Dear All,
My audience is global, so apologies, this is a UK thing – however I do think think it’s an event of global significance.
I wrote a post yesterday passing on information about a crowd fund to have the iconic Big Ben clock at Westminster London “bong” (A huge loud bell inside the clock) to mark UK leaving Europe. The fund is getting close to £250000 right now, so a good chance it will reach target of £500000, and will bong for Brexit.
I do welcome comments, as I always have, – both comments in response to yesterday’s post were in opposition to the idea, and Brexit itself. It’s fair to say that the LEAVE/REMAIN Brexit issue is/was incredibly divisive, and I do somewhat sympathise with both sides of that argument. However after nearly 4 years, it’s time to leave our friends in Europe.
Comments take up quite a lot of time for me to answer, the same as writing blog posts. So, sometimes I just repost (along with my reply) them as a blog, for wider audience, as may be of interest.
So …
Senior reader wrote :
More than 50% of the population voted for parties that wanted to remain or have a second referendum. So much for democracy and the voice of the people.
To which I replied :
The Scottish MPs also want to have a second Scottish referendum, after a “once in a generation” referendum in 2014. Question on my mind in 2014, was why was I not given a vote on whether I want Scotland to be part of UK – so perhaps the rest of the UK should be given that vote, rather than Scotland. Or, if you want to be really fair about it, the whole UK has a vote on whether Scotland stays or leaves the UK, not just Scotland.
As for Brexit, are you really sure that it’s fair to say to a population who voted leave in 2016, ie the 52% – “We know you voted to leave, but we think you might be stupid or have made a mistake, and quite frankly we don’t like your decision – so after we’ve been bickering for nearly 4 years in Parliament about it, are you *REALLY* sure you want to leave” ?
And if won, as a majority remain, what’s to stop people demanding a third, forth, fifth, sixth, seventh, etc referendum, under the same logic, because they didn’t like the result either.
By parties – Are you talking about Labour who had it’s worst defeat since 1935. Or Lib Dems, who their own leader lost her seat ? Or Change UK who no longer exist ? Or SNP who can’t seem to make up their minds if they want to stay in UK or not ? Or Corbyn who couldn’t make up his mind whether he wanted to leave or stay in Europe, on national TV, few days before the general election ?
As for the first past the post system for electing government in UK, it’s been like that for generations (it’s not proportional representation). Changing the rules because one didn’t win, hmmm, that’s not very fair is it ? And also, if the policies of those parties were so popular, then why didn’t they win ? … oh, sorry I forgot, they won the argument. Being right, is of course far more important than being a leader.
I said above, I would have voted remain (had I voted) and was a remainer up until late 2019. BUT I really really had had enough of it after nearly 4 years of bickering and uncertainty, blocking and legal bullshit, so I changed sides. The people’s vote of 2016 MUST be respected if we value democracy at all. I think that’s how critical major policies are decided, in lieu of things like civil wars, or just out and out anarchy.
“We” lost the Brexit “battle”, time to move on and make the best of it.
Best wishes for 2020, thanks for your comment.
Clowie wrote :
I won’t be donating. I see nothing to celebrate.
I, also, have been doing research and have come to very different conclusions from you. I am shocked at the lies that have been told about the EU, for decades, by our politicians and the media. The EU has been blamed for every unpopular decision made by our politicians. The things wrong with this country are not the fault of the EU. Some things would be worse without the restraints of EU regulations.
The country is still divided and it’s very sad when words like “liberal” and “tolerant” become insults. These are qualities we were once proud of.
To which I replied :
That’s OK. For me it’s more relief than celebration, after nearly 4 years of bickering (and nearly 5 years till 31-Dec-2020), there’s now a line being drawn under it, hopefully UK can move on now. As I said, if I had voted in 2016 it would have been Remain, reason, I prefer status quo (We’ve been in Europe all my lifetime)
I grew up in decades Liberal constituency, and always considered myself a liberal. Even voted Labour in early 2000s in London. But like you say things have changed, bias has changed on the left, to something that’s far from moderate or centrist, and it’s still shifting further left. Personally I abhor BOTH communism and fascism, and don’t want either. Venezuela from what I understand is the latest try at socialism, was initially heralded as a massive success, now it’s hell on earth for the majority living in horrendous poverty, whilst the corrupt at the top live like kings. But I can see the appeal in socialism in principle, it just seems it doesn’t usually work out how people expected. Capitalism is far from perfect too.
