I have offered a link to my earlier post on Scottish Freedom, Self Determination or Independence however you like to term it, at the end of this blog.
Scotland’s independence has nothing to do with Brexit. However, Brexit has reinforced the argument and indeed creates the absolute necessity for Scotland to abandon the sinking ship called England. When we succeed, we will be in a position to launch our lifeboats and pick up our friends and neighbours in England who wish to come with us on a new journey as neighbours, as partners working in symbiosis.
But first I would like to say a few things about Brexit; the result, the decision and democracy in general, UK style.
THE RESULT:
17.4 million people voted to leave the EU in 2016. The split between old and young was about 70:30. Since that time, sadly many older people have died, young people have reached the voting age and therefore the the numbers will have skewed toward Remain rather than Leave. Everyone understand that the campaign was focused more on Leave rather than Remain. Lies, half truths and deception certainly abounded but there was serious weaknesses in the Remain side for two main reasons. I doubt many people thought for a minuted that Leave would win. More importantly, our MEPs have mainly been invisible, picking up a good salary and great pension. Did anyone in the UK ever hear from their MEP about what was going on in Europe, what positives were in place and what was their vision? How many people even knew who was their MEP. I know a lot of Brits have traveled to Europe, but 2 weeks on the Costa Del Sol or Benedorm doesn’t really count as experience. No one should be in any doubt that mass immigration was the real issue. Clearly, services in the UK were put under strain due to immigration , including the health service, education and employment. Immigrants were a soft target to blame by the elite class in our society who had milked our industries, mismanaged the bit left and absconded with the residual. Of course, very many of these immigrants were in fact refugees and asylum seekers fleeing from countries in the Middle East we had trashed or annihilate on behalf of our very good Friends the Israeli Zionists who have totally pervaded our politics and media. Of course we all have a perspective on the result but consider this. During the time of the Berlin wall three and a half million Germans moved from the east to west. After the wall came down a further 2 million flooded west. Five and a half million East Germans flooded into West Germany and this put a huge strain on their resources and sure there was some animosity. However, they dug in, worked to accommodate the influx and after two decades the net migration was greater from west to east. Germany dealt with the immigration significant better than the UK for one main reason; they had no overwhelming need to blame immigrants because the ruling classes had not milked, trashed and mismanaged their economy – so they had no need for newly arrived scapegoats.
If there was to be another referendum it would be almost 4 years apart from the original; this is hardly flip flopping. The demography has changed significant and besides, I don’t remember anything about democracy that forbids people to change their minds or even refine their thinking. Of course, and especially where the result was very close, if it is established that the people were misled whether deliberately or otherwise or if there is established interference or failures in procedures that should be sufficient justification to nullify the result.
My final point on this topic is a simple one, but one that cannot be ignored. When we hear people banging on about 17.4 million people voting to leave, that really gets me riled. 50 million people did not vote to leave. Every one of them is a citizen of this country. 17.4 million voters, not people, elected to leave but the other 50 million people are subject to their decision. The plain fact is the UK does not have and never did have a system of true democracy. There is a bastardised system we call democracy that has produced repeated Governments representing about 20% of the people at most and that has never changed. There is nothing democratic about that. I suspect a dictatorship may represent a higher percentage of popular support.
My final point is this. When we develop something new, be it a product, a car, a new computer system, a power station or a drug, before we release it to the public we carry out a test run, a trial, a proof of concept, whatever we want to call it. Sometimes we select trialists and carry out alpha or beta trials. There is a set criteria that must be achieved to proceed. In the extreme, if the trial proves the thing under test does not meet the pass criteria it requires rework or even scrapping. We do that for almost everything. The EU Referendum decision and subsequent period to date has been synonymous with a trial run. It has failed spectacularly. What we set out to achieve has never been done before hence the validity of this ‘accidental’ trial period. We must rework the model, albeit many will say that is what we have been doing for two years. Perhaps now we must consider the inevitable conclusion that the only safe option is to scrap the idea. Don’t have a second referendum just admit failure gracefully and move on. We’ve all had to do that at times in our life. If we were grown up enough to do this and progressed with the EU on the basis that we were not properly prepared. However, we will revert to the previous arrangement but in parallel we will reconsider what an exit strategy must achieve. This fact alone would sure focus the EU hierarchy in terms of their behaviour. Perhaps this may even trigger some fresh thinking by the EU on its stuctures and composition for the benefit of all EU members and the EU as a whole.
