Skip to main content

I feel for the eurosceptics.

Bill Bailey has this entertaining song written from the perspective of a teenager with excellent parents who "pickme up from school / you attended all my sporting functions", the payoff of course being his rage at the very fact of their good parenting "How can I feel pain / when you're being so supportive?". It is a fact that teenagers are feeble-minded (sorry chaps, but it just goes with the turf, I was too, you won't always be, chin up), and furthermore it is a fact that the feebleminded are only capable of defining themselves in opposition to something.

And this was the first thought that popped into my head this morning to discover that Britain gets to carry on using ounces, pints and miles, as well as retaining the right to rise at 5 a.m to genuflect before a photo of the Queen Muvva gawd love 'er. Sure it will be hailed as a victory for (cough) common sense. Sure the Sun and Mail will doubtless splash pictures of punters enjoying a pint, or buying a pound of bananas. But, in a manner not dissimilar to the morning after a massive pill bender it s only a matter of time before the euphoria fades and in the grim light of morning the baggy eyed, grey skinned eurosceptics will whisper what now? How do we face the day when the night was so exciting?

For the Imperial system is one of the great shibboleths of the parochial little englander, and what Brussels has done is the political equivalent of a shrug and a drawled "whatever". The wonderful quote from Gunter Verheugen, the industry commissioner: "I want to bring to an end a bitter, bitter battle that has lasted for decades and which in my view is completely pointless" underlines european indifference to this talismanic issue; which the rabid nationalists have frothed for years was the number one target for faceless belgians, first they take our pound of bananas, next they'll make us watch Monsieur Hulot's holiday endlessly, next thing you nkow it'll be the old Etats Unis all over again. As it turns out they couldn't give a monkeys.

Coastalblog looks forward to seeing which bogeyman gets drummed up to fill the void. Anyone care to place your bets?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Inedible

"He says it's inedible" said my front of house manager, as she laid the half-eaten fish and chips in front of me, and instantly I relaxed.  Clearly, I observed, it was edible to some degree. I comped it, because I can't be arsed arguing the toss, and I want to make my front of house's lives as simple as possible. The haddock had been delivered that morning. The fryers had been cleaned that morning. The batter had been made that morning (and it's very good batter, ask me nicely and I'll give you the recipe some time). The fish and chips was identical to the other 27 portions I'd sent out on that lunch service, all of which had come back more or less hoovered up, we have have a (justified, if I do say so myself) very good reputation for our chips. But it was, apparently, "inedible". When it comes to complaints, less is more. If you use a hyperbolic word like that, I'll switch off, you've marked yourself as a rube, a chump, I'm not g...
Post a Comment
Read more

Chop chop

I was completely ignorant of the fuss over the edited Trump speech in an edition of Panorama until, one moment later, I wasn't. And the reasons for my ignorance are instructive. I had no idea that the story was even brewing until the surprise Sunday night news of the resignations of Tom Davie and Deborah Turness. As I'm sure you are by now aware, this was occasioned by a clumsy edit in an old edition of Panorama, which has already been on the iplayer for a year. It's a non-story. Except people decided to make it a story. The reason I'd heard nothing of it until the resignations was that I'm not on X, where, apparently, it was all the media classes had been talking about for a week. It was an obsession of the unholy right-wing trifecta of the Mail, Telegraph and Times (who, given that they sent a bloke just last week to interview the wrong Bill di Blasio, you'd think would wind their necks in over factual inacccuracy). It was big news on GB news, all self-contain...
Post a Comment
Read more

Creepy old men

I note, somewhat wearily, that creepy old men are back in the news, being creepy. Creepy old men, and their apologists and enablers, who argue that their creepiness is somehow the natural order of things. Old men would have you believe that it is difficult to not be a creepy old man. That it is a task of epic proportions. It is not that difficult. It is a matter of intention. As yet more of the grimness of Epstein unfolds, creepy old men are, sadly, a flaccid topic once again. Whether it be pursuing students thirty years their junior, or simply not asking too many questions about the background of the probably legal young woman who you've just been introduced to by your good pal Jeff. To be clear, I am not referring to criminal creepy old men, the ones who actually committed statutory rape, the ones who fucked trafficked hirls. That is not something which is allowed to get away merely with the contempt of the observer.  That deserves prison.  No , I'm referring to the hinterla...
Post a Comment
Read more