Thursday 15th.Jun 2016

[citizenJA]

The new polls give Leave a 3 point, and 6 point lead.

Am staying

If Leave win, will have everything crossed that Galloway, Skinner and assorted left wingers are right and it all goes swimmmingly. Onward and upward to some new wonderful more progressive reality.

And if Boris J ends up in Downing Street and puts Farage into the Lords and the government...what on earth could possibly go wrong ?....keep telling myself that....

Millennia of the nation's common laws enshrined in assorted documentation, legal precedents - a lot of that really quite good. I'm scared too.

[ohsocynical]

Morning, all.

Thank you for the lovely messages - the Showmaster is bloody but unbowed, and wearing a very fetching bolster under his hooter.
Having been informed very forcibly that I will tolerate no nonsense this time, he's doing what he's been told.

(Dearest Ohso - he's not a Ringmaster, has no top hat, but does wear a very rakish fedora.....)

Brexit Schmexit. If it wasn't so important, I'd be laughing my socks off at the ridiculousness of it all.
It is now all about Armada re-enactments on the Thames, Bojo's fantasy government, and more effing lies.
Tonight, it will be all about La Mensch. AAARRRRGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

OGRPPFGTCC informed Jon Snow that the Tories did "nothing untoward" regarding election expenses. This must be why his lawyers have been off to court to fight against the police getting extensions on the time limits for further investigations, then. Obviously......
He also said that he would "accept the judgement of the British people" on the EU referendum. That's big of him. Wanker. Having put the British people into a situation where they have to vote, he's prepared to accept what they decide. What a guy.

I blame Corbyn. He's been, like, nowhere, while it's been raining. H didn't even offer to pick Show up from the hospital. Hopeless.

Ringmaster --- Showmaster --- I knew it was something like that

[PaulfromYorkshire]

The bookies are saying it's closer and closer.

Currently the best odds you can get for Leave are only 11/8

:-s

[yahyah]

I just read my hubby the Paddy Power odds, and they had Leave at 13/8, which is worse isn't it ?
Worse for remain supporter's hopes that is.

[AnatolyKasparov]

That MORI survey has very significant methodology changes from their last one. Just saying.

Those polls give Brexit a chance, but aren't *quite* good enough to make that favourite. Its the hope that kills you......

[ohsocynical]

Morning all ,

Getting used to this now, browsing in bed and tapping a screen to communicate, who'd have thunk it.

Hope all is well with Show ephie x

Anyhoo - A A Gill wrote this wonderful piece over the weekend regarding EU & jolly olde Engerlaand Doing the rounds on Twitter now, worth a read ....



Here's that AA Gill article in full #voteremain.

Brexit: AA Gill argues for ‘In’.
We all know what “getting our country back” means. It’s snorting a line of that most pernicious and debilitating Little English drug, nostalgia

AA Gill
June 12 2016, 12:01am,
The Sunday Times

It was the woman on Question Time that really did it for me. She was so familiar. There is someone like her in every queue, every coffee shop, outside every school in every parish council in the country. Middle-aged, middle-class, middle-brow, over-made-up, with her National Health face and weatherproof English expression of hurt righteousness, she’s Britannia’s mother-in-law. The camera closed in on her and she shouted: “All I want is my country back. Give me my country back.”

It was a heartfelt cry of real distress and the rest of the audience erupted in sympathetic applause, but I thought: “Back from what? Back from where?”

Wanting the country back is the constant mantra of all the outies. Farage slurs it, Gove insinuates it. Of course I know what they mean. We all know what they mean. They mean back from Johnny Foreigner, back from the brink, back from the future, back-to-back, back to bosky hedges and dry stone walls and country lanes and church bells and warm beer and skittles and football rattles and cheery banter and clogs on cobbles. Back to vicars-and-tarts parties and Carry On fart jokes, back to Elgar and fudge and proper weather and herbaceous borders and cars called Morris. Back to victoria sponge and 22 yards to a wicket and 15 hands to a horse and 3ft to a yard and four fingers in a Kit Kat, back to gooseberries not avocados, back to deference and respect, to make do and mend and smiling bravely and biting your lip and suffering in silence and patronising foreigners with pity.

We all know what “getting our country back” means. It’s snorting a line of the most pernicious and debilitating Little English drug, nostalgia. The warm, crumbly, honey-coloured, collective “yesterday” with its fond belief that everything was better back then, that Britain (England, really) is a worse place now than it was at some foggy point in the past where we achieved peak Blighty. It’s the knowledge that the best of us have been and gone, that nothing we can build will be as lovely as a National Trust Georgian country house, no art will be as good as a Turner, no poem as wonderful as If, no writer a touch on Shakespeare or Dickens, nothing will grow as lovely as a cottage garden, no hero greater than Nelson, no politician better than Churchill, no view more throat-catching than the White Cliffs and that we will never manufacture anything as great as a Rolls-Royce or Flying Scotsman again.

The dream of Brexit isn’t that we might be able to make a brighter, new, energetic tomorrow, it’s a desire to shuffle back to a regret-curdled inward-looking yesterday. In the Brexit fantasy, the best we can hope for is to kick out all the work-all-hours foreigners and become caretakers to our own past in this self-congratulatory island of moaning and pomposity.

