Coming down
Tuesday, June 28, 2016
The result of the referendum is something I had hoped for for decades. I am convinced it will prove to be good for Britain but my celebration is tinged with sadness. The childish reaction of the losing side shocks me. Their abuse of fellow citizens who honestly tried to make the right decision is unfathomable. We are all racists, bigots and cretins apparently. We are old (a crime of which they will one day be guilty if they are lucky). We are white — as most people in these islands still are. And?
As a nation we took this issue seriously. More people voted than ever before. Millions registered to vote for the first time, probably because this would the only chance they would have in their lives to make a difference. All three national political parties plus the SNP in Scotland and Plaid Cymru in Wales were pro-EU. So voting in a General Election was never going to affect this issue. How democratic was that? And yet my social media feeds and real world conversations are filled with screaming "friends" denouncing Cameron for giving us a chance to state our view. Given my international career, I also have German, French and Polish "friends" denouncing me and threatening revenge on my nation.
We English speakers really need to do something with the word "friend". It is applied far too freely. I have never sought to limit my friendships to people who agree with me. But I am seriously considering whether people who don't respect my opinion can really be worthy of the name.
Can the people raging at us for taking our chance not understand how frustrating it has been for us at election after election to listen to our plump, smug élites making EU-sceptic noises to compete for what has proved to be more than half of the available votes only then to support the EU? Even joining a party didn't help. The membership of the Conservative Party has been anti EU from 1972 to the present day. That didn't stop the party taking us in. It didn't stop it keeping us in. Candidates lied about being Eurosceptic to be selected and then went on to campaign for Remain. How democratic was that? How honest?
Even now, when the "secret people" have finally spoken, the political class are perverting whatever democratic principles they claim to have to find ways to override us. Politics does not attract the best of humanity. It takes a certain kind of crazy to believe, when most of us find it hard enough to live our own lives well and take care of our own families, that you can usefully decide how others should live. It takes a certain kind of nasty to want to be part of the machine that takes most of the nation's earnings by force. But even I did not grasp, in all my libertarian cynicism, just how depraved these vipers are. They have lost their chance to follow Lords Kinnock and Mandelson into the millionaire-making institutions of Brussels and their un-righteous wrath is impressive.
Worst of all is the evidence the referendum has provided of the moral degradation of many of our young people. I suppose the logical corollary of the identity politics they have been raised on by their cultural Marxist teachers is that if certain minority victim groups are morally superior, the majority of people must be despicable. The hateful scorn I have heard expressed for the old, for example, is quite horrifying. Do they not know they will age? Do they not know that they will grow out of some of their current opinions; that life experience will change them? Or do they really believe they are fully formed right now, perfect and incapable of further development?
And to listen to so called "progressives", who are supposed to be all about the workers, express their patrician contempt for the plebs who voted "wrongly" is perturbing. "Why should my future be decided by Mr & Mrs Bigot of Sunderland?" a friend of a Facebook friend asked yesterday. "Why not?" I thought, "given that (a) they are no bigots compared to you in your vile snobbery and (b) you claim the right to decide *their* future even though you are in a minority!"
I wish David Cameron had kept his promises to remain as PM and implement the peoples decision and to serve the Article 50 notice immediately. He has prolonged the agony of uncertainty in a fit of petulance. We can only begin to pull together as a nation when the new normality is implemented. But I wonder if we can ever be comfortable together again now that the majority of us truly understand just how much those who think themselves our betters (and prove themselves wrong by thinking so) despise us.
Posted with Blogsy
Have faith. To my surprise and delight the Yeoman spirit is still with us. The ghost of John Hampden still walks. That we voted so decisively against the orders of the elites, despite all their dishonourable abuse of the process, misappropriation of state funds, misemployment of state employees, procuring foreign potentates to make false threats and making false threats of punishment budgets etc was nothing short of mutiny. They stand at the end of our plank, knowing that our wrath at long being cheated, abused and derided is real. Their parasitical careers depend on compliance now.
Posted by: Tom | Wednesday, July 06, 2016 at 10:58 AM
The people have risen from all directions against the condescension and sense of entitlement of the elites. This isn't a left/right thing. Few things are. Conservatives have not been listened to by the "Conservative" Party and Socialists have not been listened to by the "Labour" Party. And, not that it matters now but there's nothing "Liberal" or "Democratic" about the Liberal Democrats. The higher echelons of government, the civil service, the state-funded media and the bureaucracy have become a world unto themselves. They have looked down in scorn on the "ignorant masses" of both left and right who believe in independence, responsibility, self-betterment and education.
I despaired of living to see them get theirs, but I have never been so optimistic as today. There are risks certainly. If the European elites overplay their hand their less robust democracies will turn sour and give them the likes of Le Pen. The risk of fascism on the Continent is real; not because our Continental neighbours are nasty but because their elites are more elitist and more inclined to push their luck. Leave the masses with no-one listening to them and they may well turn to demagogues in desperation. And that will be the fault of the CLEVER people, the educated-to-the-point-of-insanity Enarques.
