When it was announced that Danny Boyle would be directing the London 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony (officially the “Opening of the Games of the XXX Olympiad” if you want to be pretentious), people were understandably nervous. “The ‘Trainspotting’ guy?” they would ask, with a worried inflection in their voice.

After all, the Beijing Olympics ceremony was epic on a scale not seen before. It cost over $100 million to stage (allegedly), featured over 15,000 performers (allegedly) and even used cloud seeding to minimise the risk of rain during the show. And we had the guy best known for “The Worst Toilet in Scotland” and Slumdog Millionaire, which contains a scene in which the protagonist deliberately jumps into an outside soil pit to escape confinement. Boyle apparently has a thing about toilets.

Luckily our fears were unfounded. It was great. I’m not one for mindless patriotism or jingoism but I was moved to tears at certain points. He showcased some of the most influential people and creations the UK had ever produced, contrasted our centuries of heritage with life in modern Britain, and there was a good dose of healthy self-deprecation to soften the impact. Reviews were uniformly positive, with the exception of one Tory MP who mocked it as “”leftie multicultural crap”. He was swiftly put down even by his own peers and told “Shut up. It was great.”

But then what? It’s been over 13 years since then, and every time I watch it on Blu-ray (Yes, of course I bought it. And the soundtrack album) I can’t help but think…

“Did we peak then? What exactly have we achieved since then?”

What next?

Sometimes it feels like all the goodwill and international recognition it achieved has since been frittered away on pointless grandstanding and irrelevant posturing. It seems that many people think the “Great” in “The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland” refers to our achievement and importance rather than it’s actual derivation (It’s ‘Great’ as in ‘large’ to differentiate the island from Ireland which was historically “Little Britain”)

It doesn’t help that there are many people who still labour under the delusion that we are somehow still a key player on the world stage and a major influence on World Politics and Culture. No, Lady Gaga does not count. Brexit proved us horribly, horribly wrong on that count. So many thought “Well, the EU needs us more than we need them. They’ll come crawling back to us and we can negotiate a favourable treaty. We hold all the cards.”. Turns out all the cards we had were jokers and the EU can manage just fine without us, thank you very much.

How did we go in just four years from welcoming people from all across the world in a celebration of British life to “Get the fuck out”?

Yes, this is a post about Brexit.

Brexit

An awful lot of people here in the UK seem to have nostalgia for a time that a) was years before they were born and b) never really existed in the first place. It’s some kind of vague Victorian-era British Empire merged with 1945 post-war optimism with no fixed time or place. Perhaps the American equivalent would be the 1950s “white picket fence suburbia” that never really existed except on television (See Hypernormalisation for more on that). The word that gets thrown around a lot is “Sovereignty”. Nobody can define what it is, but apparently that’s what Brexit was all about. And now we have it. Whatever it is.

The single question that were asked on the Referendum poll was “Do you think the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland should remain part of the European Union? Yes/No”. That was it.

Some people claim that the EU Referendum was legally binding. No, it wasn’t. It was no more legally binding than a vox pops opinion poll. The government was perfectly within it’s right to completely ignore the results, whichever way they went.

Some people claim that the EU Referendum asked us if we wanted to remain part of the common market. No, it didn’t. Read the question again.

Some people claim that the EU Referendum asked us if we wanted to curb immigration and the settlement of foreign nationals. No, it didn’t. Read the question again.

A lot of people seem quite willing to falsely claim that the EU Referendum was “about immigration” or “about our borders” or “about foreign trade”. No, it wasn’t. You may have projected your feelings about those issues onto the question, but the question was neutral on all those issues.

In case it’s not obvious by this point, I voted to Remain. Just as most sane people did. I firmly believe that the people who voted to Leave are either a) Gullible fucking morons or b) Financially invested in us leaving, and as such manipulated the people in camp a. And by god, there are a lot of gullible fucking morons in this country.

It’s a known, provable fact that the only reason David Cameron called the Referendum in the first place is because he was terrified of losing Tory voters to the even more extremist UKIP party (Incidentally, a “single-issue” party who got exactly what they wanted, but rather than fold they just started a new party called Reform Racist UK and continued bleating to the media that they still weren’t happy even though they got exactly what they wanted). Of course they left the Tories anyway so the whole thing was a waste of time.

It quickly became apparent that the Leave campaign had no policies, no plan and no thoughts about what was supposed to happen next. If “Brexit – The Uncivil War” is to be believed, they didn’t expect to win and were totally unprepared for it. Even now a decade later it’s still apparent that they STILL don’t have a plan or any firm policies. All we’ve had for years is endless meaningless slogans such as “Take Back Control” (of what, exactly?), “Oven-Ready Brexit” (In the sense that it’s a stuffed turkey?) and “Brexit Means Brexit” (Grow up, seriously) and hundreds of millions of pounds wasted on meaningless bureaucracy which has made a lot of people very rich.

There hasn’t been one single benefit to us leaving the European Union, despite the “Brexiteers” (Don’t call them that, it makes them sound like Captain Jack Sparrow or something) saying “It’ll be worth it” and “The benefits will come flooding in”. There have been exactly zero tangible benefits. Everything has become more expensive, we’ve totally lost control of our borders, people’s lives have been destroyed permanently, and we’ve got absolutely nothing to show for it. Apart from the aforementioned “Sovereignty”. Whatever that means.

