The Gift

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.

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.

Is Labour Worth Saving?

One of the other horrible things about 2016 that has largely gone unnoticed has been the lurch to the right by The Guardian's political and editorial staff. It still sometimes feels like a newspaper that is fighting unfairness, but the ruthless and relentless way it has pursued the Labour Party last year, specifically Jeremy Corbyn, has been both disgraceful and has probably cost them a fifth of their readers. So it was no surprise when they almost gleefully focused on the Tory's 16 point lead in pre-Christmas opinion polls, despite the Conservatives being a bunch of headless chickens and how Labour is trailing in every single demographic apart from communist allotment botherers.

We all know opinion polls have margins for errors, but even with the worst one built in Labour is still looking as electable as Nigel 'Bye-election King' Farage, yet still I held onto the belief that polls are not at all reliable and polling companies are usually sponsored by someone with political interest or skewered by the fact that the same bunch of people are polled all the time. Look at the Brexit vote and how everyone who thought they knew were flummoxed by one single factor - no one bothered to ask the man in the street. Or probably more relevant, no one listened when the man in the street spoke.

As people who read this regularly will know, I was not surprised by the EU vote based on my own experiences talking to people while out walking my dogs. Dog walkers are literally all types of people, from all kinds of backgrounds, with myriad beliefs, but these hardy souls have one thing in common - their dogs, therefore before long your dogs' friendships turn into human ones, albeit in the most fleeting of ways. Many of the people I meet regularly stand and chat, chew the fat, while the dogs check each other and the surrounds out, I have no idea what their lives are outside of the field we stand in. Conversations rarely turn to politics, it's like an unwritten law that you don't venture into areas of controversy because... well, you just don't.

During the run up to the EU vote I was pretty much floored by the anti-EU sentiment I heard all over and with a wee bit of hindsight, I am, at times, quite astonished that Remain got 48%.

A couple of weeks before Christmas, I did something a little bit unusual with a group of my fellow dog walkers. During a lull in the conversation, I asked them all a question, but I was careful to preface it with enough sensible wording as not to get anyone's back up or turn the conversation defensive. Spurred on by a Guardian headline that suggested Paul Nuttall - the new UKIP fuhrer - was more of a threat to Labour than anything else and coupled with my own blog suggesting that 'The Cult of Jeremy Corbyn' is never going to win anything, I asked my friends this: "I'd be interested in your opinion on something: this isn't about politics, so don't panic; but I read something in the paper this morning that made me realise I really don't know what I think about Jeremy Corbyn and I'd be interested to know what others think about him as a person. Not whether he's electable or anything to do with his politics, just what you think of him."

No one stormed off in a huff or reacted like I'd asked them about their underwear. The replies were disjointed and bitty, because more than one person was often speaking, but I'll break down (and roughly paraphrase) their answers:
J (a former catering manager now a teacher, mid 40s) said: Well, I wouldn't vote for him. He seems like a nice man, but do nice men have a place in politics?
D (a retired widow, 68) said: I think he gets a rough ride in the papers and on TV. He seems like a very decent man. He does seem a bit out of his depth.
T (a retired plasterer, also 68) said: I like him. I've voted Labour all my life, but I don't think he's the right looking man for the job. I'd vote for him but I don't think he'll win.
F (housewife, 50) said: Me and [her husband] have never voted Labour. I've never really paid any attention to him. What I have seen suggests he's being bullied a lot and that makes him look weak.
J2 (housewife, early 40s) said nothing but wrinkled her nose.
J2's mum (retired, late 60s) said: I think he looks shifty, I don't trust him.

Now, a broader generalisation: I'd say J was a Tory voter; D probably Labour but most likely doesn't bother, T is most definitely Labour (he admits it) while F is very blue. I would have thought that J2 and her mum would have been typical Labour voters, however, given the reactions I think they're people who probably don't vote because they have a mistrust of politics (this is borne out by some comments they have made that border on general ignorance), however UKIP probably tempts them.

Over the last few weeks, my friend - A - who is a Momentum member and jokingly refers to himself as 'An Activist', has expressed some deep worries about the Labour Party's complete inactivity in the 'real world'; I argued it's being covert, I might have been deluding myself...

