As I started chainsawing away yesterday morning, plugged into my helmet and autonomously felling small Larch and Hemlock trees, I thought to myself; Brilliant, an opportunity to plan my upcoming best-mans speech, iron out all the possible snags of the stag and build in my mind the review I promised I would be posting on here.

For some reason though, I couldn't get the upcoming vote out of my head. My thoughts and frustrations on the matter just kept running around my mind to the point that I became certain I had to write them down - here. It is not advisable, if you want to engage a wide audience to pigeon hole yourself and nail your colours to a particular mast, political or otherwise. Honestly though I am finding it really rewarding to be candid, honest, entirely open with my thoughts and our travails as a family.

It took me by surprise, the element of frustration that I felt today. I am clear on my position, and have remained so throughout - despite a brief challenge. I am generally amazed though by the battle lines that have been drawn in this war of no colours and many, of all regions and one, of no rules but many sentences. I am bemused by the weight given to figurative figures that are thrown around by friends, colleagues, family, and politicians alike. Incendiaries that are free to be picked up by any soldier and thrown in any direction as ammo for their cause. The same arguments are used by both sides in a futile battle of slander that is serving no purpose, let alone educating us. I am certain that any number that is stated as fact by anyone you talk to is not one they can lay honest claim to - not even the politician who first spun it. It's not just the economic factors that are being ricochet'd around by either side and thrown back and forth so many times we have no idea whose bullet it is. The NHS, immigration and even TTIP has been used to affirm both opinions. They are fear bombs used to corroborate and aide in a personal agenda. If we understand that we have a chance of voting fairly. By understand that I mean this; we all have a personal agenda.

I think if we can look inside our own hearts and minds to find our own personal agendas rather than act as pawns, as cannon fodder even, for other peoples agendas then we have a chance of a fair result.

My agenda is this; My ultimate goal is to work for easyJet, a pan-european airline that would suffer the greatest upset to it's operations if we were to leave the EU. If I land my dream job of flying for easyJet we'd most likely be living in mainland Europe, I'd hope that my family and I as Brits would be treated as a valid members of that community and still have the same freedoms, ease of passage, rights to healthcare and employment enjoyed by expats today. I'd also be flying an Airbus, another truly pan-european company. A company who support a large population in our beloved verdant homeland. Airbus make the worlds most advanced wings in the world in little old Wales. They employ 15,000 people in Broughton and have said their jobs would be safe, but couldn't possibly know how the climate would change in the future if we left. How sad if these Welsh wings migrated south.

Most importantly though, I had a wonderful young adulthood enjoying the privileges of a free and easy passage to work and play in the continent. I think those experiences have served me immeasurably well. I have a love for diversity and varied cultures, of accents and different foods, of languages and people of all personality. My mind has been inspired by contrasting geographies to those that are local to me. I have a greater understanding of tradition and it's importance to culture, I thus have a greater respect for my own culture and heritage. I cannot think of a single person who has had a truly cross-border european upbringing and is not intensely interesting - Boris Johnson included. I want my children to have that very same privilege. I cannot say that if we were to leave the EU, the same wouldn't be possible for my kids, but it is fair to assume that that freedom is more likely to be jeopardised than enhanced. I want them to grow up feeling a part of a diverse and multicultural community with fewer limitations and segregations. In a state that's making genuine honest steps to safeguard the precious environment they'll depend on.

It seems draconian to me to move backwards to a world that facilitates a feeling of us and them. Regardless of how well informed your decision to leave is, it ultimately gives credence to the uneducated and bigoted vote that knows none of the joys of diversity, acceptance and unity.

#Europe #easyJet #Airbus #family