Brexit Bollocks: An ongoing view.

Evening Mugs,

Happy Brexit Week. Yay , the good ship SS Great Britain sails off into the distance singing sea shanties and striking trade deals around the globe for silk and spices and tobacco...........the United Kingdom rejoices in freedom and control. People will be able to leave their front doors open again, scruffy children will play in the streets and pubs will be full of people standing around upright piano's singing songs of Blighty's greatness...........

Meanwhile, in the corner of our country that hasn't been injecting LSD directly into its veins, 48% of the country are sitting there thinking 'what was so bad before Article 50?'. We're watching helplessly on the sidelines as the UK starts a bonfire of its own vanities. The current course we've plotted is to step back in terms of wealth and freedom. And if we speak out? if we challenge? Then we're 'remoaners' , 'lefties' and to some we're even traitors. This is the lurch to the right the UK is moving to along the political spectrum. 

I was bloody furious about the referendum being called, then I was furious about the pathetic 16 word question, dumbing down to the ignorant and stupid and witless a major national issue. I was furious over the outcome knowing that the most impacted people were the ignorant and the have nots. People convinced by rich and landed career politicians that everything was the fault of Johnny Foreigner and the invading hordes of Turks....sorry not Turks......Bulgarians....sorry not Bulgarians .....Poles etc etc. The British populace was conned by rich, educated, power crazed people for whom the cozy white privileged life was threatened by hordes of educated proles with a sense of fairness and decency and community. The true globalists were the ordinary working people. The real nationalists and xenophobes were the privileged classes and their right wing press robber barons. 

Those generally decent people were mugged off. 

So this historic week is not a week for ranting (although I reserve the right to rant freely), but a day when I believe the UK will start to dissolve. The decision to leave was an English one and one that belittles the Union as a whole. After all, why is one political union Ok, but not the other? Especially if the other is one created from force rather than collaboration. Cultural similarities? Do me a favour....the Scots have a far more distinct character and national identity than the English. Northern Ireland is less mired in sectarian politics than ever as the younger generations, borne of a tiger economy and internal and external investment see that jobs and prosperity will come from Europe rather than England. 

And Wales...the elephant in the UK room sits there mystifyingly as a country that has seen more EU investment than any other nation in the UK and decided to vote out. Good luck with that when the United Kingdom of England and Wales dishes out the cash in the years to come, because if you think the politicians in England give a flying fuck about you then you're more deluded than even I thought.  

I have no doubt deals will be struck, but the idea that we'll get better than we have now is nonsense. Yes we can strike deals with Australia, New Zealand, Gambia and any other number of developing nations as well as other commonwealth nations. But China? The USA? India? Do you really think these economies will look at us rather than a trading bloc of over 500 million people? One that can use enticing tariffs to tempt buyers where we won't have the economies of scale. Wait until the exodus of manufacturing and banking happens.  And people like James Dyson can set up cheap labour factories in Africa whilst keeping a token design force in the UK all they like, but in the end the days when UK PLC could rule the waves as a trading nation have gone. We make less stuff you see. Therefore we have less to sell. And if you're a German car maker, and the bulk of your customers are on the european land mass, and the people want and possibly need less money then how likely to stay in the UK are you?

So good luck SS Great Britain, hope the sails can keep you moving. But don't be surprise when those former upstart nations such as India and China decide that really, you have nothing of much interest to them. And good luck Scotland when you take the inevitable plunge to independence - a different subject of course, but another I feel close to. After all if one union isn't good enough then why should any other?

Later Mugs, GJ