THE DECISION ON THE EU REFERENDUM
Have you ever heard guys in a pub after a football game telling their mates what went wrong, the mistakes the manager made, what the players did wrong and what they would have done better. Oh, and what about that decision by the ref? Chances are the guy has never kicked a ball, managed a team or refereed a game. However, that never seems to deter millions up and down the UK countries from pontificating about subjects they don’t have a clue about – what is going on there? what goes on in their head that genuinely makes them think they know what they are talking about? Fortunately, it’s only a game of football and there is always next week. But what if ..
I suspect I may piss off a lot of my readers in this section but that will not stand in the way of what I see as a truth. In the various forms of media I hear people baying relentlessly that the people knew exactly what they were voting for. In the extreme they say they are not afraid of leaving with no deal. There is no easy way to say this. I could scream at the stupidity of these people. Not because they are wrong but because they don’t even know enough to be wrong and that is why they have so much difficulty finding the words. I will explain and if I offend anyone then perhaps you have brought this on yourself.
I am a European. I don’t mean a UK citizen within the EU I mean a person born in Europe; Belgium to be precise. I moved with my family to Glasgow in the early fifties on the Clydeside. Times were very hard, but hey, I would do it again. We really were all in it together as we played in the air raid shelters, the bombed out building and raided the middins on a regular basis. I hated school but was lucky enough to get a modest set of qualifications, absolutely nothing special and was one of the first out of school and into work. Let’s just say that life was very kind to me and I left Glasgow to progress my career in the City of London where I spent about 25 years. I was a Director of a Global plc with a listed value of 27 Billion. My responsibility in terms of people, technical solutions and actual budget was absolutely massive. I was extremely lucky, but I came up the long hard route from the middins to the Board Room.
This is not me blowing my own trumpets. This is me setting some context for what I am about to say.
The vast majority of people in these countries of the UK are employees. They have skills, qualifications, experience. They may have a little responsibility for some staff as managers, team leaders, inspectors or other other forms of leadership. Other than doing a good job for their company they have absolutely no say and no knowledge of how their company functions. If their company is listed they have have no real idea of shareholder or stakeholder roles. They do not set, determine or significantly influence the company strategy. The company accounts mean nothing to them, they would not understand shareholder value or how it was determined and they certainly would not understand the roles and responsibilities of the company’s officers. To the vast number of employees, commercial law and employment law might as well be black magic and their only scrape may be when they are made redundant or find them self suddenly in receipt of a P45.
The narrative above is a very small snapshot of my daily life and that of my fellow directors and opposite numbers in our partners, suppliers and corporate customers in the UK and the rest of the world.
So. With all my knowledge and experience if I was asked for a view on the global economy I would not have a clue. Sir Richard Branson would have a very good view and others of the same ilk but I would be out of my depth. If I was to ask the same question of a solicitor or a journalist or even a career politician I might as well ask the office cat for all the sense I would get. At best I could give a reasonable view within my sector and specific to my company and more specific to my discipline but that would be my stretch. Other Senior Managers, Executives or Directors, if they were being entirely honest, would say the same thing. To get a view of my company’s perspective in the market would require a gathering of the top team, the Board, our technical experts, our accountants, our legal experts our sales and marketing gurus and representation at Senior Level within our Supplier and customer base and perhaps Government if we happen to be a Regulated entity. This is just ONE company.