Now the pointless and divisive leadership election is behind us and the Tories are blindly sleepwalking us into some kind of oblivion of our own making, where the hell is the opposition? Despite PMQs just being the modern day equivalent of Punch and Judy, but lacking any real punch or sausages, there are no positive sounds emanating from Labour HQ and personally I believe that's because, like the Tories, they haven't got a clue what to do, so they're just sitting reasonably quietly waiting for the next massive cock-up to surface and hoping that something, eventually, will damage the Tory vote.

I believed for a long time that they were playing the political equivalent of 'give them enough rope and they'll hang themselves', especially given that we're only 18 months into this administration and Treeza isn't showing any signs of calling or forcing another General Election. And, in a reasonable world I think that's not a bad game to play, but I like to think I understand politics (or did, once) and waiting for the right moment to strike and then relentlessly hammering on seems like an interesting weapon. Except... It doesn't appear to be happening. Labour, or specifically the PLP, appears to be a bunch of people thrown together, who are not particularly keen on each other and are grudgingly participating in something they're not really enjoying. Even if the press wasn't preternaturally predisposed to destroying the party anyway, they'd be well within their rights to be questioning where the opposition is.

Hello Labour! Tories slicing and dicing the country up and what are you doing?

I have, on several occasions, since Jeremy Corbyn's first election success, called myself a naive altruist more than a rabid leftie. I have been blinkered by my own refusal to accept everything that is wrong about this new Labour by continually putting forward all of the positives that Jezza's kind of politics could bring. The indications now are that he's neither the messiah nor a very naughty boy.

Last month I told you why Corbyn couldn't be elected. I'm now doubting, especially given the peculiar rise of the right in recent months, that the socialism being advocated by Corbyn and his followers isn't actually that popular amongst most of the voters. Yes, there's lots in their plans that will benefit the country and help bring poor people out of poverty quicker and lots of great ideas on how to make the country money, but as the EU referendum showed: economics isn't the big reason to motivate people to vote. It might once have been, but the media and casual, off-the-cuff public opinion has moved politics into a kind of 'us and them' territory and Corbyn's Labour doesn't even get within a million miles of the isolationism that is growing in rural England.

Tories sway with public opinion like a tree with dodgy foundations - hence why they resemble UKIP more than UKIP at the moment and their rhetoric always makes great use of framing specific words even if they don't mean what they're saying. At the moment they're not as vague as Labour, but you'd need a micrometer to measure it.

History might suggest the worst legacy of Tony Blair was actually the Spin Doctor, because once the Tories worked it out and then threw money at it they became the emperors of spin. The exception to the rule being Scotland, where pragmatism has always meant more than words.

As I said in November, Corbynistas can point at social media, the internet, mobile messaging and whatever and say they're winning that particular market over; but I'm not actually seeing any evidence of this, with one exception - how well Labour's vote has held up in council bye-elections and some of the parliamentary ones. This suggests, especially the way the press has routinely ignored them, that on the ground Labour are actually doing better than we're being told, but you only have to look at my social media news feeds to see that my bubble of like-minded souls are 99% posting 'look what the bloody Tories have done this time' stuff and very little positive opposition stuff.

Preaching to the converted about how crap it is has no discernible effect on the people who might be persuaded to vote Labour (or at the very least not vote Tory) unless they see the message; there's no point in telling people where to look, they need the message force fed to them, which only the Tories seem capable of achieving.

I've said this before but 90% of my news feeds in June were convinced the vote would be remain. 95% of the people I met on the street were voting leave. I don't need to do the maths to highlight that my bubble lost to the real world by about 4%. The main thing that needs to be understood about this vote was, when you boil it all down, it actually wasn't about party politics but about people politics. A proportion of the population basically stated that they didn't like what was on offer. The Tories saw this and Cameron was ushered out faster than the norovirus, and Treeza was seen as the unifying face by the public.

Labour - never as united as the Tories - tried the same thing and it blew up in their faces so badly that I think it's harsh to blame Corbyn for everything; it's his MPs that need to seriously look at themselves but Mr Average won't see it that way. Probably, the wisest move would have been for Corbyn to try and find his logical successor and step aside while endorsing the man best suited to carry on the work he started. Fresh faces at the ballot box does generate some interest in an apathetic populace.