Everything is more expensive. Why? Well, it’s pretty simple and has nothing to do with tariffs or “The EU punishing us for leaving” which is a common refrain from people who don’t understand tax and think a P60 is a bus. Just think about it for a minute. As part of the EU we were part of one of the largest economic blocs in the world. When buying goods from overseas we could negotiate massive bulk discounts. Now? Forget it. Why should a Chinese supplier waste their time trying to haggle with a country that wants 100,000 of something, when the EU as a whole wants 10 million? Who would you devote your time and attention to? Not to mention that we have a different currency, drive on the opposite side of the road (so cars need modifying) and use a different television and electrical system to the rest of Europe. Why would anybody bother with us? We also have to do our own regulations, our own testers, our own supervision and pay for our own import and export services because we can’t share with the EU any more. Hence hundreds of millions being wasted on border equipment and staff near Dover to police meat entering our country. No, I’m not joking.

We’ve lost control of our borders. This is even simpler to explain. When we were part of the EU, we controlled our side of the border, and also were on the governing bodies that decided on European protocol. We voluntarily walked away from that, so now we only control our side. It’s much easier to exert control over a doorway when you have people on both sides. Now we only have people on this side and the people on the other side no longer have to listen to us.

People’s lives have been destroyed permanently. It used to be common that young people in the UK would go and work or study overseas for years. This is a good thing as it broadens people’s horizons. There is nothing better for expanding people’s viewpoints than sending them to live among people who live and work in a different country with a different culture and a different language. Now that’s next to impossible. You also can’t marry an EU national and move over there to be with them (or vice versa) without mountains of red tape and tens of thousands of pounds in fees. Who benefits from this, besides the government? For some reason, many Brexit supporters felt that these new restrictions would only apply to EU nationals coming here, and wouldn’t apply to British nationals wanting to live and work in Europe. Funnily enough, one of the largest groups of Brexit supporters was British expats living in France and Spain for the weather. These are the people who collect their British pension, refuse to learn the language and have goods shipped over from Tesco once a week because they don’t want to eat “foreign muck”. Now those people are crying and screaming that they have to move back to the UK because they no longer have any legal right to live in their retirement homes. Boo, fucking hoo you racist pricks.

Those of us who pointed any of this out during the Referendum campaign were accused of being part of “Project Fear” and of spreading lies to discourage people from voting for something that would benefit the country. Well, it turns out we were right after all. Not only were most of the Leave campaign’s “facts” total lies (The “£300 Million a Week for the NHS” bus for one) but almost everything we warned about came true.

The Anti-EU morons now seem convinced that we should be focusing our attention on the US as a viable trade partner. Except for two facts. First, we have nothing they want (except Union Jack tea-towels and shortbread) and they have nothing we want (except junk food and movies)

It would be nice if we had a government with the balls to actually admit it was a terrible idea. We’ve got nothing to show for it, we’re hundreds of millions (probably billions) in the red because of it, the cost of living crisis is getting worse and worse, nobody can afford anything, and the single biggest policy decision we could do to improve things is to rejoin the EU. But neither Labour nor the Tories will do it because they’re terrified they’ll lose their racist voters to Racist UK. Newsflash guys, you’ve already lost them because you’re trying to patch over the holes in this lifeboat. The hardcore racists hate you because you haven’t gone far enough, the moderates hate you because you’re indecisive, and the liberals hate you because you refuse to admit that a terrible mistake was made.

Racist UK

Labour are going to lose the next election. That’s pretty much a given unless they can have some kind of phenomenal success in the next year or two. The Tories are still deep in the wilderness with the most uncharismatic leader this side of John Major, and the only “alternative” voters can see is Racist UK.

This troubles me greatly. Partly because it’ll totally fuck over myself and Kaa and could make it at best very expensive for him to continue to live here (we’re talking close to a five-figure payment every 2 1/2 years) and at worst not allow him to live here at all. And partly because they’re not a serious party. They’re a cash-grab company founded by a conman to steal money from gullible racists, and unfortunately they’re rather good at it.

Not only do their members keep being caught saying things that would make Eric Clapton blush, forcing them to resign, but they have absolutely no policies. They’ve never been in power, and most of their members are new to politics. They are the schoolkids who previously ran the tuck shop and have now decided that they deserve to be on the board of Governors. What are their policies? “Free sweets for all and no homework, ever!”. Certainly attention grabbing and sure to get a few votes from the kids stupid enough to think they can actually do it, but there’s absolutely no thought behind how they are actually going to achieve any of this.

Case in point, some of them recently got elected onto our local council by parroting mindless bullshit, and now they’ve decided that whilst they are in favour of our local airport opening, they don’t feel we should pay for it. Yes. They want X Airport to open, but don’t think X City should put any money towards it. Even though we already voted in favour of reopening it and spending money on it. And they can’t actually say WHO should pay for it, just not us. These are people who promise massive tax breaks but don’t actually have a plan for where the money is to come from. But again, people are gullible fucking morons who’ll vote for anybody who promises tax breaks, without considering how it’s going to happen. People vote for slogans, not reality.

We are in danger of having a government who have absolutely no experience, and no clue how to do anything. Within a year we will be billions of pounds in debt and risk alienating ourselves from the rest of the world with racist diplomacy and pigheaded attitudes. And people will be happy with this, because they are gullible fucking morons.

I’m sorry. It’s just so fucking depressing that the vast majority of people seem utterly incapable of looking more than a week into the future or caring about anything more than their immediate neighbourhood and people they already know.