Guardian Watch: Insults fly in post-Brexit hysteria
by Kit
The world is still reeling from the referendum results – there is uncertainty in the air, real uncertainty, a rare creature in the modern era of controlled media consensus and carefully directed narrative. Again and again the thoughts are echoed: nobody expected this to happen. David Cameron was positive his side had won. Oliver Imhof wrote an article threatening to leave “Brexit Britain”, comfortable in the knowledge that “at no point did I think it could really happen.” You get the impression even Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage never expected to win.
Nobody expected this to happen – Least of all The Guardian…and the reactions? They have been hysterical, in every sense of the word.
The sheer volume of opinion is evidence of an institutional panic. Polly Toynbee’s reaction, always the paragon of understatement:
Catastrophe. Britain has broken apart. An uprising of resentment by the left-behind has torn us in two, a country wrecked by a yawning class divide stretched wider by recession and austerity.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that the referendum had been for turning off the sun, banning talking, or killing the first born son of every family in Britain…rather than a return to a state of affairs that has existed for all but the last 40 years of human history. Such is the level of the destruction.
The Climate is ruined. The FTSE 100 plummeted to levels not seen since last Thursday. The pound is now worth 7 cents less than it was last week. British science is already nearly destroyed. The arts world will regress, and collapse. British stocks crashed…less than half as much as European stocks. The FTSE 100 actually ended the week on a small gain…but ARRGHH! Panic!
But of course, the (as yet totally underwhelming and mostly imaginary) financial costs are nothing compared to the spiritual, moral costs.
“We woke up in a different country”, says Jonathan Freedland, absolutely shocked that 52% of the country should “reject authority” after only a generation or so of being exploited, lied to and suffering a general decline in living standards.
Who knows, perhaps the worst effects can be avoided altogether. But we should not be under any illusions. This is not the country it was yesterday. That place has gone for ever.
An assertion that would, perhaps, be greeted with more than a few smiles in many of the places we have recently bombed in the name of protecting “European values”.
I was not aware, until yesterday morning, that more than half of the people of Britain were racists. For all of Britain’s various social problems, I have never observed much in the way of strong racism. Far-right parties like the BNP get almost no traction in elections. There aren’t neo-Nazi marches in London that compare to the ones in Lviv or Berlin.
Nevertheless…apparently,we are now totally controlled by xenophobia. The country is now cruel and racist. Joseph Harker’s column declares:
…in the wake of the EU referendum people across the UK are fearful of the intolerance that has been unleashed…
Bear in mind this piece was published at 1.37pm yesterday afternoon, literally less than 12 hours after the result was announced. We’ll do Joseph some credit and assume he spent more than forty minutes writing this up – let’s say he started writing at exactly noon. That gives him eight hours to survey these “people across the UK” who, one can only assume, were merely the people on his bus route that morning. He “understands” that the vote wasn’t about race, that people want economic control of their country back…but actually it WAS about race, and we’re all racists.
The initial, panic-stricken, meltdown could not last of course. What quickly became more important was BLAME. And you know who the Guardian, a notionally liberal and inclusive paper, have chosen to blame? The old, the poor, the uneducated…oh, and Jeremy Corbyn of course. Who, I suppose, some would argue is all three.
Pretty soon after the results were announced, YouGov released their pretty graphs demonstrating that Leave won because old, stupid, poor people voted for them. I am unclear how exactly the YouGov figures were collated, but given that right up to the wire YouGov were predicting Remain would win, I see no reason to trust any of their information. In fact they predicted a 52-48 result for staying the EU…so as far as we know all of their figures are totally ass-backwards.
But let’s put that aside – let us generously assume that YouGov have even the faintest notion of what they are talking about. Do we demand a revote because the wrong people won? Is this how democracy works? According to Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett, the most forgettable of the Graun’s feminist-clickbait typing pool, yes. Yes it is.
If you’re young and angry about the EU referendum, you’re right to be”
…declares her headline. It is just one article, of many that have appeared all over the media, citing the reported age demographics of the two voting camps. Claiming that “old people” have ruined the futures of the young…because they are old and stupid and racist.
The general inversion in western society, compared to other global societies, where we prize youth and inexperience over the merits of elder wisdom, is an ongoing problem. A bigger discussion for a different time. Talking only in the specific – only about this vote – this is still a ridiculous and insulting position to take up.
