For many, Brexit is like being given the truly awful present of a colourful tank top by your favourite auntie who lives on the next street and who you bump into at least three times a week.
It is the gift that keeps on shitting on the mat.
It has been over four months since I wrote a politics blog; a large percentage of that time has been spent writing a massive tome about why leaving the EU might not be such a stupid idea, if the right party is in power when it happens. However, since I last did any work on it, Boris Johnson has become PM (by default); Brexit has gone up several ladders and slid down as many snakes; we've gone from Treeza's 'Brexit means Brexit' and 'Nothing Has Changed' to BJ's 'Dead in a Ditch' and the Libdems abstaining from a vote which, in the event of a shit Brexit deal would stop the NHS being sold off to the highest Yankee bidder (thus proving the LibDems really can't be trusted with anything apart from taking the trash out - themselves).
What I can't understand is why Boris's first 10 attempts at getting a GE are not as important as the current one, which has the media going full scale nuclear on Labour's arse. Unless this is a rouse?
Boris is high in the polls (nearly where Treeza was when she called a GE in 2017) and everyone continues to try to demonise that Corbyn fella, blaming him for everything and then a bit more. BJ's trying every possible way to call a Christmas General Election now that's he's failed to get one any earlier. In many ways he sounds like an opposition leader trying to get the PM to resign and call a vote, and I suppose in a way he is in opposition. The thing is so many Tories (who voted for the Fix Term Parliament Act) are so desperate for a GE they really are sounding desperate; but is that desperation because they're so confident they can win big or is it, for the rather surreal reason, that they think they might lose.
There's a reason for this, which I'd like to explain because it does sound a wee bit crazoo...
There is a very good chance that a General Election will deliver us with another hung parliament; in fact, talk to any pollster and despite their affiliation to the Tories they will honestly say they couldn't put their hands on their hearts and forecast a massive Tory win. If we have a hung parliament then there's going to be a huge chance that there will be too many anti-Brexit MPs for whoever forms a government to achieve Brexit without, at minimum, a second referendum. The constitutional dilemma facing the Brexiteer Tories is another hung parliament pretty much guarantees more Brexit deadlock and can you imagine if we're still trying to sort out extracting the eggs from a baked cake in 2025? Can you imagine what the population will be like?
In a poll held in the last week of 1000 Leavers and 1000 Remainers, 63% of Leavers felt that civil unrest, violence and another MP's death was 'a price worth paying' to get Brexit done. Rather scarily (because it flies in the face of my belief) 53% of Remainers feel the same way... It might not be obvious - apart from the rise in hate crime - but tempers are simmering; hate and vile comments are increasing and it won't be long before something boils over. The division is now so great, I reckon we're on the brink of an existential civil war.
But back to the deadlock... Would Boris really want to be PM in charge of the same parliamentary numbers? Would Boris keep trying with subsequent general elections in the hope that eventually he gets the result he wants? That is a joke, but given this PM and his (lack of) success rate, I wouldn't put it past him. There's also the fact that despite being Mr Popular, he's also not particularly trusted, even by his supporters. He's seen as a slightly Machiavellian character and while that appeals to some people, he needs some victories to make him truly electable and for people to stop scrutinising him and his flippy-floppy nature.
Fortunately, he has the Mainstream Media on his side and they're not going to scrutinise him as much as they scrutinise Labour and Corbyn, but as we learnt from Treeza's botched effort in 2017, the MSM stopped trying to besmirch Corbyn because they realised it doesn't do much but make people wonder why everyone attacks this gentle man, who has an allotment and wants a fairer country for all - yes, they can call him a terrorist sympathiser (it's a shame Mo Mowlam isn't still alive to tell the wankers who keep perpetrating this myth that we wouldn't be where we are in Northern Ireland if Corbyn hadn't been on her team forging the Good Friday Agreement; but why let a fact get in the way of casting aspersions?) or they can call him a socialist or a commie, but people might also start thinking, "Well, we've had the Tories for 10 years, I'm worse off, no one trusts politicians any more, no one knows who to believe - why should I give them another go at screwing up the country they've made a good fist of screwing up already?" Labour won a lot of votes in 2017 on this fact alone; we're three years down the line and the Tories don't exactly cover themselves with glory, do they?
So, would Boris and his ERG buddies really want to be in charge of a parliament that will be as intransigent as it currently is? Or would they maybe think, 'Sod this for a game of soldiers, let's see if Commie Boy and his band of cultural misfits can do any better. If he fucks up we'll win by a landslide and can do all the things we wanted to do but legitimately and hey, we're all still young enough...'
I know this is an unlikely scenario, but Treeza's 16 point lead over Labour disappeared faster than a Boris Johnson prediction and Boris hasn't got that lead. When people start talking about the country's issues rather than Brexit, the Tories have a problem because no one really trusts them, not even their largely intelligent middle class supporters (forget working class Tory voters; they could have their children put up chimneys and they'd still vote Tory, because... [insert utter bullshit here]).
Plus there's the 1945 scenario. At the end of the Second World War, Winston Churchill - a hero of BJ - was walking on water; if there were personal approval ratings in 1945 he was as popular as Jesus and the election was going to deliver a Tory government who would do whatever Tory governments did in the first half of the 20th century, except they got annihilated. People decided they wanted something new to rebuild the country; to build houses, hospitals for the new NHS, more schools, more infrastructure - create jobs so that everybody post-war could contribute to the return of GREAT Britain. This current situation isn't much different than then, or at least that's the way it's being painted.
One last thing for the benefit of the moaners - not the remoaners, but the people fed up with it all, fed up with MPs for spoiling life by dragging Brexit out. I know there's a lot of people who think we should just leave; tell the EU to fuck off and go it alone. Even if that were possible Northern Ireland is part of the UK. I know that English Brextremists couldn't give a shit about the Irish, but there are a lot of people who do, not least some of the people we hope to make free trade deals with. If Northern Ireland is even in the same universe as a return to the troubles then we really would be fucked. You can dismiss this as project fear or say I don't know what I'm talking about, but pretty much all of the problems now to do with Brexit is how to extricate Northern Ireland from the Irish Republic without causing a civil war and how to do it to keep 10 fruit and nutcase DUP MPs happy. This is akin to giving a chimp 10 Rubics cubes and telling him in Cantonese that he has 10 seconds to solve them all - pretty much impossible without some shit being thrown first and a lot of anger.
This, along with the actual fear of economic oblivion, are the two reasons why so many MPs have thwarted Brexit. We elect them to serve us, yes. But we also elect them to do the best for us; to make the decisions that are not going to cause us great hardship and that's all of us, including the people who voted remain and those that through whatever reason didn't vote at all. I know that Leave voters hate the fact that they didn't win by 99% to 1% but dem's da facts; the referendum 'victory' wasn't a win-all-and-exterminate-the-losers kind of deal; concessions have to be made to try and make as many people reasonably happy as possible and to make sure that even the most rabid of Brexiteers don't starve to death, die of a lack of medicines or most likely get blown up by an Irish Republican bomb while Christmas shopping in Sunderland.
Most people say, 'I don't do politics' but in 2019 most everyone does, even if it's to call MPs 'wankers' or wonder when it's all going to stop. What is even more crazier than my belief the Tories might actually want to lose the election is that all those people who convinced Leavers that the sunlit uplands of Britain would be awash with diamond encrusted Unicorns dispensing money and free sex to everyone are now the same people claiming they never said it would be better and people actually voted to be worse off and culturally bereft. If Aaron Sorkin introduced this kind of story when he was doing The West Wing he probably would have been told the show was trying to stay as realistic as physically possible.
Whatever happens, just remember most of the MPs have been pissing you off to ultimately save you. You might not see it and you certainly don't appreciate it, but at some point in the future you might wish they'd succeeded.
We probably need to leave to shut down the right wing; to stop all this talk and focus on how to fix the country. That depends on who is in charge when it happens. If you work for someone be very careful about who you vote for when that day comes, because one of the parties actively talks about how citizens rights prevents the country from competing with Tiger economies; that same party would be happy to see sickness, maternity and holiday pay outlawed, because it would mean employers could get rid of whoever they didn't like and replace them with people equally as expendable. That same party thinks the NHS is a drain on resources and would like swathes of it privatised and that same party wants to keep reducing public spending while giving the richest 10% more money (which, if you are a Tory voter can you explain to me how that benefits anyone apart from the already very rich?)
If you want a future of uncertainty, fear and no security, you know which party is already offering you this. It's led by a buffoon and his army of posh wankers who wouldn't piss on the average Brit unless there was a fat cash bonus involved.
You don't do politics? Maybe you should. It's as important to humans as breathing; it affects every aspect of your life whether you want to believe it or not and 99% of the time it's instigated by ourselves and has nothing to do with 'unelected' (they are) 'bureaucrats' (aren't all politicians) in Brussels. People need to understand how it works otherwise they will continue to rage at all the wrong things.
The Politics of ...
Showing posts with label #Britain First. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #Britain First. Show all posts
Friday, 25 October 2019
Sunday, 24 February 2019
Is it Racist?
I have some questions to ask?
Why is it acceptable for British politicians to criticise decisions or actions made by the USA?
Why is it acceptable for British politicians to criticise decisions or actions made by France or Germany?
Why is it acceptable for British politicians to criticise decisions or actions made by North Korea?
Why is it acceptable for British politicians to criticise decisions or actions made by China or Russia?
Why is it acceptable for British politicians to criticise decisions or actions made by the EU in general?
