Should we stay or should we go?

Please vote to remain.

I admit that neither side of the Brexit campaign has showered themselves in glory. Farage, meanwhile, has been consistently abominable and is the tip of very dark, divisive and dangerous and dangerous minority. The future is by its very nature difficult to predict. The number of “facts” about the impact of staying or going is indeed small, disputable and debatable.

But, why would we take the risk of leaving?

We are doing pretty well as we are. We already punch above our weight on the global stage at least diplomatically, militarily, if not in the world of football (well done Wales!). And, our economy is doing better than most.

We are still British and Northern Irish while being European. Our pork pies and Stilton cheeses are protected. As is Sterling. And English remains the dominant language around the world, at least in terms of business. And, he Union Flag still flies proud over Westminster, Holyrood, the Synedd, and Stormont.

What is so great about a fictitious world outside of Europe that is worth the infamous “leap into the dark” or killing an MP for? Why would the UK be so much better run by a government headed by a self-serving Boris or his sidekick, Gove?

Who would you trust the most, those backing the Remain campaign including former British Prime Ministers Gordon Brown, Tony Blair and John Major, the Labour Party, the Lib Dems, and the SNP? While you might not like their politics, you have to admit that it is an impressive body of support from our political leaders, past and present, and a fairly broad political church.

And…

Organisations who exist to fight for jobs, workers rights, and a better society want us to remain, including the TUC, our six largest trades unions, and the National Farmers Union. Workers unite. Farmers unite.

And…

The vast majority of “serious” economists and independent financial institutions such as the Bank of England and multiple international businesses including Ford Motor Company, Toyota UK, GKN, Diagio and Rolls Royce. Nissan is actually suing the Vote Leave campaign who, incorrectly, claimed the company favoured Brexit.

And…

The people who live and breathe the much beleaguered NHS also want us to stay, such as the Chief Executive of NHS England, and the Royal College of Midwives.

And…

Most of the “credible” world leaders also want the UK to be part of the EU, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Angela Merkel.

Against this persuasive body of opinion are rallied such “great” leaders as Boris Johnson, Michael Gove (remember what he did to the Education system in this country?), Neil Hamilton and Nigel Farage, all being egged on by the BNP, UKIP, and the Sun newspaper! Oh, and Donald Trump…..Oh and, James Dyson, who moved his vacuum cleaner factory to Malaysia….

Given the overwhelming body of political, and economical support for remaining in Europe, why on Earth is anyone considering that the world would be better if we left? Please don’t be fooled by the rhetoric and lies of those spouting leave…..

I absolutely agree that we shouldn’t be governed by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels. That we should decide our own laws and how we spend our own money. But, according to the House of Commons Library Report, only 7% of our laws were generated in Brussels. They don’t govern us, or set our laws. The UK does manage its own budget and sets its own taxes and determines how it spends the revenue it raises, including how much to invest in health, education, policing, the military, and border control, etc…

And it is a two-way street. The UK has been able to influence many European laws that have brought great advantage to our fellow European citizens living in other countries. And laws that might protect us from pollution, global warming and terrorism, etc. are certainly less impactful if they only ever get implemented in one tiny island off the north west of the Continent.

Yes, we are a net contributor to the EU. We do pay in more than what we get back. But so what? It’s a good thing to help countries that are poorer than ours, isn’t it? Some would argue that one of the reasons why Europe has enjoyed such a long period of relative peace since WW2 is because of the raising of standards, economic stability, and the spread of democracy across Europe, driven in part by the EU.

And you also need to look closely at the numbers that are being banded around. Yes, we do pay £350 million a week to the EU. But, after our rebate and money spent in the UK by the EU, this reduces to a net UK contribution of just £100 million per week, which is just 0.3% (yes, note the decimal point) of UK GDP, or, about 36 British pence per person per day. I’d like to continue to pay that to avoid another European war and secure UK jobs, especially as spending that same 36 pence to improve UK public services would, frankly, amount to pissing in the wind! Put that on the side of your battle bus Boris…

Leavers claim we will continue to be able to access the single market in Europe if we leave, but, Germany’s finance minister has made it quite clear this won’t be the case. We may well face tariffs on our exports to the EU.

