Sorry to be political and junk but and its pretty UK centric but this is the biggest thing to happen in my lifetime in UK politics. So, to everyone, soz. It will be long, possibly dull, probably some bits you'll disagree with but it will definately have swearing and at least one erection joke.
On Thursday we set the trajectory for the country my girls will grow up in and there is now a very real risk that manipulation and anger might overrule sanity. The Remain camp has lost the argument.
They lost because they didn't realise what argument they were actually having. Leave supporters are not all stupid or racist. They are angry and feel like their views don't count, no-one listens to them and they are always getting told they are just wrong to hold the views they do. I can relate to that. In our broken democracy most peoples votes don't count. I'm very politcally engaged but I've never voted in a General Election because it wouldn't do anything in the safe Tory seats I live in. I think both sides of politics are depressing and pointless. Apparently this is called Electile Dysfunction and a lot of people suffer with it silently. Here though is an opportunity to be heard, even if it is not the message you want to land, and people are jumping on that opportunity like Trump in the US. People just want to say fuck you, listen to what I have to say. Leave supporters have some very real, very valid concerns but this, sadly for them (and everyone) is not a chance to make a difference to any of them.
However, the Leave camp know what people actually want and are using manipulative and misleading language ("take back our" whatever) to engage with people and make them feel like they are being listened to, when they are not. The Remain camp, sadly are just doing more of the what pissed people off in the first place, telling them they are wrong, racist or both. That the EU is brilliant anyway and not addressing the actual concerns of people. So at least Leave are pretending to give a shit what people think right? Sadly I think that is way more insidious than that. They have a few key angles and all of them are complete bullshit. Not the issues, but that a Brexit would do a single thing to change any of them. They are broadly:
Lets Make Britain Great Again
Lets Take Back Our Money
Lets Take Back our Laws
Lets Take Back Our Borders
First up, lets Make Britain Great again. Spurious non specific fluff but what they seem to mean by this is a nostalgic tilt of the hat for the old folk about making Britain the Britain of scientists, engineers, arts and learning (that it still is). Which would be fine if, and heres the problem, every scientist, engineer, artist (and no Geldof doesn't fucking count) and scholar wasn't saying please, please don't take us out of the EU. It will set us back years. Not to mention the fact that the EU forces us to spend money (in that whole we give them loads of money and they give it mostly back balls up we'll come to in a minute) on science, R&D and the arts. If we don't have that are you really backing UKIP and the Tories austerity led government to invest in these things you want to make Britain Great Again? Seriously? Farage and Gove and Johnson are your guys on this? The guys telling us (correctly sadly) that the British people are fed up of experts like these scientists and engineers telling them want to do?
Which leads me to Take Back Our Money. The whole 'we give them £350m' thing mentioned above has been roundly proved to be utter crap so lets ignore that and look at the overall economic impact. No-one really knows but the estimates range from it'll make no difference to complete catastrophe. I reckon on balance it will probably be about the same once we get over the initial panicky recession, only now with all of Europe acting against us, which will have a medium to long term effect as businesses gradually choose to invest in Europe over the geograpically and legislatively isolated UK. No-one seems to have a single plan that says it will be better, just that maybe the Remain camp are overplaying the possible disaster, which they probably are. Maybe we get to spend our money on what we want but given its spent on Art, Science, learning (see making Britain Great Again), farming (see wanting to eat) and infrastructure what would we do differently? Again Leave have offered no suggestions at all.
Lets Take Back our Laws is similar. No-one has made any suggestions of what materially we would stop doing? Or what the EU has ever stopped us doing? The attractive angle is some of their lower level 'red tape' about shape of bananas or whatever. Which sounds fine except the rest of the EU won't stop their red tape just because we won't play. So if you want to sell anything there, and to be clear all the big employers in the UK will want to, they will still have to make their products meet these rules. So they will sell them to us because having UK specific versions will add complexity and cost. So unless we cut ourselves off from Europe, which would turn the economic outlook into 'total catastrophe', it won't actually allow us to do anything differently.
The last one is the toughest. Being concerned about migration does not make you racist, just because all racists are concerned about migration. Its cheap device and logical fallacy that Remain has played very poorly in my opinion. Immigration has been positive for the country over decades, centuries, in fact its who we are as a nation. Especially for me as middle class homeowner that wants them to work, pay tax, keep the economy and housing market ticking over. But that doesn't mean its good for all. That is not necessarily the experience of an out of work, council tenant in an urban centre seeing their world change with social budgets and facilities stretched. Migration is entering a phase and scale, the like of which we have never seen. Just because it was good before doesn't mean it always will be. Thats not racism, in fact it would be worse if all the old, NHS draininBritish expats returned from various hotter climates, than it would be to let in young, grateful, hardworking Syrians.
If that bothers you fine, protest, campaign, try to change our entry criteria and support systems but people will always want to come because the Britain is already 'Great', thanks BoJo. The only way
to bring down net migration is to make the UK more shit, which has been Tory policy over the last two parliaments.
So lets accept immigration is not something to be swept under the carpet by accusations of racism if we can but, and heres the kicker, Brexit would do absolutely nothing about it. Most migration isn't from the EU so this has no effect. EU migration would only fall if we cut ourselves off completely from Europe as any trade deal with them will include free movement of labour (as all other non EU
european nations already have). If we cut ourselves off then that economic outlook goes back to 'catastrophe' and we're all screwed.
Under the rhetoric there is absolutely nothing. Nothing.
So, I know the world is not perfect, the EU are a bunch of dicks and you want to stick two fingers up to the establishment. Please though everyone, don't say something incredibly damaging just to be heard. If the people at the party aren't listening to you, don't scream 'wankers' and slap yourself in the face just to be noticed before you storm out. It may already be too late. The reputation of the UK abroad and any chance of political consensus required to make any actual change may have been burned by this horror show.
A Leave vote will make the world my daughters and all our children grow up in a smaller, more divided place. That is enough for me. Good luck to the UK on Thursday.
Belgium 
Canada 
China 
Germany 
Denmark 
Spain 
France 
United Kingdom 
Croatia 
Ireland 
Italy 
Japan 
Korea 
Netherlands 
Poland 
Romania 
Serbia 
Russian Federation 
Sweden 
Thailand 
United States 
Vietnam 
are you doing any of the study sessions yourself? Often you will find that when you begin something like this you start off by losing because you are starting to think maybe in a different way and that different/new thinking is not learnt yet. So you likely get it slightly wrong in the beginning or do it ok for one street but then don't know what to do OTT! Also in episode one I mention the Adult Learning Model and how you will learn a lot of stuff to a low level and to conscious competence and think you can do it.... except you can't unless you are running ok playing only 2 tables and are playing your A game AND you have to think about it. People assume they got it then which is silly 
When you can do it taking shots and during period of run bad, when you are playing your B/C game only 4 tables of zoom you got it!
@MilfGrinder