And if you think that’s an exaggeration of the Brexit position, then just listen to the language they use: “We are a nation of inventors and entrepreneurs, we want to put the great back in Britain, the great engineers, the great manufacturers.” This is all the expression of a sentimental nostalgia. In the Brexiteer’s mind’s eye is the old Pathé newsreel of Donald Campbell, of John Logie Baird with his television, Barnes Wallis and his bouncing bomb, and Robert Baden-Powell inventing boy scouts in his shed.

All we need, their argument goes, is to be free of the humourless Germans and spoilsport French and all their collective liberalism and reality. There is a concomitant hope that if we manage to back out of Europe, then we’ll get back to the bowler-hatted 1950s and the Commonwealth will hold pageants, fireworks displays and beg to be back in the Queen Empress’s good books again. Then New Zealand will sacrifice a thousand lambs, Ghana will ask if it can go back to being called the Gold Coast and Britain will resume hand-making Land Rovers and top hats and Sheffield plate teapots.

There is a reason that most of the people who want to leave the EU are old while those who want to remain are young: it’s because the young aren’t infected with Bisto nostalgia. They don’t recognise half the stuff I’ve mentioned here. They’ve grown up in the EU and at worst it’s been neutral for them.

The under-thirties want to be part of things, not aloof from them. They’re about being joined-up and counted. I imagine a phrase most outies identify with is “women’s liberation has gone too far”. Everything has gone too far for them, from political correctness — well, that’s gone mad, hasn’t it? — to health and safety and gender-neutral lavatories. Those oldies, they don’t know if they’re coming or going, what with those newfangled mobile phones and kids on Tinder and Grindr. What happened to meeting Miss Joan Hunter Dunn at the tennis club? And don’t get them started on electric hand dryers, or something unrecognised in the bagging area, or Indian call centres , or the impertinent computer asking for a password that has both capitals and little letters and numbers and more than eight digits.

Brexit is the fond belief that Britain is worse now than at some point in the foggy past where we achieved peak Blighty
We listen to the Brexit lot talk about the trade deals they’re going to make with Europe after we leave, and the blithe insouciance that what they’re offering instead of EU membership is a divorce where you can still have sex with your ex. They reckon they can get out of the marriage, keep the house, not pay alimony, take the kids out of school, stop the in-laws going to the doctor, get strict with the visiting rights, but, you know, still get a shag at the weekend and, obviously, see other people on the side.

Really, that’s their best offer? That’s the plan? To swagger into Brussels with Union Jack pants on and say: “ ’Ello luv, you’re looking nice today. Would you like some?”

When the rest of us ask how that’s really going to work, leavers reply, with Terry-Thomas smirks, that “they’re going to still really fancy us, honest, they’re gagging for us. Possibly not Merkel, but the bosses of Mercedes and those French vintners and cheesemakers, they can’t get enough of old John Bull. Of course they’re going to want to go on making the free market with two backs after we’ve got the decree nisi. Makes sense, doesn’t it?”

Have no doubt, this is a divorce. It’s not just business, it’s not going to be all reason and goodwill. Like all divorces, leaving Europe would be ugly and mean and hurtful, and it would lead to a great deal of poisonous xenophobia and racism, all the niggling personal prejudice that dumped, betrayed and thwarted people are prey to. And the racism and prejudice are, of course, weak points for us. The tortuous renegotiation with lawyers and courts will be bitter and vengeful, because divorces always are and, just in passing, this sovereignty thing we’re supposed to want back so badly, like Frodo’s ring, has nothing to do with you or me. We won’t notice it coming back, because we didn’t notice not having it in the first place.

You won’t wake up on June 24 and think: “Oh my word, my arthritis has gone! My teeth are suddenly whiter! Magically, I seem to know how to make a soufflé and I’m buff with the power of sovereignty.” This is something only politicians care about; it makes not a jot of difference to you or me if the Supreme Court is a bunch of strangely out-of-touch old gits in wigs in Westminster or a load of strangely out-of-touch old gits without wigs in Luxembourg. What matters is that we have as many judges as possible on the side of personal freedom.

Personally, I see nothing about our legislators in the UK that makes me feel I can confidently give them more power. The more checks and balances politicians have, the better for the rest of us. You can’t have too many wise heads and different opinions. If you’re really worried about red tape, by the way, it’s not just a European problem. We’re perfectly capable of coming up with our own rules and regulations and we have no shortage of jobsworths. Red tape may be annoying, but it is also there to protect your and my family from being lied to, poisoned and cheated.

The first “X” I ever put on a voting slip was to say yes to the EU. The first referendum was when I was 20 years old. This one will be in the week of my 62nd birthday. For nearly all my adult life, there hasn’t been a day when I haven’t been pleased and proud to be part of this great collective. If you ask me for my nationality, the truth is I feel more European than anything else. I am part of this culture, this European civilisation. I can walk into any gallery on our continent and completely understand the images and the stories on the walls. These people are my people and they have been for thousands of years. I can read books on subjects from Ancient Greece to Dark Ages Scandinavia, from Renaissance Italy to 19th-century France, and I don’t need the context or the landscape explained to me. The music of Europe, from its scales and its instruments to its rhythms and religion, is my music. The Renaissance, the rococo, the Romantics, the impressionists, gothic, baroque, neoclassicism, realism, expressionism, futurism, fauvism, cubism, dada, surrealism, postmodernism and kitsch were all European movements and none of them belongs to a single nation.

