Diversions Manifold

Every Christmas, Easter and family birthday, as I list out the contents of a parcel on what feels like an excessively conspicuous “non-EU deliveries” sticker, then pay the suddenly exorbitant postage and customs fees to the UK; every time that, right at the end of the ordering process, a British website discovers that I’m based in Europe, or a European online store learns to its horror that I want to ship to the UK - indeed, every time I want to ship nice things, only to discover that they won’t, and now that the formerly anticipatory, family-related traipse to the post office has become a trudge to bureaucracy, I silently curse Brexit. These are, in the grand scheme of things, little niggles, already well known to anyone who has ever wanted to ship to countries like the USA or Japan. But they always remind me that the UK - barely but clearly (though for some vague notion of “Brexit means Brexit”) - voted and then acted to make things worse than they had been until just very recently.

For a while during the initial phases of the first lockdown, there was some discussion about the prevention paradox , the risk that beneficial actions taken on a population basis will leave many individuals thinking: what’s the big deal, or, why should I pay that price?  A good summary of the prevention paradox is contained within this pre-Covid quote from the International Journal of Epidemiology (emphasis mine): ‘[the population strategy] offers only a small benefit to each individual, since most of them were going to be all right anyway, at least for many years. This leads to the prevention paradox: “A preventive measure which brings much benefit to the population [yet] offers little to each participating individual” … and thus there is poor motivation for the subject. … In mass prevention each individual has usually only a small expectation of benefit, and this small benefit can easily be outweighed by a small risk’ The first Covid lockdowns in Europe helped to slow the spread of

A note to my friends and contacts in the UK Don't leave me stranded on the Continent...! If there have been any verifiable facts in the debate over Britain's referendum to stay in or to leave Europe to its own devices, I missed them. It's all (up to the lamentable murder of Jo Cox, MP) been an ever more unedifying and frankly embarrassing spectacle of bellowings, bawlings and balderdash ratcheting down to the lowest common denominator red-herrings of immigration and outliers on the EU regulations spectrum. So I can't and won't base my thoughts on any clear factual basis. What remain are feelings and conscience, which crystallise in and out as I change perspective. But whatever the perspective, my feelings and conscience compel me to ask you to vote "Remain", if only on the basis that I don't want my life made even more complicated than it already is. About me and my European friends I live and work in Germany. Nope, not in "Europe", but i