Indifferent

In the past few days, several senior Conservatives, including Jeremy Hunt, have warned that leaving the EU without a deal would pose a major threat to The Union, with Nicola Sturgeon already ploughing ahead with plans for a second referendum on Scottish independence. David Lammy tweeted out – in a break from his usually ceaseless anti-white tirade – “I don't remember seeing the break up of the United Kingdom on the ballot paper in 2016”. Meanwhile, Nigel Farage has suggested that while regrettable, the break-up of the United Kingdom would be a price worth paying to deliver Brexit. 

From whence has come this shirt-rending angst over the precious union? Teflon Theresa, it would seem, in her latest attempt at leaving office without her only ‘legacy’ being that she could not deliver what the British people demanded. British, did I say? I no longer feel British, but I feel - more fiercely than ever - English to the core and it is the English who have the axe to grind with the EU. May has pledged (though it is hardly in her gift) to keep the United Kingdom together. Boris Johnson has gone so far as to state that preservation of this uneasy union is more important than leaving the EU. I beg to differ.

May’s deputy, David Lidington has gone on record to talk about English indifference to the union, as reported in The Scotsman newspaper. But in doing so and just like all the others he does not, or rather refuses to, grasp the reasons why. The Union? Yes, I – we – can see it as a strength and yes, as an island it is preferable not to allow foreign powers to have a border within our shores, but I’m not sure that indifference is the right word; frustration might be closer. What we are certainly not indifferent to is the way in which being English has virtually become a punishable offence. If, as many believe, Scotland should be governed by the Scottish, then why should governance of England not be exclusively the preserve of the English?

Recognising that London is no longer an English city, as John Cleese so rightly remarked, can you imagine the backlash if we were to hold an annual English Pride celebration? Even better, a whole English Pride month; a month in which we could come out of the closet and wear St George emblems and declare ourselves openly English without fear of censure. Well of course it won’t happen; as with the Conservatives, Englishness has been sacrificed on the altar of precarious union and must now only be practised behind closed doors.

Will Boris bring back English pride? Will he strengthen or – as is more likely – widen the divides that exist inter and intra-nation? Whether or not we leave the EU and whether or not the countries of the former United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland go on to peacefully coexist as independents or maintain close union is, at the moment, simply not germane to the pressing urgency of actually delivering Brexit. Indifferent to Scottish independence? If I’m honest I’m just not that bothered.

WWLD? (What would Lulu do?)

The Jockanese are on the march again, woading up, dressing in man-skirts and screaming “Frrrrreeedom!” from the boggy, boggy braes… the noo. But freedom from what, exactly? They seem happy to remain wedded to an unequal distribution of state funding that the Welsh would kill for. They seem to be very keen indeed to drive policy from the back seat of Labour’s underpowered clown car and they are inordinately fond of calling resources procured largely by investment from England’s Exchequer ‘Scotland’s oil and gas’. So what is it, Jimmy, whit de ye wan’?

Because, convinced as I am that Britain’s best interests lie outside the deadly cold embrace of the European Union, it would be hypocritical of me to suggest you stay within a club you so clearly despise. Scottish Nationalism can be whatever colour it wishes; you can be as red as Mao’s little book or as blue as the sainted Maggie. You can even turn yellow and sit on the Lib Dem fence if you wish. But make up your bloody minds, will you? 55% was it? 55% voted against independence? And yet about 120% of you now seem intent to vote for the party of separation. Down here in your personal piggy bank we’re all getting a mite pissed off with it all.

We’re happy for you to stay, or happy for you to leave. But not bloody happy for you to stay and then act like churlish children, holding the country to ransom and threatening disruption. And not happy for you to ‘leave’ yet still keep bringing your washing home and cleaning out the fridge every weekend. You have to choose and stick with your choice. Of course Nicola Sturgeon is going to agitate for another referendum and of course it’s going to fail again out of fear of the unknown – oh how I wished for you to vote ‘yes’ last time. But just like every UK government’s tenatious dalliance with the EU this thing isn’t going to go away any time soon.

The one thing that can be said for the rise of Wee Jimmy Sturgeon is that it will have focused the minds of many of the oppressed majority to maybe try to head things off at the pass. For years the English have been the beaten and bruised underdog of the dis-United Kingdom, yet we’ve had to fund the architects of our own impoverishment for many decades. It’s high time somebody asked us whether or not we are happy to remain ball-and-chained to two socialist regions in Wales and Scotland and further shackled to the unholy collection of disparate economies in Europe. It’s time for the English to vote for England and with St George’s Day tomorrow, now is the time for our own rally.

