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And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I’m dying
Are the best I’ve ever had
I find it hard to tell you
‘Cause I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It’s a very, very
Mad world

The haunting words of Tears for Fears from 1983.

America is due to become great again. I thought it was doing pretty well, as it happens. Equally I thought the United Kingdom might be happy to be punching away in the heavyweight category as the fifth largest economy in the world.

No, not enough.

Listening to LBC yesterday a caller rang to say that people needed their national identities back. She stopped, however, when it came to endorsing Marine Le Pen. For some reason she thought Le Pen was a bridge too far and evidently “too extreme” (my words, not hers). It was an interesting observation.

UKIP posted images of refugees prior to the referendum not dissimilar to those published in Germany in the 1930’s. It emerged that a teacher of their then leader had been concerned about his behaviour being demonstrative of some unacceptably far-right tendencies.

Yet, somehow, the caller had determined that the “line in the sand” (again, my words) lay somewhere at or to the right of Farage but to the left of Le Pen.

We are witnessing the destruction of our democracy, so cherished by liberals (with a lower-case “l”). It is now acceptable to acquire political power despite expressing previously unacceptable prejudices, or indulging in behaviour rejected by mainstream society prior to 2016. You can lie and still assume power. In fact, more than that. You can actually use lies to gain public support. When challenged, you merely shirk it off and move on to rhetoric of “taking back control” or “making things great (again)”. You then use your servile press to call for dissenters to be “silenced” and you accuse them of being “unpatriotic”.

The voice of dissent becomes hushed because initially people who oppose start to feel self-conscious of their continuing opposition to the transit with which they disagree. People start to tell them to “move on” or to “stop moaning”.

The dissenters grow anxious. They become nervous of expressing their opinions. The spiral downwards begins. In the absence of dissent the never-satisfied desire for more power drives the vehicle even faster into the spiral.

I recently read an intriguing article by Tobias Stone called “History tells us what may happen next with Brexit & Trump” (link below) in which he states that “we humans have a habit of going into phases of mass destruction, generally self imposed to some extent or another”. He also refers to the spiral and issues a chilling prediction about the descent that makes me feel very uneasy:-

“It will come in ways we can’t see coming, and will spin out of control so fast people won’t be able to stop it. Historians will look back and make sense of it all and wonder how we could all have been so naïve”.

It is time to take the car out of gear, park up and look at the storm clouds as well as the torturous-looking road ahead before deciding whether to continue the journey or go home.  The kids in the back are screaming loud to get to Fantasy Land as quickly as possible but like all such locations it’ll probably be an expensive disappointment. Have the parents got what it takes to do what is right for the whole family? Is the short-term pain of transitory disappointment and ringing ears worth the certainty of getting home safe and sound; after all we haven’t even got far out of the driveway?

So for the Mad World I see in front of me I hope Tears do not replace the Fears.

Thank you for taking the time to read.

Marc Folgate

 

Tobias Stone’s medium.com article can be found at:

//medium.com/@theonlytoby/history-tells-us-what-will-happen-next-with-brexit-trump-a3fefd154714#.twr2w5590

 

According to today’s Daily Mail I should be damned.

About me – the good

I am a father, a husband. A fan of a League One local football team. I spend my working life fighting for the rights of people against large corporations. I like to think that I am tolerant of other people and that I am a fundamentally kind person. I don’t believe that I have many enemies.

The not-s0-good

I spend too much time in the pub, talking politics and I am probably open to the accusation that I can condescend. There are a handful of people I fell out with over the referendum.

Silencing me and patriotism

A similar editorial to that of the Daily Mail also appears in today’s Daily Express. These newspapers, in effect, call for people like me to be silent, or silenced. By which means are they going to achieve that? By encouraging the breaking of my windows for being “unpatriotic”? By having laws passed to prevent my internet access? By inciting the smashing of my PC and laptop in a public spectacle?

“My country, right or wrong, is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case.”

G.K. Chesterton

A brief historical overview of those calling for silence

On the 9th November 1938 Jews throughout Germany were subjected to the terror of Kristallnacht. That night their windows were collectively smashed.

At the time the Daily Express was openly opposed to the arrival of Jewish refugees to the UK from Nazi Germany.

Five years or so before Kristallnacht the Daily Mail published an article in which its owner opined that the “minor misdeeds of individual Nazis” would be “submerged by the immense benefits (of National Socialism)”. In the same year the Daily Express printed a headline “Judea declares war on Germany” in response to an international attempt to punish the emerging Nazi regime by boycotting German imports.

