Heartbreak Hotel

Sorry to break it to you but The Eagles were wrong; quite often you don't check out any time you want but you do leave. Life is like a stop at a hotel; we check in a birth, for a short stay, checking out at death. During our stay if we're lucky we will have a few good times in amongst the pain and the heartbreak.

I've been heartbroken three times in my life. The first was as a naive ten year old, coming home with the results of my eleven plus in a small brown envelope. That small brown envelope contained a life sentence. I had failed that ridiculous and cruel exam. I was written off, consigned to the scrap heap and at such a young age as well. Exams are cruel. Exams are evil. I never recovered from that rejection. Heartbreak is like that. It leaves a permanent scar.

And my most recent heartbreak?

Well it happened just over a week ago. The referendum on the UK's EU membership. How upset I was about it even took me by surprise. It felt like a relationship break up or bereavement. I suppose it is a relationship break up. One that I don't want to happen even though I know it will. It's fair to say that, reiterating my previous post, I was devastated. How could so many people be so wrong?

So much ignorance. So much pain.

I used to dismiss or ridicule people when they stated that they were passionate about this or that. What I didn't realise was that I am passionate about the EU. I want to remain a European. And, if it's within my power, one way or another, I will achieve that goal.

I try to be a good person. I try to see other people's point of view if I am able, and if it doesn't go against fundamental human rights. But last week's result had me so incensed that I produced the picture above. I many ways it goes against much of what I stand for, but I make no apologies for publishing it. I needed to; otherwise I would have probably combusted.

Contrary to what some might think I don't believe the reasons why people voted to leave the EU are that simplistic. There are any number of misguided reason s from those on the right or the so called left as to why they voted to leave, although I've yet to hear a reason that actually makes sense to me. Having said that, I do believe that the majority who voted to leave did so for racist reasons. It makes me sick in my stomach. Racists are ignorant. Pig-shit ignorant. It's something that cannot be justified on any level. It's abhorrent to any civilised person. England needs to be ashamed of itself. What a hateful place this has become.

Stranded

A few years ago someone I know asked me if I considered myself English or British. Without hesitation I answered neither, I'm European I said. And that's how I have felt for a long time and still feel now.

As you can imagine I feel angry, sad and generally bemused by the incredulity of the referendum result. I've calmed down now so I won't be quite as insulting as I have been in recent days on social media. In fact I had to initiate a self-imposed ban on social media to stop myself from being mega insulting to so many people. I've come to terms now with the result and feel that those who voted for out will mostly be the ones that suffer because of it and because of that don't feel quite so bad.

The only good thing to come out of this is the possible breakup of the United Kingdom. As much as I find nationalism distasteful I do wish the Scots the best of luck with their future in Europe. I have no doubt that this time they will gain their independence and remain in Europe. I also think that an independent Scotland could prosper because of England's idiotic decision to leave the EU. Industry will flock to north of the border because of what the English plebs have decided.

My biggest concern is for the poor people of Northern Ireland. They have been shat on big time and result of this referendum could well reignite the violence that was so successfully subdued in the 90s. I hope they can find a way through but fear that unless a united Ireland is achieved somehow shit will happen again. If only the loyalists could see that England doesn't give a bugger about them.

This referendum has brought out the nastiest of the nasty in some people, particularly white obese racists from Essex and Lincolnshire, but not exclusively.

I shall continue to be blunt and try to shock the idiots back to sort of decency but I doubt my efforts will have much effect.

As much as I like the writing of George Orwell I fear Aldous Huxley has won out. Time will tell.

Thomson clan dress tartan - the future?

The Blue Meanies are all scoundrels

As I’m sure you can imagine I have no truck with nationalists or patriots. I’m with Oscar on that one. The concept of a British identity is as impossible to define as a sense of Britishness is laughable. And, don’t get me started on the Bulldog-spirit or the retro-racist-speak from circa 1940. It’s all phoney. It has nothing to do with national identity or interests and everything to do with oppression.

It can never be said enough but I am no lover of capitalism. I don’t like it but accept that until a majority want it changed that’s the way it is going to be. Having said that if I had a choice between the partially-regulated (and one may say highly successful) capitalism of mainland Europe and the rape and pillage model that the Tories love, I know which one I’d plump for!

David Cameron is an even bigger tosser than I ever thought possible for effectively giving away any influence that we might have had in Europe. This is particularly foolish in my opinion because I’m convinced that the €uro will bounce back, aided by the new disciplines that will be put in place. This will put the €uro-zone countries in an even stronger position within the EU. The €uro-zone will be firmly in the EU driving seat. Cameron’s made us the fat smelly spotty lad that no one in the playground wants to play with. We are the Shit-Leg* of Europe

The company I work for is a manufacturer. Yes we are that rare commodity, a company that does engineering/manufacturing in the UK! Guess where the majority of our customers are? In the €uro-zone of course! If our economy is to survive and bounce back it’ll be companies like ours that will need to thrive. If a country doesn’t make things then it is lost. Even Switzerland has a manufacturing industry! The way the Tories are acting UK plc is rapidly going to become an offshore banking business, and nothing else; a place where only the rich can afford live permanently; a place where the non-rich servant-proles are bused in on a daily/weekly/monthly basis to do the menial tasks and are then sent ‘home’ again. If the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish have got any sense they’ll break away from the United Kingdom. For us English that aren’t millionaires I guess we’ll be forced to live in Calais and beyond. I suppose it could be worse, couldn’t it?