There is a reason why the Chinese are making fake Italian handbags and the Italians aren’t making fake Chinese ones. This European culture, without question or argument, is the greatest, most inventive, subtle, profound, beautiful and powerful genius that was ever contrived anywhere by anyone and it belongs to us. Just look at my day job — food. The change in food culture and pleasure has been enormous since we joined the EU, and that’s no coincidence. What we eat, the ingredients, the recipes, may come from around the world, but it is the collective to and fro of European interests, expertise and imagination that has made it all so very appetising and exciting.

The restaurant was a European invention, naturally. The first one in Paris was called The London Bridge.

Culture works and grows through the constant warp and weft of creators, producers, consumers, intellectuals and instinctive lovers. You can’t dictate or legislate for it, you can just make a place that encourages it and you can truncate it. You can make it harder and more grudging, you can put up barriers and you can build walls, but why on earth would you? This collective culture, this golden civilisation grown on this continent over thousands of years, has made everything we have and everything we are, why would you not want to be part of it?

I understand that if we leave we don’t have to hand back our library ticket for European civilisation, but why would we even think about it? In fact, the only ones who would are those old, philistine scared gits. Look at them, too frightened to join in.

I posted the link to this on our local Labour Facebook page a couple of days ago .... A few members were miffed about it. which was followed by a stuffy BTL reminder about not offending people. I'm afraid I got irritated and said it was what was being said and written out there in the big wide world but I'd stop if they'd rather not know. Their decision.

Christ on a bike. There are times I thirst for the old days. But getting offended over a newspaper article? it's AA Milne for Gods sake. He's sarcastic and has a tongue so sharp you could cut yourself on it. It what sells.

[StephenDolan]

Morning all ,

Getting used to this now, browsing in bed and tapping a screen to communicate, who'd have thunk it.

Hope all is well with Show ephie x

Anyhoo - A A Gill wrote this wonderful piece over the weekend regarding EU & jolly olde Engerlaand Doing the rounds on Twitter now, worth a read ....



Here's that AA Gill article in full #voteremain.

Brexit: AA Gill argues for ‘In’.
We all know what “getting our country back” means. It’s snorting a line of that most pernicious and debilitating Little English drug, nostalgia

AA Gill
June 12 2016, 12:01am,
The Sunday Times

It was the woman on Question Time that really did it for me. She was so familiar. There is someone like her in every queue, every coffee shop, outside every school in every parish council in the country. Middle-aged, middle-class, middle-brow, over-made-up, with her National Health face and weatherproof English expression of hurt righteousness, she’s Britannia’s mother-in-law. The camera closed in on her and she shouted: “All I want is my country back. Give me my country back.”

It was a heartfelt cry of real distress and the rest of the audience erupted in sympathetic applause, but I thought: “Back from what? Back from where?”

Wanting the country back is the constant mantra of all the outies. Farage slurs it, Gove insinuates it. Of course I know what they mean. We all know what they mean. They mean back from Johnny Foreigner, back from the brink, back from the future, back-to-back, back to bosky hedges and dry stone walls and country lanes and church bells and warm beer and skittles and football rattles and cheery banter and clogs on cobbles. Back to vicars-and-tarts parties and Carry On fart jokes, back to Elgar and fudge and proper weather and herbaceous borders and cars called Morris. Back to victoria sponge and 22 yards to a wicket and 15 hands to a horse and 3ft to a yard and four fingers in a Kit Kat, back to gooseberries not avocados, back to deference and respect, to make do and mend and smiling bravely and biting your lip and suffering in silence and patronising foreigners with pity.

We all know what “getting our country back” means. It’s snorting a line of the most pernicious and debilitating Little English drug, nostalgia. The warm, crumbly, honey-coloured, collective “yesterday” with its fond belief that everything was better back then, that Britain (England, really) is a worse place now than it was at some foggy point in the past where we achieved peak Blighty. It’s the knowledge that the best of us have been and gone, that nothing we can build will be as lovely as a National Trust Georgian country house, no art will be as good as a Turner, no poem as wonderful as If, no writer a touch on Shakespeare or Dickens, nothing will grow as lovely as a cottage garden, no hero greater than Nelson, no politician better than Churchill, no view more throat-catching than the White Cliffs and that we will never manufacture anything as great as a Rolls-Royce or Flying Scotsman again.

The dream of Brexit isn’t that we might be able to make a brighter, new, energetic tomorrow, it’s a desire to shuffle back to a regret-curdled inward-looking yesterday. In the Brexit fantasy, the best we can hope for is to kick out all the work-all-hours foreigners and become caretakers to our own past in this self-congratulatory island of moaning and pomposity.

And if you think that’s an exaggeration of the Brexit position, then just listen to the language they use: “We are a nation of inventors and entrepreneurs, we want to put the great back in Britain, the great engineers, the great manufacturers.” This is all the expression of a sentimental nostalgia. In the Brexiteer’s mind’s eye is the old Pathé newsreel of Donald Campbell, of John Logie Baird with his television, Barnes Wallis and his bouncing bomb, and Robert Baden-Powell inventing boy scouts in his shed.