But why is it not acceptable for anyone to criticise decisions or actions made by the Israeli government?
Why does the media get behind outside influences attempting to overthrow an elected government in Venezuela, but ignores Palestine?
Why is it that you can criticise any race or culture in the world but one is exempt?
Why is antisemitism not just called racism? Why does it deserve a special word?
Actually, I can answer all of those questions. The IHRA - International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance - is a body who have created a 'working definition' of antisemitism. It is recognised by the UN and most countries appear to have adopted it in some form or another. It essentially defines antisemitism as any criticism of anything that is related to Jews is a criticism of the Jewish people. So if you think Benjamin Netanyahu and his band of Likud politicians are unjust in their treatment of other dwellers in a similar area to where most of them live and you voice this opinion contrary, you are a racist.
I find that disturbing.
What I find more disturbing is that the Labour party is systematically accused on an almost daily basis of being antisemitic, yet I've only ever heard one example of their antisemitism in almost two years and that was a tweet from a radical leftie criticising Likud over it's treatment of Palestinians. He's been expelled. For tweeting racist antisemitic comments...
I'm sorry, but, what the actual fuck?
My paternal grandmother was Jewish, albeit lapsed and ostracised because she married a gentile, but it's in my blood somewhere and I wouldn't give a holocaust denier the time of day; I'd shout down anyone who would actually be racist - calling a Jew a kike or a Yid. I wouldn't call myself antisemitic (I even worry about criticising Daniel Levy - the Spurs Chairman - for fear of having some nutter accuse me of being a racist. He's a weird looking bald guy but I don't think that has anything to do with his religion...) but by virtue of believing Likud - the current Israeli government - is a paramilitary organisation intent on some kind of radical eradication of Palestinians, I am, by definition, antisemitic. If the BBC reported this they would not report the content just that I'm an anti-Jewish racist who probably worships the alter of Jeremy Corbyn...
You know that I can call Sadiq Khan, the Muslim mayor of London and that would be 100% acceptable, but I can't include the definition 'Jewish' without being accused of racism; like saying 'Jewish' is saying 'dog shit eater' or 'child abuser'. To include one specific race in a definition is worse than any other derogatory description or labelling? If it's to do with the number of Jews who died in the Holocaust, what about the number of Muslims or Hindus who died in the Partition of India? That was done in peace time, not in a war. If I said 'Jewish film producer and serial sex pest Harvey Weinstein' I'd probably get pilloried for suggesting his Jewishness had everything to do with it. But if I mention that the London mayor is a Muslim then everyone else can jump on the bandwagon; including Donald 'Man-Baby' Trump.
How does that work then?
The thing is I firmly believe if the general public who have had antisemitism rammed down their throats for years saw some of the never-mentioned exampled antisemitism most would seriously wonder what the fuss is about. The problem to that is we get no balanced coverage of what is happening in Israel and especially what is happening in Gaza and other Palestinian enclaves. Whatever the politics, the rest of the world is sitting by and silently witnessing Israel obliterate a nation, without a hint of irony. Yes, the Palestinians are 'terrorists', but that's our fault and the Israelis for radicalising them through oppression (but, I can't say that because it's antisemitic). Like it was our fault that there is a rift that won't be healed on the Indian subcontinent or that much of former British Empire-controlled Africa is falling apart.
The media do not tell us what happens in Israel; we don't really know what's going on; the place is more like Soviet Russia for visiting journalists or reporters (Simon Reeve proved that recently on TV). Israel is outwardly a very welcoming country practising an aggressive isolationist politics to its neighbours - who pretty much don't and have never wanted them there.
The Labour party or a big part of it is against backing Israel [specifically Likud] in this conflict; therefore they are antisemitic. Labour party members asked questions of certain MPs of Jewish origin why they supported Likud. They were branded antisemitic? Really; this is how it started: a member for Wavertree asked how Luciana Berger could be a Labour MP and yet support the fiercely right wing Likud party and it blew up out of all proportions, with Berger defending her position by quoting the IHRA. Eventually, she received proper antisemitic abuse, but whether these were from genuine Labour members or from newly-created social media accounts has never fully been explored by our media - because they don't want to report the truth when the lie is so much better.
So, it started with almost innocent questions and exploded into something ridiculous. Berger, Margaret Hodge and a few others used this as a stick to beat the leader they didn't want and the right wing media - whether controlled by Jews or not - saw a way of undermining the Labour party, while simultaneously pushing an Islamophobic agenda and supporting the Tories.
But... You say... How come Labour MPs or Jeremy Corbyn doesn't go on telly and tell people this truth about the 'racist Labour party'? Don't you understand yet? You cannot discuss Likud or Israeli politics; it's not allowed. Apparently, it's called being antisemitic. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy, you can't discuss the elephant in the room in case the elephant gets offended that you might be talking about it, even if it's to comment on the colour of its painted toenails or how it produces nice oranges.
If you can't talk about or address the elephant in the room about why you can't talk about it you can't debate it. Accusations of antisemitism are 97% this. If you mention the Israel government or Likud you are a racist. I can't say it enough, because if the 'press' won't explain it to people who don't care then it's up to me and people I know to do it; without fear of being called a racist (because I will be, especially if people read this and can use it as another stick to beat the Labour party... Except, I'm not a member any more).
No one has ever told me why Jews have to have their own word for racism, unless it's not really racism as we understand it. Zionism is also a word that just to say it has you teetering on the edge of antisemitism. Zionist doctrine is followed by Likud; Zionism is not allowed to be criticised because it is Jewish. That's like the Tories passing a law saying any criticism of their party is an act of racism - a hate crime. Let that sink in and if you think I'm wrong, please tell me why.
Why is it acceptable for British politicians to criticise decisions or actions made by the USA?
Why is it acceptable for British politicians to criticise decisions or actions made by France or Germany?
Why is it acceptable for British politicians to criticise decisions or actions made by North Korea?
Why is it acceptable for British politicians to criticise decisions or actions made by China or Russia?
Why is it acceptable for British politicians to criticise decisions or actions made by the EU in general?
But why is it not acceptable for anyone to criticise decisions or actions made by the Israeli government?
Why does the media get behind outside influences attempting to overthrow an elected government in Venezuela, but ignores Palestine?
Why is it that you can criticise any race or culture in the world but one is exempt?
Why is antisemitism not just called racism? Why does it deserve a special word?
Actually, I can answer all of those questions. The IHRA - International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance - is a body who have created a 'working definition' of antisemitism. It is recognised by the UN and most countries appear to have adopted it in some form or another. It essentially defines antisemitism as any criticism of anything that is related to Jews is a criticism of the Jewish people. So if you think Benjamin Netanyahu and his band of Likud politicians are unjust in their treatment of other dwellers in a similar area to where most of them live and you voice this opinion contrary, you are a racist.
I find that disturbing.
What I find more disturbing is that the Labour party is systematically accused on an almost daily basis of being antisemitic, yet I've only ever heard one example of their antisemitism in almost two years and that was a tweet from a radical leftie criticising Likud over it's treatment of Palestinians. He's been expelled. For tweeting racist antisemitic comments...
I'm sorry, but, what the actual fuck?
My paternal grandmother was Jewish, albeit lapsed and ostracised because she married a gentile, but it's in my blood somewhere and I wouldn't give a holocaust denier the time of day; I'd shout down anyone who would actually be racist - calling a Jew a kike or a Yid. I wouldn't call myself antisemitic (I even worry about criticising Daniel Levy - the Spurs Chairman - for fear of having some nutter accuse me of being a racist. He's a weird looking bald guy but I don't think that has anything to do with his religion...) but by virtue of believing Likud - the current Israeli government - is a paramilitary organisation intent on some kind of radical eradication of Palestinians, I am, by definition, antisemitic. If the BBC reported this they would not report the content just that I'm an anti-Jewish racist who probably worships the alter of Jeremy Corbyn...
You know that I can call Sadiq Khan, the Muslim mayor of London and that would be 100% acceptable, but I can't include the definition 'Jewish' without being accused of racism; like saying 'Jewish' is saying 'dog shit eater' or 'child abuser'. To include one specific race in a definition is worse than any other derogatory description or labelling? If it's to do with the number of Jews who died in the Holocaust, what about the number of Muslims or Hindus who died in the Partition of India? That was done in peace time, not in a war. If I said 'Jewish film producer and serial sex pest Harvey Weinstein' I'd probably get pilloried for suggesting his Jewishness had everything to do with it. But if I mention that the London mayor is a Muslim then everyone else can jump on the bandwagon; including Donald 'Man-Baby' Trump.
How does that work then?
The thing is I firmly believe if the general public who have had antisemitism rammed down their throats for years saw some of the never-mentioned exampled antisemitism most would seriously wonder what the fuss is about. The problem to that is we get no balanced coverage of what is happening in Israel and especially what is happening in Gaza and other Palestinian enclaves. Whatever the politics, the rest of the world is sitting by and silently witnessing Israel obliterate a nation, without a hint of irony. Yes, the Palestinians are 'terrorists', but that's our fault and the Israelis for radicalising them through oppression (but, I can't say that because it's antisemitic). Like it was our fault that there is a rift that won't be healed on the Indian subcontinent or that much of former British Empire-controlled Africa is falling apart.
The media do not tell us what happens in Israel; we don't really know what's going on; the place is more like Soviet Russia for visiting journalists or reporters (Simon Reeve proved that recently on TV). Israel is outwardly a very welcoming country practising an aggressive isolationist politics to its neighbours - who pretty much don't and have never wanted them there.
