This rainy week, another from the sunny archives. OMG it was taken 10 years ago!
And so question three of the latest round of Five Questions.
A couple more snippets on the EU referendum.
Tom Peck in yesterday’s Independent highlights that British public wrong about nearly everything to do with the EU according to a recent Ipsos MORI poll.
So it should be no surprise that, according to today’s Independent, 55% of people intend to vote LEAVE despite that warnings about the economic impact of Brexit appear to be hitting home. According to the ORB survey 80% of people think leaving the EU would pose some risk, while 19 per cent think it would pose no risk at all. Nevertheless a majority of both groups are still prepared to take the risk.
Meanwhile my friend Katy in a blog post yesterday likens getting people to understand the actual facts (as opposed to that they think the facts are) in the referendum debate to trying to teach children how to pick up marks in exams even if they eventually get the answers wrong. Having tried both she has found much sadness.
Which just goes to prove what I was highlighting the other day: that even thinking people do not understand risk and consistently under-estimate risks.
Gawdelpus!
This month’s Ten Things brings something completely different …
For many years I have noted many imaginary — totally fictional — names of virtual people as they have happened across my brain. As I am now unlikely to every write a sci-fi or fantasy novel (or indeed any fiction) I bring you a selection for your amusement.
10 Imaginary people:
- Merkin Hick; American backwoodsman
- Armin Plaastar; Dutch; ski instructor
- Geisha Bottle (actually more likely Gaysha); East-End 6-year-old; sister of Chardonnay-Madonna Bottle
- Ii Ng; Japanese; fashion designer
- Mugg O’Teaghe; Irish; builder
- Sir Chiltern Waternut; retired ambassador
- Willie P Gentleigh; private detective
- Constant Lambing; farmer
- Mangoe Stikky; rapper
- Leena Stagarova; Soviet gymnast
GOK what this says about the state of my brain!
Another article I picked up yesterday was UK and the EU (10) — What if it is Brexit? on the Law and Lawyers blog. As you might divine it is number 10 in a series which tries to shine some interesting lights on the legal ramifications of the upcoming referendum.
Yesterday’s article points out (without saying it in as many words) that a LEAVE vote on 23 June would present an interesting constitutional crisis. In summary:
Interesting times we live in!
There was a very illuminating article by Simon Jenkins in yesterday’s Guardian under the banner
In it Jenkins writes the biography of the HS2 rail project — and how over the years it has been fiddled and fudged by governments and interested parties when there is basically no business case, or any other justification, for it.
Whether you agree with Jenkins or not, it doesn’t make very edifying reading.
My view has always been that HS2 is another classic example, like London’s proposed Garden Bridge, of an unjustified vanity project which has got completely out of hand and sucked in politicians who can’t now be seen to back down. Heathrow’s Third Runway isn’t too far behind either. These mega projects are seldom more than politicians “willy waving”.
They’re all projects which need to be killed off — FAST!
If we’ve got that amount of money to waste spend then it would be better spent on more useful infrastructure projects. Let’s start with a couple of nuclear power stations to reduce our dependence on imported coal and dirty oil with a reduction in CO2 emissions.
I despair of politicians, I really do. Doomed! We’re all doomed!
We are so often attracted to flowers by their stunning and vibrant colours — a lemon yellow daffodil or a deep red rose. But back in the early 20th century a radiologist, Dr Dain Tasker, was interested in the anatomy of flowers using his professional skills and X-ray film to highlight the soft layering of petals and leaves. This produced ghostly, monochrome images looking more like pen & ink drawings than photographs.
I’m beginning to get despondent — no, let’s have this right, I’m now getting ever more deeply despondent — about the EU Referendum on 23 June.
I’m worried that the great British public will vote to LEAVE the EU. They certainly will if the current opinion polls are anything to go by as most seem to be showing LEAVE several points ahead with relatively few undecided voters. Typically the polls I’ve seen in the last week seem to be showing roughly REMAIN on 42% and LEAVE on 44%.
