Early one recent morning when I was walking to my Parliamentary office a taxi driver stopped to tell me how pleased he was we would at last implement the referendum. He is training to be a teacher. He told me he was so fed up with Establishment and media bias and all the efforts to reverse the decision. He represents the passion and the decency behind the Brexit vote. He wanted to thank me but I felt I needed to thank him for holding true to the opportunity the vote offered.
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December 26, 2019
Good morning.
It is a great pity that he is going to be disappointed when he finds out we have only left in name only and that we will still be paying in long after we have supposedly left and subject to all their laws, regulations and oversight.
December 26, 2019
And he will find that teaching in a comp with a woke staff with pupils allowed to do as they please is not the best place to have Conservative thoughts or support Brexit.
December 26, 2019
I would simply say that this post is risible.
December 26, 2019
John didn’t query his use of the term Establishment.
It became popular in the 1960s. It means the Royals and the Landed. It includes the military, security, diplomatic and intelligence top brass, and it also takes in the established Church, along with the judiciary, the Governors of the BBC, and media owners. It includes the Tory Government and the Executive, along with senior civil servants and bankers, and many other ex-Eton, and other such schools’ bigwigs. It absolutely does not include trade unions, the Greens, Labour, the LDs, mutual societies, co-operatives, the general scientific community, and the like.
Yes, Theresa May, Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson are all in it, as is Nigel Farage. Jeremy Corbyn is definitely not, however, and it is why you will read endless distortions about him and about other Labour figures in the real Establishment’s media.
Reply You are living in the last century. The modern establishment is the politically correct who control many of the quangos, branches of government, large companies etc.
December 26, 2019
Thank you John.
People will define terms to suit their agenda. If you choose to define the Establishment as you do, then what do you call the largely social network, who occupy the commanding heights of actual material power whom I have identified, and for whom the term was generally used and accepted?
I have no problem with the small “e” version when it is properly qualified, as in “media establishment”, however, but that means a rather different thing.
I think that the confusion caused is absolutely intended by the likes of Farage.
December 26, 2019
I find the current Tory definition of elite amusing.
Apparently, according to them, I am the elite. I grew up on an estate in west London to working parents. I went to the local (failing) comprehensive school. Mum worked in the NHS. Dad for the council. We did not starve but we were not well off. We didnāt own a proper TV for much of my childhood. I was the first in my family to go to university. I didnāt set foot on an aeroplane until I was 20 – well into the 1990s – because my family couldnāt afford it.
And yet people like me – from very modest backgrounds – are branded āthe eliteā by people like Dominic Cummings, Daniel Hannan, Douglas Carswell, Mogg and Farage. They all came from privileged background attending top public schools. They got where they are because their parents could afford to pay for their success. If any of these people had gone to my school – and had not had the benefits of wealth – they wouldnāt have got beyond middle management in any job. They are where they are because they are the elite.
December 26, 2019
Andy – – you have just described to a greater or lesser extent what I, your kind host, and several million Leavers, and/or Conservative voters experienced growing to where we are.
Possibly 99.9% are none the worse for it, but you clearly suffered a life-changing rejection in formative years, almost certainly by an older person you came to despise.
Counselling is probably money wasted. Continue to vent your spleen on here, Sir John is used to humouring you.
December 27, 2019
Fred H
Totally unnecessary personal remarks, you should know better,
Happy New Year
December 26, 2019
Reply to reply:
No he is not living in the last century. It’s very much the establishment of today.
December 28, 2019
The true power behind the establishment is known to but a few…start with the Bilderberg group and work back from there…the end reward is very interesting indeed?
December 26, 2019
Mark B – I fear you’re right, though I wish I could be optimistic.
There’s a lot of euphoria now surrounding BJ’s ”deal” – but why? After all, it’s still almost the same ”deal” that many voted against – some three times! Very little in it has changed – that’s been admitted.
Why have many MPs who were so set against it, suddenly experienced an epiphany? It does seem strange to me.
December 26, 2019
Come to the edge
We might fall
Come to the edge
Itās too high
COME TO THE EDGE
And they came
And he pushed
And they flew. (Christopher Logue)
December 26, 2019
So there you are – the utter fantasy of a Leave voter.
He’s proud of it too, it appears.
December 26, 2019
Yep — thats me, a proud English, leaver and believer in democracy. You, on the other hand ….
