Goodbye to all that

 

Who would have thought that Prime Minister of the (presently) United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland would turn out to be such a fire-brand radical.  Those of us who thought of her as merely the malicious bitch of the “zero tolerance” policy which continues to poison the workings of the Home Office, could not have imagined that her mindless destructiveness in support of the continuance of the hopelessly divided and self-regarding Conservative Party would espouse the most left-wing anti-imperialist views about the destruction of empire! 

But today, after her capitulation to fellow minority politician leader, Prime Minister Sanchez of Spain, she has signed away the concept of nationality as it relates to an overseas possession.  Gibraltar, whatever the mendacious May says about it, has now lost its British character as it becomes in future subject to a foreign country deciding aspects of its existence.

Let us not forget, too, the fact that Northern Ireland and Scotland also voted for Remain and the Brexit self-harm is making these countries’ futures inside the laughably “united” Kingdom more precarious.  Whatever happens now, the divisions inside the country are not lines of demarcation but gigantic fissures that no amount of mealy mouthed platitudes from a letter to the British people by a desperate and increasingly irrelevant “Prime” Minister of nowhere will be able to bridge.

It is supremely ironic that the party of Empire and National Unity, a party in whose title is the concept of conserving what is excellent in the past, has turned out to be the modern wreckers of the institutions that they formerly maintained they existed to serve.  They have placed party politics above national interest and, including the most fanatical of doctrinaire Brexiteers, they know and have admitted that the country is going to be worse off with Brexit, a price they say is worth paying for the freedom and liberty for our country to advance into the unicorn filled grassy uplands of future long-term prosperity. 

 

As someone rightly said, in the long-term we are all dead, and in the medium to short term most of us do not have the millions safely stashed away in European funds, like the ever-odious Rees-Mogg, to make the difficult times ahead just a little more manageable.

Realizing that Brexit is a disaster is not rocket science and there are politicians on all sides who know this.  I do not paint the whole of the Conservative Party in one colour, there are people in the party who must be desperately worried that their party is going to be accused of national destruction in the future, and they know that the present policy is not one that will benefit the people of Great Britain – to say nothing of Northern Ireland.  I also know that there are Brexiteers in the Labour party, some, like fox-hunting Kate Hoey (who to me seems to have no place in the party) and others who, with some justification, are deeply suspicious about the workings of the EU.  But, as with democracy (a questionable quality in many aspects of EU governance) so with the EU, it is not ideal, but it is better than the alternatives. 

 

And remember, my father and grandfather fought in World Wars, both started in Europe, and I am of the generation that has not had to suffer that obscenity.  Unity in Europe has been tenuous enough and has not eliminated wars on the continent, but the situation is not going to be made better by a major country in Europe withdrawing to its insular boarders.

Today the minsters of the EU will sign the “agreement” and then May will have to go, metaphorical begging bowl in hand, to try and get support for a document that does not seem to settle any of the major questions that make leaving the EU so problematical.  It has been suggested that May has already been stooping to dangling knighthoods in front of those MPs who might be tempted to change sides and support this insupportable agreement.  The next few weeks are going to be catastrophically unedifying - and those are two words that I have never had occasion to put together before.

I am fed up with being a citizen of a country that is now regarded with bemused contempt by those who have bothered to look at our mare’s nest of a national situation.  I am fed up with having to try and explain why my country is doing things that are absurdly out of kilter with rational thought.  And I am fed up with my situation as a British Citizen living in an EU country being used by MY government as a negotiating chip in a no-win game at MY expense.

It is at times like these that I wish I could use the “Delete all and insert” approach of General Body meetings in my University, where one motion could be amended to its opposite by the “Delete all and insert” gambit.  The trouble is for that to work today for the absurdity of Brexit, there would need to be an addition to those four words – the word “forget” between “all” and “and”, so that the revised amendment would be “Delete all, forget, and insert”.

In real life, unfortunately, amendments like that don’t work.  However absurd and dangerous Brexit actually is, we seem to be stumbling, blindly towards our doom.  And even if, by some miracle, we were able to reverse the absurdity, there would still be the corrosive memory of what has been said and done during these two years of governmental paralysis.

Whatever happens, Britain has changed and there is no going back.  My only hope in the chaos that I foresee in the near future, is that something positive will be salvaged by politicians who finally realize that their responsibility is to the country and not to their parties.  Hoping for politicians to “do the right thing” is, clearly, desperation! 

 

But, I am an eternal, if cynical, optimist and the historical precedent of the Conservative Party of Peel and the Repeal of the Corn Laws shows the way!

Do your duty!

O God The News!

 

Never let it be said that the bloody awful weather dictates my attitude towards life.  However, I am in a bloody awful mood to match!

The news from Britain as the shambolic ‘government’ of talentless Conservative (have you any idea how difficult it was for me to put a capital letter at the start of that word) lower than vermin, self-seeking, inept, traitorous, bastards descend lower and lower into the farce that is their approach to Brexit.

