How the whole becomes bigger than the parts

There's a lot of angst about this £350,000,000 a week. Those who lied to us forgot to mention that £300,000,000 of it comes back to our regions. Post Brexit that will have to come from our own pockets. But we'll still be in the black, won't we, because there's £50,000,000 left over?  Oh but what about the farmer's subsidies and the big projects – new transport systems, new roads?  Sure, we can do that all ourselves (maybe) but isn't it better to get more brains and more brawn behind it all? And have a few internationally applied laws to keep us all safe? 

I'm a fan of the potluck supper / lunch. Everybody is asked to bring enough food for a certain number of people. An example: a choir I belong to recently hosted a visiting choir. We held a joint workshop and everybody was asked to bring enough food for two people. I brought along enough for four as one of our members had to rush off and do a translation. I provided a litre of flavoured water, a big pack of grapes, some elegant biscuits and two broccoli and cheese quiches. All for just a little more than I normally spend on a lunch in the canteen at the university where I used to work. I also had some spare cherry tomatoes in the fridge. 

What a spread! There were elegant trays of mixed fruits, all sorts of cakes, some specialty breads, crudités and dips, fresh pizza, salads, cheese, cold meat and much, much more. It looked lovely. It tasted lovely. There was more than enough for everyone to have several helpings.

We have long rehearsals in the same building sometimes. We all sit and eat our own packed lunches.  Not nearly as much fun. 

And should I add, perhaps, that the visiting choir was Danish? We sang and they sang and we sang together. We kept each other on our toes. When we sang together we made a new and interesting sound. 

Will such international co-operation be as easy post-Brexit?  

I've decided to collect signs that tell of EU-funded projects. I may make a collage of them for a future post. 

      

               

Is Brexit lose / lose?

So what were people actually choosing on 23 June 2016?

 

Soft Brexit?

A soft Brexit is described as one where we keep the single market and with that we have to keep freedom of movement. Surely, though, a lot of people voted for Brexit because they didn't want any more immigrants and they didn't want to be tied to free trade only with the EU.

Free trade elsewhere?

Well, I note negotiations with Japan are going - well!  And even if they went brilliantly, dare I mention food miles?

Baby and bathwater

Why would we anyway want to keep these two restraints and not enjoy the other benefits of membership of the EU?      

Why give up:

·         The laws that are fair and keep your own state in check

·         The European Court of Justice – where do you go when your own country's judicial system lets you down?

·         Easy travel to other EU destinations.

·         Over 40 years of peace

·         Money, where the whole is greater than the parts

Myths challenged

The UK will not be £350,000,000 a week better off after Brexit. In fact, given that we will need to pay nearly that much to our regions, and goodness knows what to the farmers, that we will lose business, that the pound has weakened, that we lose access to magic money and that we have an exit debt to pay we'll be considerably worse off.  

We still have sovereignty. We always did and would still have even if we stayed. EU matters anyway are decided by the EU parliament. We all have an MEP who represents us. One, of course, had totally let us down and creates a bad press for the rest.

There always were controls on immigration even from the EU, as there are in each EU state.  However, we chose not to implement them. Now landlords, small businesses and universities are being asked to police this.

Our immigrants provide us with a net gain. They pay more in taxes than they cost in services. Particularly worrying is the effect of Brexit on the NHS. Much of the workforce is made up of citizens from other EU states. If they all go home and all the baby boomer ex-pats return to the UK – which the state of the pound may force them to do as their pensions rapidly lose value – we'll be in a heck of a pickle.       

 

The greatest loss?

Many of our friends from other EU states have returned home or are thinking about it. They feel unwanted here. In the eyes of the rest of Europe we look foolish and disorganised.     

What we're throwing away

I find it very difficult not to spit and swear when some people, including Brexiteers, say that perhaps we may no longer have this or that benefit of being in the EU after Brexit.

Let's be very clear.

We – or at least a few of us – have opted to leave the club. We cannot expect to retain any of its benefits. It's extreme arrogance to suppose that we could or should.

Here are a few things that we lose:

 

EHIC

We are currently entitled to be treated in a medical emergency when we are abroad in any EU state the same way as the citizens of that state. That should go. If we're not paying into the fund why should we get the benefits? Higher travel insurance then, and what with the pound compared with the euro, continental holidays may become a thing of the past except for the very well off. No doubt the xenophobia will grow.

Erasmus

Again, if we don't pay in, why should we benefit? I used to be the Erasmus officer at the university where I worked. I saw hundreds of students grow because of these exchanges. We did ones with non-EU countries as well so the principle of exchange may well carry on.  But oh boy, the added paperwork. Again, as well, restricted to the wealthy. Erasmus makes it possible for students of all backgrounds to study abroad. The incoming students brought some unfamiliar but welcome aspects of their culture to us. Outgoing students often went up a class or two on their return and also brought with them a new confidence and a new more open attitude to the world.

Justice

Where will you go when the British courts let yu down?

An adequate workforce

Workers from other EU states pay more in taxes than they cost us in services. Ex-pats are coming back. A lot of them are baby boomers.  A lot of people working here from other EU states are going back home because they fear what is coming and no longer feel welcome. So we shall not have an adequate work force.  

