migration we will reduce our growth. There is a justification for that argument at a macro level, but if you say to people, ‘You may have seen some changes on your high street but it’s OK for macro-economic growth and there will be cultural benefits in London, you sound like you don’t get it,” says Smith."
"Jack Straw is frank about the failures, particularly the official projection of a mere 13,000 net migrants a year from the new EU member states. “It’s a case study of how good intentions and apparently good research can lead government in the wrong direction. But it was a very significant policy failure, done with the best of intentions and in a serious way because we’d got the research.”
It ends with this
"Ed Miliband knows immigration can be a potent issue. But he tends to lean towards dry policy solutions, such as ensuring that employment agencies cannot discriminate in favour of migrant workers. If Labour is to reconnect with its traditional supporters, it may have to think how to respond to those who, in the words of Jack Straw, feel they have not had a fair deal in life as the country changed around them after a series of largely accidental steps."
- Two months after this article was published, Ed Miliband resigned as leader of the Labour Party after it was crushed in the 2015 General Election.
to foreign readers bemused by the forces driving Brexit. It's a Long Read article from the Guardian, hardly a xenophobic tabloid. It would seem there are a large majority of Labour (and Conservative) people who have yet to read it.
I do still consider myself a Labour voter by the way.
"In the wake of the party’s defeat in the 2010 election, there was a brief mass mea culpa about immigration, but even now Labour struggles to explain to a core part of its electorate the decisions that were taken on its watch."
"Between 1997 and 2010, net annual immigration quadrupled, and the UK population was boosted by more than 2.2 million"
" In the early years of the Blair government, income levels in most of the 15 member states were on a par with UK levels. Migration from the three poorer EU members at the time – Greece, Spain and Portugal, which joined in the “southern enlargement” of the 1980s – was relatively low, thanks in part to the generous EU funding of infrastructure projects in those countries."
"In 2004, 10 more countries – eight of which had been part of the eastern bloc during the cold war – became members of the EU." ..." In anticipation of the enlargement of the EU, Blair’s government took the precaution of asking academics to assess the likely levels of immigration from countries in central and eastern Europe that were noticeably less well off. Per capita GDP, as measured in purchasing power parity, of the eight new member states was less than half the EU average.
The report that was produced by the Home Office, published in 2003, did not predict a dramatic increase in immigration from Europe."
"The projection of 13,000 net migrants per year over a decade"...." was based on the assumption that all 15 EU countries would open their labour markets to the newcomers, ensuring that the migrants would be reasonably evenly distributed across the EU. In the end, just Britain, Ireland and Sweden opened up. "
"Virtually all politicians now agree that the failure to impose transitional controls was a mistake."
"“The research looked well founded and evidence based,” ...(Former Minister John Denham)... "says of the Home Office predictions. “It is what government is supposed to do. The whole irony of this is that in some respects Tony Blair was obsessed by immigration, particularly about illegal immigration and abuse of the asylum system, but on EU migration there was a catastrophic failure of the civil service machine.”
"The response from the Whitehall machine to Denham’s memo was largely indifferent. “I sent a warning message to government about the impact of immigration in Southampton, saying Whitehall was not picking up quickly enough what was happening on the ground, or what the wider electorate were saying in response,” he recalls. “To be fair to government, it was probably true the impact at the time varied enormously from area to area, and there was real uncertainty about how long the impact would last. The reaction to migration was seen very differently in London, for instance, to other places.”
"Outlining the impact on the everyday lives of his constituents, Denham argued at the time that resentment of immigration would grow. “One of the problems was that people were supposed to register if they were employed but many came as self-employed,” Denham says. “The biggest impacts were in self-employed trades like construction, where you didn’t have to register.” In the memo, Denham stated that the daily rate for a builder in the city had fallen by 50% since 2004. He also noted that hospital accident and emergency services were under strain because migrants tended not to use GPs as a first port of call. It also turned out that the local further education college had to close its doors after 1,000 migrants attempted to sign up for an English-as-a-second-language course on one day. Whitehall, Denham argued, was wholly out of touch with the concerns of his constituents."
"Jacqui Smith, who was home secretary between 2007 and 2009, when the financial crisis began, agrees with Denham that Whitehall appeared out of touch. “I can remember seeing Treasury papers that said if we limit migration we will reduce our growth. There is a justification for that argument at a macro level, but if you say to people, ‘You may have seen some changes on your high street but it’s OK for macro-economic growth and there will be cultural benefits in London, you sound like you don’t get it,” says Smith."
