Britain

That ending explained

Posted by

I’m going to say one thing and know for certain that you will instantly realise that it’s really about something else entirely. Except this isn’t because I’m an amazingly talented writer, that I can so brilliantly convey truly fine subtlety, or even that you and I have this connection that we do. Rather, it’s a mistake.

It’s a case of one thing being on my mind when really my mind has been on another thing.

Follow. For months I’ve been grumbling around every six to twelve days as YouTube recommends some video or other with a title like “That Cinderella Ending Explained”. It feels as if you could name any film and someone has made a video explaining the ending.

This initially narked me because the film endings being explained were trivial. “Contact” doesn’t need explaining. “Arrival” invites thought, but it doesn’t need a teenager starting an explanation with the words “Wassup, guys”.

There are films I’ve left thinking about, but I rather like that. There are films I’ve not understood, such as most Bond movies, but that’s not because the plot has left be befuddled. I did struggle to understand why Star Wars: The Force Awakens was a remake instead of a sequel and in that precise example I also did wonder a lot about why the loos were so far from the auditorium.

I think the thing I’m realising is that I’m okay with not understanding the ending of something.

I get it or I don’t, I might be intrigued into pondering it, I’m never going to watch a video.

As I write this, we’re about 30 minutes from the end of the UK being in the EU and it is a fucking calamity. But I need to take a telling from myself and even though I don’t get it, I shouldn’t ponder it or watch a video. No “That Brexit Ending Explained” is going to make me understand a country shooting itself in the face.

Told you I’m not a subtle writer.

Take care, eh? I hope to see you soon.

So anyway…

Posted by

I couldn’t talk to you last week. That would be the first Friday in over four years that I haven’t wibbled on about something and delighted in how we were getting to natter. I couldn’t talk to you because I couldn’t get any words out. I stood in my little office, shaking. I don’t mean that the way one usually does, an exaggeration that I was shaken by the EU Referendum vote, I mean it literally. Physically.

Standing there shaking, convulsing. I had to hold my hands against my head to stop it, to steady it.

We’re a week on now and I should be over it. I certainly see that there’s no point saying all this to you when you’ve heard and thought it before. But if I had written to you last week, it would’ve been the shortest Self Distract I’ve ever done. It would’ve been one word. I’d have said “Fucked”.

That was before the eye-popping racism of the last few days. I didn’t see that coming. I saw all sorts of things that are now coming true, but I didn’t see that. Britain has a lot in its history that you can’t be proud of, I didn’t expect to be feeling that today.

Look, I was going to say we’re a week on, we’ve got to put this behind us. I was going to talk to you about a writing issue or something. Anything. Change the subject. Instead, I have just written and deleted a thousand words about how this affects me and my work as a writer. (Let me tell you one: I got some business support from an EU-funded programme and through it met some people I deeply admire. The project is done but nothing like it will ever, can ever happen again.)

I was going to write about how it’s said you can’t blame people for voting this way but, yeah, you can. I was in a discussion where a pro-leave person was asked who’ll run the UK next, Boris Johnson or Michael Gove. This person said well, that’s up to us now, isn’t it? Nope. You can’t buy total factual inaccuracy and complete political naïveté, but apparently you can find it very easily.

No, stop me. This isn’t doing either of us any good. If you looked out of your window and thought everything seems much the same as it did, go out the door instead. If you think we’ll look back on this in five years and wonder what the fuss was about, you’re confusing things being fine with having no damn choice about it.

I hope we will become inured to this result but we are permanently injured.

England will leave Europe

Posted by

I don’t know the details, I don’t really follow all of this, but history shows us that without question, England will be beaten by Paraguay or France or some such team. It will be a sporting tragedy that will make people across the entire continent cry out “Was England in Euro 2016? Really?”

Wait, that’s not what you thought I meant, was it? Yes, of course, you’re right: this is all about the forthcoming vote on whether the UK will leave the Eurovision Song Contest.

You have to wonder, now that Australia is in Europe, but you can’t presume, you can’t be sure. The UK is genuinely important to Eurovision because of the money it contributes to the show. If we didn’t do that, we could keep that money for ourselves and could put it toward the NHS.

Of course then the BBC would have fund the missing Saturday night television, it would have to put more money into all the pre-Contest coverage that currently hides away on digital-only BBC podcasts.

I started to say this to you as a joke: I was nodding off during BBC News’s coverage of some football thing and my mind wandered from the Euros to the Euro to Eurovision and on to chocolate. That last was unrelated.

Only, Eurovision and the money the BBC contributes to it is pretty analogous to everything the UK does with Europe. Stand by to be shocked here as you’ve never subscribed to something or opened a bank account or had a loyalty card, but the BBC puts money into Eurovision and it gets programmes out of it.

