Forget Anarchy in the UK, its Bedtime For Democracy

I live in Spain, my wife is Spanish and if and when we decide to have kids they will probably learn in school how their country was controlled by a fascist dictatorship. It now appears that I will have to explain to our children that in 2016 my country, the UK, took it's first steps towards becoming one of these dictatorships.
Sounds ridiculous doesn't it? But before you leave and just dismiss me as another paranoid idiot who is being overly dramatic, take an objective view at was has happened in the UK over the last 12 months.

• We held a referendum to break away from the European Union and even though it is written in our most sacred of laws that this cannot happen without a vote in Parliament, our un-elected Prime Minister has said she will do it anyway!
• The government have made no secret of their desire to do away with the European charter of human rights that have protected us since the end of World War II and to replace it with their own version! 
• The government has finally passed it's Snoopers Charter which will force internet companies to keep ALL YOUR browsing history for 12 months. 
• Finally they have begun to censor what you can see on the internet, banning what they deem "non-conventional".

This is not some Illuminati conspiracy, this is actually happening! Do these sound like the actions of a European democratic society? 

We would expect this in countries such as China or North Korea but in Britain?? Really? 

Regardless of where you sit on the political spectrum this should be extremely alarming, the people of the UK are going to be monitored in a way not seen since before the Berlin wall came down. However, what I find most distressing is the sheer apathy that this has been met with in the UK. People simply don't care! They are more outraged that Ed Balls remained on a televised dancing competition for too long than they are that the government is now spying on everything they do online. 

"I'm not doing anything wrong so I have nothing to hide" is the standard response I have heard, but THAT IS NOT THE POINT!!!  The answer should be "I am doing nothing wrong so why the hell are you spying on me?" The UK is supposed to be a free society where people have a right to privacy and are not constantly monitored on the off chance they break the law! 

 "It's for your own good" they tell us, in order to protect us from terrorism. Now this is complete nonsense on several levels.

Firstly when you take into account the actual death toll from terrorist attacks in the UK since the turn of the millennium  it is 52 people from the July 7th bombings, Lee Rigby and Jo Cox, although the media are hesitating to call the killing of Jo Cox a terrorist act because the killer was not a Muslim but that is another story. So I make that 54 people killed by terrorism in 16 years, lets compare that to deaths of women at the hands of their partners. The average is said to be 2 deaths each week so that makes a total of 1664 women killed in their own home since 2000. What has the government done to protect women from the very real terror of domestic violence? Or let's compare terrorism to road traffic fatalities, 1713 people in 2013 alone, has the government forced car manufacturers to limit the speed of vehicles? The recent proposed sugar tax that aimed at forcing food and drinks manufacturers to reduce the sugar content of their products was booted out because it was deemed too interfering or "nanny state". In other words the government doesn't think it's their place to tell companies what to put in their products even though nearly half the population is overweight! However, they deem it absolutely necessary to monitor every website you visit, every WhatsApp and tweet you send and every Facebook group you join, all in the name of protecting us from something that has killed 54 people in nearly quarter of a century in a country of over 60 million!  

What would the reaction have been if in the 70s and 80s the government had said they were bugging everyone's phone or intercepting people's mail in order to protect us from the IRA? I'd imagine there would have been hell up and rightly so, but we have become so politically disengaged that the news was met with a collective shrug of the shoulders. 

Secondly, will monitoring everyone's internet really make us safer from terrorism? Who is most likely to plaster their love for the jihad and their plans to cause mayhem all over their Facebook page? The boss of Islamic State or just some idiot looking for attention? The real terrorists will be deep down in the dark net using encrypted messages that this snooper's charter will do nothing to stop. It will be the equivalent of going to a club in Miami during the 80s, arresting the small time coke dealer in there and expecting Pablo Escobar to suddenly fall in your lap! Any arrest made is unlikely to be anyone who is high up in the terrorist networks and personally I feel the loss of my privacy is far too high a price to pay. 

The bottom line is that terrorism is not the threat that we are continually told it is and even if it was, this law will do nothing to stop it. 

