FLEXCIT: Talking The Talk 1

In considering the barriers to effective communication, Communication: The Reaction Barrier; here however I'm attempting to describe some concepts and explain some definitions to improve the use of language concerning this EU Referendum and Brexit choice with respect to the language and ideas used in FLEXCIT: The Market Solution:-

Flexcit, p.2 Summary:-

"The UK secession from the EU, following an "out" vote in a referendum and an Article 50 notification, will have significant geopolitical and economic consequences."

• Scale of Brexit: is a political order of magnitude approximate to the falling of the Berlin Wall, is mentioned further in. This key point is not to be under-estimated in understanding how enormous Brexit is and therefore how carefully and skillfully it must and needs to be handled. To distinguish between what we ideally want and what is possible.

"We do not believe that any options can be considered workable unless an exit agreement can be delivered within the initial two year period allowed for in the formal exit negotiations."

• Scope: The economy of time, again this is a key abstraction to take-away: The scope must be practical within the time-limits available but also the scope must come across in public and political perception as do-able and realistic and not require too great a deal of stress and strain to even consider let alone commit to.

"Furthermore, we believe - largely as a result of promises given during the referendum campaign - that there will be an absolute requirement to continue participation in the EU's Single Market."

• Prioritization: Urgency and importance of our trade and neutralizing disturbance during the political transition and process is in a word - paramount. The stats even if they are declining and over-egged by Pro-EU's are nonetheless statistically significant and is the biggest priority to sign-up to in the short-term. This is removes the Pro-EU's biggest weapon of economic FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) and reinforces The Referendum as a political and sovereign question not an economic one.

"This suggests the adoption of the so-called "Norway Option"..."

• Concrete Solution: "Off-The-Shelf" ready-made solution to remove FUD (Which is fuelled by intangible, theoretical, predictive solutions) and fit the aforementioned: Scale, Scope, Priority. That's x4 abstractions we're making for the Norway Option including killing the Pro-EU's rhetoric which will again appear even more pertinent due to the status quo effect of referendums.

"Despite better access to regional and global standards-setting bodies compensating for the disadvantages of the "Norway Option", the immediate outcome will still be far from ideal. We thus recommend putting down a marker for negotiations seeking an EFTA/EU free trade agreement, possibly based on an expanded EFTA, alongside agreements for political co-operation."

• Several-staged process: (not single event and solution) The EEA is a gambit for exiting the EU. From there it is then more valid to seek more viable solutions. This paradigm-shift of considering Brexit is what distinguishes "Flexcit" from most (all?) other current solutions.

"Our post-exit Britain then emerges from the implementation an eight-point programme."

• Global Goverance vs Domestic Reform: The real-top table above Brussels is part of the political future is a major feature of Flexcit to understand (it's complexity). Secondly, National reformation of British Politics: It was the failure of the British governing system in the first place that led to the betrayal of the British people's sovereignty. The Middle is falling out of the Political Market.

FLEXCIT: 1.0 Introduction, p.6

"...without an effective and realistic exit plan, an "out" campaign is unlikely to succeed."

• Objective : This is the unifying objective to all the different Anti-EU or Pro-Brexit (Brexiteer) groups (bar europlastics). It also provides the people with a fair question of membership of coming up to 40 years and the democratic deficit which the government has universally been obstructive to (see #3 in the series):-

1. Removal of Political Union
2. Removal of Judicial Union
3. Exemption and Total Removal of Monetary Union
4. Access To Single Market

"With the growth of the book, however, we have had to confront the problem of where to stop. The separate chapters on environment, agriculture and fisheries could be supplemented by chapters covering every EU policy."

• Abstraction The purpose of a Brexit paper is to form general principles concerning the EU extracted from the myriad particulars and policy areas that it's "Evolution of Competencies" has developed into from the EEC of 1975 to the EU and Federalist-leaning body of 2014+. Demonstrating this substantial transition is perhaps one area where Anti-EU'ers might increase the "Visibility of Control" of the EU over the UK as per changes in Sovereignty since 1975. Once the question is out of the bottle it has grown (see Series #3)

"we have no hesitation in characterising withdrawal as a major political event, possibly equivalent in its impact to the fall of the Berlin wall."

