You have to remember that the EU Referendum result to leave was apparently… D.E.M.O.C.R.A.T.I.C. This is seen as adequate justification for not holding a 2nd referendum, or annulling the first on the grounds that it is wrong and stupid.
Now, for those who don’t know – and that pretty much includes all 51.8% of the population who voted to leave – the definition of the word “democracy” is as follows:
government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system.
While we’re on that subject, it’s worth noting that Theresa May recently became Prime Minister by default. She was not elected – either by her party, or by the people. She was simply the last one standing after all the other runners had effectively succumbed to various doping scandals and political assassinations by their competitors.
Over the last three weeks, Britain has gone from being half admired and half hated by the rest of the world, to becoming a laughing stock that the world pities. Our new PM is obviously keeping the momentum going as she announces her new cabinet. Best joke of all has got to be Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary (I also hear that rattlesnakes make good pets, and that black ink is good for removing stains on delicate white fabric). BoJo runs Prince Phillip a close second when it comes to having a mouth that isn’t always fully engaged with the part of his brain which takes other peoples’ feelings into consideration (Prince Phillip’s is never engaged, of course).
The ratio of male and female cabinet members has changed slightly. These days, your sex apparently governs your prowess in politics and pretty much everything else (although if Mother Nature messed up and handed out the wrong hardware, you get double points), so it isn’t too hard to work out which way the scales have tilted.
What is interesting is that only three members of the new cabinet were “leave” campaigners (that’s what makes BoJo as Foreign Secretary such a paradox). All the others campaigned to stay. Immediately after the referendum, everyone was saying that the new cabinet had to be mostly brexiteers. Go figure that one.
I am keeping my fingers crossed that this will prevent/deter Theresa May from invoking Article 50 before then, and that further negative economic events will occur to bolster the argument against this idiotic decision to leave the EU. The full text of the confirmation email reads:
The Petitions Committee has decided to schedule a House of Commons debate on this petition. The debate will take place on 5 September at 4.30pm in Westminster Hall, the second debating chamber of the House of Commons. The debate will be opened by Ian Blackford MP.
The Committee has decided that the huge number of people signing this petition means that it should be debated by MPs. The Petitions Committee would like to make clear that, in scheduling this debate, they are not supporting the call for a second referendum. The debate will allow MPs to put forward a range of views on behalf of their constituents. At the end of the debate, a Government Minister will respond to the points raised.
A debate in Westminster Hall does not have the power to change the law, and won’t end with the House of Commons deciding whether or not to have a second referendum. Moreover, the petition – which was opened on 25 May, well before the referendum – calls for the referendum rules to be changed. It is now too late for the rules to be changed retrospectively. It will be up to the Government to decide whether it wants to start the process of agreeing a new law for a second referendum.
The Petitions Committee is a cross-party group of MPs. It is independent from Government. You can find out more about the Committee on its website: http://www.parliament.uk/petitions-committee/role
Thanks, The Petitions team UK Government and Parliament
Let’s all pray that somehow – somewhere along this road – common sense will prevail and the government will reverse the decision made by halfwits who shouldn’t be allowed to vote on Big Brother evictions, let alone on something as important as this.
It just continues to get better and better. They keep repeating that Brexit was “democratically decided” and we must therefore continue to run to the precipice – which is clearly signposted in front of us – at full speed, and all jump off together. Even those of us with IQs greater than that of frog spawn.
The media continues to report confusingly in its pathetic attempts to remain “unbiased”, this time with a story that Boeing has signed a £3 billion deal for nine aeroplanes to be built in the UK. I don’t think for one moment that the BBC is naive enough to believe that this whole deal was begun and concluded following Brexit voting. But they’re definitely devious enough to know that that’s precisely what its readers will think when they read that story.
