Watch The Birdie

While we in the UK engage in a mutual insult competition in our back garden there are things going on in the street outside.  The world has a lot of troubles and these will affect us one way or another.  They will come as a surprise because our media are wary of telling us.

This duo of articles in Project Syndicate are by George Soros first and Guy Verhofstadt second, both quite brief and clear given the subject matter.  The issue is the crash to come.  Soros tells us that the EU and Putin's Russia are in a race to doom, the question is who will go first.

Verhofstadt puts the case for the EU "Putting Putin In His Place", meaning, more or less, if Russia goes badly wrong first there might be some hope for Europe.  If it does, I am not sure that there is much hope for anybody because the fall out will hit all of us hard.

Given the suggested timing for all this is 2017, it means that whoever the next President of the USA might be he or she will have an early introduction to international politics and crises for which there is no or possibly any obvious solution.

On the other hand in the UK it may be that the vote will be to stay in just before the EU goes into a terminal financial and political crisis.  Or, if we do vote to leave, it may not be at all clear what we are leaving or how we will relate to the bits and pieces left over.

Don't forget to stock up the freezer, that is if our energy policy allows us the electricity to run it.