I do not know how many of you managed to see this interview on Sky News.
Fortunately, Mike here captured it and shared it on twitter. It encapsulates the stupidity and the downright gullibility of the English public.
“Fishing was the poster boy of the Brexit campaign – and the majority of fishermen, myself included, voted to leave the EU.” pic.twitter.com/239yuPXTPg
— Mike Galsworthy (@mikegalsworthy) August 29, 2021
I do not know how many times since Brexit we have begun to hear this same bleat. ‘this is not the Brexit we voted for.’ If pressed to describe what Brexit they think they voted for the chances are they can’t tell you.
Nobody better exposes these fools than James O Brien on LBC. When James’ callers are prompted to tell us of a single reason for voting for Brexit we never get any sensible answers.’ To scrap all those laws, they made for us in Brussels is a particular favourite. This particular refrain of the thicko Brexiteer gives hilarious answers. When asked to elucidate on which specific laws they are referring to it is usually met with lots of oohs and ahhs and ‘you know, lots of laws James, you don’t need me telling you. Well actually, I do, name one law you want repealed. More oohhing and aahhs but never a single law is highlighted.
It highlights that they didn’t vote on facts they voted on emotion. As a result of these lies and right-wing propaganda we are now out of the EU and in one hell of a mess. The UK public were once again played by a very manipulative evil English Establishment.
Lots of us tried to warn the public that they were being led into a dangerous cul-de-sac that would have no turning circle. At that time and since we were accused of scaremongering and of being unpatriotic being defeatists. England/Britain had won two World wars and Johnny Foreigner has always hated us, especially since 1966 when Engurlund won the World Cup. Remainers are traitors apparently!
The narrative is Europeans were ripping off England’s tax payers much in the same way as the Scots, Welsh and Irish do every year. Everyone is out to get England, and Brexit was England’s chance to fight back. £350,000,000 a week for the NHS. Fishermen would take back control of our fishing grounds. No more Common Fisheries Policy. The British fishermen would be able tell those Johnny Foreigners how much fish, if any they could catch and what price they would have to pay. This would be for our fishermen, a golden era. There would be jobs for everyone and once more England would be the top nation in the world. All our ails were because of the EU, and immigrants, not successive neoliberal economic corrupt right-wing English governments!
Now as the reality hits with empty supermarket shelves and fishing boats tied up excuses need to be made and scapegoats need to be found. Covid, retiring HGV drivers, are to blame for food shortages, not the actual act of Brexit. The deal that was oven-ready and used to win the 2019 UK General Election for the Tories is now being trashed, by the Tories. That the Tories negotiated and hailed this Treaty has now been forgotten. They are now blaming the EU for agreeing to the terms that the British Government demanded. The Irish protocol that London conceived and signed up to is proving to be the disaster some of us warned of as far back as 2018. That too has to be blamed on the EU.
We tried telling the farmers as well as the fishermen but they too were sucked in by the MSM propaganda. The hatred of anyone not English has long been a problem. Every misfortune that hits the English public is blamed on foreigners. It was because too many immigrants from Caribbean, India and Pakistan that your schools couldn’t get enough investment or your library closed or the local hospital shut. There weren’t enough, houses, doctors, nurses, road sweepers, school books, jobs because the drain on the public purse by these non white foreigners. All the woes of the nation were blamed on others, never the greed of the elite. The lowest pensions in the developed world, the lowest unemployment, sickness benefits are because of the bad brown people and all those Romanian gypsies and Polish plumbers and nasty Estonians who have been taking your jobs and tax funds. Brexit and taking back control of our borders was trailed as the silver bullet to all England’s problems.
Never forget on top of all this the Scots, Welsh and Irish were making life bad for the average Englishman because they take money from England too.
Meanwhile, the reality is this, the press barons and those wanting to avoid paying taxes are the cause of all the ills! The real culprits are the greedy, the elite they are the reason for the ills of everyone and they are literally laughing all the way to the Panamanian banks! Even Betty Windsor was found to have money in Panama, while bleating for state hand outs to refurbish her Big Council House in the Mall. Privatise the Profits, Socialise the losses. That is the mantra of the 1%. Corporate Socialism for them, not the masses.
