Sunday Reading: The Political Tea Leaves of Brexit

Don't bother with the legacy news-media's pontificating political analysis: It's all revealed here, above: "All is said and all is revealed!" Did I mention already, it's all here, everything is explained.

People are too easily impressed: Just start wearing a funny-looking hat (or a red scarf) and you're now a recognizable celebrity with a distinct "style". Maybe even talk "funny" and you'll be hailed as a football master tacticien. Now if you're a political analyst, you can slide over the Polls and "voila/ici" you're in business: In fact newspapers and politicians can even just not bother with the polls and make a claim and it's as good as, "I checked the tea leaves - they never  lie because they can't lie!"

Actually the tea-leaves are not necessarily very different from the polls on people. Both seem to be useful within their respective scopes. And what is that? I think it's an external mechanism to remove the internal anxiety loop that afflicts decision-making. The mechanism allows a process of making a decision to begin.

Looked at that way, it's actually fairly useful for psychological reasons, even if for accuracy reasons it's completely useless. For example sometimes a choice can be made merely by choosing to toss a coin: Head -> X or Tails -> Y.

In fact, I think what we're talking about when talking about these types of mechanisms to make a choice is "A Low Information Environment".

In the previous blog, The Political Nexus: Turning Governance Into Garbage, it was considered that in such an environment of complex systems for politicians, interacting with people in democracy who operate their own voting decisions in a low information environment, the trend is inevitable: A gap between Noise and Signal widens in the decision-making basis. It's inevitable because the lack of useful data to use dictates the decisions made which become institutionally more geared to "Blame Risk" and all the associated features of that listed: Rigid, Opaque, Disconnected etc etc.

I think at the moment there's a great deal of "blame" searching going on post-Brexit: 48% of voters "backed the wrong horse" while 52% of voters some of whom probably backed an imaginary horse!!!

Let's look at this in a simple way:-

Post Referendum Fallout

A reversal or roles between remain and leave pre and post result, between honest and possible criteria, oddly enough. Of course the "common wisdom" peddled is that "no-body knows" if remain or leave was the better choice. The tendency is that economically it was better to remain but politically this was not so and hence the referendum which was reckless to give to such low information people but democracy and on and on "ad stupidium". "But no-body is really sure" is probably the "last word" to shut everybody up! Much is made of the dishonestly that Vote Leave promulgated hence the "zero" score. If people were a bit more careful they could probably work out a lot of very interesting things about that result... too bad.

So without going down that rabbit-hole, how is the above possible to resolve? I think it's clear that the groups themselves can be broken down into 2 sub-groups each for ease of communication:-

The common conception has been that Leave is dictated by the "extreme branch" of Brexit and the "will of the 52%" will therefore dictate all of the 100% via that extreme group of people. Too often commentators have bitched about "why should 48%" be dictated to? WRONG! "Why should a measly 10-20%, if that, dictate the other 80%? Hmm lower the percentages and you'd almost land up with a General Elections for Representative Democracy  which is apparently norm people are apparently more at ease with!! But, b-but "experts" though...

Why this mistake? Let's look at a well-known phenomenon in communication at mass scale:-

Remember there's various elements going on here:-

1. A Referendum IS more likely to arouse the dissatisfied who want to "pin the blame" somewhere on someone.
2. Blame is a combination of a perception of lack of clarity/honesty involved in a negative outcome and tracking back the source of this. Hence the search starts with "naming" so that "blaming" can occur to eventually lead to "claiming" in this case Brexit the prize of consolation.
3. The legacy news-media appears to thrive commercially on "conflict narration" and always jumps at a chance to blame or credit someone. For example just look at the England Football team: From Hero to Zero faster than any other substance known to man. They'll look for the hero of the team or the scape-goat and pile questions on this angle. Hideous.
4. People are incredibly low information on the politics of the UK and worse the EU politics of the UK (it's complement Brexit). This has the likes of Tim Farron in the extreme remain vs the Farage or Fox or Davis in the extreme Leave. Each is going to haggle the other with extreme bidding to catch the attention of the low information public.
5. If we do look at polls as Roland Smith of the ASI has done: Sizing the ‘Liberal Leave’ position...

You can read the poll summaries at your leisure. This may seem a contradiction of the introduction to this blog, which was fairly critical of polling, comparing it to "reading tea leaves" and now uses the evidence/data compiled above to prove an assertion (ie popular = 1= marginal remain + leave = Liberal Leave).

Well intuitively or using common sense, and calming down a bit, a lot of people were dissatisfied with the EU's outcome or goals achieved (the signal behind the noise) yet the option or risk against changing this was perceived to be too great to change. Or to be even simpler: The LACK OF POLITICAL OPTIONS available for solutions appeared to absent. Why make a decision when there is no clear solution but high risk? That is imho a very sensible decision by marginal Remain voters. We could get all analytical concerning the Leave position on solutions, and I won't bother because this blog is a running record of the work of FLEXCIT which has survived the test of time against all the other dismal plans or solutions. What this tells you without bothering to deduct or derive the conclusion is that the data or signal here is fairly accurate to predictions of the future possibilities.

So what do those tea leaves tell us? We'll see the middle merge in this argument and it will reconcile views when broken down into constituent features or modules that they BOTH SHARE IN COMMMON for example head of the list:-

• Single Market MEMBERSHIP OF
• list.......

What we'll see is a reconciliation on honesty, post-Brexit it will be clearly possible politically and above economically to forge another new option of relationship of the UK with the EU. This "new information" will itself alter the group responses in polls given time further.