If my straw poll is any indication of how Corbyn's Labour will fair at the next election (given it should be a way off still) then I wonder if he's aware that outside of his massive bubble of support there's a population who either don't care about him or don't really think he's up for the job? If the Labour Party really does care about the country and its people it needs to reinvent itself for the 21st century and start looking at the issues that the people on the street are talking about.

If Marmite subjects like immigration cannot be swept under the carpet, then perhaps it is time the debate was had to really find out just how tolerant our society is at the moment and whether it's worth trying to save?

No Soft Option

Having recently discovered that facts are irrelevant, I don't see the point in banging on relentlessly about this, that or the other. Take the EU exit for instance - no one knows what is going to happen; very few people really believe that the UK is going to get a better deal and the hard reality is that the other 27 EU countries are going to force limitations on what we want. They weren't that ecstatic we wanted out after all...

The truth is if we're coming out of the EU it has to be a HARD one, realistically there is no soft option. It will cost too much money and pretty much leave us in the same situation we were in except without any voice. The hard option will also cost us but it will be front loaded - costs will rise, some goods will no longer be available or no longer at prices the average person can afford and no one really knows how it will affect unemployment - it could go down. One thing is certain, the people who voted to leave because they believed it would be the best thing will be hurt either economically or emotionally.

The thing is Treeza and co., are all too aware that regardless of how you spin it, her party, UKIP and the right wing press have forced her into believing that the EU referendum was actually about migration and if that isn't addressed, then regardless of what the 48% wanted, there will be factions within the country who will deal with immigration in their own 'unique' ways. It might happen even if we close our borders, but the reality, at this moment in time, is that it will cost us a lot of money whatever way we choose and people will still want to blame migrant workers and the EU for it. Honestly, if the Tory's can - 7 years on - still blame Labour for the country's ills (never addressing the fact that in those 7 years they've made it actually worse) and get away with it, then if you're foreign then you'll pretty much take the flak for every hike in inflation, rise in unemployment, redundancy or failure to obtain a job.

The sad thing is regardless of the truth people will always blame the easiest thing. Migrants, for instance, don't steal peoples jobs. I'd like a Brexiteer to explain to me how migrants steal jobs? There is obviously not identity theft going on, so are these migrants infiltrating factories, working harder and offering to work harder for much less money? Even if this was the case, it would not be them stealing jobs, it would be employers preventing the indigenous from getting these jobs by a mixture of fraud and bad practice. There is no other way of looking at it. If you hear someone say, 'bloody foreigners stole my job,' you need to ask them how exactly their job was stolen and whose fault it was, really?

How about the country is full, there's no more room... Well, it isn't. That is about as facile a comment as a bunch of people with no authority promising you - the people - that £350million will go to the NHS if we pull out of Europe. Yes, we have a rise in homelessness, but is that because of migrants? Are you stealing peoples houses? Moving in surreptitiously at night, moving out a British person's belongings and acquiring their house by some medieval EU law? No, the truth is the government has made life so difficult for genuine strugglers that they face a Christmas with little or nothing. Because of the way our renting system is now you'd be lucky to get a stable at an affordable price. More affordable houses need to be built and while the government looks to the house sales market to keep the economy at least marginally 'balanced' there's unlikely to be any nice cheap homes for any of the disenfranchised to move into.

Of course, we can say without fear of contradiction that migrants are responsible for the strain on public services. I mean, it was obviously E|U migrants who slashed the public sector budgets and they've obviously been forcing the government to not build new hospitals or schools, or make public transport better, because it makes perfect sense that EUs will come here and destroy our services so they can access them easier...

Blaming migrants for the woes of the world is just blind refusal to blame the government - of which many people voted for. If by some UKIP fluke of nature and all migrants who have moved here since 2000 were deported, would we see a vast improvement in our lives? Would the government invest all that lost tax revenue back into ailing services, or, would they more likely award fat contracts to private companies making 'consolidation' their main aim.

The blame for migrants and the way they are seen is mainly at the feet of the right wing press, who seem so intent on stirring up hate it would seem their only intention is to cause some kind of civil race war within the country, presumably so they can then sit on their high horse and say they told us so. The Tories have to take a lot of the blame - they have it in their power to end hostility to migrants almost immediately, by gagging their pit bulls in the press and showing the stats that prove the migrant crisis isn't a crisis at all, just something blown out of proportion by the Mail, which has a history of essentially being neo-Nazi.

