How can children learn the morphology of any language?

This is an essay I submitted as part of an MRes researching how children learn language. I'm particularly interested in how toddlers begin to master a part of human language called morphology, which is how we change the form of words to fit the grammar and context of speech - e.g. in English you subconsciously stick an 's' on 'picture' to make the plural 'pictures', or you can put '-ed' on a verb like 'score' to describe the past action 'he scored'. These little word endings are a simple example of what morphology can do in the English language.

What really intrigues me is when you look at languages which have really complex morphology, which English doesn't really have, like Hungarian, Turkish and Russian - I'm going to be looking at how children learn Polish morphology, which is very hard if you've ever tried to learn it as a foreigner!

The theories of what goes on in children's minds are really interesting and hotly debated, and I summarise the two 'biggies' within in this essay. However, the first half of the essay looks more at what morphology is and does in different languages of the world, which of course are amazingly diverse.

Later in the essay I go into the big head-to-head: examining the 'dual-route' and 'single-route' theories, and how these can (or cannot) cater for languages like Polish.

Any questions, comments or criticisms are welcome!

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A cross-linguistic review of inflectional morphology and the dual- / single-route theories of acquisition

 

Of the various aspects of language that children acquire during development, one which has attracted much attention for child language acquisition (CLA) research is morphology. Definitions vary, though for the purposes of this essay, morphology is “the branch of linguistics that deals with words, their internal structure, and how they are formed” (Aronoff, & Fudeman, 2005, pp. 1-2). This branch is usually broken down into two sub-systems: inflection, i.e. how a single word concept (‘lexeme’) can take a number of specific forms based on rules, and word formation, i.e. production of a new lexeme from an older one, either by derivation or compounding (Booij, 2007; Spencer, 1993; Stump; 2001). Booij (2007) uses the idea of a dictionary to explain the two types of morphology; inflections are a set of words a user is expected to know under a single dictionary entry (e.g. cat implies cats; start implies starting, starts etc. (my examples)), whereas word formation gives rise to separate entries (e.g. cat-like (adjective) is a derivation of cat (noun); jump-start is a compound related to start). Regarding children’s acquisition of morphology, it is inflection which is theoretically more important, as one of its more pertinent properties distinguishing it from word formation is its role in the grammar, as summarised by the aphorism “inflectional morphology is what is relevant to the syntax” (Anderson, 1982, p. 587). The rest of this essay, therefore, focusses specifically on acquisition of inflectional morphology.

Inflectional morphology is an almost ubiquitous component of grammar in the world’s languages, and as one might expect, it exhibits a diverse range of form and function across and within languages. While English has a relatively impoverished inflectional morphology, relying more on overt syntactic structures to mark grammatical relations and thereby convey meaning, other languages such as Russian have a much larger system of inflections available to achieve this (Ambridge, & Lieven, 2011); some languages such as Greenlandic have such rich morphology that a single ‘word’ can convey what could be a full sentence in English (Kelly, Wigglesworth, Nordlinger, & Blythe, 2014). Morphological typology will be returned to shortly in more detail; the main point here is that this wide range of inflectional morphology is something that all children have the potential to acquire in early life, and one fundamental aim of the CLA field is to determine how they do this. Following over two decades of research and debate in this pursuit, two major theories predominate: the dual-route and single-route accounts (Rowland, 2014).

In essence, these two rival theories explain how inflectional processes occur in the adult human brain and how children acquire them. The dual-route model posits two distinct mechanisms to process regular and irregular word forms respectively, the first involving a (possibly innate) development of a default rule to inflect words (e.g. In English: ‘add -s to a noun to make it plural’), and the second storing irregular forms as a complete word in the mental lexicon (Ambridge, & Lieven, 2011); this model is also known as the ‘words and rules’ account (e.g. Pinker, 1998). In contrast, the single-route model rejects the notion of a default rule-forming facility and instead proposes that all word forms (regular and irregular) are stored and processed in an associative memory (e.g. Bybee, & Moder, 1983). However, the two theories as briefly introduced here have undergone much revision and development since their early initial English-based formulations of the 1980s and 1990s – the current state of the two accounts will be returned to in detail shortly.

This essay, therefore, seeks to address the key question of how children acquire inflectional morphology by evaluating current dual-route and single-route accounts, with a special focus on cross-linguistic research.

In order fully examine the two theories, it is first necessary to take a closer look at the diverse ways in which inflectional morphology works in the world’s languages. Inflection performs a considerable range of communicative functions in language, and its possible forms are even more numerous. Languages can be grouped into four categories according to their overall inflectional properties (Spencer, 1993): isolating languages, such as Mandarin Chinese, do not use inflections at all, grammatically relying on syntax; agglutinating languages, such as Turkish, concatenate stems with (potentially multiple) morphemes in which a single morpheme has a single meaning or function; inflectional or fusional languages, such as Latin, are similar to agglutinating languages except for their tendency to combine multiple meanings or functions into a single morpheme (hence the term ‘fusional’); and polysynthetic languages, such as Greenlandic referred to in the introduction, allow nouns to be incorporated (similarly to compounding) with morphemes such that a single ‘word’ can express whole sentence-like meaning. However, a valid criticism of the above system of morphological typology is that some languages belong in more than one category, and therefore it is limited in its theoretical usefulness (Spencer, 1993). In reality, morphological richness is a continuum, with linguists such as Haspelmath and Sims (2010) using the single dimension of analytic-synthetic to describe it; in this approach, isolating and polysynthetic languages are at the extremes, respectively. A given language’s approximate degree of synthesis can be quantified by calculating its morpheme-to-word ratio based on corpus data. A now dated but influential study used text samples to estimate Modern English at 1.68, making it more synthetic than the isolating Vietnamese (1.06) but more analytic than German (1.92), Old English (2.12), Swahili (2.55) and the polysynthetic Greenlandic (3.72) (Greenberg, 1959).

A proper evaluation of the dual-single debate must not only acknowledge the full gamut of morphological richness, but it must also recognise the whole range of forms and functions that inflection presents in human language. In broad terms, there is little that inflectional morphology does not encode in one language or another; some of these are functions and concepts that are entirely absent in the English grammar, such as the evidential mood inflection on Latvian verbs to mark a statement as ‘hearsay’ (Booij, 2007).

            The general grammatical functions of inflections are to mark agreement (two lexemes take particular forms that correspond to one another), government (one lexeme has its form imposed on it morphosyntactically) – both of which are considered ‘contextual’ inflections – and, in contrast, ‘inherent’ properties (where a particular lexeme, or a member of its paradigm, has a particular non-contextual intrinsic morphology) (Bauer, 2001; Stump, 2001). The parts of speech which languages typically inflect in these ways are nouns, verbs and adjectives.

Noun inflections (declensions) often occur to mark gender and number, which fusional languages often combine as multifunctional morphemes. Number is often declined as singular or plural, such as in Finnish, which overtly marks both (Booij, 2007), though some languages such as Slovene (Lingvopedia, 2018) have a dual form, and other languages even mark trial (Booij, 2007). Case is another frequent use of contextual inflection, of which ‘direct cases’ (e.g. dative, nominative, accusative) are syntactically determined, and ‘oblique cases’ (e.g. locative, instrumental) are semantic. Further noun inflections are for possession, definiteness, and diminution and augmentation (Stump, 2001).