• Scale : This is reinforced as above: Evolution of EU Competencies (ie policy powers it now majorly dictates) is substantial as well as the changes and challenges of global regulatory bodies

"The EU has a huge influence on our economic activity. Thus, any significant perturbation in our relations with Member States could cause major disruption and drive us into recession. There is no margin for error. While leaving the EU is in our view desirable, we cannot afford to get it wrong."

• Priority of the Single Market stability and access is paramount as previously. This probably becomes one of our axioms to the Brexit stage of "exiting" after which other priorities then can be handled.

"At this stage, we would stress that we are not going to rehearse the reasons why Britain might exit the EU or address in detail the advantages or disadvantages of so doing."

• Assumptions of Brexit are taken as givens that it's necessary eg Sovereignty, Democracy, Prosperity & International Cooperation and Federalist ambitions of the EU itself.

"Here, we have to confront what amounts to a circular dynamic between the referendum and the Article 50 negotiations. In order to win a referendum (i.e., to gain a majority for an "out" vote), there must be a workable exit plan on the table. So important is this that we argue that, without it, a referendum campaign will never be successful. Then, in closing the loop, we assert that the conduct of the referendum campaign will have a significant impact on the subsequent exit negotiations: negotiators will be required address the expectations raised duringthe campaign."

• Winning Strategy is a prerequisite of the Referendum process and therefore it's affect on the Article 50 TEU Lisbon Treaty formal description of the exiting conditions. This is a major failing of many Brexit papers that wander into incorrect assumptions of A50 in a political vacuum. To re-emphasis idealistic/theoretical solutions are a poor fit to concrete solutions that already are proven to exist and in fact compromise a winning strategy as the most essential element of any Brexit plan.

"As to the exit, we see this as a process, rather than as a single event or even series of events. It is an enabler, not an end in itself. We consider that the primary objectives of those managing the withdrawal are to set up the structures and strategies which will provide a sound foundation for the governance and development of a post-exit Britain."

• Concept of Brexit = Process not an event with an immediate short-term economically directed, reachable goal, but a major political event followed by long-process post a successful referendum. This is a key paradigm-shift in the subject of Brexit to appreciate otherwise your thinking on it will be faulty and fall towards idealism at the expense of realism.

"Furthermore, we believe solutions should not be reactive. To achieve a desirable settlement, Britain should take an active role in changing the global landscape, reshaping it and the political architecture."

• Global Governance One of the major "dividends" of Brexit is in this area.

"Effectively, if the right to leave is not conferred by the Article, it must be implicit in the Vienna Convention. A departing country must thereby be exercising its Convention rights in notifying the European Council of its intention to leave."

• Political Act and not a legal decision, ie a referendum of the will of the people in a democratic system is the driver to successful Brexit.

"It is this meld of political and economic issues which make for the complexity and uncertainty, and which also mark out withdrawal from the EU as an unusual, if not unique process."

• Expediency during the Article 50 Treaty 2-way negotiation is the major caveat to ambitions of Brexit plans for economic advantages ie Increase ambition, Increase Uncertainty which feeds FUD which threatens the referendum's chances of success.

"There is little point, many might say – or instinctively feel – in going to all the effort of securing the UK's withdrawal if the outcome is simply to return powers to a dysfunctional parliament which was responsible, by act or default, for giving them away in the first place. Any exit solution must be accompanied by measures which resolve the democratic deficit which allowed politicians to give away the nation's powers in the first place. It must also ensure that any government in the future is not able to repeat the process."

FLEXCIT: 2.1 A forced referendum , p.21

"As much as anything, it is the unapologetic deceit over the nature of the Lisbon Treaty, as well as the sense of betrayal on the referendum, which has in Britain dominated political discourse about the EU. There is now a huge constituency which simply does not trust Mr Cameron and his "cast iron"promises."

• Bait And Switch nature of the EU has ballooned over time so that it's very fabric is constructed upon deception and this has manifest into the acceptable and worse, fashionable public office lies of our Prime Minsters and major leaders in The Establishment parties against the public; particularly before and after Election Events.

"When, in the run-up to the 2010 general election, Gordon Brown, chose "shamelessly" to defend signing the treaty, claiming he had protected British sovereignty, this further added to the sentiment, strengthening the disillusionment with the body politic as a whole."