December 26, 2019
No, I believe that the UK should leave the European Union.
Its continued presence is very damaging to the whole project.
Had there been further democratic expressions, then they should have been honoured too.
December 28, 2019
Martin, I am pleased one Remainer such as yourself has come to terms with democracy…a small reward I suppose?
December 26, 2019
Indeed we should thank the electorate for holding true and seeing through Labours bribe con trick manifesto. A shame so many MPs failed to respect the referendum and tried to hold the country to ransom – ultimately with the total treachery of the Benn act. Many of these dire MPs and traitors are still in parliament some even claiming to be āConservativesā.
December 26, 2019
Now the honesty, or otherwise, will gradually become clear. The majority of the present union are looking to Boris to head what we voted for….
December 26, 2019
I wish your taxi driver friend every success. He will bring some real life experience to the classroom.
Can we have a serious look at fishing post Brexit. We will have the fishing grounds post Brexit , but as a nation we do not eat much fish relative to our continental neighbours. We therefore gain a large export market. Big question is do we have the infrastructure to handle it. This I doubt.
The big plus within this new situation is that we take control of fishing conservation in our waters. I hope those who know the true situation re the conservation of fish stocks have a viable programme to achieve it. I too hope that our fishermen are involved in the process.
I do not believe that continental fishermen should be banned from our waters. I do believe that they should be rationed, controlled, especially as to their methods of fishing. It makes sense to me that they should catch much of the fish destined for their markets. Speed is the essence of fish distribution. Bare in mind many existing fishing rights are reciprocal, especially around the Channel Islands.
To control it I suggest Drones backed by RN intervention where necessary, an excellent training programme for the military personnel involved and good for our drone makers. It should be sold as one of the great environmental programmes where the CFP has to date failed.
December 26, 2019
You should read the DW article at https://www.dw.com/en/uk-fishing-industry-or-brexits-red-herrings/a-51418061
The UK – majority Scottish – fishing industry is less than 0.1% of UK GDP and employs less than 0.1% of its workforce. It mostly prefers to sell its UK government issued quotas, via a cosy little private sector oligopoly, to big foreign fishing boats; with the UK government’s approval but not the EU’s. Fishing was probably the largest pile of BS the “leave” campaign came up with.
Very little is likely to change in the fish food industry post Brexit.
December 27, 2019
Why should we take account of an article in the German press bewailing their potential loss of access to our fishing grounds.
The destruction of our fishing industry, the effect on our people and their local economies and culture, and claiming that as it is only 0.1% it therefore doesn’t matter is bullshit. That attitude is the same euphilic disease that led through the loss of other industries and imposed laws and immigration and ultimately the referendum result in 2016.
The treatment of the fishing resources, industry and people is important simply because it is our resources and they are our people, but it is also a strong indicator of how the establishment will and does treat all other aspects of our sovereignty.
You may care nothing about other members of our country, our community, but others do.
December 28, 2019
DW, read state funded, aka BBC, government political mouthpiece! Beware biased journalistic falsehoods?
December 26, 2019
Throughout the past year the media and government both told us how this was the last chance for brexit and that remain was becoming more popular.
Yet they forgot that every month the EU demands taxes and imposes controls, the people got ever more fed up and eventually threw many of the remainer MPs out of parliament.
Have remainers learn’t their lesson? I doubt many have and look forward to doing my part in removing more useless MPs at the next parliament.
December 26, 2019
An MP thanking a member of the public for voting for democracy was a quality rarely seen in the previous Parliament. We should all thank the public for being British and proud to be so.
December 26, 2019
We need people like the taxi driver entering a left wing dominated profession.
December 26, 2019
I was clearly a very good boy this year.
Santa bought me a large EU flag – which I will be putting on a flagpole outside my house next month.
I have also bought some multi-coloured bulbs so I can light the place up in blue and yellow on Brexit Day – just to annoy my elderly Brexit backing neighbours.
Mind you, annoying them is not hard. It is their permanent state of being.
December 27, 2019
Make sure you get planning permission, otherwise your neighbours will get the local Council to make you take it back down.
PS
I’m not surprised that are permanently annoyed, having to live next to you.
December 27, 2019
Edward 2
And also happy New Year to you . This was really not original enough to be written even by you