Words

Have you read the preamble to the Liberal Democrat Constitution?

Everyone should, especially those new to politics. And that’s a LOT of people.

Look, it doesn’t take long. It contains a lot of things other parties SAY they’ll do but never QUITE getting around to doing. Think ‘Big Society’, ‘Northern Powerhouse’ for starters. Where’s the balance in politics?

Look, it’s not some kind of cult, setup to make you feel better about yourself.

Ok, I rejoined the party today. It was easy.

“We need a change,” the people said a couple of weeks ago. The people spoke.

Onerous as the RESULTS OF the ‘choice’ the people made still remain to me, the people spoke.

Roll back a few months, to when the Libdems, in coalition, curbed the worst excesses of a Conservative government hell-bent on ignoring the great unwashed masses and pandering to big business and vested interests. A bit like the Chancellor of the Exchequer wanting to reduce corporation tax from 20% to 15% to attract businesses - or maybe to retain them.

Let’s examine the universal revulsion heaped upon the Liberal Democrat party as a direct result of the compromises they HAD to make, and the perceived crippling of its electability - seen as collaborators thus tarred with the same brush as the Conservatives. Or let’s not think about it, it sounds hard.

Damnit, I wish people would wake up and switch their minds on. Heck, I don’t even care if it hurts for a while as long as those brain cells fire a BIT more frequently.

++++++++[>++++[>++>+++>+++>+<<<<-]>+>+>->>+[<]<-]>>.>---.+++++++..+++.>>.<-.<.+++.------.--------.>>+.>++.

Indie

Politics; it’s all a load of old bollocks really, isn’t it.

A man spends his entire political career campaigning against a thing, and ‘wins’; decides to retire from campaigning against the thing, having no plan, no alternatives to it; ultimately though decides to carry on being paid by the political thing against which he fought for his entire political career.

No consequences? Well, the man now has a place in history - what every politician craves.

Jam tomorrow, WE were promised. Most people would like it sooner. On toast.*

Ahhh… I thought I could stop writing about important (important!) things, but no. Focus. It gives me focus on what is ultimately important.

No longer a monologue about self and family, this blog, thank goodness. Should I get back to writing about the small things though? Is THIS a healthy pursuit?

[Damnit, I originally missed ‘D’ from the post, too distracted watching the telly!] <- An edit.

Rhetorical question; my mind doesn’t work thus… Yes, of course it’s healthy. We humans, we’re inquisitive, insatiable, incompetent at times, but otherwise indefatigable.* Is it enough?

Under this spell, this compulsion to learn about this phenomenon, I believe a week and a half isn’t enough to explore deeply-enough.

Man learns about stuff; man fills head with stuff; man’s belief system ultimately remains unaffected.

*Yes, I probably AM trying too hard now.

Blinkers

I’ve spent far too long this last week attempting to make sense of the post-Brexit vote. I’ve looked at both sides of the argument and concluded that, though my vote is on the ‘losing’ side, I did the right thing.

Pointless me going over that again, I’m not a prolific blogger, my recent post history speaks for itself.

Reading lots of informed, ill-informed and decidedly un-informed and thus blinkered commentary on this unique situation in which we find ourselves brought home a number of facts.

Everyone who voted did so to attempt to make a very real difference in the way this country works. Regardless whether this was the time to protest or not, from what I’ve seen, most think it’s enough.

Do you know, I’m inclined to agree. But only upto a point.

I can’t see everyone who voted ‘Leave’ OR ‘Remain’ voting in the next election. I say next election because, obviously, this vote wasn’t one. An election. It would be wonderful if the UK could grow the level of support for our newly-discovered sense of democracy. My fear is simple, that turnout will be in the 30%-40% range at the very next opportunity. It’s a real possibility unless a General Election is called.

Challengers to Brexit have appeared today in the shape of the well-known law firm Mishcon de Reya. Operating on behalf of a number of companies opposed not to the vote result itself but to the insistence that the government and Parliament simply HAS to accept it, the firm has already been in touch with the government’s lawyers.

To me this at least pauses the steamrollering of common sense. Whether the challenge is accepted and allowed to progress remains to be seen.

A number of challengers for the Tory Party leadership battle appeared quickly. I’ve heard a fair amount from The Backstabber, from I’ve Real-world Experience (in the finance industry), little from the Home Secretary, zero from the Man Who Thinks Homosexuality Can Be Cured, and zero from the Disgraced Former Minister.

Repairing the bridges between Leave and Remain won’t be easy, and may prove impossible dependent on future government policies. Repairing the balance between the regions, or maybe CREATING a balance between the regions must be a priority, whoever wins whatever trivial leadership battles we see unfolding before us.

In the grand scheme of things, who wins these contests proves irrelevant. Policy changes little whichever party is nominally in control of our money. Er… whichever party has our best interests uppermost, sorry about that slip.