• Disenfranchisement Politics appears to be the emerging trend of the Left-Right to gravitate on the center ground and become "Cartel Parties" in power, leaving a political vacuum for a "bottom-up" party to emerge. This was predicted by Sir James Goldsmith, 3 December 1995:

"The General Election in this country is a masquerade."
In fact, it has been the EU's commitment to political integration which has been responsible for much of the ongoing friction between Britain and the other Member States. British politicians have compensated for this by extolling EU membership as a means of facilitating economic co-operation with the countries of continental Europe, especially on trade, while downplaying or even ignoring the encroachment of political integration."

• Misinformation of the conflation between Political Union (EU) with Economic Relations (EEA) and deliberate omission of this part of debating the EU Membership from almost all major politicians' speeches to the public for the past 40 years from the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat politicians. They have attempted to NARROW the debate instead of broaden it and have therefore all failed in their duty in public office to serve the interests of the public in political pedagogy and process.

"Yet the chances of the government holding a referendum in 2017, on the back of a new treaty, seemed slight.
From a British perspective, a treaty would most likely require a referendum under the European Union Act 2011, the provision finally introduced by David Cameron as the consolation prize for not having a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. Given the need for parliamentary approval and time for campaigning, that would push the event to some time in 2019."

• Weasel Words of Mr. Cameron's words do not stack up against the evidence of his commitments (both current and past promises) and the current state of affairs of rebuffs from the EU (Barroso, Shulz) and Nation's heads of state (Merkell, Hollande):-

"Then, in early October 2013, the influential federalist Spinelli Group and Bertelsmann Stiftung jointly launched a proposal for the reform of the Treaty of Lisbon in the form of a draft treaty called "A Fundamental Law of the European Union". This was presented at the Bozar Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels. Amongst other things, it proposed a form of "associate membership", which could take the UK out of the political mainstream of the EU."

• Rowing In Opposite Directions suggests that a repeat of history where the EU attempts to sideline the UK to ensure they can proceed with the Federal ambitions of the EU as previously (see The Great Deception).

"With not the slightest chance of treaty negotiations in any usable time frame, much less an agreement on treaty change, Mr Cameron's only remaining option is to push for political declarations on a similar basis to those secured by Harold Wilson in 1975, prior to the referendum then, or John Major in 1992 after the Danish rejection of the Maastricht Treaty."

• Wilsonian Fudge is clearly the 3rd attempt by a UK major leader following the previous, as per "EU Reform" and conditional referendums more angling to divert political power back to the Conservatives/Establishment than to genuinely ensure the purpose of the best deal possible for the British people. In fact such conditions and incoherence further damage the British political system, the ability of the politicians to perform their public duty and above all to continue the erosion of any drop of INTEGRITY left within these people who are practicing a fraud on the British people's ownership of their Sovereignty.

FLEXCIT: Back From The Future

• Tier 1 = "............................"
  
  
• Tier 2 = Conceptual Framework
  
  
• Tier 3 = Problem-Solving Process
  
  
• Tier 4 = Application
  
  
• Tier 5 = The (complete) Market Solution
  

In the previous blog FLEXCIT: A Paradigm Shift the key point was made that, to use a metaphor, "Brexit is a bridge - only". It is merely the evidence that it is legitimate (valid) and possible (viable) to withdraw from the EU. To quote Dr. RAE North in EU Referendum: suffering in silence:-

"By way of background, we are engaged in the political battle of the century, and to win it we need to do three things. Firstly, we need to convince enough voters that we need to leave the EU. Secondly, we need to offer them an alternative vision – one which is better than anything the EU has to offer. Thirdly, we have to be able to reassure people that moving from the EU to our alternative is practicable and safe. That is our so-called exit plan.

These three things I have previously described as the "three-legged stool". In my view, they are not optional. Together, they comprise the essential elements of the campaign. Without them, I am convinced that we cannot win this referendum.

What we don't need, therefore, is people of status and some prestige coming out of the woodwork, promoting ridiculous and totally unworkable ideas for an exit plan, and then undermining the work of those people (such as myself and all the other contributors to Flexcit) who have come up with a workable plan."

Effectively FLEXCIT/The Market Solution is the full context within which the solution (Brexit) is held between Problem and Outcome; and only one (but central) element of the full picture:

Incorrect/Zero Framing of the Problem:

Brexit: A small but pivotal part of the full story: NOT the full story!

