Red Cliffs Of Dawlish: Ballot Paper

"There is plenty of time to finish this game. And to thrash the spaniards too." ~ attributed to Sir Francis Drake, 19th July, 1588

Quoting BritishBattles.com - The Spanish Armada:-

"On 19th July 1588 Captain Thomas Fleming in the Golden Hinde, glimpsed the Armada through the swirling morning mist off the Lizard and raced for Plymouth, Lord Howard’s home port. Fleming came up the channel into Plymouth with the afternoon tide to find Sir Francis Drake playing bowls with his officers on the Ho, high above the harbour. On hearing of Fleming’s sighting Drake insisted on continuing with the game."

I grew up in this part of the world and hence this story of Sir Francis Drake and The Spanish Armada, captured my imagination very deeply, as a child, and the quote above is ingrained into my memory as more stylish and sophisticated than anything I ever heard the fictional James Bond 007 come up with, irrespective whether or not it is an apocryphal anecdote: It makes sense and serves as an instructive example of "taking action when action can be taken":-

"It is possible that he knew that the tide of the River Tamar in Plymouth was against him, so that he could not get his ships out of Devonport - therefore, he knew that he could finish his game of bowls because his ships were dependent on the tide to move. If the tide was coming in, his ships had to stay tied up. If the tide was going out, then he had the freedom to move his ships into the Channel."

Now if the tide had somehow been the reverse he might have instead said:-

"Time to finish this game and to finish the Spaniards, too."

The former shows his pragmatism and bravery. The latter would merely have shown his potential bravery. I think it's this that makes the quip so fine in meaning as well as providing unspoken interpretations of events eg the tide.

Here people are being asked for the first time in >40yrs: What does Remain in the EU mean? What does Leave the EU mean?

The above ballot paper form asks two questions. But like Sir Francis Drake's quote above, our answers very much depend on the context (is the tide coming in or going out?) when we give our answers.

The big problem I have with the Remain question being asked between now and 2017 is that it is not at the same time as Next Major New EU Treaty. Irrespective of Mr. Cameron's:-

Read David Cameron's speech outlining his four key EU reform demands

The four key points from David Cameron's EU letter

We have x3 Elements to look at:-

David Cameron
Reform
EU

David Cameron:-

We looked previous at David Cameron's track-record on the EU, in MIND THE (credibility) GAP. He is not "consistent".

"REFORM":-

His x4 Reforms are:-

Economic governance: Securing an explicit recognition that the euro is not the only currency of the European Union, to ensure countries outside the eurozone are not disadvantaged. The UK wants safeguards that it will not have to contribute to eurozone bailouts
Competitiveness: Setting a target for the reduction of the "burden" of excessive regulation and extending the single market
Immigration: Restricting access to in-work and out-of-work benefits to EU migrants. Specifically, ministers want to stop those coming to the UK from claiming certain benefits until they have been resident for four years
Sovereignty: Allowing Britain to opt out from further political integration. Giving greater powers to national parliaments to block EU legislation

Has this clarified his position to vote Remain? Well again looking at the BBC's output, gives us an indication:-

Reform doesn't sound very clear by the sounds of it: It sounds much more like political calculation than problem-resolving

In effect "Reform" still means this:-

The Hydra of Complexity: Voters will not know what they are voting for: "A leap in the dark" = "Reform"

European Union (EU):-

And what of the EU:-

Here we see high magnitude, high orders of multiple intentionality and uncertainty concernign the EUROZONE required changes. This is effectively what the EU is transforming towards in the next major EU Treaty.

We also see confusion in the role of the Legacy News-Media, for example the BBC:-

David Keighley: Not the BBC news. Norway is very rich and very outside the EU

"But then the rot set in. According to website Leave HQ, what followed about the boiler-maker and Norway’s involvement with EU rules and the single market was ‘a pack of lies’, essentially because it most certainly does have influence, through its participation in the European Economic Area (EEA) and membership of EFTA (the European Free Trade Association)."

Dr. RAE North also looks at the BBC bias EU Referendum: BBC – the enemy without

Tommy R's blog Dismantling Britain Stronger in Europe's Leaflet showing that the Anti-Brexit case is being made by the "Remain" Campaign group not the case for Pro-EU (see above). This type of campaigning is increasing confusion and complexity.

Dr. RAE North notes not the first nor last time that the Tory's are fuelling confusion too EU Referendum: the Tory delusion; leaving the word. "eurosceptic" devoid of value and meaning. Vote Leave are also adding to confusion on Article 50 by Dominic Cummings: EU Referendum: a lack of thoughtful analysis along with EU Referendum: Hannan, the enemy within. And finally various think tanks are spreading more confusion: Civitas: EU Referendum: a report to myth the point; CER: If the UK votes to leave: The seven alternatives to EU membership ; Credit Suisse: Brexit: Breaking up is never easy, or cheap. Pete North points out the obvious: Stop problematising Brexit.

Effectively,

Is proliferating, and hence increasing the "Poltitical Plausibility Scope" into ever greater and wider implausible scenarios away from actual limits of political possibility that delimit the argument between "Remain" and "Leave":-

So, if we look at all the above, the hope for Real (direct) Democracy: Hiding in Plain Sight; feels as distant as it ever did when we joined the EEC back in 1972 before a Popular Referendum! However, we can remove an enormous source of the confusion:-

Single Market (EEA) = Remove Economic Question
Article 50 = Remove Legal Question
Referendum = Resolve Political Question

Chopping down stinging-nettles may feel good, but for how long?