The simple fact is that it was too late for Boeing to pull out of the deal, that’s all. And while it is good for British industry (Lossiemouth is in Scotland, so it may not be British for much longer), the deal does not mean that Brexit will lead to more of the same. In fact, the BBC’s glib report refers to £4.6 trillion of new aircraft being needed between now and 2035 – completely overlooking the fact that what has happened during the last two weeks is likely to be chickenfeed compared to what happens over the next 20 years as a result of those two weeks. And that really is naive.
Asia, for example, is not going to go ahead with ordering over 15,000 new aircraft from the UK (or what will be left of it when Scotland leaves) because it will cost them more. I mean, come on. No one is stupid enough to pay 10-20% more to the UK for what they could get from the EU or elsewhere. And then, of course, there will be the extra costs on the UK side now that GBP is worth less.
The BBC is also at its sneaky games with the value of the £. On it’s Business Live page – and in a sub-headline on the main BBC News homepage – it announced that “Sterling Moves Higher”.
Naturally, all the little Brexiters would have been sitting there going “See! Everything’s OK. Let’s go and roast an immigrant for supper!”
In actual fact, this is what the £ did today.
The move was by less than 1 US cent at the time they were rattling on about it (and it’s barely 1 cent even now). Anyone else can see that a) it fell off a cliff when the EU Referendum result was announced, b) it has remained off that cliff, and c) it is slipping lower and lower down the cliff.
Putting some numbers to it, it has risen by about 0.75% in the last two days. Four days ago it fell by 2%. On the day of the referendum result, it fell by 8%. Compared to the pre-referendum result price, it is currently 12.5% lower. And the BBC is trying to make this sound good?
Of course, the referendum result has torn the government apart. But that is completely irrelevant as far as many are concerned, because… FANFARE, followed by the Choir of the Heavenly Host… we will have a WOMAN prime minister.
Actually, Theresa May is merely PM by default – she wasn’t voted in, nor did she win any sort of competition for the leadership. It’s just that various dirty tricks (much of it amplified by the media) ensured that everyone else pretty much had to throw in the towel to avoid some petty scandal or another. Personally, I see it as very bad news, because if Cameron had hung around until later in the year the negative effects of Brexit would have become ever more apparent, making the result of the referendum even more nonsensical than it obviously was in the first place. My worry is that she’ll trigger Article 50 sooner rather than later.
I mentioned in an earlier article how they keep going on about the referendum result being “democratic” – so with a small majority (many of whom don’t work for a living and blame the fact on immigrants) favouring the suicide pact known as Brexit, the rest of us who do work are being expected to have big smiles on our faces as we see our livelihoods cast into the abyss. This is all the more amusing when one considers the almost complete absence of democracy involved in promoting Theresa May to PM (and denigrating the rest), and the refusal by the government (so far) to acknowledge the validity of over 4.1 million signatures asking for a 2nd referendum.
It runs until the end of November, and any petition which gets more than 100,000 signatures is considered for a Parliamentary debate. Even the most highly supported petitions rarely get more than a few hundred thousand signatures. This one outstrips all of them by a long way. A very long way.
The European Union Referendum Act received Royal Assent in December 2015, receiving overwhelming support from Parliament. The Act did not set a threshold for the result or for minimum turnout.
The EU Referendum Act received Royal Assent in December 2015. The Act was scrutinised and debated in Parliament during its passage and agreed by both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The Act set out the terms under which the referendum would take place, including provisions for setting the date, franchise and the question that would appear on the ballot paper. The Act did not set a threshold for the result or for minimum turnout.
As the Prime Minister made clear in his statement to the House of Commons on 27 June, the referendum was one of the biggest democratic exercises in British history with over 33 million people having their say. The Prime Minister and Government have been clear that this was a once in a generation vote and, as the Prime Minister has said, the decision must be respected. We must now prepare for the process to exit the EU and the Government is committed to ensuring the best possible outcome for the British people in the negotiations.
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
The media is behaving as if this is the end of it, when in fact all that has happened is that the government has restated its original position. Let’s face it, after having repeatedly quoted Cameron – who it represents after all – in categorically stating there would not be another referendum, the FCO was hardly likely to do a complete U-turn and say there would be one after all.