Another alarming fact is the timing of when the government pushed this law through parliament. Whilst the world's media was frothing at the mouth at the news Donald Trump won the election and everybody was competing on Facebook to show who was the most outraged at this news before returning to selfies and cat videos, our wonderful government passed the law that allowed them to look at all your internet history. If this government really had our best interests at heart it was rather a strange moment to push a law through parliament, one might think that they wanted to make sure it would receive as little media attention as possible! 

And lastly, who exactly is on the other end of this snooper's charter? Who will be looking at our data? We have to trust that they will be competent and or trustworthy which if you look at the history of totalitarian governments they are usually neither! And make no mistake this law is the action of a totalitarian state, the last European country to have their citizens under this level of surveillance was the DDR (East Germany), who were not exactly known for their love of democracy and free speech!
Who should we really fear? The terrorists? Even though deaths from terrorism are dramatically lower than they were 30 years ago (1) ? Or a government with an un-elected leader who has just passed a law that now turns the UK into a truly Orwellian society?

Now if monitoring your internet traffic wasn't bad enough the UK government are going to decide what you can and can't look at on the internet and their first target is pornography. They are going to ban any website that shows "unconventional sex", now what exactly is deemed conventional or otherwise is anyone's guess. The completely natural female ejaculation is almost certainly gone as it was recently banned from porn movies filmed in the UK, so I wouldn't be surprised if anything other than a married couple (man and woman obviously) in missionary with the lights off is banned!
Now put aside your opinion on pornography for one second, this is not drug trafficking or arms dealing, the porn business is a totally legal and regulated industry that involves consenting adults, we are not talking about banning the truly awful stuff that is out there, that is already banned by the way, we are talking about censorship and you not being able to look at anything that the government deems "not normal". And where will they stop? Will any movie/song/videogame be banned because the government doesn't like it and they think you are incapable of being able to separate real life from fantasy? Female ejaculation is banned from films and websites, will it be banned from your home too? Spanking is another past time deemed "unconventional", if somebody enjoys spanking or being spanked with other consenting adults who are the government to tell you its wrong and what does this spell for shops such as Anne Summers who sell whips and bondage devices?

Instead of educating our youngsters about safe sex, respect and consent we are simply going to censor things, and when young people want to watch the censored porn, which they will because banning something always has the effect of making it more desirable, they will simply go onto the dark net and what will be waiting for them there? All the illegal stuff that is not on legitimate porn sites, so the actual violent stuff, child porn, as well as drug dealers, arms dealers and terrorist recruiters.
So aside from being the first step into a North Korean style internet it will have the exact opposite effect as to what the government are telling us will happen. 

As I said before this is not some conspiracy theory, I am not talking about secret reptiles that control the world, I am talking about one of the major European democracies ignoring their own laws, censoring the internet, removing the charter for human rights and recording everything you look at on the internet via your phone, tablet or computer. If only people cared as much about their own privacy and freedom as they did about fabric closing, maybe then we would see some real opposition to this government.

Maybe its because we have never had a Franco or a Stalin in charge of us? Maybe we have taken our freedom for granted so we don't recognise when something alarming has happened because it has never happened to us before. We have always been taught in school that we have fought for freedom in the face of tyranny. So we go on assuming that we live in a free society.
Every year remembrance Sunday moves away from a sombre day of quiet reflection of the horrors of war and towards a day of nationalist hysteria, but do we ever really stop to think about what those people who fought and died were fighting against?

For the Second World War at least, those people died fighting against a regime who controlled every aspect of their citizen's lives and now we are letting our own government take that freedom away from us.
Let's wake up and do something before it's too late and the next knock at the door you hear is the police coming to take you away because you are "non-conventional".

Reference 
1. https://www.statista.com/chart/4093/people-killed-by-terrorist-attacks-in-western-europe-since-1970/

TUEs

With the news of several athletes having their medical records hacked into and then in turn leaked to the press, the debate around theraputic use exemptions (TUEs) has exploded over the usual battle grounds of twitter and Facebook. Depending on what side of the fence you're on, TUEs are either a completely legitimate process that allows athletes who are ill or have chronic conditions to compete at their normal level OR they are a shady loophole in the antidoping structure that allows access to otherwise banned substances.

