The Spectre Of (Real) Democracy

One of the most persistent considerations of Brexit has been:-

"JOBS"

I noticed this common and recurring theme in Pete North's blogs and his considerations and general feeling about Brexit post Referendum.

Yes, Brexit is a mess. So what?

"Just this morning I noted Theresa May announcing that the Swansea Bay tidal barrage "is part of our plan to deliver an economy that works for everyone and will mean £1.3bn of investment and 9,000 jobs". They haven't learned anything.

We are not a country that can piss money away on eco-vanity projects any more. We stopped being that country in 2008. The politics of binge and splurge to keep the plebs in make-work jobs is dead in the water. We want the fundamentals addressed."

Yes, Brexit is a mess. So what?

"With Hinkley Point, the eye watering strike price is much the same as the Renewable Obligation Certificate scheme. An incentive to make a bad idea attractive to business. Rather than being direct taxation it effectively grants corporates a licence to raid our wallets through our energy bills.

Politicians love it because it notionally creates jobs - but that is a result of government spending, not foreign investment."

Brexit: the end of the great British ponzi scheme

"And who does this keep in jobs exactly? Middle class engineering graduates. People who vote Tory/Blair. Effectively, since 1997 the UK national grid has been an elaborate corporate welfare scheme whereby the mug punters are obliged to fund the vanity schemes of politicians peddling their eco credentials." 

Brexit is political, not economic.

"Finally I would add how little I care. When I look at Nissan and Airbus I mainly see massive job creation schemes which have a history of taking big government money - largely as part of an industrial strategy to keep jobs in the regions. Though valuable they are a sticking plaster masking a more deep rooted economic decay."

A status quo too big to fail

"For a while I have has the impression that we are in a period of stagnation. For all the government's boasting of boosted numbers in jobs, there is an air of unreality to it all as people are shunted into insecure work and increasingly pushed into "self-employment". The fundamentals are not sound. The middle class is being propped up by massive government spending on defence and energy and soon HS2."

Considering I've only just tipped over 200 blogs, whereas this blogger has blasted past a huge number, it's one way to consider things from someone who has honestly put a lot of their energy, attention and time forming their work in this subject. Not only that, the great meme of the Remain campaign was for so long based on "3 million jobs!" (which itself has an interesting and mutating history).

Sorry Civitas, it's not ok to walk away

"We anticipated the usual remainer lie that three million jobs would be lost should we leave the EU. Our argument was that these jobs depended on trade, not political union. It was therefore necessary to show that we could end political union while maintaining favourable trading conditions."

'FLEXIBLE' + 'CONTINUOUS' + 'EXIT'

One of the core arguments in FLEXCIT was to anticipate the counter-argument based on FUD: Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt. A spectre of dread to so many people. Strangely enough this spectre looms over all the news broadcasts and all the agitation of people anxious about the outcome of the withdrawal process. Why?

Dr. RAE North's latest blog points out a summary of why: Brexit: back to darkness

"This (albeit limited) intelligence comes in a briefing from Alex Pienaar, head of EU exit policy for HMRC. He says that, "any form of customs controls will increase the costs to businesses and consumers of imported and exported products", adding that these costs "can be both financial and measured in time/delays".

What we have here is the first official acknowledgement of problems to come. And, in a separate piece, we also see recognition that: "the situation would be particularly onerous for those exporting food and other agricultural products into the EU with delays of up to a week for meat tested at official laboratories".

"As its worst, a botched Brexit could rival the Great Depression in its effects on the UK economy, returning darkness to the land. At its height, the 1929 depression cost the US some 30 percent of its GDP.

Destroying our external trade is as good a way as any to trigger an economic depression. Our Brexiteers seem determined that we should have one. Our government seems happy to give them one." 

In FLEXCIT, this is precisely the scenario stipulated as first of all avoiding in our planning and secondly in our communication of such planning to people to vote upon.