Languages use verb inflections (conjugations) to mark person, tense, aspect, polarity (i.e. affirmation or negation), voice (chiefly active and passive, but also middle as in Polish (Swan, 2002)), mood (e.g. indicative, imperative, subjunctive and evidential), and finiteness (e.g. telicity, or ‘completeness’). Adjectives have generally fewer morphemes, though many languages inflect for degree (positive, comparative and superlative), as well as definiteness (e.g. in Syrian Arabic) and number (Booij, 2007; Stump, 2001).

As the above examples have shown, there are several overlaps where two parts of speech inflect for the same grammatical or semantic feature. When looking at a single language, such overlaps bring about government and agreement relations. For example, the dual number in Slovene is overtly inflected on nouns, verbs and adjectives in order to mark agreement (Lingvopedia, 2018). This multiplicity of possible inflections is most apparent in the more synthetic languages such as Nishnaabemwin, spoken in part of Canada, in which there are 890 theoretical forms for intransitive inanimate verbs alone (Valentine, 2001, as cited in Lieber, 2010). Although noun, verb and adjective inflections can indeed yield complex and extensive classes of paradigms, a certain degree of inflectional homonymy is common, whereby the phonological form of different members of a lexeme’s paradigm are indistinguishable (e.g. English you went vs she went).

Nevertheless, it is clear that the possible breadth and depth of productive inflectional morphology in human languages is considerable. This potential begs the key question which the essay now turns to: how do children acquire inflectional morphology? The next section looks at the agreed empirical phenomena observed in children’s development, before returning to the dual-single debate in greater detail.

Between the ages of 12 and 20 months, children’s first whole recognisable words typically appear. Within the following year, children begin to use certain morphemes systematically in their speech; for children learning more synthetic languages like Russian, this development can begin as soon as two months after their first words (Clarke, 2001). Children then gradually progress to a more advanced level of morphology, showing increasing competence in whichever inflectional paradigms feature in their language (see previous section). An important emphasis here is the word gradually – it may take many years for a child to master the inflections of his/her language, owing to either irregularities in form or to difficult semantic distinctions, both of which will depend on the typology of the language in question (ibid.). A theoretically important phenomenon at this point is ‘U-shaped learning’: after early accuracy in the fewer (probably rote-learned) forms that children use, an overgeneralisation phase occurs when children erroneously apply a regular inflection where the form should actually be irregular (e.g. plural inflection *three sheeps). This phase later ends when the children have learnt the irregular forms, and their overall accuracy becomes more adult-like (Rowland, 2014). Overgeneralisation suggests unconscious generalised inflectional processes, albeit immature, in the child’s mind (Ambridge, & Lieven, 2011).

Eventually, most children will reach a stage of full productivity whereby they will mark contextual inflections accurately and consistently on novel verbs. It is well-established phenomenon in CLA literature, for example, that a six-year-old child, when faced with a nonce verb such as mot and prompted to say what happened yesterday, will produce the past tense form motted (Berko, 1958). Since it is certain that the child has never before heard such a word and therefore has not rote-learned the form motted, as with overgeneralisation, there must be also an underlying generalised process that the child uses when marking past tense, at least on novel verbs.

The essential question here, which goes to the core of CLA debates in general, is whether the above ‘generalised processes’ that children (and adults) use for inflection can be regarded as instances of a formal grammatical rule (e.g. mot: ‘add -ed to denote the past’) or rather an analogy to similar known paradigms (e.g. mot: ‘copy the pattern spot-spotted, dot-dotted etc.’). As will be shown, these two explanations are not exactly unrelated, but they are associated with generativist and constructivist approaches, respectively. Generative linguists argue that rules are essential for children to acquire language, in this case, rules of regular inflectional morphology. (Irregular morphology is by definition not rule-like and therefore viewed as separate from the core grammar.) Furthermore, the so-called nativist view is held by a particular group of generativists who argue further that these formal rules – or the capacity to develop such rules – must be innate (e.g. Rowland, 2014). On the other hand, constructivists argue against the need for, and theoretical viability of, formal rules; it is claimed instead that children use analogy and pattern-finding skills to develop language, including inflectional morphology. (Grammar-like regular forms and lexis-like irregular forms are treated as one and the same, with no specific ‘core grammar’ in the generative sense.) (Tomasello, 2003).

            The specific theories that this essay concerns, as introduced earlier, are the dual-route and single-route models of inflectional morphology. As stated above, the two theories are not entirely incompatible with one another; the dual-route model incorporates the role of memory storage and analogy (irregular inflection only) that constitutes all of the single-route model, and the rule-based process for regular inflection need not be innate or based on universal grammar, a concept fundamentally refuted by constructivists (e.g. Tomasello, 2003). Leaving these overlaps temporarily to one side, the dual-route account will now be considered in isolation.

The dual-route account, sometimes referred to as ‘words and rules’, was originally developed in large part by the well-known linguist Steven Pinker (1998). The theory, which began with a focus on the English past tense inflection, states that “irregular past-tense forms are stored in the lexicon, a division of declarative memory, whereas regular forms can be computed by a concatenation rule, which requires the procedural system” (Pinker, & Ullman, 2002, p. 456). The terms ‘declarative memory’ and ‘procedural system’ are separate parts of the mind which are said to be located in two distinct regions of the brain; this dissociation is consistent with an earlier neurological study by Jaeger et al. (1996) where positron emission tomography (PET) scans of subjects asked to read or speak past-tense verbs revealed a difference in speed and distribution of neuronal activation in the brain when processing either regular or irregular forms. In addition, the phrase ‘computed by a concatenation rule’ refers to the application of formal morphological rules described earlier. Note that concatenation (here, past tense suffixation) is only one of a number of inflectional forms possible in language; the theory does not directly incorporate others such as infixes, circumfixes and transfixes not present in English inflection (Bauer, 2001), though they could be included in principle. Pinker and Ullman (2002) counter criticisms that this part of the dual-route theory is based only on English and fails to explain inflectional processes in other languages by citing studies into the German plural as further support for the theory. In addition, an important clarification for the theory is that the term ‘rule’ may be misleading: the dual-route theory does not posit an explicit rule in the sense which a language teacher may use it, but rather it is an unconscious default affixation of a morpheme (e.g. -ed) to a part of speech which is variable (e.g. a verb), which occurs in a consistent rule-like way (ibid.). How exactly any given specific inflectional rule is acquired is not clear.