The United Kingdom of St George

Yes, you say, it’s all well and good touting a gut feeling that we’d be better off on our own, but what of the detail? Where is the analysis of our trading position, our influence, our standing in a post UK, post EU world? Well, don’t ask me, ask ‘them’. Where is it? Not one single so-called ‘expert’ has the first inkling of a glimmer of a clue what would happen after a successful OUT referendum, so I reckon our chances are pretty good. What is for certain is that 60-million (a very conservative estimate of the population of England alone) are not going to starve, or stop producing, buying and selling stuff. So what have we got to lose? It’s time to ditch the ballast that has been slowing us down for years and crack on with rebuilding our mixed up, muddled up, shook up world… ‘cept for Lulu?

If you're gonna do it, do it right

Thursday; polling day: a day for observing a respectful non-partisan silence as the Scots go to vote, not least because at least half of them will be hung over to buggery. Let’s chat quietly among ourselves for a while. But, oh, it still has to be about Scotland for, in this article in the Express Alex Salmond continues to peddle the fundamental lie about immigration; the one that is constantly used to suppress dissent in every country affected by recent mass influxes of unskilled labour, that “…the country will need another XX,000 immigrants a year to fill jobs and fund a welfare system for its ageing population.”

Charles Ponzi’s name became associated in the 1920s with the deliberate practice of attracting new investors to pay dividends on earlier investments, instead of paying those dividends out of earned profits.  From Wikipedia: “The promoter sells shares to investors by taking advantage of a lack of investor knowledge or competence, or using claims of a proprietary investment strategy which must be kept secret to ensure a competitive edge.” That is the British pension system in a nutshell.

And then we get the EU pushing the same lies, dressed up as admonishment for our unruly disregard for the socialist master plan: All the time it’s “immigration is good, it is always good, it has nothing but goodness oozing for every pore… repeat after us, immigration is good…” The rabid muslim murderers of the Middle East repeat “god is good” with every slice of their beheading blades, wearing the same glazed-over, unthinking expressions of hatred for all things civilised, for all things British. It’s time to get a few things straight:

There is no shortage of labour – in fact it’s Capital-L-Labour that is the problem – as for skills gaps, that is due to successive education departments not having the balls to front up to and kick the arse out of political correctness. Every single low-skilled worker that enters Britain is a direct cost to the country; even if he – or increasingly she - doesn’t displace a resident drone, their tax take is piffling, their spend minimal and their cultural contribution is insignificant; ‘diversity’ is part of the same scam.

Every single viable British worker displaced by immigration is a net cost to the country which takes upwards of ten ordinary taxpayers to cover. So, what, the solution is to import ten foreign workers for every Brit on the dole? And what OF the pension scam? As the population ages, do we keep on increasing exponentially the number of migrant workers so the Ponzi becomes a Pyramid? It’s political pass the parcel-bomb with the problems being handed off, administration by administration and every party hoping they aren’t left holding when the music stops.

Balanced migration is good. A stable population with the right demographic mix is good. Opening the floodgates, putting out to grass an indigenous population you don’t give a fuck about, swamping whole towns and cities with insoluble tensions, branding every whistle-blower as a racist, fomenting unrest, degrading everybody’s amenity and selling it as the only way to maintain pensions is a crock of shit and if the politicians don’t know this, they are unqualified for post.

Alex Salmond - The Ponz?

Of course, if they DO know this then hanging may be too good for them. So, while I hope Scotland makes the ‘right’ decision, whatever that turns out to be, I dearly hope they are not intending to rely on the lie that immigration is any kind of a solution. If you are going to be independent and proud, do it properly.

You're breaking up!

So, one way or another, ‘The Scottish Question’ will cost English taxpayers a mint. There is no money to provide better border control and immigration services, or to get rightful British citizens their passports on time, or to patch up the roads, railways and other essential infrastructure… There is no extra cash to support our already over-stretched armed forces, police or health services… We can’t afford to build the several million new homes we need to avoid overcrowding, sickness and squalor in our cities…

But wait, here’s a gigantic bag of dosh marked “For Scottish Use Only”. If they vote Yes to independence, it will be used to help pay for their generation-long pretend separation from the British teat, but at least spent that way we might, eventually, get value for money. If they vote No, however (and they will), it will be spent to further rub English noses in the fact that we have had very little say in running our own country for a very long time.

