Today is the day

Today the UK decides who runs it. Our own government or a far-away EU government. I have voted already.

Tomorrow we find out whether the people of this country have the guts to stand on their own, or whether they wish to remain in a money-draining club that is looking ever more unstable by the day.

Nobody seems to know much about what the EU does. It’s not so much that it’s secretive, it’s more that (in the UK at least) politicians look down on the rest of the country as if they are simpletons. Don’t ask questions about politics, you can’t possibly understand the answers. Just tune in to the TV and stop bothering us or we’ll send you to bed without supper. Politicians wonder why nobody likes them, but that’s how they come across in any interaction with the public.

Well, now that arrogance has come back to haunt them. People are, on the whole, scared of things they don’t understand and it’s now become clear that neither the Leave nor Remain camps actually have any real idea what they are voting for.

So we have all this crazy nonsense such as ‘leaving the EU means severing all links to every country in Europe’. ‘We won’t be able to go on holiday’ ‘The UK will just drift into the mid-Atlantic and sink’ ‘Zombies will come. Zombies!’

The other side can be just as crazy with wild promises of streets paved with gold and a money tree in every garden. Really it all boils down to ‘we have no idea what the EU is for but we either like it or hate it depending on what someone we don’t like prefers’.

I have actually been told, on Twitter, that voting ‘leave’ is what Nigel Farage and Donald Trump want, and that should be a good enough reason to vote ‘Stay’. Really? I should base my vote on some kind of tongue-poking exercise at people I’ve never met?

I based my vote on a desire to see this country stand on its own again. We don’t need all those extra layers of bureaucracy. This is Britain. Nobody does bureaucracy better than us. We perfected it ages ago and we have forms for everything. We have no need of anyone overseeing our paperwork, we are really very good at it.

All I see of the EU is a vast drain on resources to pay people to do stuff we are actually better at doing ourselves. Layer upon layer of officials, even more than a local council. It’s become ridiculous.

Dai Cameroid is still talking about renegotiating our place in the EU and Jean-Claude Juncker has made clear that’s not going to happen. No negotiations at all. The EU isn’t interested in compromises and is never going to change. There really is only one option. In or out.

This is it. Decision time. Stayed lashed to the apron strings of the EU, an organisation that seems to me to only exist to make politicians rich – or strike out on our own, make our own decisions, form our own trade partnerships without having to ask anyone’s permission or pay anyone to let us do it.

The polls close in four and a half hours. If you haven’t voted, go and do it. decide which way you want the future to go and cast your vote. Don’t just let the day slip by.

You’ll never have the chance again.