My Kingdom for a Macroscope!

A Grey River perhaps?

A Canyon maybe?

A Mountain Range more likely?

A Lunar Surface possibly?

A Thick-Skinned Animal probably?

... An (Angry) Elephant! 

 In the first blog post here, How do you become a "eurosceptic"? (Note: Now "Brexiteer" is now the newly defined group name as per White Wednesday and "We're All "eurosceptics" now? as per Dr. RAE North at EUReferendum.com which demonstrates the pollution of the quality of arguments as per Argument Abstraction via The Knight 'N Knave through false actors ie a derived deception which has it's intellectual roots in The Great Deception) I pointed out the spark for my own scepticism; which was the blatant lies and deception concerning the EUROZONE which led to grow into now "Brexiteer" categorization. I don't generally find "labels or self-styled tags" to be at all useful or constructive as they imply limited identity and hence often revert into "defending one's identity" instead of actually arguing about the arguments! However with "Brexiteer" we have a technical working definition as per The Great Deception to paraphrase Theodosius Dobzhansky famous quote on evolution:-

 "Nothing Makes Sense in present British Politics except in the light of the Supranational EU", The Great Deception.

As per Pub Signs an attempt was to made to convey this "Fact And Theory" in our intellectual architecture of when we talk about the European Union = we talk about the Supranational governmental nature, in intent and in execution as recorded and reported from it's history above in The Great Deception. A "Brexiteer" is not only someone who does not accept this form of governance but also who points out that this form of governance leads to certain results as per Jean Monnet's "Engrenage": Destination Unknown? which IS THE MECHANISM on The Road To The European Union . One of the biggest derivatives of this established as fact, is that it has intentionally been "hidden" or down-played or de-emphasized by our politicians. The results is the spread of confusion as described in Power To The People and the manipulation of the confusion in the mass Legacy News-Media, in Understanding The Mountains Of Madness? The above exercise in the application of (lack of) Perspective to Problem-Solving was previously looked at in The Price Of A Glass Of Water: And again a metaphor can again be used in another charming and related form to the above:-

 The Story of the Six Blind Men and The Elephant (Indian high quality version)

If we have defined both WHAT IS THE EU? and therefore WHAT IS IT WE'RE WITHDRAWING FROM? then the problem solving of "making decisions that make positive changes" answers WHY? we should withdraw from the EU or else remain a part of it (defining what it is which is WHAT IS IN IT as much as "the tag" of EU that the Pro-EU arguments have relied upon for so many decades without providing a direct vote to the public on >9 major treaty changes to the EU). Once this has been done then the problem can be decomposed as per Sequential Problem-Solving in Corvids:-

"A macroscope is, according to designer John Thackara, "something that helps us see what the aggregation of many small actions looks like when added together". His theory is that such a device could help to focus ideas in the same way that a microscope focuses light, because it's seldom true that experts have access to both the micro and the macro views simultaneously.

It seems to me the Internet itself (eg Big Data, the ability to translate information into "computational forms") is beginning to act like a "macroscope" and where Brexit and the EU are concerned, no better an example can be provided, as per Lost Leonardo A Revolution In Public Policy-Making than "Dr. Richard AE North with Robert Oulds of the Bruges Group and the assistance of readers of EUReferendum.com" have managed to achieve with FLEXCIT:-

 FLEXCIT: Breaks the problem defined down into Six Stages

When we consider the EU we have an answer: The Great Deception documents it's history, whether or not you like the sound of it's title "it's tag": "WHAT IS IN IT" is what counts. For Brexit we have such tediousness, to quote the The Six Blind Men and The Elephant:-

"It was six  men of Indostan, who learning much inclined, went to see the Elephant, though all were blind, that each by observation, might satisfy his mind..."

"... So these men of Indostan disputed loud and long, each in his own opinion, exceeding stiff and strong, though each was partly in the right, and all were in the wrong."

Looking at the below we see that numerous different relationships with the EU is  in fact The Rule And Not The Exception as opposed to how the politicians and news-media attempt to portray the EU as The Singular Regional Rule for UK/Britain :-

 ALL the exceptions PROVE to be The Rule and not the exception to the EU!

