Category: Uncategorized

I avoid politics like the plague, but the very real prospect of Brexit has stirred me to set down some of my thoughts.

1. Working with clients within the EU is straightforward and hassle free. More than half of my business is with overseas companies, so you could argue that I am dependent on exports. I don’t encounter any of the buraucratic red tape that we hear so much about. Working with non-EU clients is always more protracted and time consuming.
2. If it’s easier for me to work with clients in the rest of the EU, then it’s easier for them to commission me if we are still in the EU. That’s good for business.
3. Immigration cuts both ways. It is guaranteed that there will be recessions in the U.K. that don’t affect other parts of the E.U. and many of us will be glad of the opportunity to travel and work abroad. I’m 46 and studied as an architect. In the early 1990’s there was a recession that decimated the U.K. construction sector almost overnight. The willing, and the able travelled abroad in search of work. One of those major destinations was Germany, where we worked hard, learned new skills, earned money that we could bring back to the U.K. and didn’t take any money out of the benefits system back home. Many of the skills so essential to my business today, had their origins in my time spent working in Germany.  Baby boomers and their seniors won’t be able to tell you about this, because they had “never had it so good” and really haven’t got a clue about how the modern jobs market works.
4. Being part of the EU in it’s various forms over the past decades has given us the metric system. Metric and digital were meant for each other. It’s a neat, interconnected and thorough units system. Standards and standardisation are good for business, trade and science. The Imperial system…that’s an antiquated and positively medieval system in comparison, and really should be consigned to the scrapheap.
5. Although I would describe myself as British first, I am also European, and quite proud of that. I am secure enough with my own sense of nationality to understand that I can be both, at the same time.
   
6. 59 years without a war, positives don’t come much bigger than that! There has never been a war or coup within a country that has been a member of the EU, or it’s predecessors. We are talking as far back as the Treaty of Rome, 1957. If you have even a fleeting grasp of European history, you will be aware that there was quite a bit of conflict before then. All evidence would appear to suggest that we are safer IN than out.
7. We get legally protected human rights within the EU. We always hear about those really bad, excruciatingly frustrating cases, but there’s more positive stuff that we don’t hear about. Does anybody seriously believe we are going to get a robust British constition post Brexit?
8. I hear lots of complaints that the EU is undemocratic, yet we have a power of VETO. And yet here in the U.K. we have monarchy, House of Lords, Quangos, Civil servants…I don’t recall ever voting for these?
9. If Brexit happens, I think we can pretty much guarantee that Scotland will vote to leave the U.K. I think that would be bad for us collectively, and really don’t want it to happen, but who could blame them?
10. In life, the more you put in, the more you get out. We should remain part of the EU, but we should be getting more involved. It’s not a perfect institution, but we can only re-shape the EU from the inside, by getting stuck in, getting our hands dirty and moulding it into something better. The EU isn’t going to just go away if we leave. It’ll be right there, on our doorstep, and we won’t be able to do a thing to influence it’s future direction from the outside.

One of my images prepared for ReplicaNation between 2000 and 2001. ReplicaNation was a late starting dot-com company whose fortunes reflected the dot-com bubble as a whole, growing rapidly, wasting money and then fizzling out with equal velocity. I could probably write a whole blog on what went on inside that company whilst I was there, nothing scandalous but certainly plenty of eye openers.

Despite the shortcomings of the company and its business model, I was able to produce some decent images to showcase the work we were doing there. Of the selected images in the portfolio, I prepared the meshes for the Tolomeo and the Wassily. The rest of the meshes were prepared either by my team or by sub-contractors.

ReplicaNation portfolio page.