            This default rule, however, is only one half of the ‘words and rules’ mechanism, because it only applies to regular forms. The rule can be overridden, or ‘blocked’, when a known irregular form is retrieved from the lexicon instead, hence the ‘words’ part of the theory (Pinker, 1998). This is what occurs when a mature speaker says three sheep, knowing (often implicitly) that the plural sheep is irregular, whereas a young child overgeneralising to *three sheeps has not learnt this exception and therefore is simply applying the default rule ‘add -s’ that he/she has acquired; there is no entry for sheep (plural) in the child’s lexicon strong enough to block this process. Note that strength, based on frequent of exposure to a particular word, is a relevant factor here. As the child experiences the correct irregular form more often, a point will be reached where he/she begins to correctly block the default inflection with the correct form (Stemberger, 2001). This may explain why children do not suddenly begin consistently using the correct irregular form, and they sometimes use both incorrect and correct forms during the same developmental period. The fact that the English irregular verbs comprise the majority of the most frequent verbs is compatible with this claim (Pinker, & Ullman, 2002); a blocking mechanism would not work reliably if certain irregular forms were rarely encountered.

            Another way in which blocking may not predictably occur is for pairs of verbs that have both irregular and regular forms, such as dreamed / dreamt, where the regular form dreamed may or may not be blocked by dreamt, depending on the strength of dreamt in the speaker’s own lexicon. The same holds true for regulars that have a phonological similarity to irregulars, as in the regular blink, which does not conjugate similarly to the irregular-but-frequent drink, though the high strength of drink-drank-drunk may exert a partial blocking effect, encouraging a perhaps younger speaker to possibly form blank or blunk instead of applying the default to correctly form blinked (Pinker, & Ullman, 2002).

            It is clear from above that the dual-route theory acknowledges the relevance of phonological similarity – observing that verbs (in this case) form so-called phonological clusters (Ambridge, & Lieven, 2011), and that this plays a role in encouraging the production of certain inflections. However, the theory specifically states that this only occurs in the lexicon, for irregular forms. In contrast, the default rule function will always apply to any stem regardless of its phonological form (unless, of course, in the event of blocking by the irregular), hence its status of being ‘default’, or what Pinker and Ullman (2002) refer to as “a productive default that does not critically depend on the statistics of patterns in memory” (p. 458). If this was not the case, and the rule was influenced by phonological factors, then it would no longer be a rule – the essence of the dual-route model.

If the application of an inflectional rule was subject to phonological forces, the ‘rule’ would be better characterised as a ‘tendency’ constrained by phonological patterns present in the afore-mentioned clusters, such as swim-swam / ring-rang and sleep-slept / weep-wept. The way in which regular forms are inflected would actually mirror the way in which irregular forms are produced. In short, the ‘words’ and ‘rules’ would, essentially, become one and the same (McClelland & Patterson, 2002), perhaps under the better description of ‘phonological analogies’. This is the essence of the single-route model.

            The single-route model posits that all inflections – be it English past tense or Slovene dual – are produced by the same mechanism of phonological analogy across known forms stored in the lexicon (Ambridge, & Lieven, 2011). Because words that can be inflected (nouns, verbs, adjectives) are semantic in nature, the single-route theory claims that semantics is a factor in determining all inflections, regardless of regularity (Ramscar, 2001). As discussed earlier, an inflectional paradigm corresponds to a complete, meaningful lexeme; the single-route theory presupposes an associative memory of whole lexemes according to similarities in form and semantics. The dual-route theory, to reformulate it here, claims that those lexemes whose inflectional paradigms are regular have no associations with one another, neither by form nor by semantics – they only relate inasmuch as they inflect in the same, regular way.

            Where the dual-route theory found arguable empirical support in PET scans of the brain, the single-route theory found it in the pioneering ‘connectionist model’ (Rumelhart, & McClelland, 1986, as cited in Bauer, 2001). In this experiment, a computer was trained on learning material consisting of pairs of present and past English verb forms, in which it searched for phonological patterns. Semantic features were not built into the model. After the training, the computer was inputted with new verbs and, using its learned network (a ‘pattern associator’), it outputted past forms. The authors calculated a 91% success rate, though a recalculation of the data by Pinker and Prince (1988) suggested 62%; in either case, it is compelling evidence that phonological analogy alone can go a long way towards producing accurate past tense inflections, and it lends support for the single-route mechanism.

The similarities and differences of the single-route and dual-route model of inflectional morphology have been presented. The final part of this essay examines the cross-linguistic validity of these theories by reviewing studies into children’s acquisition of inflection in languages other than English.

            In terms of studies whose results support the dual-route theory, the majority is still based on English, usually the past tense inflection. These studies generally look for evidence in the form of neurological dissociation of how and where regular and irregular inflections are used, either via direct brain imaging similar to the PET scans described earlier (Bakker, MacGregor, Pulvermüller, & Shtyrov, 2013; Jaeger et al., 1996), or by training and testing children with specific language impairment (SLI) (Smith-Lock, 2015). The evidence for different processing mechanisms for English regular and irregular forms is quite convincing, which raises the question as to why there are relatively few studies comparing regular and irregular inflection in more synthetic languages.

However, there are some studies that have attempted to do this. Clahsen, Alvedo and Roca (2002) analysed children’s errors in Spanish regular and irregular verbs, in which they found that overgeneralisation occurred in one direction only: regular inflections being applied to irregular stems. Furthermore, there was some evidence that frequency distribution in the children’s vocabulary did not affect which verbs were overgeneralised, suggesting rule-based behaviour impervious to certain patterns. Another study focused on Russian, whose verbs comprise 11 classes of distinct inflectional paradigms which do not group as neatly into ‘regular’ and irregular’ as English verbs do. The authors had to represent ‘regular’ verbs as those in the most frequent and productive of these classes, and ‘irregular’ from the smallest and most unproductive class. This study was another which used neuroimaging, again with findings that pointed to a physical dissociation in the processing of ‘regular’ and ‘irregular’ verb inflections, this time for a highly synthetic and fusional language; however, an important additional observation was of the high level of connectivity between the two regions of the brain, especially when subjects had to produce more morphologically complex forms (Kireev, Slioussar, Koroktov, Chemigovskaya, & Medvedev, 2015). This would suggest an inflectional processing system – for Russian verbs, at least – somewhere between a distinct dual route and a single route.

Studies which have provided evidence for the single-route model encompass a wider range of more synthetic languages, though the vast majority are Indo-European and fusional rather than agglutinative or polysynthetic. Where the pro-dual-route studies have tended to look for dissociation, these studies challenged the notion of ‘default’ (i.e. ‘regular’) which is central to the rule-forming mechanism. Studies into Dutch plurals (Keuleers et al., 2007), German plurals (Zaretsky, Lange, Euler, & Neumann, 2016), Dinka noun numbers (Ladd, Remusen, & Manyang, 2009) and Polish genitive, dative and accusative case-marked nouns (Dąbrowska, 2001; Dąbrowska, & Szczerbiński, 2005) concluded that there is no ‘default’ inflection for those specific and relatively complex paradigms, which fundamentally contradicts the dual-route model. Furthermore, these studies found that children’s accurate production was significantly sensitive to frequency and phonological form, directly conflicting with the conclusion of Clahsen, Alveledo and Roca’s (2002) Spanish study above. Aguado-Orea and Pine (2015) also looked at Spanish verb inflections (regular and irregular), finding that error rates were inversely proportional to verb frequency, again casting doubt on the idea of a formal inflectional rule insensitive to frequency and form. Finally, Smolik and Kříž (2015) found that the semantic property of imageability facilitated Czech-speaking children’s acquisition of verb and noun morphology, lending weight to the theory that inflections are somehow linked to the lexicon rather than resulting from formal operations.

