Future Echo

I want to be clear that what the United Kingdom is doing by leaving the European Union is both wrong and evil. That both the USA and the UK have leaders who proudly boast of their dishonesty and their repeated marital infidelity and that the agenda of Brexit is being driven by such people should be a clear warning of whence it comes. That some, while decrying something as immoral, are, at the same time, financially profiteering from it indicates where their heart is! Citizenship of the Union is hereby established. Every person holding the nationality of a Member State shall be a citizen of the Union. Citizenship of the Union shall be additional to and not replace national citizenship. Article 9 of TEU and Article 20 of TFEU Brexit is removing rights from every single UK citizen , of whom at least 17 million recognise and resent it! This is particularly distressing for the 5 million people from the UK and all over the EU who have been actively using their rights as E...

During the last week I have seen posts on Facebook from a few significant people giving up on the UK.  Those people have been working to try to help the people of the UK see sense, some of them writing, some producing videos – all fact based – demonstrating the absurdity of Brexit. I share those feelings, so I understand them entirely, yet there is almost a sense of guilt attached.   John F Kennedy in a speech in 1961 paraphrased Charles F. Aked :  The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. ' On the other hand, those people leaving Germany in 1933 had got to the point they realised their own survival depended on it. For about a year I have believed the UK has passed tipping point . I keep hoping I am wrong, but sadly nothing in the last 12 months has convinced me that I am. I see the possibility of Scotland seceding as lifeboat for some; the reunification of Ireland for others and if Wales secedes yet more....

I was born in the UK, have lived in the USA and now made my home in Cyprus. Currently, as of 15th March 2019, I enjoy EU citizenship and UK citizenship and have applied for Cyprus citizenship. My primary loyalty is to the EU and to Cyprus, my British citizenship is a result of my birth. As a young person I remember the South Africa apartheid issue. I remember the boycotts of South African products and companies that invested in South Africa. I'd never been to the Republic of South Africa. I had, at that stage, no relatives or friends who lived there, yet I felt I had a right to engage with what was happening there, albeit remotely. Recently I have engaged with people from the USA over what is happening there… We have more guns per head or population in Cyprus compared to the USA yet radically less gun crime, school attacks and similar. The USA NRA are correct when then say 'guns don't kill people, people do'. And discussion about Trump. The UK held a referend...

Some of the criticism of the EU from people against it is that it has a central ruling elite who are disconnected from the everyday population. This makes it sound like an empire but is it actually a valid criticism? And what is the gulf that separates the UK and the European Union? Throughout the ages we have had empires from the Chinese, Roman, Ottoman, British and a plethora of others. The point about an empire is that its population is ' culturally and ethnically distinct from the imperial (ruling) ethnic group and its culture '. It is contrasted to a federation, which is a ' union of partially self-governing provinces, states, or other regions under a central federal government ' or a community which is a ' social unit that has something in common, such as norms, religion, values, or identity '. To consider the European Union some form of imperial empire one needs to consider it from a phenomenological point of view. I would argue that the approach i...

Brexit has made me think a lot more about politics than I ever have in my life and about how following in the footsteps of the Messiah relates to politics. I think it has made me realise that I had become complacent with the status quo and more than anything that the direction the English speaking world is taking is definitely not the way of Christ. Historically we have used a left <-> right scale that have had Christians scattered across the line. The reason for this scattering is that there are other dimensions and some Christians have desired those other attributes of the related party and then assumed because of that almost everything with the party must implicitly be Christian. The left <-> right labels of  Democrat vs Republican or Labour vs Conservative I find particularly unhelpful. This is even worse when one tries to translate between America and the UK with these terms. When I saw the political compass I thought that was a really useful addition. Espec...

If it's on the side of a big red bus... does it have more credibility? Broken democracy? The Brexit referendum in 2016 cut across the traditional Conservative and Labour politics of the United Kingdom with a result that was 51.89% in favour of leaving the EU and 48.11% in favour of remaining in the EU. A less than 2% swing would have reversed the decision. The campaign was vitriolic with accusations of lies on one side and projected fear on the other. That has continued and there is no sign of 'the country coming together again'. Voting pattern of those eligible to vote in the 2016 Referendum  Though some Leave voters argue the referendum was clear, I do not believe one can really argue that it was an overwhelming result either way nor what the desires of those who did not vote are, one can only say that just over one third of those allowed to vote wanted to leave the EU and just under one third wanted to remain in the EU. It appears to me that there was s...

Ask a group of British people about their constitution and you will receive a wide variety of responses. It is clear that the UK doesn't have a single codified document as a constitution like, for instance, the USA or France. The implementation process for Brexit is changing the way that the British constitution works, tearing up some of the principles upon which the UK constitution functions and allowing Parliamentary sovereignty to do whatever it likes with only a modicum of oversight from the Supreme Court. British citizens or subjects can, therefore, rely on nothing to protect them from a future, or maybe current, imperious government. Lawyers in training will often point to UK constitutional law as being the thickest book they need to study for their examinations. One retired lawyer, though not a specialist in constitutional law, pointed to constitutional lawyers such as TB Smith, JDB Mitchell and Neil MacCormack as being the people he would reference: 'all argu...