And then there are the migrants. Turks and terrorists of the wrong religious persuasion wading ashore at Dover and living their lives contrary to our Great British culture, changing life in Little England and the colour of this green and sceptred isle forever.

Bollocks.

I am more afraid of the people who are afraid of immigrants than the immigrants themselves. More afraid of people who can stand in front of a poster of desperate refugees fleeing a civil war in Syria with the banner “Breaking Point”.

Forget the broad history of beneficial immigration to this country over the centuries, even since joining the EU the vast majority of immigration to the UK has been from outside of the EU. Now it is true that this balance has swung somewhat the other way in recent years but even in 2015, some 270,000 EU citizens immigrated to the UK, and 85,000 returned to the EU, giving a net contribution of 185,000 people. In a country of 64.6 million souls. Their addition is hardly going to see us slide into the sea even if they all jump up and down at the same time in the same corner of Kent!

And, most importantly, (I say again most importantly) these migrants to the UK pay more in taxes than the cost of the public services they use, to the tune of a positive contribution of £20 billion a year (versus the £5.2 billion a year net contribution that the UK pays to the EU!). Most are of working age and most work, bringing in important tax revenues at a time when our native population is becoming more and more elderly with the obvious additional strain on pensions and the health service. These immigrants, economic or otherwise, help to pay for our schools, our hospitals, and they build them and work in them. If there are not enough school places or you have to wait too long for a doctor’s appointment then blame Westminster not Brussels, and certainly not the migrants!  Incidentally, that is exactly why Australia has a points based immigration system – to attract a younger, working population who can make a positive contribution to help fund services to an ageing population.

And, remember there are 2 million Brits living in Spain, France and other parts of Europe. We call them ex-pats but, in reality they are the EU’s immigrants from the UK. Most are retired and many have holiday homes – drawing on the public services. And, there are 30,000 British nationals claiming unemployment and other welfare benefits in other EU countries. It’s a two-way street…

For sure, if we Brexit, our economy will suffer, at least in the short term. The pound will devalue – indeed it already has as the polls begin to show that the threat (and I chose that word deliberately) of Brexit is a possibility has had a negative impact on the Pond and the Stock Market. “Great” some may say as the basic laws of economics mean that a devalued Pound means the goods that we manufacture will be cheaper and we will be able to export more.

Bollocks!

What do we make here any more? Thatcher killed off all of most of our manufacturing decades ago and Osborne seems intent on finishing the job. We are largely a service industry and a financial services industry. We make skinny lattes and burgers. Those things we still do still manufacture and export such as oil and foreign brand cars for foreign-owned companies, are reliant upon integrated European-wide manufacturing process and distribution systems and are likely to be hit by tariffs of a scale that will offset any exchange rate benefit. And your holidays in the Euro zone will become more expensive. And a falling currency normally leads to inflation, which the Bank of England usually guards against by raising interest rates – so, your mortgage rates will go up! We will all be worse off…

The question is are you willing to risk all or any of the above happening?

Nicholas Soames MP, grandson of Winston Churchill is a prominent Remainer. He has been criticised for not backing Brexit, with many claiming that Churchill would be turning in his grave.

Would he?

Churchill, addressing the Congress of Europe in 1948 said: “A high and a solemn responsibility rests upon us here … If we allow ourselves to be rent and disordered by pettiness and small disputes, if we fail in clarity of view or courage in action, a priceless occasion may be cast away for ever. But if we all pull together and pool the luck and the comradeship – and we shall need all the comradeship and not a little luck … then all the little children who are now growing up in this tormented world may find themselves not the victors nor the vanquished in the fleeting triumphs of one country over another in the bloody turmoil of … war, but the heirs of all the treasures of the past and the masters of all the science, the abundance and the glories of the future.”

That’s the spirit of Churchill. That’s the spirit of Great Britain. That’s the spirit of Europe.

You can keep my 36 pence a day. It’s a price very much worth paying.

