OK, here’s the thing: we can all push people’s buttons with glee, watch them turn purple and sputter with impotent rage – had it done to me and done it myself – but wouldn’t it be great to really nail people to floor?
So point out to a Brexiteer that the recent EU Referendum was undemocratic in its conclusion, and was set in motion by what is increasingly likely to be a totally illegitimate government anyway. Watch its head spin as you do the maths and point out that yes, 52% of the vote does win, BUT isn’t a clear mandate as the turnout was only 72%.
So in my opinion, there should not have been a “remain” option on the ballot paper. So if you only voted to Leave The EU, then that would have made it easy. No fussing about two active, adversarial camps fight for your vote. Seeing as the Brexiteers have been moaning like little children about the EU for years, let them do all the work. Only those who wanted to leave would have been those turning out to vote… With very heavy penalties giving such voters let or hindrance. Therefore, the turnout itself would be close to the actual vote (I mean, people DO mess up their papers. Done it myself). They actively wanted to leave, let them actively garner 51% of the electorate to agree.
THAT I can go with as Democratic. That is a result I can happily live with, not this percentage of a percentage: especially as if the shoe was on the other foot, that ghastly Farage fellow would be clamouring for a full-blown judicial review… And for the record, if it HAD been the other way round, it still wouldn’t sit easily with me at all: so don’t judge me by your own standards (whatever they may be).
The other thing, and my main bone of contention, is that the only mainstream coverage of EU Law and Workings and how it affects us has been fabricated stories about bananas, who has to wear a reflective jacket or hardhat and when and… No mention of the electrical plugs. Oh, it’s all very well banging on about ‘our sovereignty’, but it was that mad bollox Thatcher who held a lot of EU regs at bay, like every electrical product to be sold with a fitted electrical plug. Oh, the arguments nearly every sale I made, back in the late 1980s:
“Do you want a plug with that, it’s 50p…”
“IT’S NOT FIT FOR PURPOSE WITHOUT A FITTED PLUG, THEY HAVE TO ON THE CONTINENT IT’S TUE LAW THERE..!”.
One day, I finally had enough, and point blank asked if the chap had voted Tory at the last election. He had. I told him to fucking yell at Thatcher for blocking the law, now did he want the sodding £9.99 toaster or what?
Be that side rant as it may, the fact is that if you check out European news outlets’ English services online, you’ll find it’s just a little different. A few domestic stories, then some from the borderlands and capitals of neighbouring countries, then world affairs. Followed by lottery results and a joke.
For most of my life, news has been Britain. America. How we messed up African countries. How we invaded the Middle East. Some funny European chappies doing something silly that looks dashed unsavoury, weather, joke.
The only main, regular political report about the EU was on a news channel at 3 o’clock on a Sunday morning. Hardly a hint of outward looking at the world unless there’s a sneer. (An aside here, I think the thing many experience in multiethnic enclaves is the same as many Spanish and whatnot feel when Brits descend upon their… Oh but, they’re sure to be sent back, aren’t they?).
So, you take two campaigns filled with bile, hatred and a great many untruths spoken by people no one really trusts, mix with a population starved of any useful information for years, stir the pot with the spoon of everyone’s arrogant stupidity and BINGO.
You manage to fuck up the economy for generations, with the EU pushing us to invoke Article 50 because they are just so sick and tired of that twat Farage. I’m sure that if there was an emergency measure to suspend membership, followed by permanent expulsion, they would have done it years ago.
The Tiny Mind of Jpofgwynedd 