To vote upon, via our politics. We've come full circle, in effect from prediction to fulfillment. All the while talking about the effect of our decisions on our jobs. A quick summary of the various sectors Dr. RAE North has been writing about tirelessly and assiduously demonstrates the shattering detail of this statement:-

• Customs
• WTO
• Formula 1
• Global Fraud
• CETA & Meat
• Duration of Trade Negotiations
• Automotive Sector
• Cosmetics & Standards
• Border Inspection
• Maritime Surveilance
• Tariffs, REACH & NTBs/TBT
• Elevator Business
• Geographical Indications Standards (GI)
• Digital Single Market
• Medicines & pharmaceuticals 
• Fishing Policy
• Hazard Equipment Market
• ........... [ list continues counting] ............................................

To quote the last listed bullet point:-

Brexit: a potentially explosive issue

"At that point, he [David Davies] said, they were looking in detail at over 50 sectors and cross-cutting regulatory issues, a statement he was to modify on 2 February this year, when he claimed that the number of sectors covered had grown to 58.

On this blog, though, we've recently looked at 20 sectors and can see hundreds more that need to be considered, if the department for the UK's exit from the EU is only covering 58, then we're in serious trouble. One of those sectors which Secretary of State might have missed is the growing market for the very specialist equipment used in potentially explosive atmospheres, the so-called "hazardous area equipment" market."

There's in reality a lot of jobs involved by a lot of people within all these sectors. But what dominates so many people/voters attention is:-

It doesn't matter who wins the US election. The decadent West is in terminal decline ~ Christopher Booker

However, this spectre is an image, with a human semblance only seemingly ushering in to millions tremulous emotions. Much much more terrible in it's "titanic" true form in it's irresistible and implacable force and almost impossible to understand effect on turning people into "tiny cogs within a huge machine" (Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand" in other words) and where people spend so much of their lives' finite time: Fuelling our economies:-

One of the very interesting things right at the start of FLEXCIT:-

Our vision: The Harrogate Agenda

"Our vision is of a self-governing United Kingdom, a self-confident, free-trading nation  state,  releasing  the  potential  of  its  citizens  through  direct  democratic control of both national and local government and providing maximum freedom and responsibility for its people."

Isn't that what our economies were supposed to yield unto us? Progress, GDP, Consumer Goods, Trade?

Adventures into the depths of "Irrational Brexit"

 ISO 216: Paper Sides Length : Width aspect ratio (1: 1.4...)

ISO 216 specifies international standard (ISO) paper sizes used in most countries in the world today, although not in Canada or the United States. The standard defines the "A" and "B" series of paper sizes, including A4, the most commonly available size. Two supplementary standards, ISO 217 and ISO 269, define related paper sizes; the ISO 269 "C" series is commonly listed alongside the A and B sizes.
All ISO 216, ISO 217 and ISO 269 paper sizes (except some envelopes) have the same aspect ratio, 1:√2, at least to within the rounding to whole numbers of millimetres. This ratio has the unique property that when cut or folded in half widthwise, the halves also have the same aspect ratio. Each ISO paper size is one half of the area of the next larger size.

"The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is an international standard-setting body composed of representatives from various national standards organizations.

Founded on 23 February 1947, the organization promotes worldwide proprietary, industrial and commercial standards. It is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, and as of March 2017 works in 162 countries."

 

One of the biggest mistakes I know I've made concerning the EU Referendum Campaign was insisting that people could argue more successfully if they acquaint themselves with the arguments more rigorously (so to speak). An ideal situation for arguments to flourish. Whereas I know from my own experience of making mistakes, I have to make almost "all the mistakes in the book", before I then feel like I have really learnt whatever it is that I was attempting to learn. I'm sure there are people who do learn more effectively by doing what is required right away and being more methodical and logical in their approach: I'm not one of them though and perhaps most people are not, also?

Worse, not only the poor learning efficiency of most people (including myself), but the profusion of invalid arguments and numerous false conclusions built from a majority of false information and some true information mixed together aka "Both Sides Have 'Good' Arguments For Remain or Leave" or "People want to hear the truth but the truth depends on how you interpret the arguments" (more or less one answer on BBC's Question Time from a canny woman MP on the panel: In effect feathering the political nest for future boom in business!). The Norway "All The Rules And No Say" very bad argument in particular, carried on in zombie fashion in the legacy news-media time and time again after it had died a horrible and deserved death (from a translation error mostly); given "un-life" by the prestige of various high society rhetorical salesmen.

