Nearer the referendum

The day inches nearer. My w/e summary. It has been a bad debate because the alternatives are unpalatable. To leave the EU does throw away certain real benefits: ease of travel, even roaming charges! It really does run the risk of substantial economic damage (although the threat to house prices seems as much a benefit as a loss and that "house" business underlies so much).John Band's demonstrations of how much we depend on inward investment weigh heavily with me, So be clear vote leave for a substantial and possibly rough readjustment. It may well also imperil the UK. Scotland will very conceivably go. Ulster will join the smuggling front line. We will bring the chaos of EU land borders onto our own islands. Strong arguments to stay,

And to leave there are two very strong ones. Democracy: the EU is certainly not that. It is a very poor class organisation. It has shown itself inept in managing its own currency and its borders. On those two alone it is very tempting to say fie on you. And there is the numbers game, back to the houses, population growth. I do really think that the UK population growth is a very serious matter. For years in the 1980s, we managed an equilibrium. A nation must control its borders, the world without borders is a progressive's naive dream. You may think I live in the Tyne Valley far from these realities. As we showed last week Fiona's upbringing pitches her right into the heart of it and here in Prudhoe we are promised 800 new homes with NONE of the associated quality infrastructure planning needed. We live in a town whose "town centre development" has been a decades long wrangle. Our road access north and south is prehistoric. Everything should be sweet and rosy in our town, The hillside zoned for a town centre could be one of the best new developments in Britain. We have a Garden Village already existing fit for re-use. It is being flattened, slowly. The much loved three tier schooling is being brought down to two tier LCD. So both poor development and uncontrolled population growth (whether reproductive (and worse at religious behest), EU, non EU) make me think the Great Britain I was proud to grow up in appears headed to a south east akin to Hong Kong with warring Celtic fringes going their own way. Not a well balanced place able to trade around the world WHICH IT WAS.

I am sorry if that sounds gloomy and what it means for my vote, even if I choose to exercise it, I still do not know.