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"."

An Empty Core: The Top-Down Referendum

 False Positive = Vote Leave ; False Negative = HM Government & David Cameron

With just over 6 weeks until the Referendum day on June 23rd, it's worth considering the state of the arguments and the underlying emotional energy that drives them in the absence of carefully building a factual and intellectually-driven basis for voting either Remain or Leave the EU.

Indeed the emotional histrionics and sense of urgency are all carefully created by the HM Government under David Cameron and aided by Vote Leave (see "Intellectual Quagmire" below).

In describing what we all CAN so easily observe, we may create an opportunity to avoid becoming bogged down in the quagmire that our politicians and legacy news-media have created: EU Referendum: an intellectual quagmire

"With less than two calendar months to go before polling day, it is nothing less than alarming to find that fundamental questions relating to Brexit are so far from being settled by Vote Leave that we're not even past first base. [...]

In the first instance, Jenkin is making the same error (although perhaps unwittingly) that Mr Cameron has made in agreeing his supposed treaty. He has neglected the provisions of Article 61 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, and the dictum res inter alios acta vel iudicata, aliis nec nocet nec prodocet, where two or more people cannot agree amongst each other to establish an obligation for a third party who was not involved in the agreement.

What these amounts to is that the member states, even if they agreed to carry out negotiations (which seems unlikely), would be acting inter-governmentally (which Jenkin acknowledges), which means they could not bind the European Union – which has its own, separate legal identity – to the terms of any agreement.

The inescapable bottom line, therefore, is that, if there is to be an exit settlement, the negotiations have to be with the EU. And that means working within the constraints of Article 50. [...]

We are actually paying good money for this extruded verbal material, to achieve nothing but a further attestation of the capacity of our elected representatives to waste time and money.

Whether by MPs or the official campaign, we are so badly served in this referendum that the issues have been submerged in that self-same quagmire. Not for nothing does Mr Brexit argue that the political game playing and personality politics of the referendum campaign is snatching the goal away from us.

When this is all done and dusted, he says, there needs to be a reckoning. We could not even begin to disagree."

We can see some foundation rules to this Referendum in the above that are denied by the politicians on either side of the Official Campaigns. Some examples of the results of this:-

Michael Gove’s interview on the Andrew Marr Show was a car crash
 

Vote Leave: "Lookin' Good" (feeling inadquate)

Cameron : “Stock up on canned food”

 HM Government/David Cameron: "Gotta Hide!" (feeling insecure)

The result of the above was already predicted as per Dr. RAE North, EU politics: Germany in stasis :-

"The new movement, "Direct Democracy for Europe", Patzelt speaks about favourably. It certainly has "a chance", he says, a man who is demonstrably no great fan of representative democracy.

Those who want more democracy must resort to other means - referendums initiated by citizens, regardless of elections. The problem with representative democracy is that, after the vote, the citizen has no voice. "The most important instrument of political influence between elections", he says, "is the referendum".

However, not all referendums have the same value. If they are top down, they are a tool in the hands of professional politicians. The must work from the bottom up, with citizens deciding on the topics. He who fails to make this distinction will miss the opportunity of making a truly democratic system of government, Patzelt says."

The predicament this leaves those who are fully in agreement that there needs to be an intellectual foundation to arguments of such importance as national Real (direct) Democracy decision-making at such scale of human organization of people for their future (millions over decades) is the attempt "to clear the rubbish" out of the way:-

• The Vote Leave “free trade zone” is mythical: It is the EEA or nothing (The Sceptic Isle)
• Leaving the EU is not a simple menu of options (White Wednesday)
• Pig Ignorant And Grossly Offensive To Boot (Lost Leonardo) 
• EFTA EEA is the real deal (Paul Reynolds, EU Question)

But this is "losing cause" I think. What it is doing is reducing the time possible for the dissemination of the arguments into new forms at ever greater scale and speed of distribution and multiplicity of forms while sustaining the original quality source of such derived communications to people. It's a stalling exercise, a holding up exercise due to the lack of seeing what both Vote Leave and HM Government are actually behaving according to, as opposed to making the mistake of listening to their nonsense words:

• "A Free Trade Zone Across Europe" ~ Vote Leave: "Lookin' Good" 
• "World War III" ~ David Cameron/HM Government: "Gotta Hide!"