The Labour party or a big part of it is against backing Israel [specifically Likud] in this conflict; therefore they are antisemitic. Labour party members asked questions of certain MPs of Jewish origin why they supported Likud. They were branded antisemitic? Really; this is how it started: a member for Wavertree asked how Luciana Berger could be a Labour MP and yet support the fiercely right wing Likud party and it blew up out of all proportions, with Berger defending her position by quoting the IHRA. Eventually, she received proper antisemitic abuse, but whether these were from genuine Labour members or from newly-created social media accounts has never fully been explored by our media - because they don't want to report the truth when the lie is so much better.
So, it started with almost innocent questions and exploded into something ridiculous. Berger, Margaret Hodge and a few others used this as a stick to beat the leader they didn't want and the right wing media - whether controlled by Jews or not - saw a way of undermining the Labour party, while simultaneously pushing an Islamophobic agenda and supporting the Tories.
But... You say... How come Labour MPs or Jeremy Corbyn doesn't go on telly and tell people this truth about the 'racist Labour party'? Don't you understand yet? You cannot discuss Likud or Israeli politics; it's not allowed. Apparently, it's called being antisemitic. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy, you can't discuss the elephant in the room in case the elephant gets offended that you might be talking about it, even if it's to comment on the colour of its painted toenails or how it produces nice oranges.
If you can't talk about or address the elephant in the room about why you can't talk about it you can't debate it. Accusations of antisemitism are 97% this. If you mention the Israel government or Likud you are a racist. I can't say it enough, because if the 'press' won't explain it to people who don't care then it's up to me and people I know to do it; without fear of being called a racist (because I will be, especially if people read this and can use it as another stick to beat the Labour party... Except, I'm not a member any more).
No one has ever told me why Jews have to have their own word for racism, unless it's not really racism as we understand it. Zionism is also a word that just to say it has you teetering on the edge of antisemitism. Zionist doctrine is followed by Likud; Zionism is not allowed to be criticised because it is Jewish. That's like the Tories passing a law saying any criticism of their party is an act of racism - a hate crime. Let that sink in and if you think I'm wrong, please tell me why.
Sunday, 2 December 2018
A Racially-Motivated Message
I was in Ayr earlier this year. Ayr's like Scotland's Bournemouth and was, without doubt, the most cosmopolitan place I've been to since I've lived in Scotland. While I was sitting in the sunshine, outside Poundland, I saw a group of young women - schoolgirls on holiday - all wearing hijabs. It was the first proper Muslims I'd seen in over a year. No one up here seems bothered by it and the fact all the girls sounded Scottish, you wouldn't have known any difference if you'd had your eyes closed.
Interestingly, about twenty minutes earlier, when we were wondering up to Primark, we saw two nuns - not your usual soberly dressed women, looking like nurses with headgear, but two full-on penguins. More extravagant and with just as little flesh on display. Yes, they're women of God. The girls in hijabs were probably devout followers of Allah. We have preconceptions of Muslims. Boris Johnson displayed that in August with a column about not allowing Muslims to wear what they want to wear.
I'd never defend Johnson. The man is a conniving and devious politician and disguises his ambition with buffoonery. However, reading his column you had to acknowledge that his 'offensive' remarks have probably been made worse by the solitary fact he wrote them. There was elements of casual racism, but largely he was trying to make a jokey point about a sensitive issue.
He failed. But... did he really? He's become more of a champion to the new far-right than he was before that column (and his slagging off of his former boss) and, at the time, we had people uttering the words 'freedom of speech' and so they should, because it is only right. Like it is only right that any speech can be challenged, in a constructive way, using the same freedom of speech rules. Racists and bigots need to be challenged, rather than banning them. That just inflames and makes a mockery of the 'freedom of speech' ideal.
What Johnson has probably achieved is help drive the wedge between xenophobic/racist Brits and normal people deeper. I mean, when you read about Pakistani rape gangs in Yorkshire and ISIS terrorists and radicalised British wannabe martyrs, how can those who will never be happy until all non-British people are gone ever be appeased? How are Muslims ever going to feel accepted when in some places they must have begun to feel like Negroes in 1950s USA? For every newspaper or twat US President claiming we have Muslim enclaves in our cities, we have genuinely scared people avoiding the streets for fear of reprisals because of their culture.
Now we discover that the UK has an incredible racial bias that extends to pretty much anyone who isn't white, heterosexual and, above all, English. Brexit has allowed English people to believe they're on the verge of a new Empire, one that finally kicks Johnny Foreigner squarely in the testes. History suggests when you start to alienate certain groups of people it isn't long before your cohorts are alienating others. We live in a 'Kingdom' that demonises pretty much anyone who isn't British and employed; but as The Guardian newspaper has found, even if you are British and employed, it depends on how 'British' you are.
A percentage of Brits are of Asian, African or West Indian origins. In fact, a number are also of European heritage, but are not as well accepted because they have a foreign - too foreign - sounding name. Farage is okay, but Davidovich or Simkiewicz isn't.
Let's be clear about something; I had a Chinese landlord once who thought Indians were 'dirty bastards'. I knew a man from Pakistan who thought Arabs (Iranians specifically) were allowing the world to destroy itself because they want to rule everything. I've met a man from England who believes in Brexit so hard that any dissenting voice is a liar and I've seen evidence (whether real or Russian bot) on social media platforms of such vile callousness towards people 'not like us' that it's added a new dimension to the "I'm all right, Jack" mentality. An attitude I'd always attached to dyed-in-the-wool Tory voters who believed that homelessness was a left wing conspiracy and that anyone on welfare/benefits was a scrounger or out to make something from the state. The human race is inherently xenophobic - I'd call them racist, but it's simply a fear and loathing of something that you can't relate to.
Michael Gove (or Pob as we like to think of him) pretty much declared there would be violence and national unrest if his Brexit doesn't happen and while that is just the Hard Brexit supporters' own Project Fear, in this world of intolerance he's probably not a hundred miles from the truth. But hey, in the USA BAME citizens feel like their rights and position has been eroded more in the last 2 years than it has since Rosa Parks told a white boy to find his own seat on the bus.
I look at BAME Tory politicians and wonder how long before they start to feel like a token gesture to tempt the delusional blacks and Asians to continue voting for them - 'You're all right, it's those black and Asian kids the Nazigraph is talking about' will be a variation of the excuse given to them.
Living in this part of Scotland you see a lot of casual racism, which you oddly don't see when someone is getting a takeaway from the Chinese or Indian restaurants, and, to be fair, I've not heard any overt nastiness from anyone up here towards anyone culturally different, but that's not to say it doesn't exist. There are enough Scottish Tories with bizarre ideas about a lot of things and there's considerably more Brextremists who've moved up from England, despite the fact that Scotland voted by a big margin to stay in the EU (and has been largely ignored by England since). These are the kind of people who'll always look for someone else to blame and once the country no longer has any Europeans to blame, they'll pick on the black, brown and yellow foreigners, while beginning to cast an eye of suspicion at Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders - because, you know, they might look and sound like us but they've probably stolen jobs, hospital beds and the last place on the twice weekly bus service which was hacked and slashed by the Tory controlled council and nothing to do with a 'foreign' tax payer and contributor...
What we need to realise is white people can't possibly understand what it's like to be black or Asian; the same as they can't really understand what it's like vice versa. Heterosexual people might think they can relate to homosexuals, but we can't really understand what is going on inside their 'souls' even if we can put our minds into that space. I'd like to think rational people - the kind of people who would rather help than hurt - really struggle to understand how a fellow human being can be purposefully vile and nasty to someone less fortunate (and equally, I can almost understand how 30-year-old neo-fascists can believe the Holocaust was just some Jewish propaganda and couldn't have possibly really happened... that is until the first people start being shipped into camps, like Muslims in parts of China).
The thing is it's pretty much the difference between someone with left politics and someone with right.
History is there to be learnt from and if we can't learn from it then we don't really have any right to be here. Without humans there would still be many similar traits in the animals; war, love, compassion, hatred, fear ... that's because, we're still just animals too. Devious, nasty and cruel ones, but we still shit, like having sex and beating the fuck out of people who are weaker or not like us. Not everyone is and many people who vote Tory, or feel their have little or no prejudices, probably aren't. The thing is it's easier to hate than it is to embrace and hold and until a large percentage - the majority of the population of the world - understand and practice this, just about everyone is screwed.
What part of the Bible or the Quran which tells us to 'love our neighbour' also tells us to kill them if they don't agree 100% with us? Because, that's all I've really got. I don't have a solution (apart from the war I've been forecasting for the last three years). When 50% of the planet suffers from different degrees of cognitive dissonance, you ain't got a hope of living in a peaceful non-prejudice world; so you turn your back and let the worst parts of human nature run rampant among the people supposedly running the world. And because you know you're just one person, you know you can't do much about it and if you think like that it's already too late...
Interestingly, about twenty minutes earlier, when we were wondering up to Primark, we saw two nuns - not your usual soberly dressed women, looking like nurses with headgear, but two full-on penguins. More extravagant and with just as little flesh on display. Yes, they're women of God. The girls in hijabs were probably devout followers of Allah. We have preconceptions of Muslims. Boris Johnson displayed that in August with a column about not allowing Muslims to wear what they want to wear.
I'd never defend Johnson. The man is a conniving and devious politician and disguises his ambition with buffoonery. However, reading his column you had to acknowledge that his 'offensive' remarks have probably been made worse by the solitary fact he wrote them. There was elements of casual racism, but largely he was trying to make a jokey point about a sensitive issue.