That leaves two different groups: The extremes. The Remain Extremes will have a result that they can belong to: The next Fiscal New Treaty of the Eurozone. Good luck with that! That will make clear that group's horrible dishonesty. And the extreme leavers? Again the impossibility of options makes it null and void whether or not their preference is the best Brexit in the whole wide world. They're not so much creating a rod for their back (they're on the winning side) as much as creating a lightning rod of themselves for the other groups to blame for all the unnecessary confusion and conflict!

Thus we'll see the beginning "punit square" above merge and become domestically compatible between what has to be or needs to be done and what people want to be done. The quote of Harold Wilson: "Politics is either a question of presentation or timing (mostly)."

Yes, Representative Democracy probably is something like that. It might one day be a quote from someone else that "Real (direct) Democracy is mostly a question of (voter) information and timing." 

On that last note:-

Campaign For An Independent Britain

There's other and I'd assert stronger ways of "voting" than merely scratching a "X" on a piece of paper x1 every 5yrs or 41yrs (!)... A more "informative and actively participating" way, since 1969.

Both The Campaign For An Independent Britain and EUReferendum.com provide:-

• High quality information
• Various services and organizations
• Direct donation facility

It's clearer to me what I get from them as opposed to what I get from politicians/MP's in Westminter or MEP's in the EU.

Referendum: Relief, Recovery; Some Humour and New Paths Ahead.

Great fun! And a lovely day out at such an unusual and idiosyncratic event.

The Bottle Inn, Marshwood, Dorset hosts "The World Eating Stinging Nettles" competition each year around the week-end of the 21st June (Midsummer). This occurred a few days before this Summer, and indeed the week before our Referendum. I had the chance to go along last year and took the above photo with a great deal of interest as you can see from the crowd in the sunshine with the Summer rainclouds in the background against the lush foliage of Midsummer. It was a great day out and lots of Real Ales on offer too as part of the festival.

The captivating spectacle is such as this borrowed from the mirror:-

 Attribution: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/anyone-nettle-eating-8-weird-3737825

The leaves have to be eaten, washed down with a drink, I think, and the total number of stems eaten within a couple of hours if I remember correctly is how the results are drawn up for the winner!

Now imagine after the Referendum, many of the Remain voters (not all) will wake up with a bowl or dish of stinging nettles in front of them for breakfast and their reaction might be palpably similar to the above reaction!!!

Given enough time, and common sense and debate, it is more than likely that such distaste will dim for a lot of people as "nothing really changes" for the next so many years given it's a gradual and slow process to effect change practically in the politics anyway, firstly. Secondly with the realization that what counted as performance (campaigns) bears very little resemblance to what is now the result (Leave/Brexit advisory result) then again there will be opportunity for relief for a lot of people from the initial unpleasant reactions.

Finally recovery can only be fully realized when results are found to be positive in consequence as opposed to negative, confirming that a decision made was a "good one" afterall.

However, before then there will likely be a lot of people who make an emotional mistake: They have created a self-identity and stake in a particular position which no result will touch: in fact such a sense of defeat will likely lead to the situtation where:-

 attribution: http://www.real-fix.com/bizarre/chef-creates-and-eats-his-own-version-of-the-worlds-hottest-pot-noodle/

They will look for more confirmation bias to reinvigorate their previous position. Hence the Legacy News-Media, obligingly and politicians calculating for their own craven reasons, will seek to feed people such "chillies and nettles" to get them frothing full of rage and tears at such a feast!!!

I'm already seeing a lot of people attempting to "swallow bitter, hot and stinging" more news and attitudes such as:-

• Crash in the Pound!
• Meltdown in the Markets!
• The EU Strikes Back!!
• Already people are packing their bags and piling onto the life-rafts!
• They lied to us! They lied to us!
• Start the thermo-nuclear Article 50 countdown NOW!NOW!NOW!!

Hopefully you "get the picture". But more interesting than these stupid news stories is the demand for them: People actively seek them out and WANT to eat "bitter" and "scorching hot" and "stinging pain".

• This Is Just the Start of the Brexit’s Economic Disaster (New York Times)
• Chaos was predicted and chaos has ensued & Britain is sailing into a storm with no one at the wheel (The Economist)
• Sterling falls to fresh 31-year low as banks and builders slide (The Guardian)
• Britain faces up to waning influence on global stage (The Financial Times)

Personally, I admit, after a long day sitting at a computer, either typing or coding, I tend to feel a bit "zombie-numb" and either stimulus of exercise (ping-pong or fuzzball are great for this!) or a hot Indian Curry, really get my juices flowing again from perma-freeze! So I have to be even-handed in suggesting on a wider scale, people like their news this way (eg tabloids Daily Mail and Sun and Mirror) but when you asshat journalist sources as above masquerading as something "more serious" well all I can say is repeat my previous preference that I look forward to the day robots replace these "journalists".

On the other side of this "transaction": Why do people behave in such an irrational way? Partly it's emotional digestion and developing a taste for such things like eating junk food and drinking sugary fizzy drinks. I think however part of the recovery from a Referendum is in having a sense of humour about the whole decision-making process and avoiding the band-wagon opportunist politicians who want to stir people up, the better to control them for their own "Game Of Thrones" that's going on right now everywhere in Westminster:-

Brexit: alarm bells 

And then following, Dr. RAE North's subsequent blog:  the above up with a serious rerun on Article 50 (The Leave Alliance: Article 50 - An Explainer):-

"With David Cameron skulking in No 10, declining to face the challenge of dealing with the aftermath of the referendum, and Corbyn's opposition party crumbling before our very eyes, the nation is currently without an effective government or opposition.