*a reference to a poor persecuted lad at my school all those years ago

The Promised Land

I watched a documentary about Dunkirk at the weekend. The programme was built around interviews with soldiers who were there at the time, interspersed with film footage from the time. Having thankfully never experienced it, I can’t hope to imagine what the horrors of war are really like, but the way these chaps were describing their experiences left me in no doubt just how grotesque war is. Several old soldiers said things that I’m sure will stick in my mind, but one thing in particular seemed very relevant to events now. He was describing how, nearing Dunkirk, he was injured by enemy fire. He went on to say that despite his injuries he behaved like a cornered animal; he wasn’t sure how but he scrambled and fought his way to the coast driven by the desire to survive. Desperate people will do desperate things to survive.

“One man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist” is a familiar saying. As a pacifist I could never condone or excuse acts of war or terror, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t want to try and understand why these things happen. Why individuals or states turn to fighting rather than politics to solve their differences. One thing is for sure; the more oppressed either financially, physically or politically a group of people are, the more likely they are to react against that oppression. No matter how subservient those oppressed appear on the surface there will be elements that will see their only means of freeing themselves from the clutches of their despotic masters to be violent means. When you have nothing to lose life ceases to be sacred. Rarely do you get revolution or terrorism when the populace are relatively affluent. Shit on people and eventually they will throw some of that shit back. The higher up the Maslow scale that people are the less prone to violence they will be. How can Israel expect the people of Gaza and their legitimately elected Hamas government to reject violence when they are denied the basics?

I continue to hope that pretty soon the ‘western world’ will come to recognise and desire to do something about the plight of the Palestinians. The incidents over the last week or so have indeed been condemned in some western quarters but it is still not enough. Whilst Israel continues to have the unquestionable support of the USA it will continue with its oppression of the Palestinian people.

A perpetual frustration for me are those societies who think of themselves as civilised yet continue to support pariah states, like Israel. If the majority of these countries upped their moral game the world would become a fairer and slightly more just place. The trouble is that all countries put trade above everything else save the occasional bit of national political self-interest. Just imagine the international condemnation, general hoo-ha and sabre rattling that would have taken place had it been Iran rather than Israel acting in such an illegal manner over the Gaza blockade.

What is needed is for a power block, the EU is the obvious example, to start taking a unilaterally more ethical stance on its trade and relations with other countries. It wouldn’t even have to be an instant change. The EU could declare what it considered to be a set of minimum standards that it expected from its trading partners. If those standards were not met then sanctions could be applied to countries and their supporters who continue to operate in an unethical way. These sanctions could range from mere classification as a country with unacceptable behaviour, to higher import duties, to the banning of trade on certain commodities right through to complete embargoes. There would of course be retaliation which would really test the mettle of many governments but if the EU could show that there is an alternative way of doing things others would follow suit. None of this would be done without diplomatic initiatives running in parallel, and the EU would have to ensure that it practised what it preached, but this course of action if performed right could change the world quite significantly. Once started any action like this would then snowball. There will be critics that will prophesy world recession at such action because of tit-for-tat economic reprisals. They will have a point which is why any action would need to be explained and phase in. This is no reason not to do it. The EU could lead the way in ethical trading and in establishing a new world order. An order built on peaceful, sustainable and equitable behaviour. Fanciful?

Today’s ‘pie in the sky’ is tomorrow’s ‘normality’.

Wotsa Grecian urn?

#greece

I abhor violence. There is no excuse for what happened to those poor people who lost their lives due to the fires started during the protests in Athens yesterday. That doesn’t mean I have no sympathy for those protesting, because I do sympathise. I sympathise greatly. They have every right to be angry, but it does need to remain peaceful.

There is true injustice in the world when rich people can plunge the world into financial disarray and not be penalised financially for it. It is only ever the little people that suffer, and the poorer you are the more you suffer. Is it right that low paid government workers should suffer and have to foot the bill for the financial mess that the rich and powerful have created? No of course it isn’t. It can never be right, proper or fair. If a country like Greece, Portugal or even the UK is in a financial crisis, a financial crisis that has been caused by banks, financial institutions and the wealthy that ultimately control them then they are the ones that should pay first. Taxation needs to be applied to those that can afford to pay, namely the wealthiest strata in society, the top five, ten or twenty per cent depending on how much cash is needed. Start at the top and make sure that you don’t work all the way down.

I don’t doubt that there are some very rich people in Greece. They are the ones that should cough up first, and not the low paid. It’s about time we in Europe adopted some financial justice.