Crazy crazy world

Honestly, you couldn't make it up.

If, say 15 years ago, you were told that the UK would elect a Tory government despite more than 50% of the country being pissed off with poverty and misery, and would also vote to come out of the EU based on a mixture of feelings, misplaced patriotism and idiocy and then we might witness the election of a President of the USA who, frankly, is crazier than batshit daiquiris, you'd probably think I was describing a new Armando Iannucci political comedy, because I'd think all of that and I'm a) writing this and b) living it too.

We live in a Post-fact, post-expert, post-logical world where people simply don't give a fuck about facts - especially those who voted for Leave. Experts are just there to scare us. Logic is there to confuse us and Facts are there to be ignored and derided because Feelings and Pride are far more important to the future of everyone.

The problem is we're talking about a majority of people now. You know and I know that it isn't really a true majority, but it's big enough and ugly enough to dictate the country's rhetoric. The sad truth is a large percentage of the 52% voted as a protest to the shit they've been suffering for years without really understanding that the referendum had nothing to do with what has been happening to them and no one made a big enough issue out of the fact that it was the EU that stopped the worst off and most disenfranchised among us from being marginalised even more. If you weighed up the difference between what Westminster and Brussels has given to the people of South Wales you would have thought they would have voted 99% to remain, instead of 61% of them opting for the exit button. What's worse is these people think that our government is going to save them... That's how stupid people are now. 

There are people in Sunderland facing economic oblivion as their largest employer scales back and considers moving elsewhere who actually feel happy and proud that they've helped precipitate their own downfall. I'm amazed Cameron quit; the referendum gave a warped legitimacy to everything him and Gideon were doing; the fact that Treeza May is actually attempting to reverse some of their less humane achievements almost smacks of the same level of crazy.

I loved a short statement made by *Yasmin Ali - "Tonight I went to a Tory Party meeting on Brexit. More specifically, I went to a Tory meeting on what happens after Brexit to bring the nation together again.   So what did I learn? If I distil it down, it is that they have no idea. No idea how to leave the EU. No idea what happens now. All they know is that they are so loved up with their vote that all these tedious questions are nothing but Party pooping nonsense."

Doesn't this just about sum up the feeling of the Brexiteers across the country? The same people who claim quite self-righteously that if they'd lost they wouldn't be making such a big issue about it... Yeah, right and if my aunt had balls she'd be my uncle...

It isn't just us; there's this Rodrigo Duterte fellow in the Philippines who is basically advocating and promoting a criminal-cleansing spree, allowing his citizens to kill anyone they suspect is a drug dealer or taker or friend of either. The weird thing about Duterte is despite caterwauls of horror and disgust from the rest of the world, he's a bloody popular bloodthirsty tyrant among his own people - the right wing/Libertarian supporting Philippinos think 'Digong' is top banana and his popularity has grown as the graves of the criminals have filled up.

Hungary has been trying to out-Farage Nigel by having a referendum that I'm still not entirely sure about. I could check this but that takes the fun out of it, but apparently they've just had a referendum to reject the EU's migrant policy, which kind of doesn't make any sense because as part of the EU they've already caused ructions by putting a bloody great fence around their country and restricting movement (you know, the thing 52% of our population would get massive erections about if offered the chance). The fact that not enough Hungarians actually voted to make it officially recognisable is, hopefully, a testament to nice Hungarians, because, according to my Romanian neighbour, 'Most peoples from Hungaria are shit.'

I'm sure Hillary Clinton isn't all the things she's being accused of, because if she is then the USA has finally succumbed to Total Dumb by having two unbelievably crooked and dislikable people vying for the job of Chief Button Pusher. I know it's more about how much money you can throw at it than politics, but if the USA wants to be treated with the respect it deserves it should really take a good hard long look at itself. Sometimes the idea of the Yellowstone Caldera Extinction Event seems like a damned fine idea.

Oh and while this isn't strictly politics, you have to wonder what kind of world we're now living in if fear, scaremongering and worst case scenarios are touted as news... At least four tabloids in the last week have picked up on the 'Britain is headed for an apocalyptic winter' news story. This incredible prophecy of doom first appeared in the Daily Express - the paper that essentially talks about three things: the weather, Princess Diana and the evil Labour party. The Express actually just rehashed a story written last October, with a slight edit to suggest they were a hair's width from being totally right about saying 2015 would be the worst winter since the opening sequence of The Empire Strikes Back. The truth was last winter was one of the mildest on record. The Express would have been more accurate had they said 'Pretty bog standard winter with some cold days and some mild days, lots of wind and a cold spring', because this is essentially what six of the last 10 years have been. Of the other four we had two colder than average winters and two warmer than average winters and warm springs (both of these years my apricot tree fruited).

The thing is as the Met Office says on a regular basis - anything over a week and you get into chaos theory and frankly you can only base long range forecasts on trends and computer models, therefore the Met Office has said what I said in the paragraph above - 2016/17: an average winter with colder spells and milder ones. Yet this is the sixth time in seven years the Express has told us we're all going to freeze to death.

Why?

What does scaring the shit out of Brexit-voting pensioners achieve? Do governments just say to newspapers that parts of the economy need stimulating so make up some shite that'll get pensioners in Bournemouth bulk buying bog paper from the local Asda, or is that just a crazy conspiracy theory too far?

* Yasmin Alibhai-Brown (left-ish UK Muslim journalist)