What we see when the context/framing is not applied correctly is a list of declarative battles over what is the problem and what is the solution? Nobody apparently knows and both "sides of the argument" are apparently equivalent: They're not - they descend into low quality arguments as per Argument Abstraction:-

The Political Dark Ages Today: Exemplified by these "prestigious groups" AND The Economist

In Outcomes: The 20:80 Rule it was pointed out that most of the EU Referendum discussion and Brexit by implication is wasteful communication, "mountains of madness" in the legacy news-media and "piles of garbage" produced by Westminster politicians. The assertion was made that the Positive Vision as per Dr. RAE North,above, is predominantly the future creation of a genuine single market in which Britain plays a leading role amongst equals, due to initiating this change, not by default of dominating.

However there is another positive outcome preceding this one: "Which is which when all is said and done?" And that is the very process of holding a referendum is an opportunity to increase the quality of arguments and increase the positive engagement of people into the political decision making process itself.

If you've noticed our politicians for decades and in great volume have talked about "uncertainty" in our politics: They're the biggest source of this so-called "political disease" as per The Root Of All Uncertainty, both the above two sides represented/hand-picked in The Economist above are full of The Brexit Bullshit Sandwich.

In fact what we're already doing is starting to describe the problem of our EU Membership indirectly. But there is much much more to do to build up the argument to it's full completion:-

FLEXCIT: The sum of it's parts and more than the sum of it's parts

Decrypting: What is Babel-17?

"Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen" ~ Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

Samuel R. Delany's sci-fi novel Babel-17 tells the story of a humanity encountering an alien language in the far future galaxy. This language "appears" to threaten invasion, but in order to counter the threat, the messages must first be understood. Not only the above consideration from Wittgenstein is implicit in this contention, but also:

"...my work consists of two parts: of the one which is here, and of everything which I have not written. And precisely this second part is the important one."

Here we have two considerations: The limitation of language and the limitations of what we select in order to use language to communicate. In fact Wittgenstein manages to get to the heart of the story in Babel-17 without giving away the underlying plot of the story.

Now imagine these 2 core elements of the language used in the our politics of EU Referendum and Brexit in the Legacy News-Media broadcasting the ideas from the Top Tiers of the Political Food Web:-

• (1): Without the core concepts of understanding - one cannot speak without being able to think first.
• (2): What is said necessarily omits a vast range of potential communication.
• (1) + (2) = (3): Combining both: If the language itself omits the words and hence ideas, then these in reverse prevent the necessary thinking!!!

By now I hope you are reading this, thinking I knew this blogger was cracked; a little too quirky and now banging on about sci-fi and Wittgenstein and language... !

 A "low drone" dominates and is broadcast incessantly

Now, instead of travelling far into the future and facing the seemingly inscrutable dangers of an alien language, let us take a journey back into the recent past that already looks so far away: PANORAMA The Great Euro Debate TX. 27/1/97.

 Panorama: The Great Euro Debate - 27.01.97

• "The words used in the argument are a foreign language."
• "Strong passions"
• "Most of us aren't well informed"

Our next witness is John Monks, the 
General Secretary of the Trades Union 
Congress, a man who fears for Britain’s 
workforce, that if they are outside a 
single currency life will be a cold and 
uncomfortable place, and Peter Sutherland 
questions him first. I should just point 
out that friendly witnesses are questioned 
for a rather shorter period than hostile 
witnesses, which is why Ruth Lea had 
rather more time than you did.  The 
opposite will happen when the other 
witnesses come in.  Peter Sutherland.

 Peter Sutherland 
 Well let me take up the invitation from 
that introduction.  What is your view as a 
union leader of the effect on jobs of 
staying out of a single currency when it 
is created? What will the effect be?


 
 John Monks 
 Well on balance I think it would be 
Caption: damaging. Immediately I think we would 
JOHN MONKS pay a premium in interest rates. I think 
GENERAL SECRETARY, TUC our interest rates would go higher than 
that for the Euro area and I think that 
would be a damaging consequence.

Peter Sutherland 
 So that would cost business and investors 
money?

