I voted to Remain at the 'Europe Referendum' last year, hoping that the political system would take heed of the will of the British people, essentially reinforcing our desire to retain the benefits of being within Europe and substantially outvoting the hopes of a return to the dark times of jingoistic nationalism and a belief that the inhabitants of England are better than anyone in the rest of the world.
Yeah, that went well didn't it! Whilst not exactly wearing the 'Remoaner' badge with pride, I sense my services will be called upon at some time. I'm ready. Ready to moan that is, the incompetence of politics to make our world a better place currently disgusts me.
Ok, I use 'England' to describe the United Kingdom because, let's face facts, the rest of the UK is seen as utterly irrelevant when it comes to any decision making process. That saddens me. And that's an understatement. It's utterly appalling that the wishes of millions of people living both within and outside the tiny geographic area, England, and Parliament, are ignored.
So much for 'us' being the cradle of democracy. That's all gone now, being replaced by, if not a dictatorship, then something very, very close to it. It's more subtle than most, especially the recent Turkish crackdowns, but it's nevertheless deeply troubling me.
Yesterday the British Prime Minister stated that our negotiating position, the great plan, the very best our nation can come up with, amounts to this:
We don't want the financial burden of being a member of Europe, nor do we want any of the benefits; we're not going to be a part of the Single Market nor the Customs Union. We are instead going to find new markets elsewhere using products and services that our great nation will invent, stuff that cannot be done better or cheaper anywhere in the world and shipped to us whilst still undercutting our best rates.\* We're going to eschew the benefits of shared human rights and business standards, fiscal systems, support structures across all parts of life. No, instead we're going it alone.
I…
I'm not over-simplifying by much, it really is that stark. It's saying to Europeans that they're beneath us, not worthy of continued support or cooperation. Yes, of course we're entitled to play hardball for the best interests of all of us Brits, but I'm sensing the juggernaut rolling towards a humiliating pyhrric victory here. Legacies. Membership of Europe, though imperfect for us, has to be better than the idiotic alternative offered without debate to the British people. Reform usually comes from within rather than without.
And our main English opposition party, Labour, just aren't fighting this. 'Democracy' again, see. Mind you, a party so splintered, fractured, simply cannot mount an effective opposition. Only the Liberal Democrats seem to have a clue how grave this situation really is; a credit to them, to us.
Some might say it's us, recognising our lofty position in the world, the world's fifth-biggest economy, premier financial services centre for an entire economic region, playing hardball.
Lofty. Yeah. We can't even ensure there are enough staff to efficient run our hospitals when winter pressures, something entirely predictable, occur. And when the people quite rightly complain, we hide, we lie, we quote heavily-obfuscated statistics from partisan-friendly sources. Lofty, world-leading…
In terms simple-enough that our Prime Minister can understand, here's how it should have gone:
We want all the benefits of cooperation with Europe but without the worst of the attendant costs or restrictions. Let's chat Europe, what can you do for us?
Negotiation rather than dictating terms. Heck, it doesn't have to be subtle, but come on!!
Is there any way, short of the slow, horrible deaths of all of the people lobbying to achieve, tasked with implementing or tacitly supporting in the name of 'Democracy' this unprecedented, irresponsible, xenophobic, and fiscally-destructive path… is there any way that we can remove these politicians and their supporters and restore sanity, fairness, and some measure of equality to the people of the United Kindgom?
I'm, of course, including the billionaires who run our media and hold the power to mobilise popular opinion to merge with their agendas, whatever the heck they are. The lies we all know about are easy to deal with; anything demonstrably untrue has already been roundly debunked as impossible to implement, but all remain unimportant trivialities by those casual racists ignorant of world finance and our diminishing place in a world whose power is shifting east, those whose only sources of news are run by…
You've got to ask, why would powerful people wish to destabilise an entire region, let alone one sovereign nation? Surely it's not all about money, it's not all about saving (or creating) reputations, legacies? Is it?
It probably is.
If you came for the swearies, I thought better of it; I'm keeping them to myself, sorry.
(time passes…)
(time passed…)
\Ah, fuck it, go on, go on, a late footnote. I've just seen a spot on local news that a major British 'defence' and flying thing company is looking into developing a high-powered laser system to shoot at fast-moving things far far away. And a deflector shield to protect far-distant speedy things that would otherwise be shot at and destroyed by yes, high-powered laser systems. The very *best bit, the spokesman intimated it's a perfectly-reasonable 10 to 20 years in the future. For fuck's sake, more bleeding killing machines‽ Bet, bet that, it, like all the crazy hairbrained schemes to come, dreamed up by companies desperate to get into the news and acquire funding from equally-unscrupulous backers, it, it'll be touted as a fine example of Great British innovation, something to be proud of, a driver towards economic and social greatness. Dyson for instance, Dyson make really good vacuum cleaners, we have one, it's been repaired a couple of times but keeps going on, but it's not a £300 vacuum nor is it a £2000 washing machine nor a hairdryer or fan reinvented to pander to rampant consumerism but I am tempted to mention that I think their business policies such as relocating manufacturing overseas, 'suck'. Ahhh, where was I? Yeah. And then, when we have a world-beating thing, like the jet engine, trains, power generation, our gold reserves, computer chip design and licensing, it'll be sold off to the highest bidder (or announced early so sold at the lowest price in the case of the gold or industries with national penetration) like Every. Fucking. Thing. this once-great nation has ever produced. Fuck off with your 'make Britain great' again you disingenuous twats! But singling out any one company is futile, we need the right environment to prosper. If we had the ability to conquers the world without killing large numbers of indigenous folks, we already would have.
Not proof-read.