Brexit, Bregret and Brecovering Brefore it's too late

So. Some thoughts on the EU referendum, and the problems with the outcome.

People are complaining that MPs delaying invoking article 50 (or not acting on it at all) would be 'undemocratic,' while seemingly only having a vague idea of what democracy is. Well, this result is not democracy. This has never been how democracy has been conducted. 

Right back to its roots in ancient Greece and Rome, democracy has been about people appointing an expert to represent them. This expert then researches the issue on your behalf, with your interests in mind. Finally, they argue their case and makes sure their interests are represented as the experts decide together the course going ahead. 

And it'd probably be called Boaty McBoatface
via: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:QE2-South_Queensferry.jpg

If Britain was a ship, democracy would be making sure the heads of engineering and steerage pass on their team's concerns to the captain, who ultimately weighs up their advice and decides whether to change course or not.

Democracy is not giving every idiot a steering wheel so we can 'show that iceberg who's boss.'

This result is not democratic, it's mob rule, one of the things Democracy has always tried to avoid. At every stage, the referendum campaign has been about who could lie the loudest and most often; the Sun being one of the chief offenders, who are now having to deal with a readership who are pretty mad at being manipulated, as are readers of the Daily Mail.

Image unrelated.
via: https://www.flickr.com/photos/harald/4510869982

Will Self's comment was that "Not all Brexiters are racists, but almost all racists will be voting for Brexit." I disagree with the conclusion that many or even most of the Leave voters were eurobigots or racist themselves, but I do think that bigoted logic was combined with a media campaign against immigrants to convince a lot of people to vote Leave. 

The news pushed immigrants because scary news drags in viewers. UKIP and BF capitalised on it because it suited their agendas. Murdoch and Dacre have long wanted to drag us out of Europe, and so the final push from the Sun and Mail all combined into this perfect storm in which the UK is now being compared to 1930s Germany. 

It reminds me of the #notallmen and #gamergate arguments. Individuals who supported or voted Leave without bigotry complain every time an article calls the Leave campaign racist, without understanding that they are in the minority, that there is an issue of race and nationality here, it absolutely does suit the Leave agenda, and it's emboldened racist mobs to a dangerous degree. 

In other words, it's fucking tragic.
via https://www.flickr.com/photos/lionheartphotography/4650421582

But there's a growing body of evidence that we don't necessarily have to accept this result. Even vinegar-faced human lollipop Nigel Farage said before the election that he would contest a 52-48 vote for Remain as 'undemocratic.' With increasing reports of leave voters who regret it, this new petition with over 3.7 million verified votes, and just over 75% of MPs voting against the referendum in the first place, it's clear that very few of the population understood what they were voting for, especially since the second most popular Google search the day after the referendum was "What is the EU?"

I've never been a believer in "Tough titty, live with it," especially now that so many of the Leave arguments have been proven untrue, or at best extremely misleading insinuations.

In the name of absolute transparency, yes I was pro-Remain - and by that I do mean pro-Remain and not anti-Brexit. There are many reasons, most of which are pointless to go over now. I read up on the Leave arguments, researched them, and found out that most of them were bullshit. I read up on the Remain arguments, and found them to be mostly well researched and rational. I respected the opinions of the personalities that were backing Remain, and Jim Davidson was among those backing Leave.

Pictured: Not a racist, being not racist.
via: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8XXrE9r0kM

But like most of the country, I ultimately voted with my heart. 

You see, I have depression, which limits my capacity to deal with stress. I also have a chronic injury which limits the amount of time I can work in a day without worsening my condition. But a year or so ago, my own government turned the support network that was supposed to be helping me back into suitable work into something to be afraid of. ATOS, who's administrator with a week or so's training disagreed with the medical opinion of two GPs and a consultant. 

The thing is, the recent Osborne / IDS attacks on chronic illness and disabilities could have been so much worse, but a lot of the deeper cuts and impositions have since been successfully challenged in Europe. But now that last line of defense, the final oversight stopping them from fucking me completely, may soon be gone.

