My book about Brexit is out!

[Edwin]

I don't want to go into the politics on here, but a number of folk know I've been writing a book about Brexit for a long time. (Feels like decades - Brexit years are like dog years.)

Anyway, it's out on Amazon Kindle today. Please take a look if you think you might be interested. There's a decent length chunk of free preview, and you can see the full Table of Contents too. Just head over to Amazon, then choose "Look Inside" or ask Amazon to send you a sample.

As I said at the beginning, I know this is a sensitive topic and I don't want to trigger any kind of a fight on Acorn, so I am deliberately limiting myself to alerting people that it's out there.

Please consider taking a peek. Thanks!

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07Z1FTRQW/

 

[JMI]

Good stuff Edwin, but for a balanced view people should watch this

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[LCHappy]

Good work Edwin, uninformed people are the ones who are going to die if we leave. As much information in the public arena is what is needed.

 

[diablo]

Whichever side of the Brexit argument you find yourself on, I think there's one thing we can all agree upon: Edwin is one of our own.

Few of us won't have benefited from his help and advice over the years and Acorn certainly wouldn't be the forum it is without his years of contributing.

Here's an easy opportunity to give something back.

To gain visibility for a book on Amazon, sales are crucial. More importantly, clusters of sales are crucial. This boosts a book's ratings and means more people will see that it is available.

We can help Edwin with this by buying his book today (or over the coming week if you don't see this today).

People are used to hearing "Twitter do your thing." I'm asking Acorn to do its thing.

Again, doesn't matter where you stand on Brexit. This is all about supporting a fellow Acorner.

Edwin Hayward! He's one of our own!

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07Z1FTRQW/?tag=acorn06-21

 

[RobM]

I tried to buy it but afterwards I received an email saying that I didn't understand what I was buying and therefore the purchase wouldn't be honoured.

 

[lazarus]

Well done Edwin.

 

[Edwin]

Thanks for the kind words. If you know me at all, I don't think you can doubt my sincerity even if we disagree on politics. So please believe me when I say: I know the topic's Marmite. I won't pretend it's not. I am not trying to force the book on anyone nor trigger a rerun of earlier arguments on Acorn. I'll leave it there. Have a great Sunday.

 

[JMI]

50%+ unemployment in Spain, negative mortgages offered in Germany, the EU is looking strong.

 

[starbird]

The one thing brexit has done is show how corrupt our politicians are. The speaker is supposed to be impartial yet a european commissioner said both he and the speaker agreed brexit was a bad idea. We all know bercow has put every obstacle in the way of leaving and will ensure it's successor will as well (it being used deliberately). The eu is dead in the water already. It seems the european commissioner and speaker agreed another referendum is the way forward, no doubt because a GE would wipe parliament clean, which wouldn't do would it

 

[Murray]

Did you enjoy writing the book? was it a labour of love or did you feel more of a duty to share your findings on the topic

 

[Edwin]

Did you enjoy writing the book? was it a labour of love or did you feel more of a duty to share your findings on the topic

I mainly enjoyed it. There were a few topics that were tough to wrestle into a couple of pages, so at times it felt like a chore - but overall it was fun. Feels odd not wrestling with it, actually. The last month I'd put in 10-12 hours a day on it and now all the tension's gone...

 

[poetry]

Well done it takes a lot of cachones to finally sit down and complete a book.

 

[websaway]

Knowing your views on the subject, I'm sure it's an unbiased take on the issue. Not like these people who want another referendum to unite the divide. LOL

 

[Sound]

Firstly congratulations on finishing your brexit book.

Confused as to what made you write it in the first place as we are bombarded from all sides of the media with talk and brexit articles 24/7 what does your book say that ? wont find from all the other sources?

Would also like to know how brexit has affected you since the referendum result? because my life has changed very little so far certainly not enough to send out 50,000 tweets and write a book.

 

[websaway]

Took a peek as invited. Can't see the point in sawing sawdust, especially in such a condescending manner.

 

[Edwin]

Firstly congratulations on finishing your brexit book.

Thanks.

Confused as to what made you write it in the first place as we are bombarded from all sides of the media with talk and brexit articles 24/7 what does your book say that ? wont find from all the other sources?