In January 1934 a piece appeared in the Daily Mail in support of Mosley’s fascists, titled “Hurrah for the Blackshirts”. Viscount Rothermere praised their “sound, commonsense, Conservative doctrine”.

As the 1930’s progressed, The Daily Express continued to support the appeasement of Hitler by Chamberlain.

My Comment in response to The Daily Mail Comment today

The Spectator said of the Daily Mail in the years of the dark corridor that led to the Second World War that its “appeal” was to “people unaccustomed to thinking”. Times have not changed, it seems.

I will not take lessons on patriotism from the Daily Mail, neither the Daily Express. Nor will I be convinced or swayed by their stated utopian visions of the future following the implementation of the “B” word, whatever that may mean. Their respective track records at setting out visions for the future are less than impressive.

Theodore Roosevelt knew a thing or two about patriotism and, as he said:-

“…it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth”.

So, it is off to Newcastle on Saturday I go to March for Europe, thanks to the Daily Mail and the Daily Express.

Thank you for reading.

Marc Folgate

 

 

 

Is this the start of the implosion of British politics?

Miliband and Starmer pulling one way. Corbyn and Abbott the other. The latter, of course, will support each other come hell or high water. The Parliamentary Labour Party is all over the place and clearly Jeremy Corbyn has little genuine support from the majority of his MP’s – after all, he could hardly make a quorate shadow cabinet not so long ago.

In the meantime Theresa May’s Birmingham Conference could not have gone worse for the tories. Her lurch to the right has caused many of them (including leavers) to be very anxious indeed. Amber Rudd’s speech so well shamed by James O’Brien on LBC as bearing certain similarities to passages from Mein Kampf was a major own goal. This should cement the will of Ken Clarke, Anna Soubry et al. to engage with the Liberal Democrats who are now stirring; Nick Clegg has upped his game and Tim Farron represents an uncontentious and untainted pair of hands in these times of madness. A good turnout please, people of Witney, Oxfordshire for Liz Leffman.

In the meantime Dr Fox couldn’t have excelled himself better at alienating an increasingly frustrated and incredulous business community. The economic reality is beginning to become evident courtesy of sterling’s nosedive to become, save for the Argentine peso, the worst performing currency of 2016*. This is something that any man or woman on the Clapham Omnibus can understand. Simple. The rest of the world has no confidence in the UK economy. The nosedive didn’t end with the announcement that Article 50 would be triggered by the end of March 2017. The pound continued to fall with each Birmingham faux pas.

Is there a more pervasive public mood of acceptance that the referendum result was bad news for the UK? The “pro-leave” Daily Telegraph’s on-line poll suggested as at 9th October in the mid-afternoon that a majority of participants believed that the UK would be best to remain in the EU (52% as against the three other potential “models” of “outcome”).

The perception of a fledgling dawning of reality is enhanced by David Davis whose waffling and evasiveness is as very clear to see as his emerging plan is not.

Justine Greening’s appearance on Peston last night was also a big hint. Asked whether the Cabinet could survive she said something like “I think so”. Hardly a show of strength. Whenever the “B” word was mentioned by the said Peston her non-verbal communication said it all.

The wheels are not yet off the Brexit wagon but there is some very nasty play of the bearings beginning to make an alarming sound and some of the occupants are starting to take off their ear defenders.

The glass was empty. It’s nowhere near half full yet. There may be forces gathering to shore up the fort that social media warriors and pressure groups have struggled to hold against the powers of rhetoric and political ambition. Ably projected to what will hopefully be their peak of influence by 30 years of orchestrated deceit.

Thank you for reading.

Marc Folgate

*since publication sterling has now become the worst performing currency in the world so please accept the writer’s apologies Argentina.

That is what I am doing, according to Mrs May. By challenging the referendum result and seeking to overturn it. I have made it clear that I will never accept the referendum as being a legitimate outcome of a democratic process. That does not make me “undemocratic”. I am a person, I like to think, of principle.

In April 2016 it seems that Mrs May believed that it was “clearly in the national interest to remain a member of the European Union”. I believe that she was correct. My position on this has been consistent. More so, it seems, than hers.

It causes me anguish to be subjected to the front page of the Daily Mail as I went to get some lunch and to read that Mrs May now accuses me (and my like) of “subverting democracy”.

