Subject: A political monster.
When I was a young boy we used to go fishing in the canal. It was pretty basic stuff a simple rod, a float and small lead weights to take the hook down through the water to where we assumed the fish would feed. The lure was worms which we used to keep in a tin and we would pick up the worms who had tried to escape and pop them back in the tin.
It was all so reminiscent of Brexit, a can of worms which once opened the worms escape Worms we didn't know were there, worms with such healthy vigour we now identify with the corporate body and are at a loss to imagine how the coronet body will function. A Pandora's box of worms which now, out of control we cast around for solutions where probably there none.
To be in, or to be out, that is the question since remarkably there seems no half way. The implications for virtually everyone living on this island mean change and usually not for the better. From simple things like visa requirements when you go on holiday to the assurances we have become used to when purchasing food, all of which is regulated by the EU. Every legal dot and tee has to be reexamined and redrawn. Complicated supply chains which have grown up as part of the manufacturing process will be broken and a reversion to 20th century uneconomic practice, recreated. From the drugs market to the legal authority to fly over and into Europe has to be renegotiated because the status of the parties to the existing framework has changed. In finance the system of providing a seamless trade between the financial centres is brought to a crashing halt with massive implications for our main income earner.
So what seemed as a relatively simple procedure to keep on as before with only a bit more form filling has been shown to be horrendously complex.
The world had moved on and we hadn't noticed. We assumed that the system of multi -national companies and global trade, were allegiance to national priorities was made irrelevant by corporate boardrooms sitting in tax havens was as it was when we last looked. Parliaments have become largely irrelevant, limited in their power to influence these global juggernaut, even to make them pay tax on the profits on the products they sell within a nation. We have left for years now the nitty gritty of trade negotiation to the EU Commission where it collectively negotiates on behalf of 28 soon to be 27 nations. So bad is our position that we have hired people from New Zealand and Australia to teach us how to do it.
Perhaps when we first looked into sidling up to the trade area in Europe in the 50s and 60s first being humiliated with a rejection from Charles de Gaulle, our wartime ally who had spent the war in the relative safety of London plotting his return to France.
Cap in hand, we pleaded to join this alluring market place, ditching our loyal supporters, the Commonwealth in the process, swopped the paradigm we knew for a political monster.
When I was a young boy we used to go fishing in the canal. It was pretty basic stuff a simple rod, a float and small lead weights to take the hook down through the water to where we assumed the fish would feed. The lure was worms which we used to keep in a tin and we would pick up the worms who had tried to escape and pop them back in the tin.
It was all so reminiscent of Brexit, a can of worms which once opened the worms escape Worms we didn't know were there, worms with such healthy vigour we now identify with the corporate body and are at a loss to imagine how the coronet body will function. A Pandora's box of worms which now, out of control we cast around for solutions where probably there none.
To be in, or to be out, that is the question since remarkably there seems no half way. The implications for virtually everyone living on this island mean change and usually not for the better. From simple things like visa requirements when you go on holiday to the assurances we have become used to when purchasing food, all of which is regulated by the EU. Every legal dot and tee has to be reexamined and redrawn. Complicated supply chains which have grown up as part of the manufacturing process will be broken and a reversion to 20th century uneconomic practice, recreated. From the drugs market to the legal authority to fly over and into Europe has to be renegotiated because the status of the parties to the existing framework has changed. In finance the system of providing a seamless trade between the financial centres is brought to a crashing halt with massive implications for our main income earner.
So what seemed as a relatively simple procedure to keep on as before with only a bit more form filling has been shown to be horrendously complex.
The world had moved on and we hadn't noticed. We assumed that the system of multi -national companies and global trade, were allegiance to national priorities was made irrelevant by corporate boardrooms sitting in tax havens was as it was when we last looked. Parliaments have become largely irrelevant, limited in their power to influence these global juggernaut, even to make them pay tax on the profits on the products they sell within a nation. We have left for years now the nitty gritty of trade negotiation to the EU Commission where it collectively negotiates on behalf of 28 soon to be 27 nations. So bad is our position that we have hired people from New Zealand and Australia to teach us how to do it.
Perhaps when we first looked into sidling up to the trade area in Europe in the 50s and 60s first being humiliated with a rejection from Charles de Gaulle, our wartime ally who had spent the war in the relative safety of London plotting his return to France.
Cap in hand, we pleaded to join this alluring market place, ditching our loyal supporters, the Commonwealth in the process, swopped the paradigm we knew for a political monster.
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