The ruling Conservative Party has shattered into warring factions and no one group has sufficient support to be able to elect a leader outright, while the plotters continue to position Alexander (aka Boris) Johnson as leader-in-waiting.

Meanwhile, Sky News's Faisal Islam "reveals" that Vote Leave doesn't have an exit plan. Having spoken to a Tory MP from Vote Leave, he learns that the plan does not exist. Faisal quotes the anonymous MP as saying: "There is no plan. The leave campaign don't have a post-Brexit plan".

The apparent absence of any such plan is adding to the uncertainty but, in terms of the media narrative, this is undoubtedly deliberate. Faisal knows full well of the existence of Flexcit which has had well over 80,000 downloads and is approaching the 100K mark. Yet he – and even journalists who have previously mentioned it - are studiously ignoring its existence.

There is a certain wilful stubbornness about this, which defies rational expectation. Even MPs and others, anxious to block the ascendency of Mr Johnson, and who are thus determined to produce their own plans, are ignoring the material in front of them, preferring to reinvent the wheel, mostly in any shape but round.

We thus see all around us the beginnings of the debate that we should have been having before the referendum, but at so basic a level that issues we were discussing four or five years ago are now only just being aired."

What you have above is a demonstration of the opposite of feeding people chillis or stinging nettles to rouse them up! If you prefer some healthy debate and knowledge increase, the above is the first of it post-Referendum, but which was already being "served" as far back at least as 2012 and further back in some regards still.

Now, the important thing to realize between the two types of "information" is that all essential measure: TIME. I personally have not got time to be pissing around with the Legacy News-Media or our stupid big-gob politicians duplicities and survival strategies in their own enclosed and from the outside perverse ecosystem of advancement and personal power. 

So much work was put into this subject by The Leave Alliance, and when I read The Sunday Telegraph newspaper "EU Special" on my commute to work yesterday, all I saw was one break-through article amid the sea of garbage: A sea of drama of politicians doing politics but without the politics and without the people!!! Look at this:-

• Front page: Cameron vs Boris.
• Page 2-3: Gove and Wife outside house
• Page 4-5: Farage (Mr. UKIP)
• Page 6-7: EU Leaders around a petit dejeuner table & a david blair FUD article full of bs.
• Page 8: Lord Hill and then Page 9: Bootleconometrics
• Page 10-11: Corbyn, Corbyn, Corbyn.
• Page 12-13: Cameron and Wife with Osborne, Macmilland & Heath
• Page 14: Vote Leave the inside story...
• Page 16-17: Sturgeon (A rotting head of the SNP) & Sinn Fein something...
• Page 18-19: FUD Economics on Domestic and European fronts
• End of EU Referendum Special.
• BUSINESS section: "In then out, up then down, a day of rollercoaster turmoil and shocks". 

 One good article Roland Smith: We have the chance to forge a new Britain and Europe that we are all at ease with.  

As per my previous blog, I have a minor problem even with this: It's tailored to the tastes of those with chilli addiction. It really needs some communication that is more "structured information" beyond the use of words mixing Aristotle's guide to political process: Logos, Pathos and Ethos.

For example coming back to Article 50:-

"On that basis, it is a given that it is not in any way politically or legally realistic to frame any exit strategy which does not conform fully to the provisions of international and treaty law. Strategies really need to be road-tested for compliance, before they are given a public airing.

For the likes of the odious Johnson, Gove and many others, therefore, I am addressing the general principles which strategists should keep in mind. These essentially amount to five points.

Firstly, the right of a Member State to leave the EU lies outside the EU Treaties. The Treaties neither confer the right to leave or impose any conditions which might affect the decision. As Article 50 of the Treaty of the European Union (TEU) itself states:

1. Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.

Article 50, therefore, simply recognises the state of the art. This Article applies only after the decision to leave has been made.

Secondly, the procedural choices on leaving are then limited by international law. We are not allowed pick 'n' mix options, dipping into different treaties to come up with our own desired mix.

We are bound by the principle of lex specialis derogat legi general (special law repeals general law), which is regarded as a fundamental tenet of international law. In short, whenever two or more laws or treaty provisions deal with the same subject matter, priority goes to that which is more specific.

Where Article 50 makes specific provisions for withdrawal, these take precedence over more general provisions, as in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT). We do not have the choice of using one or the other. Our choices are determined by lex specialis.

Thirdly, and subject to my further comments, until the Article 50 procedure is complete, the UK remains bound by the provisions of the EU Treaties, with all the rights, responsibilities and obligations.

As parties to the Treaties, we are obliged under international law to conform with their provisions. This general obligation is conferred by virtue of Article 26 of the VCLT, under the universally recognised provision of pacta sunt servanda: "Every treaty in force is binding upon the parties to it and must be performed by them in good faith".

As one of the major guarantors of the writ of international law, it is inconceivable that Her Majesty's Government could countenance a breach of pacta sunt servanda. The international ramifications would be profound, with implications far beyond just relations with the Union and its member states. It would gravely weaken the international standing of the United Kingdom.

Therefore, inasmuch as we are obliged to resort to Article 50 by virtue of lex specialis, the principle of pacta sunt servanda obliges us to comply with its provisions."

This groundwork is incredibly important, as it structures the start of subsequent possible solutions as well as sharpening up hence what is communicated to people as to what is possible and what is not by direct reference to the rules we are all agreeing to live by with each other!

So much time was spent by The Leave Alliance, in particular Pete North attempting to "keep in check" the multiple sources of error conflation from both UKIP (Complete Bastard, the hero we all deserve!) and Legacy News-Media and Politicians (Pete North's Politics Blog).