Malcolm Dean in his 2011 book “Democracy Under Attack: how the media distort policy and politics” sets out a background for a democratic process:-

“The first need in a democracy is the supply of unbiased and fairly set-out facts”.

There I stood, accused on the front page of the Daily Mail (by Mrs May) of subverting democracy. If that is a way to get us all “on board” then it is about as conciliatory as a slap in the face. A slap conveyed by a spiteful and duplicitous henchman.

No such admonition for the likes of Nigel Farage over the advert depicting streams of migrants. No telling-off for Boris Johnson and the occupants of the bus decorated in a £350m “mistake”. No criticism of the right-wing press for their rampant pre and post-referendum irresponsible populism and distortion of the facts about Turkish membership; a myriad of other deceits too.

A meeting for Mrs May, it seems, with Rupert Murdoch. Did they have tea? Did she offer him a biscuit?

I have been campaigning in my own way for decades about the unconscionable tabloid press in our country and the fact that the European Union faced a Herculean task in defending itself. As Dean says, the tabloid press are motivated by a “demand to create heat rather than light”.

Despite the task, nearly 50% of those who voted in the referendum voted to Remain and young voters appear to have been least likely to have their vision clouded by the bile of the press, looking at the Ipsos MORI poll of referendum voting distribution . There is a correlation between age and newspaper circulation, of course.

Mrs May, if you will listen; a democratic process which occurs today may be an undemocratic one tomorrow, the day or even the year after. If one makes the reasonable assumption that the population will shift by natural processes there will come a point at which the outcome fails to express the presently marginally majority view.

I suspect Mrs May has met Colin Powell in her time. The same man who said of leadership that it was of “solving problems” and noted that “the day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded that you do not care. Either case”, he concluded, “(was) a failure of leadership”.

So, Mrs May, when I seek to democratically protest about a decision which I think is fundamentally wrong and which I believe impacts adversely on my family (including my daughter who is 18 now but was ineligible to vote) how dare you suggest that I am subverting democracy. I look for leadership. A “genuine leader”, said Martin Luther-King, is a “molder of consensus”.

Mrs May, if you were not so adored by the Daily Mail and open for tea and biscuits with Mr Murdoch you might have stood a chance of becoming one. At the point at which your trusted henchman takes fire at me from the newspaper shelves in Waitrose the battle must go on and I feel rejuvenated.

Thank you for reading.

Marc Folgate

 

 

 

In the depths of the gloom of the “B” word I decided to seek to look positively as to how I might cope with the prospect of being stripped of my freedom of movement across 28 countries.

There was an obvious lifestyle choice to be made involving departing Blighty altogether. I did give consideration to that.

I then toyed with obtaining a Polish passport. That particular course of action is still open to me, I believe.

In order to seize the moment of taking advantage and celebrating my threatened status I resolved to do some travelling around Europe; my Europe, while it still can so be called.

First of all we went on our summer holiday to Croatia and then I was fortunate enough to receive a gift from my wife of a September weekend in Nice. Conscious of the horrific event which occurred on the Promenade des Anglais in June I noted that she had booked us into the Radisson Blu, on the same street.

We had previously stayed in Nice en route to Corsica with the children when they were much younger and it was a city we always wanted to return to in the future.

Noted first of all: the excessively expensive cost of a taxi from the airport given the short distance to the hotel and the extra luggage charge raised by the driver.

The hotel was sufficiently comfortable with its own beach and pool that I am embarrassed to say we failed to leave it for 36 hours upon arrival, save for a trip to an 8 til late. The Promenade des Anglais is a truly fascinating boulevard. At one end, the Casino and at the other the Nice Côte d’Azur airport, an aeroplane park for private jets. More than ample to keep and hold your attention.

Beautiful people jog along this wide, palmed avenue. The coloured blinds shield the occupants of the flats from the still powerful sun.

The architecture along the promenade is varied but the underlying theme is grandeur, rather like Brighton; this is a city where affluent English holidaymakers strolled along the seafront, hence its name. The pebbles here are light grey however, meaning that in plein soleil the water adopts a vibrant blue hue, making the Côte d’Azur.

Against the blue is the predominantly white background of the buildings along the front, interspersed with the odd piece of modern architecture, if that is what you wish to call it, our hotel included.