All we need, their argument goes, is to be free of the humourless Germans and spoilsport French and all their collective liberalism and reality. There is a concomitant hope that if we manage to back out of Europe, then we’ll get back to the bowler-hatted 1950s and the Commonwealth will hold pageants, fireworks displays and beg to be back in the Queen Empress’s good books again. Then New Zealand will sacrifice a thousand lambs, Ghana will ask if it can go back to being called the Gold Coast and Britain will resume hand-making Land Rovers and top hats and Sheffield plate teapots.

There is a reason that most of the people who want to leave the EU are old while those who want to remain are young: it’s because the young aren’t infected with Bisto nostalgia. They don’t recognise half the stuff I’ve mentioned here. They’ve grown up in the EU and at worst it’s been neutral for them.

The under-thirties want to be part of things, not aloof from them. They’re about being joined-up and counted. I imagine a phrase most outies identify with is “women’s liberation has gone too far”. Everything has gone too far for them, from political correctness — well, that’s gone mad, hasn’t it? — to health and safety and gender-neutral lavatories. Those oldies, they don’t know if they’re coming or going, what with those newfangled mobile phones and kids on Tinder and Grindr. What happened to meeting Miss Joan Hunter Dunn at the tennis club? And don’t get them started on electric hand dryers, or something unrecognised in the bagging area, or Indian call centres , or the impertinent computer asking for a password that has both capitals and little letters and numbers and more than eight digits.

Brexit is the fond belief that Britain is worse now than at some point in the foggy past where we achieved peak Blighty
We listen to the Brexit lot talk about the trade deals they’re going to make with Europe after we leave, and the blithe insouciance that what they’re offering instead of EU membership is a divorce where you can still have sex with your ex. They reckon they can get out of the marriage, keep the house, not pay alimony, take the kids out of school, stop the in-laws going to the doctor, get strict with the visiting rights, but, you know, still get a shag at the weekend and, obviously, see other people on the side.

Really, that’s their best offer? That’s the plan? To swagger into Brussels with Union Jack pants on and say: “ ’Ello luv, you’re looking nice today. Would you like some?”

When the rest of us ask how that’s really going to work, leavers reply, with Terry-Thomas smirks, that “they’re going to still really fancy us, honest, they’re gagging for us. Possibly not Merkel, but the bosses of Mercedes and those French vintners and cheesemakers, they can’t get enough of old John Bull. Of course they’re going to want to go on making the free market with two backs after we’ve got the decree nisi. Makes sense, doesn’t it?”

Have no doubt, this is a divorce. It’s not just business, it’s not going to be all reason and goodwill. Like all divorces, leaving Europe would be ugly and mean and hurtful, and it would lead to a great deal of poisonous xenophobia and racism, all the niggling personal prejudice that dumped, betrayed and thwarted people are prey to. And the racism and prejudice are, of course, weak points for us. The tortuous renegotiation with lawyers and courts will be bitter and vengeful, because divorces always are and, just in passing, this sovereignty thing we’re supposed to want back so badly, like Frodo’s ring, has nothing to do with you or me. We won’t notice it coming back, because we didn’t notice not having it in the first place.

You won’t wake up on June 24 and think: “Oh my word, my arthritis has gone! My teeth are suddenly whiter! Magically, I seem to know how to make a soufflé and I’m buff with the power of sovereignty.” This is something only politicians care about; it makes not a jot of difference to you or me if the Supreme Court is a bunch of strangely out-of-touch old gits in wigs in Westminster or a load of strangely out-of-touch old gits without wigs in Luxembourg. What matters is that we have as many judges as possible on the side of personal freedom.

Personally, I see nothing about our legislators in the UK that makes me feel I can confidently give them more power. The more checks and balances politicians have, the better for the rest of us. You can’t have too many wise heads and different opinions. If you’re really worried about red tape, by the way, it’s not just a European problem. We’re perfectly capable of coming up with our own rules and regulations and we have no shortage of jobsworths. Red tape may be annoying, but it is also there to protect your and my family from being lied to, poisoned and cheated.

The first “X” I ever put on a voting slip was to say yes to the EU. The first referendum was when I was 20 years old. This one will be in the week of my 62nd birthday. For nearly all my adult life, there hasn’t been a day when I haven’t been pleased and proud to be part of this great collective. If you ask me for my nationality, the truth is I feel more European than anything else. I am part of this culture, this European civilisation. I can walk into any gallery on our continent and completely understand the images and the stories on the walls. These people are my people and they have been for thousands of years. I can read books on subjects from Ancient Greece to Dark Ages Scandinavia, from Renaissance Italy to 19th-century France, and I don’t need the context or the landscape explained to me. The music of Europe, from its scales and its instruments to its rhythms and religion, is my music. The Renaissance, the rococo, the Romantics, the impressionists, gothic, baroque, neoclassicism, realism, expressionism, futurism, fauvism, cubism, dada, surrealism, postmodernism and kitsch were all European movements and none of them belongs to a single nation.

There is a reason why the Chinese are making fake Italian handbags and the Italians aren’t making fake Chinese ones. This European culture, without question or argument, is the greatest, most inventive, subtle, profound, beautiful and powerful genius that was ever contrived anywhere by anyone and it belongs to us. Just look at my day job — food. The change in food culture and pleasure has been enormous since we joined the EU, and that’s no coincidence. What we eat, the ingredients, the recipes, may come from around the world, but it is the collective to and fro of European interests, expertise and imagination that has made it all so very appetising and exciting.

