November 12th 2018 – Thoughts around Armistice Day and the Centenary of the end of The Great War
Yesterday Karen and I spent most of the afternoon watching the proceedings for Armistice Day, especially the results of people’s efforts to mark the centenary of the end of World War One – the supposed Great War. We found it quite overwhelming, especially the involvement of all the children across the UK, who seem to have taken to keeping the candle of Remembrance alight in their hearts.
This got me thinking about the history behind that war, the problems that consumed the first half of the 20th Century as a direct consequence and their parallels with what’s happening in the UK and the wider world now.
When WW1 ended the German people were shackled by the punitive reparations imposed by the victorious Allies, their economy stagnated and living conditions worsened rapidly. The Wall Street crash and the global economic disaster that followed that further depressed the German economy, to a point where people lucky enough to have a job were taking their wages home in a wheel-barrow. The value of the Mark fell to such a point that their paper money was really only fit for hanging on a nail on the back of the toilet door or for children to play with!
The poverty caused by the austerity imposed by the victors of WW1 proved to be a fertile breeding ground for the rise to power of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, flying the flag of nationalism and calling on the very basest nature of the population. The ultimate outcome of all of this was World War 2, where the liberal democracies of the world stood shoulder to shoulder to defeat the malignant power of the totalitarian states of Germany, Italy and Japan. The cost in human lives was enormous and these lost lives are also remembered on Armistice Day.
The comparisons with the times we live in now must be apparent to anyone who stops to think – notwithstanding what Theresa May says (she’s a Tory so, ipso facto, if she’s speaking she’s lying) austerity remains a plank of Tory policy. Austerity, imposed in an attempt to pay for bailing out the very Banks who caused the economic crash, has impacted on every working household, as a result of wage increase restrictions etc. and those not in work, where the changes to benefits because of Universal Credit has increased the poverty experienced by claimants of benefits – and the growth of food banks is evidence of this.
A growing number of disgruntled voters made their feelings known in the referendum of 2016, with people like Farage fomenting the unrest very much as the Nazi’s did nearly a hundred years ago in Germany. The rise of extreme right-wing, neo-fascist groups – urged on by an increasingly right wing press and an almost unfettered digital media has been keeping the pressure on. Election results elsewhere within the EU have also seen groups of disillusioned people side with the populist, nationalist parties – Poland, Hungary, Austria and Italy spring to mind, but the growth of these parties is an international problem as well. The new President of Brazil has been warmly welcomed by Donald Trump, who in turn has been getting very cosy with Putin . Again political leaders are pandering to the basic, meanest levels of people’s fears and intellects with populist policies, pointing fingers at others where the real blame lies with the political ruling classes. And feel free to include the likes of Boris Johnson, Liam Fox, David Davies and Nigel Farage in this group.
Europe lived through very similar times and then suffered the horrors of WW2 and it was that very reason that saw the birth of what is now the European Union, a deliberate economic and political union to ensure that Europe never fell into the trap of false nationalism that inevitably ends in bloodshed and tears. Winston Churchill – on the face of it Boris Johnson’s favourite politician – was an arch advocate of the Common Market that evolved into the EEC and then the European Union. I’m no Tory, as I‘m sure you’ve figured out by now, but he recognised what the EU would mean to peace and security in Western Europe. Margaret Thatcher, again, never turned her back on the EEC, instead fought hard to improve things for the UK, hence the rebates we enjoy. The legacy of that is the fact that we aren’t in the Eurozone (a mistake in my opinion) or have signed up to the Schengen Agreement (another mistake imposed by Tory Little Englanders).
It is no coincidence that Western Europe has been largely free of conflict since the end of WW2 – most conflict has been witnessed in what were the Warsaw Pact countries (those allied to what was the old Soviet Union) and occurred as a result of violent nationalism, kindled by the collapse of Communism and given space to grow in the political vacuum that followed, especially in the former Yugoslavia (as I witnessed first-hand myself in 1995), Georgia and more recently in the Ukraine.
Do we really want to return to those days?
I firmly believe that the upsurge in nationalism, fuelled by the lies of those politicians who argued for Brexit, is an insult to those who sacrificed their lives to help maintain democracy and the rule of law in the western world.
I firmly believe that Brexit is a colossal error of judgement on the part of the electorate and a treacherous sleight of hand by those politicians who used every dirty trick in the book to influence and then achieve their end.
Wednesday November 14th 2018
I was hoping to complete this blog yesterday after getting distracted on Monday but was distracted again on Tuesday.