And my contempt for May grows.  And, no, I have no sympathy for her as she is savaged by the liars and cowards with whom she has surrounded herself.  Whenever I see her robotically defending the indefensible and fell a smidgeon of sympathy, I only have to remember her tenure at the Home Office and the heartless and ILLEGAL processes that she put in place to banish any fellow feeling for her ‘suffering’ now.  Her on-going failure at least gives a re-reading of the “all politicians’ careers end in failure” as hers has been failure in its more continuous manner.  To say nothing of her dancing.

It is a sign of desperation and picking through the dregs that Pixie Cheeks Gove has been asked to take on the barbed wire rimmed, poisoned chalice of Brexit Secretary.  But he will only accept if he is allowed to renegotiate!  What world are these people living in?  Are they so secure in the foreign investments that they can look on with equanimity as the rest (the large rest) of us suffer?

I know that I do not command a great deal of sympathy as I spend my retirement by the side of the Med here in Castelldefels – but my pension is paid in pounds sterling and when I first came to Catalonia a Euro was 70p; now a Euro is 87p which means that my pension has been reduced by 20%, a fifth of my buying power has been wiped out largely because of the stupidity of a discontented electorate listening to the lies of the Brexiteers and believing that those Brexiteer had access to whole herds of magic unicorns who would make all manner of things well!  Rubbish.  Just recite the names of the most prominent Brexiteer and then ask the age-old question, “Would you buy a used car” from any of them?  Of course, you wouldn’t, so why entrust the future of your country to the sick imaginations of these failures?

And that scum that has resigned . . . and I paused there because my dictatorial watch informed me that I had been sitting for too long and I needed to move about for a minute!   

Perhaps its is just as well I walked away from the keys.  What do I achieve by venting my spleen?  I suppose it could be considered cathartic, but apart from keeping my blood pressure within the green range, cui bono?

It is, however, ironic that the “onlie begetters” of Brexit are generally not in government any more and therefore are not dealing with the mess that they have made!  Nothing like denying responsibility, but I suppose they have the superb example of Cameron to take as their guide for thoroughly selfish irresponsibility!

And the back wheel of my bike has been punctured or something because it was thoroughly flat when I attempted to ride it to my Catalan lesson this morning.  And now I have to go and pick it up in the pouring rain.  Again.  Much as I like the bike, I have to admit that I have been singularly unlucky with the damn thing.  I have barely gone more than a fortnight riding the thing without some reason to take it back to my bike man.  The broken spokes have become a running joke and the suspension is suspect too.

I am now thoroughly regretting that I have ordered the updated, fat wheel version of the bike that I have.  It will have improved brakes and gears, with a sexy paint job (sigh!), a full colour display and a back pannier, or at least a framework to put one on, and the thing will have a sort of brake light as well.  As you can see, I am easily persuaded with the trivia and don’t really care about the important engineering of the thing!

The new bike should/might arrive in time for Christmas and will give me something to worry about, while not being able to ride the thing because of poor weather.  It is all in the anticipation and not the reality!

Anyway, to finish off a near perfect day, after I have collected my bike, I then have to return to the centre of town for a dental appointment.  If a day is going to be bad then it does make sense to concentrate all the badness so that you can enjoy it a schadenfreude sort of way.

To keep my sanity, I have not gone out of my way to find what new infantile lunacy the so-called Head of the Free World has been up to.  That can wait until I am stronger!

The people have decided? Again!

Although still bitter about the fact that 52% of those who bothered to vote decided that Brexit was a sensible solution to the perceived problems of a massively wealthy country with a privileged relationship with the largest trading partnership in the world – I can at least see that a distant professional political class linked to obvious disparity in the distribution of wealth and the completely unscrupulous campaign of a group of post-truth ruthlessly selfish, self-seeking political opportunists might offer some sort of explanation for what appears (still) to be a collective decision to shoot whatever feet were available to view.

            If I hear another person say something to the effect that, “Things are not as bad as those who said we would really suffer when we left the EU are they?” just once again.  I will scream. 

            May I point out that we have not actually left the EU?  We are still full members of that organization, though we now appear not to go to certain meetings, allowing the French and Germans to decide whatever is best for their own interests.  We have not left.  That is years in the future.  A future completely and utterly unsafe in the conspiratorial hands of an unelected Prime Minister of a Party that  . . .  well, you can see the way that this rant is going.  And the point I want to make is not about the UK but my adopted country of Spain.

            The Conservatives, you will not be surprised to learn, is not my party of choice.  I have veered in my life between utter contempt for the Conservative Party (it was a real effort for me to give the title of such a beggared organization capital letters) to downright loathing.

            

     At the moment I tend more to the latter than the former.  It is difficult to feel anything remotely positive about an unelected Prime Minister who presents her choice of Foreign Secretary as anything than a joke in poor taste and, further, who expects to be taken seriously when she suddenly pulls the emaciated and ossified corpse of the rabbit of the reintroduction of grammar schools from the cesspit of unthinking Tory appeasement.  And that is enough of a mixed metaphor to be going on with.

            Just a reminder about the subject of this diatribe – which is Spain. 

