But we're not being offered a clear choice based on differing visions for the future of our country by the people who would be our representatives. Why is this?
Well in large part it is because they have become so far removed from the reality of our every-day lives and so focused upon their own short-term employment prospects, that they simply don't give a toss about the electorate or the future success of the country. It's about keeping their cushy jobs or securing a cushy job and has nothing to do with improving the lives of their constituents.
They are all terrified by the prospect of standing up in front of a real audience and having to discuss real issues. They only ever appear in front of a carefully hand picked 'positive and supportive' audience. It's a shambles and an affront to democracy in my opinion. They have no interest in our views and only during an election will they pay even lip service to what we think - and ignore anything remotely difficult in the (correct) belief that it will go away after the election.. - or not 'go away', just become a problem they don't have to worry about because there's absolutely nothing we voters can do about it.
These people are not working for us, they're working for themselves, but we're picking up the tab. We're effectively paying them to ignore us. How stupid are we?
Anyway, that's all true and quite interesting in a detail kind of way but the point I want to make here goes beyond this bullshit. I think that we're not being presented with a clear and different 'vision' (or 'choice') for the future of our country, based on differences in political stance, because it's pointless to make such an offer.
And it's pointless because while we're a member of the EU, there is simply no point in having a 'vision' for our own country.
We cannot, under the yolk of the EU, have any kind of vision for where we want to be as a nation. The only 'vision' we can have is as a bit-part player in the great European programme - or pogram as it might better be described.
As one of 28 members - and the 2nd largest net contributor of only 11 net contributors - we have an 8% share in the project, an 8% level of influence but it's not even that because we're ignored, sneered at even, by Brussels. By unelected Eurocrats. Sneered at even though we pay their massively inflated and cushy salaries. And they make the laws and we have to abide by them and they ignore our concerns and we pay for this. We are totally fucking mad.
And this means that we cannot have a vision about where we're going as a country, as a nation, as a people. Because we're paying massively for these fuckwits to decide on our future, whether it suits us or not.
We're not being offered a choice about our future as a country in this coming General Election, because whatever we vote for will be irrelevant if it doesn't meet with the approval of the unelected EU.
If we stay in the EU we will have to give up the pound as sure as night follows day, and we will be subsumed into the EU - or let's tell it like it is, the German philosophy. And what hope, what freedom, what democracy we fought for twice in the last century will have been completely in vain.
If you think this is good, I'll respect your views - that is what freedom means after all. But if you think that this will be a good thing for the UK, for us Brits, you are sorely mistaken.
Instead of having a long-term vision for the UK - a nation of enterprise, endeavour, fairness and honourable behaviour; a nation with unsurpassed positive relationships with important and growing trading nations around the world, places like Canada, India, Australia, the USA, China; we are actually being tied in to the inward-looking, slow-moving, protectionist, backward and shrinking/failing trading bloc that is the EU. A bloc that is doing more than any other to stop Africa from trading its way into the first world because it might be a threat to the French subsistence farming way of life.
Being in the world's largest trading bloc is not a boon for UK trade, it's a brake on our ability to trade with the rest of the world - something that our success as a nation has always been built upon. The EU represented 78% of our overseas trade in 1974 when we entered the 'Common Market'. It's now 45% and falling and as the Eurozone's biggest customer they simply cannot afford not to trade with us. There would be no blocking tariffs on UK trade with Europe if we left the EU because they have much more to lose than we do. There would be no significant job losses if we left, indeed there would be major job opportunities as we would be free to trade with the rest of the world - and the US (although it won't publicly admit it) would be much more keen to trade and work with us as a free trading partner with a strong entry into European (and Asian) markets if we could provide them with much easier access to European markets than they currently enjoy with the creaking machinery of the EU.
If we stay in the EU our destiny will be as a bit-part player in a failing trading bloc, without any real influence just massive bills for little or no benefit. If we get out we have a strong chance of becoming a great trading nation once again and we would not have to pay for the turn-around of corrupt and backward nations that are now joining the EU. We would be able to control our borders and in so-doing, be able to plan our infrastructure and the provision of services that we all need. We could once again have a positive (and I would say correct) attitude towards immigration: It would be an asset to us, not a problem.
For the moment all we really need in terms of 'vision' for the future of the UK is one in which we get out of the EU. It has failed as a project financially, economically and culturally and is actually more likely to cause conflict in Europe, the abolition of which was its initial raison d'etre. Outside of it we can trade and work with our friends in European countries and around the world on our own behalf instead of being dictated to by failed politicians from Luxembourg, Italy etc. How did it come to this?
Time to go and when we do, the vision for our successful future will take care of itself. And our votes at a general election will have real meaning for us all.
Thanks for reading.
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