He failed. But... did he really? He's become more of a champion to the new far-right than he was before that column (and his slagging off of his former boss) and, at the time, we had people uttering the words 'freedom of speech' and so they should, because it is only right. Like it is only right that any speech can be challenged, in a constructive way, using the same freedom of speech rules. Racists and bigots need to be challenged, rather than banning them. That just inflames and makes a mockery of the 'freedom of speech' ideal.
What Johnson has probably achieved is help drive the wedge between xenophobic/racist Brits and normal people deeper. I mean, when you read about Pakistani rape gangs in Yorkshire and ISIS terrorists and radicalised British wannabe martyrs, how can those who will never be happy until all non-British people are gone ever be appeased? How are Muslims ever going to feel accepted when in some places they must have begun to feel like Negroes in 1950s USA? For every newspaper or twat US President claiming we have Muslim enclaves in our cities, we have genuinely scared people avoiding the streets for fear of reprisals because of their culture.
Now we discover that the UK has an incredible racial bias that extends to pretty much anyone who isn't white, heterosexual and, above all, English. Brexit has allowed English people to believe they're on the verge of a new Empire, one that finally kicks Johnny Foreigner squarely in the testes. History suggests when you start to alienate certain groups of people it isn't long before your cohorts are alienating others. We live in a 'Kingdom' that demonises pretty much anyone who isn't British and employed; but as The Guardian newspaper has found, even if you are British and employed, it depends on how 'British' you are.
A percentage of Brits are of Asian, African or West Indian origins. In fact, a number are also of European heritage, but are not as well accepted because they have a foreign - too foreign - sounding name. Farage is okay, but Davidovich or Simkiewicz isn't.
Let's be clear about something; I had a Chinese landlord once who thought Indians were 'dirty bastards'. I knew a man from Pakistan who thought Arabs (Iranians specifically) were allowing the world to destroy itself because they want to rule everything. I've met a man from England who believes in Brexit so hard that any dissenting voice is a liar and I've seen evidence (whether real or Russian bot) on social media platforms of such vile callousness towards people 'not like us' that it's added a new dimension to the "I'm all right, Jack" mentality. An attitude I'd always attached to dyed-in-the-wool Tory voters who believed that homelessness was a left wing conspiracy and that anyone on welfare/benefits was a scrounger or out to make something from the state. The human race is inherently xenophobic - I'd call them racist, but it's simply a fear and loathing of something that you can't relate to.
Michael Gove (or Pob as we like to think of him) pretty much declared there would be violence and national unrest if his Brexit doesn't happen and while that is just the Hard Brexit supporters' own Project Fear, in this world of intolerance he's probably not a hundred miles from the truth. But hey, in the USA BAME citizens feel like their rights and position has been eroded more in the last 2 years than it has since Rosa Parks told a white boy to find his own seat on the bus.
I look at BAME Tory politicians and wonder how long before they start to feel like a token gesture to tempt the delusional blacks and Asians to continue voting for them - 'You're all right, it's those black and Asian kids the Nazigraph is talking about' will be a variation of the excuse given to them.
Living in this part of Scotland you see a lot of casual racism, which you oddly don't see when someone is getting a takeaway from the Chinese or Indian restaurants, and, to be fair, I've not heard any overt nastiness from anyone up here towards anyone culturally different, but that's not to say it doesn't exist. There are enough Scottish Tories with bizarre ideas about a lot of things and there's considerably more Brextremists who've moved up from England, despite the fact that Scotland voted by a big margin to stay in the EU (and has been largely ignored by England since). These are the kind of people who'll always look for someone else to blame and once the country no longer has any Europeans to blame, they'll pick on the black, brown and yellow foreigners, while beginning to cast an eye of suspicion at Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders - because, you know, they might look and sound like us but they've probably stolen jobs, hospital beds and the last place on the twice weekly bus service which was hacked and slashed by the Tory controlled council and nothing to do with a 'foreign' tax payer and contributor...
What we need to realise is white people can't possibly understand what it's like to be black or Asian; the same as they can't really understand what it's like vice versa. Heterosexual people might think they can relate to homosexuals, but we can't really understand what is going on inside their 'souls' even if we can put our minds into that space. I'd like to think rational people - the kind of people who would rather help than hurt - really struggle to understand how a fellow human being can be purposefully vile and nasty to someone less fortunate (and equally, I can almost understand how 30-year-old neo-fascists can believe the Holocaust was just some Jewish propaganda and couldn't have possibly really happened... that is until the first people start being shipped into camps, like Muslims in parts of China).
The thing is it's pretty much the difference between someone with left politics and someone with right.
History is there to be learnt from and if we can't learn from it then we don't really have any right to be here. Without humans there would still be many similar traits in the animals; war, love, compassion, hatred, fear ... that's because, we're still just animals too. Devious, nasty and cruel ones, but we still shit, like having sex and beating the fuck out of people who are weaker or not like us. Not everyone is and many people who vote Tory, or feel their have little or no prejudices, probably aren't. The thing is it's easier to hate than it is to embrace and hold and until a large percentage - the majority of the population of the world - understand and practice this, just about everyone is screwed.
What part of the Bible or the Quran which tells us to 'love our neighbour' also tells us to kill them if they don't agree 100% with us? Because, that's all I've really got. I don't have a solution (apart from the war I've been forecasting for the last three years). When 50% of the planet suffers from different degrees of cognitive dissonance, you ain't got a hope of living in a peaceful non-prejudice world; so you turn your back and let the worst parts of human nature run rampant among the people supposedly running the world. And because you know you're just one person, you know you can't do much about it and if you think like that it's already too late...
Friday, 21 October 2016
The Matrix is Broken... The Matrix is Broken...
Recently I watched one of my right on and new age friends rage with unrestrained passion about something that he didn't agree with at an event he was involved in. It made me want to use his own words and assure him that 'everything happens for a reason and perhaps he needs to embrace this set back and look for the positives in it', but I couldn't help think that it would be seen as antagonistic rather than anything else - and to be fair there would have been an element of antagonism in there, but only after a fashion.
The thing is it made me realise that even the most non-judgemental of us are exactly the opposite of what we hold as a solid human trait. Prejudices appear all the time and it isn't just the ignorant or the rich who do this. I recently made friends with a man who seemed extremely decent; his job, wife and lifestyle suggested the last thing he is was an ignorant xenophobe with obvious BNP/EDL leanings - even seemingly intelligent people can exhibit levels of fuckwittedness that beggar belief.
I've met wilfully ignorant people in the last few weeks; people who smoke while pregnant; people who work zero hour contracts and have the urine extracted from them by their employers; people who still believe the NHS will be £350billion a second better off now we're out of the EU, because they haven't taken any notice of a newspaper or a news program since the day after the referendum. I've met a school teacher who voted Leave, who told me she did it because she wanted her country back, that the country was getting to the point where there wasn't enough room and it would be nice to have the majority of kids in her class where English was the first language... A teacher... You have to start wondering about whether humanity has just subconsciously developed an absurdist self-destruct gene?
Having a wife who earns a little too much money has meant that my periods of unemployment in recent years has garnered me the absolute minimum I should be entitled to, yet someone I've known best part of my life and hasn't been remotely interested in getting a job - since 1992 - gets so much support, even now - in the wake of IDS and his purges - that it actually made me feel anger towards him (my friend that is, I've felt anger towards IDS since about 1999). After years of contributing to the economy and paying my NI, I was entitled to essentially fuck all. Had I been 'a feckless workshy wanker' I could have got just about everything I needed - like free prescriptions, bus fares or other frivolous things people with money take for granted. The sad thing is I'm not a particularly nice person but I felt slightly ashamed of myself for feeling angry towards my friend's 'life choice'.
It also should be noted that my friend with the unemployment fixation is also damaged goods and probably now falls into the category of 'people never likely to be able to do a real job again, ever'. Whether he arrived at this situation through nurture or nature isn't for debate (I know the answer to this specific question, though), but one thing is clear 50% of the blame, at least, has to be placed at the feet of the governments of the late 1970s and early 1980s, because they didn't do enough to change attitudes, or invest enough in education (because what sense is there investing in our future?) and it only got worse in the 80s and 90s.
After spending over 15 years working with the disenfranchised and becoming a good socialist as a result, I know the difference between the disenfranchised and those who play the system because they don't want to work or contribute - the people who think it is okay to live off of everyone else without contributing anything other than more actual cost to the taxpayer. Yes, you can argue, it isn't their fault they're in whatever predicament they're in - more the fault of successive governments doing little or nothing for the most isolated and alienated in already poor communities, while simultaneously finding something unrelated to blame - but I'm also not that left wing where I won't call a feckless wanker a feckless wanker.
Take the argument that migrant workers put too much strain on our services. The blame for this appeared to be placed firmly at the feet of the EU despite the fact that 62% of our migrants come from outside of the EU and never once, during the EU debate, did any party - Corbyn's included - point out that the strains on hospitals, schools and public services was actually the fault of the government for not investing in expanding it all when the need grew. I mean it doesn't take an idiot to realise that even if they hooked private business into the building of these things, they would all have been patronised, would have employed more people and would have injected money back into the economy. That isn't socialism, that's common sense that could have been exploited however the Tories wanted and still been beneficial to the majority of people.