We already looked at this perspective change in The Road To The European Union and how UNECE has x56 members as well as the EEA containing x31 members to the EU's x28 members to the EZ's x19 members. And we confirmed where that Road leads to:

A Black Swan arrives at Abbotsbury, Dorset

Reviewing where we are at the MACRO-Scale:-

1. WHAT IS THE EU? (TOP)

• PAST: The Great Deception
• PRESENT: "The Five Presidents' Report": Completing Europe's Economic and Monetary Union - Report by: Jean-Claude Juncker in close cooperation with Donald Tusk, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, Mario Draghi and Martin Schulz. State of the Union 2015: Time for Honesty, Unity and Solidarity - Speech by Jean-Claude Juncker - President of the European Commission
• FUTURE:  Bertelsmann/Spinelli: Fundamantal Law 

1. WHAT IS BREXIT? (LHS)

• LEAVE
• Trigger Article 50 TEU Lisbon Treaty

A Macroscope of EU, Brexit and FLEXCIT to effect secure and controlled transition from Supranational - Intergovernmental

Here is an attempt to use a MACROSCOPE to understand what Brexit is. The past defines the EU. The Present confirms the EU and the Future predicts the EU. If we consider ourselves "Brexiteers": Then Brexit (LHS) is merely boiled down to a  FOCAL POINT for our perspective no-matter what auxillery or supplementary ideas we may have or hold or contest. It is a declarative PRESENT SIMPLE event on the day of the Referendum, that requires for that date, minimizing of unpredictablity, of magnitude and of spurious intentionality and is x1 major component of a larger process as per FLEXCIT itself, which makes this fundamentally clear: The continuum feedback-loop of the full continuous process:-

1. WHAT IS FLEXCIT? (RHS)

• Iterative decision-making via stages
• Continuous PROCESS connecting time points
• Flexible adaptation to Withdrawal content (WHAT IS IN IT)

 For more on Article 50:-

• Lost Leonardo: Language Matters
• The Brexit Door: Article 50 – reading the intent.

 What's so important is that we Learning & Playing The Rules Of The Game because our present frame of reference is >40yrs of EU Membership. Brexit is a portal or threshold from that point of view: ie x1 Day compared to 16425 days of EEC->EC->EU->EU+EZ Membership via The Great Deception:-

What is the purpose of Article 50: The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up of our Government and our systems of governance For The People By The People in our Popular Referendum as per Power To The People. which is worth far far more than false promises from our deceptive politicians of Turkish Delight! Turkish Delight! and again made clear as per Dr. RAE North: EU Referendum: the "better deal" fallacy.

Literature And Science

In Literature and Science, Aldous Huxley considers the differences and uses between science and literature. On the one hand, science which reduces, simplifies and defines things in systems of thought and in the other hand, literature which explores the multitudinous manifestations of subjective experience for each person's own sensitivity and their own shaping of meaning in their world. So far, this blog has taken the latter approach what I've termed as "qualitative inference".

One of the reasons this approach has been taken, is that if we look at for example a newspaper, such as The Evening Standard free paper found in London, and count the general news pages which comprise "stories" that shape our feelings and our emotions compared to "investigations" which define certain limited results with numbers and logic, there's a clear majority of the former to the latter and this is how we apprehend the world everyday as a matter of course.

The picture above is taken from the famous London bookshop Foyles and the European Union Politics section is curiously next to the Slavery section is a joke too good to miss! If you were interested in learning about the European Union, what it is and so on, you might come across this shelf, if you were serious. How would you choose from all these dozens and dozens of dense tombs on the subject? You might randomly pick a sample, find advice online from reviews. Then you break the problem down and work out what it is that is most useful to you to know and to what degree of detail per component.

If you persisted eventually you might come up with a full "map" of the subject (as per The Greatest Political Problem of Our Time) and understand how they all connect to each other to what degree as well as to what depth per subject "node". However practically you are short of time, you have a limited budget and even then if you are a complete neophyte reading the right book simply will be a limited though useful beginning to begin of this "intellectual framework" due to the full complexity of the subject. Incidentally there's only x1 actually useful and accurate book on that entire shelf and I recommend: Robert Ouldes : Everything you wanted to know about the EU - But were afraid to ask

There is a movie out in the cinemas that has just released by the author Andy Weir, called The Martian. I am very excited to watch this movie. However, having been aware of the novel for sometime and not having read it yet, I have a dilemma: Do I watch the movie then read the novel or do I try to read the novel and then watch the movie? This novel is really well written from some of the pages I've read in the bookshop.

