A great letter. Very good. But the posting has stimulated a "rant" from me.
Rather like the USA landed Trump, "we" landed Brexit by overall voting for it. That is democracy, whether some of us later dislike the result and, in hind-sight, realise that we should have actually gone out and taken the time to vote and now want the decision changed - or a second vote. Tough *h!t.
IMHO The EC has got far too big - too many countries and vested interests in it. Vast overhead costs. MEPs vote in Plenary (i.e. all together) and say "Yes" or No" to something and then the Council of Ministers regularly overule it. What a frigging vast waste of our taxes and MEPs' time. I would have more respect in the EC/EU had really helped Greece or Italy with their financial troubles - but no. Or if the EC/EU had really tried effectively to sort to North African refugee crises. Or the Syrian war - but no, we allow people (including us) to sell munitions to all sides. Yummy money. We can't even decently agree with France about what to do about the refugees. Political talking heads.
My sympathies are mostly green socialist. I was a member of a highly sucessful Cambridge workers' hi-tech co-op - but the decisions it took when everybody (30+ Members) had an equal say and equal pay rate (!) were usually very poor. The Members varied from Cambridge PhDs (who created a back to the land commune, which started the business in the late 60's!) to locals with no or few GCSEs. They have now changed (still a co-op) to a small elected Management Committee in order to get quick and sensible decisions made and are now being very sucessful.
Cameron organised the Brexit vote. Some of us voted. May has done her best, stuck between a rock and a hard place - yes, she did choose to agree to be PM. She is sticking to what was voted for. So is Corben (which I admire him for - against pressure from considerable numbers of wobbly Labour MPs.
We will be fine out of Europe and there is no reason that useful people from countries all around the world will not be allowed in to live and work in the UK. But they will have to show that they can actively contribute to our society rather that just have some inalienable "right" to come and live here and use our resources.
Whichever way it goes we will be as similalry ok (or not). At present I am more worried that everything is going non-emc-hardened "wireless". One strategic NEMP atmospheric nuke over London - that all the nuclear nations have in their arsenals - including us (little fallout, high EMP) will take out radio, TV, mobile phones, most cars and vehicles, Smart Meters, etc., all over South East England. (I have professionally worked on military-related EMC issues). We have always had wars. What the **** is going on in politicians' heads? We are far more vulnerable now than ever before in our history (I am also into archaelogy and social history) . Being in or out of the EC is unlikely to help us. Countries will either pull together, or not. In the very large EC there is likely to be significant disagreement.
Alasdair