I noticed a comment on EUReferendum.com recently that caught my notice, as it paralleled this long held "if only things were different!" useless response I've stubbornly held onto (having a desire to promote such a high quality work as FLEXCIT through good arguments to more people - with limited success) to the observation people can be provided with FLEXCIT :-

"Certainly, nothing has changed – for years. We have long since known that neither the so-called WTO option nor the free trade option were viable." ~ Dr. RAE North

FLEXCIT - Full Paper
FLEXCIT - Booklet
FLEXCIT - Speech ("The Movie")
FLEXCIT - Monographs post Flexcit
FLEXCIT - Mind Map (conceptual picture)

[Note: These links are just to establish clearly how available this strong argument has been to anyone, anytime: before, during and after the Referendum - of note in the lead up to Article 50 being triggered]

Brexit: value for money

Richard North, 15/03/2017

"When in October 2013 I began the process of writing what was to become Flexcit, I quickly concluded that the so-called "WTO option" was a non-starter.

In my submission for the Brexit prize, I thus dismissed the idea, stating that a strategy based on an expectation that Britain can rely solely on WTO agreements, without securing direct agreements with the EU, would not be well-founded. Britain, I wrote, would struggle to maintain its current levels of external trade.

Of my various objections to the option, I specifically pointed out that the major problem was the proliferation of non-tariff barriers. As time has progressed, I have been writing more and in greater detail about the flaws in the option, to such an extent that you would think there was nothing left to say.

That was three years ago and so transparently obvious are the drawbacks that, had there been even a halfway intelligent debate, the WTO option would no longer be an issue. It would have been ruled out of the political discourse as too hazardous and damaging. The discussion would have moved on to more profitable and realistic areas.

But, not only has the matter not been settled, we have to suffer the low drone of ill-informed commentators such as Matt Ridley adding their ignorance to collective. Now we have a further offering, this one from Douglas Carswell "

or other really strong arguments (true or false being another question entirely) but make little use of such attempts at strong arguments to promote successful political decision-making. And everyone wonders "why do things tend to go wrong?" in politics?

What I have so far tried to briefly demonstrate, using the WTO Undead Option, is that the arguments have been not towards proving a workable Brexit. The insistence on curious mixtures of persuasion and rhetoric camouflaging bad arguments or invalid arguments and/or "not viable" even if they are valid (because they their premises are so weak), takes precedence in our politics.

Isn't this irrational? Isn't it irrational when you have John Major and Tony Blair babbling away in Babel-17 (Decrypting: What is Babel-17?)on Brexit?

Brexit: all the wrong people

Dr. RAE North writes:-

It is even worse when they are ostensibly talking sense, as with Blair who told Andrew Marr yesterday:

…one of the things I’ve done in the last few months is talked to a range of people and if it's permissible still to talk to experts, a range of experts particularly on the trade issue, I didn't understand how complicated this is going to be. If they're going to try and deliver exactly the same benefits as we have now in the single market and customs union, this is an endeavour of unparalleled complexity and what people explain to me is that normally in trade negotiations you're talking about how you liberalise trade, right. This is about how you de-liberalise over 40 years of complex trading arrangements.

 [Red Cliffs note: Red = Persuasive style of Blair (his actual arguments about complexity are valid arguments: See FLEXCIT), his signature delivery style that I detest so much because it sounds like thousands of slithering snakes and apparently for a long time was so effective on so many people...]

Then we have John Major who offers this unarguable if unpalatable observation:

The 48 percent who voted Remain have as big a stake in our future as the 52 percent who voted Leave: they, and especially parliamentarians, have a right – indeed a duty – to express their views. No one can, or should, be silenced. That being so, it is time for the minority of "Ultra Brexiteers" – those who believe in a complete break from Europe – to stop shouting down anyone with an opposing view. It is not only unattractive but profoundly undemocratic and totally un-British. What is most striking is that, amid all the noise they make, they comprehensively fail to address any argument put to them.