The restaurant was a European invention, naturally. The first one in Paris was called The London Bridge.

Culture works and grows through the constant warp and weft of creators, producers, consumers, intellectuals and instinctive lovers. You can’t dictate or legislate for it, you can just make a place that encourages it and you can truncate it. You can make it harder and more grudging, you can put up barriers and you can build walls, but why on earth would you? This collective culture, this golden civilisation grown on this continent over thousands of years, has made everything we have and everything we are, why would you not want to be part of it?

I understand that if we leave we don’t have to hand back our library ticket for European civilisation, but why would we even think about it? In fact, the only ones who would are those old, philistine scared gits. Look at them, too frightened to join in.

I posted the link to this on our local Labour Facebook page a couple of days ago .... A few members were miffed about it. which was followed by a stuffy BTL reminder about not offending people. I'm afraid I got irritated and said it was what was being said and written out there in the big wide world but I'd stop if they'd rather not know. Their decision.

Christ on a bike. There are times I thirst for the old days. But getting offended over a newspaper article? it's AA Milne for Gods sake. He's sarcastic and has a tongue so sharp you could cut yourself on it. It what sells.

AA Milne. Now that would be a good story.

Gove piglet, Johnson Pooh?

[AnatolyKasparov]

I just read my hubby the Paddy Power odds, and they had Leave at 13/8, which is worse isn't it ?
Worse for remain supporter's hopes that is.

No, 13/8 is *longer* odds than 11/8. I've always found this stuff a bit confusing as well tbf

[yahyah]

& I've just taken a Brexiteer to task for posting that the EU has '500,000,000 million' inhabitants !

[mbc1955]

I just read my hubby the Paddy Power odds, and they had Leave at 13/8, which is worse isn't it ?
Worse for remain supporter's hopes that is.

I'm no gambler but I think it's the other way round. Remember this is the odds against Leave winning, so this means that if you bet £8 and they win, you'll get £13 in return. The 11/8 odds mean that if you bet £8, you'd only get £11 winnings. Since the bookies are effectively betting against Leave in either deal, the 13/8 odds mean they think Leave is less likely to win. They're offering you more money in potential winnings to get you £8 off you to make the bet more tempting to you.

Like offering 5,000/1 on Leicester City winning the League...

[yahyah]

Maybe we should build a Trump style wall. Sanity one side, prejudice the other.

[Willow904]

Cameron as Tigger?

But who's Christopher Robin?

[yahyah]

Farage the Pooh-stick.

[yahyah]

ClETuz8WgAE1Ggj.jpg (111.51 KiB) Viewed 5638 times

[TobyLatimer]

Osborne as Eeyore. Pickles as Heffalump.

[danesclose]

I just read my hubby the Paddy Power odds, and they had Leave at 13/8, which is worse isn't it ?
Worse for remain supporter's hopes that is.

No, 13/8 is *longer* odds than 11/8. I've always found this stuff a bit confusing as well tbf

Think of it as a vulgar fraction (if you can think back to school maths lessons )
If you divide the numerator (aka the top number) by the denominator (aka the bottom number), then the larger the number the less likely bookies think it is going to happen (i.e. the odds are longer), and as my grandad used to say, you never see a poor bookie!
13/8 = 1.625. 11/8 = 1.375.

[ohsocynical]

Morning all ,

Getting used to this now, browsing in bed and tapping a screen to communicate, who'd have thunk it.

Hope all is well with Show ephie x

Anyhoo - A A Gill wrote this wonderful piece over the weekend regarding EU & jolly olde Engerlaand Doing the rounds on Twitter now, worth a read ....



Here's that AA Gill article in full #voteremain.

Brexit: AA Gill argues for ‘In’.
We all know what “getting our country back” means. It’s snorting a line of that most pernicious and debilitating Little English drug, nostalgia

AA Gill
June 12 2016, 12:01am,
The Sunday Times

It was the woman on Question Time that really did it for me. She was so familiar. There is someone like her in every queue, every coffee shop, outside every school in every parish council in the country. Middle-aged, middle-class, middle-brow, over-made-up, with her National Health face and weatherproof English expression of hurt righteousness, she’s Britannia’s mother-in-law. The camera closed in on her and she shouted: “All I want is my country back. Give me my country back.”

It was a heartfelt cry of real distress and the rest of the audience erupted in sympathetic applause, but I thought: “Back from what? Back from where?”

Wanting the country back is the constant mantra of all the outies. Farage slurs it, Gove insinuates it. Of course I know what they mean. We all know what they mean. They mean back from Johnny Foreigner, back from the brink, back from the future, back-to-back, back to bosky hedges and dry stone walls and country lanes and church bells and warm beer and skittles and football rattles and cheery banter and clogs on cobbles. Back to vicars-and-tarts parties and Carry On fart jokes, back to Elgar and fudge and proper weather and herbaceous borders and cars called Morris. Back to victoria sponge and 22 yards to a wicket and 15 hands to a horse and 3ft to a yard and four fingers in a Kit Kat, back to gooseberries not avocados, back to deference and respect, to make do and mend and smiling bravely and biting your lip and suffering in silence and patronising foreigners with pity.

