Has it been one month already?

I can't believe it has been a month since the referendum on the EU, it has gone so fast and so many things have happened and are ongoing. We have a new Prime Minister, that happened faster than most of us expected but thankfully it isn't Boris Johnson or Andrea Leadsom. I dislike Theresa May as I am not a Tory and she is a stereotypical Tory and I doubt our civil liberties, human rights or privacy are safe in her hands but time will tell.  The exit from the EU is being delayed, I am happy about that and what we may end up with is a sort of compromise membership but British tantrums over the rules will only be tolerated for so long. Britain has a history of tantrum throwing when it comes to the EU and our membership has often been questioned by some of the other members. 

I often feel we have been a well-poisoner, in it but never really wanting it to work but happy to profit from it, our businesses certainly have.  Many British people have benefited from the EU, some don't realize and never will, happy in their ignorance that Brexit is giving Johnny Foreigner the boot, slamming our door on him. If life was only as simple as their ignorant patriotic bubble. It never is that simple, it never was that simple.  Britain has meddled and been involved in Europe since the days the English Channel flooded and we became an island. Not one of us white English has a genetic background that indicates only a St George's flag (and he wasn't even English). We are a mix, most of us are a mix of Germanic, Nordic, Celtic, Norman etc. Look around and you see the evidence of race mixing going back centuries.  Patriotism can be wonderful when it is positive, when it is negative nationalism it is ugly, very ugly.  We fought it against it in 1939-45 and I never expected it to emerge in the UK, though as it is Britain it is a lazy, subdued, cowardly, covert type of nationalism, scary but easily laughed at. All I know for sure is the next 2-3 years are going to be bumpy for us all....

I made a record these past 4 weeks of how many EU citizens I encountered in work and social situations to prove that their presence is a good one and I doubt in 2-3 years time there will be some enthusiastic Brit doing the job. I won't hold my breath. We seem to have mastered to ability to sit on our asses, lacking ambition, but blaming others for our failure.  

Lunch with my friend from Spain

Haircut by a Latvian

Served in a card shop by a Spaniard

Lifeguard at my gym, Spanish

My PA at work, Italian

Coffee with my Latvian friend

Coffee served by someone from Lithuania

Lunch served by someone from France.
Reception in my building from Poland

Bowling with friends from India, USA, Germany, Australia and Ireland

We reject and insult these people at our peril.

Of course this isn't a scientific study but not even in Sunderland when I was growing up was everything done by an Englishman. My doctor was Indian, my grandad went to a Polish barber, a veteran of WW2 who made his home here.  The insults towards the Poles are the hardest to stomach of all, they fought with us, for us in WW2 and now we burn their shops! What gratitude. I know the morons doing this are a minority but they feel emboldened by Brexit and no one is really condemning it. Not one Brexit campaigner has spoken out loudly against the cowardly racism in the name of patriotism. We never accepted it against our Africa, Asian and Caribbean neighbours so why accept it now.

This video seems as apt now as when it first came out!

The EU was far less insidious than our Empire and people seem to be nostalgic about that Empire and think the EU is worse. In the EU we were equals, friends. Our Empire was based on the fact the British thought they were better than the people we ruled over and we knew best.  What an attitude, an attitude some people have not lost.

July 24th, 2016