The “old people” being discussed would have been young in the 1960s and 70s. They would be old hippies and baby-boomers. The idea of “grandma being a bit racist in and old-fashioned way”, does not work when today’s grandmas were listening to the Beatles and marching against Vietnam. These “old people” are the generation that voted FOR the EU last time, and now have 40+ years of experience of living with their decision. Do we do them credit, and assume they have changed their minds based on their life experience? Should we respect that 40 years of living and working in this country means people have EARNED their right to be heard? No, we are encouraged to dismiss them and insult their motives.
Young people, and I speak as one myself, tend to think selfishly. Teenagers are, for the most part, egomaniacal monsters – certain of their own brilliance, positive they are thinking original thoughts, and dismissive of authority and experience. It’s a phase, you grow out of it. Slowly. The young people complaining about old voters, and the authors encouraging and enabling this attitude, are assuming that older voters, likewise, think first of themselves. This is an insult, voters in their 60s and 70s would more likely be voting for the future of their children and grandchildren. To ignore that facet of their vote is unfair and immoral.
Of course, even if they were voting selfishly…so what? Everyone has that right.
It does not matter – the narrative is now set. The vote wasn’t fair, because the wrong people voted. That will be the battle cry.
In hedging their bets, should Leave win, the Guardian took up an odd position pre-referendum. Its editorial line became that, perhaps, voting isn’t that democratic. First there was David Mitchell (sensible shirt and neat beard, every inch the Guardianista caricature) arguing that Parliament should decide this issue, not us, because we are too stupid and underqualified. Then there was NatNug, always a source of prime neo-liberal insanity, declaring that “the mob” had too much influence, and that democracy should be about our “elite institutions” telling us what to do. Yes, seriously.
In keeping with this theme, a fresh column disparages the very idea of referenda:
After what we have experienced in the past month, we need political reform more than ever. But the verdict on referendums should be a ruthless one. Never again.
To back up his opinion he cites the European Council on Foreign Relations, a pan-European “think-tank” staffed by Blairites and funded by George Soros, who say that there are too many referenda and it isn’t fair.
No one expected this to happen, and they will go out of their way to make sure it never happens again.
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Late to this good article but just wanted to add this link. “Where Did Britain’s Racists Go?”
by Aidan O’Brien
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/07/03/where-did-britains-racists-go/
“It’s the economy stupid”!
A spiffing graphic Sir/Madam/non-binary entity. Who is that sailing up the Thames? Geldof?
“Who is that sailing up the Thames? Geldof?” You mean the big black scaly guy breathing fire? No, I think that is Boris. Or Cameron – it doesn’t matter anyway, they are both the same thing.
But what is that strange red thing on the road? It looks like a bus out of Star Trek. Then there is also that strange ghost-ship like a Man-of-War on the pavement in front of Westminster, not quite sure what that is. Probably some secretive prokect of the Rothschilds.
I live in Ieper (Ypres), Belgium. Ypres and neighborhood (socalled “Flanders Fields”) is the most British minded region in Belgium. But even here the atmosphere is changed. And I feel pity for my friends from the UK. I think it will have consequenses for the relationship between English and Welsh people with the people of continental Europe. How see people from continental Europe the Brexit ?
*) They’ve read and heard the xenophobe campaign of the Brexiteers against them. And they understood enough English to understand the unkind and even insulting things that were told about them. They’ve read too about the xenophobe incidents towards people of other EU countries. They conclude that they are not welcome in England and Wales.
*) They understood that brexit campaigners were telling lies to get their way.
*) They understood that the ruling party of the UK took hostage of a whole continent to solve an inner conflict in their party.
*) They’ve read and heard that a mother with 2 children was killed because she defended her “remain” conviction. On continental Europe referendums can sometimes be emotional too, but killing people for their conviction is “not done”. In e.g. Switzerland (not an EU member) with its tradition of direct democracy and referendums the discussions before a referendum are of a much higher, educated, and civilized level. In the UK there’s no referendum tradition like in other European countries.
So, on continental Europe lots of people think “good riddance if they leave”. Brexiteers make illusions if they think this will not have consequences when they visit continental Europe. Contacts with the local population became colder.
