Don't leave me now.......

“Ooooh, babe, Don't leave me now.  Don't say it's the end of the road. Remember the flowers I sent.” The opening words the eleventh track of The Wall by Pink Floyd, a rock opera, telling the story of Pink, a man who builds a metaphorical wall around himself, isolating him from the rest of the world.  Living in a belief that he is everything and no one would ever wish to leave him, no matter the treatment he meats out to others.  Some organisations are like that, living in an isolated world.

Now, I don’t know about you, but if I was a member of a golf club that, on hearing I was thinking of leaving, threw its collective arms up in the air and shouted, “please don’t leave we will collapse in a few months if you do”, I would not be impressed.  Were they really relying on me as a member to keep them afloat?  Is it my money that keeps them afloat as they haven’t been able to raise enough from the other members?  I know I pay more than anyone else, but is the club in that bad a shape?  Or is it the talent, they would lose my talent at doing things?  No one else in the club apparently can do the things I can.  Or is it, well you can see where this is going.

So imagine my shock horror and surprise when I read today that leaders at Davos fear 'Brexit' may be death knell for EU. Yes, European politicians are pleading with Britons to vote "yes" and keep the union intact

Manuel Valls, the French prime minister, said the whole of European civilisation is under grave threat and the region must stick together in its own self-defence, warning that the departure of the UK would be a fatal blow. "It would be a tragedy," he said.  Really?   Yes, he really did say that, "civilisation is under grave threat". I had no idea that the UK was that important, so important that civilisation itself could collapse.

What really makes me suspicious of such statements is, if they were true, David Cameron could be asking for absolutely anything he wanted in these so called negotiations.  But he’s not.  He is only asking for some piddly little things everyone knows the European leaders will wring their hands over only to come and say, “ok David, you’re a hard bargainer, we give in”.

If it wasn’t so important it would be laughable.  And I’d be leaving the golf club to its own devices rather quickly.