Obviously, Treeza won't do something as calamitous as admitting their incompetence is the main reason for the lack of things, nor will she rein in her media allies, so we have a situation where racism, or at least xenophobia, is allowed to escalate to the point where there are twats openly being arseholes all over the country and using freedom of speech to perpetuate their hate, while failing to see the irony in being called out by the fair people who they themselves have repeatedly abused.

Recently, a friend of mine commented on the Guardian's CiF section lambasting trolls as being worthless and hopeless antagonists who must have sad lives if the only pleasure they get is out of being nasty in a comments section. His comment was 'moderated' and deleted, despite having no bad language in it, but possibly being disrespectful to the people who do nothing but be disrespectful. His follow up comment complaining that the Guardian seemed keen to delete a message that was essentially criticising the Guardian for having double standards was also deleted. On the same page there were several attacks on 'hand wringing liberals' that went unmoderated. When a newspaper as (and I use this term loosely) moderate as the Guardian starts censoring people complaining about the lack of censorship from hate groups then you have to start wondering where we're going as a race.

The parallels to the 1930s are there for all to see and it's much faster because of social media and the new and different ways we have of communicating with each other. It isn't just migrants facing daily abuse; Pinko-liberals are getting it too. The left wing is now as much a target for the papers as migrants and presumably because some left wingers are pro-EU and believe in the freedom of movement. How long before those who advocate this are considered enemies of the people?

So the hard truth is a hard Brexit. Yes, all of us Pinko-liberals who voted remain will suffer the consequences, but they'll be no different than those who voted Leave. This won't be a Tory party pandering to those who voted for them and ignoring those who will never vote for them, this will be a real true moment of 'we're all in it together - whether we like it or not'. Apart from the cost, there's the social implications of a soft option - this is a generalisation but one with some basis in fact; quite simply Leave voters are more likely to cause problems than Remain voters and as I keep saying Treeza doesn't want to call a GE for a number of reasons, both legal and because if people don't vote for Labour and want to vote out the Tories, who does that leave?

As much as I'd like to think there could be a second referendum, I'm also acutely aware that should that vote be 53-47 in favour of staying after all, then there would be much more of a fight from the 47% than there has been by the current 48% of remainers. The sad truth is Brexiteers want you to accept a result they would never have accepted had it been a mirror result.

I also discount the claim that only 28% of the actual population voted for Leave. 72% of the people who could vote voted and frankly we have absolutely no way of knowing if that 28% would have swayed it towards Remain. I met an awful lot of people who had made their minds up they weren't voting because they thought they'd already lost. I think the country voted for Brexit because being out of Europe was some rainbow-shitting unicorn to solve all of our woes and the Leave campaign did a fantastic job of making the Remain camp out to be a bunch of scaremongering liars.

Quite simply, as I jokingly said two years ago, we need to exit and quick and then sit back and watch everything fall apart. However, I no longer believe that people who voted Remain should then rub it into the faces of those who voted Leave, because wars have been started for less.

Look at the options: decide against the vote and go back to the EU and renegotiate our membership - which isn't going to happen, but even if it did we've caused far too much disruption to expect anything in return. Or leave, jump off the cliff, and face the consequences and see if we have politicians and businessmen with the guile and acumen to sort it out and make the best of what will undeniably be a bad lot - for a few years at least.

The soft option angers too many and that's where Treeza is a bit of a populist and has angered some of her own MPs by being a bit UKIP-lite, presumably based on the combined readership of the right wing press. Hard Brexit might end up being a Pyrrhic victory for the Tories because, let's be honest about this, they've not really shown any evidence that they're any better with an economy than Labour, in fact now that they're borrowing more money than ever before they'd be hard pressed to accuse Labour of doing the same, especially as Labour might have borrowed too much but there is some actual evidence to suggest it was spent on infrastructure rather than feathering Richard Branson's pension fund.

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.

Crazy crazy world

Honestly, you couldn't make it up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why?

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

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

The Astounding Truth About Jeremy Corbyn and the 37 Naked Contortionist Porn Stars

"The English follow the principle that when one lies, it should be a big lie, and one should stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous." - Joseph Goebbels.