I have suggested before that I'm beginning to think that politicians are mainly all idiots, or have finally decided that we're all idiots, because all politics seems to be choreographed now; even Corbyn really appears to be quite toothless because no one - apart from the lovely Mairhi Black (who is 21) - seems to asking the pertinent questions or making any salient points. Take the decision to overrule the No Fracking decision by Lancashire Council - whatever way you feel about fracking, when you consider the overall costs compared to, say, putting up an offshore wind farm, you have to wonder if our politicians are also brainless psychopaths too. Am I the only person who questions his (or her) own sanity at comments, actions or interviews given by politicians. I mean, is Priti Patel even real?
I recently spent a few hours talking to the owner of a small private hire company and he told me some astounding facts about taxis. 54% of all taxis booked are by girls/women aged between 14 and 40. But even more incredible is that upwards of 60% of all taxis are booked/hailed by people on benefits. As someone who has, at times, viewed £10 as an important third of my shopping bill, to be in a position where walking or catching a bus doesn't even feature in someone's thinking, despite having nothing makes me begin to wonder if the Tories are right and that some people exploit the system. Or perhaps kids in poor schools need more education as to how to prioritise their money better when they leave education and go straight into a career on welfare. Ironically, we've allowed TV, the media and commercialism/advertising to brainwash the young into thinking that having an iPhone is more important than eating healthily and we've seen, throughout the last few decades, common sense levels in most individuals drop to the point where (almost) statistically more than half of the people here are twats. We've all been persuaded to spend all of the money we haven't got on cheap shit that won't last while simultaneously blaming Johnny Foreigner for stealing someone else's job...
The unswerving power of commercialism has placed many of our citizens in a position where they view essentials as trivial and trivia as essential and urban ghettos and isolated areas of deprivation are as a result of no government ever addressing - in my life time, at least - the problems in any long-term way. Mix commercialism with a bit of prejudice and you create a dependent with the belief of entitlement. That's the fault of governments since the 1960s who didn't acknowledge prevention was better, and cost less, than cure. Governments never really see or understand the problem until it is too late to fix. And then you need to acknowledge that to fix just some of society's ills - the ones who wield power fancy supporting - it would cost far more money than is available and we all know money is an exclusive privilege of the rich.
***
Over the last few days we've seen the right-leaning media ratchet up the hate and racism against migrants, or in fact anyone not from the UK. I fail to see what the ultimate aim is, unless Murdock, Beaverbrook and the rest actually want the UK to become a xenophobic, isolated island with no trade deals and vilified by the rest of the world.
What good are these 'rags' doing? What possible positive outcomes can we hope to get when facts are ignored in favour of jingoistic hate and bile? With at least 52% of the country's voters prone to believe sensationalist bullshit and lies you have to start wondering if there's a crazy agenda being set out by the media. Because it has to be crazy - Jeremy Corbyn is a fair politician but is treated and talked about like he was a former Nazi death camp guard, while the Tories and their supporters get nastier and the only places these are covered are in blogs, news sites (not affiliated to money) and Twitter - thus having little or no credence to the 52% because it wasn't seen on the BBC or read in the Sun or Daily Mail.
We're in the depths of a self-fulfilling prophecy; I'm not sure what the prophecy is, just that it appears to involve hate and ultimately violence.
The thing is it made me realise that even the most non-judgemental of us are exactly the opposite of what we hold as a solid human trait. Prejudices appear all the time and it isn't just the ignorant or the rich who do this. I recently made friends with a man who seemed extremely decent; his job, wife and lifestyle suggested the last thing he is was an ignorant xenophobe with obvious BNP/EDL leanings - even seemingly intelligent people can exhibit levels of fuckwittedness that beggar belief.
I've met wilfully ignorant people in the last few weeks; people who smoke while pregnant; people who work zero hour contracts and have the urine extracted from them by their employers; people who still believe the NHS will be £350billion a second better off now we're out of the EU, because they haven't taken any notice of a newspaper or a news program since the day after the referendum. I've met a school teacher who voted Leave, who told me she did it because she wanted her country back, that the country was getting to the point where there wasn't enough room and it would be nice to have the majority of kids in her class where English was the first language... A teacher... You have to start wondering about whether humanity has just subconsciously developed an absurdist self-destruct gene?
Having a wife who earns a little too much money has meant that my periods of unemployment in recent years has garnered me the absolute minimum I should be entitled to, yet someone I've known best part of my life and hasn't been remotely interested in getting a job - since 1992 - gets so much support, even now - in the wake of IDS and his purges - that it actually made me feel anger towards him (my friend that is, I've felt anger towards IDS since about 1999). After years of contributing to the economy and paying my NI, I was entitled to essentially fuck all. Had I been 'a feckless workshy wanker' I could have got just about everything I needed - like free prescriptions, bus fares or other frivolous things people with money take for granted. The sad thing is I'm not a particularly nice person but I felt slightly ashamed of myself for feeling angry towards my friend's 'life choice'.
It also should be noted that my friend with the unemployment fixation is also damaged goods and probably now falls into the category of 'people never likely to be able to do a real job again, ever'. Whether he arrived at this situation through nurture or nature isn't for debate (I know the answer to this specific question, though), but one thing is clear 50% of the blame, at least, has to be placed at the feet of the governments of the late 1970s and early 1980s, because they didn't do enough to change attitudes, or invest enough in education (because what sense is there investing in our future?) and it only got worse in the 80s and 90s.
After spending over 15 years working with the disenfranchised and becoming a good socialist as a result, I know the difference between the disenfranchised and those who play the system because they don't want to work or contribute - the people who think it is okay to live off of everyone else without contributing anything other than more actual cost to the taxpayer. Yes, you can argue, it isn't their fault they're in whatever predicament they're in - more the fault of successive governments doing little or nothing for the most isolated and alienated in already poor communities, while simultaneously finding something unrelated to blame - but I'm also not that left wing where I won't call a feckless wanker a feckless wanker.
Take the argument that migrant workers put too much strain on our services. The blame for this appeared to be placed firmly at the feet of the EU despite the fact that 62% of our migrants come from outside of the EU and never once, during the EU debate, did any party - Corbyn's included - point out that the strains on hospitals, schools and public services was actually the fault of the government for not investing in expanding it all when the need grew. I mean it doesn't take an idiot to realise that even if they hooked private business into the building of these things, they would all have been patronised, would have employed more people and would have injected money back into the economy. That isn't socialism, that's common sense that could have been exploited however the Tories wanted and still been beneficial to the majority of people.
I have suggested before that I'm beginning to think that politicians are mainly all idiots, or have finally decided that we're all idiots, because all politics seems to be choreographed now; even Corbyn really appears to be quite toothless because no one - apart from the lovely Mairhi Black (who is 21) - seems to asking the pertinent questions or making any salient points. Take the decision to overrule the No Fracking decision by Lancashire Council - whatever way you feel about fracking, when you consider the overall costs compared to, say, putting up an offshore wind farm, you have to wonder if our politicians are also brainless psychopaths too. Am I the only person who questions his (or her) own sanity at comments, actions or interviews given by politicians. I mean, is Priti Patel even real?
I recently spent a few hours talking to the owner of a small private hire company and he told me some astounding facts about taxis. 54% of all taxis booked are by girls/women aged between 14 and 40. But even more incredible is that upwards of 60% of all taxis are booked/hailed by people on benefits. As someone who has, at times, viewed £10 as an important third of my shopping bill, to be in a position where walking or catching a bus doesn't even feature in someone's thinking, despite having nothing makes me begin to wonder if the Tories are right and that some people exploit the system. Or perhaps kids in poor schools need more education as to how to prioritise their money better when they leave education and go straight into a career on welfare. Ironically, we've allowed TV, the media and commercialism/advertising to brainwash the young into thinking that having an iPhone is more important than eating healthily and we've seen, throughout the last few decades, common sense levels in most individuals drop to the point where (almost) statistically more than half of the people here are twats. We've all been persuaded to spend all of the money we haven't got on cheap shit that won't last while simultaneously blaming Johnny Foreigner for stealing someone else's job...
The unswerving power of commercialism has placed many of our citizens in a position where they view essentials as trivial and trivia as essential and urban ghettos and isolated areas of deprivation are as a result of no government ever addressing - in my life time, at least - the problems in any long-term way. Mix commercialism with a bit of prejudice and you create a dependent with the belief of entitlement. That's the fault of governments since the 1960s who didn't acknowledge prevention was better, and cost less, than cure. Governments never really see or understand the problem until it is too late to fix. And then you need to acknowledge that to fix just some of society's ills - the ones who wield power fancy supporting - it would cost far more money than is available and we all know money is an exclusive privilege of the rich.
***
Over the last few days we've seen the right-leaning media ratchet up the hate and racism against migrants, or in fact anyone not from the UK. I fail to see what the ultimate aim is, unless Murdock, Beaverbrook and the rest actually want the UK to become a xenophobic, isolated island with no trade deals and vilified by the rest of the world.
What good are these 'rags' doing? What possible positive outcomes can we hope to get when facts are ignored in favour of jingoistic hate and bile? With at least 52% of the country's voters prone to believe sensationalist bullshit and lies you have to start wondering if there's a crazy agenda being set out by the media. Because it has to be crazy - Jeremy Corbyn is a fair politician but is treated and talked about like he was a former Nazi death camp guard, while the Tories and their supporters get nastier and the only places these are covered are in blogs, news sites (not affiliated to money) and Twitter - thus having little or no credence to the 52% because it wasn't seen on the BBC or read in the Sun or Daily Mail.