Although I'm not particularly interested in talking about the individual athletes that have been "exposed", I do want to put my views across about TUEs in general as I disagree that this has been a nothing story as many people have said over the last few days and really think it needs to be looked into further.

My main problem with TUEs is that it blurs what should be a clear line on what is and what is not allowed to be taken during competition. The list of banned substances is there for a reason, they either enhance performance or are hazardous to health, sometimes both. It doesn't take a great stretch of the imagination to picture an athlete or team seeking an unscrupulous doctor willing to write a prescription for non-existent  allergies or any other condition that would require corticosteroids.
We've seen that athletes, doctors and even governing bodies don't have a great track record when it comes to being open and honest around doping.
Of course I have no doubt that some athletes genuinely have allergies, asthma etc. But is it fair that they get access to products that are banned for others?
And allowing athletes access to these drugs if they get ill during an event is just grossly unfair in my opinion! Using the tour de France as an example, staying healthy is part of the challenge and if you get ill that's bad luck I'm afraid, the same way getting a puncture or shipping your chain is! If I was challenging for the victory and I found out that my chief rival got sick and was given a TUE I'd be furious and would have to ride on knowing my main rival is getting access to an otherwise banned drug! 

Whilst scrolling through twitter I came across a quote that I think sums up TUEs perfectly. "if you need to take drugs to perform at an elite level maybe you should not be performing at that level." 

It may sound harsh but elite sport is just that, elite, the best of the best. If we are serious about clean sport then in my opinion we must remove the TUE system, it just leaves the door open for opportunities to dope. This will of course make lives difficult for athletes with genuine problems that require these drugs but I would rather that than have a system that allows access to banned drugs for anyone with a sick note.

Brexit through the eyes of an emigrant (if anyone gives a toss)

Last Friday whilst it was slowly sinking in that we had actually voted to leave and it wasn't a bad dream, I decided that I would write down my thoughts and feelings on the event. This was for 2 reasons really, one was that I had so many thoughts and emotions running through my head that I felt it would help to make them slightly more coherent if I wrote them down. The second was to keep a record from my own personal view to look back on over the years. I wanted to wait a few days so that this wouldn't end up as some bitter rant and also to try and get an idea of what I think is going (or not) to happen. I’ll explain why I voted to remain, why I think Leave won and also what I think the future will hold. I think enough has been said about the disgusting xenophobic incidents we are currently seeing throughout the UK so I’m going to steer clear of that as much as possible.

Why I voted Remain

I have always considered myself to be on the left, I would even dare to say a socialist, although that appears to be a very dirty word in today's world. I believe that in a truly civilised society everyone should have access to free education, free health care and should be free to live their life regardless of race, sexuality and religion.  The EU had always been a bit of a conundrum for me, during the lead up to the referendum I was constantly being told that as a “lefty” I should be instinctively opposed to an organization such as the EU. However, although I can understand that point of view I never really felt that way. I have always thought that becoming more integrated with the rest of Europe was the way forward and I have always had very little time for the “little islander” attitude that has always been prevalent in the UK. True, the EU is a bureaucratic monster that clearly puts commercial interests ahead of social ones, but is that any different from any country in the world?

How would my life have turned out if I had never been a citizen of the EU? This is the question I used to decide my vote.

Bit of background, I am from a small town in the English peak district, a beautiful town but deathly boring and not many job opportunities so eventually I found myself in London. Whilst in London 2 events occurred that would never have happened if it wasn’t for the freedoms we have from being part of the EU. The first involved my brother who also made the treacherous journey down south to London. He was working as a hair dresser and like most young people was getting increasingly fed up with most of his wage packet going on rent for some damp infested shit hole. So one day he decided that he’d had enough, he packed his bag bought a plane ticket to Berlin (no he’s not an aspiring techno DJ) and he left. He's now fluent in German and is loving living in a city that can be enjoyed even if you aren’t a millionaire. The second event was that whilst I was working in a south London hospital I met a girl who I am now engaged to, she is from Madrid and like many Spaniards her age found herself having to move to find work. Fast forward 3 years and we are now living in Spain preparing for our wedding next month. Had it not been for the freedom of movement that having an EU passport grants you, it is highly unlikely that I would be sat here in Spain typing this. Freedom of movement is one of the core principles of the EU and it is something that we should be thankful for. I was recently chatting to a friend who is from Latin America and lives in London, she was saying how we are in for a shock when we realise how difficult, time consuming and expensive applying for Visas can be. I’ll explain later why I don’t think this will happen but just the very thought of it was enough for me to be a strong “remainer”.