As for the EU 52% of people voted out. That’s a democratic majority for a referendum. Even though it wasn’t my choice, I still respect other people’s choice.
As for who’s to blame EU vs UK, politician’s always are blaming someone else for their failings – their main goal is to get re-elected.
We don’t know if things would be worse or better with or without the EU, because we’ve been in the EU. I would have to concede there’s been pros and cons.
Within that I’ve tried to make the post as least political as possible, I’m not an activist, nor am I an expert, nor am I a politician with any power to change anything. Perhaps that will change, I don’t know. Mostly I’ve tried to keep my blog non-political, I’m interested in people’s opinions and sometimes I’m creative.
Brexit is a major historical event, whether one believes in it or not. Personally, I’m looking at it with a positive outlook, as an opportunity for prosperity and happiness for the future.
Not much to add to that really, other than to say thankyou to the commenters, was interesting to discuss with you both.
Hopefully Brexit will bring a positive outcome all citizens of the UK. Will try and post some creative stuff on this blog this year (sorry, you know – life !)
Anyway – Here’s the GoFundMe campaign if you missed it yesterday ….
The link:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/bigbenbongforbrexit
Hope this message finds you well, and that 2020 will be a prosperous and happy year for all of us.
If you’re commenting, please make it coherent and polite – if you want to be approved, and, responded to (if I have time).
Cheers
Don
Don Charisma 
I said it was sad to see words like tolerant and liberal used as insults in this country and I thought you understood. You have now used “woke” in the way that the right wing press do.
The referendum was corrupt – it has been shown. And our current PM is withholding a report about interference in our political processes that was ready before the election.
He achieved 43% of the vote. That gives him a large majority in the house, even though 57% of voters do not want him there.
Brexit will make some billionaires richer, some politicians are making a lot of money out of it.
May went back to the electorate after outlining her Brexit plans, asking for a larger majority. It resulted in a hung parliament and they bribed the DUP to support them.
Brexit was mostly delayed by the very politicians who support it because they could not agree what form it should take. The PM voted down May’s deal 3 times. His deal is that deal with a few bits ripped out – things like guarantees on workers’ rights and food standards. Northern Ireland was promised no borders, but Johnson has gone back on that. There will be controls between them and the rest of the UK.
We are probably heading for a hard Brexit with Johnson in charge.
It was right for MPs that care about the country to scrutinise the deal and oppose it if they thought it wrong.
A second referendum could easily be held if they admitted that things have changed and no one had any idea what Brexit would look like. During the referendum no one mentioned “no deal”, but it gradually became the ideal Brexit for many.
I don’t think more people support Brexit. All the polls show more people wish to remain as more has become clear.
As for you comment about unelected leaders in the EU – they are guided and held to account by our elected MEPS, much like the civil service in Whitehall.
I hope Brexit works out better than I expect.
I think if I’m being called right wing, directly or indirectly, with or without plausible deniability, then this conversation is over. I’m not right wing, more centrist than anything.
Best wishes
Don
Wow! I did not mean to call you right wing. I was just surprised that you would use a word like that in a derisory manner. I also don’t really appreciate being called a remoaner, directly or indirectly.
Ok, no worries, apology accepted. So you’re not a remoaner, just fed up with Brexit dragging on same as me ? Lemoaner ?
I’ve yet to hear/see/experience anything I like about or agree with within the woke doctrine, so not sure how I can express that without being derisory, without out and out lying, and I can’t see the point of that on a blog that costs me time and money to do. Perhaps I’m just a wrong thinker. Or perhaps my life experiences have shown me a different way of being.
I’m fairly sure the change in “liberal” came from America. “woke” came from America, and technically speaking the non-people of colour have culturally appropriated it from people of colour, which is kind of ironic really. I didn’t really understand what you mean’t about “tolerance”, that still means the same thing to me and I’ve not seen or heard it used in another way, than the dictionary definition from 10 or 20 years ago. Anyway, I’ll look out for it.
