Showing posts with label backing Britain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label backing Britain. Show all posts

Tuesday, 19 June 2018

Who's Backing Britain?

So now they are resurrecting the threat to close down UK-EU flights, post-Brexit? Good, let them. Let them shut down the whole cheap-flight industry, the holiday resorts they serve and the service industries which support them. Let the shitty all-inclusive hotel complexes close and fester, let the beach-side strips go un-fouled by the stench of fish and chips and two-day old Ambre Solaire and sweat. Go on, EU, show your contempt for the British as openly as you wish. The gloves are off.

David Cameron was told in no uncertain terms that there could be no special arrangements of any merit for one of the 28. And why not? Their club, their rules. So he went to the people and despite a colossal united opposition to leaving, a rag-bag of warring Leave groups still manage to win the day. The next morning, we should have served notice. Cameron’s resignation was un-called for; he could easily have carried on, just as his pale stand-in has done, except this time working to deliver what he promised to deliver.

Article 50? What a load of bollocks that turned out to be; an unnecessary prevarication which did nothing but allow the stunned Remainers to mobilise. Nobody had contemplated Brexit – Cameron wouldn’t have authorised the referendum if any analysis had suggested the vote could go against the establishment’s use of the state apparatus to cover the land with a blanket of doom. But we are where we are; wallowing in a self-inflicted morass of negativity created by the relentless insistence of Remainers that Brexit is a modern day Black Death.

Meanwhile, in the so-called Mother of Parliaments, the treacherous – and they truly are treacherous – House of Lords voted again with the Tory rebels to end Brexit by any means. But if they think bringing down the government is the way ahead, let them face the wrath of the millions who voted to leave the unaccountable governance of the EU for precisely the same sort of behaviour their lordships are aping. The referendum as a tool of democracy is dead; the commissioners must be pissing their pants in glee.

So, what are we left with? Short of an armed march on Westminster and the dragging out of the main actors to face summary justice; short of actual civil war, what? Voting at the ballot box is no way out; whichever way it goes can be ignored and anyway, far too many MPs have shown how easily they brush aside the wishes of their constituents.

Backing Britain, 1968. How times change.

If you want Brexit you can do it yourself. No Spanish holiday, no French wine (I personally stopped buying that decades ago) forego the foreign cheese, boycott Brussels. Instead, grit your teeth and buy British, keep your cash in OUR banks. If you can’t face an actual holiday in the UK – and let’s face it, we’ve let ourselves go – try going for days out. Get out in the countryside, get fitter and save the NHS in the process. Wake up and realise that voting then hoping it would happen is a lost cause. If you want an independent Britain you need to start backing it. Brexit needs to become more than a wish, it needs to be in the blood in the way the EU never could.

Monday, 18 July 2016

Brits go home!

Have you seen, I mean really seen, what the UK has to offer the holiday-maker? We have mountains big enough to be dangerous yet small enough to climb in an afternoon. Some of the best beaches in the world line our shores. Sights, sailing, swimming, scuba diving... all the activities you can imagine. Admittedly the weather is unreliable but so much variety is in driving distance you can wing it on the day. You want history, we got history. You want entertainment, art, shopping... it’s there in spades.

Plus you can speak the language fluently (if not maybe all that competently) you know what the road signs mean, your phone will work without any interruption and you can decipher the cultural shorthand so you know, for instance, that that ‘artisan’ bar may be less your cup of tea than Ye Olde Inne on the green. And of course, you can always get tea. And chips.

Or why not a ‘staycation’? Unless you’re on the old King Cole chances are you spend all your time going to work, doing the daily chores, eating and sleeping and never get to really live in and enjoy your own environs. Why go ‘all inclusive’ with a horde of strangers via a cattle class travel system to sweat under an alien sun. Really? You actually go for the sun? You do realise it’s the exact, same one we have here, yes? I pity you.

Think of the economy. Instead of exporting your earnings overseas to buy hangovers and tacky souvenirs, which only get lost along with the rest of your luggage, why not just have a luxury week at home. Splash out a bit on days and evenings out and inject a little love into local businesses. I’m serious, it makes more sense now than ever before, especially as your foreign retreat may now come with the added uncertainty of returning home with all your limbs intact.

Turkey is a ticking time bomb, North Africa is more or less off-limits and even the USA is about to go all ‘Mississippi Burning’ on its ass. France is in flames and Germany set to follow as all around the besieged European peace and love project borders are going up and fear is rising. The world is a dark and dangerous place right now and it is neither racist nor islamophobic to say so; how islamophobic, on a scale of one to please-don’t-cut-my-head-off, is blacklisting all muslim countries as potential holiday destinations?

I reckon we could all do to forego cultural enrichment for a year or so while we work out what the hell is going on and in the meantime make a bit of an effort to reconnect ourselves to our own heritage. Rather than trying to contract skin cancer on a crowded beach we could fill the coffers of the National Trust, explore our national parks, thrill to the theatre, the finest in the world or simply get out and enjoy the garden. All this and you don’t have to miss your favourite soaps, if that floats your boat.

This land is our land.
The greenest and most pleasant land on the planet!

Think about it. In the sixties Bruce Forsyth sang "I’m backing Britain" as part of a national drive to reinvigorate the nation. Well why not, in this fractured, divisive, post-Brexit-decision purgatory, get behind that same spirit and say, stuff Sardinia, toss off Turkey, fuck Florida... I’m back, in Britain. And nobody can call you racist for doing so.