Traditionally the Fourth of July stands for the people standing up to rid themselves of incompetent and backward-looking government. The UK electorate will get the opportunity tomorrow to claim their own share of that. If you are reading this in Britain: vote for who you like just as long as you vote, try not to demonize people who have a different opinion from you*, and don't let me influence you. Well, beyond saying that the choice is pretty much summed up in this Brian Bilston poem.
And my thoughts too are with our neighbours across La Manche, also in the midst of a fraught election. The result there could have far greater consequences than the vote in Britain, given that one of the party leaders openly supports Putin over the EU. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion isn't even close.
Careful, Dave. I hope you haven't offended any 'non vote-ists' out there.
ReplyDeleteI like Brian Bilston's poem. A concern would relate to attention spans. You may have Farage knocking on your door later on to shake your hand. It also made me recollect a competition from my Junior school days. Each group was set 20 tasks to complete, with the fastest group to be declared the winner. Number 20 was 'don't bother completing tasks 1 to 19'.
If Farage turns up at my door I'll take pleasure in slamming it in his face, Andy. Although if he notices the footnote to the post I don't expect he'll bother.
DeleteAs a Yank who does not follow UK politics very closely, I'm curious - what is so bad about Farage?
ReplyDeleteWhere do I start? Well, defending the use of a racial slur by one of his party members, he said, "If you and your mates are going out for a Chinese, what do you say you’re going for?" Personally I say, "Let's go for a Chinese meal." (In fact I'll probably specify Beijing cuisine.) But Farage and his buddies apparently favour the word "chinky" and aren't even ashamed of that.
DeleteThat's one of his milder views. Asked why he didn't object to Germans coming to Britain but kept complaining about other immigrants, he said, "You know the difference." His record on anti-Semitism and anti-feminism is cause for concern at the very least, with complaints about what he calls a "Jewish lobby" and defending some unsavoury remarks about women as "just what men say sometimes". His approach to politics is to treat it as a circus and try to undermine trust in public institutions -- in the West, that is; he admires Putin. He blames NATO and the EU for Putin's invasion of Ukraine. One of his typical dog-whistles: he proposed a ban on people with HIV being allowed into the country.
To put him in an American context, he admires Donald Trump and called Barack Obama "a creature" and "a loathsome individual". So that at least tells you the kind of people he'd suck up to if he were in the US -- some will admire him for that, but people like me (lefty liberals, that is) despise him and I have no doubt the feeling is mutual.