"Jack Straw is frank about the failures, particularly the official projection of a mere 13,000 net migrants a year from the new EU member states. “It’s a case study of how good intentions and apparently good research can lead government in the wrong direction. But it was a very significant policy failure, done with the best of intentions and in a serious way because we’d got the research.”
It ends with this
"Ed Miliband knows immigration can be a potent issue. But he tends to lean towards dry policy solutions, such as ensuring that employment agencies cannot discriminate in favour of migrant workers. If Labour is to reconnect with its traditional supporters, it may have to think how to respond to those who, in the words of Jack Straw, feel they have not had a fair deal in life as the country changed around them after a series of largely accidental steps."
- Two months after this article was published, Ed Miliband resigned as leader of the Labour Party after it was crushed in the 2015 General Election.
Wednesday, 22 June 2016
Vote REMAIN to save the United Kingdom and stop the ongoing disaster of nationalism
All the potential benefits of British independence from the EU will be lost if it prompts another, successful vote for Scottish independence.
I was really hoping someone in the shamefully clueless Remain campaign would mention Scotland but they seem to be too busy with ideas like having the Mayor of London and its financial services industry try convince the rest of he country Brexit is bad for them.
I know lots of people, perhaps a majority, voting for Brexit. A lot are smart people, but when I mention this could easily lead to another Scottish vote they wave it off with
"oh let them go I'm sick of them as well!"
Which really is incredibly stupid and illustrates how dumb and emotional some of the arguments for Brexit are. There is a sensible progressive case for Brexit, but I've heard very little of it over the ravings and lies from the likes of people I'd never walk into a voting booth for.
Try arguing the case against Scottish nationalism when English nationalism has taken us from one of the largest trading blocks on Earth.
How effective will Brexit be when independent Scotland joins the EU and the Schengen area? Are we going to get Donald Trump to build a wall across the North of England?
Is Brexit worth losing a seat on the UN security council when the UK ceases to exist?
Are your children ready to put on a uniform and patrol the peace lines in Belfast when the fragile Irish peace process unravels?
It's like watching a gathering firestorm of nationalism that feeds on itself.
Look at UKIPs hideous poster of immigrants supposedly trying to get into Britain (actually they are on the frontier of Southern Europe). Look at the faces of those people.
What did nationalism do for their countries?
What did nationalism do for Africa and the Middle East? With Soviet backing, African and Arab nationalism drove out the forces and influences of the liberal, prosperous West and gave those young countries just enough independence to be now filled with poverty, corruption and war, Decades later the impoverished populations of those places have looked at the results of their own nationalist history are now voting with their feet.
The horrible self sustaining irony is that he very dumb nationalist thinking that drives the OUT campaign AND Scottish nationalism is exactly the same thinking that in the 1950s-60s held back the developing world and now drives migration to places like the EU.
I was really hoping someone in the shamefully clueless Remain campaign would mention Scotland but they seem to be too busy with ideas like having the Mayor of London and its financial services industry try convince the rest of he country Brexit is bad for them.
I know lots of people, perhaps a majority, voting for Brexit. A lot are smart people, but when I mention this could easily lead to another Scottish vote they wave it off with
"oh let them go I'm sick of them as well!"
Which really is incredibly stupid and illustrates how dumb and emotional some of the arguments for Brexit are. There is a sensible progressive case for Brexit, but I've heard very little of it over the ravings and lies from the likes of people I'd never walk into a voting booth for.
Try arguing the case against Scottish nationalism when English nationalism has taken us from one of the largest trading blocks on Earth.
How effective will Brexit be when independent Scotland joins the EU and the Schengen area? Are we going to get Donald Trump to build a wall across the North of England?
Is Brexit worth losing a seat on the UN security council when the UK ceases to exist?
Are your children ready to put on a uniform and patrol the peace lines in Belfast when the fragile Irish peace process unravels?
It's like watching a gathering firestorm of nationalism that feeds on itself.
Look at UKIPs hideous poster of immigrants supposedly trying to get into Britain (actually they are on the frontier of Southern Europe). Look at the faces of those people.
What did nationalism do for their countries?
What did nationalism do for Africa and the Middle East? With Soviet backing, African and Arab nationalism drove out the forces and influences of the liberal, prosperous West and gave those young countries just enough independence to be now filled with poverty, corruption and war, Decades later the impoverished populations of those places have looked at the results of their own nationalist history are now voting with their feet.
The horrible self sustaining irony is that he very dumb nationalist thinking that drives the OUT campaign AND Scottish nationalism is exactly the same thinking that in the 1950s-60s held back the developing world and now drives migration to places like the EU.