Other reasons for my Remain vote were my refusal to believe the lies that all the problems of the UK were the fault of immigrants, and even with my limited economic knowledge I could see that as the world is teetering on another recession, placing our own economy into a period of chaos however short it may be, wasn’t wise.  I am currently several thousand euros poorer thanks to the value of my savings in sterling falling off a cliff! And I am sure many fellow Brits who live within the EU are in the same boat.

I’ll get the sovereignty issue later on, but the idea of an “ever increasing” political union didn’t really worry me, in fact I always thought that the more politically integrated we became the larger the say we would have in who is in the European parliament. Instead of voting for a national parliament we could have voted for a European one. Sadly, I think as a race we are still too preoccupied with the issue of nationality and we still think that the patch of earth we were born on somehow makes us different from other people.

Why I think “Leave” won

The simplest answer for this is that they campaigned better. As much as I loathe people like Farage and Boris (and I really really do hate them), I have to grudgingly respect how they positioned their campaign and completely out manoeuvred the Remain crew. I do talk about immigration but you can skip to the next paragraph if you’re sick of hearing about it.

Regardless of what the victorious leave voters say now about immigration not being the issue for them in an attempt to distance themselves from the predictable xenophobic events we now see on our streets in 2016 (although you could easily be mistaken and think you were in the 30’s), immigration was a huge factor in the decision. There are a sizeable number of people in the UK (as with any country) who simply don’t like foreigners. The problem is when the global economy isn’t doing well the ruling elite impose austerity on us and then through the media tell us it’s our own fault. The next obvious target to blame is “foreigners”, we have seen this throughout history and we are currently seeing it in Europe now. Austria nearly elected a fascist as president, the National Front are gaining ground in France and we have UKIP. All of these parties were nowhere to be seen at the turn of the century when the good times were rolling. Farage himself hit the nail on the head the other day with “when I first came here, stated my intention to lead a campaign to take Britain out of the EU you all laughed at me”. He was right, we did, because at the time it seemed like a joke, the problem is people continued to laugh at him until last Friday morning when they suddenly realised how dangerous he was.  Take a browse through the right wing media (which is pretty much all media) of Britain over the years and you will see headline after headline of anti-immigrant sentiment. But, that said, to brand every Leave voter as a racist is both lazy and untrue. Yes, there was an element of that in the Remain vote, that is undeniable, however, many Leave voters did not vote to go because of immigration and this is where Remain really fucked it up.

The Leave mob played the absolute master stroke of turning the campaign into “the Establishment” versus “the People”. This really was genius and is why they won. By continuing to refer to the EU as either “the establishment” or “the elite” and constantly pointing out how they put commercial interests before those of the people “just look at what they did to Greece”, the Leave campaign created the illusion that they were fighting for the rights of the forgotten working class. What made matters worse is that leading the Remain campaign was the Prime Minister and the Chancellor, how much more “establishment” can you get? And then heading up Leave you had Nigel “he calls a spade a spade” Farage and everyone’s favourite buffoon Boris Johnson. By regularly trotting out pearls such as “let’s spend that cash we send to Brussels on the NHS” and “our grandparents fought for our right to decide our own laws” they spoke right to the heart of the nation! Christ, if their claim about pumping an extra 350m into the NHS a week was legally binding even I would have voted Leave.