So yes, that's why I'm mad, and that's why I don't particularly feel like 'just accepting the result.' 

"Well, guess I'd better just get used to all this fire now."
via: https://www.flickr.com/photos/aj-clicks/4054799944

The stakes are far too high to equate this to stern parenting. If your child was about to walk off a bridge, you'd stop them for their own sake - especially if they were begging you for help, which is what this petition is begging of our MPs.

But because I was so pro-remain as well as anti-leave, it'll probably just seem like sour grapes, and like I want to flip the vote my way, despite that the petition in question was started by a Leave voter hoping to shoot down a predicted narrow win for Remain.

I think the real thing to come out of this whole debacle is the amount of fact checking the media needs to do, and that the various statistical and media regulatory bodies need more power to take action against the press for their role in the misinformation, and politicians taking liberties with the truth.

Image not quite so unrelated.
via: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jun/25/cameron-brexit-bet-drama-night-ripped-britain-apart-ukip-eu-referendum

To have a situation where the news is nothing but Brexit for months, then the day after the vote the truth emerges and the public cries "But we didn't know!" is a shameful indictment of our political and media landscape.

So yeah. If the basis of the re-vote is that it was only a narrow majority, the public were misled, and now regret having put our economic recovery back five years and emboldened a terrifying degree of racism, I can appreciate that. And I think it's an appreciable enough viewpoint that when this issue is debated in parliament, I hope our MPs will vote to indefinitely suspend invocation of article 50 while an inquiry is held into whether or not the country understood what the hell they were voting for.  

Which, as I said, they clearly didn't. 

What's in a word?

So I woke up this morning to this:

http://metro.co.uk/2016/01/30/hundreds-of-masked-men-beat-up-refugee-children-in-stockholm-during-revenge-attack-5652849/

And the article in the Daily Mail (which I'm not linking to because I don't want them getting any more ad revenue) is using the word Migrant to describe the victims.

Migrants.

It's a word the right wing loves throwing around these days. It comes from the Latin migrāre, to change one's abode. It implies a choice. It implies that they woke up and decided they were going to pack up and head over here for a better life, like Katie Hopkins' imaginary 'army of cockroaches.'

But what's the harm in a simple word?

The vast majority of the 'migrants' were bombed out of their homes by our governments. A brief look at any shots of Syria will tell you that.

Source: http://www.pythagorasandthat.co.uk/a-syrian-street-in-2011-and-2014

And Syria's just one of the countries where we've bombed, or funded insurgencies, or otherwise screwed their infrastructure to the point that the people can no longer live there. So they did NOT 'change their abode.' Their abode was changed by war. They were driven out of their homes, and they are looking for a new one.

The word you are looking for is refugee.

1680s, from French refugié, noun use of past participle of refugier "to take shelter,protect," from Old French refuge (see refuge ). First applied to French Huguenots whomigrated after the revocation (1685) of the Edict of Nantes. The word meant "oneseeking asylum," till 1914, when it evolved to mean "one fleeing home" (first appliedin this sense to civilians in Flanders heading west to escape fighting in World War I).In Australian slang from World War II, reffo.

noun
1. a person who has fled from some danger or problem, esp political persecution: refugees from Rwanda

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/refugee?s=t

When David Cameron uses a word like migrant, it is a very deliberate linguistic choice, even if it not at a conscious level. It is a change from passive to active. It changes the image in the listener or the reader's mind from those seeking refuge, those desperately dragging themselves through country after country seeking a better life, into dehumanised targets for our ire. The same way the same paper that supported the Fascist Oswald Moseley warned us about the outrage of 'aliens' and how they were 'pouring into this country,' and is now comparing the refugees to rats.

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/07/31/daily-mail-1938-jews_n_7909954.html

Floods. Hordes. Migrants. The same words. The same paper. The same meaning.

I found myself wondering how it is that the mob responsible for the violence yesterday could have done it. How they could have walked up to a complete stranger and hated them so much that they would beat three children in broad daylight.

