Tag: EU

The Post-Post-Brexit Phoenix

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Boris Johnson today suggested he was attempting to break international law in an effort to protect Britain’s “economic and political integrity”. For those who have travelled outside of the UK and actually had a conversation with anyone whose first language is not English, it has been pretty clear now for about four years that we as a country have little political integrity left. In 2016 shortly after the fateful day I was surrounded by utterly bemused Greeks, Spanish, French and Germans unable to make sense of what we had done to ourselves. For them, like most people I’ve met who are not of a particular ideological standing, the reaction has generally been a bemused one. Today, while I like to think I understand this Brexit issue from all angles, the truth is I too remain bemused. Since the referendum I haven’t felt compelled to jump on the “EU is perfect” bandwagon because firstly it isn’t, and secondly this level of fervent belief doesn’t appear to be that far removed in structure to the Brexiteers we’re fighting. The truth is always in the middle. Sort of.

I have recently been discussing the financial ramifications with a Brexiteer. I won’t go into particulars but this person has seemingly lost a rather large number of digits on the value of their wealth. This is mainly down to the falling value of the British economy and market in these last four years. With others I know losing in real time half the value of their estates, Brexit is very much something they can tangibly measure. I remember a few months ago reading about the cost of Brexit so far being the equivalent to all the money the British state – us – had so far paid to the EU since it’s inception, this loss is felt by all. The money the NHS was going to receive never existed, it was always a lie. Covid-19 will likely mask, or be used as a mask by the government and the media, the full extent of what is likely a no deal Brexit but it’s something no mask will manage to cover in our own life. While Boris attempts to convince his chums to embrace their inner teenager and break the law, we’re all left to pick up the pieces.

Make no mistake all we have left is pieces. The hardcore admit the economy will take a hit but that it will be worth it in the long run. Well what is the long run? For my generation, and the one after that, if not the one after that and possibly even the one after that – fifty years until we really see the benefits as Jacob Reece Mogg suggested last year. Great, I should be eighty-three years old by the time the country has fully recovered. Is ideology really worth that much? Myself and god forbid if I have children, them too. At least we won’t have to deal with the bureaucrats in Brussels as we fill out forms for bread.

There is so much lately that I just struggle to understand. Attempting to look compassionately from the other perspective seems completely futile now that the other perspective is hell bent on persevering with such a suicidal approach. Do we accept defeat and leave. Learn Mandarin? All this proves is that not only have we as a people failed to accept the defeat of our own empire roughly one hundred years ago but that we’re willing to go down with the worlds current self-defined ‘only’ superpower. Not only is it confusing it is depressing. We need to reinvent ourselves. Thankfully the ashes don’t appear that far away.

The Law Breaker Part Two

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

If only I was in a position to go out and party this weekend I know I would be tempted. With new laws coming into force on Monday on there being no more than six people in one group at the same time, the media are reporting a police union’s fear that those reckless and irresponsible young people previously deemed wholly responsible for the spread of the virus, might take advantage of one last weekend of relative freedom. With the threat of all fun being put on hold until the spring can people really be forgiven. I know I would. And if there is such a fear of this happening then why have this new law start on Monday, why not Friday. Let’s all blame bureaucracy of course, but who’s willing to put a little cash on the Daily Mail, Daily Express and Daily Telegraph writing a piece on these devilish party folk and referencing this weekend if the government continue to fuck up at every opportunity and numbers increase. Scapegoat anyone? Ready made excuse. They’ll probably find a way to blame these revellers on the fact people had to drive hundreds of miles for a test. Or that Matt Hancock is still bizarrely in a position of power despite, well, everything he has done for the last six months. Saying that Boris, Dom and Mikey Gove are still the bouncing around full of beans. What’s that phrase about bad smells?