It may appear from the previous section that the weight of cross-linguistic evidence lies in favour of the single-route theory, but these studies’ conclusions are tentative, and none so far have addressed the considerable evidence for dissociation from neurological studies. A key point here is that evidence for ‘dissociation’ does not necessarily entail evidence for ‘dual-route’, nor does evidence against a ‘default’ entail evidence for ‘single-route’. Studies which have approached a particular inflectional paradigm with an open approach towards the dual-single debate have been the most inconclusive (e.g. Nicoladis, & Paradis, 2012). Furthermore, for both accounts there are still numerous languages and inflectional systems for which children’s acquisition has had little or no research conducted into it.

            It does, however, appear that both models in their current form have their own insurmountable flaw: the dual-route theorists may need to concede that semantics, frequency and phonological form play a role in all inflection, albeit sometimes variably, even if it is not apparent in the rather unrepresentative English past tense system. They may also need to acknowledge that the notion of regularity and default is highly spurious when one looks at how inflectional morphology works in some of the world’s languages.

Equally, the single-route theorists may have to accept that the human brain does process simpler, more regular inflections in a different way to those particular ‘exceptions’ which are more idiosyncratic and more lexical – though the these two processes may be two ends of a continuum rather than discrete and isolated in the mind (Kireev et al., 2015). They would also have to agree with Booij (2007, p. 243) in that a lexicon which stores each inflection within a paradigm for highly synthetic languages (such as Turkish or Nishnaabemwin) without a means to capture redundant learning would be “quite absurd”.

            The possible reconciliation here, combining the merits of the dual- and single-route theories, which would accommodate the morphological diversity of language summarised earlier in this essay, would be to take the notion of an inflectional ‘rule’ and regard it rather as a schema, or set of schemas (Ambridge, & Lieven, 2011), whose form is based on the distributional frequency of inflections in a given language. The schema is input-based and therefore constrained by semantics, frequency and phonology, as described in the usage-based theory of language acquisition (Tomasello, 2001). Such a unification of the dual-route and single-route mechanisms, with the respective concessions highlighted above, may lead to a better all-round theory of morphological acquisition that stands the cross-linguistic test. There are signs that this development is in progress, such as recent research into Lithuanian noun morphology, which supported a usage-based mechanism that was neither fully ‘dual’ nor ‘single’ in their form described in this essay (Savičiutė, Ambridge, & Pine, 2018). As Pinker himself wrote (2002, p. 462), “the adversarial nature of scientific debate might sometimes have prevented both sides from acknowledging that features of one model may correspond to constructs of the other”.

 

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CBeebies

You can't beat playing and being silly with your 2-and-a-half-year-old. That said, sometimes you stick on the telly for a bit (for longer or shorter depending on your energy and/or sanity levels).

After countless such instances, you begin to make internal reviews of the shows you and your kid consume. I'm beginning to fancy myself as a bit of a kiddie's Barry Norman, or perhaps even Jonathan Ross (minus the 'kiddie' bit because that's a tautology). Here's my (semi)grown-up take on what we watch on CBeebies.


The Adventures of Abney and Teal

The pot-smoker's choice. That floating character with a cup of tea balanced on horizontal surface of his fat belly is the perfect depiction of 'chilled out'. I don't know how or where he produces that fog-horn sound, but I like it. And the dog that plays on the accordion just tops the whole thing off. Love it!

Andy's Prehistoric Adventures

Groovy theme tune! Andy, in spite of his weird face, is a cool cucumber and gets really into his time-travelling dino escapades. The opening shots of the museum (Natural History in London?) are a bit over-the-top though: huge sweeping views across the hall as you fly over a towering dinosaur skeleton...you feel like you're about to settle in for an epic 3-hour Spielberg!

Baby Jake

Firstly, it's patently obvious that Jake's parents don't use and/or don't believe in condoms - have you seen how many kids live with them in that f***ing windmill?! Anyway, I'm already a bit irritated by the overacting intonation of the kid who narrates, so it's not a good start.

Then, once Baby Jake enters the magical world, my cortisol levels really begin to rise. I have to bulletpoint my reasons why.

• The jerky animation style of Jake's movements (I think it's based on playing around with photographs of him) is really grating.
• That rabbit's laugh is possibly the most irritating (and un-rabbit like?*) noise ever produced by a human vocal tract.
• HAMSTERNAUTS? And not just one - which I could handle at a stretch - but five of the bastards, moving in perfect North-Korean-style unison? I'm sorry...
• The regular sing-song, which we're supposed to know the words to (according to the faceless-yet-somehow-smackable narrator), but you can't tell what the hell the words are, because of the background cacophony and mumbling singing style. Something like 'acky-acky-oggie, noo-noo-nee...' (I can't even be arsed trying to type out the rest).
• The seriously questionable Beyonce-esque arse-shaking by dancing Baby Jake. Baby-booty? That's just wrong.

*A quick Googling suggests the right word here would be 'uncunicular'.

Bing

What the hell is Flop?

Whatever he is, he has the most infinite patience with that extremely needy kit Bing.





Boj

Not a bad cartoon, with a catchy theme tune. Can't get over his shrill Australian accent and his annoying upturned nose, though.

Chuggington

Pretty decent show that must have just landed on the right side of 'copyright infringement' for Thomas the Tank Engine. The human characters in it always sway around like they're pissed.


Do You Know?

Actually, Maddie, I bloody didn't! Learning how a sponge-cake forms at a microscopic level, and how bin-lorries and zips work - it's as much educational for me as it is for my younger co-viewer!





Everything's Rosie

We don't really watch it but love the theme tune! Especially the final chord lick with a diminished in there somewhere, similar to the end of Lady Madonna.



The Furchester Hotel

Blatantly American with British voices added. The regular song 'A Furchester never gives up, never gives up, never gives up' always sticks in my head for the rest of the day at work.

My wife keeps calling it 'Colchester Hotel' - I rather prefer that amusingly dull, mundane alternative title!

Go Jetters

Another groovy theme tune - I always picture Heather Small from M People singing this one. Love the 3-2-1 facts about real-world sites given by the omniscient-yet-cooler-than-cool Ubercorn. What a guy!





Hey Duggee

I'm always mesmerised by the animation style of this one. As geeky as I am about this, I love how the tentacles are created for Betty the Octopus, one of the 'Squirrel's. It looks as if there are five tentacles, which is how a circle of eight could appear from side-on, when you think about it. Geniuses are at work, here.



You've also got Alexander Armstrong narrating, which can't be bad.


In The Night Garden

If Abney and Teal are for pot-smokers, this one's for the Class-A gang. I'm talking Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. Pinky-ponk? Iggle Piggle? Makka Pakka? (He's the Mother Superior, I reckon.) I can only assume this series has been made in loving memory of Keith Moon, and the commercial appeal to infants and young toddlers is a fortunate coincidence.