The above article makes it clear that this was 'sparked' by the death of Alexandra Mehzer, stabbed by a refugee child. The mob see themselves as taking revenge for that, I have no doubt. Whipped up into a frenzy by the media and the political right wing over the refugee crisis.

But I have no doubt either that the refugee child was blinded by the same fear of us that drove the mob to yesterday's atrocity. I also have no doubt that somewhere in a refugee camp right now, someone is reading a sensationalist report about 200 men beating up a sixteen year old and planning revenge against the 'monsters' who attacked kids.

And I also have no doubt that when it happens, there'll be a Daily Mail journo all ready to go with another 500 words of fear and misinformation, a tory MP who'll stand up and tell us they must be stopped, these migrants. All ready to whip us all up into giving them a little more ad money or a little more power.

We're all going round and round and round taking revenge for this, and that, and the other: a pointless and ongoing cycle of destruction. I asked myself why it is that the attackers couldn't see the refugees as victims, how this cycle of blame is being perpetuated. It's easy.

It's the words.

The press is dehumanising everyone involved for sensationalisation, to be the paper that everyone reads. The news is turning into clickbait. Why use a word like refugee - a nice sympathetic word - when you can use the word migrant, and grab everyone's attention?

Get some clickthrough. Or in Cameron's case, get some votes. Whip up the public into being afraid enough to vote for the warmongers who put us in this situation by bombing the Syrians in the first place. Sod the consequences, we're all just playing the game and if you criticise that, you're just naive. There's money to be made from the latest two minutes of hate. There's power to be gained.

You want to know why we're in this war? Why it keeps going? Why people are killing each other?

Because we've all become afraid of each other, and the right wing are literally making a killing out of it.

Welcome to a Conservative Britain!

From their own 2015 manifesto, here's what you can expect over the next five years:

We can fuck you up the ass, and there's nothing you can do about it!

The number one thing stopping any government getting away with whatever sketchy shit it likes is the European Court of Human Rights. It over-rules our courts, and it's a fucking good thing too. If they didn't, our government would almost literally be unaccountable.

Of course the Tories want rid of it, citing the difficulties getting rid of Abu Quatada and almost certainly EU regulations about Bananas or some shit. Hell, Theresa May still thinks it protects people from being deported if they have a cat (hint; it doesn't, and she's been told off for saying that on the news).

I think they threw her in a wheely-bin. I'm not good at remembering the news. 

So if they're unhindered by a higher authority, what can they do? Pretty much anything they like. But specifically, they can do some pretty terrifying things with the following policies suggested in their manifesto:

• Police-led prosecutions to be 'further extended,'
• 'Semi-custodial' sentencing allowing police to detain offenders in custody for 'extended periods'
• Ability to ban organisations that fall short of meeting the terrorism act's definitions (so anyone they don't like, basically)
• More boundary reforms

The Boundary reforms are probably the most concerning, because they're at the root of why the conservatives are in power right now with only 36.9% of the vote. That's only 6.4% more than Labour. But still the conservatives won 330 seats and Labour only got 232. How can the conservatives win a clear majority? Look at a map of the different voting boundaries and you'll see why:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2015/results

Notice how the blue areas have a lot more small, compact constituencies? They're at the heart of the imbalance. Each constituency gets one vote. So the tories literally get more votes, because they've engineered things so that the regions of the UK that tend to vote Tory are divided up into more constituencies.

Doesn't sound fair? Well, because we've had nothing but Conservative and Labour since about the 1920s, and they both used to benefit from this system, nobody's complained. Unfortunately now that Labour have pissed off the Scots, it's not working for them any more, leaving one, big fat beneficiary who now intends to rewrite the rules to their benefit.

(link to relevant tumblr post)

If we still have a European Court of Human Rights by then, we might be able to stop them, given that the right to fair elections is one of the things that they oversee. I say might, because they could still manipulate the laziness of the general population by implementing photo ID voter registration.

