A final mention, for now, of UK politics. Last week in addition to the Mayoral election there was a Europe wide poll for the European Parliament. As I may have mentioned before, Scaryduck wrote a tremendous piece on narrow minded people. Unsurprisingly he chose the Cornish.
In turn it wasn’t a great surprise that the UKIP received lots of votes in the South West. Mainly from those who think that they are being hard done by. Usually, they think, by Europe, London, Plymouth or just up the road. Because everyone really *is* out to get them. Hang on, no we’re not, that’s the plan for dealing with the Welsh.
As Richard Allan points out in this post it’s not just a matter of getting out of the EU, but rather what do you replace its rules and institutions with? Mr Kilroy Silk and his friends like to blame Europe for all of the supposed ills of the country, but would the alternative be any better? In essense they are saying that we should just think back to the wonderful times before the UK joined the EU and how things were so much better then. Except they weren’t of course.
I’d like to bring my contribution to a close by illustrating my point with this quote from the fictional newsreader Henry Davenport on Drop the Dead Donkey from season 3 episode 9 (entitled "Paintball");
"Every generation kids itself about the good old days. The Victorians hankered after the eighteenth century. In the eighteenth century they all went around saying that kids were better behaved a hundred years earlier when they were dying from bubonic plague. There has never been a golden age. I bet you the dinosaurs went round bleating ‘I bet you never got any of this egg stealing in the jurassic period.’
It’s all nostalgia. Nostalgia is the last refuge of the moron, to paraphrase Dr Johnson, and they don’t make writers like him anymore."
Top, top, show. I think I’ve got a new catch phrase for this blog.
Couldn’t agree more old chap. Remove ourselves from Europe and just watch manufacturing companies such as Nissan, Toyota and Honda simply….close the doors. It really will be like the ‘good old days’ i.e. 3 day weeks, power cuts and Watneys Red Barrel on draught. This rabid xenophobia against anything ‘foreign’ really must stop. I blame the Daily Mail personally.