Kate and Mim-Mim

Another clearly hyper-sentimental American export with voices redone in British (I mean, since when do the English accents say "No sweat", "Sure thing" and "Way to go"? They could have a least tweaked the script!) At least the BBC even bother to change the voices, unlike over on CITV.

We like to call this one 'Kate and Minging'.


Peter Rabbit

Christ, since when did Beatrix Potter stories take on such a hard-core edge? I'm talking about the high-octane opening sequence. It's like the start of Trainspotting when Rigby is running and running and running. And the pumping music with the singer shouting "COME ON!" is bordering on The Prodigy. Beatrix Potter? More like Beatrix Pothead.

Postman Pat

Another example of writers/producers trying to hype up kids shows, almost spilling over into CITV E-numbers territory. You'd never have thought back in his humble beginnings that Postman Pat would now be flying around in helicopters and leaping Bond-style through the Greendale air. It must be something to do with the privatisation of the Royal Mail, with its need to be 'distinctive'! Bloody Pat and his cat, they're only in it for the money these days - tut tut!

Raa Raa the Noisy Lion

Is that really Lorraine Kelly narrating? This one has another catchy tune with a few nice jazzy fills in it. The only other thing I've taken from it is amusement at Raa Raa's jungle car having watermelons for wheels. The only thing my son seems to really take from it is the prompt to shout "RAAAA!!!" like a lion.

Sarah and Duck

Another surprise here - the bloke narrating this chillout antithesis to everything hyper / American / no-Panda-Pop-after-3pm is this guy from The Thick of It!

Twirlywoos

Yet another zen theme tune - gotta love CBeebies. Haven't a fucking clue what Twirlywoos are, but if you imagine an alert hoopoe with its crest up...

...which then, after an unfortunate altercation with a cat, has had its bill ragged off...
 
...and then, after finding a job as an adminstrator, develops an 'admin arse' from 10 years of permanently sedentary work...

...you're approaching a Twirlywoo:

I also admire the story-writers' regular use of prepositions as educational episode titles ('Through', 'Up' and 'Underneath' being my personal favourites).


So that's my take on the current state of CBeebies. I hope you found it a mildly amusing distraction while your kid(s) has either:

• been asleep (it's evening and you're getting your breath back);
• put some crumpets in the washing machine and managed to turn it on;
• brought to your attention a mysterious dollop of poo on the carpet with no apparent ex-owner;
• spilled milk on the table and promptly spread it across as large an area as possible;
• emerged from another room wearing your partner's / your knickers on his / her head;
• said "What's that?" 1.45 x10^78 times;
• quietly performed a critical review of that new political drama you've been watching, concluding that it's puerile trash - serves you right for slagging off Boj!

Brexit Wounds: Britain shooting itself in the foot (and heart, and head)

The EU referendum is coming up, and lots of people still haven't made up their minds whether to vote 'Leave' or 'Remain', or indeed whether to vote at all.

Now I'm not claiming to be an expert, but like a lot of people I've paid close attention to both sides of the debate for a while now; they are both equally guilty of exaggeration, over-generalisation, scare-mongering and straw-man tactics, and I sympathise for anyone relatively new to this issue who wants to make up their own mind based on the actual facts of the EU and its effects on UK citizens.

As it stands, the only known facts are, for better or worse, on the Remain side. The Leave side is purely conjecture, because it's never happened before, and we've no meaningful experience to draw from.

Following the EU debate is interesting but frustrating. However, once you've listened to enough politicians, commentators and experts talking about the EU, you begin to notice patterns and inconsistencies, and you start to filter out the actual truths from the half-truths and the junk. I've decided to write this hopefully junk-free blog to express my view on the main aspects of the topic.

If you've already decided which way to vote, you may as well stop here. If you're uncertain, please read on. I'm going to start with the main arguments that the Brexit campaign uses, address them and debunk parts of them (though some points are valid), then move on to the surplus of positive arguments in favour of Remain that Leave doesn't have an answer for.

Immigration

Let's leave to one side the fact that there are more non-EU migrants than EU ones here. 500 million people live in Europe, and so about 440 million live outside the UK. Although they could, they are not all going to end up in the UK. Even if Turkey and other south-eastern European countries join the EU (and if none of the current 28 heads of state, including the British PM, veto the decision!), they won't all flee their homeland, skip the other EU nations and land squarely in the UK. It ain't happening. Turkey has been trying since the 80s to join, and it is far from meeting the necessary requirements even now - add to that the UK's power to veto and it's clear that Boris's statement "Turkey is joining the EU" is just not true (or at least weasel words).

By the same logic, all 63 million Brits aren't going to end up in London, deserting their homes in Manchester, or Glasgow, or Cornwall or Nuneaton. So to talk like that is just empty and purely designed to scare; if you want to have a normal discussion about immigration within the EU, then you have to be realistic and focus on what is probable, not possible.

Now, a true counterpoint by the Brexit side here is that there are areas of the UK with already very high levels of immigration, increasing pressure on the NHS, in schools and elsewhere. This is certainly a partial consequence of being a relatively prosperous country in a union of nations which enables freedom of movement of people, where other nations are considerably poorer and with high unemployment. I say partial consequence of being in the EU because, as I have said, a great many migrants are non-EU.
   To be fair to most Brexiters, I'm sure most of them don't blame migrants for exercising their right, and have problems with the policy rather than the people it affects positively. Those living in highly populated areas really do feel the effects of high migrant populations, but that could and should have been avoided by not imposing devastating cuts on public services - thank the Tories, not the EU.

Notice that the above paragraph about current immigration isn't your typical Remain-style discussion. Some of it could even have been said by a Brexiter. However, also note the lack of xenophobic undertones. I believe EU immigration is a great thing, and am proud of my country for providing a home - temporary or permanent - for Germans, Spaniards, Poles...It would take a lot to convince me that the current levels of EU migration are too high across the country as a whole (notwithstanding regional pressures discussed earlier) - 'too high' would be a situation where the overall population, whether British born or not, is such that unemployment rises and standards of living fall; that simply isn't happening.
   We're still a prosperous country, and still attractive to migrants and business. If we were at such a breaking point, people would stop coming. Again, public services such as schools and the NHS are suffering because of the Tory government and not the EU. I see crowded A&Es near my home but hear almost entirely native English people. Most EU migrants are young, educated and healthy; most of the strain on the NHS is coming from older Brits in an ageing population. (So, that recent Vote Leave campaign advert with a split-screen video of an inside-EU and outside-EU hospital A&E is highly misleading, a.k.a. bollocks.)
   As for schools, you often hear about full intakes, but it's a fact that there is an equivalent of one EU-born (non-Brit) child per school. In short, the impact of EU migration levels in the country as a whole is exaggerated and politicised. (Note: I say the impact is exaggerated, not the numbers - the official numbers are not exaggerated, and probably underestimated.)

