Bonsoir old thing, cheerio! chin chin!

Two score and seven years ago our fathers dragged us into a Continent, conceived in Error, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created European...

Three years and seven months after a majority voted to leave the EU the UK is now, at 11 pm January 31st 2020,  leaving that damned institution. There will be muted celebrations I expect, this is the way things are done here not with a bang but a whimper. Still, a Brexit Party house just a few doors down is putting out the flags in a show of Union rags to put the Mall in London to shame. Now I wouldn't want you to confuse me with those sentiments. I wouldn't have that Butcher's Apron on my property. I wanted to leave the EU but I'm no mad British Bulldog patriot, je ne suis pas un rosbif! I do not feel particularly British or English (I've never, ever felt European, I don't know what it means to feel such a thing, it's an invented identity that has no history or meaning) I'm just a Hartlepool lad a long way from home ... but I digress, anyway I had no choice in the matter, ma and pa just left me here to sing my song. No. I just want this country to be responsible for its own mistakes and its own successes like any other independent state. Make our own laws, pay our own taxes, spend our taxes as we see fit, trade freely with whoever will trade with us, kick out the bastards in our Parliament every now and then and make our government humble and sore afraid of the people. Not too much to ask, I think, just some basic independence.

It might be thought appropriate here to say that I wish the EU well without us ... well no, sod 'em, if you'll pardon my French... They and their vocal friends in this country have done their best to delay, thwart and obstruct the will of the majority. They are dangerously antidemocratic. This is absolutely unforgivable and will be their downfall. They still think they have some right not to have their noses rubbed in their defeat. I sincerely hope the sensitive souls are suffering. I look to the rise of other successful Leave parties across the states that remain trapped in the humourless and historic absurdity that is the European Union. This will no doubt happen but vita summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam ... 

“The lips of the tyrants are trembling and pale, 

In dismay they are dreading the shock, 

Of the millions who, bold in the truth of their cause, 

Are as strong as the adamant rock!”

The weekend in black and white is here.

Are you ready for Brexit?

 J. Heebink is a Dutch transport firm with bases in Manchester and MIlton Keynes. Their bright orange lorries are a common sight on Castle Street as they head to and from the port. They've been in business for decades and with a bit of  common sense from all parties, will keep on trucking for many decades to come.

The theme for this month is orange. 

At the end of this month, if certain folk are to be believed and the UK does finally leave the protection racket known as the European Union, the sky will fall in, this country will run out of medicines, food, fuel, folk will be put out of work and we will collapse into a state of complete paralysis with lorries unable to transport goods to and from the EU. This will only happen if the EU chooses to make it happen, let us be clear, it will be their choice to mess with trade; someone, somewhere will have to choose to block or delay the transport of vital medicines...  thus showing what inhuman bastards they have been all along.
It's poppycock (a fine Dutch word), of course, but that is how these scaremongering idiots work. I've given up on the political machinations going on in Parliament, plots here, plots there, plots against plots, court cases to reverse the PM's actions, plots to change the PM, rumours of plots, denials of rumours and you think it and it is happening (possibly, who knows? who cares any longer?) ... all keep the BBC (the biased broadcasting conspiracy) salivating. This parliament is simply not working, the government cannot govern, the supposedly neutral Speaker is in cahoots and conspiring with the Opposition, ... The people cannot have an election because the Opposition is rightly scared of the result and won't let them, so much for democracy. It all boils to one thing: are they, a few hundred MPs, really going to overturn the votes of 17.4 million people and block Brexit completely? Do they think they can get away with it? Well the answer to that is, suck it and see: Oh the Great Reckoning there will be!
Meanwhile the Government is putting out adverts with the question: "Are you ready for Brexit?" to which my answer (and I guess a lot of others) is "Just get a bloody move on ..."

"Your patience and cooperation is appreciated."

"This is your decision. The government will implement what you decide."

                                                                                        Her Majesty's Government

Leather, I read, is the appropriate gift for a three year anniversary and a good strong leather tawsing would sort out our dozy elected representatives fine and good. Three years of prevarication, horse trading, Parliamentary shenanigans that I've never seen the like of before and still somehow, to no-one's real surprise, the UK is still in the EU. The record from the illiberal, antidemocratic Remainers is stuck, "Leaving without a deal" would be a catastrophe, the world would stop spinning and the sky fall in ...but of course there is no deal that they could accept not even the watered garbage offered by Mrs May. The record of our so-called "Brexit means Brexit" government is one of supine surrender to the stubborn mules of the EU. So the delay saw the farce of this country participating in the EU Parliamentary elections where the Bexit Party, a mere couple of months in the making, got twice as many votes as the next two parties put together. (Somehow this was seen as a tremendous victory for the Liberal Democrats who, it goes without saying, are neither liberal nor democratic.) 

Now two Prime Ministers have been consumed by Brexit and a third is about to be chosen in an arcane process involving only members of the Conservative and Unionist Party. This appears to be accompanied by  merry and bloody hatchet jobs in all the media on the leading contender's private life, make stuff up, report scurrilous lies, you name it, it's open season on Boris Johnson (I could almost feel sorry for the overweight old Etonian sybarite, almost...) He just so happens to 'promise' to leave the EU, come what may, on October 31; ah promises, promises ...

The other guy, Jeremy Hunt, or Mrs May in trousers, campaigned to remain in the EU and now mealy mouths vaguely about leaving, hints at a second referendum (by all means bring it on!) and has a surname that is often the subject of Freudian slips ...

Three years ago today the people of this country, participating in the largest democratic exercise in the history of this country, voted by a clear majority to leave the EU. The government said, in a pamphlet delivered to every house in the land, "This is your decision. The government will implement what you decide." So, as the old song says, "Why are we waiting? Why, why, oh why?".


A Pedant's PS shouldn't that be "Your patience and cooperation are appreciated." ?

One year later and ... what?

Anniversaries come round so quickly these days, I must be getting old. Can it be a year since we strolled down to the polling station and made a mess of the world by voting to leave the EU? With the shenanigans in Brussels and Downing Street, the departure of one prime Minister, the humiliation of a second,  and the decline of the seemingly invincible Tory hegemony into a rudderless collection of loons and fools kept in office if at all by the even more bizarre (if that were possible) Democratic Unionist Party the year since the utterly unnecessary Brexit vote has been entertaining if completely unproductive with regards to leaving the EU. The UK Government hasn't got a clue what it wants to do (if it has it hasn't told anyone) or how to go about getting it and neither does it have the power at home to come to a decision on hard or soft Brexit or anything in between really. We shall see if the Queen's Speech gets past the Commons; if not then who knows what will happen. Another election or a minority Labour Government led by a man who was described as unelectable by the vast majority of his own MPs only last year. Add to all this events such as terrorist attacks and the appalling loss of life in a fire in a London tower block and it's clearly going to be a long hot summer for whoever is in charge which is as it should be.

What lurks behind the Brexit mask?

So the day after the so called Scotland Parliament demands (I like that: a jumped county council making demands of the UK government) it has a second independence referendum (no chance Jimmy! You blew that the first time round ) and the same day as effective direct rule begins in Northern Ireland the Prime Minister writes a Dear John letter to Mr Tusk saying so long and thanks for all the fishing quotas... So yes at long last the very welcome two year divorce proceedings with the EU begin with all the necessary pleasantries and crocodile tears ... Expect the unexpected is my best guess for the near future.

The mask I found in a joke shop some four or more years ago I thought it might come in useful for scaring little children; if you don't like it I have another ...