My Thoughts on the European Referendum

Among all the noise and fear-mongering coming from both sides in the Great European Debate at the moment, I thought I'd chuck in a few thoughts and conclusions of my own.

First, some facts.

• If we leave the EU, we cannot possibly end up with better access to the european single market than we've got at the moment, but we can end up with worse.
• Even though the rest of the EU sells more to us that we do to them, that's in absolute terms. As a percentage of exports, we are far more dependent on selling into the EU than they are on exporting to us.
• If we leave the EU, the remaining countries will have strong incentives to make sure that any deal we get is unattractive. Otherwise it might encourage other countries to think of leaving.
• Much of the EU regulation that people complain about would still affect us, if it involves selling goods or services into the EU. The only difference will be that Britain won't have any say in them.
• The rest of the EU regulations are not going to be just swept away. Regulations written by civil servants in Brussels will be replaced by regulations written by civil servants in London.
• Scotland looks likely to vote massively in favour of remaining in the EU. A survey this week suggests that 76% of Scots will vote to stay. If England votes to leave, that will encourage the Nationalists to demand another referendum to leave the UK.

Now, some reflections.

• Exit campaigners express horror about EU membership involving our country having to give up some of its independence. This is ridiculous: everybody gives up some of their independence whenever they need to work with others for a common goal. What do they think marriage is?
• I am not so sure that the Commonwealth is quite as enamoured of Britain as some Exit campaigners think. In the Caribbean, some countries are starting to demand reparations from Britain for the slave trade. In India there are calls for reparations for the damage British rule did to the Indian economy.
• It is ironic that the politicians who tend to be most against Britain staying in a federal Europe are also likely to be in favour of Scotland staying in a federal UK. Also ironic in the other direction that politicians in favour of Scotland leaving a federal UK dream of an independent Scotland joining the EU.

Both the campaigns, In and Out, have been uninspiring so far, concentrating on fear and prejudice to make their cases. I would like to hear somebody arguing to stay in the EU on ideological grounds. For myself, I will be voting to remain in the EU. I've always been an Internationalist, and I hope that one day (not that I'll live to see it) the human race will become a single nation.

If that wasn't enough, there's also the remarkable coincidence that almost all the politicians campaigning for an Out vote are people I strongly dislike or disagree with. In the case of Donald Trump, both.

I was 16 when the country last voted on whether to leave. That vote was supposed to settle the matter of our European membership once and for all. So a final prediction: whichever way the vote goes, the argument will carry on.

A lesson in beer drinking

It's been months since my last post, and the title of this blog is starting to feel less and less appropriate. Maybe I need to change it to The Right Side of 60 while there's still time.

Two nights ago I opened a bottle of 8.1% strength beer. I won't mention the beer's name because it's probably not the brewery's fault what happened next. However, as a hint it's named after a nearby star, which was also the setting for a battle between Starfleet and the Borg in a memorable Star Trek episode: the one where Captain Picard has been assimilated and uses his knowledge of Starfleet tactics to... er. Anyway, so I open the bottle as I always do, and it goes off like a roman candle, beer gushing all over the work surface.

Two tea towels later and I'm on top of the situation, but most of the beer has gone. I carefully sip what's left. Perhaps it's the great strength of the beer, or maybe the bits of floating sediment that the bottle's instructions suggest I should have left in the bottle ("pour into a glass in one smooth action"), but I cannot warm to its flavour. Part of me wonders if the fountain effect wasn't a red flag.

Why was I even trying to drink an ale nearly twice as strong as normal? Well, it's an age thing. I don't mean that I like more alcohol as I get older. I bought the beer in the poorly lit back room of a beer shop (such an excellent invention—I never saw one until I got to York), and the print on the bottle was very small, and bizarrely I hadn't thought to take my reading glasses with me when I went shopping, so it wasn't until I got home that I discovered exactly what I'd bought.

I made it into my forties before I needed glasses. First for reading, then another pair for longer range, such as looking at a computer screen. The decline is slow but persistent, and now reading without glasses is a definite challenge, particularly first thing in the day; some mornings I have difficulty focusing on my breakfast cereal. In that dim shop, this bottle's label might as well have been written in Egyptian hieroglyphics for all the good it would have done me. In fact, that might have been better, for a couple of glyphs of legless Egyptians or a vomiting crocodile-headed god might have given me valuable clues about the alcohol strength.

But wait, I've just noticed that the label shows an illustration of two Neanderthal figures. Could this have been a coded hint about the expected level of my mental ability after finishing the bottle?

It also says that all their beers are naturally carbonated. Aha! Unexpectedly I realise I must from now on always read the instructions on beer. (Just as an afternoon of near terminal flatulence twenty years ago taught me the importance of reading the instructions on sugar-free jam.)

Old dogs can learn new tricks, provided they learn the hard way.