Tuesday 2 April 2019


Here are some random thoughts about the cake eaters and the engine room stokers - some of this will probably offend.

This whole shitshow is offensive, but they were observations based on emotion rather than calm reasoned discussion, thought and debate (I've been doing that for 3 years and it doesn't seem to work). Emotional nationalism is what won it and we are suffering the fallout.  It's a fascinating insight into the Divided Kingdom.

Friends used to make off colour casual putdowns of the French and the Germans and us Canadians - well, the thought of not being taken seriously is perhaps the great Canadian conhumdrum and we should embrace our inner Bryan Adams.  We get our fair share of ignorant observations of our cultural stereotypes. You have to take it all with a grain of salt to survive in the D.K. I realise now that perhaps they were more serious than I thought and those extreme stories in The Daily Mail I used to mock for the last 30 years might have had more effect than I thought at the time.

I sympathise with the protest as we have all been stitched up like a kipper. I love the slogans and the flawed characters, they are human after all, but I reject the extremism and the subtle racism and the not so-subtle racism. The overt 'not-in-my-backyard' little Englander rears his/her ugly head.

"Are you in or out?"

What? If you mean are we being kettled then I hope I'm out because I want to go home. All this standing around and marching is making me tired.

 "Where are you from?"

South East London.

 "Have you got a big cock?" - laughter all round - "He's not from here. Sorry we're very drunk".

Brexit was a working class grass roots protest and the door was pushed open just a little bit more when the fuckers won. Cromwell would've approved. Farage wishes he was the new Cromwell but he can't even get elected. It's a joke but nobody is laughing anymore.

Religious nutters, jolly jokers, blokes and lads on the piss all waving clever slogans on plastic placards. Mythical Englishness, the kingdom of Wessex and the flag of St George. Symbols of Great British identity one thousand five hundred years old.

The Brexiteers gather to save Brexit under the ugly purple flag of UKIP who erect a massive screen across Whitehall and let The EDL spout their propaganda via Tommy Robinson.

They are desperate to hang on to simple slogans like; "Our fish our waters" and to find their own heroes 'who speak the truth'.

The stench of stale beer in working class pubs and the football chants proclaiming they are democratic freedom fighters uniting the underclass who have spent their lives underfoot.

They happily mimic the lingo and the sound bite like vassal state slaves chained to the EU dictatorship forever.

You can spot the Daily Express, Telegraph and Daily Mail readers a mile off. It's the blowhards with bullhorns you need to watch out for.

The Farage messiah is the pied piper of the downtrodden, the disenfranchised and the salt of the earth fish wife.

Prod them a little and pretty quickly the usual soundbites come out..."vassal state", " dictatorship" , "Betrayal" and all the stuff you read in The Express if that's all you read.

A Scottish marching band with matching 'True Defenders' black shirts and military styled caps enthusiastically marched and circled around in front of the Sovereign's Entrance and then they quickly moved off to join the Tommy Robinson extremists on Whitehall.

The 'Gammon' brigade (and their fishwives) hollered, chanted and flashed rude fingers at the impressive stone walls of Victoria Tower. The machine gunned police on one side and the world's media on the other.

"BBC. FAKE NEWS. FAKE VIEWS."

They are proud of their ignorance and of their roots. Union Jack t shirts bulging over beer bellies, 'GAMMON' on one shirt, English flags being flogged for a fiver , cans of cider and cheesy Matt Munro tunes.

It was a day out for the residents of Portsmouth's council estates in front of The Red Lion Pub on Whitehall. They are proud of where they come from and they wanted to tell us about it and perhaps they were hanging around for the big match today V Sunderland at Wembley.

These are the bottom feeders of society, the dregs, the fag ends, the crustaceans - the down and out salt of the earth working class who slave away in the engine room with an axe to grind and they are tired of shovelling the coal into the fire for somebody else's gain.

Moggy you better watch your step.

The veterans for democracy gather for a sing song as 'Jerusalem' segues into 'Rule Britannia'. The football chants rise as The Democratic Football Lads Alliance march into Parliament Square under police escort with their raised arms which could be mis-interpreted-as-you-know-what.

The brave patriots, as they call themselves, want their country back and proved it by walking all the way from Sunderland to London.

 Queen's 'A Night At The Opera' can be heard blasting out of the PA just before Tommy Robinson appears...the final song of course is their interpretation of 'God Save the Queen'.

"As Alf Garnett would say, "he had stamina"".

The fractures have been ignored and plastered over for decades and they run deep. The stokers aren't going away until they get their cake.