Travels of a Fish Nut

(I had planned on writing a post on immigration and something more detailed for my last post on the referendum but time has run out). [Previous posts are found here: 1 , 2 and 3 ] The referendum is only a couple of days away. The polls are too close for comfort so there's truly no way of knowing what the future holds. On Friday we could be heaving a starting to steer the country back on course or ploughing into uncharted waters. Only time will tell.

[Click here for part 1 and here for part 2 ] Things are hotting up in the run-up to the referendum as the official campaigns have been chosen by the Electoral Commission . Britain Stronger in Europe is organising the ‘Stay’ campaign while Vote Leave have been designated the official ‘Leave’ campaign. Vote Leave has written a ‘Case’ for leaving. It’s a 36-page PDF document that paints a picture of a bright and rosy future if only we’d do the sensible thing and leave the sinking ship that is the EU.

[Part 1 can be found here ] Almost two months ago I left the UK and, via a short (but fantastic) stop in Bangkok, I landed almost half way round the world in Australia to start a PhD. Before I left I went to a couple of foreign exchange places. Both offered an exchange rate that gave me almost exactly $2 to the £ (so ‘almost exactly’ that I got $200 for £100). Less than two months later that same £100 will get me a measly $187. Now, you could argue that the Australian dollar is just doing really well, but given that there's a bit of a slump due to the (temporary) collapse of the mining industry, this seems like wishful thinking. In fact the reason for the change is not an increase in the value of the AUD, but the decrease in value of the GPB. The slump gained significant momentum when Boris Johnson backed Brexit and there is no sign of things improving.

[This has become much longer than I expected so I’ve decided to break this up into two posts. Probably two posts. . . . Hopefully just two posts . . . We’ll see. . . ] The EU referendum election is coming up on 23rd June. I don’t think it comes as any great surprise to hear that I’ll be voting to stay in, but I thought it might be worth taking some time to explain exactly why I not only feel that we should stay in, but why I feel extremely passionately that this is the best thing for the UK.

In a few weeks’ time voters around the UK will go to the polls to vote for the MEPs they wish to represent them in the European Parliament for the next 5 years. Despite the highly publicised debates between Nigel Farage and Nick Clegg , voters still seem unclear exactly what they’re voting for. A poll taken a couple of weeks after the second debate showed a level of apathy among voters that hasn’t been seen since the Police and Crime Commissioner elections . Only 16% knew when the elections are being held, and only 7% could name any of their MEPs or even knew how many MEPs the UK currently has. I can’t criticise because I didn’t know any better so I thought it about time I educate myself and maybe do my part to help improve these figures by explaining a bit about the European Parliament and the voting process.

UKIP are a strange beast. They seem to court scandal, whether it’s over expenses , claims of sexism and racism , or renouncing their own manifesto and even their own members . Yet despite all this they are on a roll, having regularly trounced the LibDems in polls for almost a year. In the recent debates over the place of the UK in the European Union the consensus was that Farage won , despite (or maybe because) it seemed to be more about the personalities of the two debaters than any arguments they presented.