What also makes it fascinating is that it's a novel which uses a lot of technical description precisely calculated and related to decision-making: It's quite challenging, not to mention it's set in space on Mars and hence is very "science-heavy" and unfamiliar. The visuals of the film will enable enormously for me to visualize and relate the theoretical calculations to the practical implementations as well as the emotionally-cool-headedness of the titular character, Mark Watney, played in the movie by the excellent actor Matt Damon. Here is a really solid combination of Literature and Science: We can relate the private experience of "The Martian" as well as the objective problems of his extraordinary environment, simultaneously.

Here's a contemporary and topical example of the dynamic between:-

1. Expectation or Prediction
2. Results vs Performance
3. Analysis and interpretation

From The Evening Standard, on the Friday eve before the England Rugby Team played Australia:-

England Rugby World Cup stars past and present today said the team can triumph in their do-or-die clash with Australia with the help of their "amazing" fans.

Johnny Wilkinson, who won the tournament in 2003 with his famous drop goal against the Wallabies, said he was "full of confidence" that England would progress tomorrow. Wilkinson, 36, added: "This weekend is going to be bigger and better. It is going to be a bigger and better England team, a bigger and better atmosphere, and it is going to be a bigger and better result."

His optimism echoed that of Prince Harry, who met the players after a training session at the team base at Pennyhill Park hotel in Surrey yesterday. The royal insisted England could win, saying: "Of course they can! Bring on this Saturday." And current fly-half Owen Farrell pledged that he and the rest of the players would give the fans something to cheer about."

How different the above is to Will Carling's quote today backing up his previous in my opinion accurate inference previously:-

"Something has to change in order to deliver better results," 

Let's look at this, many of the "professionals" were masquerading/mixing" expectation or "wish-fulfilment" "bigging-up both the tournament's appeal and giving the England team a "vote of Confidence" to help them feel upbeat and positive about the match.

Unfortunately the above is a huge issue for when things go wrong, people are full of consternation, disappointment and confusion: "How could this squad that promised so much go out of the World Cup at the pool stages, the first ever?!"

For that the ever-useful assessment of player's performance vs the Australian peformance is considered: Pocock played a blinder; Ford should have been in on instead of Farrell, England missed Vunipola through injury. We made mistakes at bad moments; the referee made some tight calls against us etc etc.

However looking at the actual data and analysis:-

And breaking up "when" in the game and "where" the flow directed to "how" Australia scored their points over England to win the result, a more definite picture of the performance is analysed. It's more concrete and dependable than opinions and suggestions "why". The above is really useful to work out "what" decisions players and team were making that contribute to performance alongside stoicastic factors. Finally "who" was playing compared to selection and opposition.

How does all this relate to the EU and the Referendum?

What's very observable above is the reliance on "inference" and subjective feeling" before the Referendum and only with the benefit of "20/20 Hindsight" can we more narrowly use data to work out how things turned out: Whether or not our decision-making was a good result or a bad result - over time.

Let's look at some of the latest media stories about the EU Reform:- Cameron hit by double blow on EU ~ Sunday Times:-

Here the narrative is very much like the pre-match "mood music" for England before they were defeated by Australia. There's so little reported on the actual rules of the EU the Treaty Structures as the "arena" in which David Cameron has real choices. Instead we see the as per Aldous Huxley "crystallization" of literary mode of communication inferring nothing of value and aiding deliberate deception. Here "the professionals" as above are all applauding Cameron's chances vs Merkel in the same way as the England team.

To requote Dr. North again, EU Referendum: flawed understanding

Described as a member of Business for Britain, one of Matthew Elliott's business ventures, this woman would have it that the EU was turning out to be a "flawed concept" because it had monetary union without fiscal or political union.

Seemingly a small detail, the EU cannot be regarded as a flawed concept for this reason. The very essence of the single currency was to launch an incomplete construct in the knowledge that the stresses would create political pressures which would drive further integration.

This is the mechanism of engrenage, at the core of the so-called Monnet Method, relying on the doctrine of the beneficial crisis. It is not, as they say, a bug, but a feature. The European Union was designed to act in this way.

Business is being allowed to talk in a professional way just as the England ex-players were doing before the England match.