Some days ago I’ve heard a discussion in a chip shop in Ypres between a local dude and a British visitor. The British dude said the local dude “we love you, and over 8 years we’re back in the EU”. Time will tell.
http://www.nieuwsblad.be/cnt/dmf20160627_02358713
With respect – you read the version of the Brexit campaign your mainstream media wanted you to see. How much coverage did the Left perspective get? Did you get to hear George Galloway at all? or the Labour Leave campaign?
I would urge you to urge your friends in Belgium to look more into this, and to realise there is a wide swathe of opinion that wants to leave the EU – not Europe – and who have no xenophobia at all toward their fellow Europeans.
The EU isn’t Europe. The EU is simply the banking and trading arm of NATO.
Naw,the EU was a creation of the Rothschild banksters and the CIA.It is failing badly.Get over it.
Ian, what you are hearing is mainstream media nonsense. The whole Remain campaign was built on the claim that anyone who wanted to leave was some frothing xenophobe.
Now that same media who sold that rubbish are making up stories to fit the narrative. With ridiculous claims making headlines like some Polish child being threatened to leave or whatever else.
Funny you mention the Welsh. Did you have a premonition?
Beatle-listening, Vietnam-marching hippies were the vast minority then so don’t sell us that tired old cliche. It is the people who have suffered the effects of neoliberalism and brutal austerity for decades that voted to leave and who can blame them? The fact that they’ll suffer even more with this result is a moot point. You can blame whoever you want but we’ve had a gutsfull of the ever-widening gap between the wealthy elite and the rest of us!
You’re telling me that young people listening to the Beatles in the 60s were…a minority? I have to say I find that hard to believe.
It looks as if articles and headlines had already been created if things were headed towards Brexit.
Media muppets have worked themselves into a frenzy and as usual think that small world they inhabit, of talking heads who wouldn’t know what a day’s work is, tell us this is what we’re thinking too. And to jump up and down accordingly.
There are no real journalists left. Just chattering class pillocks who write up 3rd hand hearsay, lunch and check their twitter accounts on how many new followers they’ve got.
These fake liberals will bleat on about democracy all day long and how concerned they are for us plebs and what we think. Again they show their true colours and the disdain they have for anyone but their own clique.
Reblogged this on Radiation Free Lakeland and commented:
Maybe things aren’t quite what they seem on the twitter sphere. The Guardian is abusing half the population as old, thick and Europe hating. Meanwhile, Ironically, the result of the Guardian’s environment writer, George Monbiot’s nuclear cheerleading has been to line up the ducks for the biggest threat to Europe’s safety. Here in Cumbria untested, untried nuclear reactors are now, with no small thanks to George, being promoted as a done deal. They are due to go online before Hinkley. Where? On the beautiful flood plain of the river Ehen, slap bang next to the biggest pile of plutonium in the world at Sellafield. The Guardian’s foremost environment writer is trusted by so many ….and has done so much damage to the safety of Europe. On a personal note I voted Leave for the same reasons as Bob Crow and Tony Benn ….both of whom were opposed to nuclear. No matter what way people voted whether like me, they are “old and stupid” or hip and young, if we want to prove that we love our Fellow Europeans then campaigning to Stop Moorside “the biggest nuclear development in Europe” Is a very good start.
Economist Larry Elliot seems to be the last honest Guardianista: Brexit is a rejection of globalisation. I wonder how much longer he will last!
For those who are not yet fans of the Ancient Ship of Faf (formerly Fafblog):
The Toronto Globe and Mail had an editorial about the “horrible mistake” British voters have made, delivered in tones appropriate to scolding a really recalcitrant juvenile delinquent.
As for the generational divide, a slightly peculiar breakdown I have seen divides voters thusly:
18-24 (overwhelmingly, Remain)
25-49 (more Remain than Leave, but no absolute majority because of undecideds)
50-64 (more Leave than Remain, but no absolute majority because of undecideds)
65 plus (overwhelmingly Leave)
Do you notice anything strange about that breakdown? The first group is a 6 year cohort. The second group is a 24 year cohort. The third is a 14 year cohort. The last is open ended, of course.
I’m curious about the decision to make the second cohort so big. It makes it seem as though everyone under 50 in Britain is mostly Remain. More likely: 18 – 29 year olds who are young and naive are mostly Remain (but not overwhelmingly) while everyone over 30 (people with families and real jobs) are mostly Leave.
Good point about the weird cohorts. The data never analyze and interpret themselves.
“Do we demand a revote because the wrong people won? Is this how democracy works?”