Poorer areas (who are more likely to vote against the Tories) tend to respond very poorly to voter registration, because they're too busy working two jobs to update their photo id, cart it down to the local council office (assuming there's one nearby), stand in a queue and fill out a bunch of forms. Richer and more prosperous areas have the time and the energy to do so (and have generally better maintained public services that are able to keep up with demand).

So you end up with a lot of registered voters in Tory areas, and very few in labour areas. When they redefine the voting boundaries, they'll be redrawn based on the amount of registered voters. Meaning that the situation with all of those extra votes in the Tory heartland and a few vast reds scattered everywhere else is about to get a lot worse.

Of course, even if they fail to get rid of the ECoHR, they'll still be able to do any and all of the following:

Benefit reforms!

• 'Tougher' day one work requirements for job seekers (I'll be interested to see if it's even possible to get tougher without using the word 'workhouse'),
• 18-21 year olds excluded from Jobseekers Allowance and given 6 months 'Youth Allowance', after which they must get a job / training / disappear from the statistics / die (whatever's quickest),
• No housing benefit for 18-21 year olds, so good luck if your parents are abusive, dead or kicking you out!
• More sick / disabled people to be classified fit to work by ATOS,
• Support for Homeless people and mental health care to be hidden behind new and exciting 'bonds' that will doubtless be unadvertised and difficult to access, as with most social care now Jobcentres have strict targets and most of the CAB offices are gone.

Tax Reform!

• Further corporate tax decrease. It's not even veiled behind colourful language, they're proudly boasting they'll decrease corporate tax.

Justice reform!

• EU referendum in 2017. Lets see how much a combined front of the Murdoch press and our own government can scare us by then!
• 'Deport first, appeal later' policy on immigration. Direct quote!
• Police no longer allowed to access journalists phone records (Thanks for the recommendation Ms. Brooks!),
• Police-led prosecutions to be further extended,
• 'Semi-custodial' sentencing allowing police to detain offenders in custody for 'extended periods',
• SCRAP THE HUMAN RIGHTS ACT (I'm not sure how UKip managed to get more attention than this),
• 'British Bill of Rights' to be decided by a bunch of old white men, and Sith lord Theresa Palpatine-May (you know, the one who voted against gay rights including marriage, has been found in contempt of court over detaining an Algerian man, and deported Jackie Nanyonjo to Uganda, where her illegal status as a lesbian has forced her into hiding),
• European Court of Human Rights will no longer be able to correct injustice in the UK.

Most worrying of all:

• Ability to ban organisations that fall short of meeting the terrorism act's definitions (so anyone they don't like, basically),
• Ban / disband nonviolent extremists as defined above,
• Stop 'extremist' individuals from using the internet, or teaching at a university.

Now read these again in light of Home Secretary Theresa May's responses over the detention of Journalist David Miranda. If the government want to call anything terrorism, they can; and just in case they can't, they still want the power to act even if it falls short of any approved definition. Russell Brand's a bit shouty and anti-government. Maybe he can be a terrorist...


Education reform!

• Schools that OFSTED likes can basically do what they like and get free money,
• Everyone else gets threats of closure, funding cuts (helpful for schools in poor economic areas!) or being turned into an academy.

Civil reform!

• Continued censorship of the internet, extending from piracy to porn,
• More boundary reforms,
• Proof of id to vote, so less of those objectionable poor people will register, and the number of Tory safe seats can increase,
• Extend the vote to racist ex-pats on the Costa del Sol (and presumably the ghost of Thatcher),
• NIMBY law allowing locals to protest against new housing, developments and basically anything in Oxfordshire,
• Inheritance tax cap effective at £1 million as long as you put it in property (so you can buy a million quid block of flats, fill it with plebs and hand it on to your family safe in the knowledge they will be carrying on your legacy of spiteful manipulation of basic human needs),
• Decrease co-operation with Europe (proven stability & interaccountability) and increase trade links with India and China (shocking human/civil rights records, poverty stricken manual labourer class and - actually now that I think about it, all-round Conservative wet dream).

It's all in there, check for yourself at http://www.conservatives.com/manifesto if you want. I know you won't.