Thursday, 9 June 2016
EU Referendum : choice is not IN or OUT but Europe or America
Question: So if it's so bad why did Britain join the EU in the first place?
Answer: To avoid becoming the 51st state of the United States.
For all the current debate on Brexit in the run up to the referendum there is very little covering the decisions and thought processes that caused the UK to join the European project in the first place.
Who were the great enthusiasts for joining what was then the Common Market? Well, only virtually all the British politicians of the 1950s and 60s. McMillian, Wilson, Heath, basically everyone in both major parties.
Why?
That Special Relationship was quite different in the 50s and 60s.
After 1945 Britain went from being a rock solid wartime ally of the United States, wiling to share every technological secret in her inventory (Tizard Mission) to being frozen out of the US Bomb project, forced to repay Lend Lease early ("Washington suddenly and unexpectedly terminated Lend-Lease on 21st August 1945"), leaned on and humiliated during the Suez Crisis - and virtually ignored during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
It is no surprise then that the UK was at its most desperate to join the EU when US president Lyndon B. Johnson was trying to use economic pressure, mainly threats not to support sterling, to force Prime Minister Harold Wilson to support the American War in Vietnam.
"The years 1964-68, when the Labour government of Harold Wilson and the Democratic administration of Lyndon B. Johnson were in power, saw pronounced strain at the highest levels of Anglo-American bonds, caused to a significant extent by differences over America’s war in Vietnam. Opposition to the war within the Labour Party and among the British general public meant that the Wilson government could not satisfy the United States’ desire for support; certainly, London had to reject the frequent American requests for combat troops."
Parliament in the 1960s and 1970s saw a stark choice between becoming a major part of the European project or becoming a small client state of a belligerent super power - and they quite sensibly chose Europe.
What I'm sure the politicians of the 50s and 60s didn't foresee is UK government 30 years later voluntarily handing foreign policy and security to the 2003 equivalents of Henry Kissinger.
As I suggested in this post - the choice in the EU referendum is not between Europe, or sailing off into the distance as a powerful but small sovereign state in a world of massive trading blocks..
(The latter is just a daydream from somewhere back before 1914)
the referendum choice is between
the European sphere of influence, economics and politics
or
the North American version
And there are some smart Americans warning of exactly this
and some Americans eagerly anticipating it
In fact he's flying over the day of the vote to visit the property he already has in what may be soon independent Scotland.
Trump is joined in his enthusiasm for Brexit by French far-right leader Marine Le Pen and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who you can be sure have your interests at heart.
Where am I on this? As demonstrated in my other post I'm conflicted but will vote to stay IN.
Truthfully I'm not massively optimistic either way in the Brexit vote but I'm prepared to make the best of it, (probably as an Englishman when the Scots vote to leave).
To our European friends if we do have a 'Trump vote' and leave via Brexit I hope we can be more supportive from outside than we ever were inside, and you know, look at the map - we're actually going nowhere.
More on EU Referendum
Answer: To avoid becoming the 51st state of the United States.
For all the current debate on Brexit in the run up to the referendum there is very little covering the decisions and thought processes that caused the UK to join the European project in the first place.
Who were the great enthusiasts for joining what was then the Common Market? Well, only virtually all the British politicians of the 1950s and 60s. McMillian, Wilson, Heath, basically everyone in both major parties.
Why?
That Special Relationship was quite different in the 50s and 60s.
After 1945 Britain went from being a rock solid wartime ally of the United States, wiling to share every technological secret in her inventory (Tizard Mission) to being frozen out of the US Bomb project, forced to repay Lend Lease early ("Washington suddenly and unexpectedly terminated Lend-Lease on 21st August 1945"), leaned on and humiliated during the Suez Crisis - and virtually ignored during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
It is no surprise then that the UK was at its most desperate to join the EU when US president Lyndon B. Johnson was trying to use economic pressure, mainly threats not to support sterling, to force Prime Minister Harold Wilson to support the American War in Vietnam.
"The years 1964-68, when the Labour government of Harold Wilson and the Democratic administration of Lyndon B. Johnson were in power, saw pronounced strain at the highest levels of Anglo-American bonds, caused to a significant extent by differences over America’s war in Vietnam. Opposition to the war within the Labour Party and among the British general public meant that the Wilson government could not satisfy the United States’ desire for support; certainly, London had to reject the frequent American requests for combat troops."
Parliament in the 1960s and 1970s saw a stark choice between becoming a major part of the European project or becoming a small client state of a belligerent super power - and they quite sensibly chose Europe.