Well, that’s definitely how it works in the EU, the Euro-peon Union! Brussels slogan: ‘You vote, we decide.’
Seriously though, all this reminds me just a bit of when the East Germans briefly rose up against the new DDR back in 1953. Bertolt Brecht–sounding very much like one of today’s Europhiles–was actually moved to write a poem asking, “Would it not be easier
in that case for the government to dissolve the people and elect another?”
If only the Guardianistas could dissolve the British public and elect another! That would solve all of their problems, wouldn’t it?
Part IV. Of the Kingdom of Darkness
Chap. xlvii. Of the Benefit that proceedeth from such Darkness
[21] …For from the time that the Bishop of Rome had gotten to be acknowledged for bishop universal, by pretence of succsession to St. Peter, their whole hierarchy (or kingdom of darkness) may be compared not unfitly to the kingdom of fairies (that is, to the old wives’ fables in England, concerning ghosts and spirits and the feats they play in the night). And if a man consider the original of this ecclesiastical dominion, he will easily perceive that the Papacy is no other than the ghost of the deceased Roman empire sitting crowned upon the grave thereof. For so did the Papacy start out of the ruins of that heathen power.
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan: with selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668. Ed. Edwin Curley. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994.
Oh, flew in from Liberia Beach D.O.A.
Got to a hospital bed last night
All the way this ebola bug was in my pee
Man I was a dreadful sight
I’m back in the E.U.S.S.R.
You don’t know how lucky you are… boy
Back in the EU, back in the EU,
Back in the E.U.S.S.R.
Those great debts really knock me out
They kick the West’s behind
Angela’s blubbery cellulite is hanging out
That EU troika is always on my, my, my mind
Take me to Carpathian Mountains way down South
Let me foreclose your daddy’s farm
All the way the bankers’ hands are reaching out
Come and grease your comrade’s palm
I’m back in the E.U.S.S.R.
You don’t know how lucky you are… boy
Back in the EU, back in the EU,
Back in the E.U.S.S.R.
Hilarious! I’m gonna steal that one. Hope you don’t mind.
Born gay, as gay as the wind blows
As gay as the grass grows
Born gay to follow your heart
Live gay and beauty surrounds you
The world still astounds you
Each time you look at a star
Stay gay, where no walls divide you
You’re gay as the roaring tide
So there’s no need to hide
Born gay, and life is worth living
But only worth living
’cause you’re born gay!
(Stay gay, where no walls divide you)
You’re gay as the roaring tide
So there’s no need to hide
Born gay, and life is worth living
But only worth living
’cause you’re born gay!
She was a girl from Birmingham
She just said Heil Hitler again
She was a goose stepping sieg heiling baby
She threw the jews out of the country
She was a NAZI who killed Jew babies
She threw Jews out of the country
She was an angel
She was a bloody saint
Bloody! I don’t want chosen parasites
Bloody! I don’t want chosen parasites
Reblogged this on TheFlippinTruth.
The Wrath of the Elite be upon you for daring to ask for more porridge !
Project Fear isn’t finished just yet. I’d lay odds that there will be a spill attempt on Jeremy Corbyn in the very near future too.
Ah, the Guardian! More brilliant work:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/06/news-agenda-set/
The ‘European ‘Council on Foreign Relations”?? Even the title tells you it is a Yank-controlled, Atlanticist, clone of the US original.
The old are just as likely as the young to be greedy, thick and ignorant. However, they know what it is like to be young, and old, and in between. Most never change their opinions throughout life, however. Cultivating inter-generational hatred is another useful ‘Divide and Rule’ tactic, to add to class antagonisms, identity politics and the traditional Party loyalties. And the young are the chosen dupes in classic US-controlled ‘Colour Revolutions’, easily organised and manipulated by experts like Otpor and its successor CANVAS, and numerous NGOs replete with ‘useful idiots’ like Jo Cox. The sheer contempt, even rage, at the serfs not voting according to expectations, and refusing to follow orders from their superiors tells you that the parasite elites in the Western corporate thugocracy and their MSM propagandists are frightened. Their dream world of ever growing inequality and elite wealth is cracking at the seams. Expect them to get VERY nasty, indeed, from here on out. I’d say first get rid of Trump (if he indeed represents a threat to the Atlanticist Reich)and Corbyn, then launch an attack on Syria and/or Iran to create the requisite hysteria of an existential crisis for ‘Western Moral Values’, and drive the rabble back into line. Russia is just too dangerous, even for these lunatics.