As we get closer to the EU Referendum Date, it becomes more necessary to be able to disseminate according to a holistic argument to produce a clearer picture with which people can contribute positively via DIRECT REPRESENTATION of themselves to their own future - independently from politicians.

Vote Leave: A Lesson In Power

 

Tywin teaches Joffrey a lesson in power

White Wednesday aka Roland Smith follows up another valid blog post: Idle musings: “The EU will do a deal with us”:-

"One of the biggest claims by the Leave side in this debate is that “the EU will have to do a deal with us” — a claim usually backed up by other statements such as: “we’re the fifth largest economy in the world; they’ll still want to sell us BMWs; German industrialists will be on to Mrs Merkel immediately;” and “they sell more to us than we to them.” Some Leavers also claim that precisely because our economy is so heavily aligned with the EU, we may even be able to do such a deal over a weekend."

If you remember, I pointed out that these people, in particular the politicians at the head of the Leave Campaign and especially the Vote Leave "lot" all seem to possess a similar "aura" of "talking sideways at subjects with full confidence"; as I tried to illustrate concerning the HM Treasury Report:-

What an impressive-looking pen.

First of all, to contribute to the careful analysis by White Wednesday:-

1. Haggling: This implies the problem is one of degree. It is not: Two different Rules Systems: EU Treaties vs Outside EU Treaties (Self-Governance).
2. Inferiority Complex: The foundation for this thinking is based on our politicians' obsession with projecting a "self-important" image onto the world of the UK or more accurately themselves to the British people upon upholding this "legendary status"; hence any "deal" must come with silver tassels and other special privileges befitting such "status anxiety". A lot of the self-deception in our politics and hence "bubble driven policy" seems to derive from this affliction.
3. Whining Tone: The actual communication comes across as asking for things that are not actually relevant, and hence any concession must be massaging fragile egos; namely token and gesture based: "Special Status" sounds all too snugly fitting... for such swaddling infants.
4. Dominance-Submissive Dynamic: The clip above from Game Of Thrones is worth considering; people projecting a kind of dominance or coercion is an unbalanced relationship, where I think actually all that is actually demanded is an EQUAL Relationship - by withdrawing orderly and in cooperation with the EU from EU Treaty Rules.
5. Rule-Based Argument: John Ashworth pointed this out, in his booklet: The Betray of Britain's Fishing To The European Union; the problem the UK has with the EU is not necessarily the EU: It's our own politicians, who either:-

• Did not Read the EU Treaty Rules correctly, or,
• Did read these EU Treaty Rules but deceived and continue to deceive the British Public over the consequences of these rules.

Interesting, it was posited that the "Inferiority Complex" that may have been one of the major inputs into Britain opting to join the EEC back in the 1960's is a latent force at work still today, resorting to cowardice and a complete lack of courage in our politicians to face the factual feedback and revert back into their bubbles... as White Wednesday I think is careful in pointing out in the above blog post.

There appears however to be some "good people" attempting to do just this and put the facts first, such as The Sceptic Isle:

We need to get the politics right. If we de-risk Brexit, it will have almost no ill-effects

"The two pivotal words of the EU referendum campaign are “could” and “how”.  Every analysis of the consequences of Britain leaving the European Union are heavily reliant on the word “could”, or similar words like “might”. We will hear it endlessly right up until the vote. Brexit could mean this and Brexit could cause that. What it entirely comes down to is how we leave the European Union.
This is essential to keep in mind when considering the IMF warning that an EU exit could cause severe damage. The warning said Brexit would ‘disrupt established trading relationships’, and ‘disrupt and reduce mutual trade and financial flows’. Such points of concern are of course based on the consequences of leaving the Single Market without having concluded a trading arrangement. The IMF warning is entirely contingent on the UK unilaterally withdrawing from the EU or failing to make arrangements for trade.
I’ve argued repeatedly that due the conclusions of a vast multitude of analyses the Government will look to adopt the existing EEA based model to protect the economy, facilitate negotiations and prevent disruption. What the IMF is referring to is a worst case scenario that neither the UK or the EU want or can afford politically or economically."

