Good, evil and stupidity?

André Trocmé was a Protestant pastor with a good turn of phrase.

Along with many others, he courageously saved the lives of many Jewish people, hiding them from the Vichy authorities, and then the Nazis in the Massif Central in France during World War II. Arrested in February 1943, his thoughts were: ‘I had always believed there were two powers fighting over our world, good and evil. But now I realise there is a third: stupidity.’

Referendum options

These words came to mind as I pondered the current cause célèbre, the upcoming referendum on Europe. My feeling is that the country is being asked to choose between two extremes, neither of which the majority of British people really wants. The choice is between jumping irrevocably aboard the bus bound for the united states of Europe, dominated by foreign bureaucrats and judges who don’t understand us and with the inevitable dilution of our democratic power*, or becoming a ‘go it alone’ nation, regarded as a pariah by the rest of the continent and, if President Obamah is to be believed, by the USA as well. Surely most of us do not desire either option. We want to be our own country, with friendly and mutually advantageous trading, political and cultural relations with our neighbours. This is what many of us thought we had signed up to in 1973. But stupidly, that is no longer an option.