At the bottom of the email, there is this non-FCO text:
This petition has over 100,000 signatures. The Petitions Committee will consider it for a debate. They can also gather further evidence and press the government for action.
The Committee is made up of 11 MPs, from political parties in government and in opposition. It is entirely independent of the Government.
So, all that has really happened is that the government has dug in its heels as the scales of public opinion have continued to swing heavily – to the tune of 4.1 million signatures and counting – against it. The biased media has not seen fit to clarify this, in an attempt to prevent any opposition to Brexit gaining ground.
There’s a certain irony in the origins of the petition. Apparently, William Oliver Healey set it up when he expected the outcome of the referendum to be a narrow vote to remain in the EU. The petition argues quite logically that a tiny majority wanting to stay would be unfair on a slightly smaller number wanting to leave. At that point, it had 22 signatures.
Now, I’m sure Mr Healey would agree that if 51.9% of the population voting to stay would have been unfair on the 48.1% voting to leave (if it had gone that way), then it is equally unfair now given that the result was the other way round. Actually, I’m pretty sure Mr Healey doesn’t agree with that at all, and he must have choked on his muesli when he got up on 24 June and saw the result. However, he probably choked on it a lot more in the two weeks since, as he couldn’t have foreseen that his petition would subsequently have been taken over by almost 200,000 times more people than had agreed with him prior to the referendum.
Cameron has f___ed this country up big time with his idiotic referendum. By refusing to try and rectify the wholly wrong result – a result which which he, along with William Oliver Healey, didn’t expect in his wildest dreams – he is f___ing it up even more.
I wish some of the prats who voted to leave the EU could tell me when the good stuff starts. Because so far, all that has happened is bad.
Brexit has screwed up the Labour party; it’s in the process of screwing up the Conservatives by forcing a wholly unsuitable new Prime Minister on us (but officially, we will have to pretend the new PM is brilliant solely because it will be a woman); it’s screwed up the £ against pretty much every currency on the planet; it’s already sent the cost of certain consumer goods up and we are warned this will extend to everything else over the next year; British company shares have fallen significantly; and Scottish independence from the rest of the UK has been virtually guaranteed.
One of the partners Tata was in talks with was Thyssenkrupp – a German steel company. Thyssenkrupp has responded to Tata’s latest concerns by saying:
…that it believed a consolidation of the European steel industry was necessary, but that it still remained “open” as to when such a step would take place and who it would take it with.
Work it out…
Scenario #1: Britain part of the EU, therefore considered favourably in any “European steel industry” consolidation plans.
Scenario #2: Britain tells EU to f__k off, thanks to a bunch of retards who only understand pictures in The Sun and yet who were given the chance to vote in a referendum. EU responds by telling the remainder of Britain (minus Scotland) to shove its steel industry up its arse, since it isn’t going to screw Germany or any other remaining EU member.
Well done, Brexiters. You may just have destroyed the steel industry for good, but at least some of you got to spray paint some racial obscenities on local Polish businesses and nail some pretty flags up on your council houses, eh?
Dell and OnePlus are raising UK prices as a direct result of the idiotic result of the EU Referendum. Intro2020, a major importer and distributor of optical and camera equipment, is to follow having said that it had been:
…”punched in the stomach very hard” by sterling’s drop after the Brexit referendum.
Price rises are being predicted across the board by financial experts.
Since the result on 24 June, the pound has fallen 12% against the dollar, but it has fallen even more against Asian currencies – and most technology imports come from Asia. Dell has apparently applied a 10% increase in costs to UK retailers because its products are priced in US dollars. OnePlus has slapped a 6.5% increase on the price of its latest smartphone. Intro2020 is likely to increase its prices by at least 10%.
Sigma, which makes lenses, has said it will also have to raise prices because:
…the dramatic fall in the value of sterling as a result of [the] vote to leave the EU is far too great to be absorbed [by the usual price buffer]
It expects “volatility” in the pound for at least 9 months. And a retail expert has said:
For some markets, such as clothing and footwear, this will see a return to inflation after a period of deflation.