 John Monks 
 Well it would cost everybody - mortgage, 
people who have got mortgages and so on.  
Because we’ve got a record of devaluation 
and the Germans haven’t, which will be the 
core of the system, we would pay I think 
greater, a premium on our interest rates. 
I think too that we would lose some of the 
inward investment  which has been very 
important to Britain. Something like forty 
per cent of our exports at the moment come 
from foreign-owned firms and that’s been a 
tremendous boost at a time when a lot of 
British industries of the traditional kind 
have been struggling. And the third reason 
I would say it’s damaging is that our 
influence in this thing called Europe, the 
European Union, would be so much less. We 
would be peripheral to what was going on. 


 We would be in a small minority of 
countries and I think for Great Britain 
that’s a pretty hopeless future. We want 
to be at the centre of things, not on the 
edge. 

 Peter Sutherland 
 Do you think it would be possible to 
Caption:  sustain membership over the medium to long 
PETER SUTHERLAND term by remaining outside a single 
CHAIRMAN, GOLDMAN SACHS currency with virtually everybody else in 
INTERNATIONAL the European Union inside a single 
currency? 

John Monks 
 You see I think it would be difficult to 
stay in the European Union indefinitely if 
we were floating our currencies against 
the Euro. If, as some people would argue, 
we actually pegged the level of the pound 
to the Euro then we get all the 
disadvantages of being in the Euro without 
 any of the influence and the advantages 
and probably still pay a premium on 
interest rates but I think, if we float 
against it, then it’s a matter of time 
before there’s tremendous tensions between 
us and the Euro area about devaluations or 
revaluation, probably devaluations on the 
long-term given our recent economic 
history, and that could blow us out of the 


 European Union which would be tremendously 
damaging. 

 Peter Sutherland 
 Thank you, Mr Monks.

 David Dimbleby 
 Norman Lamont. 

What is absolutely fascinating is that the time is different, yet the pattern of the subject is almost identical to the present prevalent "LOW DRONE" we find drowning us in the Legacy News-Media in the newspapers, webpages, radio and television mediums.

You can read the above or watch the video link.

I was just watching the latest BBC Question Time and the deception over the Norway Option was manifest once again:-

Summary from White Wednesday refining Paul Reynolds "Norway Scorecard"

Unfortunately this scorecard won't be broadcast far and wide by the BBC so instead we have:-

• Shabana Mahmood - Labour MP for Birmingham Ladywood
• Sal Brinton - House of Lords Peer and President of the Liberal Democrats

Emitting their "low drone" and suffusing the British electorate with it. Do they know what they speak of? If not they cannot speak of it. 

 Here's a most illuminating consequence of our "Babel-17" language on the EU Referendum: Pawel Swidlicki now TALKS FOR PEOPLE!!! because he knows what they want - OR, because people like him exploit the "low drone" language that people use to speak about the subject.... [Details: Norwegian model or Norway Option a lot like EU / Europe; Flexit or FLEXCIT]

There are 2 very hard results to discuss here:-

1. The language of the EURO matches the language today of the EU immaculately in it's shape, it's pattern, it's tendencies: Above all: It's severe limitations.
2. This language allows our "betters" to think for us and hence speak instead of us.

 It's probably for the best if you don't give Martin Durkin any money

Yet more Babel-17; coming to cinemas near you in 2016!!!

EU Sketches: The Importance of Being Ernest

The Eurozone: Seen better days

 Cameron's EU-Turn

Project: Projecting Fear aka FUD

 Leave: "motion & agitation" may feel good...

See No EU, Hear No EU, Speak No EU

Tax-Payer held hostage by banks held hostage by EU

Let Them Eat 1/28th Cake! 

Cameron's EU Reform

EU Supranationalism: Time to put this idea into the bin?

Merkel's Feeding of the 10,000 pigeons

Thanks for being so honest, for once!

 Poor Old UKIP

 The Real Global Top Tables

Britain's EU "influence"

Global Britain: Feeling Left Out?

Some humour to keep things light-hearted and hopefully generate some warm laughter during the dark, cold Winter months.

Learning Politics Can Be Fun!

The Fluorescent Scorpion Test

In the first blog, How do you become a "eurosceptic Brexiteer"?  I cited that I'd attended a meeting in Dawlish, on the coast of Devon, of extraordinary quality: Brexit: the Dawlish experience. One of the (many) things said on the day as being interesting:-

"With that, what people are also learning is that politics can be fun. For a day's outing, the 35-plus that attended found it an entertaining, challenging day, from which we all learnt and all benefitted."

