Referendum Floods

Soggy Reader,

I’d thought hard enough on the long journey home tonight  (I was clever enough to move out having registered to vote back in Essex) to produce a poem upon the odd predicament, with more rain running than trains. Which I certainly have never done before, and never about flooding.

Enjoy.

Getting Home for Mum’s Birthday

23rd June 2016

It was a Thursday, dull and grey,
(A soggy referendum day)
When I was walking down the Strand
And saw a swimming pool at hand –
I was surprised, for though quite clean,
T’was where the underground had been.

The station master, rather wet,
Gave a speech I shan’t forget:
He calmly said, though unsure how,
That “Essex is aquatic now.
“For those of you who might have voted,
“We don’t know where your paper’s floated.”

The county, high in disarray,
Was fathoms now, not miles away.
Platform four and five were clear
And had become a working pier,
While on the route to Bethnal Green
There sat a stranded submarine.

Commuters, ragged from the stress,
Had donned more ‘buccaneering’ dress
And taken out the Cutty Sark
For ‘pleasure boating’ in Hyde Park;
(But sadly – t’was unlucky chance –
The wind had pushed them out to France.)

I think before next time it rains
We’ll need a vote upon the drains,
And hopefully, though wisdom’s thin,
We’ll have more votes to take ‘Eau’ in;
What good can ‘go alone’ pretend
And who would vote to lose a friend?

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To EU or not to EU

Amicable Reader,

After the reaction to my last political post, I thought I’d be clever enough to avoid continuing on that same wise again for the remainder of this trail of internet that some call a blog, allow me, well-beloved Reader, to happily fail in that goal entirely.

“Never put your political feelings on the internet, it’s just a bad idea” – every wise person ever

I was going to vote leave. That’s the sum of it. As I’m sure the majority of the nation has done in the run up to the referendum, I’d had a gut reaction, googled a few figures, heard some good reckonings at a pub somewhere, and come to a conclusion. Blimey they were some convincing reckonings. I figured I’d do a bit more research closer to the time – google would handle that too – and then whatever I found would probably support my previous feelings, or I’d continue googling things until it did.

If I’m willing to be so easily-swayed and inexpert in my decision making, how many others are the same? What kind of informed decision can a referendum actually bring? – with the result led by knee-jerk reactions, propaganda, and manipulation from both sides, each of which are again being weighed in upon by experts with one-sided and incomplete views. It is not the job of the people of Britain to consider so many ideas and put them together into a reasonable decision looking at all angles, that’s the work of government researchers, who would take months to get anywhere towards a sensible and well-considered result.

As L’Estrange explained 350 years ago, although perhaps not in the most palatable way to our modern tongues, there are paid people in government who are simply well informed in these things, and it is the job of the nation to elect a government that will bring the right people to those roles. It is the job of the government to make the great decisions that, if given over to the public, would simply be an ill-informed guess because hardly any member of the voting population has the time to research the problem as a whole and afterwards recommend a sensible and complete solution.

Will there soon be found a referendum on every idea the government has, so that if it goes well the government can pat itself on the back for wisely handing it over to the people, or if it goes badly to instead blame the people, who took the decision out of the government’s hands?

In my opinion, a government that gives such an important decision over to the public because it is too nervous to make the decision, with its own confused explanation of the facts and splits within itself adding to the confusion, is a very dangerous government indeed.

Do not think, dearest Reader, that I am against the public voice or the public vote – but this is not an election, this is a particular decision that requires much time, thought and, expert knowledge; and it shouldn’t be affected by the waffle and hot air of a hundred different opinions, each shouting to be heard from behind their own hidden agendas. Indeed, if we have such little faith in the government that we demand a referendum rather than accept the decision of those we elected to make informed and forward thinking decisions on our behalf, then it is the government that needs changing, not the method of decision making.

P.S.
I’ll be blogging a bit more again now I’ve remembered my password.

Why Immigration is Awesome

Worthy Reader,

I have restrained myself from being too political upon these curious folds of the internet where my blog is perpetually perched, but certain notions have made me write this blog post. Whether I publish it or whether it remains quiet like countless other posts is yet to be seen, but I suppose your reading this proves quite assuredly the former.

Immigration is awesome. It’s been proven countless times throughout history. It does not reduce job prospects for those already here, and it enriches, not deminishes our culture.

At the end of the 17th century the king of France, Louis XIV, dramatically increased his persecution of protestants, leading to an incredible exodus of French workers entering Britain – largely into the south of England. The population of England is supposed to have risen by between 2 and 3% in a matter of a year or so; if it happened today that would be the equivalent of nearly one and a half million people, with many, many more following in subsequent years.

Estimated figures of current annual immigration, including some idea of illegal immigration numbers, is only about 10% of that; and it appears to be falling.

So, why is immigration awesome?

Firstly, the economy has always flourished following immigration; rather than losing jobs, history has shown us that immigration brings huge new opportunities to workers; both those who are new to this country and those who have lived here all their lives. For example, the Tudor dynasty had a love for Italian styles and openned up Britain to the world in a way that this small medieval country had never been before. By doing so, rather than remaining isolated and poor, the entire country revelled in the renaisance and amazing ‘foreign’ ideas. By having foreign workers, designers, architects, artists, and many more besides, Britain’s economy and culture flourished, and many things that are now seen as very British came here for the first time from distant lands.