We're in the depths of a self-fulfilling prophecy; I'm not sure what the prophecy is, just that it appears to involve hate and ultimately violence.
Monday, 4 July 2016
A Special Kind of Ignorance
52% of the country are not dimwitted racists and xenophobes; yet given the rise in hate crimes and the fact that nearly two weeks after the vote to leave people are still peddling the same truly laughable and almost deliberately obtuse 'facts' - such as 'Taking back control', 'Ridding ourselves of unelected European bureaucrats', 'Saving £350 million a week which can go straight to the NHS', 'Turkey will be joining the EU' and 'Policing our own borders' - and completely refusing to even acknowledge the logical and at times utterly truthful counter-arguments, you would think there were.
Let's look at those Brexiteer's claims:
Take Back Control - let's look at this now. The PM has resigned. There is a leadership battle, which will determine the new PM, decided by the Tories. Not undemocratic, but not the country's decision. 'Control' might mean anything at the moment, but there seems a distinct lack of it and the party in charge are fundamentally split down the middle, campaigned against each other, showed bitterness and hatred laced with lies towards supposed colleagues. Some control, huh?
£350 million saved redirected to the NHS - this has already been denied despite being the slogan on the battle bus and a big reason still given by people who voted out. The stock market lost a lot of money during the first two weeks, it has rallied, but the amount we lost, as a country, was 8 years worth of net contributions to the EU - in one fell swoop; bingo; just like that - no bureaucracy, no EU interference, this was your country 'taking back control' and allowing your money, thanks to you, to disappear.
Ridding ourselves of unelected European Bureaucrats - these will be the elected MEPs that all people get to vote for every four years (but don't often choose to); not 'unelected' at all. The fact that the UK population's mistrust of the EU meant that a lot of MEPs were UKIP people meant that your elected MEPs did more to prevent good EU regulations than it ever did to stop bad ones. The fact that the UK has a House of Lords - a lot of unelected bureaucrats (often loaded with left or right leaning peers) to help bolster a struggling government is not undemocratic in the slightest. Is it? Eh?
Turkey - In or Out? - The British, like the 27 other EU states, had a veto and the EU wasn't unanimous, it was everyone or nothing. One of those 28 countries say NO and the other 27 had to respect and abide by that veto. The UK opposed Turkey's entry, as did SEVEN other EU states - when asked - yes, the situation is more complicated than that, but as a result of us coming out, we'll be negotiating with the EU on the same level as Turkey, but they've offered to take 2 million refuges back, we're having 20,000. Turkey will probably get the same EU trade deals as the rest without a vote. We won't and we won't get a vote. While we wouldn't have voted for Turkey in the UK the turkeys voted for Christmas - huzzah for us and our infinite wisdom.
Policing our Own Borders - won't it be good to go to the airport again, or ports, or the Chunnel and see British Customs and Excise guards rather than all of them... um foreign, er, border, er... Okay, the new points-based system for migrants will certainly slow the slew of damned foreigners - except almost twice as many non-EU migrants came to work here last year, many from Africa with little or no skills; so a points-based system is always going to be better for all concerned. Let's start right now. I have a friend from Uzbekistan who plays the spoons...
I also hear people talking about ridiculous things from straight bananas to fishing restrictions. I for one will be pleased to see bent bananas back in the shops; I've been thoroughly cheesed off with all the round, oblong and square bananas thrust on me by pirate banana growers in Bulgaria; as for those fishing restrictions; damn those EU people from preventing the bulk of the rest of the fishing industry from going under in the 1980s. If those bureaucrats hadn't stopped our overzealous fisherman from landing just about anything that moved, North Atlantic cod could have been extinct in these waters by now and subsequently haddock and other fish of that ilk because of relentless over-fishing.
Imagine a brain like a Möbius strip. You say state a 'fact'; it's proved wrong, so you say state another, that is proved wrong, so you say another. When that is proved wrong you start with your first 'fact' and repeat ad nauseum. Or, in the case of many out there, you'll get a variation of 'I don't care what it costs I just wanted my country back!' which, if you ask them where it went you get don't get a laugh, you get the objections wheeled out again, with louder voices and gritted teeth. Ask any of these people to tell you of one incident in the last 12 months where the EU has worsened their lives to their knowledge and the amount of blank stares or dumbfounded looks is enough to realise that the final legacy of Margaret Thatcher is here at last - not the leaving of the EU, but the total obsession with 'self'. The biggest protest vote against her and the subsequent 35 years that followed her initial election will ultimately hand the people the thing they thought they were voting against - the elite.
How about this for irony and a measurement of just how unintelligent the voting public has become. In 2015, the electorate kicked the crap out of the LibDems. They weren't the party responsible for the austerity, they might even have tempered it, yet the Tories and the press managed to make you believe that the mess we were in was because of the Cleggster and his band of uncaring Liberal bastards. Twelve months later and the same thing has been achieved again in incredibly similar ways; you were told the EU was responsible for all our woes and despite everything you know telling you it was a lie, you've always had an inward distrust of the EU so it must be right and you don't understand politics much anyhow...
Just so you understand that everything you voted for will, like a general election, not happen and again you will only have yourselves to blame except you won't get to try again in five years.
The final irony is that because the Tories were literally 'all over the place' and the establishment couldn't keep a lid on it, it required the Labour Party to implode; to do enough to keep the Tories from all of the front pages and all of the headlines. The Tories can't run themselves, let's make sure the people don't lurch to Corbyn. Have we got enough dirt on all those Blairites to keep Jezza busy?
People need to start thinking for themselves is no longer enough of an excuse or directive, because it's clear that many of us can't (or won't). We have become blinded by trivia, lost in vitriol and we're starting to lash out and this is the fault of 35 years of governmental neglect towards the majority of the people.
There will never be as big a turn out of voters again in my lifetime; I believe they've made their mistake and I hope we all don't live (and die) to regret it. Politicians have to start thinking about the future and ensuring that the population born post-Brexit isn't riven with the ignorance, hate and disdain they have nurtured for so long to get us to this place.
Let's look at those Brexiteer's claims:
Take Back Control - let's look at this now. The PM has resigned. There is a leadership battle, which will determine the new PM, decided by the Tories. Not undemocratic, but not the country's decision. 'Control' might mean anything at the moment, but there seems a distinct lack of it and the party in charge are fundamentally split down the middle, campaigned against each other, showed bitterness and hatred laced with lies towards supposed colleagues. Some control, huh?
£350 million saved redirected to the NHS - this has already been denied despite being the slogan on the battle bus and a big reason still given by people who voted out. The stock market lost a lot of money during the first two weeks, it has rallied, but the amount we lost, as a country, was 8 years worth of net contributions to the EU - in one fell swoop; bingo; just like that - no bureaucracy, no EU interference, this was your country 'taking back control' and allowing your money, thanks to you, to disappear.
Ridding ourselves of unelected European Bureaucrats - these will be the elected MEPs that all people get to vote for every four years (but don't often choose to); not 'unelected' at all. The fact that the UK population's mistrust of the EU meant that a lot of MEPs were UKIP people meant that your elected MEPs did more to prevent good EU regulations than it ever did to stop bad ones. The fact that the UK has a House of Lords - a lot of unelected bureaucrats (often loaded with left or right leaning peers) to help bolster a struggling government is not undemocratic in the slightest. Is it? Eh?
Turkey - In or Out? - The British, like the 27 other EU states, had a veto and the EU wasn't unanimous, it was everyone or nothing. One of those 28 countries say NO and the other 27 had to respect and abide by that veto. The UK opposed Turkey's entry, as did SEVEN other EU states - when asked - yes, the situation is more complicated than that, but as a result of us coming out, we'll be negotiating with the EU on the same level as Turkey, but they've offered to take 2 million refuges back, we're having 20,000. Turkey will probably get the same EU trade deals as the rest without a vote. We won't and we won't get a vote. While we wouldn't have voted for Turkey in the UK the turkeys voted for Christmas - huzzah for us and our infinite wisdom.
Policing our Own Borders - won't it be good to go to the airport again, or ports, or the Chunnel and see British Customs and Excise guards rather than all of them... um foreign, er, border, er... Okay, the new points-based system for migrants will certainly slow the slew of damned foreigners - except almost twice as many non-EU migrants came to work here last year, many from Africa with little or no skills; so a points-based system is always going to be better for all concerned. Let's start right now. I have a friend from Uzbekistan who plays the spoons...
I also hear people talking about ridiculous things from straight bananas to fishing restrictions. I for one will be pleased to see bent bananas back in the shops; I've been thoroughly cheesed off with all the round, oblong and square bananas thrust on me by pirate banana growers in Bulgaria; as for those fishing restrictions; damn those EU people from preventing the bulk of the rest of the fishing industry from going under in the 1980s. If those bureaucrats hadn't stopped our overzealous fisherman from landing just about anything that moved, North Atlantic cod could have been extinct in these waters by now and subsequently haddock and other fish of that ilk because of relentless over-fishing.
Imagine a brain like a Möbius strip. You say state a 'fact'; it's proved wrong, so you say state another, that is proved wrong, so you say another. When that is proved wrong you start with your first 'fact' and repeat ad nauseum. Or, in the case of many out there, you'll get a variation of 'I don't care what it costs I just wanted my country back!' which, if you ask them where it went you get don't get a laugh, you get the objections wheeled out again, with louder voices and gritted teeth. Ask any of these people to tell you of one incident in the last 12 months where the EU has worsened their lives to their knowledge and the amount of blank stares or dumbfounded looks is enough to realise that the final legacy of Margaret Thatcher is here at last - not the leaving of the EU, but the total obsession with 'self'. The biggest protest vote against her and the subsequent 35 years that followed her initial election will ultimately hand the people the thing they thought they were voting against - the elite.