There is a large part of society that really dislikes people quoting Nazis. However, this is one quote - the correct one - that extreme nasty bastard Joseph Goebbels said that should you remove his name and replace it with...

"The English follow the principle that when one lies, it should be a big lie, and one should stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous." - Donald Trump/Tusk/Duck

... could easily be believed (especially about Donald Tusk and his observation of the Out campaign).

Just because someone is seen as a thoroughly despicable human being doesn't mean they can't be accurate in an observation. The last x number of years have been built on a large number of lies and exaggerations of the truth and depending on what newspaper you read, or TV news station you watch, some lies are more important than others. Tony Blair probably lied about the circumstances that led to the Iraq war and his ongoing vilification has been expected and generally welcomed. The Coalition government essentially blaming a portion of the population draining £2billion from the budget were responsible for the country's ills and not the tax avoiding corporations not paying in excess of £40billion in legitimate taxes - the comparisons were never addressed in the mainstream media - was a lie. Recently we've had £350million promised to the NHS as the pinnacle of the Leave campaign's reason for leaving the EU and did you notice how quickly that was dropped? Or how many of our 'impartial' media outlets made an issue out of it? Lies.

The simple truth is we're being lied to by the sources we depend on for fair and even coverage. Take the BBC, always accused of being left wing biased by the right wing, yet the corporation currently produces some of the most anodyne 'current affairs' content in its history and has a news department that is awash with Conservative editors, who have recently admitted - and ignored by the mainstream press - that it might have possibly maybe shown some anti-Corbyn bias in its coverage. Or as an independent blogger worked out: Labour in-fighting is covered on a ratio of 4:1 against Conservative in-fighting; Leadership contests - until the announcement of Theresa May, Labour's coverage was 2:1. More strikingly is that media coverage of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown was extensively on them with less than 20% of media coverage on the 'in-turmoil' Tories or their various leaders. Once the coalition came in focus on Ed Milliband - the opposition leader - rose to almost 50%. His pales into insignificance at the almost persistent hounding of Jeremy Corbyn.

In the last twelve months there has been a record number of newspaper retractions of things they, wrongly, said about the Labour leader. There has been an almost constant trivialisation of the man, while simultaneously building him up as both dangerous and unelectable. In a sensible society, one should wonder why the media are so desperate to continue warning us about the dangers of a man with policies that would have had 1960s Tory MPs nodding in agreement (with the exception of the Trident bit, naturally)? If the man is so dangerous, how come he's not being, you know, dangerous? Preventing 25 Tory bills in 12 months, 11 of which have been banished from the statute books is actually a better record than any opposition leader in 50 years in such a short space of time. I actually couldn't find any examples of anything the Tories prevented during the Blair/Brown era. Obviously information like this is not important to the general public; they're more interested in the size of Jeremy's marrow or that he was sitting in a park playing Pokemon Go (when, in reality, the desperate Daily Mail reporter handed Jezza the game and asked him to comment on its current trendiness).

Plus it's really easy to make click bait headlines against him. Corbyn attacks Eagle with knife is better than Corbyn grows prize marrow.

There are a number of reports floating around at the moment that shows enormous amounts of evidence to back up the media bias against Corbyn: this is one example - http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/media-depictions-of-corbyn-are-an-affront-to-democracy/ and even some of the broadsheets have briefly mentioned this, but none have supported it, condemned it or criticised any of their competition about it. Even The Guardian, for some inexplicable reason now, still the preferred choice of the intellectual Labour voter, has pretty much nailed its allegiance to a lost cause - neoliberalism or Blairism.

Despite Labour continuing to win council by-elections and now mobilising a greater number of young voters, the knives are out again and sharper, because of the Labour Party's desire to self-destruct for the sake of some career politicians. 

This isn't a conspiracy theory, it's a fact - the country is pretty much run by a small bunch of people from all across the political spectrum who do everything in their own interests first; it has been seen with the expenses scandal, it has been hinted at with the simmering but never likely to amount to anything election budgeting 'scandal' and the continued onslaught by the none-left wing members of the Parliamentary Labour Party to do anything they can to prevent someone who isn't them and doesn't share their ideology from disrupting their comfortable status quo. The press hasn't really focused any of its attention on Owen Smith or Angela Eagle because there's a Corbyn to be scalped and the fact the old bird is still around makes that scalp really valuable.

