Don't lecture me about life in Britain

I first learned how to use a lathe in woodworking classes at school. Not many boys were permitted lathe work. It was (and still is) considered too dangerous for children. I was allowed because I was one of those irritating kids who had an over-developed sense of self-preservation. I was born Healthy and Safe, three years after the Labour Party created the NHS.

I have been periodically using lathes ever since. I still have a stone lathe at my workshop. It does not occur to some people that stone and marble can be turned on a lathe. It occurs to even fewer that axes are used on stone. They have been for hundreds - if not thousands - of years. I have many stone axes.

After I left school I worked on a concrete gang and was partially responsible for laying the foundations of the University of Surrey. It being the days before concrete pumps, every ton of concrete was pushed in a wheelbarrow over a single scaffold board before being tipped into a vast pit (machine mountings), then the empty barrow would be returned to the concrete lorry to be refilled. Repeat all day, every day, for six days, then repeat the week after. A full barrow of wet concrete weighs 400 pounds. It was the hardest and most exhausting work I have ever done, but it was good money for a 16 year-old.

I have a 'grandad' licence which allows me to drive a little 7.5 ton lorry, but when I reach 70 in 18 months time, this will be relinquished unless I take another test, which I cannot be bothered to do. It's fun driving one of these trucks with a full load - 3.5 tons of stone on the back and air brakes so fierce that you would go through the windscreen if you pulled the little lever accidentally or stamped on the foot pedal too hard.

The first person to ever teach me stone-carving was a Gypsy. True, he was a wealthy Gypsy who lived in a bloody great Surrey house, but he had a £30,000 painted caravan parked up in the grounds which used to be his grandparent's home, so I think that he counted. He did not hare-course, but I have plenty of non-Gypsy friends who did. I always thought that hare-coursing was vile, but hunting with hounds was legal right up until Tony Blair declared it illegal to take the attention away from more important issues.

I have always told my German friends that the E.U. was nothing but a financial carve-up, and this upset them quite a lot about 25 years ago, but then the E.U. and the euro became useful fiscal and financial tools to guard against a U.S. take-over. The dollar crashed and Trump filled a political vacuum as only right-wingers do in times of social crisis. They can still take over any time in the next few months. Is this what you want?

To have a second referendum would result in even a worse situation than produced by the first. The balance would be the same percentage, but reversed. All of this is the sole fault of the Conservatives, beginning with Thatcher (who paved the way for Tony Blair) and continuing with Cameron - the fool who gave in to Farage and the extremists in his own party - followed by Theresa May who kept to her own secret agenda for over two years; culminating in the erstwhile buffoon, Boris Johnson - who has transformed himself into a creature beyond the recognition of even his own family into the bully now resident in 10 Downing Street and who is now gambling on all our futures for the sake of his own political survival. He is running a very high risk of letting Corbyn in through the back door, and if he does he will blame our own Parliament for it. He will blame you for it if he has to.

I filled out a questionnaire about this for the Guardian recently, but they said I did not qualify. Too middle-class apparently.