The "R" Day gets closer.

We are now entering the final phase of the Referendum campaign and in a few days the people will troop out to vote.
With all the noise of claim and counter claim people are still as confused as to where to place their cross since in the need to scream the loudest there has been few cold facts,only prophecies from people who we feel have an hidden agenda. In this age of scepticism of leadership, distrust of official statistics, from which ever source has left us bereft of any support in making this, our once in a lifetime decision.
Emotion is the fall back position for many. Do we wish to fall under direct  German hegemony  or do we wish to kid ourselves and think that we can avoid the economic power of Germany by staying out. The Kaiser, Bismarck even Hitler must be smiling in their graves to think that without a round fired, the war was won.

 Wolfgang Schauble  has issued a dire warning and we refuse to take heed of what he says at our peril. Ask Greece what happens when Schauble is crossed as he was by Yanis Varoufakis. The plea of the then Greek Fiancé Minister, the IMF, national leaders across th world fell on deaf ears and the concept of writing off the Greek debt to allow Greece to recuperate under bankruptcy law was given short shrift by the authoritarian German. It's his world we are choosing to enter to play by his rules and one has to ask was the Dunkirk spirit all for nothing. Did the Churchillian call to defend ourselves against the big beast Germany not recognise that Germanic ways are not British ways and that we pulled out all the stops to prevent our being subsumed by Goliath. 

Of course an armed invasion is very different from an economic one. The second one is largely based on emotion and the difficulty of coming to terms with being second best and under the financial control of the old nemesis. Is this enough to fight on, trying to maintain our individuality, struggling to find alternate markets when we have let our export industries decline during the period of the softer option of a guaranteed 500 million consumers. A market protected by tariffs erected against outsiders of which we would choose to become one.
Have our people become too soft, not able to roll up their sleeves any more, enamoured by a Welfare culture, inculcated by their demand for "rights" which include living standard, without considering that everything in this life has to be earned.
The wooden rifles our 'home guard', (yesterday's Territorials), trained with didn't fire bullets. We were ill equipped to go to war but against the odds we did and with the help of our relationship with the Empire, soon to become The Commonwealth and the belated entry of America we won the battle. It's hard to say if victory provided us with anything other than our freedom but that freedom, so hard fought, must not be given away easily.