The EU vote raises the same question that is never explicitly asked.

Why do Labour and the Lib Dems never vote against Europe?

This was largely the question posed to me by a friend when the discussion of exiting Europe came up. I have to be honest, I had to think. If the population of the UK wants to get out of Europe, which it does (why else would a government be so scared to hold a referendum?) surely it would be easy money for Labour or the Lib Dems to cash in on this by saying they would exist Europe.


Well, the reason begins with this; no one believes in independence anymore. Confused? Let me lay it out. Power is dictated by money, whoever has the most money, has the most influence and has the spare cash to spend on financing a nice shiney military. But even without guns money gives control (more on this a little later). To get money you need a good economy.

The US has a good economy, for example, because it has low tax, highly skilled workers and a huge home market. If you don't know what I mean by a home market take this example.

Your name is Bob, you like in the US, you make a product which brushes your teeth for you. You can now sell that to the whole US population of 300 million people at $5. You make $1.5 Bn.

Your name is Francois, you like in France, you make the same product. You can now sell it to the whole of France's 65 million people for $5 which makes you only $325million.

If you want to sell else where you need translation, you need to address the change in cultures their toothpaste tubes don't fit etc etc. This all causes expense and profit margins go down.

In short, if you live in a big country or area with the same rules and regulations and culture, you make more money.

This is why the US is so rich. Everyone speaks the same language, drive on the same size roads, has similar values and so on.

Great. Lesson one, done.

Lesson two I'm going to abridge to stop this getting too big. The more money a country has the more you can get other countries to do what you want. If they don't do as you ask, sell all your investments in their country and their economy goes down the pan, people lose jobs, the leader gets kicked out, and you start the process again.

So with this in mind the leaders of the UK know that if we go it alone, we're going to get screwed with by countries like the US. So we need to get along side someone equally as big. The two obvious options at the moment is the EU and the US. Frankly I'd rather get on side with Australian, New Zealand and Canada, but whatever.

This is where the explanation comes in for Labour's and the Lib Dem's behaviour. Everyone in Parliament knows we need to choose between the EU and US... how do they decide?

Ideology.

The United States is a free market, free speech, small government, morally Christian kinda place.

Europe/the EU is 'generally' is a protectionist, socialist, big government, morally secular kinda place.

Labour is protectionist, socialist, pro-big government and morally secular
Lib Dems are big government, morally secular
The Tories are for free speech, small government, free market, and half of them are morally Christian.

Get it?

Basically this is lifes play ground and we're having to choose who our friends are. Each party is trying to pick the ones that are most like them. This is just an epic sized question of "do you hang around with the junkies, the nerds, the jocks or the Crispys?"


You're not going to spend your life on your own, so it is time to choose some friends. But be careful who you choose, "Do not be deceived: “Evil company corrupts good habits.” or another proverb "The righteous should choose his friends carefully, For the way of the wicked leads them astray."

Now I'm not saying Europeans are evil or good or vis-a-versa. But you will become more like your friends, whomever they may be. Whether they are good or not.

So the next time you heard about a EU treaty and who has voted on it and how. Don't look at the small picture, whether the treaty has merit or not. Look at the bigger picture of the aims of the two parties, because I'm willing to bet that there is one group of people who will vote for it no matter what it says and others who will vote against, almost everytime.

That's because the question is not about that individual treaty really, rather it is about the country you want to live in in 30 years: a socialist leaning, protectionist, big government secular one, or a free market, small government (slightly more) Christian one.

That is the question for the EU vote, and that will ALWAYS be the question for each EU vote.

The definitive guide to class in the UK.

This is starting to annoy me now. Everyone wants to express their opinion on why there is no class mobility. or why class mobility is so bad in the UK. The problem is most of the people who are expressing these opinions are journalists and politicians who chances are (by nature of their job) have no idea what problems there are for the working classes. So here it is, the definitive answer.

To begin after an introduction like that I feel I ought to explain a little about myself. Since this is the Internet and essentially anyone can read this however, it will be just that, a little.

My family heritage is based firmly in the working class. My fathers first job was digging roads and now I'm here a Barrister. So I feel I can state with confidence that I know what I'm talking about when it comes to class and class barriers.

Point number 1: Someone working class people just have an inferiority complex.

Some people who are successful in Britain still go on moping about how they don't really feel totally accepted in the middle class and how they still feel like outsiders. Allow me to put this in the plainest possible terms, just because you have an inferiority complex that doesn't mean that you don't fit in. What it means is that your insecurity is telling you that you don't fit in, despite the fact that you have in fact 'made it'. You have made the transition from one class to another. Your subjective feelings however are nothing to do with what anyone else thinks about you.

Admittedly this isn't something from which I suffer. As far as I'm concerned anyone who thinks they are better than me because they were born with money and I wasn't is actually proving the reverse. I have got to where they now are with less than what they had. This means that I'm superior, if they were as good as me then they wouldn't be where I am, they would be on a beach in Barbados living off their controlling interest in Virgin, in other words they would be Richard Branson, who now I come to think about it, wasn't born with money either, in fact he was born with very limited academic ability.

Point number 2: Some state schools are useless, but not for the reason you think.