When England doesn’t win the WC, Euros or Rugby World Cup or top the Olympic medal table it is because the Scots, Welsh, Irish won’t support Mother England. The foreign referees caused them to lose because they are not as good as English referees and everyone is out to get England because they are world leading at everything. Sadly, the English people are so programmed they fall for it every time. The real problem is that England has not managed to get over its imperial past. The elite is still acting as if the British Empire still exists in all its pomp and glory. The non elite are delighted to believe this myth to as a way to make themselves feel better about their shitty circumstances. It is better to believe they live better lives than any other nation in the world than to face reality. It also suits the establishment that do not want the people aspiring to the lives of the Scandinavians or Germans or Estonians or any nation that puts their people ahead of ideology of the right. That might result in them having to pay their fair share of taxes.
The ones that win every time are the 1%. While they are hiding their ill gotten gains offshore you are having your Universal Benefit cut by £20 a week. As they are stealing £37 BILLION for a track and trace system that never worked nurse’s, porters, cleaners, firemen are being told there is no money to give them a decent pay settlement. As the elite become wealthier the poor become poorer. One of the greatest tricks the rich and elite ever pulled off has been in blaming the poor themselves for their poverty. As Nelson Mandela said,
Poverty is not an accident. Like slavery and apartheid, it is man-made and can be removed by the actions of human beings.”
Sadly in the UK a handful of press batons control the message, and a bunch of politicians use it as cover to enrich themselves and their friends. The press barons and the elite get to keep their wealth offshore and in return the media lie to the masses.
England/UK has always been a class driven society. Those at the top tell those in the middle that the ones at the bottom are the problem, not the ones at the top that are stealing from us all every day. Until that changes then nothing else will change.
Let us have a referendum on taxes. Let us have a referendum on the monarchy and reforming the House of Lords. I expect the outcomes would not be what the elites and media keep telling us. They don’t ask the people because they fear the answer. It is why they oppose a Scottish independence plebiscite too.
The politicians keep telling us the rich will leave UK if we tax them, great I say don’t let the door hit your arse on the way out. The Rich are the parasites, not the poor and dispossessed. It is the rich that avoid taxes, not the poor. It is the rich that don’t spend their income in the local economy. It is not the rich that fill the food banks or the homeless shelters. It is usually those with the least that have the most compassion. Being poor is not the stigma, being rich is the stigma. Even their middle-class Christian religion tells them that, “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
The rich and rulers love to be seen in church, its the Christianity bit they don’t like. Hypocrisy, greed and elitism are the problems, not the poor, not the non-whites, not the non-English, the dispossessed or homeless. Greed and elitism are the problem. The time is fast approaching when the people will have to rise up and say, Enough!
What an excellent summary of problems since Brexit – and the list is not by any manner complete.
And yes what a gullible stupid electorate in knuckle dragging England. Their have unleashed the worst example of a country committing self mutilation. The fishermen may be the upset but truly they are the example of the greedy selfish moron that is the British Brexiteer.
What we are seeing now, the empty shops, the redundant fishermen, the shortages of key materials, the key labour shortages are the Brexit dividend. A dividend a mythical as the big yellow bus that was going to return weekly with hundreds of millions of cash for the NHS.
And on the international stage, the world has just watched Britain’s military rout from Kabul. A rout even more spectacular than Britain’s rout from Singapore or the rout from Suez. A busted flush of a country that thinks of itself as a great world power and which was was only around twelve months ago belligerently crowing about Britain’s ability to project lethal force.
Ah Roddy, should we really care if the average English pensioner lies in abject poverty, cannot get adequate health care from a failing NHS and all in a country with empty shelves and idle workers. We should start caring for ourselves, get Scotland on its feet, integrated and trading with Europe and let the Britishers sink in their own Britannic filth.
Good summary, and then you think of both votes SNP!!