We all know what “getting our country back” means. It’s snorting a line of the most pernicious and debilitating Little English drug, nostalgia. The warm, crumbly, honey-coloured, collective “yesterday” with its fond belief that everything was better back then, that Britain (England, really) is a worse place now than it was at some foggy point in the past where we achieved peak Blighty. It’s the knowledge that the best of us have been and gone, that nothing we can build will be as lovely as a National Trust Georgian country house, no art will be as good as a Turner, no poem as wonderful as If, no writer a touch on Shakespeare or Dickens, nothing will grow as lovely as a cottage garden, no hero greater than Nelson, no politician better than Churchill, no view more throat-catching than the White Cliffs and that we will never manufacture anything as great as a Rolls-Royce or Flying Scotsman again.

The dream of Brexit isn’t that we might be able to make a brighter, new, energetic tomorrow, it’s a desire to shuffle back to a regret-curdled inward-looking yesterday. In the Brexit fantasy, the best we can hope for is to kick out all the work-all-hours foreigners and become caretakers to our own past in this self-congratulatory island of moaning and pomposity.

And if you think that’s an exaggeration of the Brexit position, then just listen to the language they use: “We are a nation of inventors and entrepreneurs, we want to put the great back in Britain, the great engineers, the great manufacturers.” This is all the expression of a sentimental nostalgia. In the Brexiteer’s mind’s eye is the old Pathé newsreel of Donald Campbell, of John Logie Baird with his television, Barnes Wallis and his bouncing bomb, and Robert Baden-Powell inventing boy scouts in his shed.

All we need, their argument goes, is to be free of the humourless Germans and spoilsport French and all their collective liberalism and reality. There is a concomitant hope that if we manage to back out of Europe, then we’ll get back to the bowler-hatted 1950s and the Commonwealth will hold pageants, fireworks displays and beg to be back in the Queen Empress’s good books again. Then New Zealand will sacrifice a thousand lambs, Ghana will ask if it can go back to being called the Gold Coast and Britain will resume hand-making Land Rovers and top hats and Sheffield plate teapots.

There is a reason that most of the people who want to leave the EU are old while those who want to remain are young: it’s because the young aren’t infected with Bisto nostalgia. They don’t recognise half the stuff I’ve mentioned here. They’ve grown up in the EU and at worst it’s been neutral for them.

The under-thirties want to be part of things, not aloof from them. They’re about being joined-up and counted. I imagine a phrase most outies identify with is “women’s liberation has gone too far”. Everything has gone too far for them, from political correctness — well, that’s gone mad, hasn’t it? — to health and safety and gender-neutral lavatories. Those oldies, they don’t know if they’re coming or going, what with those newfangled mobile phones and kids on Tinder and Grindr. What happened to meeting Miss Joan Hunter Dunn at the tennis club? And don’t get them started on electric hand dryers, or something unrecognised in the bagging area, or Indian call centres , or the impertinent computer asking for a password that has both capitals and little letters and numbers and more than eight digits.

Brexit is the fond belief that Britain is worse now than at some point in the foggy past where we achieved peak Blighty
We listen to the Brexit lot talk about the trade deals they’re going to make with Europe after we leave, and the blithe insouciance that what they’re offering instead of EU membership is a divorce where you can still have sex with your ex. They reckon they can get out of the marriage, keep the house, not pay alimony, take the kids out of school, stop the in-laws going to the doctor, get strict with the visiting rights, but, you know, still get a shag at the weekend and, obviously, see other people on the side.

Really, that’s their best offer? That’s the plan? To swagger into Brussels with Union Jack pants on and say: “ ’Ello luv, you’re looking nice today. Would you like some?”

When the rest of us ask how that’s really going to work, leavers reply, with Terry-Thomas smirks, that “they’re going to still really fancy us, honest, they’re gagging for us. Possibly not Merkel, but the bosses of Mercedes and those French vintners and cheesemakers, they can’t get enough of old John Bull. Of course they’re going to want to go on making the free market with two backs after we’ve got the decree nisi. Makes sense, doesn’t it?”

Have no doubt, this is a divorce. It’s not just business, it’s not going to be all reason and goodwill. Like all divorces, leaving Europe would be ugly and mean and hurtful, and it would lead to a great deal of poisonous xenophobia and racism, all the niggling personal prejudice that dumped, betrayed and thwarted people are prey to. And the racism and prejudice are, of course, weak points for us. The tortuous renegotiation with lawyers and courts will be bitter and vengeful, because divorces always are and, just in passing, this sovereignty thing we’re supposed to want back so badly, like Frodo’s ring, has nothing to do with you or me. We won’t notice it coming back, because we didn’t notice not having it in the first place.

You won’t wake up on June 24 and think: “Oh my word, my arthritis has gone! My teeth are suddenly whiter! Magically, I seem to know how to make a soufflé and I’m buff with the power of sovereignty.” This is something only politicians care about; it makes not a jot of difference to you or me if the Supreme Court is a bunch of strangely out-of-touch old gits in wigs in Westminster or a load of strangely out-of-touch old gits without wigs in Luxembourg. What matters is that we have as many judges as possible on the side of personal freedom.

Personally, I see nothing about our legislators in the UK that makes me feel I can confidently give them more power. The more checks and balances politicians have, the better for the rest of us. You can’t have too many wise heads and different opinions. If you’re really worried about red tape, by the way, it’s not just a European problem. We’re perfectly capable of coming up with our own rules and regulations and we have no shortage of jobsworths. Red tape may be annoying, but it is also there to protect your and my family from being lied to, poisoned and cheated.

