A positive response to Brexit

There is a severe lack of positivity surrounding the vote to exit the EU, so today I will be making a post about exiting the EU, from the perspective of somebody who apparently looks on events such as this from an unusually long perspective.

It is, of course, easy to do this when you do not have to worry about business, mortgage, or standing in a slightly different queue at the airport.  I have perused the media, parliamentary coverage and a variety of ridiculously underqualified commentators spreading their muck across the airwaves and probably getting very well paid for it.  I will also be making a few choice comments for the benefit of some exceptionally stupid Scots I have come across online.

Here goes nothing:

Clearly the remain option was the safest over the short term, however it is likely that we will be the first of many nations seeking to leave the EU, and so it is likely that we will not be short of trading partners as the process of undoing the globalisation process continues.  You, as a miniscule actor in globalisation, are unlikely to benefit from it.  The popular hatred of the one percent/bankers/anyone with more money than you is very much entwined with arguments for globalisation, and so you need to understand some basic facts:

The EU, the USA, the trade deals going on such as TTIP, CETA, TPP etc are all fundamental to the process of globalisation.  Globalisation benefits large companies in the following ways –

regulation, which they tell you as the consumer is for your benefit, is actually a way of preventing smaller businesses and poorer countries from competing with big business and protectionist states.  Regulation is an extremely effective barrier to entry for smaller businesses, and so lots and lots of regulation is highly desirable if you happen to own a stupendously large company.  It is not for your benefit at all. eg.  Would you rather work at the ASDA checkout, for an American company, or start your own bespoke greengrocers, because the eventual consequence of globalisation is that Walmart, owners of ASDA, will regulate you out of the market altogether. If you allow companies to legally challenge governments, nothing can prevent them from doing this.

The USA, like the EU, refers to free trade. There is no such thing as free trade. If there was you would not set up trade agreements or indeed the single market. The illusion of free trade is a bullying mechanism by which nation states seek to dominate markets and other countries.  If you have any doubts about this, go and research how the USA began trading with Japan. In much the same way the single market is a mechanism by which the entire EU is much easier to manipulate for larger players, whether these are countries or businesses.  The USA is a particular menace as their constitution and political habits effectively rate companies above the nation state.  In order to avoid the knock on effects of their problems, it is wise to seek as much autonomy as possible if you wish to retain any effective freedom of action and opportunity for your own population.

Mobility of populations is also for the benefit of business, not consumers or employees.  Several EU states have unprecedented levels of unemployment and debt since joining, for two reasons.  The first is too many people wishing to locate in the one place, the second being that the EU provides a safety net for countries taking on too much debt when they are unable to pay.  Further, unemployment is now seen as desirable for many countries, since it means that business gets to choose from a wide range of employees.  This does not help you in the course of your life, but it does aid large businesses because they can choose people who are willing to agree to their mistakes and prevents progressive thought within their businesses. It also suppresses wages.

As part of the EU, Britain has seen the decline of manufacturing in the UK.  Many people are confused about this, and in the last few days I have heard many blaming Thatcher for it.  Thatcher was actually a lot fairer than our current Conservative government, since she believed in home ownership, share ownership and entrepreneurship for all social classes.  George Osborne has spectacularly failed to encourage the roots of the economic garden in the form of promoting small business start ups, therefore we have no stimulus to remove the need for perpetual austerity. On the contrary, perpetual austerity and the suppression of optimism generally has caused more recession than we actually needed to experience.

Nobody has revived the domestic economy, in the form of encouraging British people to buy British goods.  The effect of this is that you need far more capital to start even a small business, since you have to pay attention to regulation and prepare for marketing overseas before you have adequately tested your product. British people are inventive, and without a prototype, you cannot produce a finished product.  We need to stimulate the market within the UK, in order to serve the wider global community.

The nation state generally is becoming less relevant as businesses get bigger.  Giving large businesses more power is unwise, since we already have a situation in which countries such as the Uk are so desperate for even a small amount of tax, that they are prepared to give overseas companies massive tax concessions.  If companies do not get these concessions, they will simply locate their offices elsewhere, benefiting countries willing to accept small amounts of corporation tax such as Switzerland.

BT is a case in point.  Without tax havens, Britain would also be considerably worse off.  There is unlikely to be a reversal of this process, and so if we continue to discourage small business, we will eventually be in a state where only the consumer funds the nation state by paying any tax at all.  Do you really want your future to consist of being employed by a multinational, spending your entire wages on the meagre supplies you can afford, provided by the same companies?  The EU is set up to hasten this process, and so the short to medium term benefits of being part of a superstate, are likely to become long term hazards to your life as an individual, whether you are a money grubbing ass kisser or not.  I am sure that this is an unintended outcome, but it is not a desirable one.

Markets are always unstable, and the media is never independent.  If you pay close attention to what you are watching or reading, you will find that it is rare that a genuine expert on anything is presented to you.  Now it turns out that our elected representatives are just as incompetent as we are, so you cannot afford to be lazy when it comes to seeking information on which to make decisions.  It is neither surprising, nor particularly horrifying, that companies are making threats, kneejerk judgements and that the media is keen to terrify you by spreading them.  Do not accept even ‘expert’ opinions, as the gun is always loaded.