Please vote to remain.

A world without social media….

It has been a strange week. The final week with my current employer – last week was my leaving do and the ritual handing over of my laptop and security badge as I have been on leave this week.

In the middle of this week, for some reason, my current employer disabled my email account. In many ways this was a blessing, but in others, felt like a parting with an old friend. I expect that my iPhone will die tomorrow – a final farewell.

I am not sure how I will cope with the prospect of being unconnected until I collect my new security badge, phone and laptop on Monday. Even if only for a day. Hopefully my new employer will furnish me with new technology but it is likely to involve a strange new world of French keyboards, and a French telephone number, and who knows what kind of phone….

Imagine a world without connectivity. Without social media. No email, texting, WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Skype. What would become of Middle Man then? Without his blog? To paraphrase the seminal work of the philosopher, George Berkeley – if Middle Man blogs in an unconnected world, who will hear his voice?

And this is all happening at a time when I have another new badge. A badge of honour, earned this week in the Twittersphere. Someone blocked me. And it is a badge I wear with pride. A badge which, in importance, stands head and shoulders above any of my 36 Tripadvisor badges….

I assume they blocked me because they did not like my politics. Or, because they did not have the wit nor wisdom to defend their own.

I had been driven to Twitter to chastise Boris Johnson, @MayorofLondon, for his banal and frankly racist criticism of Barak Obama after the latter had waded into the Brexit debate on behalf of the stay campaign.

I merely pointed out that Obama was not the only non-EU politician to offer an opinion and that, as Americans had died in large numbers in two European Wars, that America had earned the right to express an opinion on the pros and cons of membership of the European Union – an institution, which, while flawed and in need of reform, had helped to keep the Continent relatively peaceful for the last seventy years.

And I said all if that in less than 140 characters. 🙂

Boris did not respond. Clearly I had shamed him into silence. If only….

But, one of his followers cum acolytes waded into the debate by stating that FDR (Roosevelt) had intended to let the UK fall to the Nazis and advised me to check my history – always a red rag to this bull of an Oxford Modern History graduate who specialised in British Foreign and Domestic Policy 1935 to 1939…….

She blocked my account after I referenced certain similarities between the current geopolitical situation with that immediately before the outbreak of World War Two – mass immigration (of Syrians and others displaced from war in the Middle East and Northern Africa, rather than Jews); an aggressive ideology based on righteous superiority and hatred (that of ISIS rather than Nazism); and, of belligerent and conflicting superpowers grabbing land and strategic assets at the expense of weaker neighbours (Putin’s Russia rather than Stalin’s; China instead of Germany), etc., etc.

Again, in less than 140 characters….

My nemesis did not retort. She merely blocked me. And no doubt turned to that greater wit and wisdom of that fine list of intellectual heavyweights pushing the Leave Campaign – the likes of Boris and Gove, Farage and George Galloway, Rupert Murdoch and Katie Hopkins…..and Putin.

Nuff said?

Now, I wonder what Ken Livingstone has been up to?

It’s Time for Change!

Things need to change. No I don’t mean the nature of politics and the political nature of our country. But they do. Bring on proportional representation. Bring on a new leader of New Labour. Bring on a revitalised Liberal Democratic Party. And, bring on the total demise of UKIP. And, bring it on quickly before the Conservatives bring on the type of radical, right-wing change that drives us straight back to the 1980s when it was us against them and everyman for himself.

But, at least with Ed Balls (result!), George Galloway (result!), Vince Cable (shame) and Nigel Farage (result!) all now out of work, I am really looking forward to an excellent series of Celebrity Big Brother this year. And, your local pantomime will have no difficulty filling the role of the baddy this Christmas…..

But, I didn’t mean politics. I meant personal

I am pushing fifty. Many of my friends are, or soon will be, on the wrong side of that particular milestone in life (not that I like to rub it in…..much) but it will be my turn all too soon. And, I need to consider my weight, my fitness, and my health.

