I've started this morning's blog with a photo I took from last year's Badminton Horse Trials to get you (and me) in the mood for this year's event, but what I really want to talk about is politics.
Heavy topic for a Saturday morning - which was my bf's thoughts when I bundled into bed with him this morning to tell him all about it.
The other night we were watching the final of three televised debates in the UK between the three leaders of our biggest political parties: labour (currently in power), conservatives and the lib dems (who've not had a shot in years). The topic moved on to immigration and the conservatives talked about their manifesto and how they planned to cap immigration into this country - the other two said he couldn't promise this, and that it was misleading (which is true, only 20% of immigrants to the UK come from outside the EU so 80% would be unaffected by the cap) and in response david cameron (conservative idiot) said to control the rest he'd introduce EU filtering to control EU resident immigration - this wasn't challenged by either of the other two and this surprised and annoyed me: this wasn't a promise he could honour; the free movement of workers within the EU is a key fundamental characteristic of the EU and is completely necessary for the whole concept to work and idiot cameron was promising that even if it were possible, which it is not, that the UK could make that decision - it can't! We don't even have 2 votes in the EU anymore, we've one - like everyone else. The EU was started a long time ago as the EEC, the purpose being to share steel and coal markets because if you want war you need coal and steel so if everyone shares the same sources no-one can prepare for war without anyone else knowing. And for idiot cameron to affirm the population's fears about immigration, re-enforcing this apparent feeling that people are unwelcome here unless they're british, he is creating an opinion in people's minds that this is right. It's not right! It's completely flying in the face of what the EU stands for and the whole ideology: to prevent war and in group/out group mentalities. Idiot cameron wasn't offering the people what they want, he was feeding their fear, and as a extremely wise little green man once said: fear leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering.
If you're not from the UK, you won't be familiar with the requirement that if you mention one party you have to mention there are other parties too - to avoid (ironically) showing a preference for one, so in that spirit: there are other idiots, idiot brown and idiot clegg and a whole host of other idiots. I voted for idiot clegg, because I actually suspect he's the least idiotic of them all.
All of this came to me because yesterday I stopped my car to let a lady cross who was from another race and religion and she turned to me and did the biggest, warmest smile and thank you and it made me so ecstatic, and I thought how nice it was and how others from her background are normally so unfriendly and rude; and it hit me, maybe they're not rude - maybe they feel hostility towards them because people fear them. Everyone is just afraid. And to me, this is a very tentative position to be in.
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