I wonder if those pricks who voted “leave”, and who are still expecting to see bonfires made out of immigrants as we ethnically cleanse this sceptr’d isle so it’s how they want it, are happy with what they’ve done.
This is the beginning of the reality. Price rises, followed by job losses and inflation. Someone has got to do something soon and reverse the idiotic decision to leave the EU.
Take a look at this chart. It shows the value of the GBP (£) against the USB ($) over the period 20 June to 6 July 2016.
At point A (immediately before the EU Referendum), everyone expected a vote to remain and the GBP rose to its highest level against USD since December 2015. In actual fact, between 15 June and 23 June, it rose from 1.41 to 1.49 (almost 6%) on the strength of confidence that we’d remain EU members.
Once the catastrophically wrong referendum result was announced, it fell to its lowest level for 31 years (a fall of around 10%). It recovered slightly – which prompted the nationalist press (i.e. The Sun) to announce that the scaremongering was over and the future was rosy. Again, in fact, it was still at its lowest for decades.
Following a weekend lull, it fell again This time, it stabilised at the level it had fallen to immediately after the result. A day later, it fell again and stabilised 2% lower than its previous lowest at 1.31 (B). For several days, and partly as a result of speeches from various people trying to calm the market, it climbed back to between 1.32 and 1.35 (C), and that’s where The Sun claimed everything was now all right once more. After another weekend lull, it set off downwards again, and today it stands at 1.29.
The Bank of England has repeatedly warned that Brexit will hit the markets and currency badly. Ranged against this you have… The Sun, whose counter arguments seems to boil down to “oh, no it won’t” and “it’s all those foreigners taking our jobs and scrounging off the state who are to blame”. Frighteningly, there are still people who read The Sun who genuinely believe this – these are the ones who swung the result of the referendum in the first place.
The Sun also favours quoting the FTSE 100, and has said several times that it “has recovered to pre-Brexit levels”. The FTSE 100 does not accurately reflect what is happening in the UK market – it is the FTSE 250 which does that. Today, for example, the FTSE 250 is down by almost twice as much as the FTSE 100 directly due to the Bank of England’s warning that the effects of Brexit are beginning to “crystallise”. Tesco and Morrisons – better indicators of the state of the UK market than, say, Vodafone – are down by 6%.
How much longer has this got to go on before someone wises up and admits that they made a mistake in allowing retards to vote on EU membership, and the that result was disastrously wrong?
Originally published in April, 2012. Furthermore, I have seen a few posts on a forum with ADIs fretting over pupils who aren’t making progress. They really ought to consider ADHD as a possible reason for this. I had another one recently who has all the necessary hardware to drive well, but who struggles when the software (the mind) becomes involved. After completing the questionnaire referred to later, previously undiagnosed ADHD entered the frame very strongly indeed.
In 2011 I had a pupil who was a dream to teach, with the single exception that she was extremely nervous and literally hated driving. We had to agree that in the debrief following each lesson the baseline started at “I hate driving” and only ever went upwards from there – it was the only way we could identify and acknowledge any improvements. Prior to that, whenever I asked her how she felt a lesson had gone, it was always “not very good” or “terrible” because she was equating a good lesson with enjoying it 100%. We were never going to achieve that merely because she hated driving. She was actually a brilliant driver.
In the course of our chats I discovered that her mum was the same. She said that her mum was a nervous driver, and would always drive round the block to make sure the car was pointing in the right direction in order to avoid having to turn around in the road. She also told me about her brother, who had taken and failed his driving test 5 times up to that point, apparently because he went to pieces on his tests. It seemed that whatever it was that ran in the family also extended to him.
She passed easily at the end of summer that year, and a couple of weeks later I got a call from her brother asking me if I’d take him on, which I was glad to do. His sister called again and asked me not to tell him that she’d passed – the family wanted to keep it from him to avoid upsetting him. She told me there was no need to lie, just not to mention it to him (he was in his late 20s). Anyway, he started lessons with me in September, 2011. At that time, I just assumed he was nervous like his sister and mother.