On a law breaking note, apparently Boris’s plans to avoid anymore of the “miserable squabbling” over Brexit, in other words do as he says or he’ll continue to squabble. He only plans on breaking international law in a “specific and limited way” as opposed to randomly and completely which presumably would be the bad way. The rumour is that the rebels in his party seem to be inconveniently perturbed by their own party damaging the integrity of the UK by “protecting the integrity of the UK” as Gove called it. It appears not even a stonking majority will allow this lot to completely do as they feel and in total disregard for the recognised ways of law abiding. The miserable squabbling appears to be returning as the rest of the country rejoices that not everything is going as planned. Is this the first step in a slight rebellion against a still perplexing government. The government has already had to make numerous u-turns since coming to power. If they are seen to be defeated by their own MPs then it quite significantly makes it clear to those in the party who don’t enjoy seeing their leader behaving in a less than legal and democratic way as being capable of crumbling. It may take time but once something can be seen as possible it inevitably becomes real. Time to get that deck chair out and prepare for the show.

Fucking Fascists

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I wrote a piece earlier about Greece and the current situation with the refugees crossing from Turkey and attacks on them by the fascists. Fascist is a term thrown around far too easily, I should know I’ve been one of those people calling everyone fascist for years, but in Greece it is genuinely a word you can use to describe people. Greece has actual fascists, everywhere does don’t get me wrong, but in Greece they are numerous, hold varying positions of power and the police are absolutely riddled with them like a disease. The piece I wrote earlier though turned into a rant because these fucking morons are arseholes and they piss my off. I’ve met them, not too often but enough to know how they think. Also Greeks in general can be quite volatile, the possibilities of what could happen in Greece worry me. They’re also just human and I love them for this, they’re genuine in their own way. I am really struggling to stop this turning into a rant again…oh fuck it I’ll just paste the first one below…

Greece appears to be fucked at the moment. Fucked doesn’t appear to be a strong enough word but I’ll use it anyway. Turkey has opened the gates to Europe using people for political gain and power, while Greece is attempting to shut them also for political gain and power. The Turks are exaggerating the numbers they’ve let through and the Greeks deny they’ve let through many at all. There have been videos online of all sorts of actions against refugees this last week. The Greek coastguard firing live rounds into the water near a boat they had previously tried to sink with a stick and turn over by ramming. When you have about seventy people on a boat designed for fifteen and only just above the waterline it is remarkable that didn’t happen. It is a shocking video and had it not been for political point scoring by the Turkish coastguard who are guilty of the same and worse, it would never have been shown. These things have been going on for the last few years in that narrow strip of water between Greece and Turkey but just away from the cameras. You then have refugees, NGOs and foreign volunteers being attacked on the beaches by roving bands of fascists, as the police look on doing nothing. The police themselves in Greece have an horrendous reputation for being indiscriminate racist morons who will only make the situation worse. New Democracy, the right-wing government in power since last summer doing all they can to attack left-wing squats, attack refugees and turn the islands into prison camps. Greece has a rich history of right-wing military dictatorships in the last hundred years and one thing they loved doing was throwing communists on prison islands to die, history repeats itself yet again. Moria camp on Lesvos has a capacity of three thousand but contains something like twelve thousand at present. I don’t blame the locals on the island for being pissed off at the national government for wanting to build more and larger (prison) camps on Lesvos, Chios, Samos and Kos but as per usual they’re going after the wrong people. The reality in Greece is that the fascists are real and they’re very much at the front of an angry populace. It is not hyperbole. Once there was Golden Dawn the far-right party but to win power New Democracy just appealed to the lighter elements of their message and then gave them free reign once they came to power. I remember when I was living there it was pretty clear that it wouldn’t take much for Greece to descend into another bloody civil war and with the right-wing violence of this last week just feels like another step in that direction. An incredibly polarised country in which they hate each other. Tourists always say about how nice and welcoming the Greeks are and it’s true, they are great at looking after guests, as well as their own families but outside of this they can be total arseholes to each other. Give them a divisive issue when they’re already struggling with no work or money and a country that is falling apart and doesn’t give a shit about them and the violence is inevitable. Who gets hurts, the innocent people once again. As the EU commends Greece for shutting the gates to Europe it ignores the abuse of innocents, of children being tear gassed, women being clubbed and boats being rammed. The Greek government has said they will stop taking asylum requests, I may be corrected here but surely there must be some kind of international law they’re breaking with that. But commend them our governments will. Commend the fascist thugs terrorising with impunity they will. Commend the brutalising of an already beaten populace they will. This has been a little bit of a unthought rant and I’m wary of doing so. But I also know people who have been threatened and attacked. This is a rant because it’s an emotive issue and it scares me and I worry about people I know in Greece. As I said a few days ago about the fascists in Spain, in Greece they have been and continue to be just as real. The Nazis were never short of collaborators, neither were the British and Americans backing the right wing in the civil war of the late forties. So nothing has changed in seventy years, it’s the same old bullshit as our governments feed the monster before distancing themselves once the job is done and letting everyone else pick up the pieces. Fuck them, that makes the Brits collaborators, the EU, everyones a collaborator. We’re all collaborating with right wing extremism because they’re doing in our name. How much do we love the EU now? Perhaps they’re not that perfect after all. Blood on everyones hands.