So much wasteful energy & time spent. And in fact if you are a Remain advocate still still disappointed with the EU Referendum: Think on this: We can cut out a large area of wasteful activity bickering about what something means (to whom and by whom????), and get on with the job (to borrow Cameron's favourite phrase) of actually doing something directly for the UK by the UK!! And besides, here's a wise head with perhaps a more useful and enjoyable meal of news for you:-

Europe makes Brexit-voting UK look like a safe haven ~ Merryn Somerset Webb

As for me, back blogging already, but different paths and directions await; I don't want to have to keep commenting on commentators who should "know better"... there's some really interesting stuff regarding the next 10yrs that I want to sink my teeth into next given we have this golden opportunity ahead of us now (~14mins in) and ahead of time, too:-

edit: blue bug!

Arguments or Relationships 1st? Modern Family & "Emotional Digestion"

Variation, differences & Arguments... but long-term family relationships

I remember watching Modern Family in 2011 in Australia, and enjoying it a lot. It's useful to point out that everyone deals with each other daily and finds ways of getting along with each other even at the same time as dealing with how they don't get along, but I think with the ultimate thought that afterall, a family needs to understand that their relationships in whatever shape or combination or quality needs to be managed over the long-term.

With respect to Brexit and the EU and the Referendum, many different narratives have been applied to "shape it" in a way that is universally recognizable by the public and politicians and news-media, for once all tending to agree on what is actually being talked about! An example that won't go away is that of "A Marriage", from Daniel Hannan's "A Doomed Marriage" to David Cameron's "A Marriage Of Convenience" to perhaps Nick Clegg's "A Marriage Made In Heaven" (!). Well... people's gut feeling  (CIB) is I think the main far removed now from Nick Clegg's views of "this marriage". Daniel Hannan's I think is stoking the wrongs of the arrangement in a group of people but not very helpful and David Cameron's is maybe sounding practical but does not feel emotionally satisfying... indeed I think again most peoples' gut feeling is that a Remain vote won't resolve these underlying "emotional fissures" even if they feel that this is the most sensible option to remain in the Single Market and enjoy our present "Special Status" in the EUropean Union "Family".

Jared Diamond in traditional garb: The Traditional remains within the Modern.

There's an interesting anecdote recalled by Jared Diamond in context to how people relate to each other and especially so when "differences" arise in a communities In Conversation Jared Diamond: full transcript:-

"That’s true and I discussed examples in my book of the un-moderness of modernity. I point out the distinction between modernity, between modern societies and traditional societies is not an either or. But I go though some examples of what is embedded within modern society is a lot that is still traditional.

For example: rural areas of modern society, Montana where my wife and kids and I spend our vacations. When Montana ranchers have a dispute they don’t call a lawyer, they don’t call police they deal like New Guineans because they know that that rancher has been there for 20 years. That rancher his or her children could be there for the next 50 years.

Right or wrong what the cow did on that particular day, that’s secondary. You got to deal with the rancher for the next 50 years. And so the focus is on dispute resolution in a traditional way where the goal is to re-establish a relationship and to maintain the ability to interact with each other, rather than right or wrong as the law states in a society."

Now, I'm going to make a very very bold assertion or claim:-

"The entire Referendum Campaign and indeed much of the prior arguments have been restricted in accordance with "Resolution of Relationships" and the Political Movement to manage "Emotional Digestion" between different actors."

What I'm claiming is that so much vastness of so-called "higher forms of decision-making" at the national level and international level are about as traditional and "tribal" even as you care to consider from Papua New Guinea or Rural Montana: Far from being the "Bleeding Edge" of intellectual "rights and wrongs" of Globalization, Barriers To Trade, Multiple Guises of Trade, Unbundling, Harmonization of regulations and standards convergence, or the deeper insights into the nature of the EU from "Engrenage" or The Monnet Method, Beneficial Crisis, Industrialization of Warfare genesis of the EU Supranational design and so much more... there is mainly arguments avoiding these issues in accordance with ensuring the "status" of actors is carefully balanced in their emotional relations to each other at the political "world stage" levels of diplomacy and the like.

All along I've held sympathy with this in particular considering the fragility of the Eurozone. Indeed people prove themselves to be "apparently beyond rational decision-makers and the need to manage populations in an emotionally subtle manner may warrant some of the "delusional decision-making" that seems to occur. However, there are repercussions (to an exacting degree) and they can be claimed with significant confidence:-

The Mysterious Affair at The IEA Brexit Prize Competition... and Vote Leave.

• IEA Brexit prize: a challenge
• IEA Brexit prize: the farce continues
• EU referendum: voting out to stay in
• Brexit: a lack of realism from Bootle
• Brexit: questions to answer
• Brexit: The Winning Entry?
• Brexit: interesting coincidences
• IEA Brexit prize: last post
• Brexit: another nail in the coffin?

The above is a list of EUReferendum.com blogs on FLEXCIT's submission to the IEA Brexit Prize and the dubious process involved. The loss was significant firstly in monetary value of EUROS: 100,000 but as significant given this 100,000 would most likely have been reinvested in The Leave Alliance:-

The Leave Alliance: Showing how much can be productively done with so little

Worse, is the fact that the competition acted as an "smother" of the intellectual side to Brexit. Now this is an accusation you can read about in the above blog series. I'm far from a rampant "fan" jilted and out for revenge. My point of contention is much more savage: This is the sort of stunt or trick you'd expect in a Soviet Era government on it's people. There's dozens of examples of the trickery invoked to control people in the most manipulative and totalitarian methods. Yes, the stunt pulled here is an exhibition of a lack of democracy in action in the UK in our politics to ensure fair and free competition of ideas outside of those who hold onto power. The mendacity is costly.