The economy followed the same suite following the mass French protestant migration of the 1680s-1700s, when at the first arrival of the poor, wandering French, they were disliked and distrusted; they soon employed themselves in their previous skills, and brought new wonders to Britain. Whole parts of London were built to accomodate the huge growth in silk weaving that the French craftsmen brought with them, which would stoke the furnaces of economy for the rest of the eighteenth century; bringing jobs to tens of thousands of otherwise prospectless Englishmen.

Likewise, our culture is far from a constant ‘English’ way of life, and there is barely any part that has not come from other parts of the world. Tea was introduced to us by the descendants of Portuguese explorers who immigrated here; sausages were brought over by Roman immigrants. Even our language barely holds a note of those truly native ‘British’ who lived here two thousand years ago, and is instead a poetic mixture of Latin, German, and other odd fragments of languages that we so happily speak.

We’re always afraid that change will result in disaster; some going as far as believing that only a fool would risk nationality by allowing immigration. But if anything has any track record of ending in great fortune, wonderful artwork, and an enriched culture, then it is immigration. And by disliking and fearing immigration we are putting at risk not just our nationality, but our country itself.

Adue, kind reader.

George Carleton’s Little Note

Erruptious Reader,

It was probably something you ate.

(tl;dr – one of my old books has writing in it.)

I made a little discovery today of something that reminded me of the joyous liberality of our present times, and I thought it interesting to post here, and hopefully entertain you while you eat those cornflakes*.

I have been doing a little research lately on my third edition of Bellarmine’s Disputations – the Catholic response to the Protestant reformations of the 16th century that systematically and cleverly argues for the return of Catholicism to the Protestant countries. The text itself had a dramatic effect across Europe, especially in England and Germany – two Protestant heartlands – and esteemed clergymen were paid to write rebuttals to what was seen as an incredibly dangerous doctrine to the Protestant cause.

My copy of this fascinatingly important text dates from 1591, a third edition of the first volume, printed in Paris because I’m fairly certain it was banned from being printed this side of the channel. My copy is full of handwritten notes in a mixture of Latin and Ancient Greek, save for one where the reader was so taken aback by what they read that they forgot all their learning and spelt out their horror in plain English.

When I first bought the book I didn’t pay much attention to the writing, since I believed it belonged to a late 17th/early 18th century owner, and I instead focussed on what I believed to be earlier names written in other parts of the book.

Well, looks like I was very wrong; having taken a new look at the book the writing is clearly that of someone who learned to write towards the end of the 16th century, since the style and notations used are of that period. What’s more is the handwriting matches a name written neatly onto the title page of the book; George Carleton.

The date of the handwriting, the depth of knowledge shown by the annotations, and the subject of the book itself point to this George Carleton being the George Carleton who was born in 1559 at Carleton Hall in Cumbria. He rose to bishop of Llandaff in 1618 and a year later became the bishop of Chichester.

Even more interestingly, he wrote a book called Iurisdiction, regall, episcopall, papall, which was one of the many rebuttals to Bellarmine’s Disputations published in those times of religious trouble. So it seems that I own not only a copy of the Disputations, but, within its margins, own the first manuscript notes of Carleton’s Iurisdiction written in about 1609, the year before that book’s first edition appeared.

Anyway, before I went on excitedly about books and the history that a single margin note can contain, I mentioned how one particular one of them had reminded me of the difficulty and the passions that rose up on either side of the Catholic and Protestant countries.

Carleton’s one English note, where the text surprised him so much he gave up writing in Latin or Ancient Greek, reads thus:

O Lord! how is t[his] long suffering al[low]ed. O show th[y] servannts the judgm[en]t of the great whore.

The square brackets are where either the words are shortened, or the 19th century trimming of the pages has removed some of the writing.

This note accompanies an area underlined in the introduction to the book, which roughly translates to:

On the one hand, we understand not the human counsel, prudence, and strength, that has long stopped the Roman Pontifactum; just as much as we understand this rock, founded by God, and by Him strengthened, and of the angels that guard the one heaven. However, by the providence of God and his protection, they may in no way against the gates of hell prevail, whether it be for them the gates of the persecuting tyrants, or their acceptance of the madness of these times, or the anger of those causing these schisms, whether they know their crimes or not.

The note that Carleton wrote refers to the judgement of the ‘great whore’ in Revelation 19:2, where God sends an evil immortal harlot to hell for corrupting the earth.

In this single momentary thought that he penned, he sums up his belief that God and the earth suffer from the corruption of the Catholic church, and voices his wish that Catholics will all be sent to hell for eternity.

Perhaps we forget just how much anger there once was between different parts of the same religion, and though there is far from peace yet between the different dreams of God, there is so little war compared to what there once was. And so much difference in thought, compared to the absolute hate that once existed in so many.

I think I was just surprised to find a little moment of hate written on the page of one of my books over 400 years on.

*I wouldn’t blame you if you aren’t.