The first thing about the whole Brexit argument that ticked me off was, well, it was the word Brexit. But the second was the claim that the UK pays eleventy-billion pounds into Europe. I remember watching the politician saying this and assuming TV news had cut away before he said “and we get back this other amount”.

We can blame TV news a lot for this. For instance, they will show Michael Gove saying that Brussels passes laws that cripple our sovereign state and which we had zero input to. They’ll cut away before he presumably adds that he’s kidding. There’s the small matter that the UK is party to these laws and not just the whipping-boy recipient, there is the fact that Gove knows this and is involved. There is the small fact that if this were true, if Britain were powerless against the might of Brussels laws, then that’s why we’ve got the minimum wage. The bastards.

That would go if we left Europe. There’s not much you can be certain about, but there’s one. Minimum wage dies. On a completely unrelated note, and I don’t even know why I bring it up now, there are UK businesses that very much want to leave the EU. Can’t imagine why.

The leave campaign people would have you believe that we graciously give the European Union your hard-earned money and all we get back are laws that override our own. Britain joined the EU in 1973: if this were really what happens, our government chose to pay over money and take the law lumps and our government also chose to continue doing it for 43 years. On that basis alone, I’d rather we really were run by Europe or anyone but our own government.

As it is, you know that of course the UK gets a benefit from doing this. It is impossible that it wouldn’t. Yet the leave campaign hopes you don’t know that, it hopes that you are so thick that you just go yeah, yeah, we need that money for our own NHS. They’re crossing their fingers that you then assume that they would give the NHS this money.

The leave campaign is doing an awful lot of assuming and unfortunately the side saying we should stay in, is not. The stay campaign is making one assumption: that nobody could be so stupid as to think Britain is forever bailing out Europe from the goodness of its heart.

I think this is why the leave campaign has its word Brexit and the stay campaign has no word at all. It’s got a campaign name but I don’t remember what it is.

I do know that there is a Leave poster near my house which says something to the effect of how you should vote to leave the EU because that’s “the safe choice”.

The leave campaign appeals to politicians who are enjoying the ride and would quite like to be Prime Minister please. It appeals to old people who for some reason believe Britain was a superpower in their living memory and can be again. It appeals to people who think Britain still has any industry. That safe choice poster is trying to mop up the people who are lazy about this. Oh, just vote to leave, that’s safer.

Everything the leave campaign says, without exception, is scaremongering or out and out lies. You shouldn’t vote based on how you resent being lied to all the time, but it’s tempting. I also just think the sheer totality of the bollocks is a reason to be suspicious, at least.

But then, what do I know? I work in the Arts. If the UK leaves the EU my industry would be reliant on the British government and that’s the safe choice.

Lies, damned lies and percentages

Posted by

I’m not saying that people make up percentages, I’m saying if that they were telling the truth they’d give us the figures. I’m going to make up some examples here in part because my point is about the lying rather than these specific lies but also because it seems appropriate. For I’m seeing this particular lying technique used a lot at the moment over whether Britain should stay in Europe or not and if you’ve seen an actual fact for either side, well done.

I’m seeing it most of all in discussions about immigration which is apparently a dreadful problem. Oh, is it bollocks a problem. BBC Breakfast interviewed a woman this week who said, like so many others, that immigration is a very bad thing and it must to be stopped. Only, she’s an ex-pat British woman living in Spain. She’s an immigrant. You can’t buy stupidity like that but you can pander to it.

Consequently you’ve seen people banging their fists on tables about how immigration has – I don’t know, let’s make up some high figures here – doubled. Maybe more. Maybe there are 60% more immigrants.

Since when? Usually people say “since when” in the same tone and with the same meaning as something like “you and whose army?” but I mean it literally. Immigration has doubled since when? Wednesday? The 17th Century?

The 60% or whatever other percentage in whatever argument you like is not a figure, it is a red-alert klaxon saying the speaker wants you to believe something you wouldn’t if you knew the truth. Say it is 60%, say immigration is up 60% and let’s even throw in that it’s up that much since this time last year. We’re throwing in an actual baseline comparison, we’re throwing in a genuine since-when.

Only, say 10 immigrants came to the UK last year and a whole 16 came this time. That’s a 60% increase right there. Gasp. Doubtlessly or at least presumably the actual figure is more than 16 people but I don’t know what it is and people telling you percentages don’t want you to know.

It offends me that politicians think immigration is a vote-winning issue and it offends me even more that they’re right. For god’s sake, though, my family is from Ireland: I’m only first-generation British born. I shouldn’t be allowed.