The result was burying Mannsfields "magical numbers" entry in the economics of Brexit instead of which is what FLEXCIT achieves, defining the problem as a political one by decomposition of the problem (iterative withdrawal - the singular brexit plan on this paradigm shift - certainly of the many IEA candidates I read up at the time). Indeed the behaviour of the entire campaign is a masquerade of actual arguments burning off peoples' emotions in all areas of the UK until people feel "the referendum is a neverendum going nowhere ruled by Project Fear or Project Fantasy, equally resulting in "I don't know how to vote"."

IF - FLEXCIT had won the IEA Brexit Prize, and we'll see perhaps why it should have in a moment, the knock on effect of search results on google, on the entire shape of the argument of Brexit and "narrowing down solutions" leading to adult discussion of consequences and how to manage them could have been made possible. Doubly so when we look at The Electoral Commission's eventual designation to Vote Leave above!! With none other than Lord Lawson rearing again. In such circumstances with FLEXCIT as the prestigious title with more airtime by more people arguing about it, the designation might have been very different and Leave.EU might have been emboldened to adopt the idea (instead of backing off from it asper Aaron Banks).

Now to state my problem with the entire way our politics is conducted, my primary interest is raising the quality of arguments and hence educating and increasing understanding of people/electorate and voters during this Direct Vote Process to improve politics and hence national decision-making with a greater and wider competition of ideas and hence opening up to more sources, for selection and eventual refinement and adaptation and development.

And to come back to this assertion concerning FLEXCIT, fortunately it's all been summarized excellently so by The Brexit Door:-

Flexcit Breaks Cover – Newsnight

“These route maps by Pro Brexit thinkers”, he said, “go by names such as Flexcit, Europe 2.0, or the Liberal Case for Leave.” (Cook’s Piece starts at about 10 minutes)

In reality, Flexcit has been in the hands of the civil service since well before the Referendum was called.

Complexity is unavoidable

However campaigners try to avoid it, the truth is that the world is complex. Looking for simple soundbites might well be the stuff of campaigns in the modern televisual age. It is not the stuff of trade deals and international treaties. This is the real strength of Flexcit, it does the detail, proposes solutions both for short term and long term policy issues, and it is sympathetic to the political and economic issues that arise not just for the UK, but for the negotiators on the other side of the table – the EU 27.

It seems to me the public has merely been privy to the management of relations and indeed the priming the public for whatever new relationship (it will be new on both sides that is "guaranteed") results. Thus this question really is definitively a "Political Question" and a "Political Question" to answer ONLY!

 "The Liberal Case for Leave" - Everyone wants a positive relationship post-Referendum

You can determine this by the entire behaviour of our politicians which is only just in the last few days bubbling up visibly to the surface eg above.

To finish this blog: Previously I've criticized politicians delusional behaviour in The Political Glass Bead Game: Delusional Decision-Making and then I've criticized peoples' ignorance and ease of manipulation (voters) in The Dark Heart of Politics: Barriers To People? I think the combination is where the explanation for the behaviour I've described in this blog resides: Between the two. As suggested, a higher form of quality arguments and hence politics is possible and could have been possible as per FLEXCIT gaining earlier traction 2 years ago or winning the IEA prize (now it's apparently in the hands of the Civil Service) but that did not fit the actual conditions of politics: Politicians and People, and instead the trajectory of developments has led us all to this stage.

What next?

Leave Result: At one level positive change and trends, but at another still so many of the old underlying problems may continue to persist unchanged in how we organize large groups of people.

But to quote Dr. RAE North, even though overall the experience "out in the open" has been negative and indicates the same old problems will persist either result underlying the Referendum, namely that great expenditure is involved in the emotional digestion and preparation when people are involved in politics to the detriment of the actual quality of arguments being used; underneath this there's signs of positive progress in how we conduct our politics:-
 

EU Referendum: the debate moves underground

"We always said it would come to this. As Vote Leave increasingly departs from reality (not that it ever really had any grip), and the "remains" indulge in ever more vacuous rhetoric, what seems to be happening is that people, increasingly disillusioned with the official campaigns, are walking away from them and looking elsewhere for their information. They have come to the same conclusion , our bloggers have, that the legacy campaigners are irrelevant.

This was seen in the Scottish referendum, where vibrant debates were being played out, entirely unrelated to the official campaign and completely under the radar of the media and politicians. The debate went underground.

It is difficult to quantify this phenomenon, as there is not one debate but many. And while the pundits are watching the social media, this is by no means the full extent of the game. The classic forum is still a huge repository of debate and so are e-mail lists, mechanisms by which millions share their views away from what the media like to call the "mainstream"."

Alternatives To Certainty: A Bird In The Hand.

 

 ...and another one (Bullfinches are invariably found in pairs) in the bush!

Yesterday, a male Bullfinch above flew into a window, and stunned itself. Fortunately, it appeared only stunned and needed about 40 minutes to recover before flying away to a nearby apple tree with normal, strong flight returned and alertness in it's behaviour, restored.

Before then, I had picked it up and gone outside and held it in my hand in the sunshine until it had fully "woken up" while it seemed to doze off, at the same time as hoping it was merely stunned and not otherwise seriously injured. Well, it was wonderful to see such a beautiful creature so close and more so that it seemed to make a full recovery and fly away again. The above youtube clip is remarkably similar to my own experience, above, though I did not stroke the bird, merely providing a perch for it, in my hand and for some time a seat as it sat down for a good while too while it closed it's eyes and tried to recover from the stun or shock of it's impact. I remained calm though inwardly feeling consternation for such a bird, one of my favourites, in fact.