I'd like to throw in a theory; it's tenuous I warn you...

UKip are reported as being the biggest threat to luring older Labour voters away (this could be down to the media's knowledge that old Labour voters would never vote Tory, but might be duped into voting Tory under a different name), yet in the majority of those council by-elections I like to bang on about over 90% saw a substantial drop in UKip support (incidentally as the primary goal of UKip has been achieved, how come the mainstream press aren't questioning their continued existence?). It is possible that Corbyn is having a similar effect, but on a different demographic, which Nigel Farage had when his purple fascists suddenly became players on the political landscape (through vote share rather than any seats in Westminster; and remember, their only MP is Douglas Carswell, a former centre-right Tory MP with some hard-right ideas). Some people out there suspect Corbyn isn't the Antichrist and won't eat your children regardless of what Rupert, Paul, Rebekka and co want you to believe.

I've maintained for years that Farage's appeal to your average, largely ignorant, over 50 has been down to his stirring up of jingoistic attitudes and laying the blame at the feet of all the people not responsible for all the ills he peddled. 21st Century fascism encouraged by an inordinate amount of screen time given to, I presume, his general entertainment value. It's like putting subliminal messages into Teletubbies cartoons, programming your children to axe murder you when the signal is given. All he did was peddle lies, deceit and worst of all echoed the urban myths and legends floating around canteens and factories all over the country; it has to be true even if many never saw any evidence of it. Corbyn appears to be galvanising people who still have a social conscience in a similar way.

Once the media started its halfhearted attacks on Farage it increased his support - the little guy who stands up for us workers is being attacked by those lying scumbag newspapers; what are they scared of? Oddly enough the same people will perpetuate myths such as Corbyn not singing the National Anthem or bowing low enough at the Epitaph because they read it in the Sun or the Mail (or those lying scumbag papers, when it suits them)... 

I know people who buy it all; believe that Corbyn is not the right man for a variety of reasons all culminating in, 'and he's simply unelectable' using a term that the media coined, so however much people protest their opinion of the man is their own and hasn't been tainted by outside influences, why aren't you looking at his record, why are you looking at his tie?

Anyhow, Paul Dacre at the Mail will continue to sanction some of the vilest and despicable lies imaginable and somehow remain above the law or criticism. The far right supporting Daily Mail isn't going to be criticised by Tories for blurring the boundaries of impartiality by printing spurious bullshit and if someone from the left attempts to criticise them or take them to task they just lash out again because they know they have no leash. Look at the vicious attacks on the Millibands' dead father and yet Cameron's father was involved in all kinds of tax dodges and the same newspaper called for the dead man's memory to be left unsullied and people believe and support them despite blatant double standards and promoting elitism.

Remember the Sun in 1992? "It was the Sun what won it" or some similarly grammatically appalling headline and I think most people over the age of 40 believe that newspapers can win elections for people; the Sun claimed it won it for Blair, which newspaper historians might interpret as 'Murdoch says this guy will bend over more for me than the last guy'. The Sun didn't win it for Cameron in 2010, but they tend not to mention that. 

More and more people no longer listen to the radio how they once did. TV is changing all the time and our new and innovative ways of viewing are being adopted by more people. Newspapers are dying out among younger audiences, who get their news from different sources. My generation is probably the last one to depend on a lot of 20th century staples and yet we're slowly adapting; but in 20 years many of us will be very old or dead and the people who will become us will have a completely different approach to everything and hopefully that will mean changes in the way we do politics and engage with common people. 

I think this is what Jeremy Corbyn's team has been trying to do. For every person saying, he's unapproachable, he's not statesmanlike, he's out of touch; he doesn't engage with the press enough, there are more people praising his constituency work; his campaigning, his charity work, his support and how, unlike so many other politicians, he's approachable if your intentions are earnest. He gets out and meets people, talks to them and does it the old fashioned way, while simultaneously getting his army of younger political activists to target the places that most people over 50 only hear about from kids or on TV. Young people writing messages about politics aimed at young people doesn't sound so crazy when you say it out loud.

