This is my 3000th tweet. I thought I'd mark that with some inane sparkly GIF, but since most of my Twitter use has been in expressing my incredulity, sadness and anger at the folly that is brexit, I felt I should do something a little more meaningful...
The very first time I took part in any democratic process was in the 1975 referendum on staying or leaving the EEC, I was an Engineering apprentice politically naive and I didn't buy a newspaper, though I sometimes scanned discarded copies of the Sun that others left lying about.
The screaming headlines got to me and convinced me that in order to prove that I was truly British, I had to vote leave, I got into several discussions with colleages and found that they were all 'unpatriotic traitors' and my sloganised 'views' were dismissed,
One of my mentors took me aside and showed me an old photo, it was his siser. He went on to describe how, whilst on leave in 1943, he had returned to his home, or what was left of it, since it had been bombed the previous evining,
He found his mother and several neighbours frantically rummaging through rubble in a desparate attempt to find his sister. She was eventually found, but sadly, died of her injuries within days. He then went on to tell me why the EEC exists, and that its main purpose for him was..
in ensuring that what his family, and many others had to endure would not happen to me or my children. The EEC would give us better ways of settling differences between European nations. The EEC was the victory for everyone in Europe, there could be no better prize than peace.
June 5th came and I voted to stay. Since then, I learned that there is no conflict between being British and being European any more than there's conflict tween being British and English, English and a Midlander etc.
I've noticed the EU at work, watched local rivers; the Tame and the Trent change from dead chemical sewers into crystal clear havens for wildlife, These days I regularly kayak on these rivers and am constantly aware of the sights and sounds of kingfishers, herons and egrets.
I could travel to other countries easily, not because 'Her Majesty's Gov't demanded the bearer of my passport to pass without let or hindrance', but because I had the right to. I was now a citizen of the Europe, not just a subject of Britain.
I've watched my own children grow up, seen how they don't see national borders as obstacles, that they are completely at home learning new languages, embracing new cultures and making new friends across Europe.
We could throw all this away, we could go back to the 60s and 70s... only we can't. We're a very different country to how we were then, in those days we had a strong manufacturing base, we could sell stuff to other countries and the proceeds were ours,
In those days we had the ability to take from capitalism what worked for us and see no conflict with operating socialist principles of free healthcare for all and a benefits system that provided a safety net for the less fortunate.
In those days the world was a bunch of countries like us. We were a big player, but the world too, has moved on, those countries have coalesced into powerful trading blocs, we cannot return to being the big player without the world rewinding.
Leaving the EU would make several generations of younger people quite rightly feel an enormous sense of betrayal at the loss of their freedoms, their opportunities, their human rights and their place in a wider world.
It's not too late to change this, if you love this country, if you believe that we should have national self respect, if you believe that Britons are better than brexit with it's false promises and lies,
if you want your children to have the freedoms and rights that we take for granted, if you ever wish to stand at a war memorial and utter the phrase 'lest we forget', know why you're saying it, and mean it, then help to put an end to this idiocy. Save Britain.
Before it's too late.