How about this for irony and a measurement of just how unintelligent the voting public has become. In 2015, the electorate kicked the crap out of the LibDems. They weren't the party responsible for the austerity, they might even have tempered it, yet the Tories and the press managed to make you believe that the mess we were in was because of the Cleggster and his band of uncaring Liberal bastards. Twelve months later and the same thing has been achieved again in incredibly similar ways; you were told the EU was responsible for all our woes and despite everything you know telling you it was a lie, you've always had an inward distrust of the EU so it must be right and you don't understand politics much anyhow...
Just so you understand that everything you voted for will, like a general election, not happen and again you will only have yourselves to blame except you won't get to try again in five years.
The final irony is that because the Tories were literally 'all over the place' and the establishment couldn't keep a lid on it, it required the Labour Party to implode; to do enough to keep the Tories from all of the front pages and all of the headlines. The Tories can't run themselves, let's make sure the people don't lurch to Corbyn. Have we got enough dirt on all those Blairites to keep Jezza busy?
People need to start thinking for themselves is no longer enough of an excuse or directive, because it's clear that many of us can't (or won't). We have become blinded by trivia, lost in vitriol and we're starting to lash out and this is the fault of 35 years of governmental neglect towards the majority of the people.
There will never be as big a turn out of voters again in my lifetime; I believe they've made their mistake and I hope we all don't live (and die) to regret it. Politicians have to start thinking about the future and ensuring that the population born post-Brexit isn't riven with the ignorance, hate and disdain they have nurtured for so long to get us to this place.
Monday, 20 June 2016
More Than A Feeling
You are 14. You have just met the most fantastic boy/girl. Inside 24 hours you are in love; smitten and wrapped in a warm fuzzy sensation no drug can really truly replicate. When you profess your love for this other new and brilliant person in your life, you are looked at in the same way you were looked at when you were six and farted at the dinner table. "It's how I feel!" You plead with your mum, who knows, all too well, what you are experiencing.
You are 21. It's Grand National weekend and you like a flutter on the Grand National. It's a national pastime, innit? You saw the runners and riders a week ago and you had this sneaky feeling about Bold Future. You think it is going to win. It's 25/1. All week you convince yourself that the odd feeling - that may well have been wind - when you first saw the horses' names is the feeling; the one that is lined with gold.
You are in your 50s - not quite in the baby boomer generation, but old enough to remember the world of three TV channels, ringing telephones that were simply just ... telephones and men with leather patches on their elbows and shoulders of their brown corduroy jackets. You have been 'a European' for 4/5ths of your life and the other fifth you were so young you had no real comprehension of the world around you. Contrary to popular belief most kids that wander around the world up to the age of about 10 do so with an awe-inspired open-mouthed acceptance. You are influenced by what you hear more than what you see because people don't have a tendency to shove pictures in people's faces to continually emphasise a point the way they do with words. Words stick, just ask the mum who inadvertently mutters the word 'fuck' almost under her breath and now has a child running around the house shouting FUCK at the top of its voice.
You are in your 50s and that means you're not too far away from something that seems almost ridiculous - retirement. What you are looking at is your pension, your security and your family (not necessarily in that order, but politics has a tendency to re-prioritise peoples lives) and whether or not you're going to get NHS treatment in the future, because if you haven't started going wrong, it's sitting around the corner waiting to pounce. For the first time in your life you are actually actively thinking about the future, because you've flushed 50-odd years down the toilet and you ain't got that much time left to replay it all again. Tell a 16-year-old he should stop smoking because they will suffer for it when they're 50, they will, almost quite rightly, point out that that's over 30 years away and you didn't listen to the people who told you the same thing.
You might be younger and be reading this thinking carpe diem or death and glory, but trust me, it's like death and taxes, it is something you will do and when you do it's usually with worst case scenarios just to ratchet up the fear factor. You will slow down. You will see time pass without real comprehension.
Now, I'm gobsmacked that we've had 16 years of the 21st Century already. I mean, where did that go? It's like my world has been encased in a select bubble that because it is ageing with me I'm only aware of the numbers. So with that in mind you realise without ever realising it while it is happening that your life becomes reasonably ordered and steady and staid and even a bit boring, but usually it is comfortable and bollocks to going clubbing this weekend, my legs are aching from doing the gardening... It. Just. Happens.
Therefore what you want from the future is that unconscious security you've been experiencing since whenever it started. At least that is my feeling. I'd like that unconscious security to be in Wigtownshire and involve as little work as possible and I'm sure everyone else also has their idyll knocking around in their heads. I'd like to make one last adventure in a life that, compared to my father, has been relatively conservative (SMALL C) despite my belief that it's been more cosmopolitan than many people I've met. I feel that a move will be the best thing I can do with whatever life I have left; the idea of something new doesn't, in the slightest, fill me with dread, but an electric current-like frisson of possibilities and positives.
But, you know, I have COPD, which isn't going away and a history of back and shoulder problems and no private pension to speak of. The wife has family she needs to be around because of her mum's ill health and moving to Scotland would be a massive movement of everything away from everything we know. Still, it's a feeling I think needs to be tried, even if it goes extraordinarily tits up.
What I've just been talking about is what an enormous amount of people I have met on my travels think about the EU Referendum. Obviously not that exactly, but because it is a feeling they have and it doesn't matter how much you can prove to them that the most sensible thing is to RemaIN/Leave, they have a feeling, goddammit! You can't argue with feelings. Look what happens when you question feelings: "Boss, having spoken to that Jimmy Savile fella I've got a nasty feeling he's a wrong'un." And feelings, especially when they've been precognitive, tend to stick in your mind. The 50,000 other feelings that were so wide of the mark they're exiting the known universe next week are always forgotten about. Benign feelings tend to mutate into rose-tinted nostalgia. Feelings are what are likely to drive even the most responsible of people and of course if everyone with feelings were exempt from voting that would leave the psychopaths...
It doesn't matter what you see that suggests what you do is going to essentially butt-fuck you for the rest of your life, because if you remember that girl/boy you fell in love with when you were 14, you know that you would have walked 30 miles over broken glass in bare feet just to put matchsticks in her shit and that is what this is like. Yes, so I sank my life savings on Bold Future and it broke its neck at the first, I have the rest of my life in front of me. I feel that voting out is the best thing and even if that means my life will become one long continuous nightmare of poverty, alienation and hate...
The 14 year old boy/girl is now 54; he/she is 100lbs overweight, has umpteen children, varicose veins and piles. She/he lives in a housing association shed and thinks having the new iphone is more important than feeding the kids healthily. The words 'sausages', 'Mersey' and 'tunnel' are often used in connection with her. Do I need to carry on?
Ask yourself this, especially if you have a feeling about this referendum. Are you really prepared to risk everything you have and everything your kids might have on the basis of feeling it might be the right thing to do?
You are 21. It's Grand National weekend and you like a flutter on the Grand National. It's a national pastime, innit? You saw the runners and riders a week ago and you had this sneaky feeling about Bold Future. You think it is going to win. It's 25/1. All week you convince yourself that the odd feeling - that may well have been wind - when you first saw the horses' names is the feeling; the one that is lined with gold.
You are in your 50s - not quite in the baby boomer generation, but old enough to remember the world of three TV channels, ringing telephones that were simply just ... telephones and men with leather patches on their elbows and shoulders of their brown corduroy jackets. You have been 'a European' for 4/5ths of your life and the other fifth you were so young you had no real comprehension of the world around you. Contrary to popular belief most kids that wander around the world up to the age of about 10 do so with an awe-inspired open-mouthed acceptance. You are influenced by what you hear more than what you see because people don't have a tendency to shove pictures in people's faces to continually emphasise a point the way they do with words. Words stick, just ask the mum who inadvertently mutters the word 'fuck' almost under her breath and now has a child running around the house shouting FUCK at the top of its voice.
You are in your 50s and that means you're not too far away from something that seems almost ridiculous - retirement. What you are looking at is your pension, your security and your family (not necessarily in that order, but politics has a tendency to re-prioritise peoples lives) and whether or not you're going to get NHS treatment in the future, because if you haven't started going wrong, it's sitting around the corner waiting to pounce. For the first time in your life you are actually actively thinking about the future, because you've flushed 50-odd years down the toilet and you ain't got that much time left to replay it all again. Tell a 16-year-old he should stop smoking because they will suffer for it when they're 50, they will, almost quite rightly, point out that that's over 30 years away and you didn't listen to the people who told you the same thing.
You might be younger and be reading this thinking carpe diem or death and glory, but trust me, it's like death and taxes, it is something you will do and when you do it's usually with worst case scenarios just to ratchet up the fear factor. You will slow down. You will see time pass without real comprehension.
Now, I'm gobsmacked that we've had 16 years of the 21st Century already. I mean, where did that go? It's like my world has been encased in a select bubble that because it is ageing with me I'm only aware of the numbers. So with that in mind you realise without ever realising it while it is happening that your life becomes reasonably ordered and steady and staid and even a bit boring, but usually it is comfortable and bollocks to going clubbing this weekend, my legs are aching from doing the gardening... It. Just. Happens.
