The End

I had no intention of commenting on this, but as I was preparing dinner, it struck me that it would be appropriate to mourn the demise of the UK’s membership of the EU. Here’s why.

I don’t usually have breakfast these days, but now and again I quite like to knock up a pseudo English breakfast for dinner. Tends to be with sausages, rather than bacon, which would be better, but it’s close enough. Actually, bacon and sausages would be better. Still, here is what the boy was about to get stuck in to, about an hour ago.

As I mentioned, it seemed appropriate to say something, today of all days. Italian tomatoes from a French supermarket chain, alongside Heinz baked beans and HP sauce, washed down with a German beer (okay, that’s mine, not the boy’s), with some MvVitie’s biscuits as the chaser, probably softened up with some Bird’s custard for good measure.

I’m not a particularly political individual, in the sense that I have no deep involvement with, or understanding of, politics, but I have yet to see, hear or read anything that persuades me that the UK will be better off outside the EU. Correction: the UK will be spending 350 million quid extra a week on the NHS, rather than sending it to the EU, won’t it?

Oh, no. Sorry, that was just a load of old bullshit to con the gullible, apparently.

The whole “being British and European” thing reminded me of a very stressful experience several years ago. In short, my (now) wife was (then) just* a Taiwanese citizen, but she had been invited to show some of her artwork at an exhibition in Venice. We had to visit the Italian Embassy to obtain a visa. In fact we had to go to an office in Bedford, but following a certain amount of confusion, miscommunication, and a major argument with a bona fide Italian jobsworth clerk, we left empty handed. I remember thinking how I’d been so lucky that I’d never had any restrictions on my travel, simply because I had a British passport. In other words, because I happened to have been born in England I faced almost no issues wherever I chose to visit around the world, whereas if I’d been born in Taiwan, my life experiences would have been significantly hampered. I was angry and not a little embarrassed by the fact that I could have jumped on a plane to Italy without so much as a by your leave, while my partner was being treated like some kind of second class citizen (*thus my use of the term ‘just’ Taiwanese). I had never really contemplated the meaning of borders, but here was a very real example of a direct impact on an individual’s life and freedom to travel. I felt sick. It still makes me uncomfortable to think about it.

Brexit. I hesitated (and waited) to use the B word, as I anticipated (see what I did there?) some grief, but would someone please explain how it will make things better for those wishing to travel, live, love, work (or whatever) around Europe in the coming years. I’m all ears.