Take Down Thy Fence

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Goodbye my lover…sung an annoying whiny man once. Today marks the end of a relationship nobody knew they cared about until after the Brexit referendum two years ago, or was it three, it might have been three. It all feels like a complete blur politics wise these last few years. Actually as I say that it might have been 2016, which would be four years ago because Trump was 2016 and certainly there were parallels of fear over the two. Social commentators the world over spent hours refusing to admit they had zero understanding of how society thought outside of their own narrow little universes.

We have spent the last three and a half years, let’s settle on that; arguing, hating, blowing up bridges, digging deeper trenches, building barriers and getting nowhere, and we’re in a much worse position than had we just stopped hating each other for five minutes and worked together. Tomorrow our relationship with the EU will be exactly the same as it is today, it’s just we won’t be able to influence decisions. Despite officially leaving it won’t be until the end of the year that we either sign a rushed and half-cooked trade deal or we just crash out with no deal at all. Boris was going to Get Brexit Done but it’s become clearer that nobody except the puppet master Dominic Cummings really has any clue what that actually means.

We leave one trading block to gain the liberty the Americans and Chinese are very quickly going to take away before turning us into the meat within their squabbling sandwich. The only power on the world stage we have is The City of London, the financial centre which will very soon become the epicentre of British efforts at becoming a cold, wet and windy version of the Cayman Islands. There is already talk that the fishing rights to our waters will be sacrificed to allow the financial sector access to European markets. It may have been one of the major issues that was used to sell this power play but it looks delusional in hindsight that unelected bureaucrats like Cummings would stand up for a few fishermen when his mates in the City demanded a return on their investment.

The EU is not perfect and they have feasted on the carcass of countries which were never going to be able to match up to the requirements of membership. It was a great model; get them in and when they can’t keep up, call in the debts and sell them off. The Greeks for example may have brought it upon themselves but they were sold an illusion that would benefit only the minority at the top. Are those in power in the UK taking us out because they want to protect us from that? Or are they in fact the minority at the top who have simply seen an opportunity of even more personal riches in dollars and yuan than the euro can offer?

It doesn’t matter anymore though because tonight at eleven o’clock, or midnight Brussels time ironically, we will be leaving the EU. We have five more years at least of Boris and when the Labour Party lurches back to the centre; an opposition in name only. What comes next is anyone’s guess but before anything happens we all need to accept that the fight to stay is over for now. It is only in this acceptance that people will be able to make any genuine productive moves in the future. We also need to accept that this is not a black and white argument, that there are actual genuine benefits from leaving the EU. There may not be many but until we can see that they do exist we’ll never manage to reconnect with the leave voters. Too many barriers to cooperation have developed over these last few years. You may disagree with your neighbour but while that fence gets bigger the only person to benefit is the one selling you new planks of wood, incidentally he’s also the one leaving you both notes about the indiscretions of the other.

A Union of Secession

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I’m going to attempt to recreate the main points of a conversation I’ve just had with my Dad. For context he is both pro-Brexit and pro-Union. These ideas discussed have come up in the past but seemingly have taken a step further with recent events.

