Nearly a year ago the Will of The People
amply guided by the Will of the Press Barons spake of their dreams of throwing of the foul yoke of Brussels, and the Pound took a dive of about 20%. And people said either it was a price well worth paying for freedom from EUSSR tyranny, and anyway, since we make so much of our own stuff and grow so much of essentials like food, the effect on inflation was going to be a mere few percent, so chill out you goddamned remoaners etc etc. In the frenzy of cheer and Enlightenment values we had the Daily Mail calling the judiciary the enemies of the people, perhaps they should have been true to their hearts and used the term Volksverräter
Well, fast forward a year, which is often when the harvest from last year’s sowing is due, and what have we got? Presumably loads of hospital building, increased pay for NHS staff in the pipeline and all that good stuff we had plastered on the side of buses? Let’s hear it from Mark Carney then.
Uncertainty for companies about the outlook may also have made them unwilling to raise wages at a faster pace until they have more clarity about future costs and market access
Oh well, guess that’s the price of freedom then, guys. You don’t get ‘owt for n’owt. I was reminded of this as a couple of Conservative dudes cruised round a few days ago wanting to know if they could count on my vote. I’ve been looking forward to this for a while, to ask a genuine Tory how David Cameron could have been allowed to fuck things up so beautifully by asking a question to which he didn’t really want to hear the full range of answers. An affable old Tory gent, Geoffrey Van Orden responded that it will be fine and all right on the night. He was the first aristocratic-viewpoint Brexiteer I’ve come across, because the Ermine is of lowly stock and doesn’t normally move in such circles. I know enough ordinary folk who were into the sovereignty side of things, and tended to be a little bit older than me. That’s fair enough, it takes more than one viewpoint to make up a world, and at least these retired folk aren’t subject to the vicissitudes of finding work. Nor have they had the possibility of going abroad to earn money and escape the tyranny of British housing and its vile BTL landlords ripped away from them, so although I don’t agree I can see they hold a valid different opinion. I have also run into a couple of the xenophobic sort of Brexiteers, I try and avoid the lowlife scum end of the spectrum. But since it is largely the wealthy gentry and their mouthpieces of the right-wing press that brought us this joyful freedom, I was interested to see what an example was like in the flesh.
I noted the public school accent and education, which gave him the edge in verbal dialectics compared to me, although I also observed the entitlement to rule character. He identified me as a Remainer and feigned sympathy for the cause which he clearly doesn’t have. Was clearly chilled about the way Brexit has made political discourse pretty nasty in this country, and is of the view that if a few Poles get roughed up, well, that’s just statistical variation, correlation with Brexit not causation, dear boy. I guess the ends justify the means.
Geoffrey showed me just how much further away from the heat the rich really are
The ermine is hopefully on the right side of the impending Brexit economy suckout, but it worries me. Sure, I read things like this article and with this sage reflection:
The fuse of currency depreciation had been lit, and was quietly making its way towards the tinderbox of rising inflation, higher household debt and increased pressure on spending power.
The average household is now spending an additional £21 a quarter on groceries compared with last year. That may not seem a huge amount, but with inflation on the up that could mean an extra £119 over the course of this year. Airfares, package holidays and energy bills are all rising while wages remain the same.
and think to myself well, if £120 a year is going to push you over the edge then you’re hosed anyway. You way as well stick your head between your knees and kiss your ass goodbye right now. And FFS, airfares, package holidays – you need to pay your energy bills but cut out the holidays if you find the wolves howling ever closer to the door. To be honest the prescription is always the same, cut the wants before the needs, live within your means, and avoid picking up commitments that you can’t afford to run.
But it’s still a worry for me, I am many multiples of that £120 a year from the breadline but they’ll all add up. Whereas the likes of the old buffer Geoffrey swan blithely through that sort of worry, because they are so far away from being washed away by the incoming tide that they spout about grand plans, which broadly sum up to a Trump-esque “Make Britain Great Again”. I never did understand why they had so many wartime films on the telly in the 1970s but it seems that the sentiment burns on in many Brexiteers’ hearts, particularly if they are of a certain age.
Geoffrey talked lovingly about his fine work with the Indian trade delegation when I reminded him that I am old enough to recall the National Front marching through Lewisham in the 1970s and that sort of intolerance of t’other seems to be on the rise again. Apart from a minor technicality of him doing this as a MEP which will be worth a bucket of spit after Brexit, it really isn’t the days of the Raj any more, and I think some of these old boys are going to have to be pushing up daisies before Britain finally starts to deal with the world as it is in 2017 rather than as it was in the 1950s. Having shitloads of money just seems to insulate you from some of these realities.
I had a really great choice in this election of nothing I like at all. One the one hand is the Maybot going Brexit means Brexit and on t’other side we have somebody who was probably a closet Brexiteer anyway. I had the choice between something I never asked to happen and a genial but ineffective old buffer that reminds me of other aspects of socialism in the 1970s like that creep Arthur Scargill and his band of merry thugs flying pickets exercising their God-given right to stop other people working because they had the power of force.
A plague on both your houses
But we seemed to have had a general election with no overall winner, which was probably the best result for my views, although what I voted for was lost, so thank you the rest of the British public. It seems the despicable rightwing press was largely ignored in their seething spewage. The Tories buggered this up in the first place by having a Brexit referendum at all, and now seem to have lost a lot of their pre-Brexit majority. Good for Theresa May returning to the electorate after such a big change in the background 
Theresa May’s WTF? expression
But what I feared more than a Tory landslide was a Corbyn majority. Corbyn has done well and hopefully will do his job in diluting the Empire-dreaming hard Brexiters. It’s not a good result, but it’s probably the least worst. You sowed the wind, Tory PM Cameron, with you damned manifesto promise of an EU referendum. Now the hard Brexit nut-jobs have reaped the whirlwind by being just too full of cock. Maybe we’ll have to try and talk in a civilised way about Brexit, rather than revel in the arrogance of ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’
Oh and though I had no part in it since I couldn’t bring myself to vote Corbyn, I am pleased that
Labour’s gains included the symbolic toppling in Ipswich of Ben Gummer, the author of the Conservative manifesto.
It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good