Corbyn and his team are well aware that he is never going to court support from the majority of papers, but Momentum are looking ahead at how things will be fought in the future, while Corbyn remains this quiet, largely unruffled figure refusing to play the games or pander to the media. The biggest problem for Corbyn with right wing leaning news reporting is that if there is a slow news day they aren't averse to manufacturing a story that is negative rather than run a story that is positive. The press would rather you know that someone, somewhere, might be Muslim who is linked to a crime and supports Corbyn than report on how the negative and devastating cuts have decimated deprived areas even more.

If Corbyn's brand of politics is going to remain in charge they need to get a bit slicker in the PR department and they need to try and get a lot of their MPs deselected and new faces to replace them before the next election; so these candidates can win these seats. He also needs to adopt some populist language - or constructive lies - to appease those who think he's soft on areas they want strength. Cameron came across like a sexually aroused horse sporting an enormous erection when he lied to the nation he'd get immigration down; it hurt him that he didn't - but probably nowhere near as much as Jeremy Corbyn's failed radish crop will spell the next downfall of the freakish warmongering vegetarian peacenik (™ The Daily Mail). It's nice to think we have a politician whose principles embrace honesty, but we've got used to being lied to. We don't believe the lies, but we want to and that keeps us going until the next lie comes along.

The Last Word

Worst Case Scenario

The country decides to leave the European Union. What could happen?

The stock market could crash and there could be a massive run on Sterling, devaluing Britain by as much as £40billion over night.

This will spark an emergency budget to put safeguards in place should the arse fall out of the economy.

David Cameron - growing increasingly unpopular - resigns and triggers a leadership battle in the Conservatives, where those in favour of Leave become the leading contenders, people with an extreme right-wing leaning and who have publicly stated that the cuts to public services are not deep enough and are unlikely to channel whatever piddly amount is saved from leaving into those services and the excuse will be the fall in stock and the fiscal effect on leaving.

Not a lot else will happen during the first two years as our government attempts to negotiate trade deals and discovers that it cannot accept any existing deal without allowing the freedom of movement - just ask Norway or Switzerland. Except, some things will happen, socially.

As one political reporter (Norman Smith) said, 'Whatever happens it will change the face of the UK'. He knows, as do many others, that the extreme examples of xenophobia exhibited throughout the campaign will spill out onto the streets, probably whatever the result. The referendum has allowed prejudices to be almost acceptable, as like-minded people congregate to castigate and show extreme opinions that align them with some of the worst terrorists and this will affect foreign migrants in this country, who will be stuck in a limbo, not knowing what the immediate future holds for them.

The scary thing is if intimidation begins (continues) and starts to drive EU migrants (and others) out of the country, there is an idiot minority who will view this as a victory and once it starts 'reclaiming the country' will become something that the far right will begin to practice, because if we vote to leave then the lunatics will really be in control of the asylum. You might not care about the economy (you really should) or bureaucracy (there's probably more of it in UK law than in the EU) or even the migrant issue (depending on who you believe it's either the big issue or not really a concern), you might just feel it seems the right thing to do.

That hangnail - you know if you bite at it you'll end up making your finger bleed and sore for a few days. You know that pulling at it is the stupid thing to do, but you do it anyhow and you'll probably do it again. This isn't a hangnail, this is like cutting off your nose to spite your face. This isn't a frivolous thing; this isn't about getting one over the government, or screwing David Cameron, this is self-harm. Ask yourself this: the UK might be a better place out - that fairy tale might come true and Boris & co., will be right. It might not change much at all and you might shrug your shoulders and say 'Meh', or... it might be costing you your job, your children's jobs and futures, your pockets and purses, your civil liberties and you might wonder what the hell has happened and who can you blame for it?

If you vote Remain and nothing changes will it be that bad? But just think, for a second, put those feelings to one side and think about the future, what if it all turns to shit? What if your house devalues by 35%? What if your pension disappears either through lack of money or a corporate raider like Philip Green? What if there are no jobs, no money sloshing around the economy, no cheap goods - what if you can no longer buy what you want or at the right price? People don't want second best, but they sometimes have to accept it - but it tends to be their choice; if you never have the first choice any more and pay more for what you have to have, is that better than it is now? Do you really really want some kind of mythical independence if it is going to cost your kids their future? Can you truly live with yourself if you are one of the people responsible for the isolation and bankruptcy of our great nation?

Vote Remain.

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?

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.