My Facebook news feed is full of friends who are running 10ks, marathons, and iron man competitions and/or promoting healthy nutrition, cleansing regimes and angelic lifestyles. Well, good for them. I am impressed by their efforts and heroics but they are not my motivation.

No, my motivation is personal. It is an ever-expanding waistline and an increasing reluctance to look at the bathroom scales in a morning. It seems that I have not inherited my dad’s slim gene. But, I have inherited an old man’s knees and a taste for the finer things in life.

And so, C and I have decided to do something about it. Well, actually, C decided to do something about it and I agreed to go along. We have decided to try the new Couch to 10k app. I think that getting fit using my iPhone appeals to the X-Box ninja in me…. We will soon be seen (as a blur) circuiting the block at first walking, then running, then walking a little less and running a little more until we are able to run non-stop for a full 10k.

So, the new to-be fitness regime involved getting the right clothes to wear. Yesterday, we set off to John Lewis to acquire running gear for yours truly. We failed at the first hurdle – JL’s selection of running shoes was pitiful, especially as I was adamant that the new foray into self harm wasn’t going to cost me an arm and a leg…..literally, figuratively, or financially. Any shoes that were within budget failed C’s “you’re not going out in those test”. My cunning plan had been foiled….

I soon gave up on “tracksuit bottoms” as they no longer exist. At least, not in the format that they did the last time I was doing any serious exercise – circa 1990. The new running tights made me look like Mr Invincible – all shoulders and chest with a pair of out-of-proportion skinny legs propping me up. And that was only when I was sucking in my stomach, which I suspect I will not be able to do for a full 10k. And the new training trousers made me look as if I was in my pyjamas and ready for bed. So, I selected a pair of shorts, deciding that my knees will just have to be exposed to the fresh air.

And, I also selected a not-too garish/not-too dull top, albeit that was far from an easy task either. Some were so tight they made me look like a stack of spare tyres wearing a gimp suit. Others were so baggy that they needed to be pegged out. But, eventually, I got sorted.

However, the whole process was exhausting and so I felt the urge for a pizza and the sofa, which is kind of the reason I had got into this position in the first place. But, while ensconced on said sofa I did at least manage to surf the net and acquire a pair of running shoes. So, that’s the first step of Couch to 10k completed. Result! Getting off the sofa might be a little more tricky……and painful.

PS. I would just like to take this opportunity to apologise to my knees.

Go Girls!

Today’s TV, radio, and social media are full of political pundits and self-servers such as Katie Hopkins picking over the bones of last night’s UK Leadership Debate.

Many had described the format as the worst episode of Fifteen to One, the Weakest Link, or, Take Me Out…..as if there could ever be a good, of better episode of Take Me Out. Not Paddy McGuinness’ finest moment.

While the moderator, Julie Etchingham, did exert control in an Anne Robinsonesque manner, for me the Debate took on an otherworldly feel.

Rather than a TV quiz show, I was minded of the fantasy of the Fellowship of the Ring in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. In this story, the disparate and diverse people of Middle-earth came together in an uneasy coalition of men, elves, dwarves, wizards and hobbits, to save the world from evil and destruction.

For me Nick Clegg was Legolas, trying to bring ancient, long-lived elvish wisdom and compromise to the short-termism and hot-headedness of the men. This is a political world in which the dwarves and hobbits are unfortunately too few in number or lacking in stature to rule in their own right, but are an integral part of the alliance.

It remains to be seen who will emerge as Frodo, the diminutive hero who ultimately saves the world and allows the King to return to his rightful place of enlightened, absolute power.

But, I suspect it will not be Leanne Wood of Plaid Cymru, who is mostly Welsh. She is as Welsh as a Welsh thing, stopping just short of standing on stage next to an inflatable leek and rallying the audience with a cry of Oggy, Oggy, Oggy.

I despair that it might yet be Farage, who offered nothing but fear of HIV infected health tourists and the fact that the Communists were coming. I think he would promise a lot of sweat and tears – his sweat and our tears.

And, while I would hope that Clegg could be the voice of reason and compromise in a Labour-led coalition this coming May, I fear that Nicola Sturgeon, might be Grima Wormtongue whispering in Moribund’s ear, which will not bode well for this United Kingdom.