So I decided with this thought on my mind of such a beautiful creature to connect the experience with the current topic I noticed on the EU; afterall there's such little inspiration to be had from the channels of communication that so poorly serve the people in how our politics is conducted:-

1. Caroline Lucas was talking about people overestimating how democratic Westminster is.

2. Richard Dawkins was cited as suggesting his own ignorance is (he's actually aware of) is too high for people to really vote on this issue in a direct democratic vote ie Referendum.

3. Following on the daily status quo that "Remain" is the safe option" compared to "Leave" which is the essence of David Cameron's argument.

What I will say about the above: There's a lot of different things going on in what these people say. To briefly explain the arguments:-

1. Caroline Lucas is right: Westminster itself is not very democratic, but the argument she's really making is that for her particular arguments they deserve special status that is even less democratic so that they can't be modified as easily by voters, namely why she supports as a Green the EU.

2. Dawkins is it seems aware enough to assess his own state of ignorance and notice the low quality arguments in the news-media. But he fails to understand that ironically the process of Direct Democracy on the Subject as opposed to the People who espouse (supposedly for a range of subjects) is a positive experience for electorates to feedback on "democracy in action" directly. He also fails to appreciate that this activity promotes a higher trend of increase of knowledge on the subject and more pressure on the low quality arguments polluted by inverting the processes of conclusions and results. Namely polling presumes people already hold conclusions without recourse to results, so it's a question of massaging the message to assume the appearance that appeals to those people!!

3. And hence Cameron's "Devil's Trick" is to blind people to the actual EU Question = "EU Membership" not Economics.

• Description: Above I have described three people's arguments.
• Explanation: I've explained roughly the arguments used.
• Arguments: They each make some statements to form an argument to persuade others of some conclusion they desire or deem good.

This leads us to the question: How do we truly know the value of the above however? Well for that we'd need to deduct as much of the facts as possible. This is a complex process. So much so that:-

1. The complexity has limits to simplification.
2. The logistics of deducting and researching for oneself is necessarily highly involved and demanding and of course may be impractical for communication at a massive scale.
3. Where we can simplify we can make progress. Where we can't we have to rely on alternatives instead of "validation" we rely on "probability".

Hence the old cautionary phrase:-

In fact, Vote Leave have done everything possible it seems to me to ensure people think that Brexit is "a risk, because chances are that you (pl.) could lose everything."

Once people believe the frame of the question is this, then what David Cameron says sounds like the right answer...

... but it's the right answer to the wrong question! As per Roland Smith: Read The Question!

So people can save themselves time if they think and say these things with under a month until the voting day:-

• "I don't know enough how to vote."
• "They're all as bad as each other anyway."
• "It won't change anything anyway if I vote."

Let's look at Caroline Lucas' argument on our own Westminster Politicians:-

• "No Loss of Sovereignty" [Not Happening Argument]
• "There May Be Some Loss of Sovereignty but it's very little." [Happening but insignificant (and not applicable to the UK) Argument]
• "There is Some Loss of Sovereignty but it's worth it." [Happening and Significant and Applicable to the UK) but Positive]
• "Sovereignty is overrated and besides there's nothing we can do about it." [It's Happened already whether or not it's positive or negative and is now "normal" or "the way the world works" / status quo - there is no alternative.

On Richard Dawkins argument:-

• We've missed a Referendum on the previous major treaties, the problem is not a Referendum, it's not enough Referendums on subjects that are smaller and more apprehensible and applicable as and when they are passed for motion for democratic legitimacy by the people.
• We've been in the EEC/EU for over 40 yrs, a long enough time for people to educate more people, so the problem is not the impossibility of knowing, it's the methods or failure of democracy to do just that! See previous.
• His very argument that the Referendum should be an exlusive argument is indeed the very reason why he and so many others feel so ignorance: Because it is an exclusive argument under the current systemic failings of our politics in the UK, that led the UK into the EEC in the first place!

On David Cameron's argument:-

• People voting in the EU Referendum: The big con trick being asked of you is to apparently vote for either one set of Westminster Pro-EU politicians or an alternative set of Westminster Anti-EU politicians and both of their fallacious arguments come a distant second as if this is a General Election.
• This "Devil's Trick" by Cameron and Vote Leave is setting up the "One Bird In The Hand" Inductive Thinking in people to vote Remain.
• One bird in the hand may seem to be "probably" better than speculating on two in the bush. But in fact the Sovereignty of the People of the UK does not belong to either the EU or Westminster!
• This is indeed the question that is being asked in the EU Referendum as Roland Smith correctly points out.
• Knowing that is the question, the answer is simple. What is the best reason to vote to Leave the EU?

 

Success for me was seeing the Bullfinch fly away back into the bush and not in anyone's hand, thankfully!

Rate Of Change: Velleity < Vanity: f(x)Δ > f(x)δ

Getting a grip on change!

Let's imagine X = Time. Y = Degree of Change (DELTA: Δ (large) or δ (small)) over time. The steeper the slope in the above graph the more rapid the rate of change is measured (ie increase in Y over time).

Velleity:-

The marketer Matt Bailey described it as "a desire to see something done, but not enough desire to make it happen".

"Velleity is what keeps companies locked in this mindset of reporting useless numbers. Desiring, even expecting to someday have an epiphany of change, but not willing to change the mindset or the culture of locked-in reporting to achieve it. Nor are they willing to ask the hard questions in order to uncover what must be done."

We could use another physical idea in combination with Rate of Change and Velleity: Inertia to which Isaac Newton described in his Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, which states:-

"The vis insita, or innate force of matter, is a power of resisting by which every body, as much as in it lies, endeavours to preserve its present state, whether it be of rest or of moving uniformly forward in a straight line."