On one level it is all about risk if we use our "Left-Brain Thinking" adeptly. If we look at our "Right-Brain Thinking" complementary however, I'd argue that it's not merely risk, it's our "breaking through our own barriers" and putting aside this destructive force of "inferiority complex" that drives so much of our political (lack of) leadership and makes such cowards or "Donkeys Leading Lions" and the poor consequences that has a tendency to keep on leading towards?

What is something we can all agree on?

I'd suggest that we can all agree on what is written down in the rules that govern us. The Brexit Door produced an outstanding piece of work reflecting on this both for our own Democracy with reference to Tony Benn's famous five question and also with respect to how to message correctly in this campaign:-

EU Referendum – Your help is needed

Richard Corbett and Benn’s 5 Questions

One of the things you'll notice about King Joffrey/Vote Leave is the way in which both "grasp at things"; for all their self-styled indomitable shows of supreme confidence in themselves and their place in the world, if we look at Vote Leave to keep things on track:-

• Better Deal/Reform For Britain!
• The Public Demand Immigration Control of Borders for any Plan!
• Don't worry we don't need a plan, we'll sort it all out after we leave!
• The PM has done well under the circumstances lying to us all!
• We need a Great Leader such as BoJo to lead us to the promised land! All hail!
• Hannan, the breath-taking Orator of our times! Cummings the boy-wizard mastermind without a plan.

Anyone who has to say: "I am the King"...

This behaviour kind of reminds me of King Joffrey in the above clip: "Flipping out" reactions and edicts: It's delinquent and hence delusional. There's a short summary of Owen Paterson's Brilliant Brexit Patter by contrast:-

1. Paterson’s vision for a UK outside these uncertainties is one of a self-governing, free-trading nation, a true part of the global family, its international trade and participation no longer absorbed into the EU.
2. There is no status quo. If the UK remains in the EU, it will be a second-class citizen, and the EU’s political centralization will continue, dragging the UK along with it. The eurozone, politically integrated by 2025, will dominate the rest. 

And how?

"Leaving the EU is not an instant commitment, but a process. There would – and certainly should – be a long process of discussion before the formal commitment to withdraw (and the two-year i-dotting period that follows it) is given."

By redrawing and choosing to find new agreements on which rules we choose for ourselves and hence our future relationships with each other, hopefully for the better of all. God forbid we end up with more "King Joffrey"!

Qualitatively different arguments about Rules and Change In Rules and Rate of Change

Our own politicians as John Ashworth rightly observes, are the real problem even beyond the highly rational analysis that is readily available to anyone to help them come to their own conclusions in their own way.

The Heavens Opened: A Thunderous Voice Spoke!

David Miliband descends from the heavens in the wake of fire and wind and all the people cow and huddle down in terror and awe!

The above picture could have been Lord Mandelson, David Cameron, Boris Johnson or Nigel Lawson or any other of dozens of such individuals.

What they have to say may be low quality, it may be proven to be inferior arguments, it may further be shown to be exposed as numerous fallacious argument techniques and finally just like Tony Blair, and now today David Cameron, it might be shown to be a Big Lie.

But repeatedly these individuals invade the political life of millions of people and hold disproportionate influence built through the media news with their privileged positions and access to these channels. This is based on their positions of prestige and not on the merit or quality of the arguments they are promoting.

"Leaving the EU would be an act of political arson that risks the destruction of international order, the former foreign secretary David Miliband has said.