            However, just before we get to that country, I would like to make a link between this ‘policy’ suggestion of the re-introduction of grammar schools and the Anglican Church.  As an Anglican Atheist myself, I feel a certain nostalgic concern for the doings of the Church and I am always fascinated by Religion.  There are important concerns that religion attempts to wrestle with and believers and non-believers can gain from studying the way that the Church has struggled with some of the major philosophical and social questions since its institution.  It has thought long and hard and Church thinkers have contributed to the intellectual development of our civilization.  It is therefore all the more frustrating that sizeable sections of the modern church find challenges like social and political inequality too difficult to cope with and so turn to ‘easy’ questions to which there appear to be equally ‘easy’ answers.

            If you find that church leaders are attempting to find ways to challenge the vested interests of the status quo, the easiest way to unsettle their socialist tendencies is to raise the twin concerns which are guaranteed to act in the same way as the chorus of sheep in Animal Farm who chanted, “Four legs good; two legs bad!” as soon as any other animal challenged the authority of the pigs.  The two key areas whose discussion will swamp anything else are, of course, the questions of Abortion and the ‘question’ of homosexuality.

            If you want another example of one stupid thing swamping discussion from my experience as a teacher, then it would be an item on a staff meeting agenda discussing school uniform and the pupils’ wearing of jewellery.

            The amount of time that I have listened to discussions about the size, positioning, composition and cost of various items of clothing and earrings to be worn by school children make medieval scholastic discussions about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin look like casual throw-away lines!

            So, the point that I am making is, the unelected May is raising the ghost of a lost policy with the concept of new grammar schools.  If she fails (and she should because there is no educational expert who thinks that they work for all children) then she can point to the fact that she did her best but the establishment (sic) did her down.  If she succeeds then she will make the middle class grunts in the shires happy as they will assume that their privileged darlings will obviously get to the grammar schools and the lesser breeds without the law (who don’t vote Conservative anyway) will get the Sec Mods that they deserve!

            I can’t wait to see the Jesuitical logic that will have to be used to show that naïf little Candide’s tutor was right all along and they will be the best possible schools in this best of all possible educational worlds. 

            I assume that all of Trump’s speeches are being video recorded for cabinet ministers to learn from.  After all, the fact that the rambling gibberish that he spouts has nothing to do with education doesn’t make any difference as he finds it difficult to focus on anything at all, apart from spouting twisted childhood memories of the nursery rhyme about Dumpty Dumpty – and it all seems to go down well with a certain section of the Republican Party.  And how different are the American and British Conservatives anyway?  It’s just the Brits don’t have guns.  Yet.

            Anyway, Spain.

            We have just had the results from the election in Galicia and the PP (the Spanish Conservative Party) has won an overall majority.  Again.

            If you do not live in Spain that may mean little.  If you do live in Spain it is incredible.

            

          PP has had the sort of catastrophically bad publicity for months and months and months that would be amusing if it were not all too real.  Every treasurer of the party, since it was founded, has been charged with criminal mismanagement.  Corruption has become synonymous with the name of the party and day after day companies, politicians, businessmen, party workers, anyone in fact who has had any contact with this toxic brand have been accused.  The scale, of what can only be called theft, is astonishing and scalps have been claimed by courageous media types who bring the latest misdemeanours to light.

            The epic mismanagement of public funds in Valencia has degenerated into pure farce with the senator for Valencia being accused by the High Court and then resigning from PP who put her there so that the acting president (PP) can claim it is nothing to do with him because she is no longer in the party!  In an ironic touch which is poignant to the point of insult: the ‘senadora’ actually gets paid more now that she is not in a party and has extra funds allocated so that she can manage alone outside the framework of an established organization!  The idea of resignation for the misdemeanours of her dictatorial and grasping reign in Valencia does not of course enter her head and, with a brazen audacity that takes the breath away she continues to flaunt her apparent disinterest in the chaos that she has caused.

            It is difficult to give a true impression of just how overwhelming the stench of corruption is in this country.  Any one of the tens of major scandals that have rocked this country would have settled the hash of any government in the UK trying to brave it out.  But in Spain, few of the true criminals are actually in prison.

            Spain has a whole section of society that is above ordinary justice: thousands of people who cannot be tried in the same way as ordinary citizens.  The UK has no one who is above the law in this way.  German has no one who is above the law in this way.

            Spain may point to the fact that the sister of the present King was actually arraigned in court for corruption and was cross-examined.  And as part of her evidence she said, “I don’t know” hundreds of times.  I think in a British court she would have been charged with contempt.  And we are still waiting for a judgement.  I am not holding my breath that she will spend the time in prison that one of the prosecutors has demanded.  Her husband was arraigned with her, charged with exploiting the royal name and overcharging by misappropriating public funds (guess where!) etc etc.

            In spite of the torrent of adverse publicity, Galicia has voted in a majority PP government in its autonomous region!  It makes one weep.  In spite of the massive amount of evidence that points to institutional systemic corruption, they vote for more of the same.

            It is, sometimes, difficult to maintain an optimistic approach.  But not impossible.

            There are solutions to the present situation.  The parties of the left could find some sort of way to work together to stop what would be a total disaster – the continuation of the ‘government’ of PP.  They must find a way.  

          In a very real sense, the future of a united Spain depends on it.