Because let's face it, you were probably part of the third of the British population who didn't even turn up to vote yesterday.

Democracy! 

One- Line Reviews

Apologies for the recent blackout. The list of drafts that greets me on my dashboard has let me diagnose the problem - I had become fixated on newsblogging, and launching into diatribes supported by links, evidence and bibliographies. In other words, all the things that made me hate writing back at university. Even now, I'm looking at the cursor blinking in front of me waiting for a naturally flowing subject to pop out of my subconscious, complete with references, point, structure and summary. Unfortunately my brain has to be wrestled into that shape. I have the organisation skills of a piss-up in a brewery, after the piss up. On the other hand, having seen what structure and references can do to the likeability of a piece, I am loath to become just another mouthpiece screaming into the void. With that in mind, here are some one-line reviews of things I have recently encountered: Minecraft: It's like OCD Porn. Help me. (9.5/10) The Social Network: Business people screw each other over, who knew. Also Justin Timberlake is perfectly cast as a massive douche. No 'splosions. (8/10) Double Entry Book-keeping: Functionality 9/10 - Fun -ohgodkillmenow/10 Co-Op Marinated Chinese Elmwood Chicken Skewers: Dry, but delicious. Good with a nice thick sauce, like gravy with sweet chilli added. (7.5/10) Game of Thrones: I CANNOT WAIT TO FIND OUT WHICH ONE SEAN BEAN PLAYS. IT'S TONY STARK, ISN'T IT. WAIT, NED STARK. WHO CALLS A FANTASY CHARACTER NED. OH MY GOD WOLVES (10/10) The Leveson Inquiry: Hoping they're at the mid-season lull, preparing for an explosive finale next week when David Cameron accidentally lets slip mid-question exactly how much Murdoch semen he ingested on the way to number 10. (5/10 with the potential to hit 9 next week). With that in mind I excuse myself, and slip back into the void. Incidentally, do feel free to leave a comment. The plugins are getting lonely.

David Cameron and the Ford Pinto of Shame

Comedy lizard and spoof prime-minister (well I'm hoping so - for god's sake he'd better not be serious or we're all fucked) David Cameron shuffled further away from the reality that should be etching the word 'shame' into his forehead on a daily basis, by declaring in a robotic monotone that "Business is not just about making money, as vital as that is. It's also the most powerful force for social progress the world has ever known." Shortly after, every cat within a 7 mile radius was found dead, it's face frozen in a rictus grin. But I digress. In and of itself, this statement is true - business isn't just about money, it's also about avoiding hostile takeovers and unethical competitors pushing you out of your target market, usually by resorting to even more underhand and unethical behaviour. It's about offsetting the cost of repairs against the cost of a human life. It's about work, and getting as much of it out of your employees before they break down, quit, die or retire. No no. Business isn't just about making money. It's merely the single most important aspect of it. And yes, business is a force for social change. Just look at how Monsanto has 'changed' life for the few farmers Africa was able to support, or how Nestle has 'changed' the life expectancy of infants in developing countries, or lack of proper adherence to health and safety codes is 'changing' live workers into dead ones. The thing is, to me this just shows how far removed from reality David Cameron has become (sidenote - I'll have to refer to him as DavCam from this point on, since if you say his name three times he appears behind you with his sexual organs exposed. All nine of them). Anyone who can look at the NHS wholesale and say that the same business thinking that went into the Ford Pinto is a good thing to have in an organisation concerning healthcare, is, I suspect, an automaton placed in position by DavCam for when his people invade. I worked for the NHS. I saw how the one thing that was crippling it was the fact that it was being run like a business. Hospitals competing against each other just means hospitals (and even departments) don't work together. Incorrect diagnoses are made, because (for example) the MRI department doesn't want someone's tests coming out of their budget, so they refer them to a less expensive test, or another department. Everyone assumes areas where there is the slightest overlap is 'someone else's problem' without ever checking it's being done. And the structure of the NHS should lend it to some of the most creative problem solving ever, and yet it is almost entirely staffed at a management level by business school graduates, who apply competitive thinking strategies because they don't know how to do anything else. And at the end of the day, that's fine to NHS management, because it's just numbers. The red bar on their statistics sheet isn't a pile of bodies, it's just a red bar. When they save money, the red bar goes up, and so does public outrage, but the trick for them is to keep cutting costs while keeping the outrage below an 'acceptable' amount. And maybe this is the thing. We're all taking too much. In terms of cost-benefit analysis, either our threshold as a nation is too high or the government has decided to just stop listening. Either way, it can't be a good sign.