In one of the starkest warnings of the referendum debate so far, Miliband argued that the impact of Brexit could extend far beyond the UK and that it could have a disastrous effect on the rest of the world.
Writing for the Guardian before delivering a key speech in Westminster on Tuesday, he said it would amount to “giving up on our alliances” with the rest of the world.
“It means forsaking our position at the negotiating table and abandoning our international responsibilities – unilateral political disarmament. No nation in human peacetime history has voluntarily given up as much political power as we are being invited to throw away on 23 June.”

Remember this is off the back of Nigel Lawson's own grand speech:-

The Brexit Door: Why Lord Lawson is wrong

Here Lawson has trashed the work done on building up arguments concerning the Irish Border and The Single Market. He's reported as the head of the Vote Leave group of Tory Politicians and thus symbolically the source and quality of their arguments or it's figurehead. He's only the latest in that rotation from Boris Johnson and David Cameron and Peter Mandelson:-

As The Brexit Door point out again Cameron’s “Bazaar” deal:-

"The most striking piece of the interview is when he is asked whether if the European Union was to change the deal, whether Britain should interpret that as a failure to honour what was promised.

"Who counts as the “the European Union” here? Member state leaders have met within the framework of the European Council, but their agreement is in no way a document of the European Union, but a text of hybrid character, which is unspecified and not legally binding.

At the moment, the whole thing is nothing more than a deal that has been hammered out down the local bazaar. The European Union, however, is a community of law, in which there are regulated responsibilities. If the British are going to put all their eggs in one basket, in a promise made like this, which has not yet complied with our clean process of law, then, for me, this process of law is more important and preferable."

This finally puts to bed any doubt that the deal struck by David Cameron is not binding. Here the Vice President of the EU Parliament spells it out in totally transparent language – the EU hasn’t agreed to anything, it cannot be held to a promise it never made.

I'm sure David Milliband has learnt from the likes of Peter Mandelson, the ideology of these people that they rightfully are in power and must dictate how people behave, as if they are gods amongst mere mortals:-

Their important weapons:-

• Fear
• Prestige
• Idolatry of the People themselves
• Control over The Speaker's Position (They speak, people listen obediently and silently)

Große Lüge - The Big Lie of Magic Money

Economic Modelling gives you...

The above is a clip from the  blaxploitation action comedy or comedy-spoof Black Dynamite, by watching it you see a sketch of "making it up as you go along" riffing on detective stories. Economic Modelling is perhaps a kind of detective exercise on the economy. Once the "chain of reasoning" gets going into rapid gear, it's perhaps hard to follow and hence become bogged down in the complex details; A loaded question or complex question fallacy:-

"Such questions may be used as a rhetorical tool: the question attempts to limit direct replies to be those that serve the questioner's agenda."

The Brexit Door blogs on this subject in The CBI/PWC ‘Cost of Brexit’ report,

"This morning all the talk has been about the report from the CBI into the implications for the UK economy on leaving the EU. I had rather hoped it would start to enliven real debate over the issues, but I’m afraid it won’t."
"It’s economic analysis is probably beyond question, I certainly won’t challenge its modelling. That is not where it’s problem lies. It’s real problem is that it simply analyses a situation which is never likely to exist. A straw man is built, and effectively knocked down (at great expense I would expect, knowing PWC’s eye watering hourly rates), simply to create a convenient story for the government and it’s Remain camp allies, notably the BBC who went big with it this morning I’m told."

"The CBI is openly Pro EU, so they make no pretence to impartiality here."

 Economic FUD amplified via "Große Lüge" - A Loaded Big Lie technique

There's a couple of techniques here included FUD which is becoming apparent all the time, the other one is: Große Lüge (Big Lie):-

A big lie (German: große Lüge) is a propaganda technique. The expression was coined by Adolf Hitler, when he dictated his 1925 book Mein Kampf, about the use of a lie so "colossal" that no one would believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously."