Talking or being concerned about immigration isn't racist. When someone on the left quickly brands someone 'racist' or 'xenophobe' for bringing up immigration, the debate takes a step backwards. It also does nothing to help the Remain camp. For sensible, normal people, immigration is simply about numbers. The problem here is that we are so often told using pejorative language that the numbers are 'unsustainable' or that we're being 'swamped' or we have to 'put up the shut sign' etc, etc. This use of language is subliminal and, unless you pay particular attention to people's choice of words and the motives behind them, you are going to gradually develop negative knee-jerk feelings - probably unconsciously - whenever the topic of immigration is mentioned. This is especially true of less educated or analytically minded people. And as the Archbishop of Canterbury said, it is "pandering to people's worries and prejudices".
   The Gillian Duffy types who Ukip/Farage, Daily Mail and other right-wing press seek to manipulate and misguide (with or without success - they are not all brainwashed idiots!), tend to live in communities where this shared misperception of foreigners naturally thrives and is constantly reinforced. Over the last 5-10 years or so, they have become a significant part of the (generally white working class) population and are energised by the Leave sentiments. It's important to point out that many white working class people are not this way inclined, and people will make up their own mind; but it is true that if right-wing politicians and press have successfully xenophobised anyone in this country, they're by and large in these communities. I'm not pointing out this demographic to demonise them - far from it (I grew up in a mostly white working class northern town) - but to show how the Brexit movement has been so successful. Now there is a perceived issue with the EU that was not an issue before, so much so that a referendum has been called, and the Brexiters are close to getting what they have come to want.

Sad times. Sad because EU immigration - for the most part - deserves celebration, not condemnation.

An in-depth report a year or two ago concluded that EU migrants pay in to the UK in taxes more than they take out, by about £20bn over the previous decade. I can believe that: a very strong work ethic. They are no more benefit scroungers than your average Brit, and probably less so if you could measure such a thing. Many EU migrants are young and well educated, working in manual jobs that their British counterparts would consider beneath them. Nigel Farage loves to include the phrase 'former Communist' when referring to the countries these people come from - if there's any relevance to that maliciously highlighted association, it's that they come from a culture where being idle is not so much frowned upon but simple doesn't enter people's minds as an option! Why isn't Mr Farage being more wary of young Brits instead, who grew up in a 'former Imperialist' country? (Of course that would be ridiculous, but it's no less ridiculous than Farage's 'communist' reference designed to stir distrust in Eastern Europeans.)

It reminds me of Schrodinger's Immigrant: one who simultaneously takes your job whilst leeching from the state.

As has been shown, in terms to working and paying taxes, there's nothing wrong with the EU's free movement of people principle. Employment among Brits is at a record high! So then, what about driving down wages? Some employers recruiting from poorer EU countries will enjoy being able to pay minimum wage without hearing a grumble, but it's hard to believe that if they could only employ Brits, they would somehow pay higher wages. If you're a employee worried about your wage level and workers' rights, don't flipping vote Tory. 
   If we left the EU and slashed migration, there'd be such a shortage of potential staff that many organisations just wouldn't be able to exist. As I said, a lot of Brits nowadays simply wouldn't want to work on a production line, which so many EU migrants do, hence so many businessmen and businesswomen, high-level and small-level, publicly warning that leaving the EU would bring big problems for them.

(A side-point: it's a pity that the word 'immigrant' has developed a negative connotation. The fact that Brits living abroad so often are referred to as 'expats' allows a horrible dichotomy to flourish. There's rarely any actual need to label people in such terms anyway, no more than calling someone a 'brown-haired' person. Here's an interesting thought experiment: imagine calling a well-to-do retired British couple living in Mallorca 'immigrants' and a Slovakian man working in warehouse an 'expat', and see how those two words just don't fit the people. Of course, words are powerful and can shape perception.)

Also, there is one big unanswered question in the Brexit plan, if we are to actually control EU migration in the case of a Leave win: If you don't want freedom of movement of people, they you have to leave the single market as well (as Michael Gove wants). You can't have the best of both worlds (if you think 'movement of people' is a 'bad' thing in of those metaphorical worlds). Norway and Switzerland don't have it both ways. Britain won't either. So, if you vote Leave to try to reduce migration, and if the Tory government achieve this themselves (outside the EU), then you also have to face a future in which we aren't part of the European single market. That's a lot of 'ifs' and a big loss at the end, all for the sake of saving yourself a bit of time in the A&E queue or having one extra place at your local Primary school, nationally speaking.

By the way, remember that we're not in the Eurozone and we're not in the borderless Schengen Zone; and if the British majority don't ever want us to, then it won't happen, because we elect our government and we elect MEPs.

Ok, I don't want this to become just about immigration, because the EU debate is much more than that, though for the Leave side of it, not much more. However, one area which I think Remain hasn't been honest enough about is democracy, and to a lesser extent, sovereignty.

Democracy

The EU should be more democratic. I'm not saying it isn't democratic, because democraticness is a scale rather than black-and-white, and the EU is reasonably democratic. However, before I explain where I think reform needs to happen (and how), just remind yourself about how the UK democracy looks...

At the last general election, nearly 4 million people voted Ukip and over 1 million voted Green. Both parties have only one seat in Parliament. I don't see such passionate campaigning about the state of British democracy!


We also have an unelected House of Lords comprising over 800 people, nearly 100 of whom inherited their position. Less than a quarter are women. I don't see such passionate campaigning about that either!

I could also mention one other person, but it's her 90th birthday, so I'll give her a break...

True democracy is unattainable in practice; nothing would ever get done. Some bureaucracy and appointed decision-makers have to exist for countries or even small organisations to function. You can't please everyone all of the time, and you have to draw a line in the sand somewhere between the two extremes of autocracy and democracy. For example, there are 649 MPs in London who I didn't elect, who can together propose and debate laws that do not express my own views. Then those laws are passed to an unelected house who would only reflect my own opinion out of pure coincidence, and often don't reflect my views. But that's life! If I don't like it, I vote for an opposition or campaign or join the political process in some other way. The same applies to our elected MEPs in Europe.

Speaking of opposition, I do partially agree with the Leave campaign on the matter of accountability - there should be a formal opposition structure built in to its workings; at the moment it is just MEPs, with Ukip and Farage actually doing quite well at providing opposite voices, albeit aggressive and personal and not representative of their country (so vote in the next European elections!!).

So, what's the issue with democracy and the EU? After all, it does have MEPs who are directly elected, standing in the European Parliament. It also has a Council of Ministers who are ministers that the UK people elected through government. That's fine. They (in theory) represent the needs of Britain on the the European stages. If they don't represent your needs, then that's because either you didn't vote in the last European elections (for the European Parliament) or General Election (effectively for the Council), or you are just in a minority.

The problem lies, as I mentioned earlier, in that the European Commision is not elected by EU citizens. This, in my view, should at least have a democratic 'in' point, and it currently just has our own Commissioner appointed by our government.

