David Cameron's broken Britain
I used to be a fan of direct democracy. Let the people decide, not the politicians. Sounds great on the face of it, and if we get a "bad" result, tough, that's democracy, the people chose.
I feel so saddened by the June 23rd decision by the people of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland though. Sad for my children's future and sad for the message my fellow countrymen have sent to Europeans and the rest of the world.
Some proportion of "Leave" voters are just petty racists who "want their country back". They are not going to get what they want. They live with people from all over the world. Their next-door-neighbours, their own family members, themselves. Just in case any of those people read this, for your information the only humans on planet Earth who are not immigrants live in the Rift Valley in Kenya or Southern Africa.
We have in effect let what I hope is a tiny minority of "Leave" voters depress this country's economy and spirit for at least a generation, maybe longer. We've told 500 million people, and probably many more, "We don't like you, and don't want you in OUR country".
Together with the "I only wanted to register a protest vote, didn't really want to leave Europe" idiots, they were probably enough to swing the result on their own.
Personally, the referendum result has transformed my opinion on Scottish independence. In the last Scottish vote I wanted the UK to stay together, become a more federal state but do together those things we could best do as sixty million rather than just the five million who live in Scotland. Now I feel those racists who supplied the winning margin for "Leave" are fleas we can't remove from the back of the UK, but we can say goodbye to them from Scotland.
One reason I voted "No" last time is that despite all protestation to the contrary I believe "Nationalism" often leads to the same evils, and the "Cybernats" demonstrated that during the campaign. I think there is a - currently hidden - core in the Scottish National Party of people who want to live in a Braveheart fiction. A world where Burns is the only poet, Charles Rennie Mackintosh the only artist, Walter Scott the only historian and Gaelic spoken by all "true Scots".
I have to hope for the best now, hope these fairytale believers are in the tiny minority. Because the UK is over, the racists, the Little Englanders have prevailed.
Trade agreements? What do they matter. As a European looking to invest, would you invest in a country where they don't really like "foreigners", or take your money somewhere where they're proud to be doing business with people from another culture or a far off land? If you were a foreign investor would you for instance put money into a London or Edinburgh property when there appeared to be a real prospect of visa control that would prevent you ever seeing the result of your investment?
It's so over for the UK, I want out.
Oh, and the other example of direct democracy that won't work? It's long been said by pollsters that a referendum to bring back capital punishment would approve it by a large margin.
Another example of mob rule making a bad decision. Capital punishment is wrong for many reasons, but the stark, irrefutable one will do for this - it has long been documented that people were wrongly convicted and hanged in this country, justice makes mistakes. By definition, capital punishment cannot be corrected, nor it seems the European exit mistake.
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