Where the Remain campaign dropped the ball is that they failed to point out (or at least they didn’t do it well enough) that our Boris and Nigel are also part of that elite that they are slagging off. As much they portray themselves as the “blokes down the pub” they are both public school boys who are stinking rich and have both previously expressed the view that the NHS needs to be privatised. The Remain campaign should have been screaming this from the rooftops but instead they focused on how most Leave voters were poorly educated and from the north of England. By calling somebody a thick northern racist you aren’t suddenly going to persuade them to change their mind! Another idiotic move by the Remain campaign was the constant doom saying about how we would lose access to the common market if we left the EU. Most people neither know or give a shit what the common market is, they want a school place for their kid or a Drs appointment when they need one. To your average “thick northern racist” this sounded like “we bankers in the city of London want to carry on making shit loads of cash so we need you peasants to pipe down and vote Remain”. The Leave was retort was perfect, “don’t worry, the Germans will still want to sell us cars”. Apart from being probably true it spoke to people in a language they understood. While the Remain campaign was continuing to focus on immigration and how everyone in Leave was a horrid racist, the Leave team were slowly building the support of a disgruntled and unrepresented working class.

What I think will now happen

When the result came in I had a moment of panic and had visions of the Guardia Civil kicking my door in, wearing those weird plastic hats and dragging me to the nearest airport. The day of the result we had a meeting with the judge regarding our wedding, would that be all out of the window because we voted to leave the EU? Although I am an “extranjero” in Spain, being an EU citizen is essentially the same as being Spanish in terms of civil rights, if I was say American, the marriage process would be even more complicated than it was. Once my initial panic had settled down and I was assured that I would still be considered an EU citizen for the next 2 years, my panic turned to fury. Don’t worry I’m not going to go through the 5 stages of grief but my current mood is deep sadness. Sadness at how my country is being perceived by my Spanish friends and family (and my brother’s German friends), sadness at how being openly racist appears to be socially acceptable on the streets of the UK and also I feel really sad for the people who voted to leave because they genuinely believed it would improve their lives.

A friend of mine who voted to leave told me his reason was “sick of those rich bankers in Brussels telling me what to do” or something along those lines. Basically he fell hook line and sinker for the “the people vs the elite” argument. When I asked him if a Tory led government that had just broken away from the shackles of the EU would make his life any better, he couldn’t really answer me. The argument that a vote for leave was a vote to break away from an undemocratic institution that is making our lives so difficult was an inviting one. The reality is that as workers we have done very well from the EU, putting the opportunity to live and work in several countries aside, working hours, holiday entitlement, maternity (and paternity) leave have all come from being part of the EU. Our American cousins would give their right arm and probably even their automatic assault rifles to have the working rights we have. Although it may or may not happen, the fact is that now the Tories could vote to remove or reduce any of those rights and we have lost the protection that being part of the EU would have given us. The bottom line is, as brilliantly put in an article in the FT is that we have simply replaced one set of distant elite for another. Bankers will still make millions and we will still be paying to drag our country out of the recession they put us in whilst we are told it was our fault for daring to ask the bank for a mortgage.

To not like being told what to do is human nature but unfortunately unless you are one of those mythical elite, I’m afraid it’s tough shit, you will still be told what to do by a government that doesn’t want to spend money on the public services they told you would improve if we left the EU. You will still have to enter a lottery to get your kid a place in the local school, you’ll still have to wait for a GP appointment, your train to work will still be delayed or if you drive/cycle to work you will still have to travel on roads that look like Islamic State has paid us a visit. This is because successive governments have failed to spend on infrastructure or have sold it off to private businesses who only care about that little number on the top right of the ticket for the train you are waiting in pissing rain for. Whether any of these issues would have changed if we remained in the EU is debatable but in my opinion they are far less likely to now we have left.

Some of the more worrying aspects of leaving the EU are what it may mean for the environment and also human rights. The EU has an emissions target which although could have been a lot stricter than it is, it is better than nothing at all. I know the environment isn’t a particularly sexy topic and few things cause more eye rolling but I still live in hope that we will do something before we have to start paying for breathable air. Climate change aside the air quality in our largest cities, especially London, is deteriorating fairly rapidly. What worries me is that on the list of priorities of a post-EU British government, the environment is going to be way down if it’s on there at all. The Tories have been dying to rid themselves of the European charter of human rights for ages and although they give the reason that they would be able to boot that Chowdry idiot out of the country, personally I would rather have him in the UK than give up the protection that the charter offers me. Maybe I’m being paranoid but it makes me very uneasy when I hear my government talking about replacing a charter of human rights with one of their own, it all sounds a little bit too totalitarian for my liking.

adding to that PM hopeful Theresa May desperate trying to get the snoopers charter through parliament. Frightening!! 