“Cultivating inter-generational hatred is another useful ‘Divide and Rule’ tactic, to add to class antagonisms, identity politics and the traditional Party loyalties.”
Yup. They do the same in the US. Every time the Wall Street Journal (or whoever) argues in favor of privatizing Social Security, they always try and stir up the millenials by railing against ‘greedy seniors’ who are–in a classic case of projection–said to be ‘waging generational warfare’ against the youngsters by ‘sucking on the Federal teat’. It’s shameful, and fortunately, it hasn’t been terribly successful to date. Whatever their shortcomings may be, it seems that most millenials are least clever enough to realize that no fool ever got rich by impoverishing his own parents or grandparents! Let’s hope it stays that way.
Sixty two, that’s old. Check
Born and brought up on a council estate (first one ever built in the city in 1919). Check
Miners, railway workers, buffer girls in the family. Check.
Forty four years mainly in skilled manual trade. Check.
Served in the forces. Check.
Voted remain. Oh shit. Now look what I’ve gone and done. I’ve spoiled the simplistic caricature of the young sprog who went to the trouble of writing this.
No problem with calling out the complete bollocks coming from the Guardian, the elites and the out of touch Blair cult.
The problem is this site and its recent output just does not get it. Of course there is left wing case for Brexit. Of course the EU edifice is at present a steaming pile of neo fascist crap which is a million miles away from the ideals of what it should be. But you know what, the left wing case for Brexit suffers from one simple fundemental flaw – it’s like the Parliamentary road to socialism. The real world context, you know, the where we actually are now as compared to where some people clearly wish we were, is that there is absolutely no prospect of anything other than extreme right wing neo feudalism dominating in England.
This is because like all young simplistic vanguardists you have this rose tinted view of the working class as a single homogenous block. There are many many good,noble, patient, intelligent, rationale, kind and humane people and there are also many many obnoxious, ignorant, anti rationale, emotional, bigoted, xenophobic ignorant selfish individuals and groups. You have no room for the idea of giving people the right to be arseholes. Because that’s part of the human condition regardless of where one is in a hierarchy.
As for the EU and it’s current power structures and trajectory, once upon a time in this country we had a power structure and set of institutions where the majority of the population could not afford to be ill. We did more than just moan about it or decide to have nothing to do with it. People got off their backsides and created the NHS. They changed the structures and processes. They took control. They did not take the easy and cowardly option of running away. They rolled up their sleeves and sweated to change what existed to serve the majority.
Farage said yesterday in a few words nothing fundemental different to the plethora of articles on this subject coming from this site. He said “decent” people had voted to leave, implicitly dismissing the 16 million, many of whom are working class like myself who voted to remain, to fight to turn things around, not to run away, as not decent people by definition. We don’t count in Farage’s vision and we clearly don’t feature in the vision of those running this site at present. Nice company you are keeping.
Against their will and best interests Sixteen million people, many of whom are also working class, are about to lose their EU citizenship rights and the protections which go with those rights. Protections in fields like employment, consumer and environmental protection, to study and work cross Europe. Areas dependent upon EU funding are going to lose that funding. Are you lot so high on the crack cocaine of your own ego’s that you seriously believe that a left wing Government is going to sweep into power any time soon in the current climate and context? That Boris Johnson, Gove, IDS, Theresa May,Farage et Al are going to replace existing EU protective legislation in these fields with something better? That the establishment in little England is going to redistribute savings into the region’s and the NHS? What we have is as Naomi Klien outlines, the chaos of the shock doctrine where right wing year zero pol pots like Gove are going to rip everything up that the working class built after the war, what my family helped to build, and replace it with a neo feudal dystopia.
Different from the Guardian my arse. Get a grip and grow up.
Well said my friend – I’m gutted too!
62 & romantic – that’s good.
To believe you can ‘change’ the EU reich – that’s an illusion.
You had created the NHS – all of the EU years, the eurocrats have created nothing similar anywhere in europe. At the moment, they are busy destroying public health care – which has never been as good as the NHS – in all “crisis-hit” countries.
“Another EU is possible” is bollocks (pardon my french) you hear from the likes of Tsipras – who has totally betrayed the will of the greek people in last July’s referendum.