All in all I would say that the winners of the Debate were Nicola Sturgeon and Natalie Bennett, who spoke well and honestly, answered the questions, and showed that they had a sense of how normal people in this country live. Girl power might be on the up.

Unfortunately, both Cameron and Moribund seem stuck in their fantasy world of Middle-earth.

Turn to camera and make puppy-dog eyes……

The sorry state of British politics…..

Does anyone else feel disenfranchised at the moment? I am currently at a total loss as to who to vote for at the looming General Election. The only positive thing about the current set of UK political leaders (I can feel my Scottish friends wincing as they read those words) is the positive impact they have had on the careers of political cartoonists. Surely, this is the political generation which must bring about the revival of Spitting Image!

I used to vote Labour, until I became disgruntled with Tony Blair’s false smile and illegal wars, and with Gordon Brown –  a Scot with all good humour and generosity removed from his personality (which makes him a Yorkshireman doesn’t it?), and the compassion of Attila the Hun.

I then turned to the Liberal Democrats because their politics appear to be based upon grown-up logic, sound economics (thank God for Vince Cable), social compassion, and the best two Prime Ministers we never had – Paddy Ashdown and Menzies (Ming) Campbell. I still think that the Lib Dems have performed well in the Coalition Government, acting as a moral anchor and tempering the worst instincts and policies of the Spawn of Thatcher. Unfortunately, however, the Lib Dems seem to have become un-electable, being tarnished by association with the Tories, Clegg’s all too similar hairstyle to that of David Cameron, and that viral YouTube video….It is a shame, because I would very much like to see more of his wife, Miriam Gonzalez Durantez!

I can’t vote Conservative. At least not unless they oust Cameron and swing way, way to the left. Which seems unlikely. The only swinging that the Tories seem to be involved in these days is likely to involve pampas grass and a gimp suit. William Hague is the only decent Conservative and they have already done for him. Cameron’s likely successors are quite terrifying – Theresa May, most famous for her “fuck you” shoes and having bigger balls than the other Bullingdon lapdogs, Osborne and Boris. Do we really want Boris Johnson in charge of the nuclear button and launching a bendy-bus invasion of Syria?

On the face of it I should have quite a bit in common with the Prime Minister, David Cameron. We are the same age, and we were both went to Oxford university. Indeed, we were both there at the same time although, as an obvious slow developer, he graduated a year later than me. But there the similarity ends. I was not a member of the Oxford Union, and I hadn’t even heard of the Bullingdon Club. And even if I had, I think I would still have chosen to frequent the Queen’s College Beer Cellar sweaty bops on a Friday night instead.

Unlike Mr Cameron, my Great, Great, Great, Great, Great Grandfather was not King William IV (by way of his mistress Dorothea Jordan). It is a fact that Cameron is indeed from a long line of right royal bastards. Educated at Eton and Oxford, he is a career politician having just had one job outside of politics, working as a Director of Corporate Affairs at Carlton Communications for six years, a job he got on the back of a recommendation from his mother-in-law, Lady Astor. He is a fifth cousin twice removed of HRM Queen Elizabeth II. He is hardly a man of the people. And, I feel he is likely to fall victim of a coup following the debacle of Clacton. I suspect that a similar catastrophe in Rochester and Strood could do for him.

But what are my choices? Where else can I cast my vote?

At least Ed Miliband, forty four and the Labour Leader (I use that word in its loosest context), son of Jewish immigrants, went to ordinary schools before earning his place at Oxford University. But he is also a career politician, who knifed his older, brighter, more personable, better brother, David Miliband to secure his current, and hopefully brief, role as Leader (still loose) of the Opposition.

Red Ed cannot be Prime Minister. He has the charisma of Dudley. And, a 1970s Dudley at that. He may have been an excellent President of his Junior Common Room. I might even vote for him as leader of my local council. But, a Statesman he is not. He cannot be Prime Minister of this great nation. Bring back David. Take Ed down. Take Balls down. Let someone such as Chuka Umunna or Tristram Hunt step up and save the Party. We need a new New Labour.