We know from Decrypting: What is Babel-17? that Economics is a useful language of deception to use because as per 1997:-

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

The above cocktail is ripe for confusion and FUD to feed the Status Quo Effect. Given the stagnation in development of the arguments it's also clearly very effective given the same complaint is pointed out by people: "We don't know enough".

"CBI Director-General, Carolyn Fairbairn, has warned that leaving the EU would cause a serious shock to the UK economy, with a potential cost to UK GDP of £100 billion and 950,000 jobs by 2020 and negative echoes that could last many years after that."

"Under both PwC scenarios, UK living standards, GDP and employment are significantly reduced compared with staying. The analysis indicates a cost to the British economy of leaving of as much as £100 billion – the equivalent of around 5% of GDP - by 2020. Even in a scenario where a Free Trade Agreement with the EU is secured rapidly, the analysis indicates GDP could be 3% lower by 2020. GDP per household in 2020 could be between £2100 and £3700 lower, and the UK’s unemployment rate between 2 and 3 percentage points higher, than if the UK had remained in the EU. GDP growth in the years 2017-2020 could be seriously reduced – and possibly be as low as zero in 2017 or 2018." 

The CBI and "magic money"

The Brexit Door notices an interesting outcome however:-

"So why is the remain campaign and its supporters avoiding analysis on the Market Solution?"
"Well it’s hard to escape the conclusion that they are rather concerned that it cannot be easily rebutted because it is well researched and thought through. To draw attention to it would do more harm to their cause than good – so they, and the government, pretend simply that it doesn’t exist."

 The numbers in the CBI/PWC Report merely grow and grow as per the growing chains of reasoning from the loaded question in accordance with their uncertainty value:-

CBI/PWC focuses on Left-Hand-Side and ignores the Right-Hand-Side, like so many of the Leave Campaign, The Establishment and the Legacy News-Media

Instead what we have is Misdirection (magic) Money:-

Misdirection is a form of deception in which the attention of an audience is focused on one thing in order to distract its attention from another.

Managing the audience's attention is the aim of all theater, it is the foremost requirement of theatrical magic. Whether the magic is of a "pocket trick" variety, or, a large stage production in Las Vegas, misdirection is the central secret of all Magic.

 The Leave Campaign (Vote Leave) are proving to be David Cameron's Rabbit, the Dodgy Deal was the Hat.

The basis of the misdirection is the Polls and confessions of the Leave Voters themselves, apparently UKIP, Leave.EU and GO want:-

• "Control Our Borders" (empty meme) removal of Freedom of Movement
• Saving Loads of Money from Economic Membership
• A Free Trade Agreement or Something Like the WTO
  

Vote Leave are similar:-

• Bonfire of Redtape!
• FTA like Canada has
• EU will still buy our cars no matter what!

This allows the Remain and David Cameron deception to use their opponents own weight of fallible arguments against themselves:-

Imbalanced & Weak Arguments: Leave Campaign's own weight used against itself: "Control Our Borders": No! To Freedom of Movement! or "We Can Do So Much Better Than Norway or Switzerland" as "They Buy More Cars Than We Do!"

The Leave Campaign plays right into the hands of The Great Deception; it's not surprising it's been going since the early 1960's concerning the UK, at least. This leaves the intended picture of Brexit instead of The Market Solution:-

Edit 22/03/2016: City A.M. 21/03/2016:-

Major added those in favour of a Brexit were wrong to insist Britain could leave the EU and then rengotiate trade deals to its advantage.

"Their argument is that the EU needs the UK market more than we need theirs. This is at best disingenuous, more bluntly it is fantasy," he said.

If people referred to the arguments more, they would realize that Major describing the kind of Judo throw above and pointing out such arguments are "imbalances" that are so ripe for taking advantage of. The Deception is the focus on these bogus Brexit propositions aka "Big Bang" Brexit categories (LHS above, all of them). However the misdirection is NEVER to mention The Leave Alliance nor The Market Solution staged iterative withdrawal and secondly that these are themselves stages towards conditions more closely aligned to FTA or otherwise removing "EU Centric Political Integration" from "European Genuine Single Market" evolution.