   

Where I don’t think there will be much change is with the freedom of movement, which was one of the main issues for me.

 Although I may have got this completely wrong my understanding is as follows:

• ·         The core principles of the EU free market are the freedom of movement of, people, goods, services and capital
• ·         There is also the European Economic Area that consists of the EU plus non-EU countries, Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein
• ·         Switzerland has not joined either EU or EEA but has trade agreements with both to allow access to the free market
• ·         The EEA and Switzerland have to adhere to the 4 core principles in order to be part of the free market
• ·         Therefore, ALL countries have to allow the freedom of movement of people.
• ·         They still have to contribute financially to the EU but not as much and they receive no funding in return

So once we formally leave the EU we will have several options. 

The first being the most unlikely is that we completely remove ourselves from the EU and the EEA. We would have complete control over our borders and so on but it would put our status as being the global financial centre at jeopardy. The reason London is currently the number one is because we have access to the common market, if that were to change there is the very real risk that banks, especially non-European ones, would simply move their offices to an EU country which would mean job losses on top of the negative economic effects. My friend who works for an American trust company told me that the bosses have already made it very clear that if this happens then it’s off to Ireland. Many people may be thinking who cares? But as much we hate the financial industry, the fact remains that without it we wouldn’t be one of the richest nations. This would be like the Germans suddenly getting rid of BMW and then saying they were still the big boys when it came to car manufacturing. Also you could add in to the mix that if option one were to take effect then it would almost certainly mean the end of the UK as Scotland have made it very clear that they intend to remain in the EU. So all in all option one would be pretty unappealing for Boris.

The second option which is almost as unlikely is that the UK manages to negotiate the freedom of goods etc. but not people. Whilst this is not impossible it would require agreement from all EU nations and I can’t imagine Italy and Spain etc. signing up to let the UK into the free market whilst also denying their citizens the opportunity to go and work there. Not to mention that Norway et al would be soon knocking on Brussels’s door demanding the same deal. The knock on effect of that would basically render the EU useless as it would prove you could pick and choose which bits of the treaty you wanted, so I would be staggered if the UK could swing that one no matter how many BMWs they promise to buy.

The third option which I think is most likely is that very little changes, the UK wants to be in EEA and the EU wants the UK in the EEA. The UK will have to accept the terms of entering into the EEA and therefore the freedom of movement of people will remain. I personally cannot wait to see buffoon Boris bumbling his way through that speech when he has to explain that no we aren’t “sending the buggers back” and although we have left the club we still want our nose in the EU trough but now we have even less say about what rules apply in order to get it in there. The UK may be able to restrict access to benefits for migrants but it won’t be able to stop them coming. Which, if you are like me and believe every human should have the opportunity to move to a more prosperous area to improve their lives (as I did when I moved to London) will make you very happy. Whereas if you are like the utter dregs of society that we are currently seeing on the news then you won’t be too chuffed, but tough shit I’m afraid!!

So to cap it all off, once the dust has settled people will realise that although a “foreigner” isn’t telling them what to do, they are still being told what to do. The daily express will still go through its headline cycle of “we’re all going to freeze to death in winter – immigrants are stealing our jobs – princess Diana – immigrants again – we’re all going to burn to death in summer”. And unfortunately the working classes will once again realise that the government doesn’t have their best interests at heart. Maybe one day they’ll stop voting for right wing governments!

The only thing that will have changed is that finally Boris will have managed to outmanoeuvre his old Eaton chum and will become leader of the Tories which if anything shows the lengths that the man will go to for power.

What a colossal waste of time!!!

At the point of finishing this I noticed that that weasel Gove has stabbed his Brexit chum in the back and tossed his hat into the ring for Tory leadership. So now you have the choice of him, buffoon Boris or Theresa May who has been trying to pass a bill that would allow the government to snoop through your phone and email data. What a terrifying thought, thank ‘effing Christ I decided to leave!