Whilst there will be short term uncertainty, which the Conservative party will be keen to capitalise on, especially whilst the Blair and Brownites are trying to destroy what is left of the Labour Party rather than leave and start their own, the return to the nation state gives you, the individual far more control over your future and opportunities.  Similar to my previous post on feudalism, it is, quite simply, far easier to stop the economic and political machine if you want to.  Being part of a superstate prevents you from having any control at all over your own destiny.  This is a statement of fact, not an opinion.  People have more protection and more of their interests served by local representation, not distant discussion. The sky is not falling, and none of this is unexpected, with the apparent exception of the Bullingdon Boys who missed that history lesson.

The fishing industry, with the associated shipping industry and engineering skills thereof, was crucial to the British economy before the EU effectively removed it. Why do none of the whinging remainers care about coastal populations?  It was central to British success over centuries.

Finally, for the benefit of the aforementioned stupid Scots.  No, neither Nicola or Alex think about much apart from Scotland.  They do not envisage becoming President of a Scottish superstate.  The political strategy you are witnessing is exceptionally clever, even if it is a mystery to you.  You would serve your own interests better if you watched and learned.  The SNP is likely to branch into separate interest groups once we have a country to rule, so do not assume that every SNP member sits on a party line in the same way that the Labour Party has traditionally functioned.  Since the other parties are still too stupid to respond with any interest, I will refrain from outlining this at this point in time.

I hope this is sufficient to engage your interest in learning more before you shoot your mouths off hating people for trying to give you a decent future.  Short term pain, long term gain.  Enough with the panic already.

EU referendum postscript

So, yesterday Britain went to the polls to vote on whether we wanted to be in or out of the European Union.

The campaign on both sides was pretty woeful, Boris appears to have taken the job as leader of the Brexit campaign in order to bluff the population out of voting Brexit, a fact that most of the media has ignored. I have never seen Boris make so many errors as he did during the campaign, which leads me to believe that he took it on as a favour to Cameron.

Meanwhile the Remain campaign, headed by David Cameron himself, was just as lazy and complacent as their assumption that we in Scotland would be too lazy to consider running our own country.

Hilariously, England and Wales have voted out, and everyone else plus London and the richer cities have voted to remain in.  Boris probably had about fifteen minutes to write his speech this morning.

Nobody appears to have planned for a vote to exit, and nobody seems to be able to imagine the UK without the EU.  Younger voters have been tweeting all day about the selfish old codgers who supposedly ruined their futures by voting to leave the EU. They have been trained to find someone to hate in response to news that they do not like.  Who should it be this week?  The fat, the old, the smoker, the drinker, the ehead, the junkie.  Whatever floats your boat, it is no fun to actually look at the truth, and it probably takes more than 30 seconds.

There do not seem to be many people willing to discuss it that actually remember what the UK was like before we joined in the first place.  In 1975, there was weeks of discussion over whether it was a good idea, huge resistance to doing it, and a large number of people and industries have suffered in order to benefit a few large companies and extremely rich people. These same younger voters know nothing of Britain’s fishing industry, eating British produce when it was in season, or actually being able to get work when you were looking for it instead of endless temporary work whilst you wait to get a job that you are actually trained for.  I am by no means suggesting that Britain was paradise, but it was certainly easier for my older siblings, who all benefited from the pre-EU economy, to find gainful and permanent employment than it was for me. Marks and Spencers, for another example, used to sell classic styling made in Britain.  We generated domestic income by promoting things ACTUALLY MADE HERE, and people had work.

Driving around Scotland, you can see traces of the industries that have been destroyed since then, by a combination of Westminster policy, EU rulings, and the ability to easily move jobs thanks to a more advanced system which meant that company owners no longer needed to care if they were destroying an entire region by removing thousands of jobs.  Kilmarnock made carpets, Port Glasgow had shipping services, Rothesay was the holiday destination for railway workers.  All over Scotland you can marvel at the astonishing amounts of money we once had to build incredibly beautiful buildings, and the people now housed in cardboard blocks of flats, who once earned a decent living and spent money, sustaining everybody around them as they did so.

Whilst the porridge wogs are, of course, of no importance to the English and Welsh voters who have now decided to revive the old UK, (they hate everyone with equal venom)  they have now noticed similar desertification of their own areas, and they are angry with Westminster.  Scottish people are just whingers, of course, but these proud English have expressed their anger by demanding that Britain exit what is seen to be a controlling EU, which somehow manages to induce the Conservative Government that these same people voted for, to create policies which kill the disabled through neglect and welfare punishment, invite an underclass of immigrants to undercut the fake minimum wage, and – shock horror – reduce their local services.

Does anyone seriously think that their favoured Conservative Government is more trustworthy with human rights, the environment, TTIP, TISA, CETA and promoting a healthy economy which benefits everyone within Britain?  No, I do not think they do.  I think they are more like my neighbour, who does not want Scottish independence in case he has to do some additional paperwork and refuses to understand that people are dying BECAUSE HE VOTED TORY.  I think they have, like the young, been trained to hate, and they have chosen the traditional English way out – it is Johnny Foreigner’s fault.

With my economics hat on, I forsee interesting times.  I do not forsee a return to ‘Buy British’ or the heyday they seem to think they will return to, but a country that allows you to make a living and allows the fishing boats to fish their own waters would be nice, so it is not the end of the world.  The pound going down is not so bad either, since it will create a demand for the goods nobody sees the point in making any more.

It may also interest the disappointed youth to know that nobody was prevented from going on holiday before we joined the EU.