With all of this in mind let’s think of the question that the people of these countries was asked. Should me remain in the EU or should we leave. Yes or no. Nothing else, just yes or no.
So, here we have a lad who is a plumber and his wife is on the checkout at Tesco; both very laudable and skilled jobs. Without sounding patronising, on a scale of 0 to 100 what are their chances of answering the question – I would say anything higher than 0 is a gross exaggeration. You could argue that we know what leaving the EU means insofar as one day we are no longer a member. However, and this point is almost universally missed, IT IS IMPLICIT IN THE QUESTION THAT YOU UNDERSTAND WHY YOU WANT TO LEAVE OR STAY. The question was never meant to mean, pick an answer or give us a guess.
When I hear people say they knew what they were voting for, I would love to sit them down and question them. I guarantee that they would fail miserably at the first question. For example; so you are happy to leave without a deal? what is your solution to Ireland? do you just throw them under a bus, use imagineering to dream up a technical solution that does not exist or do you hold your nose and hope the smell goes away – FAIL. Explain the T & Cs of WTO Tier 4. I know you know what WTO stands for because you heard it on the tele, but what does it actually mean? FAIL … and so on.
I would not be sticking my neck out too far to suggest that not a single person in the UK or any part of the EU could even begin to answer that question with qualification. Liam Fox as International Business Secretary was asked a single question on Brexit and said it was too complex a question to give a single answer. Well, hold the front page, you asked the girl at the checkout in Tesco, not 1 question but every bloody question with a multiple choice answer, Yes or No? Then you flatter them by suggesting or putting words in their mouth that they knew what they were doing – of course they did not know what they were doing.
DEMOCRACY
My favourite subject. Steven Pinker, the Harvard psychologist was asked a question on Question Time, 29 May 2019. He gave an excellent analogy about democracy that fitted the model espoused by many in the UK. Ask people if they want square wheels. If the majority opt for square wheels that is a democratic decision. I’m sure you can see what the problem is going to be? The UK leaving the EU without a deal would probably be more difficult and damaging than square wheels.
The media and politicians continually bang on about the will of the people. Let me say something about ‘will’ in the context of the will of the people. This is of course the collective will of a group of individuals. So let’s look at an individual expressing their will. or what they wish should happen. I use here an extreme case, but then Brexit is a very extreme case in it’s own right. So; a parent has a child seriously ill in hospital, on a life support system and he is not happy about how things are going. The surgeon approaches the parent and says ‘do you want me to switch off the machine. Yes or no? The parent wants to know the prognosis. How serious is it, what are the chances for life. Is there any suffering. What are the options. What are the risks and so on. The surgeon says, ‘look, this is your child and your ultimate responsibility. I can’t elaborate on potential outcome because I don’t know. However, I need you to give me an answer, yes of no. In this circumstance any and every reasonable person would say they simply cannot give an answer because this is a massive question and they have absolutely no information to go on. Of course they are right not to answer. Yet, people were asked whether they wished to remain in or leave the EU. They had absolutely no idea what that would mean. So to continue the analogy, the parent tells the surgeon they were speaking to a bloke in the corridor and he said ‘just switch it off mate, the child will be just fine’. The parent says ‘just switch the machine off’. The child dies and the parent says ‘why did you force me to make a decision when neither you nor I knew anything about the outcome. The surgeon says, ‘look mate, you made the decision, not me, this is on you’ . This may seem quite brutal but this is scarily close to what was expected of the UK public.
The sense or logic of UK democracy is never explained and in fact has been trivialised to a boolean choice; on/off, yes/no etc. Some say ‘first passed the post’. Boolean works fine in Algebra but in life it is extremely problematic.