One of the numerous buses took us into old Nice and the feel is Italian there. Narrow streets emerge into piazzas where parasols shade diners and drinkers from the afternoon sun. Whilst the food at the hotel had been good this was now an opportunity to sample something really niçoise and there is no better way to do so than by ordering a salade niçoise, moules frites or pissaladière. The latter is the subject of some controversy in these parts, it being rumoured that the pissaladière was the first pizza, before its concept was then adopted by the Italians who lay claim to it being their creation, having put cheese on top of the tomato base originally decorated only with black olives and anchovies.

It was time to return and make departure plans. In order to walk off the impressive €15,90 set meal we decided to take in the entire avenue along its course. Old Nice with its bustle and narrowness was gone; as if we had emerged from a funnel. Everything was wide again, big. I had plain forgotten where we were as I gazed out to the Mediterranean and suddenly it was there.

The noise of a sobbing lady caught my attention. I had a feeling that she probably goes there everyday day. She didn’t look like a stranger here. There are candles but most of all, cuddly toys. There’s a bear with the year 2000 printed on it.

Having stopped for a crêpe we had enjoyed our sweet and now this was the bitter, the really bitter indeed.

Still fresh and hurting.

There is nothing you can meaningfully say to each other when faced with this.

We headed back for the airport and post-“B” word Britain. We had gone over our own as well as the footsteps of English holiday travellers for centuries. This time, it was different however. Just as sweet but with a markedly more bitter after taste.

Marc Folgate

 

“A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends”.

So said Henry Agard Wallace, the 33rd Vice President of the United States between 1941 and 1945. A man well placed to pass judgement on such matters, it appears to me.

I don’t suppose that Henry Agard Wallace ever visited rural Northamptonshire but if he did I’d wager that the village of Fotheringhay would have been up there on his “wish list”. This pretty village is the spiritual home of the House of York and then became infamous as the place of prolonged incarceration of Mary, Queen of Scots, ending in her demise.

It is hard to see how Fotheringhay could have been the scene for such brutality. Apparently when Mary first set eyes on her final destination she uttered the word “perio” in her carriage. This Latin word means “I am going to die” and is how Perio Mill Farm derives its name, sitting alongside the road to the village at what was the first terrifying vantage point.

When you visit the village now there is no castle. It was soon afterwards razed to the ground by Mary’s son, James I, save for a modest chunk of one of the walls. Now there is calm, unless the scouts are camping in the vicinity. Swans glide down the River Nene, and wedding bells peel frequently in the church of the House of York. King Richard III’s remains find themselves in Leicester to the annoyance of local historians.

“Look to your consciences and remember that the theatre of the whole world is wider than the kingdom of England”

The words of Mary Queen of Scots as she faced trial by 36 noblemen without legal counsel and access to the evidence in support of her prosecution. All but one convicted her.

We live in perilous times. Politicians in such times face their toughest test and the price of failure in rising to the test is invariably significant. It is believed that Elizabeth I never wanted Mary executed and she vacillated in signing the death warrant, but that hawkish political pressure caused her to perceive that she had no alternative.

The present peril lies in the combination of the motives for leaving the European Union and the means of securing that end. Wallace’s comment on fascism is enlightening as to where we find ourselves now. The enthusiasm with which the Leave campaign is prepared to exit on any terms is alarming. We all know about the deceit by which they took the country to the precipice upon which it now flounders. A deceit that started decades ago but recently has known no boundaries whatsoever. “Grass roots” has become a catch phrase of late. I fear that the grass roots we may be observing are weeds capable of overpowering the garden and even eating at the foundations of the castle.

My friend recently asked me why I was so worried. This is my response.

I once read a play by the Swiss playwright, Max Frisch, named Biedermann und die Brandstifter. The play premiered in 1958 and its English title was The Fire Raisers. In essence, the character Biedermann is conned by an affable stranger and allows the stranger into his attic at a time when reports of arson are rife. He is then further duped and lets another stranger in. The warning signs are obvious to all apart from Biedermann and his wife. The attic becomes a stockpile of inflammable material and Biedermann then watches as he effectively burns his own house down.

When I see loathsome Daily Express headlines fomenting intolerance towards our long standing partners and I perceive the lack of challenge from our politicians I am reminded of Biedermann, Mary, and the wise words of Wallace.

Marc Folgate

Education, education, education.

If we had to look for any reason why we are floating around with no conceivable plan for dealing with the referendum result then here it is. On a day when the Prime Minister sounds the Grammar School horn we have a timely reminder of the power of education.

