The Plastic Mancunian: UK referendum

I start this post off with an apology. I’m going to rant again. I’m going to talk about politics again.

And my language may not be what you would expect from a polite mild-mannered Englishman.

I’m sorry.

On Thursday my country voted to leave the European Union. I voted to stay.

I lost.

I am a sore loser and I am still barely able to contain my frustration and anger about this.

The United Kingdom consists of Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England but as a country we are not united at all. My own country, England, together with Wales voted to leave. Scotland and Northern Ireland wanted to stay. Yet now they will be dragged out of the European Union, alongside those English and Welsh people, like me, who want to stay.

And it stinks.

I can’t believe that just over half of my fellow countrymen, the ones who could actually be bothered to turn up, chose to turn their back on Europe based on a weird form of patriotism and a disturbing undercurrent of xenophobia.

I am gutted and angry. And yes – I am bitter too.

The immediate effects are obvious – the value of our currency has plummeted and the stock markets have dropped like a stone, something that the economists warned would happen. The problem is that the leavers, who have been seduced by a false sense of optimism, are saying “We’re British! We’ll be fine! We have our country back!”

I’m not a man of violence but the primitive, primeval animal within me wants to lash out at these idiots.

Now I’m sure that some leavers genuinely had reasons to vote the way they did but the truth of the matter is that the rest didn’t.

I actually saw one man interviewed who said:

“I’m a bit shocked to be honest. I’m shocked that we actually have voted to Leave, I didn’t think that was going to happen.

My vote, I didn’t think was going to matter too much because I thought we were just going to Remain, and the David Cameron resignation has blown me away to be honest.

I think the period of uncertainty that we’re going to have for the next couple of months, that’s just been magnified now.

So yeah, quite worried.”

Are you insane? What a fucking moron.

There is also a story I heard involving a young black woman talking to a white woman about the result. As they were chatting, a man walked past, pointed at the black woman and said “Great result – now we’ll send you home!”

Send her home to where, you racist fuckwit? She’s ENGLISH!

My own son is furious because he feels totally let down by the older generation. Why? Because the older generation mainly voted to leave.

Here is how the voting went over the age groups according to YouGov:

18-24: 75% Remain

25-49: 56% Remain

50-64: 44% Remain

65+: 39% Remain

Read those figures again – the majority of people under 50 wanted to stay whereas the majority of people over 50 wanted to leave.

There is a lot of bitter resentment in young people and I am ashamed at those people my age and older who have potentially made our country a worse place to be for the younger generation in future.

I fully understand why they are angry.

Furthermore, this result has shattered any plans I had of spending my later years in sunny southern Europe.

On a lighter note, I turned up for work yesterday having watched David Cameron’s resignation speech, and faced my work colleagues who wanted to see my reaction. Regular readers know that my work colleagues regard me as a grumpy old man prone to comedy rants.

And they weren’t disappointed. I ranted several times during the day but, even as I poured comedic scorn over the clown prince of idiocy, Boris Johnson, and the fish faced freak, Nigel Farage, I could see in their faces that they too were disappointed. If there were any leavers in my audience, they didn’t make their views known.

And now the leave politicians are asking for calm and unity.

How the fuck can I be calm when and suddenly be magnanimous in defeat when I am so bitter and angry that we have been shafted just so that David Cameron can heal rifts in the Conservative Party?

The blame for this debacle lies fully at the feet of David Cameron. The man has taken a political gamble using my country and has lost, just so that he can appease his party.

"WHAT HAVE I DONE????????"

I also blame Boris Johnson who, despite his vehement denials, used this referendum to stake his claim on Number 10 Downing Street.

"I'M GOING TO BE PRIME MINISTER! SHAME THE COUNTRY WILL BE A DISASTER AREA!"

I blame the odious Michael Gove who is also a pretender to David Cameron’s now vacant throne.

"DON'T CALL ME ODIOUS! I'M MUCH WORSE THAN THAT!!!"

And if I am ever unfortunate enough to meet Nigel Farage, my wrath will explode so much that I will mutate into The Plastic Hulk and forcefully take him out of the country and maroon him on an island surrounded by hungry cannibals with a penchant for fish.