Still Alive

So I'm pretty lazy. I mean, right now there are many things to comment on that are of personal interest to me, and by extension the people who feign interest in what I have to say. There's the whole News International phone hacking collapse, and the UK teetering on the brink of a known industrial lobbyist taking over the two main lodestones of British political sway, namely the tabloids and Sky TV. There's the ongoing patent war between Apple and everyone, in which they just lost their first major battle and now face losing their US (and probably UK) market share. Which I find hilarious because I work in IT and see on a daily basis how often Macs don't 'just work.' But really, it just seems to be a case at the moment of not having enough time at the moment to push my agenda on the world. Maybe this is why News International have been able to get so far in my absence, or maybe it's mid-day and I need to take the special pills that stop me thinking I'm more powerful than Rupert Murdoch (nobody is more powerful than Rupert Murdoch). I moved house you see. I know, tremendously inconvenient but then along with graduation comes the gradual bleeding of real life once more into my cozy existence, and suddenly I no longer have periods where I SHOULD be working but aren't, I just have moments when I'm either working or slipping further into David Cameron's pocket. So for the blog, this translates into me probably not updating much for the next ten days. There again, I might update more often, I just don't know. This is just to warn you that there will be gaps ahead.

We are all Tenths of a Percentage

Beginning with the recap on last post's guinea pig panic (which incidentally is a name I am copywrighting as a possible computer game / theme park ride / cartoon franchise), we have researched and listened to sample noises, and things seem to be turning out OK. A little nipping still continues, but ultimately they have now settled into the normal social order, established social dominance and are letting us pick them up. Sometimes. The beef of this three course post is that I am approaching the end of the degree now with the crushing inevitability of Justin Bieber's next single. So how do I feel? Well, worried and relieved in equal measure. On the one hand, I no longer have to have every spare moment spoiled by the realisation that I should be working on an essay, or reading some of the set texts, or not getting 100% gamerpoints in Assassin's Creed 2 (I'm not going to lie, it was the most productive part of the weekend). And of course, once I get a job out in the real world I can hopefully afford things again. On the flip side of course, there's always the statistics. Only 55% of graduates are getting into jobs these days, the rest of the country's fucked, every job application puts you up against hundreds of other people and rent; and living costs and most likely incidences of toffs buggering the poor are all spiraling upwards like the rapture we were promised on Saturday (which made a great excuse not to go out - sorry chaps, can't join you this evening, got a bit of frantic repentance to do). I'm babbling. It's the result of several weeks of long, sleepless nights and wildly panicked procrastinating putting off the end of the old and in with the new. Not just a literal apocalypse, but a metaphorical one too. And despite my best efforts backfiring or going ignored (e.g. voting Lib Dem backfiring and the alt vote getting shot down), I enter the workplace at an all-time low. So there is that. And in the middle there's me, a human being just trying to make a decent living. But then that's the trick to modern living - people aren't individuals anymore. We're all a tenth of a percentage, or a tick in a box, or a one/zero effect on the group so that computers can tally us up and come up with group dynamics to sum up what we want. It's easy to let slip a million people losing out from policy, because the human mind can't process it. Cameron and the government aren't evil, they just can't see the people losing out from their actions as an army of miserable individuals. The population who should be protesting in outrage can't see it either. Nobody can. I make ready to venture out into this world, and if i'm honest, it scares the willies out of me. Writing, as unrealistic a goal as it is, seems to be my best option.