What on earth is happening in 2016? This week alone we witness the unmitigated horror of dozens of people gunned down purely because of their sexuality, and now a British MP and mother of two toddlers is brutally slain in the street because, it appears, she was a pro-immigration member of parliament campaigning for the UK to stay in the EU.
I hadn’t intended to post on the subject of the impending in/out referendum, chiefly because I no longer live in the country of my birth. However, this shocking and distinctly undemocratic turn of events in Leeds has got my blood boiling, and it’s already pretty fiery.
Like many, I was never in favour of Cameron’s referendum in the first place. It’s a massive and unnecessary waste of taxpayers’ money and seems to be an excuse for an uglier, nastier and more violent rerun of the June 1975 vote; one incidentally that a certain Mrs. Margaret Thatcher campaigned for continued EC (as it was then called) membership, or an obviously opportunistic round of political posturing by overly ambitious obese ex-mayors of London or messianic leaders of one-issue parties (as a so-called political party UKIP itself has deliquesced into a cult around the dim-witted racist that is Nigel Farage) who have already admitted they have no idea what would happen to the country should a Brexit occur.
Both Boris Johnson and the preposterous mountebank Farage are also on record as making a series of deeply unpleasant homophobic comments but that’s another story. Brextremists, the pair of them.
The EU is far from perfect, but lest we forget the primary reason for its creation in the 1950s (because our elected representatives don’t always care to admit this): to prevent a third world war starting in Europe. So in that respect it has been a success, because it gets the great historic countries of Europe talking rather than bombing each other.
Yes, immigration is a touchy subject, and I can understand the somewhat seditious tendency to want to bring down the monolithic federation but hey, where would I be without free movement of peoples? I have English, Welsh, Greek (yes, it’s true, I can safely say without being deemed racist: the often lazy Greeks ARE hopeless with money), Serbian, German, French and Native American ancestry, and the EU passport afforded me the right to live in The Netherlands without question, and currently I’m an immigrant once again, this time in Australia.
It has to be said, the callous killer of Jo Cox is a perfect example of the majority of working class Brits brainwashed by certain tabloids into believing the EU is some kind of evil empire, and that Britain was so much better when it was on its own. They’re loutish little Englanders, nasty nationalists, reprehensible racists, over-zealous xenophobes, bastard bigots, usually uneducated, most definitely ill-informed and quite often barking.
Still, at least I no longer have to live among them. I’ve plenty of friends who do, and I pray you do your research properly before you tick that box on the 23rd. Peace.
Steve Pafford
First published: Facebook, June 2016
#peaceinourlifetime #weareorlando #loveislove #borisisdangerous