There's a couple of ideas which can be applied to our arguments. Let's start with Rate Of Change:-

Stuck in the middle with EU: How global regulators are killing the value of EU membership ~ Roland Smith

In  the  modern  world,  trading  is  increasingly  organised  at  the  global  level.  It  involves  bodies  ranging  from  private  sector  rule-making  organisations  such  as  the  ISO, to various quasi-governmental institutions under the United Nations and the World Trade Organisation.
 
This has had a growing effect on the logic (or lack of it) for remaining in the EU and it also informs the debate on what Out looks like. The activities of such global bodies are known collectively as ‘global governance’ (as opposed to ‘global government’). There is no single body in play, nor even a 2 coherent group of institutions. Instead the different functions are carried out by a range of organisations which have little in common. The proliferation and reach of global organisations in recent times reflects the advantages they offer to the global trading system. Together they are the real-world manifestation of the word ‘globalisation’. 

These bodies have three specific advantages that the Bruegel think-tank once listed as follows.

1. They ensure more security and predictability than ad-hoc arrangements. Global  rules  provide  core  principles  and  legally  enforceable  commitments  for  all parties. The bodies also offer a forum for settling disputes.
2. Global institutions give a voice to all countries big and small and are accountable to these countries. Critics may complain with some justification about the lack  full  accountability  but  global  institutions  do  ensure  a  degree of fairness and ownership which other solutions lack. In other words, they provide a certain  stability  to  economic  integration  which  would  be  lacking  in  a multipolar world where integration is driven by private stand-alone initiatives only. 
3. Such institutions can be viewed as global ‘public goods’. This is because every time something new needs to be done, they don’t have to start from scratch. This cuts negotiation costs and avoids the long and painful process of defining a collective global response. Well-designed and well governed institutions, therefore, are an asset for all participants in the global economy. 

As more and more issues are addressed at global level, the EU  is  steadily  losing  control  over  its  own  regulatory  agenda.  For  example,  more  than 80 percent of the EEA acquis (and therefore the EU’s Single Market legislation falls within the ambit of existing international organisations and is thus potentially amenable to global regulation (see pie chart below).

Here is a useful description of the "globalization" process and indeed the formation of an identity for it concerning trade. This process is not well known and the rate of change is not well appreciated. In fact our old friend and useful metaphor which Dr. RAE North used can make another appearance:-

Crikey! I'm just waiting for holographic screens and 'information waves' leaving functions "deviceless" and "tubeless" - "extrapolating at this rate of change".

Now so much of the discussion of the UK's options is "EU-Centric" concerning the rate of change or more appropriately "inertia" of failure to change successfully that afflicts the EU. The two can be compared very broadly with respect to the "globalization" of tangibles that can be quantified and digitally so. The latter is with respect to politics which is a form of information that is much more challenging to deal with: Social Information. In fact the more complex the relationships the more "inertia" the system will inevitably build up.

Rate difference and Inertia (resistance to change) difference in one

And this comes onto the psychology: Velleity. In the previous blog we looked at Political Barriers To Entry: An Image Of Power; A Course To Ruin. In particular re-quoting:-

"What is this fantasy? I suspect it's based upon "mixed-motivations": Attempting to win votes is itself a kind of divorced reality of politics from the facts themselves: Indeed we're right back where we started: Big Ideas and the problems of presentation that themselves lead to "other problems"."

It seems to me when the "Big Ideas" become the attachment of personalities who support such "Big Ideas" for whatever reason, maybe they have "invested" so much mental or other form of "capital" into these ideas. And here we see that this is the old form called "Vanity". It seems to me that there is possibly a great requirement to reorientate people's support and investment of belief and nowhere more so than this process which increases in magnitude via centralization of power that dominates and centralizes around SW1 (Westminster, Big Business (CBI) and News-Media), back to "The Road To Serfdom": People/Voters in servitude to ideas which do not serve us well; because they do not reflect a greater notice of what is actually happening in the world as opposed to what is happening in our own minds - or indeed the minds of a select few and their capricious exercise of their own Vanity and social information. This suggestion is beyond my own understanding (I don't have the expertise nor the experience), but what I can inform further on is that idea of globalization:-

Two broad observations: (1) High Quality Arguments and Experience of People talking (2) So Few People in attendance, comparative to this quality.

Fortunately video recording was conducted of the event EU Referendum: questions, questions …

So for expediency and to take on board the advice to "stick to one argument well made" (Thank you!!); to select from my notes of the day the relevant information to the topic of this blog:-

1. Booker recounts the Trend of Thatcher on EU

From The Great Deception, we see an example or indeed "an experiment" of the situation when a politician who makes a big U-Turn over support of the EEC/EC/EU (and subsequently deposed). Christopher Booker mentions the key lesson of Jean Monnet the genuinely gifted "political fixer" to "GRADUALLY CHANGE" towards a Supranational entity; to which as far back as 1961 was aware of. Booker quoted: Hugh Gaitskell:-

"In a speech to the party conference in October 1962, Gaitskell claimed that Britain's participation in a Federal Europe would mean "the end of Britain as an independent European state, the end of a thousand years of history!" He added: "You may say, all right! Let it end! But, my goodness, it's a decision that needs a little care and thought.""

I want to point out that this lesson of "careful deliberation" (in our present time 41 years of EU Membership) also deserves such as "needs a little care and thought", too. Therefore there is no surprise from Semi-Partisan Politics: If The Remain Campaign Succeed In Cheating Their Way To Victory, Their Joy Will Be Short Lived. This rushed through referendum is an exercise of pure Vanity by the politicians and Establishment in power. In effect it shows their cowardice and lack hence lack of courage to "ask the hard questions" and apprehend the changes in the world outside their comfortable bubble world in Westminster (itself hollowing out atst as we'll see concerning the EU).

