Thursday 19 May 2022

Dream holiday


This morning I had to walk through the part of town by the theatre and I stopped a while to take it all in.

It is easy to imagine that you are on holiday here at this time of year - mainly because most people are - but today all I had to do was watch the restaurants preparing, the street cleaners cleaning, people chatting and smell the breakfasts being cooked to go right back to the European trips we have made together in the carefree days before everything turned to shit.

Now, everyone seemed to be surprised that Vladimir Putin is holding the world to ransom as revenge for the half-hearted sanctions we have placed on him and his oligarchs, but what on earth did they think he was going to do? People of my generation will never see the end to the shortages, but we are more fortunate than others in poorer parts of the world. We will still eat, just not the burgers that Colonel Blimp thinks the poor are incapable of preparing for themselves.

Can anyone tell me one single advantage that Britain is now enjoying by leaving the European Union? Can anyone think of any small part of our daily lives that has been improved by the acrimonious divorce? I don't want to hear the usual bullshit about plans being disrupted by unfolding world events which could not be predicted. I mean ordinary everyday things which we came to take for granted. Things which could - and were - predicted. You know what I am talking about.

George W Bush gave a good talk the other night. Did you hear it? If not, here it is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvI7LQ4QoCo

25 comments:

  1. You ask a lot of questions ,
    But all I will say is that I’d love to visit Bath

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  2. Each country makes decisions that the majority of people feel are right. I have to wonder what the majority thinks about the result of leaving the EU? We all know you are not happy but what about everybody else? Sweden and Finland are looking to join NATO. P is not happy again. More retaliation?

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    1. In the unlikely even of us having another referendum on the issue, I would say that the result would be pretty mush the same percentages, but in reverse. Most people don't like to be seen to have made the wrong decision. Now that Putin has even more NATO members on his borders, I think he will seriously consider using nuclear weaponry if he has not already. This is more dangerous than the Cuban missile crisis - by far.

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  3. Poor George. I wonder if it was a Freudian slip. Tell me more about the EU grousing that too many of their bankers are dealing from London. Where did they think the finance industry was located and where it would move to.

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    1. Some of the threats made by the EU to Britain should we leave it were that London would cease to be the European financial hub it has been for hundreds of years, and because the international bankers have not left in their droves, the EU are trying to force them.
      Investment bankers will go wherever suits them best. Ever since we left the EU, Boris Johnson has been trying to make the UK an attractive place to trade by not taxing them too much. Now he is in a bit of trouble because of the deteriorating global position caused by Putin, he is prepared to let the poorest suffer by protecting the oil companies - who have made vast, unexpected profits from the rise in prices - from additional windfall taxes as would be expected from any other government who were not so desperate to keep investors in the country, having insulted and rejected the most exclusive club in Europe. Almost anyone could have handled it better.

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  4. As a matter of principle I do not comment on political affairs in other countries (fearing heavy retorts, well-founded, on my country Germany). But my British friends, normally very cool, wept when you left the EU, and my balanced newspaper from neutral Switzerland, the NZZ, writes often about your premier. As said: I can think of a lot retorts...

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    1. I know people who actual wept as well. My German friends were just sad and baffled.

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  5. World leaders sanctioning Russia have not paid any attention to history and how WW2 started because of Hitler's reaction to the severe Versailles Treaty sanctions imposed on Germany after WW1. Putin's threats on nuclear attacks should also not be ignored right now.

    I agree that it is impossible for the man in the street to see any benefits in leaving the EU. Referendums of the people are not a good idea and should never take place. Although you ask not to mention current Covid times I have to say that it is difficult not to and a clear picture of being out of the EU cannot be reached now without being clouded by Covid measures we have just been through and also now the sanctions against Putin have to be thrown into the pot affecting our own economy with companies such as BP and Shell feeling obligated to move out of Russia. Also take into consideration the carbon emission targets that were agreed long after the EU Referendum vote and are another area that changed the ball park. Throw into the pot the British psyche of work ethic being not that brilliant and unions and the new culture of the sanctimonious and self righteous and you have a melting pot of gloom and low morale which fuels itself once it gets going.

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    1. In hindsight, our leaving the EU for purely ideological reasons could have been done with more grace than this government is capable of. They started with a war of insults which were designed to appeal to the xenophobes who form the core of their popularist support. If there were any purely pragmatic reasons for Brexit, they would made a big deal about them from the beginning. Painting lies about money on the side of a bus shows the general standard of their campaign.

      Now they are adding injury to insult by tearing up jointly signed legal agreements and are about to start a trade war between Britain and the EU, just when another trade war would set us back another ten years with the economy and push food prices up even further than they are set to rise in any case. Boris Johnson knew that Northern Ireland was an emotive and intractable problem, but he went ahead and signed the treaty anyway, just so he could say that he got the job done. Now we are all going to pay the price for his vanity.

      The poor British work ethic is a myth put about by people who would like us to work seven day shifts to improve productivity but will not spend any of their investors' money on infrastructure. Unions are portrayed as bolshy and unreasonable communists because - as everyone knows - you do not enter into negotiations by telling the employer exactly what you would be willing to settle for from the outset. The days of Arthur Scargill are long over. People with ordinary jobs need unions more now than ever before.

      The sanctimonious and self-righteous have also had their day, but they had a point. If more attention had been given to sustainable domestic power production during the years of austerity, Putin would not have us so tightly by the balls as he has now.

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  6. I didn't watch the video, I haven't got time but will watch tonight. I am out for the day.

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    1. It's only a 20 second clip and it is cringingly funny.

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  7. What have we lost? Freedom to be happy and look forward. It is a bit of a price to pay. The world is going belly up according to you and George Monbiot this morning! And yes I felt homesick on seeing Bath and remembering the walk through Victoria Park on a bright and beautiful May day.

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    1. I was really asking, what have we gained? What we lost was obvious from the beginning.

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  8. Benefits of leaving? None

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  9. No benefits of leaving. Just nine percent inflation and everything is expensive.

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    1. The decision was made just before the most perfect storm in the last 100 years loomed on the horizon.

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  10. I have visited Bath on a beautiful May day some years ago and yes I would like to do it again. Instead I am on a dream European holiday writing this on my 4th quarantine day sitting on my Greek hotel balcony watching the world go by. It is weard. We should have been home by now.
    My stiff upper lip husband did not weep on that dreadful day. Instead he turned white, very white.
    As far as George W. concerns. I feel sorry for him. I am always mixing my children's names up. Slip of the tongue.
    Did you see a certain Stanley who happens to live in France? Hilarious as well.

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    1. Oh hell. Did everything change or did you test positive? Mixing your children's names up does not always result in the death of thousands, I am guessing. Who is Stanley?

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  11. I felt European before we left and I still feel European now.

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    1. I felt European before the Common Market, Weave. I resent the freedom of movement more than anything else. We were lied to right from the beginning when we were told that passports would be a thing of the past, even though the host countries retained identity cards since the 1940s. We are lied to continuously, and I am sick of the whole lot of them.

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  12. I won't comment on Brexit as it didn't impact us here. As far as Megxit goes we prefer you take them back.

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    1. What, both of them? Why can't we share the problem?

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    2. Why can't they just buy their own desert island and go there, living the quiet life, with no media intrusion? Idyllic and just what they claimed they wanted...at least that's what they told Oprah they wanted.

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    3. Mustique is a prison island.

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