Regular readers amongst you will be aware of some of the problems I’ve had trying to get the spaz wagon registered here in France – I’ve been at it since July and it was proving much more difficult than getting the Picasso changed over. Well yesterday I got an e-mail from ANTS (Agence Nationale des Titres Securises) asking me to resubmit my documentation, a month to the day from when I last submitted the last two pieces of info they needed. It was 17:00 by the time I’d finished as the system kept booting me out (three times!!) which meant I had to do it all again – a total of fifteen documents each time!
This morning I checked my e-mithers to find three from ANTS, the last of which asked me to log on the system as I needed to do something. When I looked they were asking me for money – 293.76€ to be precise – because, at last, LL 62 OUD is now registered here in France and goes by the name of FB-586-TN. I’ve told the insurance man so that the policy can be altered and the new number plates are ordered and should be supplied and fitted by Tuesday next week.
That’s something less to worry about but running a big van is expensive and, to be honest, was something I have only just started to realise. In the past few months we’ve had to have new tyres on the front after about 11,500 miles and will probably need new back tyres sometime early next year. It’s understandable really when you consider how much extra weight it carries as a consequence of the conversion – retracting step for the passenger door, two fold up jump seats in the back and the electric chair lift in the back door. They must all come in at something like 1,000kg, minimum, and then when I’m in it you can add another 250kg for me and my chair. In old money that must come in at an extra ton of weight, which is bound to impact on things. Fortunately it’s proving to be reliable so I shouldn’t complain – although we have seen that the windscreen is cracked and needs replacing!! A small crack appeared over the summer, but was only visible inside the van, there were no marks externally. After the cold and snow we experienced at the end of October the crack grew and is now visible from the outside. For some reason it all seems temperature related – it started in the heat of summer, seemed to stop and then started growing in sub-zero temperatures. Very strange but our insurance man has it in hand and we await a visit from the windscreen man any day.
Talking of the weather, as I often do, we are enjoying some very mild weather at the moment. The average for the last two weeks must be about 20*C and we’ve had very little rain, so no complaints there. The good weather has done wonders to the produce we’ve grown over the summer and early autumn and we continue to benefit. We have a mature apple tree in the garden and for a long time I thought it was a crab apple, like the one on the other side of the wall on my neighbours’ side. I was mistaken. It’s a proper cooking apple, like a Bramley, tarter than the sweet eating apples that are the only ones you can buy at the supermarket, and as a result we have gathered easily 25kg of good apples, with plenty more to come over the next week. Karen has been baking to her hearts content and as I type has just presented me with a bowl of apple meringue – delicious!
It’s not all sweetness and light on the weather front though. The snow we had at the end of October caused a lot of damage – trees that really suffered through the almost drought conditions of the summer were so dry that many of them lost large branches through the weight of snow. On the lane up to Lioux le Monge (the next hamlet to us) outside our gate there is about 100m of telephone cable down where the branches have fallen on them and dragged them to the floor. It’s been almost three weeks now and the people up the road still have no phones or internet. Shame I’m a spaz because back in the day when I was a telephone engineer I could have fixed them, and if I had working legs now I’m sure I still could. It will be some time before they get sorted – there are lines down all over the place and there’s weeks of work to be done. The phones will always be at risk because everything is overhead out here in the countryside, much as it is back in the UK. Some communities have chipped in with each other to get the lines to their houses underground but the main cables remain overhead. There is a plan to get a fibre optic network out to all of Creuse over the next two years and that will be delivered overhead because of the cost of laying it underground. I’m not sure how that’s going to work but we’ll see. At least we’ll be able to get really fast broadband out here in the sticks and 85 km from the nearest large town – which was something we couldn’t get when we lived in London!
I’m going to close now but please humour me for a little while longer on the day Theresa May is trying to convince the Cabinet that she has delivered a good Brexit deal and let me pose you a number of simple questions. Just answer yes or no – as simple as that ….
In your normal daily life, at work or at home, would it be acceptable for someone to:
A. Deliberately lie to you to convince you to adopt a position that they know will be detrimental to you financially?
B. Deliberately lie to you to convince you to adopt a position that they know will be detrimental to your employment prospects?
C. Deliberately lie to you to convince you to adopt a position that they know will be detrimental to you and/or your family’s health care?
D. Deliberately lie to you to convince you to adopt a position that they know will risk the make-up of the United Kingdom?
E. Deliberately lie to you to convince you to adopt a position that they know will be detrimental to the UK economy?
F. Deliberately break the law of the land to manipulate the outcome of the democratic process?
If your answer to any of these questions is ‘No’ then surely asking for a second referendum on the content of any deal she might get through her Cabinet must be necessary. Nobody knew what the real potential impact of Brexit was going to be. Now we better understand the dangers posed to the United Kingdom, the Good Friday agreement, the NHS and the futures for our children and their families surely it makes sense to reconsider our options?
You know my views, feel free to let me know yours.
Take good care of yourselves. Jem.