The Tory party in the UK won a stonking majority of some forty seats and in Scotland the SNP won an equally stonking forty-eight out of a possible fifty-nine seats. Both of these result can be and have been spun in numerous ways but arguably what it does do is give a mandate for Brexit and a mandate for a second referendum in Scotland on independence. It is hard to argue against either of those things when Brexit and Scottish independence were the main priority of both parts respectively. However as with everything in politics this is not as straightforward as it seems. We in the UK have a voting system called First Past The Post, which allows for people to win seats once they get a certain number of votes but which for numerous reasons too many to get into here, creates a voting system which arguably favours the larger parties, creates a two party system like we have in the the UK and in the US too and which often allows for a larger percentage of seats that percentage of the vote.

The point is that while this may have been a Brexit election the Remain supporting parties actually received more votes in total than the Brexit supporting parties yet received vastly fewer seats. The same can be said for Scotland which has so many tight marginal seats that can be won by less than one hundred votes, the SNP received a far fewer percentage of the vote than percentage of the seats, which also equated to fewer pro-independence votes than pro-union. The argument made by my Dad was that the SNP don’t actually have a mandate because were there to be another referendum they would lose it because of this share of the votes but it is also an argument which can be made back in regard Brexit.

Put simply; the unionists want to maintain one union while breaking up another while the separatists want to break up one union while also maintaining another. The unionists believe they have the mandate to break from the EU because they hold a resounding majority in the UK parliament but not break up the UK because the majority of those voting in Scotland voted for parties not pushing for independence, whereas the separatists want to break from the UK because they hold a majority of Scottish seats in parliament but maintain the connection with the EU because the majority of Scottish voters voted to remain. Confused? You should be.

Ultimately that is the more ridiculous nature of politics and power. We pick and choose what we want to see and believe depending on what fits our narrative. We have a belief, we see facts, numbers, ideas which support this belief and fervently repeat them even in the face of contradictory points we choose not to see. I don’t doubt I do this too and hope one day to develop the self-awareness to stop. It’s just both amusing and depressing to see both sides using the same argument against each other and being oblivious to the fact its exactly the same argument. And whats worse, this road of obliviousness appears to stretch from one horizon to the other. This madness has always been, the question is then, will it always be?

Bureaucracy

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

A bureaucratic nightmare is a phrase that you may not have said yourself but will have certainly heard said by someone else in a usually less than positive moment. Bureaucracy is one of those things that we all just love to hate. We spend three days filling out a one hundred page form to apply for a foot test or a visa to a foreign land, and bemoan the complete and utter waste of our time. At least you can enter those foreign lands I hear someone saying. Anyway when four months later we receive back a notification that we forgot to fill in Section 17 Subsection P which can be found by following the link printed at the bottom of the last page and will now have to pay a fine of four hundred and forty-nine pounds or be banned from ever filling out forms again, we forget about the waste of time, rejoice and decide now is the moment to finally tear down the state. We’ve all been there.

I’m going to Ireland for Christmas, how lovely. The dog will be coming along and it appears that despite Ireland being rabies free, she needs an up to date rabies jab if she wants to come with us. I can confirm she wants to go. Fair enough I hear you say. What I don’t understand is why she needs these things. I can understand requiring them coming from mainland Europe as this is an island and it is about keeping various diseases out, such as rabies in this case. However I don’t need any pet documentation to go to Northern Ireland, which while still being part of the UK is also coincidentally still part of the island of Ireland. I suspect very few people within the island of Ireland give much of a shit about taking their pet passports, or even getting one if they’re going back and forth over the border so what really is the point.

It makes zero logical and practical sense as it can be circumvented so easily which means it must be down to some political bureaucratic nonsense. This will be some EU law or regulation cooperative states abide by and I dare say this could be an easy moment to rant about the EU if I was that way inclined. That though would miss the point, this is more symptomatic of State, governance and institutional power. Regulations protect and eat away at liberties in different often polarised ways but we’re dealing here with the ultimate trip – time and money, and what they mean for power – bureaucracies most honoured of friends.