Also, a reformed EU should have increased accountability, and a post-Remain UK political scene should stay at the table and encourage it. A Brexiter at this point may say that it's futile, that the European Commision would always win over - this is rubbish. The Parliament and Council of Ministers are there, and increased engagement in European politics is needed by the British public in general. No bugger in the UK seems to have followed EU politics at all in the past, with tiny voter turnouts, and now suddenly people are shouting about how 'undemocratic' it is, as if they'd been violently lobbying for years!
   The reality is that we vote for our MEPS, and they have the power to accept or reject proposals from the Commision. Yet the democratic deficit still persists because new proposals still originate from the appointed, not elected, Commission.

Again, this should be the type of thing the UK should lead and help bring change to. If we are so drastic as to leave the whole thing, then we'll have no say whatsoever on the decisions in Europe that will still affect us over the Channel (assuming we want to continue trading and collaborating with Europe and not float away somewhere to the mid-Atlantic!). You shouldn't run away and just hope for the best, which is basically the Brexit approach. Stay in and help improve it from within!

Sovereignty

At this point in the debate, when listening to Boris and co, you'd think the EU had impose laws on us that are morally wrong or fly in the face of British needs; remember, the EU is there to deal with transnational issues, not local ones. This logic is equally true for your local government, who are elected to deal with local issues. In a globalised world, there has to exist a hierarchy of governance; without it, we end up with competitive nationalism and distrust of neighbours, weakened response to international crime and terrorism, and a climate and environment that gets increasingly worse. That's not scaremongering - that's plain fact. Just as the current UK Tory government can overrule or direct policies that affect Labour constituencies in issuees that need national-level management, so the same holds true for the EU and supranational-level issues. Without it, there'll be little progress in the long term. You've got to pool sovereignty in the real world (unless your name is Kim Jong-un).

We hear the slogan from Leave "Let's get our country back"; this is so often said but so utterly exagerrated in its implications. This isn't Soviet communism in eastern Europe. This isn't Israel in Gaza. This isn't Saddam Hussein in Kuwait. To use such language is inflammatory and an affront to countless other countries with real problems. Meanwhile, back in Old Blighty...

The directives and regulations coming from EU concern the greater good, and are not part of some malign design that seeks to do bad to the British people. If you're not sure about this, don't listen to the Leave campaign or Ukip, but just research some of the laws derived from the EU; if you ignore the many that don't apply to us (e.g. olive oil), ignore the silly or exaggerated ones (bendy bananas and straight cucumbers), and ignore the countless mundane ones (manufacture of oven gloves), you have almost nothing left that any rational person would find more damaging or disagreeable than what the Tories are doing. Ask a Brexiter to name an EU law that they think the British people (overall) wouldn't also vote for within the UK. You'll rarely, if ever, hear a legitimate answer. You're far more likely to find abhorrent policies in the current government - cough, Jeremy Hunt, cough. Only 24% of British people actually voted for the Tories - the lack of democracy in the UK (caused by having First Past The Post) is far more damaging than the lack of democracy in the EU.

Leaving the EU wouldn't give more power to us, the voters. It'd give more power to the Conservative Party. Only if you think Corbyn's Labour Party have a strong chance of winning the 2020 election could you believe otherwise.

Money

The last real debating point that Brexiters make is about cost. The Leave campaign printed on the side of a big lorry that the EU costs £350 million a week. I hope most people know by now that this is simply false, and the the campaign organisers have ignored instructions not to keep saying it. But the buggers still do.

   Once the UK's special rebate (another extra perk that other net-giving EU nations haven't got) is considered, as well as investment back in from the EU and various subsidies in industry, it is said to work out at about £2.70 per person per week. I think that's a small price to pay for all the advantages of the EU, more of which I will provide shortly. The UK still pays far more in defence, education and health, and that's even with the tight-fisted Tory government making the decisions!
   Such large numbers are rarely given in context. Actually, take a look at your Annual Tax Statement which is now posted to everyone (or see examples at this link: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/millions-start-receiving-break-down-of-how-their-tax-is-spent). It shows a pie chart of tax spendings, and the EU is a tiny slither of about five degrees of the chart. It's nothing, yet you'd think the EU was bleeding the taxpayer dry, the way Leave campaigners talk!

Also, the benefits in economic growth and investment from EU and worldwide business investors is huge. That's why so many businesses don't want us to leave. Economists are - quite amazingly - practically unified in their conclusion that leaving the EU would damage the economy. The uncertainty is already putting of investors right now. Why on earth would an investor want to come to the UK in the next few years if we Brexited at the end of June? Brexiters delude themselves into rubbishing these arguments from economists all over the place, including the International Monetary Fund, Institute for Fiscal Studies, London School of Economics and OECD to name but a few. And which experts say Brexit would be good economically? Someone from Cardiff Uni, plus a handful of others. If any rational person has read recent reports and still wants to vote Brexit on economic grounds, then he or she ceases to be a rational person. It would be madness.


Ok, so I've addressed the Leave campaign's main points about immigration, democracy, sovereignty and money. I've tried to debunk the common claims where I can, but conceded a few points. You might think that the decision on your poll card is still flitting between 'Leave' and 'Remain', depending on your own personal circumstances and values.

So, let's push this decision comfortably into the 'Remain' side and wave a wise goodbye to Leave's flimsy case...

We have good trade agreements with the other 27 countries, and 500 million consumers. These would have to be renegotiated over several years after a Brexit, and would certainly be less favourable than if we stayed in the EU. The EU would not want to provide equally good terms, because that would be a driver for more Leave sentiment in other countries. Even if we did magically get good terms on new agreements, the prevailiing uncertainty beforehand is a fact, and that is bad for business. (Alan Sugar explains all this in layman's terms on his video.)

Products and services, e.g. flights abroad, are cheaper. These prices would go up if we left, as the increased cost to business would be passed on to British consumers. This may change later on as an inward-facing Brexited Britain develops its new trading structure, but it certainly wouldn't be any time soon.

Crossnational issues like climate change and crime/terrorism. These issues are undeniably more effectively tackled by working with other EU nations; that's not scaremongering, it's bleeding obvious! A Brexited British government could not be trusted with the environment - just look at its position on fracking. Thanks goodness the EU is there to put pressure on countries to become environmentally sustainable; if we left the EU, the little islanders' oft-used phrase of 'this green and pleasant land' will lose its meaning.

We're living in a 21st century, global world. Most Brexiters grew up in a less connected past on a more isolated British Isles; the world is changing and we need to move with it by operating within the EU. It's a fantasy to say we could "stand on our own two feet" as a country outside the EU, even after many years of restructuring following a Brexit; if you believe that we could go it alone, take a look at what's happened thanks to the Conservative Party that one quarter of the electorate voted in: Junior Doctors' strikes, academisation of schools, tripled tuition fees, etc. It's hardly a fairly tale. We won't be a world player outside the EU whilst run by Boris and his gang.

Scientific collaboration. Universities across Europe collaborate through EU initiatives, and share resources, equipment and research findings. Science and medicine progress faster with an EU there to facilitate it. Stephen Hawking recently spoke out about this. As for students, the Erasmus scheme is unparalleled in terms of enrichment and development; a Brexited UK would have to reapply to be considered a part of this scheme again.