There are certain forces in play who want to change the meaning of words, and even criminalise certain things we might say, or write. And I agree that’s sad state of affairs, freedom of speech has to be a basic human right. It’s in the American’s first amendment. There was a big to-do about bill C16 in Canada, which forces specific speech on pain of jail. In UK people have been arrested by the police for offending LGBTQ+ people on twitter, under the 2003 communications act (well more of a misuse of of the act). I heard about the Uyghur Muslims being forced to change their “wrong thinking” in China in special re-education camps. In communist Russia people were tortured or murdered or sent to gulag for wrong thinking, and I’m sure similar stuff happened/happens in other communist countries.
So, language is important, freedom of speech some say is freedom to think. And freedom is almost always high on people’s most important values.
Within that language does change, I think bovvered was added to the dictionary courtesy of Catherine Tate’s character on BBC.
And jealous these days has a double meaning shared with envious. Which is pretty sad, because the word is now ambiguous, where in the past it was precise.
As for Brexit, it’s fairly certain it’s done and dusted now. So my advice is make the most of it, I’m certain that it’ll work out just fine for you.
Anyway, all the best
Cheers
Don
So you’re still in England Don? Long time no see. We are all interested here (Canada) in what’s happening there.
Leslie 🙂
Sometimes I’m travelling, but UK is still my home. Long time no see also, hope you’re doing OK (did miss you!)
Brexit is a major event with global effects. Currently we’re leaving Europe on 31-Jan-2020, then into trade deal negotiation with Europe, final leaving date is 31-Dec-2020. That’s all things being equal of course.
Brexit has divided UK politically, left and right. The left has gone extreme left, whilst the right has stayed closer to the center. I think similar things have happened in USA. Many are worried about communism (the inevitable result of socialism) – I’m sure you know what happened in Russia and China, etc, appalling suffering and murders. Capitalism isn’t perfect, not by a long chalk, but at least it’s relatively free, and generally people have the opportunity to prosper.
Europe looks like a tinder box with major social problems in Germany, Italy and France. With UK leaving, I’m worried that this may escalate into something not very nice. Mass immigration is said to be one of the factors. Austerity/lack of prosperity would be another.
I only know a little about Canada through Jordan Peterson, bill C16 and other snippets. There’s a lot of good youtube channels come out of Canada. Perhaps you can fill me in a little about what you think re Canada.
I’m fairly new to politics, and never was a political blogger, but can tell you what I think if you have any questions.
Hopefully, I’ll get back to my photography and more creative things soon. Blogging was taking up a lot of time, and there was no money coming in (Photography is now more art, than an income). Dunno, I have hope in 2020.
Also, it’s tax month this month for UK, so I’ve got to get that done.
Best wishes
Speak soon
Don
I just finished the book – Google met with Wikileaks by Julian Assange. Very interesting and alarming at the same time. Also read – Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones, Tailspin by Sten Brill – the decline of the west, The Looting Machine by Tom Burgis -the rape of the African continent of its natural resources. Then there’s – American Prison by Shane Bauer – the institutionalization of slavery. If you want to know what’s going on in the world, I recommend those books. Some are very heavy going because they are academic with everything cited. You won’t be able to sleep after all that. But you will know what’s going on. Canada is being run by an elitist “pretty boy”, who doesn’t hesitate to interfere with the judicial system to get his high roller business friends out of trouble. He even fired the Attorney General because she wouldn’t do his bidding. Big brouhaha about that
One thing about Trump, he’s got the globalists stymied and everyone else doesn’t know what to do because he’s a lose cannon.
There you go Don – the world in a nutshell…chuckle… a real nutshell!
Leslie
Thanks for the book recommendations.
“Canada is being run by an elitist “pretty boy”, who doesn’t hesitate to interfere with the judicial system to get his high roller business friends out of trouble. He even fired the Attorney General because she wouldn’t do his bidding. Big brouhaha about that”
Re: Canada – Sounds about right, snippets of this I knew already, “pretty boy” totally. Wealthy globalist elites are the puppet masters globally I think.
Good on Trump then. Not sure about loose canon, Iran he seemed to show quite a lot of restraint. The left probably see him as a loose canon though. What I’ve heard round and about is that people are rejecting established left-wing globalist politics in favour of nationalist populist, some are centrist, or right leaning. You know, people who care about their cultural identity and believe in things like merit based immigration.