Tweeting came first, and for a long time. At some point, I had so many bits and pieces all over the place that a sneaking thought crept into my head "Hey, maybe these could be a book too". Rather than shoo it away, which might have been more sensible, I ran with it. Turned out to be far harder than I expected. I'll hold up my hands to being naive about the whole "writing thing"! But the further I got, the more determined I was to finish it. And now it is - yay!

As for the question of what it says that's different, it's probably more a case of how than what. I tried to provide a logical step by step explanation of as many aspects of Brexit as I could squeeze in, in plain English.

 

[Trauiner]

My only issue with books like this are that they tend to be written by remainers, for remainers, or written by leavers, for leavers. Basically, written to feed each other's thoughts that they're right no matter what. There's doesn't tend to be any consideration for a balanced overview.

It's like writing a book about how marriage is bad because there's usually a large expense to weddings, the divorce can be nasty and you can lose everything you've ever worked for and you've locked yourself into a commitment to a person when you should be "free".... all while just pushing the other factors aside. Love, having a life partner, being happy in the marriage while it lasts, even if the end result is different etc.

I haven't read the book but if it offers a balanced and fair overview of the pros and cons of Brexit, I'll give it a purchase? Or is it 100% that leaving the EU is wrong and everyone is dumb and stupid for voting for it. I would guess/assume that even if someone is a hardcore remainer, they could still have a chapter or two on the potential upsides of leaving. I would find it hard to believe there aren't "some" things that could be good.

(For the record, I didn't vote as I didn't have a good overall balanced view of which may be better. There were potential pros and cons to each and none outweighed the other from what I could see. However, I'm always interested in what is the best decision and the reasons why.)

 

[Edwin]

That's a genuinely tough question to answer. Not least because I don't believe the sum of all the facts on each side of the debate have equal weight. In other words, it's not like a pair of scales with one empty pan and one bulging one. However, in my book (both literally and figuratively) there are more weights in the Remain pan than the Leave one.

I don't want to take this back into the politics themselves, so I will limit myself to this:
1. I did try and think of both sides
2. There is a section (not enormous, but it's there) dedicated to the potential benefits to leaving. I also point out some of the tradeoffs that would be involved (e.g. if we decide to remove VAT on fuel - something the EU prevents us from doing at present - that clearly benefits the public, but it also unarguably reduces the amount of money going to the Treasury).
3. I had a very good friend chide me every time he saw too much bias creeping in. We went through several iterations on some of the stuff.
4. I had a crack at pointing out some of the problems with the EU, when they were real. (There's a gigantic amount of misinformation floating around, which was one of the reasons for writing the book in the first place.)
5. There are some things that are both very widely circulated and wrong. Fishing, for example. When you really dig into it, almost all the glib takes on the subject are contradicted by reality.
6. Some of the myths were half-debunked, in that they have some truth to them, which I acknowledged. But the rest of the notions Leavers have about them are incorrect.
7. I made an important (to me anyway) distinction between Leaver and Brexiter. A Leaver is someone who voted Leave. I don't blame them for the outcome of the referendum, or think they're stupid or racist or anything like that. A Brexiter is someone in a position of responsibility and power (e.g. an MP) with a strong influence over the debate - they do have a much, much greater responsibility to get the facts right, and I do blame the latter group for a lot of the mess.
8. It is not a prescriptive book. It doesn't say "you must think this way". It gives people the facts as best I have been able to nail them down, and lets them run with them.

 

[websaway]

I've read your twitter account. You really are shameless. You promote your book on this forum under the pretence that you give a balanced view on why the majority of voters voted to leave the European Union, an organisation we joined when it was the common market. Everything you have ever championed has been purely out of self interest and I believe even remainers will see through what you have turned out to be. I do believe when you voted to remain you really did not understand the argument and still don't.

 

[Edwin]

I've read your twitter account. You really are shameless. You promote your book on this forum under the pretence that you give a balanced view on why the majority of voters voted to leave the European Union, an organisation we joined when it was the common market. Everything you have ever championed has been purely out of self interest and I believe even remainers will see through what you have turned out to be. I do believe when you voted to remain you really did not understand the argument and still don't.

It's going to be impossible to convince you because you're not going to read the book. All I will say is that I addressed the book to a wider audience than my Twitter followers, who are probably 95%+ Remainers like me. I could have written something just for them. Would have been much easier, in fact. But I didn't.

It would be fantastic if you could keep the personal insults to yourself. Thanks.