Soon after I’d met him and started teaching him, it quickly became clear that his general driving wasn’t actually that bad. However, he couldn’t do any of the manoeuvres to anywhere near test standard, and he had real problems with roundabouts or any “complex” junction. He could talk forever and you couldn’t shut him up, and this was a major source of distraction to him – he invariably started talking at the precise times when he should have shut up to concentrate on what was ahead. His favourite subject was how many lessons he’d had, how much it had cost him, and other topics connected with his lack of driving success. Just about everything we did he could somehow relate back to this, and it always fired him up once he started, thus distracting him further. Even if there was no obvious trigger he’d just blurt it out at some point in every lesson.
A couple of months after he started I also began teaching his girlfriend. It turned out that she was a good driver, and it was clear that she was going to get up to test standard very quickly. More about this later.
I discovered that he found it very difficult to learn anything “different” – he couldn’t parallel park at all using whatever previous method he’d been taught (which meant I couldn’t help him fine tune that method, since I didn’t know what it was, either), but trying to teach him a new method was met successively with frustration and anger at not being able to do it. Even when we’d apparently made progress on one lesson, his first attempt next time would invariably result in him defaulting to his original confused method, leading to more anger. I lost count of the number of times he told me he was “stupid”, how he had “always been like it at school”, and how he couldn’t learn things. Me telling him he wasn’t stupid had little effect.
We’d had his test booked several times – but moved it for various reasons (money issues, working overtime due to money issues, and having to spend money for his two kids at Christmas). When I looked it up in March, 2012, he’d only had 9 one-hour lessons over seven months, with long gaps between some of them. However, he still wanted to pass quickly, and in talking with him there was an inner struggle between his desire to pass his test and fear of failing if he tried.
One test booking which did have him fired up was the one that would have ensured he passed before his girlfriend. He was absolutely desperate for that to happen, but he ended up not booking any lessons so his girlfriend and me eventually persuaded him to just cancel it and not rebook until he was really ready.
As I’ve already mentioned, I’d told him that he wasn’t stupid. But I broached the subject of learning disabilities, because it had become clear that it wasn’t just “nerves” affecting him.
It turned out that he had problems in his normal life. Apparently, he had ripped doors off hinges at home when he got angry at something. He often got so angry that he had to stop himself hitting people if they “wound him up”. He had been in trouble at work for throwing things in anger. He had a home gym to help him work off his anger and frustration (one thing he told me that makes me laugh even now is how one time he squared up to his girlfriend during an argument – he is about 6′ 3″ tall, and about the same wide; she is roughly the size of a Barbie Doll. She cracked him on his jaw, and he was subsequently frightened of her). It also turned out that he’d been tested at school because of his behaviour, and he was told that there was “something wrong” but they didn’t know what!
Early on in his lessons I’d suggested that he see his GP to explain his problems – I had beta blockers in my mind while nerves were still on the agenda. I’d mentioned counselling a few times. But when I found out about his problems outside driving and his school’s assessment, I wrote “ADHD???” on his driving record. He said he’d often thought about that even though it “only affected kids”.
When his girlfriend passed her test first time he went into a real depression – “everyone is passing before me”, he said, “and I’ve been taking lessons since…”. And off he went on his favourite topic. He made me laugh again when he said he would refuse to get in the car with his girlfriend “on a matter of principle”. When I asked what principle, off he went again on the same topic – “it’s not right she should pass before me, after all those…” To make matters worse, he then asked me outright if his sister was still taking lessons (I’m sure he must have suspected something during those seven months, as he had never asked about her until then). I didn’t lie, and told him she passed the previous summer. And off we went again.
He suddenly started taking things much more seriously. On his next lesson he told me he’d found this website – and a questionnaire about ADHD. The subject had stuck in his mind and he’d followed it through. Basically, the questionnaire scores you between 0 and 100 – when I did it, I scored 8. He scored 80 (anything above about 30 ranks as likely ADHD). He contacted the relevant people and they arranged for him to be assessed properly.