What deepened my worries is the state of mind of the “unthinking masses”. There’s a group on Facebook for the town where I grew up — a town now predominantly populated by people I can only best describe as “Essex chavs” (although that does do an injustice to many). Someone bravely put a poll on the Facebook group asking what people would vote. When I looked a few minutes ago the figures were REMAIN 28, LEAVE 158.
WHAT! Yes, that’s right, almost 6:1 in favour of LEAVE. I find that really scary because it implies that the LEAVE campaign’s fear-mongering, mostly on immigration, has got through to the minds of the less critical masses.
I fear that Joe Public is going to vote according to his tribal and xenophobic, Daily Mail, mindset — just as in many other things he (and she) will always vote with their wallet. Even many immigrants, and children of immigrants, are saying they’ll vote LEAVE because of immigration.
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m OK with a LEAVE vote as long as it is based on some concrete foundations. However I know that Joe Public doesn’t work that way; he votes according to his fears and predilections, not because of good logic. Remember the old research which says that 5% of people can think and do; 5% of people cannot think; the other 90% can thing but just can’t be bothered — and that is partly because they have never been properly taught to do so.
It is going to take an awful lot of thinking citizens to overcome odds like that.
Part of the problem is that people cannot grasp that this whole thing is a big gamble; but a gamble where no-one knows what any of the odds are! This was summed up a couple of days ago by Martin Lewis of moneysavingexpert.com under the title How to vote in the EU referendum. His article is quite nicely balanced; Lewis points out the good and the bad with the EU. Here are a few key snippets:
It’s the biggest consumer decision any of us will ever make. It affects our economy, foreign policy, immigration policy, security and sovereignty. Our vote on whether the UK should leave the EU will reverberate through our lifetimes, and those of our children and grandchildren.
… … …
My mailbag’s been drowning with questions and concerns. The biggest being: “Please just tell us the facts, what’ll happen if we leave?” I’m sorry, but the most important thing to understand is: there are no facts about what happens next.
Anyone who tells you they KNOW what’ll happen if we leave the EU is a liar. Predicting exact numbers for economic, immigration or house price change is nonsense. What’s proposed is unprecedented. All the studies, models and hypotheses are based on assumptions — that’s guesstimate and hope.
Oh, and that applies equally to both sides of the debate! There are no facts; just guesses.
Lewis goes on to recommend that we “do some reading on useful independent sites that run through the issues” and suggests we start with The UK in a Changing Europe which is run by King’s College, London and pools balanced articles from all sides.
He then, quite rightly, points out …
… for most people this comes down to a risk assessment.
A vote for Brexit is unquestionably economically riskier than a vote to remain. Yet don’t automatically read risk as a bad thing. It simply means there’s more uncertainty …
Leaving the EU risks us being left on the sidelines …
Or we could in the long run become a nimble low-tax, low-regulation, tiger economy …
The likely truth is of course somewhere between the two. But most independent analysis suggests Brexit will be detrimental to the economy.
… … …
The volume of uncertainty means the only way to make the right decision is based on your political attitude to the EU, your gut instinct, and how risk-averse you are on each area that matters to you.
All I would say is please do this consciously, after carefully weighing the options, and don’t necessarily go just with your gut feelings (important though they are). In the words of Frank Zappa “a mind is like a parachute — it doesn’t work if it is not open“.
I happen to think that on balance leaving the EU would be the worse option — and heaven knows there’s so much about the EU I don’t like. But I could be wrong. We all could be wrong. As with all things there is no “RIGHT” answer.
And remember, again as Lewis comments, “the future is always a journey” but the path is crazy paving and you lay it yourself as you go along.
Good luck! We’re all going to need it whichever path we take.
Pussy porn again this week …
Meet the latest two additions to the household: The Tuxedo Twins.
Born: 6 April 2016
Arrived here: 3 June 2016
Mother was rescued, very pregnant, and cared for by our local animal rescue group, Guardian Angels Animal Support. These two were our choice from the five kittens. Needless to say our existing cat, Tilly, is not impressed. Well not yet anyway!
