Month: July 2016

A good friend of mine lamented in the pub that Leave voters were really seeking a sense of turning time back. They wanted to recapture a time of Spitfires and warm beer.

I then read at the weekend that the most accurate indicator of voting habit in the referendum was not in fact social class but, simply, whether one would vote to bring back the death penalty.

What a terrible irony. Our MP’s would never let the public vote on a referendum to bring back hanging. Neither should they have gambled away our membership of the European Union to an electorate, as my friend I believe now rightly concludes, that largely sought a return to a time of Spitfires and warm beer.

Just as bringing back the death penalty makes no logical or ethical sense, neither does abandoning our near neighbours, a 50 year peace and trade project and taking a step back to isolationism. The restoration of the death penalty is the sinister side of searching for the past. The jovial and scoundrel milkman is the romantic flip side.

There is no romantic flip side, however, to this vote. People will still drink lager and Spitfires will still be flown at air displays as they have been all through our membership of the European Union. A belief in an illusion of past perfection is very dangerous territory. It presupposes that your value systems are right and that any failure in what you perceive is your ideal society is therefore the responsibility of someone, or something else. It throws aside logic.

Marc Folgate

Leaked document

Theresa May’s Government post-Brexit plan has been leaked as a result of a classified dossier being left on a train at Chipping Norton station.

Sources close to the Prime Minister have been forced to issue a statement.

“The weakening pound is no unplanned phenomenon“, one anonymous junior minister explained.

“We have predicted that global warming together with the attractive weakness of sterling will give a massive boost to the post-Brexit tourism economy“.

Global warming promotion

She went on to say that the Government were taking active steps to promote global warming because the inclement British climate was now the last major obstacle to tourism supremacy. When asked about the environmental impact to the rest of the world she hinted that in a post-Brexit world Britain had to forge its own path. “We will“, she maintained, “make Brexit a success regardless“.

Bye, bye, Fenland. Hello prosperity.

It has long been suggested by scientists that Peterborough might end up on the coastline within several hundred years in the event that the sea level rose in line with scientific expectations. A Peterborough set to be 10 degrees fahrenheit warmer than it is at present.

Another Government source hinted at the fact that the natural taking back by the sea of the Fens also meant that migrant workers would no longer be attracted to the area and as there would be no agriculture to service indigenous Brits would no longer be tarnished by being “work-shy”.

Experts

Another source rejected the opinion of climate-change “experts” saying that the Government denied the claim that it could take hundreds of years.

“Our research”, he asserted, “suggests that with a large increase in fossil fuel burning we could narrow this down to before the next election”.

He suggested that letters had been sent out cancelling wind farm and other sustainable energy contracts. The planned construction of new nuclear power stations would also be mothballed.

It is thought likely that the Government will enter into significant contracts with former colonial dependencies to provide the fossil fuels required to pep-up the British climate.

Nene Park

Beneficiaries of the Government’s plans could be sites like Ferry Meadows and Nene Park. Tenders for sun lounger contracts are likely to be invited from early 2019 onwards. It may be time to say “bonjour” to continental holidaymakers used to the Riviera.

(With conceptual contribution thanks to Jeremy Thompson).

Marc Folgate

I decided in the wake of the referendum result in the United Kingdom to set up a site where people who were suffering from the phenomenon known as “Bregrexit” could share their experiences and pool ideas, as well as to empathise with and offer hope to each other in the uncertain months and years that surely await.

This is also a forum not only for those who are pained by the outcome but also those who are regretting their part in it, as you rightly should if responsible. There are numerous expressions of regret now beginning to find their way out. Do any of these sound familiar?

i) I didn’t think it would happen;
ii) It’s all gone to **** and if I had known that I wouldn’t have voted the way I did; and:-
iii) I thought that £350 million a week was going into the NHS. Where is it then? Not to mention…
iv) Why have Johnson and Farage ****ed off and left us to it; didn’t they expect to win/have a plan? and then
v) I wasn’t being lectured by Cameron and his smug Old Etonian Chipping Norton set political elitists; let alone
vi) I didn’t really know what the EU was until I Googled it the day after the vote.

Theresa May’s installation as unelected PM is where we are at after Andrea “Take Back Control” Leadsom showed generosity of spirit (and/or realised that some game was up) “Brexit”, Theresa says, “is Brexit”. Debate away.

Marc Folgate

How long does everyone think it will be before the back-stabbing starts that is so endemic in the Tory party, particularly where the needlessly toxic subject of Europe is concerned?