I’ve used the questionnaire on several pupils with driving issues, and they’ve scored between 40 and 95.
By the way, that image on the sweatshirt sums up what appears to be going on inside people’s heads when they have ADHD. It’s no wonder it affects their ability to learn. However, once you know what IS going on in their heads you can find ways of dealing with things, as they affect everyone differently.
You can buy various shirts with that design from www.zazzle.co.uk.
He had his assessment and was offered the following two options:
go via the NHS, and wait up to TWO YEARS for a consultation
pay more than £500 to go private (plus whatever the medication costs) and get a consultation within a fortnight
I remember years ago, someone I knew had a hernia. He was told by the doctor that the NHS waiting list was about 18 months – but if he went private “I can fit you in next week”. Same doctor wielding the knife.
I should point out in closure that he passed his test on his first attempt with me a few months later! I like to think that at least some of that was down to me.
I occasionally see him when I go shopping in Asda, and he never followed up on the treatment for his ADHD. Just knowing what the problem was at long last seemed to make all the difference. He’s driving around quite happily, having had no accidents.
ADHD isn’t a show stopper as far as learning to drive is concerned – but it can seem like it is if it isn’t picked up. Someone with ADHD cannot be taught the normal way, because they can’t learn the normal way.
One of the main reasons for the marginal – and let’s not forget that it was very marginal – vote to leave the EU was because the Leave campaigners had convinced themselves that if we left, all those filthy foreigners would have to go home or risk being burnt at the stake.
The Huff poses the question “which of the 28 countries in the European Union has the most citizens living abroad as immigrants?”
During campaigning, the Leave camp certainly implied very strongly that it was the Poles and other Eastern Europeans who had allegedly parasitized the UK who held this honour. Of course, they couldn’t campaign directly on the subject since it would have automatically been racist – they therefore had to leave it to The Sun and The Daily Mail, both of which already existed in the cloaca of British society, and whose readership was happy to live down there with them as they pushed their lies and prejudices concerning EU membership and the benefits of leaving.
In actual fact, Britain has the highest number of people living outside its boundaries, but within the EU’s. Furthermore, it is only 14th out of 28 in the list of EU countries in terms of the number of non-UK nationals per capita.
This is not quite what “Leave” and the gutter press were telling everyone running up to the referendum, is it?
The article then proceeds to discuss the difference in meaning between the word “expatriate” (or “expat”) – as Britons like to refer to themselves when they move overseas – and “immigrant” – which they like to call everyone else who does the same. Take a look at these two definitions:
expatriate
noun
1. a person who lives outside their native country.
immigrant
noun
1. a person who comes to live permanently in a foreign country.
The article points out that in general usage, the term “immigrant” applies to those who move from a poorer country to a richer one seeking a better life, whereas “expat” is applied to those from rich countries who work abroad.
I’m sure that any Brexiters reading this will already be formulating their weasel replies, but anticipating their thought processes – which isn’t difficult when you’re dealing with racists – that distinction between “immigrant” and “expat” is very accurate, and that word “permanently” is spurious. There are many Africans and Asians who are only over here to either study or work, and yet who are freely regarded as “immigrants”, in spite of the fact that once they’ve completed their studies or whatever are likely to move either back home or to another country (I’ve taught several trainee doctors from those continents who had every intention of going back home to practice once they’d qualified). Likewise, many British “expats” will never – and have no intention of ever – returning to the UK while they are alive.
…public opinion about immigration has become a deciding factor in some of the most important geopolitical events in the world.
Views on immigration have shaped the world’s response to the refugee crisis, our policies on the war on terror, and this year’s U.S. presidential race. Yet, the basic facts about immigration almost never come up at all in the debate.
He then shows how the UK population believes the number of immigrants to be double what it really is (all countries overestimate this figure, some more than others). Perhaps even more worryingly, the UK population overestimates the number of Muslims it carries by a factor of more than four!