Bla bla bla, private schools are so unfair, state schools aren't good enough bla bla bla. I'm so tired on this argument I don't know where to begin. The state school I went to was dire. I don't mean 'oh you didn't get an A*' dire, I mean 'pat that kid down for knives' dire. This got better at sixth form, but it was still no picnic. But the question to ask is why did it get better in 6th form? Th reason is that all the people who didn't want to be in school left. That is why it got better. It was still underfunded, the teachers still had to pay for their own white board pens, but the people who didn't want to be there left, and that is what counts. The attitude of the pupils who are there. Everyone in private school not only wants to be there, but wants to be there so badly that they are willing to pay £9,000 per year to be there. You don't pay that unless you really care about what you're coming out with (or you're so rich £9,000 is nothing but they often don't do well). The idea that public schools are better because they are better funded and therefore have better equipment is like me claiming that Marcel Fischer is a better fencer than me because his Épée cost more than mine. It may be true but it has nothing to do with why his is better (assuming he is of course!).

My school was rubbish because the attitude of the pupils was not one of competition and wanting to get the best marks possible. It was because it was filled with idiots, who thought school was "s***" and then left to spend their life on benefits and shop lifting, that isn't a generalisation, that is two case studies.

The fact is if these people went to a public school they would be kicked out and their backward looking educational outlook would leave with them. That just didn't happen in my school because the state makes it illegal for them not to go to school. As a result the morons must go somewhere and that somewhere was the same place that I went to learn.

Now those of a Guardian reading disposition love to say that failing state schools is a fault of the government. This is rubbish. All my teachers did their best under the circumstances and a good few went above and beyond what was required of them. But that doesn't change the fact that you're teaching an idiot, not because they aren't intelligent, but because they place no value in knowledge, to mis-quote the famous philosopher 'Chris Rock' "nothing pleases a [chav] more than not knowing something". To go slightly higher brow, Proverbs 1:22 “ How long, you simple ones, will you love simplicity? For scorners delight in their scorning, And fools hate knowledge.

And this is something that Guardian readers can't grasp, some people are fools. They are not stupid, they do not lack resources, they lack no good only that they are fools. I don't consider these people below me or anyone else for that matter. I don't think they are particularly bad, 'but for the grace of God go I' as John Bradford once said (well technically referred to himself in the third person, but we'll ignore that for the sake of simplicity).

These people need support but it is not more money for teachers and it is most certainly not banning private education from the rich. There is little the state can do because the attitudes that these people need are instilled by their parents and their families at large, this is something that the state just cannot do, no matter how much socialists like to think it can. It is society at large which has an effect on these people, not some man in number 10 who will never see or meet them. But I guess socialists don't like that idea, because it means you can't just load the blame on Parliament and anyone who so evil as to be rich.

No, if people really wanted to reform the education system they would do thus: they would allow parents to send their children to whichever school they like. This way parents who care about education will all go to good schools with others who are the same. Those who don't care about education will let their children go to whichever school is easiest because they don't care. The former schools could then focus on the dizzy heights of accomplishment and the later could focus on providing the type ambition and life skills that they may not be getting else where. It isn't a perfect solution I know, but then as I've already said, this is just one fight that the state cannot sort out on its own. It is in the hands of their families.

Point number 3: No one asks at interviews what is your fathers occupation.

There seems to be a thought that somehow when you go for an interview you will be given the job because you are middle class or upper class. No I don't know about you but I've never been asked what is my fathers occupation in an interview, so I fail to see how they are going to know whether anyone is upper, middle or lower class (or anything in between). Dress code, language and accent can all be modified if needed rendering one class indistinguishable from the next. The only indicators are the names of the schools and the universities. Frankly if there was a new convention introduced that the name of the schools were not allowed to be put on CVs and application forms (replaced with a serial number instead) I would have no problem with this at all. As for Universities generally Oxford and Cambridge give preference to state school candidates so there is unlikely to be class bias there. There is of course the issue of contacts, but I consider nepotism separate from class discrimination, I will address this later.

Point number 4: getting more people to go to university would do nothing, in fact it would be a hindrance.

Labour thought that sending everyone to University would make things fair. It doesn't. Not even slightly. First of all, we need to face facts that not everyone is intelligent enough to do a chemistry degree, in which case teaching them media studies isn't going to cut it. Getting more people to go to University just devalues degrees, this means that the value of the degree becomes less important forcing people to decide on other factors, such as, oh I don't know, contacts! All the while we don't have any plumbers and so we have to import the whole of Poland to compensate (which I imagine the Polish aren't too happy about). Although the people who really are well off can afford to just do a masters or an MPhil putting them ahead of those who cannot afford to do so. This brings things right back to class and money, except everyone has wasted three years of their lives doing a useless degree when they could have been working. That's the thing about money, the rich always have more of it.

Point number 5: nurture or nature, logically it would make sense for middle class couples to have intelligent children.

Oh my, middle class children earn more! How can this be? Well lets just think this through shall we? Whether you think intelligence is due to DNA or whether you think it is down to your upbringing, either way this favours middle class children. Between the ages of 2 and 10 I constantly harassed my father with every question my youthful mind could muster. Since my father has the patience of Job, rather than telling me to shut up before he drove off a cliff (we were often in the car at the time I recall) he told the time and effort to answer these inane questions. When we were travelling we would have a game of 'Capitols', one person names the country the other person has to state the capitol city. To this end I was devastated the other day when I couldn't remember the capitol of Romanian was Bucharest. Anyway, the point is that my cerebral development had as much to do with my parents intelligence and reception to knowledge as it had to do with to which school I went. Don't get me wrong I'm not saying that stupid parents cannot give birth to intelligent children, but logically it is going to be less likely. The result of this is obvious, intelligent children are likely to grow up and have high earning jobs. It isn't rocket science, and it isn't a class conspiracy.

While I did intend for this evaluation to be comprehensive, I didn't expect it to be so long, so I'm going to cut it in two here.