Barbs traded as business weighs in on/in out vote - City AM (google-cache available also.)

BUSINESSES did battle over Britain’s potential EU exit yesterday, with a war of words erupting about the repercussions of a Brexit or staying put. Gina Miller, founding partner of SCM capital management, kicked off the exchange by warning that the City faces “disaster” if the UK is forced to renegotiate. She said: “It will take years of negotiations, during which Britain, and the City, will be stuck in a limbo.”

The event at Guildhall was hosted by Business for Britain, the City of London Corporation and Business for New Europe. Miller added: “One of one is weaker than one of 28. It’s a fallacy that we would be stronger on our own.” She also pointed to the skills shortage and said, speaking as a fintech business, Britain is “struggling to provide the skilled workers we need to remain at the centre of the financial world. The coders, the hackers. We rely on a mobile marketplace with Europe, and would be very much impacted by leaving.”

Serial entrepreneur Luke Johnson, of Risk Capital Management, was more upbeat about the effect of a Brexit, stating: “The City will remain great, no matter what.” While Johnson said that with significant negotiations he’d stay in the EU, he pointed to the “countless anti-City
measures” – from bonus-caps and short-selling regulations to the Common Agricultural Policy – as things he’d be happy to see left behind. He also pointed to “all the doom-and-gloom scare-mongering when we didn’t join the Euro… and it never happened.”

Tim Skeet, director of the International Capital Markets Association, warned that the French will “eat our croissants and the Germans will steal our sausage” in the event of Brexit. He also lauded the City for having been “pragmatic” in the face of EU regulations. Andrew Lilico from Europe Economics argued if the UK went it alone, the country could attract new trading partners, such as Switzerland, Norway and Denmark, and create a new partnership

What's so fascinating is that both Pro-EU and "eurosceptics" are using the same system of thought of inference and headline arguments that hold this quality and trading them. As it happens I would predict that the "eurosceptics" have the stronger memes and emotions to play, but that the prospect of defeat with such uncertainty then matched with a Cameron arrangement which allows us all to "avoid" such a high-stakes match, will see people vote to stay in the EU.

But this comes back to Will Carling above: "Something has to change." Cameron in the role of Lancaster will likely step-down and we'll have a new coach in the hot seat of England Rugby manager. But like our football team and cricket team that also went out in their respective World Cup pools: Will we learn the mistakes presented from our past results and improve our decision-making performance?

For that we have to leave the News-Media, we have to look at that "wall of books" or find other mediums such as videos to convey information to us on the EU such as:-

By Robert Oulds if the book appears to be too far advanced a step. Whatever choice we as a people need to start making however relies on using not only qualitative inference but "deductive quantification" WHERE we can. It's not always possible, but where it is it will limit the excesses of our leaders as per The Goldfinch and the Gilded Cage

And that applies equally to Pro-EU advocates and to people who aspire to becoming genuine "Brexiteers".  It's the simple reason why insisting on the relationship as UKIP under Farage do:-

• Immigration > EU > Democracy <= Media, UKIP, Establishment focus

The old "reversi" trick:-

• Democracy > EU > Immigration  <= FLEXCIT (see side for video)

Can we deduce a more rigorous case for "British Exit" (Brexit) Withdrawal from the EUropean Union Treaties via the above? And will that change our performance and hence improve our results?

I believe it's the first step to success and for the people to leave this decision-making to the £professionals£ will lead to yet more cases of the amusing joke:-

"Britain invents a sport. Teaches others how to play the sport better than themselves. Invites the world around to compete in these sports and ends up losing in all of them."

How do you become a "eurosceptic"?

On Wednesday 24th September, 2014, at Dawlish in Devon, The Campaign For An Independent Britain organized and funded a Workshop on such subjects as:-

• The Great Deception that is the EU
• The Way Out - Walk Don’t Run
• The Norway Option - an explanation
• Dr Richard North - How we leave the EU, Flexcit

It was free to the public to attend. In answer to the title question, all the information you could ever need is contained above. However if answers were so easily assimilated by people, then there never would have existed much to the question in the first place. I hope this blog therefore attends to that reality and steadily invites more questions and more interest on this subject. Because that's how questions and answer truthfully do behave; like ever expanding horizons: the more you know the more there is to know.