The identity politics, political correctness and virtue signalling, people are having their own awakening to. Woke – people are also waking up to that there might be a problem with rabid twitter mobs thought policing us, as just one for instance. Jordan Peterson speaks at length on these kinds of topics.
Italy have a right wing party that’s on the rise, as does Holland. France has had yellow-vest protesters in Paris for a year or more, and mainstream media don’t report on it. There’s been some horrific mass sexual abuse cases on women and girls in Germany, Sweden and UK. UK was failings of left wing Police and government officials. Probably the same in Germany and Sweden, but more to with open border policies. All of the abuse was attributed to non-indigenous people as far as I know.
So Europe is really having some problems under current ideologies, seems to be heading towards a communist empire. Seems like a tinder box right now, especially with UK leaving.
Assange should be free IMO Obviously the rape allegations where fraudulent. The Americans want a scapegoat, the Guardian and other publications won’t face any justice from the Americans.
Opiates were government assisted monopoly, incredibly corrupt. I wonder if the “war on drugs” was just a leg up for monopoly of big-pharma.
Don’t know all that much about slavery, but I did hear that the Africans et al (eg Egyptians) were slavers a long time before British, Europeans or Americans. The British also acted to force the end of slavery, and actively gave up colonies of British Empire.
Just my two cents. I’m learning everyday. Some of the concepts I’m still getting to grips with.
I posted a video from British comedian, might be of interest, he sums up what happened with Teresa May’s brexit deal.
And, as regards Brexit it’s not just a left vs right divide, probably also a globalist vs nationalist and elite vs masses divide too. The main competing party in UK “Labour” had it’s worst general election loss since 1935 (12-Dec-2019). Working class people who’d voted Labour for generations, switched to Conservative, which is a major thing.
Cheers
Don
True we are in a state of flux. I don’t think anyone wants a WW3 except maybe Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Booz Allen Hamilton etc…..However, the thing we have to worry about is the control of the minutiae of the little people (us) by G5 technology. I agree that Assange and Snowden should be granted immunity for their work. They only exposed what we thought was going on anyway. However, the authorities are going to have a dossier on all of us and they will be able to thwart any opposition to their designs. I don’t mean to sound like a conspiracy theorist but prepare to see our freedoms curtailed.
Leslie
The next American war we’ll have to wait and see. It would serve the US military machine to have one. But as I said, I think Trump might surprise us in this respect. He did recently announce that space program, space would be a peaceful way to keep the US military machine happy.
I also heard Clinton called a war-monger. So had she been elected, America might already be in a war.
I did a lot of research on Trump/Clinton. My conclusion is that I changed from being suspicious, and not really liking Trump, to actually quite liking him. Clinton, seems to REALLY crooked. That identity politics speech she made, “basket of deplorables”, made her look very nasty piece of work.
So, hopefully, we’ll have peace with Trump.
Agreed on both Assange and Snowden, they are kind of heros in a way. I hope they get freed.
I don’t think it’s a conspiracy theory, I think you’re spot on the money. I’ve been storing less in the cloud. And learning how to encrypt hard disc and USB sticks. May also switch more to using Linux, as I don’t trust Apple and Microsoft. I don’t use FB, Twitter, Insta etc
Did you hear about the US trying to force Apple to de-crypt that guy’s phone ? They even made out he was a pedo for leverage.
Cheers
Don
External hard drive is the answer.
Yes we would have been at war already if Hillary had won. Trump is uncontrollable and the establishment doesn’t like that. We live in interesting times.
Leslie
I’ve been using Bitlocker encryption on Windows – But I don’t really trust Microsoft. Linux have LUKS encryption which I also use. Linux is getting more accessible for less IT literate people, and there’s usually a guide for everything on Google.
Google track your searches, especially if you’re logged into a gmail (private browsing, duckduckgo or TOR browser, might be an antidote). Facebook logs everything, and even own your photos. ISPs probably keep records.
Cloud services like dropbox and crashplan I’m fairly sure are in cahoots with CIA, NSA etc.
Also I got a “Trezor One” to encrypt usernames and passwords, just started using that. I was using an online service, don’t 100% trust them or that it might get hacked.
