The Telling Strangeness of Brexit

On the 23rd June 2016, the British people asked their Government to get them out of the EU. It was a non-binding referendum. If the Government didn’t like it, they could ignore it. After all, the French did in 2005: their rejection of the European Constiution was made to fade away like the morning mist.

But something strange happened. Everyone in the EU treated the British referendum as binding and final. The Liechtenstein Lush didn't call Cameron and say "You're going to fix this, right?" and go on his way with a smug, knowing grin. Nobody said "We must give the British time to come to understand what they might still do". Junk The Drunk did not behave like a statesman, but like a schoolboy who has finally got rid of the irritating kid in the class. The EU could not wait to be shot of the UK: they wanted Britain to trigger A50 then, in June 2016.

It was the British bien pensants who thought they could get round the referendum. Who thought that Parliament would debate, with the help of right-thinking mavens, the meaning of the vote and whether the British people had voted in thier best interests? Whether it would be the Right Thing to heed the vote and leave the EU, or whether they should set the result aside. It wasn't binding after all. Surely no-one would wrench them from the teat of EU subsidies and Erasmus scholarships?

The EU officials, the 27 heads of state, did no such thing. The British were leaving. End of story. They had it all worked out: they threw our clothes out of the window and changed the locks on the doors. The 28 became the 27 and they took schoolboy glee in excluding Britain from their meetings.

Snowflakes think of Brexit as a divorce, and saw the referendum as Daddy and the kids throwing another ultimatum at Mummy so she would quit drinking for a while. What Mummy EU was supposed to do, after a couple of months, was make a handful of serious concessions to Daddy, so everyone could go back to their dysfunctional family life again. This time Mummy shrugged and told Daddy to take the kids and spilt. That's what's upsetting the snowflakes: Mummy doesn't want them anymore. And maybe never had, for many years.

And it's all Daddy's fault that they found out. Mummy EU was a useful socialist counter-balance to the natural free-market, world-trading, worker-exploiting nature of much of British social and political culture. And now the snowflakes are stuck with life under Daddy: and because they know they don't deserve their grants and subsidies, they are scared Daddy will cut back. He will, but not as much as they think. Hence the wailing of the snowflakes, and their desperate signalling to Mummy EU that they love her still and will she please find a nice comfortable job for them somewhere? But Mummy doesn't love them, and hadn't done for a long time, and it hurts, hurts, hurts to find that out. Nasty Daddy!

Thrown into chaos, the Conservative Party huddled down to find a new leader. Then something strange happened again. Did they choose a clubbable Europhile with close relationships to the bureaucrats in Brussels, who might try to finesse the referendum? No. They chose a woman who had suffered six years at the Home Office being humiliated by the European Courts. They chose a leader who would not be accepted by the 27-Boys Club and who understands in her soul why the UK cannot not go on being over-ruled by a bunch of ideologically-motivated judges in Strasbourg.

Teresa May said "Brexit means Brexit" and to prove it in October the government said they would repeal the European Communities Act 1972. Brexit, it turns out, meant independence and sovereignty. The EU is such a totalitarian entity that everything else follows: if you don't accept its Courts and laws-out-of-thin-air, you can't dodge the 17% tax on shoes designed to protect the Italian shoe industry. Declare legal and political independence and you're back with WTO-based trade deals. Under the Most Favoured Nation rule, any concession the EU gives the UK, has to be given to every other WTO member. So Britain is effectively negotiating trade terms for most of the rest of the world. Those trade terms are the EU's raison d'etre, because it is there to protect the national interests of its members. Perhaps there are going to be more surprises in store: perhaps the EU will use the Brexit negotiations to change rules and tariffs it could not otherwise get past those twenty-seven sets of national interests.

This is a job for professionals who understand what's at stake. The rest of us can only cheer or jeer from the sidelines. In the meantime there will be a lot of posturing. Everyone will want to make it look like They Matter. Whereas they don’t. Not Nicola Sturgeon, not the MP for Lower Cokeatington. Angela Merkel and Victor Orban won’t matter much either. But they will all want to get their shots in. The saddest poseurs of all are the Remainers, deep in denial about the fact that the EU hasn’t wanted them for maybe a decade or more.

Those negotiations will be mostly sound and fury signifying nothing. Face-saving for EU bureaucrats. It’s got to look tough for the UK so that the minnows don’t think they can do it as well. I suspect the British team will play their part in maintaining the charade. I suspect that the professionals know most of the answers already.