Magic money

The whole is greater that its parts.  Just take a look around you. Look for the star-spangled projects. What we give in comes back bigger. Yes, £350,000,000 a week is a lot of money. But we're going to have to find more than that to replace what the EU is doing for us. Not to mention the falling pound and the fee we'll have to pay to exit. Tax payers, get ready.  

Single market

We have no claim on it now some of you have decided we should leave. If we did by some miracle manage to retain it, we're obliged to allow free movement. Wasn't getting rid of that the point for most Brexiteers?

By the way, we always did have our sovereignty and our own and EU laws would have controlled immigration numbers if they'd been enforced properly.   

We are properly represented in the EU. We have MEPs. Most of them do a good job.         

Peace in Europe

We've had sixty years of it.

Nigel Farage recommended that we should all go and see Dunkirk. Oh, yes, Dunkirk was very significant in World War II. We've even coined a phrase from it. Dunkirk spirit. But Dunkirk spirit isn't exclusive to the British. And do you want a conflict like that again?  

I've been accused of hyperbole when I've mentioned war. 1'll point out here that the person who did this said it was actually all right back in 1999. Brexiteer, I have news for you. You voted to go back to 1972, not 1999. I can tell you from first-hand experience that it was quite difficult to work and live in mainland Europe back then.       

We'll be too busy worrying about what is going on on the other side of the Atlantic and in North Korea to quarrel too much but at the very least there'll be a few heated exchanges about Gibraltar and fishing rights.    

                 

Taxation and Representation

"No taxation without representation," they say. This rarely applies. EU citizens not living in their home state seem particularly badly done by here. Millions live in other EU states, paying tax there, and can only vote in local elections. They can vote in national elections neither in the state where they reside nor the in the state from which they come. An exception appears to be the French presidential elections. 

How different might the results of the June 2016 referendum have been if British nationals living in other EU states and citizens from other EU states living here had been able to vote.

We have many reciprocal tax agreements not only with other EU states but also with other countries including the US. For instance, I'm taxed in the UK on my earnings from Amazon.com. This is fair on me as I have no representation in the US. There is a slight oddity here, though, as Amazon.com is serviced by the US yet I pay nothing towards this. Perhaps it's partly made up for, though, by the Americans who earn from Amazon.co.uk but pay no tax here.

More worrying are the number of people living and paying tax in a state who have no representation in that state nor indeed in their home state.

Could we not have some sort of system where the resident chooses whether to have election rights in their home state or in the state where they live and pay taxes? This would be rather like university students electing to vote either at their term time or holiday address.

There is an argument that you actually need representation in both places: you need to have your say about where you live and about what your home state is doing – after all, they may be about to make some big changes about your rights e.g. Brexit. Might is be an idea to let you have a split vote? Perhaps your vote could count as just 50% in both places. Or you could even choose to split it as you see fit – say 10% / 90% in favour of either place? Surely we have the technology to make this easy enough? 

There is an alternative. We get rid of all national barriers and national leaders become regional ones. Brexit and its associated confusion would disappear overnight. Come on United Nations – take the lead on this.      

On being relatively European

"If …. every citizen realizes that the only guarantee for security and peace in this atomic age is the constant development of a supra-national government, then he will do everything in his power to strengthen the United Nations. It seems to me that every reasonable and responsible citizen in the world must know where his choice lies."

From Albert Einstein's open letter to the General Assembly of the United Nations.

I've recently watched the National Geographic Bio-serial about Einstein. Yes there was quite a bit of poetic license but it was enjoyable and informative all the same. Einstein appears as a background character in one of my novels and I've been researching him quite a bit. 

He was used to being a stranger. He left his native Germany to study in Switzerland. His first wife was Serbian. Sometime after he returned to Berlin when he had become an eminent scientist he was persecuted for being Jewish. He gained asylum in the USA but was constantly monitored and was even spied on by the Russian mistress he took after his second wife died.

As a scientist he had grave concerns about the use of nuclear energy for war and encouraged the idea of a supra–national government. The United Nations goes some way to providing that, but they can't solve every problem. For me the most sickening about Blair and Bush's foray into Iraq was the division it caused within the United Nations.    

A few years earlier I'd felt very uncomfortable when we were at war over the Falklands. We seemed alone in the world. We lived near a lot of naval families at the time. War is not trivial and should be avoided.

Let's not dismiss the years of peace in Europe that the Common Market, EEC, EC, EU has brought us.

If I can be in favour of Brexit at all it is to be like Einstein. Let's get rid of borders altogether. Let's just have one world. But this would mean disbanding the whole of the EU and I'm not sure getting rid of all borders is quite what the Brexiteers mean. In the meantime, the EU remains a strong and stable force, even with all its faults, and it represents baby steps towards peace on the planet. Why would we want to go in the other direction?

So whatever happens, I'll remain relatively European. I've been through a process four times now that has involved gradually understanding why others do things which seem a little strange to us, and then understanding so well that those routines and habits become my own at least some of the time. I'm now ready for that process to happen anywhere. Thus I remain relatively European not because I'm more British than European but because I'm even more a global citizen of nowhere.