If any Leave or undecided voters read this, remember the use of the opponents' arguments as Judo atst as Misdirection and the amplitude of FUD as Big Lie technique. The solution? Learn and find the arguments that: Discrīmen: Arguments have their own reasons.

Pro-EU Deception, The Intended Picture: Lie Big, Lie Frequently and use your opponent's arguments against themselves:-

 Big Lie: Brexit will cost you dearly, 100m, 1m jobs and 5% GDP to be "on top authority".

The Leave Alliance: A Choice With A Plan

Radar of Air Traffic Control over the UK: Planes, Plots and a PLANNED routes between origin and destination

This illustration above shows part of the United Kingdom and some of France, Belgium and Holland above which:-

• Planes IDs
• Planes at present positions at given times
• Planes plotted routes (lines)

What's abundantly clear is that all these planes must have stringently planned routes and schedules predicted in advance. Simulations of the above should correspond with live feedback data and hence relational positions of all planes to each other should be controlled, safe and secure and hence properly managed.

Let's say we're taking a plane, we have 3 pieces of coordinate information:-

1. Origin: London (point)
2. Route: Managed and safe and scheduled and efficient (line)
3. Destination: Brussels (point)

 This interested me because I was browsing a conversation over at EUReferendum.com in the comments section between Dr. RAE North and some commentators:-

Rommel was not about to sit down to a nice cup of tea with Montgomery and explain his strategy.

So what has the government actually provided help people know the UK/Britain's coordinates in the upcoming Referendum and our decision on Brexit or European Union Membership to political integration?

Remember the 3 Criteria both coordination and hence future planning decisions to be taken:-

• Origin
• Route
• Destination

 1. Origin (Present Status)

The Government decided to review this in one of their reports via the following criteria: Review of the Balance of Competences between the United Kingdom and the European Union:-

 Links to the outcomes of the above report: Review of the balance of competences.

2. Route (How the UK Withdraws)

Again the government has provided something here: The process for withdrawing from the European Union.

1. Article 50
2. Single Market (EU/EEA)
3. Huge Scale of Renegotiation
4. Start of a process (not end of an event)
5. Mishandled has serious impacts across the board: EU referendum: impact of an EU exit in key UK policy areas
6. Risk Assessment is extraordinarily high which warrants "EU Reform" (?) alternative ROUTE

 Uncharted: Too many moving parts - Risk too high, wrong result mutually assured self-destruction for both the UK and EU! Wrong route = Mid-air collision.

"2.3 But the process is unprecedented. No country has ever used Article 50 – it is untested. There is a great deal of uncertainty about how it would work. It would be a complex negotiation requiring the involvement of all 27 remaining EU Member States and the European Commission."

3. x2 Destination ("Special Status" not EU Reform) vs Alternative Models

Again the UK government has provided somthing here: Alternatives to membership: possible models for the United Kingdom outside the European Union.

EU Alternative Final Destinations: EEA, Bi-Laterals, Customs Union, FTA

 Just to clear up some definitions/distinctions in the above:-

There's 3 categorical choices:-

1. Full participation in the Single Market as a MEMBER OF the Market; covers trade across the board.
2. FTA to the Single Market; is limited to specifics of the agreement.
3. Else WTO MFN status.

Effectively 1. is fully comprehensive to the point that movement of goods, services, capital and labour make it so. This is equivalent to what is called our present "Special Status" or "Best of Both Worlds".