Over the last few days I’ve thought carefully about joining the Labour Party. Yes, simply so I could vote in its leadership election - for that principled man Jeremy Corbyn. Not some fly-by-night politician changing his ideals dependent on which way the wind blows or from which direction the money comes (though the Labour Party, like any other, does indeed have some pretty influential groups throwing loadsamoney at it), he seems genuinely committed to making things better for us.

The bottom line though, in this uncertain climate I just can’t expose my wallet to the current fees. At £3 it would have been a no-brainer. At a one-off £20, yeah, why not. At just shy of £50 though it merits serious thought.

Kaiser Wilhelm, the last German Emperor, believed that Germany’s place was at the top of the pile.

A sentiment I’m sure echoed by the British (English!) throughout all the years the empire expanded. Who could argue with any country’s desire to influence, to control others?

I found a particularly appropriate quotation; the Kaiser’s letter to The Telegraph: “You English are like mad bulls - you see red everywhere! What on earth has come over you, that you would heap on us such suspicion as is unworthy of a great nation… I regard this missaprehension as a personal insult… You make it uncommonly difficult for a man to remain friendly to England.”

Sure I’ve picked that out of many available at WikiQuote. Heck, I don’t even know to what situation he is referring let alone when it was penned! But if you bring that across to our current situation it’s what Europe is saying about us and, eventually, what we will be saying of them.

Er… Yeah, this’ll end well!

Rubbish as I am at picking winning Lottery numbers and resisting the temptation to bet just that little bit more ‘next time’, I see unwelcome changes ahead. Some might be tempted to say gathering storm clouds. Me, I’m not good at melodrama so…

Children, run for your lives, it’s spitting!

Hopefully we won’t awake tomorrow to World War III; to a collapse of our, Europe’s, the world’s financial markets; to a devaluation of the Pound that throws the FTSE100 into a slide, to a… No, these things take time to brew, need lots of careful stirring, tender manipulation, a gradual increase of the heat…

I still can’t believe that some think it’s all over; that there are no necessary trade-offs to be made when we’re negotiating for a free-trade deal; and that we’ve no-one with experience of what’s to come.

Essentially no-one’s been through this before. We STILL don’t know what to do to get the best out of this.

For once we need to admit we’re not in the driving seat. We need to treat the negotiations like a job interview; first researching the situation into which we wish to inject ourselves, stressing what we can offer, what we’re GOOD at, and then, then, to compromise on pay. Ah, crap analogy.

Sure other nations’ leaders want the best for THEIR people, it’s common sense. We must go into this respecting their wishes, sovereignty. Saying that only someone who voted to leave Europe is capable of getting the best deal is complete madness! Look at Brexit’s Chief Architect’s utterly reprehensible behaviour last week in the European Parliament - this is not how we must be seen.

Central to any further advancement out of Europe is putting the very best we have to offer into positions capable of influencing which way we head.

Luckily we have a civil service the rest of the world looks upom enviously. Don’t we. Right?

Ahhh…

Screwed.

Hmmm…

“London calling, here are our votes… Europe: null points.”

East

Stepping backwards in time around 35 years, to another period of desperate uncertainty, the time of strikes and industrial discord, I’m reminded of a computer game I played a lot. ‘The Hobbit’.

Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t be looking back to such events but these aren’t normal times, not by a long way.

Now, the point about adventures is not everyone is cut out for adventures. Just like the Hobbits, some of us British thought it’d be a great idea to venture out into the world beyond the safety of The Shire. It sounds a noble thing to do, to assemble a band of like-minded travellers, none particularly well-suited to the unknown but all SURE it will go well.

Deep down, they know the reality is likely to disappoint, to scare, but their friends carry them along. Friends won’t let friends down, there’s nothing more certain than that.

East. East was a direction one had to take to progress, but a direction leading one deeper into darker situations. Trolls, Goblins and Wargs - wolf-like creatures, a giant spider, a dragon, and even scarier creatures, yeah, the stuff of legend.

Rest easy though, there’s a happy ending - there were enough allies available during the journey to make a difference to the eventual outcome. Read the book, read it to your children. Read it before the books are burned.* We British went east, east into Europe, our tale doesn’t look likely to end well…

Lemmings. I’ve seen more than enough references to lemmings in cartoons and popular media, but the cartoonists got it wrong. Understandable, lemmings are more in tune with the British psyche, being at least identifiably European. They’re not but that’s a minor detail.

Actually, lemmings running off a cliff was a clever stunt by Disney, a stunt to perpetuate a legend rather than to put one to rest. Disney chucked hundreds of lemmings over a cliff. And filmed it. Yay, Disney.

Now, we aren’t lemmings, lemmings aren’t us. We’re buffalo.

