Europe: In or Out
David Waddell
Senior producer, BBC World Business TV (Business Today & Talking Business). Breaking news reporter. Experience of overseeing culture change. Open to non-exec directorships.
For those of you pondering how to vote in June's EU referendum, I can't recommend highly enough David Charter's book 'Europe: In or Out'. He is publishing a new edition at the beginning of March which will include commentary on the latest negotiations between David Cameron and his buddies across the EU.
His analysis is remarkably forensic, balanced and informative.
For many of us this is a straightforward decision. Not for me. I'll be spending much of the next four months listening to the arguments and considering what the future might look like either way.
The European Union is changing, as it always has done. Indeed the EU proposition we ponder today is fundamentally different to the European Economic Community we joined in 1973. And the world of today is immeasurably different to how it was then. That's when Life on Mars was set. And we joined the EEC precisely five months before Roger Moore first burst onto our screens as James Bond in Live and Let Die.
However we decide to proceed, as a nation, there are uncertain pros and cons either way.
I have mixed feelings about the value of referenda. On such an important constitutional question, it would seem absurd not to put the issue to the people. And it's entirely reasonable that it should be subject to a generational review. But while it's emotive for many, it's also an incredibly complex and challenging intellectual decision.
However difficult the decision, I lean towards the preference that - for good or ill - we should be trusted to decide our own destiny.