NOW, HOW CAN WE EXPLAIN BREXIT?
What happened was that Americans were fed up with the way their country was run (a bit like the Brits were) as you can see in the first picture.
So, unlike in the UK, it is possible to change that. Shake a stick at it (see second box of cartoon), by electing someone from the left field (OK, in this case, the right field). Someone totally different; someone with no Washington DC experience, Senate or House; someone with no State experience, Governor, or local government; someone with no military or legal experience.
Someone, in fact, with the world’s weirdest hair. Someone who is Orange and lives in a Las Vegas-like tower of glitter and gold. Someone who makes Liberace’s taste look cultivated. Someone who is racist, sexist and pokes fun at people who are disabled. Someone who despises gay people brags he can get off with any woman, and sends himself congratulatory tweets before he’s even in the job.
There, that should do it, or not, as you can see in the third box of the cartoon.
In the UK, Scots had the courage to throw out a lot of dead wood. People who had been lurking around the back benches for years, getting fatter by the day, and some who thought to stride the world stage as statesmen, mighty leaders. And they replaced them with lawyers, doctors, surgeons, estate agents, all brand new to this House of Commoners lark… and threw in a rookie 21 year old who had to get a day off for graduation and turned out to be a star.
On the other hand, England decided that Ed Miliband looked a bit of a dick when he was eating a bacon sandwich and voted instead for a man who actually was a bit of a dick, who thought that really all that mattered was standing up straight, wearing a good suit, doing up one’s tie and singing lustily “God Save the Queen”. A man who was so conceited he thought he could talk Joe and Jo Soap into voting for the EU, after he and his ilk had spent the last 40 years blaming everything that went wrong on that very thing, with the help of their odious mates in the gutter press. A man who failed, however, to convince people, and having done so, slid out the back door and off to make a fortune following Blair round the world selling himself like an exclusive rent-boy in a good suit and straight tie singing “God Save the Queen”.
And thanks to him we have the singularly inept “Mayhem” of a prime minister, leading a bunch of third raters and, with probably the most momentous thing to happen in the UK since WWII about to befall us, she has placed our futures in the hands of a clown and a couple of mindless drips with no understanding of…well, anything.
I dunno who is worse off.
Cartoon pretty much sums up Brexit and 2016.
Better get the superglue for 2017….
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LOL, Heavy duty welding gear, I think…
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It must be a great cause for concern among our Unionist friends that the mighty , all knowing, never wrong British elite have made a total balls up of Brexit and the only people who have any idea of what to do are our very own genetically inferior Scottish Government.
Factor in to that as well the British are making enemies of everyone and Scotland is gaining new friends all the time. We were always told no one likes us. Oh dear it wasn’t meant to be like this was it?
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Sounds like a plan that went all wrong…
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Trump is perhaps not an ideal first choice, but Hilary was not a good candidate. Ed Milliband was a poor candidate too. It is perhaps a symptom of the arrogance of the political cast that they stand such poor candidates in the first place. At a time when the economy of the West is stagnant, going through massive technological change, up to its neck in debt, and people are afraid for their future, surely the political parties can put up better people to lead us than that?
The lazy journalists, spoon feed the lazy voters with lazy “news”. We live in a strange culture where ignorance is celebrated. And all the while a small group at the top of this system line their pockets. I have no idea how you tackle it. We Scots are better informed it would seem than most, but even we struggle with Mr Mencken’s maxim.
“No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”
I despair at times. I only hope the trust we have placed in that wee lassie frae Irvine is justified. We really do need to plough our own furrow.
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Agree completely that Clinton was a poor choice, given that she was unpopular and seen to be a part of the corrupt Washington establishment.
My point about Miliband was the puerile nature of the press’s attacks on him. OK, he was relatively crap, but then no one in their right mind would have thought that Cameron or Clegg were any good either.