I will doubtless be charged with accusations that I am ageist. I am really not. However, it is fair to say that there was a divide between young and not-so-young at the vote. That is not to say I am suggesting that young people are more clever; if you take Michael Gove’s perspective as Education Secretary then quite the reverse. He was always keen on tackling the “dumbing down” of examinations and making academic attainment more difficult to achieve. The raising of standards to times of old.

It has been said that Grammar Schools were empire building machines, modelled on public schools. Remember the Raj Quartet? Ronald Merrick and the chip on his shoulder so excellently played by Tim Pigott-Smith?

I am going to say this as I see it, without apology. To those who feel affronted by my comments I am sorry.

People in this country have been educated to feel superior. It is not instinctive. That perception of superiority is taught, and the learning mechanism is very sophisticated.

I mention elsewhere the imperial measurements so cherished by some but that is only a part of the process. My dad tells me of a time at school when the world map was divided between the Empire and everything else outside it. If I remember rightly he said that it was outlined in red.

I was born in the late 1960’s (you may or may not be surprised to know). I recall first going on holiday abroad in 1976. That hot summer which was even hotter in a tent. I recall that first feeling of being abroad. Real foreigners, speaking French. Excitement, and a tinge of anxiety at the same time. The same sense I felt recently as an adult when I crossed from Croatia into Bosnia-Herzegovina.

1976 was the first year that I had ever seen mountains deserving of the title. Not only mountains, but the roads carved round them at impossible heights by engineers who were not British, but had still managed such a feat.

That summer I was also left for 30 minutes or so at the house of a French family we met on the beach at La Rochelle. My anxiety went into overdrive as my mum and dad disappeared off for some down time and I remember being comforted by this kind lady and her children; they offered me hot chocolate and a tissue. The words I understood not, the comfort offered I did.

My eyes were opened to a new world beyond the English Channel. Language exchanges came and I started to become aware of an inner battle inside me. I now know what this was. A struggle between the acquired preconception of national superiority (based on the mere fact that I was British) and the reality.

Patriotism and my inner struggle

Some people never have the struggle. My beloved grandmother never travelled abroad. She had her torments but this wasn’t one of them. I remember arguing about patriotism with her; both my lack of and her abundance of it.

Meanwhile 1970’s Britain served us all up “Mind Your Language”, an ITV sit-com featuring a language school and basing its humour upon a series of nationalistic stereotypes. If you are young enough to have been spared this I can set the scene by saying that the blonde nymphomanic was Scandinavian and the smooth gigolo Italian. That was the sort of “education” we were subjected to. I still hear people fall into this sort of stereotypical pigeonholing to this day, whether it’s “the French don’t like us” or “mañana, mañana”.

My hackles rise when I hear any sentence which starts “The… (insert nationality before stereotypical description, complimentary or otherwise)”. We have Italians who love children and the family. Greeks who are laid back. Turks who pester blonde women. Germany is free of litter and Hitler built good motorways. It is difficult to see how the Netherlands functions with all that dope they are smoking. I shall not go on to Romanians. The Poles do work hard but the money all goes back home.

Some British people still question whether the water in France from the tap is drinkable even though our water industry is largely French-owned. They also question the safety of electrical connections abroad although we are (maybe) about to employ a French company to construct a nuclear power station. Italian cars apparently rust (they might have decades ago but what’s to get in the way of a good stereotype).

Proudly British, 100% British, produced by British farmers, putting the “Great” back into Britain…

According to our supermarkets everything British is superior. Unless it is German and mechanical –  and because they are good at those things this means that they in fact want to rule and dominate us all still.

If you go to a supermarket in France you might find a chalkboard saying “Origine: Espagne” next to the oranges but in the UK you cannot avoid the message. It’s not even subliminal, it’s perfectly overt.

Spanish strawberries? Have you heard this one? No flavour, apparently.

Stereotypes – uniquely British?

I suppose it’s not entirely us. The Austrian Metternich (1773-1859) was also capable of stereotyping when he said:-

“The English have more common sense than any other nation, and they are fools”.

The European Union stereotype?

Decades of “fat cats”, “gravy trains”, and “potty bureaucrats” well-established in the British psyche and largely unchallenged.

TB’s educational legacy – cause for optimism?

Tony Blair’s government post 1997 committed to invest in education and, in my opinion (and it’s a relatively informed one) it at least partially succeeded. I wonder how much of the Blair government’s work on Education x 3 succeeded? Work which would have been assisted by widening travel opportunities, experiences and social media exploding boundaries. If voting habits in the referendum are anything to go by maybe more than we all realise.

Marc Folgate