The difference with the EEA to other such examples is the loss of sovereign controls over migration. But given The RULES of the EU are in-built this way because it's a Supranational organization that cannot change upon Brexit. So Freedom of Movement FOM is effectively a determinant of Single Market access as a full member with full participation. Given the UK is so highly integrated into the Single Market for it's economy (~35%) then the conditions of Brexit Article 50 preclude FTA's in time, so you have to opt for continuance of the economy to trade with the EU and with the current EU Trade deals elsewhere too. This is all factually grounded:-

* 35%
* 2 Years
* >200 Trade Agreements to which the UK/EU are party to

There is, " no ifs, buts" or "whataboutisms". It's Single Market or mid-air collision.

Whatever the true merits of the Government's report as considered by The Brexit Door it's already leaps and bounds ahead of the Leave Campaigns Vote Leave, Leave.EU and GO.

David Cameron has not achieved "EU Reform" he's achieved what he's calling a real alternative: The best of both worlds: the United Kingdom’s special status in a reformed European Union.

A Clearer Picture:-

To note the UK government is not going to point out which Brexit routes are possible even if they do conveniently point out which routes are impossible and which destination are not appropriate.

The Government's contribution (summary:-

1. Origin: Review of the balance of competences
2. Route:  The process for withdrawing from the European Union
3. Destination: Alternatives to membership: possible models for the United Kingdom outside the European Union  or The best of both worlds: the United Kingdom’s special status in a reformed European Union

But I think the trick pulled here is three-fold:-

• Present Brexit at impossible Route and negative Destination
• The one possible route (The Norway Option) is presented as a negative Destination.
• Use all the vested powers of the state to deceive that the "New Deal" is a new Destination and not the same old Origin!

The Leave campaign must therefore step in here and point out:-

1. A Possible Route
2. A Positive Destination
3. Taking this journey is comparable and comparatively better than the EU/EEA ; EZ/EEA Negative Origin.

Categorically: The route and/or destination both must be possible and positive - which only leaves The Norway Option. The government has covered over the fact it's possible by pretending it's not positive (end-destination)

If we look at the above "map representation" of Brexit. I think it manages to connect the gap between the government providing what alternatives are like with the information that it is possible and it is positive though there is inherent risk which can be gauged. You'll notice the most salient feature is "EEA" which is:-

• Off-The-Shelf Option: The destination is positive and working
• Full Single Market Access via repatriation to make the journey
• It's going in the same direction as UK's historic opt-outs from Political Union! Not the wrong direction as evidenced by this record.
• We know the EU/EEA or EZ/EEA route is possible. But the biggest question is is it the right destination?

Just like a plane journey that is meticulously scheduled and planned: Longer journeys often involve multiple connections

If we realize that The Norway Option (White Wednesday) or indeed The 1st Stage of the Market Solution comprising fall-backs, is a Layover or "Connection Point" to a future subsequent leg of the full journey/route, it suddenly starts to make a lot more sense not to focus on the Journey but the Destination!

• Political Union
• The Market Solution

I personally believe most people never did buy "an air ticket" to Political Union; see Dr. RAE North's EU Referendum: the genesis of obsolescence. The government sold us a trade relationship and sent us onto the wrong plane. This won't be admitted explicitly so we end up with this game of charades where they attempt to confuse the fact people would like to buy "an air ticket" to The Full Market Solution if they believed the route was safe, secure and possible.

I hope the above mock-up of travel maps helps simplify from the confusion of both the government and the leave campaigns who failed to help people understand the actual options.

Your boarding pass to Brexit

The Route is indeed possible, but it's the destination that counts.

Sticky Ideas: Progression via Selection

Spring Progression: Snowdrops followed by Daffodils followed by Bluebells

I recently spotted some of the first Snowdrops of Spring; which is always a welcome sight, not only as they are beautiful flowers but also they remind me of the good things to come, to anticipate positively the future progression through mid-Spring with Daffodils and then into late Spring with Bluebells.

"It is estimated that 25%–50% of all common bluebells may be found in the British Isles."

