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EU referendum: keep calm and expect
change
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Philip Jones, editor of The
Bookseller, on how the decision to leave the EU will affect UK
publishing...
Publishing's nightmare scenario has come true: at about
4am this morning the major media outlets confirmed that the UK population had
voted in favour of taking the UK out of the European Union.
The shock today is palpable, as The Bookseller's
surveys have shown the book trade was overwhelmingly against 'Brexit' and pro
Europe, as were its heartlands of London, Edinburgh, Oxford and Bath. One
author said it was like waking up in a badly written dystopian novel.
If only. One publisher chief executive simply tweeted: "Forgive the
people because they know not what they've done! The leaders of the politics
of hatred have triumphed over our children's futures."
As pre-warned, yesterday's out vote has resulted in
economic and political turmoil the likes of which few of us living today will
ever have seen. Project fear has become project reality.
This will pass, of course. As of today nothing about the
economy has changed, and it is to be hoped that wise heads prevail over the
next few weeks and months as the UK government works out the best approach to
re-negotiation.
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1 comment:
Goodness me.
Quoting: '"Forgive the people because they know not what they've done! The leaders of the politics of hatred have triumphed over our children's futures."
Arrogant nonsense. The Left so control publishing. Perhaps if Brexit removes the Progressive stranglehold on modern literature future generations will look back and be thankful that we'll see the flowering of a literature that includes all those excluded currently, namely: libertarian, right wing, conservatives, business people.
But trade is still going to go on, like it did before this monster rule-bound EU ate up economies and suffocated them.
People are going to still buy and read books. How does UK leaving the EU stop that?
The UK economy is not going to go down. At least, Central Banking well buggered up Western economies decades ago; the ECB going to negative interest rates destroying savers the final capitulation. Look at the last decade: economic stagnation across the West: most EU countries are bankrupt. There's an outside chance Brexit is letting the air out of Keynesian stock market bubbles and will stop them blowing even further into something far more ugly than the GFC, because that was (probably still is) certainly coming. Unless we get really lucky and this leads to break up of EU, the abandonment of central banked Keynesian economics, and a return to capitalism and voluntary transactions that are not stifled under regulation and taxation, then we all will be far better off ... including the book trade.
But really. All this scare mongering: nothing has changed with the reading of books here.
As for the political accusations of the Brits being insular and the tosh being thrown by our Left Overlords, who obviously know so much better than we do & UK's working class who voted to leave, all that Brits have done is say they want to be governed by their own laws, and have their own judges interpret those laws, not bureaucrats in Brussels. That they want their natural justice as discovered through centuries of common law, not civil law dictates from the an autocratic Continent over-class. They want to be, that is, just like NZ, Australia, US, etc. We in NZ wouldn't stand to be ruled by law making and interpretation from a foreign land, why do we expect it of Brits? Does anyone want a pan-pacific court sitting in Indonesia deciding NZ precedent? Hell no. That's not racist, insular or backward: that's people wanting to keep their difference, independence and freedom.
My wet dream is we carry this through to full revolution right down to individual sovereignty.
Right, off to get my pitch fork.
... ahem. Um, wine first I think.
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