The Referendum Show: Rules go with Responsibility

The Deep Convictions of the Cast - How Normal!

The above clip is the opening scene from The Truman Show movie. It's a mix of people being interviewed and providing profound beliefs for the roles they play in this "great tv project" ("of our times..."!). Everyone believes in what they say and it evidently accords with their values and inspirations of "higher things"; only all too often they habitually say their lines in front of product placements... .

It's all perhaps on the first viewing an introduction of "excitement" at the novel idea of a live tv show. On future viewings you can't help notice that this opening scene is terribly, terribly full of the full portents of irony, suffused into the film all the way through towards the final peak of "ekstasis" - and even then irony has the final say beyond that moment, too. Once you've watched the movie and are aware of where the film is heading, you are sharp eyed for every slight perturbation along this theme. It's a good story showing the resolution of a character at the same time as the irony of an indifferent environment to the character's underlying "crisis of self-identity". As another character in another movie once said, Total Recall: "If I am not me? Then who the hell am I?"

 "That's... weird..."

This is not going to be a long and patriotic speech that we are "British" and demand our "Sovereignty" or all the other identity and flag-waving emotions; although speaking to a friend after attending EU Referendum: Leave Alliance launch, they mentioned that the original notion of Sovereignty was probably something defined along the lines as "Not The French." ! No, it's an "epiphany", a way to describe the surreal, bizarre, perhaps madness that is the way in which the communication of this Referendum and indeed the EU and Brexit and our politics is conveyed via the Legacy News-Media by both politicians and journalists and to which many people themselves then take their own opinions from - within this self-contained world.

EU Referendum: beyond stupidity

 Along with David Cameron, Boris Johnson, one of the main cast of actors: But who or what is directing this (virtual) "reality show"?

One of the strangest of strange results that has been operating for at least the last 4 years as far as my own recollection enables me to have personally observed it is this:-

• 1st RULE of the EUROPEAN UNION:-

What are the Rules? Are we committed to follow these rules? Does the historic record confirm this is factual reality? 

If the above, then so:-

• Last RULE of the EUROPEAN UNION:-

Article 50 And Withdrawal: An explainer

Generally when you buy a new appliance, you open up the "How To..." or "Instructions Manual" or if you play a sport you learn the rules of that sport. Why are our politicians not acting responsibly to the public to educate them on the rules?

• The First Rule of the EU: "Ever Closer Union"
• The Last Rule of the EU: "Article 50 Lisbon Treaty"

 Instead we get The Referendum Show:-

The sheer banality and inanity of our journalists and politicians

But I think the biggest joke is on the people who watch this and don't take a look at the rules, at the responsibilities of those rules in both the Remain and the Leave "emotionally incoherent and biased" drives:-

The politicians don't believe the people really want or should want "something else".

As per Lost Leonardo and for the last two years, apart from "Article 50" being side-lined and "Ever Closer Union" being side-lined for the last 43 Years (!) until of course David Cameron can "magically make it all ""go-away"" ":-

The Plan That Must Not Be Named

There is a solution, despite the enormous, the prodigious energies expended by those in power to deter people; the one thing the politicians don't want people to do:-

Spontaneity can often be a simple and honest reaction - if unpredictable

Poor on all the doom, all the threats, all the begging, all the pleading, all the bullying, all the coercing, all the antipathy of these prestigious aggrandizing people, abusing their responsibilities by very simply not referring to the simple rules that were supposedly agreed and are if you read them so simple and so clear in meaning.

It's your life and your choice, for the first time in 41 years. A lifetime in point of fact.

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:-