When commentators claim a British victory for the triumphs of the Andy Murrays and Chris Hoys of our shared island it is small recompense for the way in which the supposed ‘evils’ of our former empire are laid squarely on the English doorstep. Everywhere else in the world ‘British’ means English, especially when it is hissed in tones of contempt. Yet Scottish thinkers and doers - as they often remind us - were in the vanguard of our expeditionary zeal and military ambition and shared handsomely in the rewards.

That’s a position they seem loathe to relinquish – the plucky wee independent nation that nevertheless punches above its weight and is justly rewarded for doing so. But if they go off alone, why should we keep on paying? And if they stay, how can we justify paying out even more to keep them from rebelling? I heard today how complicated it would be to have a devolved English Parliament, with Scottish and Welsh MPs denied a vote on English-only issues. No it wouldn’t; it would really be quite simple in principle.

Stay or go, make Scotland self-ruling and self-financing and remove their representation at Westminster. Do the same for Wales and Nor’n Ireland. Because, whether or not the Scots leave us, the genie of devolution is abroad and the so-called Balkanisation of Britain kicks off on Friday. Cornwall, Yorkshire, Shetland, Orkney, Channel Islands, the Isle of Man… even a school in Berwick-upon-Tweed is holding a referendum on independence!

The Tartan Taliban

I say go for it, folks. Let’s start a fund for all the freedom fighters around the former (lower case now) united kingdom. Make Westminster an irrelevance and create world-beating industries in electric fences and border crossings, toll booths and machine gun towers. Let’s ALL have our own currencies, in imperial units so we can rip off the tourists like we used to do. Let’s make the island of Great Britain such a nightmare to negotiate that nobody who leaves can ever get back in again. I think this might just be the answer to our jihadi problem… Thank you, Scotland! 

Cry Freedom!

Alex Salmond - Wee Eck - is on the warpath about... well, about everything. He's an angry little fella and not without reason; he's Scottish but he isn't even ginger. But that aside, should they stay or should they go now?

As a vocal advocate of cessation from the EU it would be hypocritical, not to say churlish were I to hold a firm view, one way or the other on Scottish independence. It’s not my business and I – quite rightly – haven’t a vote.  Over to you, Scotland and whatever you choose I hope it solves your identity crisis and unites you either as an independent Scotland or an integral part of the old union. I think, however, that I do speak for many in the UK when I say I am pretty ambivalent as to the outcome.

Out is good. Provided we lose all of your socialistic and disproportionate influence on Westminster – under Tony Blair it seemed the entire cabinet were Jockanese at times. And of course, provided you no longer receive a single penny from the UK exchequer and cough up your fair share of the debt. You’re already a separate nation, of course, as you proudly remind us over and over again, so making that split formal will be relatively easy. To be fair we haven’t understood more than a small fraction of anything you’ve said during all our years together.

In is fine, too, except if you do stay in we know you’ll never stop banging the drum for independence so, for that reason alone it’s probably best for all of us if you leave. This is the fate that awaits us, too. Should Cameron be returned with a majority Tory government and should he honour his promise of an in/out referendum (I’m not holding my breath on either count) and should we vote – and it will be by the narrowest of margins – to stay in the EU, I know the issue of independence will never go away. So my plan is for ME to go away – after all, I’ll have the whole of Europe to find a quiet bolthole, ideally where I won’t understand the language well enough to listen to the politicians. (Scotland, maybe?)

Ignore all the recent shenanigans about currency and your own potential EU membership and the division of the spoils and all that. If you vote to leave I know as a nation you have the guts to go it alone. And just think; you’ll have your own Olympians in tennis and curling and I guess you’ll still be able to watch proper sports on the telly, so what’s not to like? But here’s an idea, why not say stuff Europe altogether and become genuinely independent?

For over forty years we have not had a say – yes, yes, there was the 1975 referendum, but I was there and even as a teenager I could see it was a big con – but you, Scotland, have an opportunity to just step away. If it ever comes about Brexit will be a tortuous process with the EU establishment putting up as many obstacles as it can out of sheer spite and doing its best to label the UK (what’s left of it) as a pariah state. As the UK-EU relationship is all haggled over at Westminster all Scotland has to do is print new passports. Hell, you don’t even need to pack. One day you’re in, the next you’re out. And bloody good luck to you.

And all of that has made me think. What if Wales is next? And all Nor’n Ir’n has to do is merge with their southern cousins for England to be on its own again. But wait. If that’s the logical end to all this and the last man standing in the union will be left holding the EU membership card, surely we’re missing a trick? Forget voting for an independent Scotland. Forget trying to wriggle out of Europe. Let’s have a vote on English independence and walk free from the whole shebang. Time for an English National Party? What could possibly go wrong?