Therefore what you want from the future is that unconscious security you've been experiencing since whenever it started. At least that is my feeling. I'd like that unconscious security to be in Wigtownshire and involve as little work as possible and I'm sure everyone else also has their idyll knocking around in their heads. I'd like to make one last adventure in a life that, compared to my father, has been relatively conservative (SMALL C) despite my belief that it's been more cosmopolitan than many people I've met. I feel that a move will be the best thing I can do with whatever life I have left; the idea of something new doesn't, in the slightest, fill me with dread, but an electric current-like frisson of possibilities and positives.
But, you know, I have COPD, which isn't going away and a history of back and shoulder problems and no private pension to speak of. The wife has family she needs to be around because of her mum's ill health and moving to Scotland would be a massive movement of everything away from everything we know. Still, it's a feeling I think needs to be tried, even if it goes extraordinarily tits up.
What I've just been talking about is what an enormous amount of people I have met on my travels think about the EU Referendum. Obviously not that exactly, but because it is a feeling they have and it doesn't matter how much you can prove to them that the most sensible thing is to RemaIN/Leave, they have a feeling, goddammit! You can't argue with feelings. Look what happens when you question feelings: "Boss, having spoken to that Jimmy Savile fella I've got a nasty feeling he's a wrong'un." And feelings, especially when they've been precognitive, tend to stick in your mind. The 50,000 other feelings that were so wide of the mark they're exiting the known universe next week are always forgotten about. Benign feelings tend to mutate into rose-tinted nostalgia. Feelings are what are likely to drive even the most responsible of people and of course if everyone with feelings were exempt from voting that would leave the psychopaths...
It doesn't matter what you see that suggests what you do is going to essentially butt-fuck you for the rest of your life, because if you remember that girl/boy you fell in love with when you were 14, you know that you would have walked 30 miles over broken glass in bare feet just to put matchsticks in her shit and that is what this is like. Yes, so I sank my life savings on Bold Future and it broke its neck at the first, I have the rest of my life in front of me. I feel that voting out is the best thing and even if that means my life will become one long continuous nightmare of poverty, alienation and hate...
The 14 year old boy/girl is now 54; he/she is 100lbs overweight, has umpteen children, varicose veins and piles. She/he lives in a housing association shed and thinks having the new iphone is more important than feeding the kids healthily. The words 'sausages', 'Mersey' and 'tunnel' are often used in connection with her. Do I need to carry on?
Ask yourself this, especially if you have a feeling about this referendum. Are you really prepared to risk everything you have and everything your kids might have on the basis of feeling it might be the right thing to do?
Thursday, 16 June 2016
Little Britain versus Great Britain
As we hurtle towards June 23, I can't help wonder if this is no longer a referendum about staying in the EU and a referendum on just how racist this country is. Of course, I'm always utterly bamboozled when I see Indians or Chinese or West Indians being racist and yet I have been reliably informed that the Indians and the Chinese have loathed each other for a damned sight longer than there's been English speaking people in this country. Racism isn't simply a reserve of the British, but something that is remarkably parochial, colloquial and regional as well as being focused on simply colour, culture or religion.
I grew up with English people telling Irish jokes and before that most Canadians making jokes about 'Newfies' or people from Newfoundland: if there was an Irish joke doing the rounds, it became a Newfie joke. Argentinians take the mickey out of Patagonians who in turn take the piss out of those crazy native indigenous Welsh speaking locals. Sometimes it's just a bit of a lark, other times it causes wars and even genocide - racism, whether casual or intended, is something pretty much every person on the planet has had a thought about and whether this xenophobia is inherent or something we've developed as more of the world becomes known to us is a subject for an anthropologist or a archaeologist...
In general terms, for anyone who really wants to know the 'facts', there are umpteen reputable places they can seek them. Both sides of the argument can state their cases, claim 'facts' and extrapolate on these 'facts' and build their own project fear (if ever this government's agenda of putting fear at the head of the table was ever more apparent...). Today a man called Anand Menon, who works for a company that process actual facts and was answering questions based on the information his company has gathered as opposed to being loaded with any political rhetoric or personal bias, pretty much answered the question that people who care about this referendum are probably more interested in. No One Knows! He said that if we remain very little should change and evidence will back up that the economy will re-stabilise and that it will be business as usual. He then said that no one can possibly give anyone an actuality after June 23 because no one knows whether the current government, in its form, will be in charge and, more importantly, no one apart from the people in charge will know what they will do given whatever scenario they eventually settle on.
I'd like to think that's what I've been saying all along and in one or two cases people have accepted this and said they would look at more details to understand things more; however as we draw closer to the day the subject is fast becoming a vote to decide just how racist a country we are, because, quite simply, migration and migrant workers is the subject that the ignorant only care about. They are basing their decisions on 'feelings' rather than common sense. You can categorically prove Remain is the best way, but for them, this isn't the case and they'll come up with the same reason, worded differently, when all they really need to say is 'you can prove to me the sun is a donkey's cock and I'll still believe what I think because it suits me' and when it comes to people who don't speak English there's a lot of people out there who offer up hundreds of reasons why they're not racists and yet can't help sounding like a Nazi party member. The referendum has stirred up fervent and unpleasant xenophobia and a strange kind of neo-nationalism.
We have allowed ourselves to become so judgemental, largely because of social networks, that we're not even modest about our dislike of bloody foreigners and if there isn't a mass brawl or riot (or another vile murder) before the 23rd I will be surprised, because tensions are building so much now that I borrowed a friend's description of it being like a 21st century English Civil War.
If immigration, migration and foreigners honestly mean nothing to you at all in this debate, then you deserve a seat at the table and your beliefs should be respected, unequivocally. If you're not prepared to look at the facts; the completely verifiable facts that currently, based on the proposed points system UKIP are promoting MORE NON-EUROPEAN PEOPLE COME TO THIS COUNTRY THAN EU MEMBERS. Sorry for shouting, but we are not being flooded out by unwelcome foreigners, we invite in over 60% of the ones who don't have access to ... er... free access.
The press and the government have made such a mess of the entire EU PR that Cameron and co are now backtracking on a lot of what they said publicly and in the Commons about the positives of migrant workers, possibly showing that perhaps the respect I afford politicians is misplaced and perhaps they only ever look like they're playing a long game when all they're doing is muddling along. The damage they are doing to the country could be irreparable.
I grew up with English people telling Irish jokes and before that most Canadians making jokes about 'Newfies' or people from Newfoundland: if there was an Irish joke doing the rounds, it became a Newfie joke. Argentinians take the mickey out of Patagonians who in turn take the piss out of those crazy native indigenous Welsh speaking locals. Sometimes it's just a bit of a lark, other times it causes wars and even genocide - racism, whether casual or intended, is something pretty much every person on the planet has had a thought about and whether this xenophobia is inherent or something we've developed as more of the world becomes known to us is a subject for an anthropologist or a archaeologist...
In general terms, for anyone who really wants to know the 'facts', there are umpteen reputable places they can seek them. Both sides of the argument can state their cases, claim 'facts' and extrapolate on these 'facts' and build their own project fear (if ever this government's agenda of putting fear at the head of the table was ever more apparent...). Today a man called Anand Menon, who works for a company that process actual facts and was answering questions based on the information his company has gathered as opposed to being loaded with any political rhetoric or personal bias, pretty much answered the question that people who care about this referendum are probably more interested in. No One Knows! He said that if we remain very little should change and evidence will back up that the economy will re-stabilise and that it will be business as usual. He then said that no one can possibly give anyone an actuality after June 23 because no one knows whether the current government, in its form, will be in charge and, more importantly, no one apart from the people in charge will know what they will do given whatever scenario they eventually settle on.
I'd like to think that's what I've been saying all along and in one or two cases people have accepted this and said they would look at more details to understand things more; however as we draw closer to the day the subject is fast becoming a vote to decide just how racist a country we are, because, quite simply, migration and migrant workers is the subject that the ignorant only care about. They are basing their decisions on 'feelings' rather than common sense. You can categorically prove Remain is the best way, but for them, this isn't the case and they'll come up with the same reason, worded differently, when all they really need to say is 'you can prove to me the sun is a donkey's cock and I'll still believe what I think because it suits me' and when it comes to people who don't speak English there's a lot of people out there who offer up hundreds of reasons why they're not racists and yet can't help sounding like a Nazi party member. The referendum has stirred up fervent and unpleasant xenophobia and a strange kind of neo-nationalism.
We have allowed ourselves to become so judgemental, largely because of social networks, that we're not even modest about our dislike of bloody foreigners and if there isn't a mass brawl or riot (or another vile murder) before the 23rd I will be surprised, because tensions are building so much now that I borrowed a friend's description of it being like a 21st century English Civil War.
If immigration, migration and foreigners honestly mean nothing to you at all in this debate, then you deserve a seat at the table and your beliefs should be respected, unequivocally. If you're not prepared to look at the facts; the completely verifiable facts that currently, based on the proposed points system UKIP are promoting MORE NON-EUROPEAN PEOPLE COME TO THIS COUNTRY THAN EU MEMBERS. Sorry for shouting, but we are not being flooded out by unwelcome foreigners, we invite in over 60% of the ones who don't have access to ... er... free access.
The press and the government have made such a mess of the entire EU PR that Cameron and co are now backtracking on a lot of what they said publicly and in the Commons about the positives of migrant workers, possibly showing that perhaps the respect I afford politicians is misplaced and perhaps they only ever look like they're playing a long game when all they're doing is muddling along. The damage they are doing to the country could be irreparable.
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