Referendum

The new skipper of SS Britain…? 

Oh blimey so much to talk about. The European Chammpionships, Adele at Glastonbury, the frigging weather. And what about that Referendum result? I’m still in a state of shock. I’m amazed at a poll in today’s newspapers that says that over 1 million people have come out and declared that they voted for Leave but were shocked to find out that we are actually now having to leave the EU. Apparently they were all secretly hoping for a Remain outcome. Eh?

Well, well done folks because you’ve just inadvertently delivered mayhem on the stock exchange with billions wiped off share values of UK companies, seen the £ fall to record lows against the $ and the €, created chaos in Westminster with a rather decent Prime Minister having to resign and with the prospect of bonkers toff Boris in No 10 (really?)  and Michael fucking Gove in No 11 (arghh), the Labour Party in melt down, Scotland wanting to secede from the UK (and this time they really mean it), turmoil in N Ireland over the land border with EU-based Ireland, the EU wanting to strike a very tough deal with the UK on trade matters etc as a deterrent to other factionalist national pressures, rising petrol prices/interest rates/mortgages/inflation and so on. But we get to deliver £350M back to the NHS every week don’t we? No Nigel Farage. We are committed to continue to pay that to the EU every week till we actually leave on Jan 1 2019 at the very earliest. On immigration matters – and I suspect this was the big real reason behind the Leave vote – well nothing can and will change in the same time-frame. The free movement of workers across borders has to still apply and I suspect that hundreds of thousands more people will want to enter the UK now before border controls and entry conditions get changed in 2019. If you thought conditions at Calais were bad now just wait till the French decide ‘Fuck it’ on immigration controls, as they surely will, inside the next week or so. They’ll hand the border controls back to Dover as soon as England knock France out of the Euro Champs.

It’s a frigging disaster of a decision. I listened to one woman on the tv news yesterday explaining that she had voted Leave because she wanted to have milk from English cows again in the shops. What? If English farmers aren’t supplying milk to retailers it’s not because of EU bureaucrats nor the Common Agricultural Policy you muppet but because British supermarkets have driven down the price they are prepared to pay for the product forcing English milk farmers out of the business. It’s bloody Tesco’s fault not Jean-Claude Juncker!!

I studied International Politics at University and wanted deeply to work within the EU structure when I left because I genuinely believed that working in co-operation with our allies in Europe was the best protection against the instability that had caused so much and increasingly terrible war-mongerring over the years and I felt like I wanted to make a tiny contribution to that process. The EU, despite its many faults has delivered the longest period of peace and harmony that W. Europe has enjoyed in centuries. I never made it to Brussels for all sorts of reasons and probably wouldn’t have enjoyed the atmosphere but hell, it’s been a flawed but a decent institution to be frank if you think about it rationally. I can’t think of a single decision from them which has seriously compromised my lifestyle – can you in all honesty?

So now we get life ruled by the likes of Johnson and Gove, with more input from that fuckwit Farage, and that bumptious twat Trump probably elected leader of the Western world, over the water. Be careful what you wish for folks.

pp

 

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