The only good thing about Nigel Farage and UKIP is that they are not the BNP. Not yet. But, UKIP does seem to be fast becoming the home for those who spout the ideology of “I’m not a racist, but….”; people who hanker after the glory days of the great British Empire, defined as the period before the Empire Windrush set sail from Jamaica in 1948. Farage, pint in hand,  and his Monster Raving Looney followers are set on parting the waves of the English Channel and leading us on an exodus out of Europe to the Promised Land……and oblivion.

It is a sad, sad reflection on the state of our politics today when I find myself listening to a George Galloway speech and wondering…….

Time Travel…..

Well, I am home.

I have survived another visit to Manila, where every hotel, mall and office block is guarded by men with big guns and dogs sniffing for explosives. We had earthquake drills and our attention was drawn to the handy checklist next to every telephone in the office, pointing out what to do if someone phones in with a bomb threat. The Philippines is a country where Her Majesty’s Foreign Office warns that the risks of crime, kidnap and terrorism are high. Strangely they did not warn me about the food, which is what nearly got me in the end (see here).

I survived despite much sleep deprivation, a result of jet-lag, stress, and poisoning. I survived despite flying through airspace where planes simply disappear. I survived in spite of a growing regional tension which saw China threatening Japan and Vietnam over disputed oil-rich territories, and a military coup in Thailand, seemingly the result of Manchester City winning the English Premier League (tenuous I know but the link is there if you look for it….).

But, in three weeks away, little seems to have changed. People are still desperately trying to sell their Rolf Harris paintings. MH370 is still lost without trace. The Nigerian school girls are still being held captive by Boko Haram. The Nigerian military remains inept. Assad is still using poison gas in Syria. Putin is still threatening to invade Ukraine, deterred only by a concern that he will make Prince Charles look wise. And, unfortunately, Maslow, our furball baby, remains very poorly.

I missed the British summer. At least I won’t have to clean the BBQ.

I landed on Friday lunchtime, feasted on pork pie and Lancashire hot pot,  and slept most of the weekend only to awake in a newly fascist and racist Europe run by a bearded Austrian lady while the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz is threatening to win the UK general election next year….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I must still be asleep and having a bad dream….

It’s Windy Out There…

David Silvester, a UKIP Councillor – and, therefore, a mad, racist, bigot, and homophobic member of CAMRA – blamed the recent bad weather in the UK on the Government’s policy on the legalisation of gay marriage.

Well, he may well be a fool but this weather is certainly Biblical in its proportions. We have had the rain. We have had the floods. We have had the wind. We have had the cold. We have had Charlotte Hawkins (@SkyCharlotte) spending her mornings standing up to the top of her Hunters in some Thames Valley flood water interviewing stock brokers who have rescued their over-pampered Chihuahuas and politicians in high-visibility jackets and hard hats. At least Nigel Farage (who was once the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz) had the good sense to do his Somerset Levels interviews from the inside of country pub.

Now, I’m all for a bit of a windswept Hawkins in a morning but this is going on and on and on…and on. We have had the wettest January in over 100 years. It has been Stormaggedon.

I pity the poor people in the South West who have been flooded since Christmas. I am sorry for the thousands of homes that are still without electricity. And at least the politicians have begun to take things seriously now that the Thames Barrier has been deployed.

But yesterday it began to get personal. The North West of England was hit by hurricane force winds and torrential rain. The roof of Crewe Station (my home from home) blew off, bringing down power lines and a halt to the West Coast railway. Restaurants and pubs in Sandbach were closed due to falling masonry, and trees were falling in the country lanes around and about faster than at a lumberjack competition.

It has been cold. Our old house (1855) is draughty and chilly at the best of times but it has been proper cold. The cat has camped out under the radiator on the landing to keep warm and we can’t wait until he deigns to join us in the lounge so we can warm our hands on him.

And, the pyjamas have been deployed.

Enough of this weather already. Stay safe out there everyone – there is more to come at the weekend….