About a year later, the next September, at Leaming Spa this time I also attended a second meeting which again I found conducive, as per When To Attend/Hold Meetings, EU Referendum: not just another meeting. One person I met and was very grateful to listen to, told me an interesting thing at lunch. "If they asked a politician whether or not they would vote yes or no (in/out; remain/leave) in a Referendum on our membership and that politician did not give a direct (no/out/leave) answer then this was a hugely economical test of that particular politician's credibility", as per MIND THE (Credibility) GAP! I would like to thank that person with this blog with the idea of suggesting a name for such a test:-

The Fluorescent Scorpion Test

When you shine an Ultraviolet (UV) light in the dark, the scorpion's body lights up with a fluorescent glow, making it particularly easy to spot and stand out against it's surroundings. The same concept applies to the above "Test Question" 

A lot of hard work has been put into reading huge amounts of material and from time to time a new concept is coined or used which makes learning politics fun from time to time! So here's a list to add to our newly coined scorpion!

Six key mistakes that could lose the referendum

The Monkey And "Typewriter"

Shooting at the wrong targets...

Fat Cats are the real target: Siemens

EU Referendum: Hurdles To Exit

The Boiling Frog slowly cooks without realizing it!

EU Reform: Barking Cats

Barking Cats: Have you ever heard one? Neither have I.

It's Purple Banana Time!

Purple Bananas: Totally relevant?

The Enemy Within

A Judas Goat: The Tory "eurosceptics" leading to slaughter

EU Referendum: the Norway Model

The Norway Model sounds like, but looks VERY different to The Norway Option!!

Dead Chicken Media

Dead Chicken Media: Laced with "industrial strength tranquillisers"

The international elephant in the room

Elephant in the Room: The fallacy of omission's unavoidable presence.

Jean Monnet's "Engrenage": Destination Unknown?

Engrenage:"Gears" (french) small gears move big gears over time

Overcoming The Monster

Overcoming The Monster: Ignore the rules of the quest at your peril!

Fallacy of The "Wrong Turn"

"The Wrong Turn": Excusing the inexcusable by the unspeakable?

As mentioned in When To Attend/Hold Meetings and in Learning & Playing The Rules Of The Game break-throughs in understanding often hinge on Definitions, decomposing the guiding Rules which are conducive to "Concept Shifts". We've just looked at how David Cameron is attempting to master the language of the debate before it's even started with his "Middle Way Fallacy" from the previous blog Using A Macroscope on Cameron's Reform and how this is an attempt to distort The Brexit Number & The EU Onion real picture of Brexit in relation to the EU itself, using another concept of the EU as an Onion of concentric layers towards the core.

When we achieve these concept shifts, often it can be experienced as an exercise of focus where are skills of understanding are matched by an appropriate challenge and we fall into the timeless FLOW + CHANNEL as per Power To The People:-

Even at low skill and low challenge level we can tap FLOW: The psychology of optimal experience; which often accompanies forming a "good fit"  from using a newly created or encountered "model of understanding" of a new concept: Learning becomes it's own reward and is fun, as perhaps you can see above.

As per Pete North in A word about "showing unity" . Other politicians will suggest that "eurosceptics" should be clever and resort to a Middle Way to win and we can describe them as Judas Goats as this goes contrary to developing Power To The People. Others yet again will try to dodge the question of how they will vote for various reasons who are politicians who obviously have given up on the people as per You know, we're just not reaching that guy. and for them we can apply The Fluorescent Scorpion Test. In all cases, however there's a distinction: Where people are really trying to learn and develop the democracy and quality of our politics, there is likely a correlation with the attempt to inject some "flow" into the experience for others: Away from apathy and anxiety towards real control (not the lip-service the politicians peddle) and arousal to the challenges our political system is supposed to be designed to help resolve successfully.

That's as good a "Rule Of Thumb" over who to trust in the upcoming Referendum as any:-

Pub Signs

The Hand In Hand Pub on Wimbledon Common, London, UK

I've always enjoyed different pub names and their signs outside. Above, The Hand In Hand pub on Wimbledon Common always struck me as both a nice name and an appealing sign outside too. From yesterday's blog I thought to myself, The Knight 'N Knave might be a good name and a good sign too, for a pub, if "We The People" win the Referendum vote?