[Red Cliffs note: Blue = Highly Ethical point: To argue successfully requires both sides to be permissible participants for their side of the argument and the other side of the argument, in promoting strong arguments and identifying strong arguments: On both sides to draw closer to what we consider to be what is the state of things as they are, with which we then choose our decisions] The Ultras don't qualify as participants of arguments is a very important label correctly applied to them by Major (even though he too abuses his own delivery with his own style of rhetoric and persuasion).]

"All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Brexit together again."

 

That Humpty saying about "being on a wall" then "falling off the wall" seems appropriate for the mess on display! How to make any sense of it all? Well coming back to that long held feeling I've had about the effective use of arguments: It seems if you hold the premise that Britain should remove itself from the EU (Read The Great Deception for "Why?" questions and FLEXCIT for "How?" questions and browse for your self "What?" questions (eg Europe, the UK, Globalization etc) you would naturally try to prove this argument to other people.

And yet the opposite process is evident as I've tried to demonstrate in this blog above: The irrationality of Brexit reigns supreme "above the surface". I came across a name for this type of argument actually which is a very clever approach to arguments themselves. I don't comment on whether there is any consciousness in how things have panned out or whether it's a natural manifestation but what we're witnessing is the argument and the truth of the argument expressing itself one way or another (it will have it's say):-

There's a type of clever argument I only just came across and registered fully; which goes about using "Proof By Contradiction" and this is very applicable to our new friend (√2 = "Brexit Ultras"/ Remoaners) as per the standard used in the dimensions of paper (above):

Proof By Contradiction method on The Square Root of 2

proof by contradiction is a form of proof, and more specifically a form of indirect proof, that establishes the truth or validity of a proposition. It starts by assuming that the opposite proposition is true, and then shows that such an assumption leads to a contradiction. 

We're assuming that The WTO Option or The Free Trade Option are true and then putting them to the test against the actual conditions to produce a contradiction: Article 50 for one glaring example. It might NOW be questioned if this is such a good idea to "play with fire", but we're past that point now, given May's declaration to invoke Article 50 and start the count-down on Brexit.

It seems as with mathematics, so with politics, the best way to deal with Irrationality (of numbers of people) is to use Contradiction. I think this is something I will have to remember when dealing with people who don't wish to argue fairly: By their nature eg  √2 ( 1 trillion ${\displaystyle =}$ 10¹² ${\displaystyle =}$ 1,000,000,000,000 ) decimal places and counting, they behave irrationally and can continue providing irrational reasons forever and ever!

Brexit: Once again the animals were conscious of a vague uneasiness

 Halnaker Windmill - West Sussex: Ref: westsussex.gov.uk/leisure-recreation-and-community/places-to-visit-and-explore/halnaker-windmill/

"A windmill is a mill that converts the energy of wind into rotational energy by means of vanes called sails or blades. Centuries ago, windmills usually were used to mill grain, pump water, or both. Thus they often were gristmills, windpumps, or both. The majority of modern windmills take the form of wind turbines used to generate electricity, or windpumps used to pump water, either for land drainage or to extract groundwater."

I remember in the book Animal Farm, that one of the symbols of the new future for the Animals apart from changing the name from Manor to Animal Farm, was the construction of the Windmill. A device to reduce the labour required of the animals in running the farm. This became a powerful symbol of the fruits of fighting for their freedom and aligning with the new ideology of "Animalism" and the principles they had all agreed to live by and hence prosper altogether by: In fact without the "corruption" of old regime under Jones, and in combination with the combined energy of all the community of Animals who lived in Animal Farm, this "one for all, and all for one" Spirit of The Windmill would seem to set a future course towards progress. So where and how did it go wrong?

Obviously this "Big Project" ended up becoming over time less and less a function of investment of the useful work of the Animals who constructed it (towards theirs and their offspring's future) and more and more a political device in the hands of the supervisor Pigs. It does not matter which politician you pick at random, they all sound like Squealer, particularly the tone of voice they use, the actor's mashing up of semantics with expressive undulations of subtle and shifting inferences in the art of delivery. Likewise the training of the sheep to bleet out "Four Legs Good, Two Legs Bad!" or the "growling of the dogs" again on cue, doesn't sound too different to the persistent bleeting of mantras of Brexit such as, "We Sell More To Them Than They Sell To Us!" or "Control Of Our Borders!" growling. Or "Long Live Animal Farm!" / No Deal Is Better Than A Bad Deal!".