The first “X” I ever put on a voting slip was to say yes to the EU. The first referendum was when I was 20 years old. This one will be in the week of my 62nd birthday. For nearly all my adult life, there hasn’t been a day when I haven’t been pleased and proud to be part of this great collective. If you ask me for my nationality, the truth is I feel more European than anything else. I am part of this culture, this European civilisation. I can walk into any gallery on our continent and completely understand the images and the stories on the walls. These people are my people and they have been for thousands of years. I can read books on subjects from Ancient Greece to Dark Ages Scandinavia, from Renaissance Italy to 19th-century France, and I don’t need the context or the landscape explained to me. The music of Europe, from its scales and its instruments to its rhythms and religion, is my music. The Renaissance, the rococo, the Romantics, the impressionists, gothic, baroque, neoclassicism, realism, expressionism, futurism, fauvism, cubism, dada, surrealism, postmodernism and kitsch were all European movements and none of them belongs to a single nation.

There is a reason why the Chinese are making fake Italian handbags and the Italians aren’t making fake Chinese ones. This European culture, without question or argument, is the greatest, most inventive, subtle, profound, beautiful and powerful genius that was ever contrived anywhere by anyone and it belongs to us. Just look at my day job — food. The change in food culture and pleasure has been enormous since we joined the EU, and that’s no coincidence. What we eat, the ingredients, the recipes, may come from around the world, but it is the collective to and fro of European interests, expertise and imagination that has made it all so very appetising and exciting.

The restaurant was a European invention, naturally. The first one in Paris was called The London Bridge.

Culture works and grows through the constant warp and weft of creators, producers, consumers, intellectuals and instinctive lovers. You can’t dictate or legislate for it, you can just make a place that encourages it and you can truncate it. You can make it harder and more grudging, you can put up barriers and you can build walls, but why on earth would you? This collective culture, this golden civilisation grown on this continent over thousands of years, has made everything we have and everything we are, why would you not want to be part of it?

I understand that if we leave we don’t have to hand back our library ticket for European civilisation, but why would we even think about it? In fact, the only ones who would are those old, philistine scared gits. Look at them, too frightened to join in.

I posted the link to this on our local Labour Facebook page a couple of days ago .... A few members were miffed about it. which was followed by a stuffy BTL reminder about not offending people. I'm afraid I got irritated and said it was what was being said and written out there in the big wide world but I'd stop if they'd rather not know. Their decision.

Christ on a bike. There are times I thirst for the old days. But getting offended over a newspaper article? it's AA Milne for Gods sake. He's sarcastic and has a tongue so sharp you could cut yourself on it. It what sells.

AA Milne. Now that would be a good story.

Gove piglet, Johnson Pooh?

Now all you Nesters know just how bad I am at names.

[citizenJA]

Where'd that image Farage is standing in front of come from, please? Does anyone know the context?

I found it on the Guardian politics blog, sorry for not checking first.

[55DegreesNorth]

admin: image link removed to un-skew page

There was a time, not that long ago, where the use of this image in this context would have been thought of as unacceptable, racist and promoting xenophobia. The sort of thing the BNP might do, but no 'mainstream' politician.
That's the country I want back.

[Temulkar]

Maybe we should build a Trump style wall. Sanity one side, prejudice the other.

There is the old welsh joke of:

An Englishman, a welshman and a scot were lost in the desert and found a magic lamp, when they rubbed it the genie came out and told them he could get them home and offered them a wish each for their homeland.

First came the scotsman, and he asked for rivers full of salmon and the best water in the world for making whisky. The genie agreed and with a flash sent the Scotsman home.

Next came the Englishman: he asked for a great big wall 100 foot high and 100 foot wide to keep all the foreigners out of his homeland to keep it great. The genie agreed and sent the Englishman home.

Then he came to the welshman.

'Now,' said the Welshman. 'Tell me more about this wall around England?'

'Well,' said the genie, 'its 100 foot high and 100 ft wide and goes all the way around the country, and nothing can get in or out.'

'Right then,' said the Welshman. 'Fill the fucking thing with water.'

[ohsocynical]

England - Wales football. Now who do I cheer for?

[refitman]

admin: image link removed to un-skew page

There was a time, not that long ago, where the use of this image in this context would have been thought of as unacceptable, racist and promoting xenophobia. The sort of thing the BNP might do, but no 'mainstream' politician.
That's the country I want back.

Connor Beaton
‏@zcbeaton

Your new poster resembles outright Nazi propaganda, @Nigel_Farage. Thanks to @brendanjharkin for pointing it out.

" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[ohsocynical]

After the last few days, the only way to describe how I feel about it all is despair...

[refitman]

Jo Cox, the MP for Batley and Spen, has been shot in her West Yorkshire constituency, according to reports.

The Labour politician was injured in the attack and there is an ongoing police operations in the area, a witness told the Press Association.

Armed officers are reportedly on the scene in Birstall, near Dewsbury, West Yorkshire. West Yorkshire police said in a tweet: “We are aware of a serious incident ongoing in Birstall. Details will be released in the press in due course.”