“Deep blood kettle”: a loose translation of the Blackfoot tribe’s word for a buffalo jump cliff. Not so much a cliff for buffalo to jump off but one off which a herd was forced to fall, either killing the animals outright or incapacitating them until they could be killed by the native Americans. The principle was simple: panic a few at the back, drive them in the right direction, those at the front won’t stand a chance, pushed along by the sheer weight of numbers behind.

Sustainability though was, I believe, the key here. It’d be utterly pointless for the tribe to kill off an entire herd. What happens next year? And the next? Starvation or the necessity to become nomadic? A stark choice.

“United Europe has been a curse.” “We’ve become complacent, reliant upon other people to make decisions for us.” “Those decisions were never in our best interests, especially the laws to enhance personal wellbeing and safety.” “Europe will decline and drag all with it.” “Those nasty European bureaucrats!” Yeah…

Common complaints by people who who haven’t studied Europe as deeply as I have. For the last 6 weeks. Off-and-on. Makes me an expert. Yeah. Ok, so I’ve spent a little more than that, but…

Knowing that no-one likes experts or facts anymore fills me with dread. I’ve noticed my attention span diminished over the years as my recreational use of the Internet increased; more precisely my ability to place events in a time-related context. Expecting others to look back to a time before they became self-aware is very selfish of me.

Deep down I know that it’s pointless to attempt to educate people that the worst is NOT over; that though the pound has indeed rebounded against the Dollar (and the Euro), and though the FTSE 100 has indeed stabilised, and though…

Oh, what’s the use? Farage and Boris and Gove jointly pulled the sword out of the stone already.

Now what? Now the sword is out, what can we do with it? Is it shiny and radiant and pure and does it sing of greatness and…

King-making is out. Our society doesn’t work like that any more.

Eye-for-eye justice systems, etc. all gone, consigned to a time in history when things were just simpler, more predictable.

Yes, the Black Death focused the nation’s collective mind, likely brought along social and economic change in a way nothing previously had. And the industrial revolution, forever changing society from self-sufficiency to a reliance on others… but conflict remained.

Battles with other belligerent, territorial, nations - predictable, understandable. Let’s see those fingers lads!

Ahhh… maybe I should let things take their natural course and stop worrying. I am but one man. Writing to my MP brought zero hope.

Let’s see what we have. Take stock.

Long ago in a land far-away lived a middle-aged man. He gambled with his country’s future. He lost. Not the end of the tale, nor much of an auspicious beginning.

#spellcheckaracist: Is it worth it?

*Yes, melodrama!

Boris

‘Everyone knew Boris’: a quotation (paraphrased here) from someone who knew Boris at university. Not everyone knew David Cameron, 2 years behind Boris. Boris, he’s unique that one.

Xmas hasn’t come early for Boris though. I genuinely feel sorry for him. Less-than a week after the vote, Michael Gove’s abandonment of both any semblance of friendship with Boris and his own statement that he himself wasn’t Prime Ministerial material are telling of the measure of the man. The measure of Mr Gove, that is. Boris Johnson is in no way Prime Ministerial material either, and I’m struggling to come up with a government department suitable to be run by a man with his unique talents.

Er… I can’t think of anything but an arts or media-related department. Sport. None of those Departments are ‘nothing’ jobs, but… Not Chancellor, not Justice, not Foreign or Home Offices, not…

Commentators, political, financial, history , must be rubbing their hands with glee; unprecedented events, a dream team of limitless political talent on both sides of the House Of Commons, what could be better‽

Right here, right now, political journalists have to be where everyone is looking. We need answers, answers the politicians aren’t providing. Unless they’re Scottish, in which case they’ve suffered the angst already, are actually prepared for this.

Almost everyone who voted should be asked to formulate a plan; either to lead the country out of this mess in the most efficient manner possible, or to provide the best possible framework to survive our post-EU era. I have mine. Its simple, but relies on the British not gaining a very British pyrrhic victory, not letting a very British hubris drive our future, and not being uniquely and stubbornly British in outlook. English then, ok.

Bemusingly, my MP failed to provide a rational response to the Labour Party’s fragmentation, by first standing alongside her leader and then, when the tide against him started to lap at his toes, resigning in the name of, er… unity and doing her job: which is apparently holding the Conservative Party to account.’ So where does that leave us? Where does that leave me?

Looking at currency movements, comparing the GBP to the US Dollar (ignoring the Euro for now) and against gold. Standing back from Nigel Farage (never one of us) a man rubbing Europe’s nose in his poo; likely believing he single-handedly started the terminal decline of an imperfect organisation responsible for the welfare of 500 million people. I’m learning a bit about the psychology of decision making, herd mentality, and politics. And I’m examining history. I’m not examining my conscience.

Everyone; a rhetorical question: To what extent would you allow untruths to propagate unchecked, who would you abandon along the way, how far would YOU go to change our world?

Yes, more words, blah.