When you seek out creativity and innovation around the world you almost always find it hand in hand with flatter organisational models where power and decision-making are accessible and in touch with those doing the actual designing, developing and making.
Like every empire throughout human history large organisations tend to become flabby, they develop pyramidal power structures, adopt bureaucratic procedures and become slow and extremely conservative decision-makers, a habit which they tend only to break by adopting wild, on-the-spot, Trumpesque guesses. Managers build empires within empires and the fortresses which they use to protect their own positions become blocks not only to innovation, but also to the satisfaction of other employees. Rules and procedures appear which become more important than the actual aims of the organisation.
I doubt anyone could successfully argue that the EU is not a huge and unwieldy bureaucracy, but perhaps someone will. It even has to physically shift that bureaucracy from one centre to another on a regular basis. Significantly, because the countries making up the EU act individually in health matters many of them appear to have dealt with the pandemic far better than the fairly useless UK. Germany for instance operates its hospital system all the time much further from capacity than us. Every year flu' poses a threat of overwhelming us. Every measure the Germans imposed worked better than our efforts (and that includes Nicola Sturgeon's Scotland).
It is only now that having made the apparently sensible decision to bring together the EU's massive buying power to bear when purchasing vaccines that suddenly the UK has leapt ahead by refusing the invitation to join. The decision what to buy and where to buy was made so slowly that not only did the EU fall miles behind even a daft UK government brilliantly advised by scientists, but it also placed bets on the wrong parts of the roulette wheel. EU regulators have moved so slowly that they are now demanding supplies of a vaccine that they only today will allow themselves to use for the first time. Whilst the UK successfully invested in four vaccines which will enter human bloodstreams the EU was backing a French firm, which might not get there until the the turn of the year and which may decide to switch to producing the Astra-Zeneca vaccine. Already Germany is beginning to make its own arrangements.
And that is the problem with bureaucracies. If you want niceness and fairness with lots of rules at the risk of falling permanently behind the curve, then bureaucracy's the way to go. If you have the capacity to be original and innovative, if you've a reputation for having your own way of thinking and not being particularly bothered whether everyone else agrees with you, if making your own way appeals more than being dictated to (even in a very kindly way!) then don't sign up to join a bureaucracy.
It's not that the EU is an evil empire - it's a rather nice one. It's just that it's fat and getting fatter, and the fatter it gets, the slower it will go. And what's worse is that the less capable it appears of moving, the more self-satisfied it becomes. By its every action it confirms its view of itself. Why else do all its negotiations run to the last day and beyond?
If you think the world seems to be speeding up and that the need to adapt to change will be of prime importance in the future then I can see why any people would seek independence. And I'd always support that desire. Self-determination! And once you've achieved it for gawd's sake don't surrender it, or sell it to anyone.
Like every empire throughout human history large organisations tend to become flabby, they develop pyramidal power structures, adopt bureaucratic procedures and become slow and extremely conservative decision-makers, a habit which they tend only to break by adopting wild, on-the-spot, Trumpesque guesses. Managers build empires within empires and the fortresses which they use to protect their own positions become blocks not only to innovation, but also to the satisfaction of other employees. Rules and procedures appear which become more important than the actual aims of the organisation.
I doubt anyone could successfully argue that the EU is not a huge and unwieldy bureaucracy, but perhaps someone will. It even has to physically shift that bureaucracy from one centre to another on a regular basis. Significantly, because the countries making up the EU act individually in health matters many of them appear to have dealt with the pandemic far better than the fairly useless UK. Germany for instance operates its hospital system all the time much further from capacity than us. Every year flu' poses a threat of overwhelming us. Every measure the Germans imposed worked better than our efforts (and that includes Nicola Sturgeon's Scotland).
It is only now that having made the apparently sensible decision to bring together the EU's massive buying power to bear when purchasing vaccines that suddenly the UK has leapt ahead by refusing the invitation to join. The decision what to buy and where to buy was made so slowly that not only did the EU fall miles behind even a daft UK government brilliantly advised by scientists, but it also placed bets on the wrong parts of the roulette wheel. EU regulators have moved so slowly that they are now demanding supplies of a vaccine that they only today will allow themselves to use for the first time. Whilst the UK successfully invested in four vaccines which will enter human bloodstreams the EU was backing a French firm, which might not get there until the the turn of the year and which may decide to switch to producing the Astra-Zeneca vaccine. Already Germany is beginning to make its own arrangements.
And that is the problem with bureaucracies. If you want niceness and fairness with lots of rules at the risk of falling permanently behind the curve, then bureaucracy's the way to go. If you have the capacity to be original and innovative, if you've a reputation for having your own way of thinking and not being particularly bothered whether everyone else agrees with you, if making your own way appeals more than being dictated to (even in a very kindly way!) then don't sign up to join a bureaucracy.
It's not that the EU is an evil empire - it's a rather nice one. It's just that it's fat and getting fatter, and the fatter it gets, the slower it will go. And what's worse is that the less capable it appears of moving, the more self-satisfied it becomes. By its every action it confirms its view of itself. Why else do all its negotiations run to the last day and beyond?
If you think the world seems to be speeding up and that the need to adapt to change will be of prime importance in the future then I can see why any people would seek independence. And I'd always support that desire. Self-determination! And once you've achieved it for gawd's sake don't surrender it, or sell it to anyone.
