Search This Blog

21.6.16

New Logo as we embark upon a new business venture!


19.6.16

WHY WE SHOULD REMAIN IN EUROPE by Anthony Dougan

WHY WE SHOULD REMAIN IN EUROPE by Anthony Dougan

I don’t often go into print with my views.  I pretty much utterly despise the mass media, its something I see in service to power.  Yet we believe it to be in service of the accounting of power-that is our ideal of it.
To take Plato’s ideal perfection of form, it is so far from its idealised concept as to be it’s opposite.
Today posted through my door there came two flyers for the leave campaign.  (And don’t get me wrong-both campaigns have been the most blatant impoverishment of political discourse I have ever seen.)
But these are amazing because of their idiocy.  First I am encouraged by Owen Paterson, an environmental vandal in his time as environment minister, who states, “ I believe the UK has a great future beyond the EU.  Under a UK rural policy, we could pay more than the CAP, regulation could be massively simplified, and subsidies could be more specifically tailored to the UK’s industry, geography and climate.”
On the other side of this flyer it quotes from George Eustice, the Farming Minister (Yes there is such a creature!)
“EU regulations make life hard for the UK’s farmers.  If we have the courage to Vote Leave and take back control, we would be free to think again and could achieve so much more for farmers and our environment.”
My second leaflet quotes Sir Richard Dearlove (a splendid but hugely ironical name) who is a former chief of MI6 who says,
“Brexit would bring two potentially important security gains: the ability to dump the European Convention on Human Rights…and more importantly, greater control over immigration from the European Union.”
Tim Martin the Chairman of Wetherspoons - a chain of really shit pubs, is also quoted and other members of the noblesse oblige.  But it is all so crap I cannot quote any more.
Let me tell you what is in my heart.  It is not about the economy.  It is not about the curvature of bananas. It is not about the bloated bureaucracy of the European Parliament.  It is not even about the outrageous austerity assault on the nation of Greece.
The twentieth century was a half-century of horror.  Of total war.  Of genocidal war.  Of hatred. Europe has a history of such barbarism.  The current EU makes such a war unthinkable.  The current EU is a family, with all the dysfunction and animosity and pettiness that goes with the notion of family.
But it keeps us safe!
Families are whirlpools of madness-but they are the unit of stability that remains throughout history.  You love them and you hate them but you struggle with them and ultimately you love  them.
You don’t leave them.  You stick with them.
Yes there are problems with sovereignty (normally the upper classes rights to abuse the citizenry!), and there are problems with immigration-the reasonable but groundless fear of social swamping.
But in my heart I see this European Project as a Project For Peace.  Economy’s are worthless in times of war.  Nothing matters in war except winning.  Europe is an alternative to that horror…and it works. We’ve seen it!
Let’s truly believe in Peace and work within the Union to improve and better it and make it an engine for humanity. A model of social engineering based on the best of what we know.
Europe is a project still unfolding-lets stick with it and contribute.
This is the greatest political experiment in world history.  Don’t you think in your heart that its worth hanging on in there?
Vote to stay in..please.