2. North compares the rate of change

I'm amazed at how prescient Sir James Goldsmith must have been having been recounted some of his own thoughts and words on this subject at the meeting:-

Sir James Goldsmith held a rally to reach 10,000 people. It is hoped that with the age of modern technology and internet distribution of information beyond social information barriers, that the video presentation of the day will reach many more than that number, to reflect the theme of this blog's discussion. I was just listening to today's Andrew Marr Show and both Tim Farron and Theresa May: The Bubble Illusion that they talk from within, and Sir James Goldsmith even points this behaviour out in the above clip back in 1997, let alone 2016! He even points out EFTA (European Free Trade Association).

I need to get back to Globalization, which Roland Smith manages to summarize so effectively and articulately above. Dr. RAE North suggests this "Rate Of Change" difference is our "Stokes Precept" EU referendum: strategy is the problem:-

"Nor is there any recognition of the "Stokes precept", from Richard Stokes, the Labour MP for Ipswich, who on 15 October 1940 told the House of Commons in a debate on war aims that it "... is no use fighting for a negative object. You must have a positive one, and the sooner that [is] stated the better".

To gain a broader acceptance from the majority of the population that we should leave the EU, we must be able to offer a positive object. Simply to fight on the negative one of leaving the EU is not enough. And just to argue for a referendum, without the first idea of how you would win it, is suicide.

Those who refuse to accept this, who robustly argue simply for unilateral withdrawal and expect the nation to rally to that cause, are part of the problem – as much as those like Leadsom, who are arguing for "fundamental reform". Egos really don't matter. It cannot be emphasised enough that what counts is strategy."

There we see the "reason behind the reason" from the last blog: Vanity and the subsequent loss of power and loss of Sovereignty from the people to Parliament and thence to the Supranational EU.

What is remarkable is the present hysteria and propaganda profusion that masquerades as "intellectual honesty" when it is pure unrefined ego and vanity on display. Booker pointed out in his speech the parlous state of this Referendum and we can understand exactly why that is the case when connecting the causes and contexts together to complete the picture:-

The superstitious medieval politics of today

It might be "Save The Children!" or spurious statistics written with a golden pen by a prestigiously titled "institution":-

Ok so the focus of this blog has been side-tracked again! But coming back to the main argument on the day:

3. Creation of a Genuine Single Market

If you notice, Vote Leave have variously advocated:-

• A "Swiss-Style" Deal, better than either Norway or Switzerland
• An FTA "ala S. Korea" or "What Mexico/Chile have got".
• Scrap that, The British Option!
• It's just like "The Canadian FTA" agreement.
• Ok, from Belarus to Iceland to Albania, the Common European Trade Area!

Roland Smith articulately suggests perhaps any of these destinations are agreeable to Vote Leave, but what about: Idle musings: The EEA as a transition point or destination?

Forget Vote Leave, let's look at a conceptual picture that abstracts the key/core concepts of a positive vision, a "Stoke's Precept":-

We can draw some inferences from this remarkably useful diagram from Dr. RAE North's FLEXCIT document:-

1. EU claims member states right of representation on global standards bodies
2. This means our influence is diluted per a "common position" by the EU hence not necessarily specifically per sector in the national interest.
3. The EU "Gold-Plates" some of the regulations that it "downloads" from the global bodies complicated the process.
4. It's indirect and mixes more complex politics with technical regulations thus we can refer to Rate Of Change graph above as product of the EU "inertia". And again as with complexity, more tendency towards "things going wrong" in general.
5. EFTA/EEA members have direct influence or representation over these bodies before they then feed back into the EU.
6. Global Regulation is driving "globalization":-

Here the arrow is indicating the increasing trend of globalization of standards and origins of various legislation "in action": In this "rate of change" argument, this is really where I wanted to get to and finish with:-

The quoted figures:-

• 70-80% of technical standards and regulations are made in Global Bodies
• 90-95% of these various technical standards pertaining to the Single Market have some form of "origin" in Global Bodies.

And the "Globalization" driver behind much of this "Network Effect" to increase World Trade:-

Hence in effect to come back to the talk and quoting by Christopher Booker, Roy Jenkins Speech at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference centre (22 March 1999), quoted in The Sunday Telegraph (28 March 1999).:-

"There are only two coherent British attitudes to Europe:-

1. One is to participate fully...and to endeavour to exercise as much influence and gain as much benefit as possible from the inside.
2. The other is to recognise that Britain's history, national psychology and political culture may be such that we can never be other than a foot-dragging and constantly complaining member; and that it would be better, and certainly would produce less friction, to accept this and to move towards an orderly, and if possible, reasonably amicable withdrawal."

And that brings us to:-

What both sides of the question: Remain and Leave both have to appreciate in their respective advocates is that:-

• Rate of Change will continue to apply at different rates in different directions either Globalization or "Political integration towards Supranationalism": Hence the present Lisbon Treaty is not an end destination but as Roland Smith remarks a "transit" position on "Ever Closer Union" at the same time as Dr. RAE North points out: EFTA/EEA is an interim stage of FLEXCIT: The Market Solution "staged withdrawal".

I think we can put some powerful arguments forwards that measure a degree of change in the world that is important to feed into our decision-making processes as a nation or indeed functional democracy. What we currently see on display, the appearance without the substance of such is Vanity driving Velleity: A lack of positive change despite that particular phrase being such a favourite saying of our politicians and their poverty of prosperous ideas.