What I'm sure the politicians of the 50s and 60s didn't foresee is UK government 30 years later voluntarily handing foreign policy and security to the 2003 equivalents of Henry Kissinger.
As I suggested in this post - the choice in the EU referendum is not between Europe, or sailing off into the distance as a powerful but small sovereign state in a world of massive trading blocks..
(The latter is just a daydream from somewhere back before 1914)
the referendum choice is between
the European sphere of influence, economics and politics
or
the North American version
And there are some smart Americans warning of exactly this
and some Americans eagerly anticipating it
In fact he's flying over the day of the vote to visit the property he already has in what may be soon independent Scotland.
Trump is joined in his enthusiasm for Brexit by French far-right leader Marine Le Pen and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who you can be sure have your interests at heart.
Where am I on this? As demonstrated in my other post I'm conflicted but will vote to stay IN.
Truthfully I'm not massively optimistic either way in the Brexit vote but I'm prepared to make the best of it, (probably as an Englishman when the Scots vote to leave).
To our European friends if we do have a 'Trump vote' and leave via Brexit I hope we can be more supportive from outside than we ever were inside, and you know, look at the map - we're actually going nowhere.
More on EU Referendum
Friday, 6 May 2016
Britain must stay on to rescue the EU Bus
Britain could escape EU but can't escape a dangerously out of control Europe - or voracious American corporatism.
I've been agonising over the EU vote and have already written a blog post saying I'm going to vote out.
For these reasons;
Anyone really pessimistic about the future finds the apparent complete uncontrolled chaos at the borders is pretty terrifying and I'm not just talking about refugees. I hear European anger at Britain's lack of enthusiasm for taking in Syrian refugees but thanks to a history of being a destination of migrants this island is already one of the most densely populated in Europe.
Do I want to take in 50,000 refugees from Syria - absolutely YES
Do I want to take in 50,000 refugees from Syria + the annual influx of 330,000 economic migrants (and climbing) - NO
Those British people who don't care on this issue I would guess are either in comparatively depopulated Scotland, or spend most of their time in their second homes in France (or cycling around leafy bits of London).
They obviously don't spend much time on English motorways, NHS hospitals or comprehensive schools which are all creaking under the strain.
I also don't trust EU political structures, as they are incapable of dealing with a crisis. Just look at 2008 collapse, Greece, Migrants etc. God knows they would handle something really serious.
There need to be more decisiveness, perhaps from Germany and France, and Britain just seems to get in the way and be a distraction.
because I'm British and, like many of my countrymen going back centuries, I know the problems of Europe aren't solved by ignoring them. And Europe's problems more often than not quickly become the worlds problems.
This is all a bit dry so let me illustrate this.
Think of the movie 1994 movie SPEED.
What we should do is at least stay aboard and steer everyone to safety before the bus/project meets it's probably inevitable demise (in its current form anyway).
Most importantly we need to be aware of jumping off the EU bus would not be any actual escape, we would just find ourselves (to follow the analogy) leaping off the EU bus onto the harsh class divisions of the American nuclear train ....
Think of the 2015 movie SNOWPIERCER
I'll quickly summarise the benefits of that for you
We've actually all forgotten, avoiding becoming the 51st State is why Britain joined the EU in the first place. British politicians in the 1960s were so worried at being economically blackmailed into joining the Vietnam War they saw a close association with Europe as the only alternative.
And don't kid yourselves that the whole immigration debate will go away when we align ourselves West rather than East and South after Brexit. I'm sure the British nationalist dream of a new Anglo zone Big Business project will continue to get it's cheap labour from somewhere. How would we support the all important housing market without ever increasing demand?
So sadly though I don't trust the EU, I trust my own government even less.
In a wider sense, voting for Brexit might make sense if Britain were an island literally in the middle of the Atlantic. Since we can't move we need some form of EU or NATO and I think it is possible to lose both in the new world of Trump politics after Brexit.
After Brexit we in England may also find ourselves with an undefended land border to the European Schengen Area, when the Scots subsequently give themselves up to their own self serving nationalists.
“Nationalism is an infantile sickness. It is the measles of the human race.”
Albert Einstein
Just for amusement I posted a Post Brexit Timeline.
I've been agonising over the EU vote and have already written a blog post saying I'm going to vote out.
For these reasons;
Anyone really pessimistic about the future finds the apparent complete uncontrolled chaos at the borders is pretty terrifying and I'm not just talking about refugees. I hear European anger at Britain's lack of enthusiasm for taking in Syrian refugees but thanks to a history of being a destination of migrants this island is already one of the most densely populated in Europe.
