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Politics & Media
Jul 01, 2016, 10:47AM

Britain, I Point and Laugh

English chumps suck it some more.

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First, please hear this: Ha ha, hah-ha… Ha ha, hah-ha... Hah… hah…ha…HAH-hahhhh. That’s the opening to Tchaikovsky’s first piano concerto, kind of. No connection with the British crisis, but I love the cadence. And a simple “ha ha” doesn’t cover the Brits’ situation. They deserve something full-scale.

Oh, I remember my backpacking days. I remember what the Brits used to say about Americans. We didn’t know a lot, we were flat-footed in intellectual matters, we were gullible and literal-minded. Sometimes I was excepted from all this, sometimes not. But now the verdict slides off my shoulders. I can report that the Brits touched off a global crisis because they looked at the side of a bright red bus and took it for a referendum platform. White paint on red paint: “£350 million” and “National Health,” Brits fell like an Ohio yokel in 2002. But when the President put “al-Qaeda” and “Saddam” in the same sentence, people were listening to their national leader talking about a war. His gambit traded on loyalty and goodwill, and on gullibility too. Boris Johnson and his red bus ran on gullibility and nothing else.

America has often looked crazy, especially to me, and that has added to my resentment of derisive Brits. But now England has the staggers. In America, Elizabeth Warren and Hillary Clinton are knitting together centrists and the near left. Meanwhile, Labour’s members of Parliament gather in a big room to yell at their leader. Not only that, but crowds of citizens standing outside the building yell about the MPs who are yelling inside the building. Labour is having a constitutional crisis right in the middle of Britain’s Euro-crisis.

The man being yelled at, Jeremy Corbyn, was made leader of the Labour Party by a vote of everybody, plain or fancy, who belonged to the party. Of this collection, he received the support of people who felt ripped off by what New Labour had done during its years in power. Hold a Labour leadership contest, and it turns out such people make up a large majority. The result is that the MPs are being led by somebody who isn’t on their side. Whether he should be is another question. He isn’t, and Labour has been a fracture waiting to happen. Now the Euro-crisis has hit and the fracture has popped wide.

When the kingdom shakes, an election may be called. If that happens, the MPs figure they have no one to lead them. Corbyn and his followers (for example, the crowd yelling outside Parliament) figure that the MPs do have a leader, and that it’s the man who was democratically elected. The MPs say he must go. He says he’ll stay. And the party will do nothing over the next few, or many, months except hash out this situation. By holding the referendum, the Tories blew their leg off at the hip. But Britain’s electoral left can’t do anything about it. They’re too busy trying to find their asshole and give it a good chew.

The only thing I can say for New Labour is that, having known some British left-wingers, I’d rip them off too. All I can say for the left-wingers is that New Labour was probably dreadful because it was made up of Brits thinking they were clever. All I can say to the Brits is don’t believe everything you read on a bus. And this: Hah… hah…ha…HAH-hahhhh.

—Follow C.T. May on Twitter: @CTMay3

Discussion
  • C.T. This puts you in a position where, if the Brits do well, you have to....piss and moan. I don't, for the moment, see a world wide crisis. However, the problem is that they rejected the prospect of living downstream from an unaccountable regulations factory. Also, how many Rotherhams must one accept in order to be the Right Sort of Person? Like C. T. May fancies himself.

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  • The Brits thought the money would go to NHS because a bus sort of told them so. They were gullible, and they'll still have been gullible even if they luck out and Brexit isn't a mess. Fine with me if they do come out okay -- then I'll be laughing at foolishness alone, not foolishness that produces misery.

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  • There were more reasons than the NHS money. Thing is, you speak as if you have knowledge of the issue. So, if the 350 isn't available, that's a wash. No change. So what's the downside? And if there isn't a downside, what's to laugh at? You're going in two directions. You make the Brits look like absolute fools and....you're smarter than they are. Which, according to yoiu, doesn't mean much at all. So why bother?

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  • The 350 was a paramount reason, and making a big change for a chimera is foolish. As to my motives, they're laid out in the piece. Nothing to be proud of, but there they are.

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  • The 350 was likely a reason. But primary? Remember Rotherham. The first accusation was that the cops were afraid of being accused of Islamaphobia. They claimed it wasn't that; they'd just not noticed. That turned out to be untrue as well, but the point is, given the social and legal atmosphere wrt Muslims, the most plausible reason was the fear of Islamaphobia. Brits need to walk on eggshells to avoid arrest for anything remotely like annoyance with Asians. The whole mess has been imposed on them by the, iirc, Liberal party and the EU. Rochdale didn't get as much ink because it was another Rotherham and everything had been said. Just for grins, search for "rock the multicultural boat" followed by "rotherham" to see what the Brits are putting up with. Or there's the regs on tea pots and toasters. And the energy policy imposed without reference to subsitutes. No accountability. Much more to it than any one thing, which is the case with Trump. The book "What's The Matter With Kansas" explained the author's puzzlement that the benighted prarie dwellers would vote against their economic interest due to cultural issues. Same thing here, except that, wrt Kansas, they did okay economically anyway. And if the Brits do okay, the Remains don't have a lot to go on except comparing credentials. And social class snobbery was supposed to end with Downton Abbey.