So, here is the thing. When dealing with humans ‘yes or no’ is almost always flawed. The default should always be ‘yes or no or don’t know’. How many times have we said yes and meant no. How many times have we said no and meant yes. When that happens the correct answer was ‘don’t know’. ‘Don’t know’ leads us to find out more then make a better or correct choice. THERE YOU HAVE IT – BREXIT EXPLAINED IN A SENTENCE. When you ask someone a question and they say, ‘don’t know’ that is not because they are dumb, it’s because they are smart and recognise they need more information before they can make a correct or reasonable decision.
32 Countries in the world have recognised and practice this policy in their democracy and they political decision making. In an election there is an option of ‘No Confidence’ similar to ‘don’t know, and it is counted and it can win and then the election must be re-done with better candidates or policies. Furthermore, it is a legal obligation to vote carrying a fine for non-compliance. Of course, this may not work in the UK because it eliminates electoral fraud. If we have 30 million voters and 35 million votes we get a big clue there is something amiss??
SUMMARY
17.4 Millions voters opted to Leave the EU. Clearly this was for a range of reasons rather than a specific reason other than immigration. Clearly, the only commonality across the 17.4 millions would be the prospect of a better outcome for the UK. On reflection and after 3 years the UK is clearly in crisis. Government resignations have been almost a daily occurrence, Ministerial Posts have changed hands quicker than a rusty car. We have no clear way forward and have lost another PM and the UK has progress from Damage Limitation through Disaster Recovery and perhaps a sanction in the Courts for various voting irregularities. Where are these 17.4 million voters now. Perhaps they will be queuing outside the BBC waiting their turn to join an audience and scream ‘the will of the people’ and ‘we just want out’ like an innocent convict. Many older voters will have passed on while many young voters will have more than filled there places. Many more will have recognised the lies and deception and changed their view. In any event, whatever that number is now it falls far, very far short of the 50 million in the UK who did not vote to Leave. These were mainly citizens of the UK, people if you will who make up the People of the UK; and not just voters.
Regardless of what the ‘arrogant Leavers’ say there should not be any doubt that nobody, not a one had a clue what Leave meant. They would not even know what Remain meant and if my ‘Don’t know’ option was included it would have won be a landslide. I hear BBC audiences and rather silly politicians who fall into one of the categories of journalist, solicitor or career politicians saying we want to, or are not afraid to leave on WTO rules. They have read somewhere what WTO actually stands for but in there shallow world they belief they understand. Huge damage has been done to the economy just on the threat of leaving. If we leave with no deal the UK will almost certainly crumble and I would anticipate serious trouble on the streets. Just consider if you will the impact and attitude of a whole community devastated by closure of their sole employer due to Leave and some Leave supporters shooting their mouths off in a local? The factor that nobody in England bothers to consider because of their arrogance is that Scotland will leave the UK before the EU, who will fast track their re-entry immediately. England will very quickly discover, having lost the financial sector in London to Frankfurt and Paris that their only and in fact main resource is, or rather was, Scotland.
The weakness of UK style democracy is manifestly flawed. The baying BBC hand picked audience chant ‘ we voted to Leave so we must leave, regardless. Here’s a final thought. A guy decides he has had enough and he phones Samaritans saying he is about to end it by jumping off his balcony. He is standing on the outside of the balcony looking down considering his fate. The police rush to the scene and the police negotiator, who just happens to be a Brexit supporter confirms that the guy had told the Samaritans he was going to jump. The negotiator says, ‘look mate, you have made up your mind to jump, you must jump, jump means jump – and off he goes. The guy is on the ground long before the negotiator!!
Without a doubt, it is essential that Scotland most take its freedom and become an independent self determining country. We tried and succeeded in 1979 but were cheated by the process. In 2014 we were narrowly beaten in a referendum that raised more questions than answers. We must get it right this time. I have produced a ‘business focused’ blueprint to achieve our goal, what we call a success plan. Sounds a bit passe but plans famously go wrong. Success plans are designed with one thing in mind – the objective to succeed and meet your principal objectives. You will find this link to the [success plan]