Do I want to take in 50,000 refugees from Syria - absolutely YES
Do I want to take in 50,000 refugees from Syria + the annual influx of 330,000 economic migrants (and climbing) - NO
Those British people who don't care on this issue I would guess are either in comparatively depopulated Scotland, or spend most of their time in their second homes in France (or cycling around leafy bits of London).
They obviously don't spend much time on English motorways, NHS hospitals or comprehensive schools which are all creaking under the strain.
I also don't trust EU political structures, as they are incapable of dealing with a crisis. Just look at 2008 collapse, Greece, Migrants etc. God knows they would handle something really serious.
There need to be more decisiveness, perhaps from Germany and France, and Britain just seems to get in the way and be a distraction.
But despite all that, I've decided to vote IN
because I'm British and, like many of my countrymen going back centuries, I know the problems of Europe aren't solved by ignoring them. And Europe's problems more often than not quickly become the worlds problems.
This is all a bit dry so let me illustrate this.
Think of the movie 1994 movie SPEED.
- The EU government is a mad Dennis Hopper, probably schizoid, who has rigged a bus/European project to hurtle on and be destroyed with massive disaster and loss of life it ever slows down
- Sandra Bullock is the European population which now finds itself on the bus
- and Britain is Keanu Reeves
What we should do is at least stay aboard and steer everyone to safety before the bus/project meets it's probably inevitable demise (in its current form anyway).
Most importantly we need to be aware of jumping off the EU bus would not be any actual escape, we would just find ourselves (to follow the analogy) leaping off the EU bus onto the harsh class divisions of the American nuclear train ....
Think of the 2015 movie SNOWPIERCER
I'll quickly summarise the benefits of that for you
- world records for wealth disparity
- minimal health care
- minimal holidays and work place rights
- minimal government health standards- would you like some lead with that drinking water?
- politics courtesy of Fox news
We've actually all forgotten, avoiding becoming the 51st State is why Britain joined the EU in the first place. British politicians in the 1960s were so worried at being economically blackmailed into joining the Vietnam War they saw a close association with Europe as the only alternative.
And don't kid yourselves that the whole immigration debate will go away when we align ourselves West rather than East and South after Brexit. I'm sure the British nationalist dream of a new Anglo zone Big Business project will continue to get it's cheap labour from somewhere. How would we support the all important housing market without ever increasing demand?
So sadly though I don't trust the EU, I trust my own government even less.
In a wider sense, voting for Brexit might make sense if Britain were an island literally in the middle of the Atlantic. Since we can't move we need some form of EU or NATO and I think it is possible to lose both in the new world of Trump politics after Brexit.
After Brexit we in England may also find ourselves with an undefended land border to the European Schengen Area, when the Scots subsequently give themselves up to their own self serving nationalists.
“Nationalism is an infantile sickness. It is the measles of the human race.”
Albert Einstein
Just for amusement I posted a Post Brexit Timeline.
Friday, 8 April 2016
Post Brexit timeline
2016 : Britain votes for Brexit, immediate run on the £, 4 year year recession starts.
Inward immigration to England stands at 330,000 over calendar year.
2017 : EU in crisis reconstitutes as a far more centralised, decisive federal state.
2018 : Scotland votes to leave UK.
Inward immigration to England stands at 230,000 over calendar year.
2019 : Scotland joins new EU and immediately loses nearly all independence gained from leaving UK.
2020 : UK dissolved as Wales and Northern Ireland leave UK to join new EU.
After 4 years of recession inward immigration to England stands at 200,000 over calendar year.
2022 : Australia becomes Republic.
2022 : Canada becomes Republic.
2023 : Far right Conservative government in London abolishes child benefit, housing benefit, privatizes NHS, slashes 'red tape for business', introduces lowest corporation tax rate in the developed world. Then signs trade deals with NAFTA, China and India, relaxing visa requirements across the board. Inward immigration to England stands at 330,000 over calendar year.
2022 : Scotland becomes Republic.
Inward immigration to England stands at 400,000 over calendar year.
2024 : New Republican Administration in United States leaves NATO, followed by England. NATO is dissolved. New EU signs border treaty with Russia still run by members of Putin family.
2025 : With the open land border with the EU to the North and the open border policy with North/SouthAmerica and Asia inward immigration to England stands at 450,000, is rising 50,000 per year and national border security has been abandoned.
2040 : New Zealand becomes Republic.
 |
| pic from Jarman's JUBILEE |
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