Once Again The Animals Were Conscious Of A Vague Uneasiness.

Politics: The Tedium Of Burning Off Nervous Energy

Gas Flare on Oil Rig

As per wikipedia:

"Gas flaring at many oil and gas production sites protects against the dangers of over-pressuring industrial plant equipment. When petroleum crude oil is extracted and produced from onshore or offshore oil wells, raw natural gas associated with the oil is brought to the surface as well... vast amounts of such associated gas are commonly flared as waste or unusable gas."

Each and every day I tend to find that underneath the surface of my daily routine, I'm a bag of nervous nerves jumbling together and managing to coordinate the day by ensuring these nerves are managed at the same time as working on the aspects that are directly relevant to performing my various tasks and duties according to external criteria and the measurement of success that connects to objectively.

I'd guess with Brexit, it's analogous? There's too many people with so much nervous energy, that is not very usable and hence over time as with the gas flare above the excess needs to be burnt off gradually, at the same time as extracting the useful or usable energy?

Pointing this out, is not really changing anything, but it is contrasting with what is always pointed out with little actual productive response from people interested in politics; which is:-

1. Deliver the arguments to people
2. It's just a question of how much exposure needed to get the message through. 
3. Apparently this is what politicians do for us. Except they don't and can't.

In fact because this is what people believe IS politics, because what politicians do and say is for "everybody, everywhere and all of the time," reported through the news-media and then imitated by people: The result is this burning off/of nervous energy has become the full extent of public actual participation in the decision-making machinery of the nation (UK): Our politics.

It's interesting but listening to the student speeches for their GCSE English Language "persuasive speaking" module, they have in the high marking ones perfectly parroted this process from politicians to news-media to people in the arguments presented.

Here apparently the facts are laid out in pro vs con style and various arguments are compared and "scientifically measured" against each other, and along with news-media, applauded for doing so skillfully. Yet, what I would argue is actually going on here, is the "Gas Flare" component of politics. For what the students are really doing is fitting the arguments to the marking criteria of their speeches and what the politicians are doing equally when exposed to their source of information on the EU is fitting that to the rhetorical devices they use as their own marking criteria - which is the popularity they seek to gain from the morons who vote such a bunch of charlatans into their offices be it geographic constituency or sector of the economy.

Taking the analogy further, what then describes the actual useful energy component extracted as it were in our politics? Equally valid to ask: Can people be usefully involved in politics at this scale of millions of voters, so called "democracy"?

A lot of people would have chosen to vote Remain for selfish reasons: They don't want their house to go down in value or their business to lose money due to currency or export changes or rule changes and so on and so forth. Equally a lot of people would have voted for Leave based on nervous energy as well without really understanding the implications and scope of what Brexit necessitates; such as being sick of the lies of politicians and being excluded from politics or simply being malcontents or indeed gaining an idea that the EU is not all it's cracked up to be and that somewhere in the future there really will need to be a major decision to make: So why not make it now and force the issue?

In all these cases people choose the criteria that befits them: They don't choose the criteria very often that fits the actuals state of knowledge of the subject eg How little attention was focused on FLEXCIT in the YEARS before the EU Referendum decision as one if not an special one of the Brexit papers published and freely available to people to consult.

Because of this absolutely huge mismatch, we're probably going to experience the long tedium of burning off nervous energy around Brexit for years to come let alone the actual productive negotiations extracted finally.

I doubt many who voted in the EU Referendum will see or understand much of the effective energy extracted out of this political process: All they'll be left with is looking at the slightly attractive gas flare given off 24 hours a day and 7 days a week in the news-media and by politicians and by people who perfectly parrot this process believing it to be something useful that it is not. By the time the UK doesbecome noticeably distinct within or without the EU, people will then be considering the even worse tedium of bureaucracy of standardization that awaits once they can get over their state of nerves! But at least with this there is the case to be made that people could be contributing and acting usefully in their participation of politics according to their knowledge in their area of life and how these rules and regulations affect them?