Might be worth looking into VPN service (which I am currently). Probably will go with NordVPN, but not sure who I trust, NordVPN had a big scandal recently, one of their servers got hacked.
For the external hard drive I’d urge you to buy two of same capacity, and regularly backup files (hard drives do fail, I’ve had many fail). On Windows, MacOS and Linux, there’s a free app called “FreeFileSync”, which I use, it seems to work pretty well.
I watched a very long video about the whole election campaign for 2016. Some of the shenanigans of Hillary, well, she should be in jail. Deleting emails on that server – if that had been you or me, we’d have served time in prison. Trump got caught out with the locker room talk, as a guy I didn’t find it offensive, it’s the kind of joking around guys do, it’s not meant to harm anyone. I think most grown up women wouldn’t find it offensive either. And I think women have the same kind of conversations, based on their biases. I think if anything it made him look more “human”.
Yes, times don’t feel very free or safe. Privacy should be respected, I think it’s a requirement for most people. Things like Facebook and social media were supposed to bring us closer together, but seems to me the downsides outweigh the benefits.
Anyway – As you suggest my last blog, anything I can post for you, or a suggestion I can make my own ?
If you read When Wikileaks met Google, Julian Assange was trying to get Eric Schmidt to admit that he was in with the US State Dept. In fact, Google had taken money from the NSA to process spying requests from the US government. Jared Cohen, now head of the Ideas Dept. at Google, at one point was working @ the State Department as an advisor to Condoleezza Rice. He then stayed on as part of Secretary Clinton’s policy planning team. A little too close for comfort. We’ll soon have to speak in code.
Leslie
As with a lot of things, it’s time management, often I just speak to people who have read a book – get a summary from them. If you want to write a summary of the book, then I’d be happy to blog it for you.
There’s a lot of corruption out there, at huge scales, done by people we’re supposed to trust. We also get lied to a lot. I have friends who’d prefer to stay naive, but I had some problems in life, and curiosity got the better of me.
I mentioned Jordan Peterson a couple of times, he’s a bit of a hero of mine, he decoded the identity politics for me which I’d been the victim of for such a long time. Now I know how to fight back, or if not fight, realise when it’s in play. He also put a lot of others things in place, so that I can understand things happening in my life better now.
Should be some kind of email encryption (PGP ?) so that’s possible on email. Dunno if it’s still secure though. If these nutters keep on spying on us, then they will end up with a bunch of encrypted files and messages flying around, and find themselves out of the loop. What annoys me, is aren’t they supposed to be chasing criminals and terrorist, not spying on us.
UK has gone down a dark road misusing the Communications Act 2003 to arrest twitter users for “upsetting” transgender people. We don’t it appears have free speech in UK.
They have to keep us under their thumbs. What better way than to build a dossier on us.
Leslie
Correct. Just try not to do things which get added to the dossier 🙂
At the end of the day, I don’t think neither you or I need worry about it too much anyway …
The clues is don’t broadcast all your actions…
You’re wiser than I ! But yes that’s good advice.
I refuse to hide my thoughts….
The Brexit initiative was sponsored by pro-Kremlin forces. The same groups that jimmied the U.S. elections to bring us Trump – i.e. the Russian cyberwarfare army), aided by such bad actors as Cambridge Analytica (now disappeared into historic ether) – practiced their dark arts on the British electorate.
This story is only partly known despite being well-disclosed. Why don’t the British voters care? Are they so complacent as to welcome Russian meddling? Or have the oligarchs of the world – including Rupert Murdoch and Vladimir Putin’s gang – so overwhelmed us with fake news that we vote against our interests?
Dunno, I can’t confirm or deny what you’ve said, beyond my expertise.
However, it’s commonly known that the wealthy elites are the puppet masters. They have most of the money, and almost all of the power. And a lot of them are far more corrupt than most of the people in our jails. They almost never face real justice or consequences. And if they do, their friends or money gets them out of it.
As for the fake news, have a look around on youtube, a persistent look around, there are people out there who are actually journalists and actually reporting real news. Most of the mainstream media is fake or bias partisan, and they are losing viewers/readers every day. I think things will become more distributed, and one needs to put more effort into finding real news sources.
But I guess you probably already know this …
Dunno what else to say, I try not to think about it too much or worry about it too much – life’s too short.
Cheers
Don