Greetings from Athens
Your ‘fighting to turn things round’ has been a smashing success, hasn’t it. Have you not noticed that the precious NHS is no more, destroyed bit by bit by Tories and Blairites alike, and about to be inhumanely euthanised by the TTIP corporate take-over? I sympathise with your predicament, but Leave has begun the great unraveling of the corporate fascist neo-feudal project, which is better than remaining in an irreformable system dreaming of ‘turning things round’.
“The real world context, you know, the where we actually are now as compared to where some people clearly wish we were, is that there is absolutely no prospect of anything other than extreme right wing neo feudalism dominating in England.”
And?
There has to be more than that statement to make an argument for staying in the right wing neo feudal EU.
It’s less difficult to overthrow the status quo in one country than it is to overthrow a supranational behemoth like the EU. So your incomplete argument is still born.
My condolences.
The size of an entitity does not equal its stability. Otherwise, the USSR would still be around.
No idea of what that means in context.
“Areas dependent upon EU funding are going to lose that funding. ”
Where do you think the EU gets pounds sterling to make those payments?
A small portion from the UK. The rest of it from the EU. Anyway, you forget that it’s an investment. The UK has a potential to benifit in the long run through EU funding. We also give grants to new industires, but they can be quite small compared to the EU (which has a bigger sourse of funding).
Pounds Sterling come from the UK government. Period.
“Farage said yesterday in a few words nothing fundemental different to the plethora of articles on this subject coming from this site. He said “decent” people had voted to leave, implicitly dismissing the 16 million, many of whom are working class like myself who voted to remain, to fight to turn things around, not to run away, as not decent people by definition.”
That’s merely your personal implication, although of course you are within your rights to cling to it. For my part, I’m certain that Nigel Farage didn’t imply that people voting for remain were indecent.
With the views of the Guardian’s hacks and the Remain poster children, there’s no need for us to resort to imagination in order to figure out what they think of the voters on the Leave side. They’ve spelt it out in stark adjectives such as stupid, ignorant, xenophobic, racist, inward-looking and gullible.
I think Nigel was merely reminding them that the vast majority of Leave voters are decent too, probably at least as decent as Polly Toynbee when she’s typing her diatribes or Bob Geldof when he’s showing off his mottled molars and his receding gums while snarling and giving his opponents the two-fingered salute.
I have to say, Dave, I don’t understand the combativeness of your tone – you seem to have gone out of your way to take offense. You talk in generalities about this blog, as if you know anything about any of the people who work on it, and you are flatly wrong on every single point. Once your base assumptions are wildly incorrect, what do you think the chances are that blindly stumble on to the correct interpretation of reality? Not good, Dave. Not good.
Sprog I may be, but I didn’t make any generalisations about who people were OR why they voted, I merely defended the 17.4 million Leave voters who are ritually having their characters assassinated in the media. It is not fair, and the only response is to put the counter case. I didn’t say anything to imply that Remain voters were being morally incorrect, either.
In fact, if you read carefully, I said i don’t even BELIEVE the demographics published by YouGov, i think they have been fudged to make a facile case for dismissing the vote.
When Farage said “decent” people voted out, he was protecting his campaign and his voters from the many, many, many insults that fly at them from every establishment mouthpiece. He never said anything about other people being indecent – again, you seem to prone to take offense.
Workers rights are not enshrined in only EU law, they are protected by British law, in fact British law has greater rights – for example British law grants the right to 52 weeks of maternity leave, where as the EU grants only 14. That’s the only one I know off the top of my head, but there are others. The idea that the EU, which enshrines free market capitalism as the central doctrine of Europe, is somehow a haven of workers rights is absurd. It’s not a socialist union, it is a corporate one. If we don’t like what Gove/Johnson do? We vote them out. No such luxury exists for EU bureaucrats.
I don’t have a “rose tinted” view of the working class, at all…but, if I did, I’m sure a few more inexplicably hostile responses from you will clear it up.
I am quite familiar with the idea that “people can be arseholes” – there was no need for a demonstration.
“… As for the EU and it’s current power structures and trajectory, once upon a time in this country we had a power structure and set of institutions where the majority of the population could not afford to be ill. We did more than just moan about it or decide to have nothing to do with it. People got off their backsides and created the NHS. They changed the structures and processes. They took control. They did not take the easy and cowardly option of running away. They rolled up their sleeves and sweated to change what existed to serve the majority …”
You are right, Dave, the British did indeed create the NHS. It was created (I believe) while Winston Churchill was Prime Minister in the 1950s.