In Ecological Succession different founder species form different types of transient habitats towards a "climax community" eg from a grass clearing over time developing via stages into a mature forest. This of course is what is going on when from the point of view of gardeners "weeds" such as stinging nettles (Urtica dioica) establish on a lawn or in a garden and grow. They're easy to chop down, but as anyone knows who's had to clear large bushes of them, they quickly (rapidly!) grow back. Hence some digging finds a complex matt of root systems from which at any point new nettle-stems can grow back from. It's effectively an example of the "roots vs shoots" problem or "root cause". The effort to dug up the root system is considerably more, however it does resolve the problem of permanently removing the stinging nettles from that particular patch of ground.

EU Referendum: The Rule of 2

In Eurosceptic "Amnesia" vs Brexiteer "Total Memory Recall" the importance or input of memory was considered in our arguments. This follows from the observation made in Literature And Science about future qualitative inferences that shape our expectations of future results compared to post-hoc quantitative deductions which can then feedback into our next future decisions. In Understanding The Mountains of Madness we saw how the argument as per the Electoral Commission's Referendum Question:-

The argument simplified to it's essence

Is not so much shaped as above, but as:-

Pro-EU Status Quo which is observed to be not working very well.
Anti-EU extremism which is considered unsafe and possibly unsound.

We learnt from The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up what our arguments concerning "good governance" reduce down to and how this principle has the potential if applied to make us happier as a people. We looked at elegant patterns in Pattern Recognition and adding to that from the above booklet "A House Divided": Can Parliament serve two masters: the Nation and the European Union?

(1) Design for EU, 1947: "No government dependent on a democratic vote could possibly agree in advance to the sacrifice that any adequate plan must involve. The British people must be led slowly and unconcsiously into the abandonment of their traditonal economic defences..." ~ Peter Thorneycroft, later Chancellor of the Exchequer and Chairman of the Conservative Party.

(2) What Germany Means by "Integration": "Does free Europe want to join Germany? Germany is the heart of Europe and the limbs must adjust themselves to the heart, not the heart to the limbs." ~ HANS SEEBOHM, Minister of Commerce in Dr. Adenauer's Government 1950.

(3) "In this challenging time we are naturally encountering difficulties. They are the birth pangs attending the creation of a United States of Europe." ~ Jean Monnet (The father of the EU) April 30 1952, addressing the Washing Press Club on the European Coal and Steel Community.

Common Market Referendum - MP Nigel Spearing was there - The country was Duped!

You can compare and contrast with Edward Heath's quotes here in a timeline:-

I would argue the above are "the roots" of the EU Referendum argument. Mostly hidden in the sands of history. And hence we see a pattern emerging:-

2-Speed EU: Periphery and Core
2-Stage Referendum Process
2-Extremes on the political spectrum where a Middle Way is manufactured above.
2 actual arguments: The Government-EU Argument (Top) and the Government-People Argument (Down) (which will be attempted to be neglected).

Effectively the Government-EU argument comes before our own. We're excluded from it as per David Cameron's hush-hush Reform Details and avoiding mention of the EU Time-Table towards Association Membership. What concerns them is the argument of the present such as:

In fact far from Brexit causing the UK/Britain to collapse... it's the very reverse proposition that worries "the powers that be" and well-spoken by Xavier Rolet in the above too: The consequences for uncertainty on the EU/EUROZONE, itself. For this reason, this argument cannot accept the primacy of the "ultimate frame of reference itself: Time and History" to our arguments and hence what must happen as their objective and therefore as the visible public argument leading up to our Referendum is their argument: Chopping down stinging nettles not removing their roots. This is backed up again in Conservative Home piece attempting to persuade via the political angle: Nadhim Zahawi MP: Our best future in Europe would be a multi-speed EU – not the divorce that would be worse for everyone .

Surely it seems reasonable to help the EU/EZ as Europe affects us either way we vote? There's nothing unreasonable in suggesting this. However, we have to consider our choices a little more deeply... to bring up from The Campaign For An Independent Britain (see blogroll)

We can witness how deep the seeds of deception have gone into our national identity, attacking it and further as per again the latest booklet from The Campaign For An Independent Britain (CIB):-

Generations Betrayed: Cutting the roots of our National Identity (in education)

“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” ~ George Orwell.

The great problem we as a people face is with arguments which do not actually engage with our own arguments as per democracy but seek to attack and undermine our identity and hence the abuse of power by our own government, our own ruling institutions that underpin democracy we see as per the warning from The Road To The European Union directly applicable to us! When we make a choice we are representing ourselves, our identity, what we value and what we work towards. All those assumptions that help us form a successful nation are undermined when we don't act in accordance with them, when we fail to remember them and fall for the persuasive arguments as per Eurosceptic "Amnesia" vs Brexiteer "Total Memory Recall" .

The above "mocked-up ballot paper" may seem extremely tendentious, but what I think it symbolizes is not to worry about all these exterior postulations from David Cameron who is "a prisoner of his own making" (just count the number of lies he's made and the continuation of The Great Deception under all our Prime Ministers); it's to remember to count on our own interior understanding of our place in the world; draw on our own roots which if we keep healthy like those pesky stinging nettles will grow back out of the ashes of The Great Deception: It's those roots we must look after, not the ever-changing political weather of the day.

Red Cliffs Of Dawlish