Cultural learning. Being able to freely and cheaply travel and work between countries, without red-tape and visas, allows us to mingle with our neighbours. If we mingle, we understand. If we understand, we trust more; we see our similarities more than our differences. People mostly have the same basic values, especially in Europe - Britain was, and should continue to be, a leader in promoting these values. The languages spoken may be different, but it's really not much more than that. You'll still have angels and demons within any society, of course, but that won't change. The only differences in culture are superficial but also enriching to see: food and drink, music, traditions, the arts...all those things are to be celebrated, and being in the EU encourages these cultures to come into contact with each other - not to be eroded or replaced, but to be shared and respected.

Peace. Most Brexiters grew up post-WW2. Those old enough to remember the war, and veterans of the war, are pro-EU, because they know first-hand what a fragmented Europe looks like. Middle-aged people grew up in the 60s and 70s, when peace was growing and the EU's predecessor was set up to accelerate peace-building, but sadly a lot don't see these merits of the EU and want Brexit instead. The EU has unquestionably done a great deal (along with Nato and the UN) in promoting a peaceful continent and fosters collaboration, not conflict between nations that were enemies not that long ago.
   This doesn't mean that a Brexit would bring on WW3, of course. But it certainly won't help peaceful relations between politicians and between citizens if we are to be discouraged from interacting, trading, working, living and travelling between these countries! Vladimir Putin is the only world leader I've heard who would like to see a Brexit. Judging by his opportunistic occupation of Crimea, which is actually about the same distance from the UK as Cyprus is, you'd be naive to overlook this or put it down to 'scaremongering'.

Travel and tourism. This is linked to the cultural point, but even if you just want to go to Europe for the weather and sunbathe with other Brits, that's fine: the point is, travel and tourism is cheaper and easier when we're in the EU than if we're out. Plus you get free or subsidised emergency healthcare, e.g. A&E, which will probably end if we Leave.

Love the UK? Scotland may leave. Scotland is generally pro-EU. If the UK votes Brexit, it will be even more likely for Scotland to have a second independence referendum (even Alec Salmond recently let this one slip in a TV debate), and more likely for them to leave the UK so that they can rejoin the EU. Don't want Scotland to leave the UK? Well think about that if you're leaning towards Brexit. I'm not joking or scaremongering - it's clearly possible and quite probable!

...and Northern Ireland? Leave has said nothing yet about what would happen at the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which would be a frontier of the EU which is mostly open countryside and crossed daily by locals who now thankfully have great relations with one another. Build a wall? Have patrols? I don't think our Irish/Northern Irish friends would like that.

The rest of the EU would suffer greatly. Yanis Varoufakis, economist and former Greek MP, justifies this view in a very insightful read (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/05/yanis-varoufakis-why-we-must-save-the-eu). Not only would this delight Putin (as said above), but it would be damaging to the structure and a step backwards for other EU countries and its close neighbours. Even if you didn't care what happened over the English Channel, the repercussions would obviously affect us too, unless we really became isolated from Europe! 


So, to wrap up this partially structured rant: the EU question is complicated. But to leave is more complicated than to remain, though the latter needs reforms, and that does add uncertainty. A post-Brexited Britain would have thousands of legitimate questions to answer, though it's answered very, very few so far, with the referendum very soon. Compare this with the Scottish independence referendum - the SNP produced a long White Paper outlining their vision and its rationale in great detail. Leave have nothing of the sort.
   To remain carries risks too, but most of them are known quantities. There are also reforms on the table, which we would still be sitting at, and other EU members would have to listen, especially given how close they are/were to losing the UK from the team. And yes, we are the EU - it's not some external body that has nothing to with us. We have elected representatives working in it. It's not about us versus them, but us with them.
   The fact that we're having a referendum at all is quite strange, really: such a complex set of scenarios behind a simple yes-no question, with no-one knowing for sure what the hell is actually going to happen if we leave the EU. To ask millions of laypeople to decide on something so unknowable and complex isn't the kind of thing referenda should be for; you can have a referendum on something plain with a straightforward set of outcomes, but not this! Ok, the outcome will hopefully settle a question that's been bugging a certain segment of society for a while, though either way there's going to be a whole lot of people who are seriously pissed off (though admittedly that applies to most referenda), and potentially an undesirable future that resulted from lots of badly informed but passionate people turning out to vote Leave.

Of course we're all entitled to our opinion, but we should think long and hard about where our opinions come from. We have values and personal experiences, and if yours tell you that to leave is the best decision, then so be it - but make sure you're informed about the facts and the probable future facts. If you agree with enough of my blog here, hopefully a bit of reality and rationality will swing you towards the decision to Remain, even if it's not perfect and all roses. It's got to be better than a Leave, if you think about it completely honestly.

I just hope not too many people who would generally vote Remain, but aren't that bothered, don't refrain from voting. This is especially true of younger folk, who grew up in a more globalised UK inside the EU, and are happy with how things are now and would choose Remain if asked. If the EU was so bad in recent years, you'd expect the youngest to be the keenest to Leave.
   The older generation (but not as old as those now in their 80s and 90s who have adult memories of the war) are generally more eurosceptic, and many are likely to turn out to vote Leave based on vague notions of greatness and lamentations of a past Britain (and even Empire) that's dead and buried.   
   Other Brexiters will vote because they've been led to see the EU as 'undemocratic' (rather than the true 'could be a bit more democratic') whilst their attention has been diverted from the UK's own democratic flaws.
   Some Brexiters will vote based on immigration, in some cases based on legitimate but localised and personal reasons rather than the true national picture; many anti-immigration voters are likely to be oblivious and uninformed about the inextricable question over the single market, and the implications of leaving that.
   That leaves the Remain voters. How many that is is anyone's guess.

It appears to me that the greater the turn-out, the greater chances of a vote to Remain. This would also be more democratically representative of the country's true national character (assuming Brexiters are actually passionate about democracy).

If you're still on the fence, I hope you can see that Brexit is a fatally bad idea and that Remain, for all its sins, is the only real way forward.

To end with (if anyone has got this bloody far!), here are some noteworthy, well-regarded people from all walks of life, who will be voting to (or support) Remain:

Tim Berners-Lee
Sir Richard Branson
Sir John Major
Robert Winston
Stephen Hawking
Emma Thompson
Benedict Cumberbatch
David Mitchell
Bob Geldoff
Richard Curtis
Billy Bragg
Noam Chomsky (!)
Brian Blessed
Bill Gates
Deborah Meaden
Eddie Izzard
Lord Alan Sugar
Sandi Toksvig
William Hague
Jo Brand
Jeremy Clarkson (!)
Jude Law
JK Rowling
Slavoj Zizek
Simon Cowell
Michael Eavis
Steve Coogan

...not to mention scores of world leaders (past and present, EU and non-EU), leading academics and economists, prominents businesspeople and CEOs, university vice-chancellors, leaders of professional bodies (inc. NHS), key figures from MI5, MI6, NATO, and all of the Armed Forces.

Ok, I've finished! Roll on the 23rd June...