Posted by: Tom | Wednesday, July 06, 2016 at 09:31 AM
If they were more industrious and more courageous they would be a real problem. It is only the weakness of the resistance that has allowed them to cause any damage. It is the feebleness of business leaders (such as those I encountered in my own professional life) who are afraid to be called "racist", "homophobe", "islamophobe" or "sexist" even though they are none of those things that has allowed them to warp society with minimal effort on their lazy part. There are lots of straws in the wind at present suggesting that – while ordinary, decent human beings are no more inclined than ever to step into the political sewer with these rats – they will no longer be silenced by mere name-calling. A more robust political culture would end the culture of fear – aka political correctness – and allow regular people to be represented again.
Posted by: Tom | Wednesday, July 06, 2016 at 09:23 AM
There are certainly a good many in the public sector. Working in an industrial private sector company during the mid 1980's I encountered one particular specimen, a card carrying member of the SWP no less, who lasted a month on the real shop floor in the company of real working men before leaving.
All subsequent encounters with others of that ilk have confirmed my prejudice that social activists don't like productive work and will go to great lengths to avoid it.
Posted by: Bill Sticker | Tuesday, July 05, 2016 at 03:17 PM
The latest remainiac wheeze I've noticed is a HoC free vote - that sounds distinctly possible and the folk behind remain will bust a gut to get there and the BBC will turn the volume up to 11.
What happens then? - I personally shudder to think. The folk in the bubble probably don't think... and will be surprised (shocked even) when they get a Búsáhaldabyltingin or worse....
In the meantime just look who's offering themselves as an expert !!!
Posted by: tomo | Friday, July 01, 2016 at 12:42 AM
You are right of course. They set up victims to justify the accretion of power ostensibly to correct injustice but actually to stand under a waterfall of tax money.
Posted by: Tom | Wednesday, June 29, 2016 at 08:35 PM
I think they would be unwise.
Posted by: Tom | Wednesday, June 29, 2016 at 07:02 PM
I think another example of this is the fiasco going on over in the Labour Party.
The resigning MPs are not really complaining about Mr Corbyn's leadership during the referendum campaign. That's just a convenient smoke screen/false flag.
No, what they have woken up to is the fact that if there is a snap general election. With the current mood amongst the "proles" their supposed natural base/voting fodder. They may find themselves de-selected or just voted out. Which in turn would threaten their place at the Westminster trough and expenses all-you-can-get buffet.
However, you do have to wonder if there is a conspiracy amongst our factional political elites to shaft us once again, only this time over the referendum result by kicking it down the road with all their party politicking shenanigans?
Posted by: barnacle bill | Wednesday, June 29, 2016 at 08:34 AM
Tom, 'progressives' have never represented the working man. They only want the working man or woman's support to obtain political power to do what they want. Now the very people the progs courted have had it thrown it back in their faces. Deservedly so. Of course the Remainders are upset. They've been thwarted, and like all thwarted children are throwing Teddy out of the nursery.
The trick, as with all spoiled brats is to let them keep going until they're out of breath and you can say "Feel better now? No? Tough."
Posted by: Bill Sticker | Wednesday, June 29, 2016 at 08:29 AM
We shall see. I still hope they will calm down and see how childish their behaviour really is. All we can do is set an example of being polite and sensible.
Posted by: Tom | Tuesday, June 28, 2016 at 08:27 PM
I am not so sure. There are straws in the wind around the Western world that conventional warmed-over Marxist statist elitist thought is breaking down. Some of the new views are misguided but if the political class does not engage rather than just sneer, there will be change. It's a dangerous time and could go wrong. But there's also hope.
Posted by: Tom | Tuesday, June 28, 2016 at 05:49 PM
The referendum has open a can of worms in more ways than we could have imagined.
My first shock was the Sunday before the vote when I attended church with my mother, who I was visiting for her birthday, to hear the visiting vicar openly tell the congregation to vote Remain. He used all the falsehoods that were being peddled by the Remain camp.
It was only afterwards when I told my mother of my unease that she informed me he had been at the last school she had taught in before retiring. That he was regarded then as a "Progressive" C of E vicar.
Since the result whilst I have been lucky not to experience any personal abuse I have been amazed at the tantrums people are throwing. Showing a side of their character I would not have thought existed.
One of the biggest "toys-out-of-the-pram" fiascos being that going on in the Labour Party or, should I say the former Labour Party, with it's nuLabor fifth columnists finally showing themselves.
I was going to say the only thing I could think of that would re-unite the country would be another world war. However, judging by the way some people are behaving, I think even that would fail.
So I think for now and the immediate future we are going to have to live with this devide.
Posted by: barnacle bill | Tuesday, June 28, 2016 at 01:22 PM
We knew certain sections of our society rotten and corrupt especially the political classes and the vested interests that demand legalised theft of the peoples money to further their nefarious causes and ideologies. We knew now we know it without any shadow of a doubt. Apart from the best possible result this referendum has exposed their rottenness and corruption as we watched and listened to their lies, deceit and flagrant scaremongering. Will they be punished or even chastened by this exposure? I believe they will not. They will carry on in the same old way and we will be daft enough to let them.
Posted by: Antisthenes | Tuesday, June 28, 2016 at 11:42 AM