I’m inclined to think that while Nicola may not be perfect (who is?) she’s the best thing Scotland has got… Imagine Dugdale or Davidson facing this situation…
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well seeing as the Torys are gerrymandering how or how not people
vote best not crow to much as they will get more votes for Conservatives
in Scotland. The snp cohort at westminster will be severely culled
showing evidence( the torys will say ) of Scotlands reluctance to follow
the snp extremists over the cliff.
under the suggested proposals the snp will lose 3 votes from my immediate family
who do not drive or have and will not get a passport. And they always vote at every
general election. Extend that trend across Scotland and its not so good for the snp
or Labour but will assist the Conservatives in Scotland.
The Conservatives are taking a leaf out of the USA Republicans playbook on how to
gerrymander voting districts and suppress their opponents supporters votes .
Britannia has always waved the rules the nats say but never this far the UK
is moving from a flawed democratic society to a post democratic society.
There never did, there never will, and there never can, exist a Parliament, or any description of men, or any generation of men, in any country, possessed of the right or the power of binding and controlling posterity to the “end of time,” or of commanding for ever how the world shall be governed, or who shall govern it; and therefore all such clauses, acts or declarations by which the makers of them attempt to do what they have neither the right nor the power to do, nor the power to execute, are in themselves null and void.
-Thomas Paine
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Yes. I see that the Tories are trying to exclude the poor by insisting on passports and driving licences.
In Scotland many old people have a photocard for bus travel, so that should do. (I think it’s just photo identity.)
Of course they have gerrymandered the constituencies as they tried to do last government until the Liberals stuffed them because Cameron wouldn’t allow his beloved Lords to be affected. (You can see why when you saw his retirement honours.)
I’m still wondering why you have any attachment to this unpleasant and undemocratic country, Niko
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No Doubt the nats will say in their innocence The Scottish Parliament
will rule in Scotland but with one swirl of an English quill pen and
Scotland’s executive will be consigned to history once again…
Or will the law abiding Scots have the guts ( I think not ) to raise
their own laws entirely above Westminsters writ (they would
shite it i reluctantly believe )
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They could try it, I for one would demand Scotland’s right to self determination be respected, for its Parliament to be reinstated, and for Westminster to piss right off.
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Munguin and I will be there with you, Jim
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Well, I’m not sure that the Brits could get away with disbanding the parliament.
You can only push people so far.
I seem to recall that an early poll in the independence campaign, before Cameron ruled out Home Rule, read:
Independence (around) 22%
Status quo (around) 10%
Devo Max/Home Rule (around) 66%
Direct rule from England (around) 2%
Insisting on something supported by 2% of the population and putting Fluffy Muddle in charge would go down less than well, I reckon.
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I seem to recall, correct me if I am wrong, that Stormont was shut for a while, during the ‘troubles’?
So they have a model for dealing with pesky natives?
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Yes. You’re right. Direct rule with the Secretary of State in charge and decisions made in Westminster parliament. It can be done. It has been done.
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Assholes leading asses ……… 🐎.
Sounds familiar?
If I was not such an upbeat optimist I would despair. However, the tide of history is running our way and this 66 year-old WILL see Scotland free for my grandsons!!!!
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I hope you are right Chas. Britain hasn’t ever been a nice place to live unless you were very comfortably off or well connected. It’s becoming a hellhole.
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Some of this reminds me of Bertold Brecht’s:
“Some party hack decreed that the people
had lost the government’s confidence
and could only regain it with redoubled effort.
If that is the case, would it not be be simpler,
If the government simply dissolved the people
And elected another?”
Are we now living in that sort of society? I think the government actually detests the people it is supposed to represent.
The sooner we make our own way, the better.
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yes, it is like that.
We have a habit of forgetting that WE employ THEM. Maybe it’s the monarchical system; maybe it’s the fact that the “leaders” tended to come from the “ruling classes”, but Brits, and possibly others, seem to treat politicians as if they were special.
They are not. They are our staff.
I was once told off by my boss for calling Jack McConnell “Jack”, when he referred to me by my first name. WHAT?
We really need to lose this kind of attitude and remember that it is US, the people, who matter.
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Here’s one for Trump and the Brexit brigade.
“The nations of the earth are mostly swayed by fear—fear of the sort that a little cheap oratory turns easily to rage, hate, and violence.”
Joseph Conrad (1857-1924)
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Hell, that’s good stuff.
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I thought so.
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