There was no European Union then.
So you don’t think that those who voted to leave the EU aren’t aware of the work ahead to regain Britain’s prosperity? I’m sure many if not most know the road ahead will be difficult, not least because there are those (like you) who are convinced that Britain cannot survive away from the EU and who will resist change, be nuisances or even try to sabotage any moves towards political and economic independence.
BTW, EU funding does not come from the European Central Bank or EU institutions – it comes from the taxpayers of the EU member nations according to the size of the respective nations’ economies.
The NHS was created in 1945, by the newly elected Labour government. Clem Attlee was PM. Aneurin Bevan was Minister of health. Back when Labour stood for something.
I think Churchill would have slit his throat before doing anything that egalitarian 🙂
Actually by the mid-1940s, all the major political parties in Britain (Conservatives, British Labour, Liberal Democrats) were agreed on introducing a National Health Service.
This is what Churchill said in March 1944:
“The discoveries of healing science must be the inheritance of all. That is clear. Disease must be attacked, whether it occurs in the poorest or the richest man or woman simply on the ground that it is the enemy; and it must be attacked just in the same way as the fire brigade will give its full assistance to the humblest cottage as readily as to the most important mansion. Our policy is to create a national health service in order to ensure that everybody in the country, irrespective of means, age, sex, or occupation, shall have equal opportunities to benefit from the best and most up-to-date medical and allied services available.”
http://civicpolicy.com/our-policy-is-to-create-a-national-health-service/
It was during Churchill’s tenure as Prime Minister that a survey of existing social insurance schemes was undertaken and recommendations culminating in the Beveridge Report that became the basis for the NHS were made.
True, Churchill did not support all the recommendations of the Beveridge Report but in essence he supported the concept of compulsory national insurance. The thing to remember about Churchill was that he craved popularity and power more than he stuck to ideology so he was prepared to bend to the public will to some extent.
I gather Churchill wasn’t much loved by his colleagues, because he changed party allegiance a few times. Apparently some referred to him as ‘shithouse’, a play on his initials W.C.
Relax, Dave. No actual Brexit has taken place yet, and it may never happen at all. The EU is pretty famous for disregarding or reversing the results of any referendum it loses. Giving the sort of propaganda coming out of the MSM–according to whom all the Brexiteers now supposedly regret their vote, or how too many of ‘the wrong people’ turned out to vote–we now strongly suspect that we’re being primed and conditioned to accept a reversal of the referendum’s outcome, possibly by Parliament. We’ll see…
well said dave.
Hehehe
Amen to all this, and, hehe, true.
I for the first time, enjoys reading the whining wall, aka our league of prestitutes and whorespondents, in our ever increasing stink pile of manure, is drowning them selfs this days.
Even ordinary people notises this, because its glearingly obvious, and a lot of people thrue out europa have had an rude awakening, and consolidated their belifes on the EuroCrauts rule, witch basicly best is described as an long row of massive eCONomic cluster f….. and Greece is one magificent example of IMFing an Country to the stone age, and take the inventory as well.
They have solved nothing, just made everything wurse.
I cant Imagine why this ignorant and totally incompetent bunsh of creeps gets away with their nonsense about Economy.
I think the Brits got out in time, to be honest, and you have your pound, still and that one is more vitale to do something about that anything else, fishery is more about setting borders and doing the right thing for the British fishing ind.
The quality will be better, for the europeans, it will be mutch better.
I dont eat that shit they give us in our shops and I am Norwegian.
Its been to China and back, hehe, where the f…. is the CarboNazis.
And I dont eat, fishfarm products, well, not entrily true, but as Chiken, I eat as litlle as possible, but the sea is ppacked with fish that I think is better than Salmon and Trouts.
Smoke Cod, try it, infact smoke everything, and I use to when I can, fish some cod, chop it up and boil it in sea water, not lett the meet be older than 4 h, thats the limit of fresh fish, the decay comes rapid after that.
Because then the consitence is like chiken meet, and only then do you taste the true flavor of an Cod.
And a beer to flush it down.
Im still smiling, I look like an idiot, hehe.
Cheers.
peace
Mmm… Kippers 🙂