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  • 350 was a big, much publicized reason. No use trying to write it out now. As to regs, the UK wants to sell into the EU market; that means meeting EU regs, whether the UK's in the Union or not. It may also mean accepting the number of immigrants the EU deems fit -- we'll see, but anyone who assumes the EU will let Britain have free trade plus the power to keep out EU citizens is making a very big assumption. Of course, that's the assumption many "Leave" voters made. Foolish of them.

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  • The EU wants to sell into the UK, too, so there's some leverage there. But the point is that financial issues, even if they work out as badly as the Remain predicted/hope, aren't the entire issue and may not be the major issue. Somebody who's already retired, say, isn't looking at a job loss, but having to walk on eggshells, as I mentioned earlier, or hear of another Rotherham, of find a kindhearted Muslim businessman murdered by another Muslim for the crime of being cordial to Christians, all together, might outweigh the uncertain results of complicated financial and regulatory backing and forthing. To find the Union Jack must be removed because it offends people..... It's one thing that some are offended and it's another that the Establishment goes along with the claim and removes it. The first you can put up with; the second is unacceptable.

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  • Which of the Rotherham perps came from the EU? Do EU regs call for the Union Jack to come down? But I bet a lot of "Leave" voters reasoned as you do. Foolish of them.

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  • The Rotherham perps came from the migrant community, about which nothing may be said, which was imposed upon the Brits by the liberal party. Ditto the nothing may be said part. The migrant community may as well not have been in the UK since they refuse to assimilate. Or drop the dime. And the EU will continue the inflow. Leave seems to be a blow against the UK's squishes. The squishes, the establishment, take the complaints of offendedness--from migrants they imported--seriously and removes....piggy banks, sexy ads on buses, and Union Jack. They and the EU are the same. I thought I'd be searching a long time but a bunch of hits came up about a fourteen year old girl ARRESTED for asking her teacher if she could study with kids speaking English instead of Urdu. A Freaking RESTED. My hypothetical retiree lives closer to this than the squishes who make sure they and their kids are not exposed to such. Leaving the EU is, whether it was intended as such, a kick in the nuts to the establishment. I mean, listen to them howl. EU, establishment, migrants, are all one. Can't vote against the establishment very successfully, but this worked. As Frank failed to understand in What's the Matter With Kansas, there are more goods people are willing to pay for than he guessed. Looks like the same thing here.

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  • This is spasm, not argument. The Rotherham perps did not come from that part of the migrant flow controlled by the EU. Therefore, leaving the EU does nothing to address the problems you list (or allege).

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  • "A kick in the nuts to the establishment." That's real mature, Fenwick. Lashing out -- always a sign of clear thinking.

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  • Problem with your point about which, exactly, was the origin of the Rotherham perps is that it doesn't make any difference. They aren't likely to seem any better or worse than the folks the EU is imposing on the UK. If you want to acquit by origin, you have to figure out how the guys who killed Trooper Rigby came from, maybe, Uruguay or someplace. It will make everybody feel better. The stampings in the tops of fast food drink cups had to be changed because some clown claimed to be offended? Do we have no influence in our own country????some must be asking. Recall how Gordon Brown ended his career. Talking to a nice, polite middle-class woman about crime. He was politely noncommittally concerned--you learn that in politician school--and then was recorded going off on her as a racist. He was the only one in the country who didn't twig to the fact that he was in a government vehicle with an armed guard going to a residence guarded only slightly less tightly than the Palace. That's the establishment and everybody knows it. Do you recall Boston's forced busing for integration? It's pretty far east in the time zone and in parts of the year, sundown is near 4:30. So my kid's getting off the bus at near dark. "You're a racist." My kid's getting beat up at school. "You're a racist." My kid's teachers are mostly substitutes who don't do anything. "You're a racist." My daughter was going to be in the Madrigals this year."You're a racist." The infuriating thing about this is that the folks who made it happen and accused the complainers took very good care their kids not go to such benighted places. And everybody knew it. What's left is a spasm. The origin of the kids speaking Urdu in school when the girl was ARRESTED doesn't affect the fact that she was fucking ARRESTED and people are entitled to be angry that she was fucking ARRESTED. And even if the Urdu speakers had not come via the EU, others have and will and the same thing will happen. So it's not only the immigrants, it's the cession of freedom of all kinds large and small. When the establishment has left only spasms....what do you expect?

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  • So, other than a spasm, what can you do about the establishment that let this clown stay in the country? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/03/convicted-somalian-rapist-had-deportation-order-overturned-befor/

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  • If you're so confused about the solution, you're probably confused about the problem.

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  • Facile but meaningless. "the problem" has many aspects and various people are conerned with one or another to a greater extent than they're concerned about others. This is not confusion. I can be concerned about Waco and Ruby Ridge and when somebody else is concerned about the EPA's sang froid about the Animas River catastrophe, that doesn't mean we're confused. But you know that. And to add the VA to the mix doesn't mean we're confused. I think you need to explain to a Brit retiree whose life has been restricted by no-go areas, a pub he favors menaced by anti-booze patrols, the prospect of having his toaster and tea kettle made illegal by Brussels, and the establishment telling him he's racist, islmaaphobic, and jingoist that he has no right to be upset. After all, you know better how he's supposed to feel.

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