To begin at the beginning, I remember vaguely as a young child my father complaining that "Europe" as an economic idea might work but that for political reasons it was impossible. Many years later, I came across an article that confirmed a very large mismatch between what the politicians who were Pro-EU had promised, what had transpired and how they were explaining this "gap" presently between: observed, actual results and expected, predicted results: It's Not That the Euro Will Fail, It's That It Should Fail 

In modern political language this "performance gap" is obscured by "Spin". It seems to me in life in general, that people are very tolerant of their immediate friends and family's faults. But even within these social circles there comes a point when someone has taken our trust for granted and abused it's generosity of spirit too many times, for too long and we almost U-turn in our reaction from tolerance to defiance. Dr. Anthony Seldon writes on this subject of a loss of Trust in British Politics; which like "fresh air" is only missed by it's absence.

I would posit therefore, that this particular discussion is not about the details of the EU or Brexit, it's not about the principles or politics of these subjects. It's about "the thinking required for the subject in question". This is where beginning at the beginning really takes place or to use the more modern technical phrase: "Metacognition" required for discussion and to which Trust is such a vital precondition with which to ask questions and find useful answers; and why "Spin" prevents progress in our politics: Our politician's performance gap remains as wide as ever.

Dr. Richard A. E. North writes the eureferendum.com blog and one of his core phrases is "the intellectual architecture" required to understand the subjects of the EU and hence by implication "Brexit" and furthermore any "Popular Referendum" if it is to be shining light of enhanced democracy. In the Western Civilization tradition much is made of Democracy, and by contrast lack of democracy elsewhere in the world is considered an inferior condition; possibly one to which we allow ourselves to feel a sense of superiority? And yet there is an odd little fact concerning any EU Referendum the UK will hold on our current membership. The "first and only" Referendum we had was in 1975; fully 40 years ago in 2015, to which you would have had to have been 18 years of age to have voted on, meaning anyone under the age of about 58yro has never voted on this.

To return to that day in September on the coast at Dawlish and quoting Dr. North: Brexit: the Dawlish experience

On the day - reflecting much of the online feedback and the experience of earlier meetings - what I found necessary to emphasise is that the exit plan is complicated. Furthermore, there is a limit to the extent that one can simplify it, before you are misrepresenting the entire process.

If we look at a telephone from 40 years ago, and look at the latest devices, there is a huge leap in the degree of complexity – matched of course by a massive increase in capability. What has happened with telephones has also happened with government and we could no more go back to the simple Bakelite telephone than we could go back to the far more simple style of government which prevailed in pre-EEC days.

The parallel or echo or reflection is fascinating: In the time from that "first and only" vote over 40yrs ago, the complexity of our membership has changed in orders of magnitude without a single vote on it. If you want to consider the value of all the preceding, it is possibly encapsulated in this curious fact of our membership that abstracts most of the above themes so far discussed.

Suffice to say, I came across lots of different materials and opinions and proponents of Brexit and variations in "eusceptic" options, before finding eureferendum.com and then attending this talk and workshop in Dawlish. Now I would borrow a coined word from White Wednesday (see blog list) and say that this long journey from becoming a "eurosceptic" has finished and I am more accurately now a "Brexiteer"!

Finally, on the central idea of this blog post, imparting one idea whatever your own beliefs and understanding and effort invested into "seeking the truth" of matters: This blog is named: "Red Cliffs Of Dawlish". Why? Is a question not with a single answer but with many answers:-

1. I attended a free talk that was as high quality as speeches from Steven Pinker or Jared Diamond that I once attended at The Royal Society in London; where both Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton propounded their own theories in their own knowledge domains.
2. The phrase is a play on the more famous: "White Cliffs Of Dover"; indicating different versions exist of common concepts for different people.
3. I spent many of my formative years growing up on or near this coastline and to revisit it in a capacity I could never have imagined; there's something lyrical about life in that to my mind.
4. The symbol of Britain/UK's coasts and hence boarders imparts the same concepts as "brexit" or "global britain" and indeed the UK's particular relationship with Europe!

In answer to the title question: There's many answers: But do any of them belong to you? That's a question I would ask of any interested readers to this blog and towards any potential vote in the UK's Referendum on the EU: To Leave or To Remain: That is the question, afterall. But do you understand it? And hence can you give YOUR answer and not someone else's?