 In the previous blog it seems like we're trapped in "Winter freeze" in the progression of our Referendum debate and discussion, EU Politics: Groundhog Day (2nd February), and so the question is: Why is this? We already noted that some very Sticky Ideas dominate the discussion as per Arguments: In The Deadly Grip of Confabulation, with David Davies talking about "German Cars!" on the Daily Politics today perpetuating these empty ideas ie "political sloganeering memes". We've looked at Richard Reed of Innocent Smoothies banking on these empty memes to propound his own ignorance and dam up progress.

Simple … Unexpected … Concrete … Credentialed … Emotional … Story

• Be a master of exclusion.   Less is more.  Ruthlessly prioritize and focus on the vital few.
• Boil it down to simple + profound. Create messages that are both simple and profound.
• Create engagement.  Use surprise, emotions, concrete images, and curiosity.
• Surprise people.  Surprise people’s expectations.
• Have testable ideas.  Have a ‘”try it yourself” approach and help people test out your ideas for themselves

I think one of the challenges has been to provide a counter vision that can become a "Sticky Idea" more powerful than the above Confabulations. One sticky idea that "Brexiteers" need to get their head around is Selection ie the point 1 above: Exclusion:-

Progression: High Diversity of Ideas (LHS - BEFORE) ====>>>> Low Diversity of Ideas (RHS - AFTER)

In the above Referendum, if it is a well-structured Campaign before the Polling Day, there will be a competitive selection by the entire electorate (huge sample size ie full population sample!). Listening to Margaret Beckett also on The Daily Politics Show coughing up the "terribly dark and dangerous vision of Brexit" suggests to me a paucity of strong ideas on the Pro-EU side of the argument. But it's very easy for people like her to attack the Pro-Brexit (Leave) side of the argument due to the sheer diversity of ideas, many of them weak.

Oral statement to Parliament: Prime Minister's statement on EU renegotiation - 3 February 2016

David Cameron's powerful edict: Never say never: "We Shall NEVER surrender!"

It is interesting to hear David Cameron's speech above for what he will present as his "British Model" to the British public for the Referendum. "Never" is a very powerful word to utter; a clear evocation echoing our history, patriotism and sovereignty under duress...

If he really means all these things using such powerful evocation of the nation's identity and foundations of our society and state, then surely for "NEVER" to really mean "NEVER" then:-

Achieves that unequivocally. In effect:-

What we see in the above tabulation above, is that:-

• The top-half of the table, 1-11 = Political Union. 
• The bottom-half of the table, 12-18 = Single Market (+ Global Market).

 Aka what we've already met before: The Market Solution: A Growing Solution. So what we have concluded is that The Single Market (+) as part of Withdrawal aka Brexit/Leave is a critically positive outcome + the removal of political union (-).

However for this progression to work, selection must operate. And in my opinion the biggest selective pressure on the UK is indeed our >40yrs of EU Membership! Which boils down to Article 50 Lisbon Treaty; the latest and last Treaty we were signed up to by our Prime Minister which we did not get a Referendum on - until now.

The Referendum Question depends on The Single Market which depends on the stipulated terms of our EU Political Union membership (presently) = ARTICLE 50 LISBON TREATY

Progression is via a feedback loop: The Referendum Question requires Single Market guarantee to then vote Leave to remove the Political Union. Removal of the Political Union requires: Article 50! The Selection Bottleneck = Article 50 to withdraw/exit from Political Union.

So, how to make this idea Sticky? Using the advise we must refine our message and Exclude, Boil It Down, Surprise People and Tell A Story:-

EXCLUDE:

• This is the present state of the debate: Stuck in a cloud of confusion created as much by the "eurosceptic aristocracy" as by the Pro-EU's who profiteer from this behaviour that stops the feed-back loop above.

-

 SIMPLIFY:

• Do you trust David Cameron and our political class when they speak to you? Or do you trust a practical and working plan that matches words and actions:-

 +

=

 SURPRISE:

•  Do you know about Globalization of Regulations and Standards and the many many many Real Top Tables we could gain a place at "sans political union" in Supranational EU?

&

 TEST:

• Put your name on the future, for the first time in >40yrs...