When the memoirs are written we will find out that the professionals in the EU wanted the UK out, and the professionals in the UK wanted out of the EU. The catch was that there was no way of doing it that was politically acceptable. So when Nigel Farage turned up - a Euro MP who wanted out of Europe - and when UKIP got 13% of the votes in the 2015 Election, the game became playable. That’s the only explanation that makes sense of all the behaviour that looks so strange under the assumption that the EU and UK wanted to stay together.

Ten Rap Songs

There’s a lot of music I don’t pay much attention to: most nineteenth-century romanticism, Mozart symphonies, dixieland, chord-scale jazz, almost anything on ECM except Keith Jarrett, “avant-garde” jazz and classical music that goes plink-plonk, novelty songs and anything by this year’s, or any year’s, version of FKA Twigs. I’ve never quite managed to dismiss rap, even though I’ve only ever possessed two rap albums (Pain Is Love a while ago and Paid In Full more recently). Rap has moments, I just don’t want very many of them. A little goes a long way. Anyway, here are ten songs that I remember and play on You Tube more than once a year.

 

Patton vs Any Given Sunday and the Rest of Hollywood on Winning

If you’ve never seen this speech from Oliver Stone’s Any Given Sunday, then take five minutes to watch it. It’s wonderful writing and a tremendous piece of cinema.



I have just one reservation. At 2:50 Pacino says… “In any fight, it’s the guy who’s willing to die who’s going to win..”

No.
No.
No no no no no no no.
Just.
No.

It’s the guy who’s willing to kill the other guy who’s going to win.

But that doesn’t sound so noble.

General Patton got it right. If you haven’t seen this, watch it as well. The key line is at 1:16.

 

"Now, I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.”

Hollywood has never since uttered that truth.

Introducing Broscience

If you have never watched any of the Broscience videos on You Tube, you are missing something from your Lifting Life.




50% fact 50% magic 100% results


Okay. I didn't get a lot of sleep Tuesday night. I watched this at about 05:00 Wednesday morning and it was hilarious. I thought I'd share it.

I will write a good long think piece on something soon. It's January. I had a massage Monday that left me feeling a bit dizzy Tuesday. I'm going to be early now. You know. Life.

Along London Wall

It's January. Who the heck does anything in January except hibernate?

November / December 2016 Review

Happy New Year.

Yep. Going back to doing these. I gave up earlier this year and I’m going to blame the orthodontic work, or rather, my reaction to it. I think I felt so self-conscious with that plastic in my mouth that I stopped wanting to go, or having gone, to stay, out. I even quit having supper with Sis because eating had become such a chore.

So….the ortodontics came out on November 1st. Since then I’ve had two haircuts at George The Barber, attended meetings and been to the gym. A lot. When I wasn’t having horrible colds. I lost a week to a cold, and had the laptop at home, so I could work. I blame half-term.

In the gym, I carried on with the pull-downs and pulley-rows to get some strength into my back, and added leg curls and extensions to see if that will make it any easier to, you know, climb stairs . I started really light and took care when the knees twinged. I suspect I may have to re-build tendons rather than muscle.

I saw After Love, American Honey, Nocturnal Animals, Francophonia, Gimme Danger, Paterson, The Unknown Girl, and Through The Wall at the Curzon Soho. I joined the membership scheme, and now I don’t pay silly prices to see the films, only about as much as I would at the local Cineworld. I saw The Peony Pavillion at Sadlers Wells, and booked tickets into next year as well. I took Mum to see The Red Shoes at Sadlers Wells on New Years Eve afternoon. That involved exciting rides on the 391bus to and from Waterloo and thanking the Lord that Caravan on Exmouth Market was open when almost every other restaurant was closed.

I read I Hate The Internet, by Jarett Kobek, Look Who’s Back by Timor Vermes, The Transformation of Bodies by Yuri Herrera, Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem, Submission by Michel Houellebecq, How to Win Every Argument by Madsen Pirie, and books on Brughel and Jeff Koons.

In November, Sis and I had supper at Rules, then the next evening went to see Peter Pan Done Wrong, and it was exactly as silly and hilarious as I had hoped it would be. Then we got colds and didn’t go out in December.

2017: Embrace The Change.

Persia International Bank

There is no such place as Persia. It's called Iran. For quite a while it was on the Naughty Step, being removed by the EU in late 2015. Someone's been doing business there in the meantime.

Happy Holidays.