Without doubt, immigration and an underlying trend towards racism swung the result of the EU Referendum by just enough for “Leave” to scrape victory. It’s scary when you consider that stupidity and a deeply disturbing desire not to recognise facts about immigration were at the root. But it was a victory that was so frighteningly and obviously wrong that you wonder why someone isn’t doing more to pull a second referendum at the earliest opportunity.
But then again, perhaps the idiots who voted to leave the EU need to see some shit hitting the fan before that happens.
The vote to leave the EU was wrong. Totally and absolutely wrong.
The vast majority of MPs can see this, and it is what is coming across in the media. It is why over 4 million have signed the petition for a 2nd referendum. Unfortunately, in their pathetic attempts to maintain neutrality, they (BBC, in particular, take note) are insisting on printing a counter argument to every argument. Before the referendum – when everything was merely guesswork – this stupid behaviour caused confusion among the great unwashed masses. But now, in the face of harsh realities, these counter arguments are just coming across as childish and naive.
“Leave” Lies
The “Leave” campaign pretty much stated prior to the referendum that it would stop immigration completely, and give £350,000,000 to the NHS. These promises struck a major chord with the less intelligent people in our society, and undoubtedly won many votes. However, “Leave” reneged on both promises as soon as it became clear that it had won. Quite simply, immigration cannot be controlled in anything like the way “Leave” said, or in the way that dumb, nationalist people would like. And the NHS will not get £350m for the simple reason that “Leave” lied – absolutely and definitely lied – about the amount of money being paid to Brussels, and which it claimed could be given to the NHS instead.
Break up of The Union
As soon as we knew that Scotland had voted to remain, but England had voted to leave, the destruction of The Union was assured. Scotland held a referendum in 2014 on whether to remain a part of the United Kingdom. It chose future security over flag-waving and voted to stay, though the admittedly narrow margin of the “stay in the UK” vote has been the subject of much discussion ever since, and further referendums were always on the cards. Scotland’s future security flew out of the window on the morning of 24 June 2016, and within a day it was announced that a second vote on independence was definitely on the cards. Separate talks to keep Scotland in the EU have already begun.
Furthermore, Northern Ireland’s independence and Ireland’s valid claim to sovereignty on geographic grounds if nothing else has always been bubbling away under the surface. Northern Ireland also voted to remain in the EU, and it isn’t hard to see how the independence argument could bubble up again. The only problem there is that, unlike Scotland, Northern Ireland is likely to fall back into civil war as the Loyalists and Republicans are almost certainly not going to agree with each other. Just saying the words “Northern Ireland might seek independence” misses the realities of the situation by a million miles.
And if Scotland and/or Northern Ireland go, what will Wales – which has also talked of independence in the past – want to do?
Remember: before the referendum, no one predicted what has happened since. But what has happened since should provide a big enough warning of what could now happen moving forward. And it won’t involve blue skies and rainbows – more like black clouds and lightning.
Nationalism
The day the result was announced, I noticed a dramatic increase in the number of houses with flags hanging outside – many on dwellings such as the scummy one I mentioned before on Wigman Road in Bilborough – which had already been displaying “Leave” posters. As I pointed out to several pupils, these were not all due to England being in the Euro 2016 football competition – many were the response of a bunch of chimpanzees jumping up and down with glee at the exit vote. Although most were George Crosses, some were Union Jacks (one appeared on a flagpole on an exclusive property on Town Street in Bramcote).
This made me laugh, because there will be a new Union Jack within a couple of years – one with all the blue missing. A few years after that, Britain’s flag will just consist of the George Cross, and we’ll be called “England”. There will be no British Isles, since there will be no Britain.
It’s hard to fathom how the tiny minds of some people work. They’ve been going on and on for the last 70-odd years about how “great” Britain defeated Hitler and right-wing extremism, and yet they have now voted in such a way that they have destroyed the very mechanism by which that happened.
