My View, Bill Morrison: No precedent to help us decide on EU

The coffee time view is that whatever the result, we will not feel any true impact for at least two to three years, too late to change your mind. I for one, like many others, am still undecided, but we oldies do recognise that we will see increased food prices, we do import a lot of food so it is a reasonable assumption. Security is also a big issue, should Dave’s World War Three happen, and it’s not an impossibility with the far right gathering momentum,are we Brits going to be the” Billy no mates of Europe”?

If it comes to the crunch, where will France and Germany stand, apart from with each other, and we know who will be boss. As for the rest well I think we know the answer to that one as well. A new deal will take a long time to finalise and in the interim we all agreed that our little island would be very vulnerable. The EU will not rush and why would it if we opt to leave their club? The bottom line in our view was quite simple. We leave and they have us at a disadvantage, we may well want to trade etcetera but will they want to reciprocate?

There are many strong arguments on both sides but with no precedent we have no gauge. Whatever the outcome on June 23 it will change our lives, our attitudes and our global position for generations to come.

Closer to home, services to the communities gets progressively harder to sustain. No one wants to take responsibility anymore. Just recently I became aware of a situation involving an elderly gentleman with dementia, poor mobility and numerous associated illness who found he had no heating or hot water. A straight forward emergency situation for St Leger Homes. At first it was can’t help till next Tuesday (seven days away) then we got to this Friday (three days away).

After much wringing of hands and buck passing he did get a same day response but only after involving his local councillor who got involved when his care company sought assistance in getting his dilemma resolved. I find it appalling and unbelievable that no proper emergency backup is available to support the most vulnerable in our communities. If this is the result of cut backs then central and local government should hang their heads in shame. On the other hand if it is simply because someone could not be bothered to motivate themselves they should be found, and then given a shiny new P45. There are a lot of good caring people looking for a job who would gladly swop places with the can’t be bothered today brigade. I sometimes think we are sleepwalking into disaster.