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/201 ... -yorkshire" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[HindleA]

See above

[ohsocynical]

YES2 removing tories ‏@YESthatcherDead 4h4 hours ago Москва, Россия
As CPS say "No charges for #CliffRichard"

He says he immediately feels like a younger person

[HindleA]

Local coverage of above


http://www.dewsburyreporter.co.uk/news/ ... -1-7967886" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[yahyah]

Sorry Dan, I didn't mean to just dump that pic there as it was too big.
The builder called me outside to ask me something and I started tidying the kitchen when I got back in.
Senior memory.

Thanks for reducing it.

The pic I was trying to put on showed the similarity with a Nazi poster, I see someone else has posted that now.

[ohsocynical]

Guido Fawkes ‏@GuidoFawkes 4m
BREAKING: Jo Cox shot and stabbed by "65-70" year old attacker with "homemade" gun.

[refitman]

Sorry Dan, I didn't mean to just dump that pic there as it was too big.
The builder called me outside to ask me something and I started tidying the kitchen when I got back in.

Thanks for reducing it.

The pic I was trying to put on showed the similarity with a Nazi poster, I see someone else has posted that now.

S'allright. HTH.

[HindleA]

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... work-carer" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Angela felt pressured into work. Now she’s struggling to pay the bills

[TobyLatimer]

Jo Cox wrote a piece for the Yorkshire Post last Friday on Brexit & immigration http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/opi ... -1-7956822" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[mbc1955]

If the attack on Jo Cox is because she is anti-Brexit, that would confirm all my fears and despairs about what this God-forsakenly-awful thing has done to our country. Please let her live, and please let it be something like insanity. I can handle that. The country can handle that.

[yahyah]

I agree mbc1955

But am not optimistic. I said to my other half this morning that it feels like there is something nasty erupting in this country. Then I read that.

May Jo have a good recovery, and her family be able to find some peace as she is being treated.

[yahyah]

52 year old being held.

[ohsocynical]

Maria Eagle MPVerified account
‏@meaglemp Maria Eagle MP Retweeted Manchester News MEN

.@Jo_Cox1 attacker shouted "Britain First" says eyewitness.Maria Eagle MP added,

David Axlerod ‏@AxlerodDavid 8m8 minutes ago
David Axlerod Retweeted Maria Eagle MP

You disgusting woman trying to spin this for political gain

Seat belts on. It's going to get dirty....

[danesclose]

Watching the England Wales match I'm reminded of the old Max Boyce joke from the '70's about a Welshman with no ticket stood outside Twickenham for the England Wales game.
After 10 minutes there's an enormous shout from the crowd "What's happened?" yells the Welshman. "14 Welsh players have been sent off, there's only Gareth Edwards left on the pitch" comes the reply.
Five minutes later there's another great roar. "What's happened now," says the Welshman "Gareth scored, has he"

[yahyah]

Well that bastion of socialism, the Mail, is saying the same as Eagle.

[mbc1955]

Maria Eagle MPVerified account
‏@meaglemp Maria Eagle MP Retweeted Manchester News MEN

.@Jo_Cox1 attacker shouted "Britain First" says eyewitness.Maria Eagle MP added,

David Axlerod ‏@AxlerodDavid 8m8 minutes ago
David Axlerod Retweeted Maria Eagle MP

You disgusting woman trying to spin this for political gain

Seat belts on. It's going to get dirty....

It may be disgusting to use that for political gain, I don't know. But if that's what's motivated this shitty attack (big brave man, attacks a woman with knife and gun, f***ing coward), WE HAVE GOT TO KNOW.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Eagle doesn't need to be retweeting unconfirmed stuff.

This is horrible.

[Rebecca]

Maria Eagle MPVerified account
‏@meaglemp Maria Eagle MP Retweeted Manchester News MEN

.@Jo_Cox1 attacker shouted "Britain First" says eyewitness.Maria Eagle MP added,

David Axlerod ‏@AxlerodDavid 8m8 minutes ago
David Axlerod Retweeted Maria Eagle MP

You disgusting woman trying to spin this for political gain

Seat belts on. It's going to get dirty....

The Indy is also reporting that an eyewitness says the attacker shouted 'Britain First'.

[yahyah]

Shout at me, Axelrod style, but am posting this from the Western Mail the other day.

It spooked me at the time...

Britain First have been holding an 'activist training camp' in the Welsh mountains.
One of the things they learnt was 'knife defence', along with 'self defence', martial arts and survival skills.

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales ... t-11474970" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[PaulfromYorkshire]

If the descriptions of the attack I'm reading are accurate it will be a miracle if Jo Cox survives.

[Tubby Isaacs]

The Telegraph also reported the same.

[yahyah]

Sounds like some people at the scene were brave, tried to track him down.

That's what's to hold onto, that human beings can be courageous and compassionate, not only destructive and angry.

[yahyah]

One of the pics from the Western Mail article about the Britain First Welsh 'training camp'.
I thought at the time, 'what a bunch of losers'.

[citizenJA]

Paul, the gun was makeshift

[citizenJA]

dreadful
I'm beside myself
awful, awful thing

[PaulfromYorkshire]

Paul, the gun was makeshift

Yes let's hope that's a good thing JA

[yahyah]

dreadful
I'm beside myself
awful, awful thing

I've been crying, and praying for Jo and her family. And for the man who has nearly killed her, he needs it because he is hopelessly lost in a maze of violence and hate.

My other half is watching the Wales/England footie on recording, oblivious to the news.