Re my earlier post and the reference to the big yellow bus mythically to bring £350 million a week to the NHS.
Sorry for saying that Boris’s bus was a big yellow one because it wasn’t yellow, but red. Must have got mixed up with someone else we know who went round Scotland with a yellow bus.
Same modus operandi, similar bullshit lies. And can anyone guess who it was that had the big yellow bus. Well birds of a feather…..you know the rest.
“The rich and rulers love to be seen in church.” How true. But why? In many Highland churches there was a special area reserved for the land-owner and his family. Sometimes it was even raised above the rest of the congregation Those employed on the estate were expected to attend, though in actual fact they would be there anyway as the people were naturally religious. The factor, the minister and the teacher (all male!) met up from time to time for a chat and the odd dram. So there you have how it was worked. Land-owner + factor + minister + teacher (in that order) controlling the working population.
“It’s the Christianity bit they don’t like”. You’re right, Roddy. Had they been Christians the work and the rewards would have been equally distributed.
When you have a product you cannot sell to the EU – wake up and ask why you were not warned!
When you have rules enforced that didn’t apply when you were a member state – try to think why no one seen that coming.
When EU citizens return home creating critical gaps in your infrastructure – ask why this was not highlighted prior to the vote!
When you rush to put Brexit progress ahead of the Good Friday deal and Peace in Ireland – do you not have to question the judgement of Brexiteers?
The reality of course is that Brexit was;
a) profit for the few Brexit donors.
b) profit for currency speculators.
c) protecting the Tory Party from desertions to the Brexi Party.
d) good old fashioned “English Nationalism and Bigotry”
What an excellent essay. Would that every household could be forced to read this. Surely one of your best ever, Roddy. More power to your elbow. I have emailed the link to this to all I know. I would ask others to do the same
Thank you Harry I appreciate that and your kind words.
Too many folk in England suffer from a serious detatchment from reality largely due to a severe lack of knowledge of their own history and this sees no sign of changing anytime soon. Whether it’s the Empire, Brexit or GERS, too often the widely held views are not based on any reality. Taking the Empire as one example, Britain became wealthy during the early years of the industrial revolution by taking advantage of it’s military strength and using that to appropriate wealth from many countries around the world, most recently stated as amounting to £45 trillion from India alone over almost 200 years. I haven’t seen any figures for all the other countries that had their wealth taken from them in various ways, but the point is that Britain’s wealth and the ‘we ruled the world’ pride is based on Britain having been susidised by other nations wealth.
This started to change after WW2 as countries gained their independence and it’s no surprise that without this appropriated wealth, Britain started to seriously decline economically. Of course one of the ironies of this ‘glorious UK past’ is that the wealth didn’t get much further than the 1% (‘elite’), with unbelievable slums existed throughout Britain well into the 20th century. Yet so many people relate to this privilaged and glorious past as if most people benefited from it rather than were simply part of the exploitation that took place in Britain for most people and for most of the Empire years. England, even now largely has not come to terms with it’s position in the world and continues to be widely delusional and/or ignorant of it’s past, yet still looks to a past that didn’t exist for their feelings of identity. Too often this also applies to those who move from England to Scotland as well, with obvious implications regarding how support for independence is determined.
Scotland remains in a position where it will continue to be used by the UK for the benefit of the UK elite, with too much of it’s wealth appropriated by the UK and then lied to about how much it benefits from and depends on the UK, just as India and so many other countries were. None of those countries gained their independence easily and neither will Scotland. 2014 gave the UK elite a huge fright and the tactics the UK will use if independence looks to be a possibility again will be far more deceitful and malicious than the last time. I hope Scotland has the means to succeed against the inevitable onslought because the UK elite have a long track record of ruthlessness and will use all their powers to maintain what they see as theirs. Reasonableness or honesty will not be part of their plan to hold onto Scotland, which is why I can’t see Scotland becoming independent unless it is fought for using legal processes, and in particular international ones.
https://historyofyesterday.com/great-britain-looted-45-trillion-from-india-3abd4ab2a10a