According to Historic UK, under their article Pub Signs Of Britain:-

"The origin of inn signs goes back to the Romans. The 'Tabernae' would hang vine leaves outside to show that they sold wine - in Britain, as vine leaves are rare (due to the climate!), small evergreen bushes were substituted. One of the first Roman tavern signs was the 'Bush'. Early pubs hung long poles or ale stakes, which might have been used to stir the ale, outside their doors. If both wine and ale were sold, then both bush and pole would be hung outside."

"The naming of inns and pubs became common by the 12th century. With pub names came pub signs - as the majority of the population could not read or write. In 1393, King Richard II passed an Act making it compulsory for pubs and inns to have a sign (his own emblem the 'White Hart' in London) in order to identify them to the official Ale Taster. Ever since then, inn names and signs have reflected, and followed, British life at that time."

Old Coffee House, Soho, London

 

Looking at the above public house in Soho, London, The Old Coffee House, the similar public place for people to meet and chat and talk as per Coffee Houses:-

The 17th-century French traveler and writer Jean Chardin gave a lively description of the Persian coffeehouse scene:

"People engage in conversation, for it is there that news is communicated and where those interested in politics criticize the government in all freedom and without being fearful, since the government does not heed what the people say. Innocent games... resembling checkers, hopscotch, and chess, are played. In addition, mollas, dervishes, and poets take turns telling stories in verse or in prose."

In Argument Abstraction the idea of "sticking" to the central point of the argument would promote superior quality arguments and ways with which we resolve our disagreements and hence promote quality democracy on a greater scale. The problem of actually achieving this basic state was considered in The Knight 'N Knave and how the increase in complexity (fragility), in magnitude (fear) and in unpredictability (uncertainty) were effectively weapons of discouragement to people making decisions based on their risk vs pay-off perception.

looking at the Pub Signs, and their practical reasons under conditions when most people were simply "illiterate" in their origins for public use, it is possibly instructive to compare today's "Political illiteracy" and lack of political knowledge across the public, aka "The 90 Fools" as per Argument Abstraction. It seems to me that FLEXCIT acts as another major Concept Shift:-

The Referendum Question = Time Point = Fixed Event = Brexit as Threshold Defined

Both our present Frame Of Reference = Supranational Membership for >40yrs and our possible/potential future, Frame Of Reference = Intergovernmentalism are both Complex. Arguments will easily become bogged down in details, and that makes the work of "The Nine Knaves" that much easier than of that of the "One Knight" to educate and inform "The Ninety Fools" (The People and yes that's what the Knaves really think of their people for letting them in charge: Derision!). What FLEXCIT does is:-

 

FLEXCIT: Light-Years ahead of all other Brexit plans

• Identify the link between the pre-Referendum ie the Campaign (reduce uncertainty loops)
• The minimization of Risk on the decision itself Quadrant 1 tendency as much as possible (reduce magnitude and hence over-promising also!)
• Understand that processes work more superior if they are "iterative" as opposed to all the other Brexit plans which are "declarative" fallacies" (reduce fallacies via minimizing assumptions)

 This is an attempt to abstract the essential qualities of FLEXCIT itself; let alone actually analyse in detail it's sheer complexity on policy and strategy and conceptual power. And hence returning to the idea of pub signs, the actual decision itself if accepting that the Central Point of the Argument is Disagreeing absolutely with Supranational Membership and replacing it with Intergovernmentalism leads to the Pub Sign Equivalent for people to use, of FLEXCIT on the Referendum Day:-

 Arguing The Central Point + Using a Pub Sign "to go with the words"!

I've laboured in thinking how could I possibly provide the shortest, simplest answer to being asked why I think people should vote "LEAVE" supposing a TV Crew and all the crassness of that context was put to me. And I think the idea of The Pub Sign as a means of communicating to a politically illiterate people (thanks to the Knaves who have seen to this result being sustained for decades, bear in mind) then if they complain that's "over-simplifying" the decision, they have only themselves to blame. What all arguments hinge on whether or not their quality is the zenith of the nadir of the "pyramid of Argument Hierarchy Quality" is Honesty and Truth with which hence to make an informed and free decision on. Take that away and you take peoples' real political freedom from them.

Given we do have FLEXCIT, we can use that promote the idea of The Referendum Question as a Pub Sign with which to act as a guide for people who just want a good drink of democracy on their life's travels without the lies of politicians depriving them of that one simple demand!