Fascism
That leads nicely on to the issue of racism – I’ll come to fascism in a moment. Within hours of the referendum result, acts of overt racism were already being reported. In Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, carefully produced laminated cards were being left at properties believed to be owned by Polish people. In actual fact, they were being left in the wrong places, but we already know that most “Leave” supporters were a little short on brains.
In a way, this illustrates the deeply ingrained racist beliefs held by the older generation in this country, and which has been passed on to generation after generation of their offspring. They are incapable of understanding that someone who was born in the UK, and whose ancestors – that would be great-great grandparents – emigrated here are just as British as they are. To believe that they aren’t… well, I’ll come to that shortly.
I want to go back to the Second World War for a moment, and the 70-plus years we’ve had to endure the message that we saved the world from a right-wing monster; the repetitive snide comments about Germany or Germans who do anything we don’t like (such as win sports events, or be involved in global politics); the snide comments about France for being occupied and having to be rescued; the snide comments about anyone smaller than us, or with a less illustrious history; and the “fact” that we singlehandedly saved them all from Hitler and fascism.
When you take all of that into consideration – and believe me, you could write a book on the subject – who would ever have thought that right-wing seeds should so readily sprout in the British Isles? You know, the country that defeated extremism again and again for almost a century (longer if you want to consider Britain’s imperial past)?
The vote to leave the EU has unleashed this right-wing bile by the bucket load, and not being part of Europe guarantees that it will fester and grow as we try to pretend we can become “great” again. The worrying thing is that we already were – but now we’re not.
Don’t try to convince yourself that it is “only a minority” of people who are racist. Anyone who voted to leave the EU solely because of immigration is already part of that same group of Neanderthals to a greater or lesser extent. Immigration was a problem for the whole of Europe and the whole World. It still is. Except we’ll have to deal with it alone from now on.
Economy
And that leads me on to the the economy. The shockwaves created by the referendum result have surprised everyone except for those who were too stupid to understand what they were doing by voting to leave. The GBP (£) immediately fell to its lowest value since the depression of the late 70s and early 80s. Shares in any company which relies on international trade plummeted, with trading even being suspended in some cases. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has warned that the country will be poorer as a result of the vote, and has also warned that taxes will have to rise by 2-3%, while spending will have to be cut (and let’s remind ourselves that a vote to leave was going to give an extra £350 million to the NHS, whereas it looks now as though it will actually end up with less than it was already getting). There are plans to increase duty on fuel and alcohol, as well as an increase in inheritance tax.
Don’t be misled by stories that the markets have “stabilised”. Global markets might have – temporarily. But UK companies are still almost 10% down on pre-referendum figures. The propaganda tells us that the GBP (£) is “up” to 1.35, yet it was 1.50 this time last week. Since it fell to a low of 1.32 or thereabouts, it is actually only “up” by 0.03 – whereas in reality, it is down by 0.15 as a direct result of the decision to leave the EU.
Referring back to the Chancellor’s comments, you have to laugh over that inheritance tax thing. There was one prat called “Graham”, who wrote a comment at the bottom of a recent BBC article (all in capitals, as is typical of his kind). He said he had voted “leave” for the sake of his children and grandchildren. I wonder what he thinks now? Well done, Graham. I hope waving your St George’s Cross goes some way to making you happy – but f__k everyone else, eh?
Forty years of net prosperity, growth, and success has been wiped out overnight, and replaced with uncertainty – a bunch of aged idiots, white van men from council estates, and f brainless football supporters all waving flags and rattling on about “making Britain great again” (those words have been written more than once by more than one “leave” voter).
We already were “great”. Now we’re not, and there’s no sign that we will be during the lifetimes of anyone now living.
The Referendum
It should never have been held. A decision like this should not have been made by idiots. It should have been made by economists and academics.
As I said at the start, this decision was wrong. It is obviously not working, and it obviously cannot and will not work in the future. Ever.
The government knows the result was wrong. It needs to stop prattling on about “democracy” and overturn the result quickly before Europe kicks us out. Then, it really will be too late.
