Bugger!

As you all know I've not posted for a while, Beccy has been admirably steering the blog along while I've been wrapped up in dealing with migrants, miscreants and general rubbish stuff at work. I will get onto what we've been up to in a bit but first I'm going to take this opportunity to have a bit of a rant about events this week - and if you don't like it don't read it - it's my blog!
I always used to be for the right of the general public to be given the opportunity to be able to say whatever they want, to have a say in their future etc etc. But that was before Football radio phone ins when the Great British public ring up and say things like -
"Wey they should just sack the board and appoint Jose Morinho", and when asked by the radio person how exactly that could be done, reply "Ahh divven kna but they should dee it like." I decided that perhaps it maybe wasn't ideal to ask some people how the future of the country should be decided.
That view was confirmed when I watched the news last night. Britain has voted to leave the EU - OK that's fine if it's based on a reasoned argument with a clear plan on what happens next. I'm sure many people have a clear idea and vision of what the country will be like in say 5 years time - but please hurry up and tell us what it is. But back to the news - an interviewer asks two old biddies on the street what they thought - we think it's great they replied, we want to go back to "the good old days."
 Now had I been the interviewer I'd have asked "What good old days are they then? Before or in between the wars, maybe when rationing was still around, perhaps it was a bit later on, when maternity/paternity leave was pretty much unheard of or when workers rights weren't enshrined in a European wide rule. Maybe it was in the days of the 3 day week, when electricity was cut off or maybe in the deeply divisive decade of the 80's when we stopped making stuff and it was all me me me." I'm not saying that the EU did or didn't make any difference to all of that, it probably didn't (except to workers rights), because in truth I really don't know - I just want to know when those good old days were?
 Then the BBC cuts to a market in Sheffield and asks two stallholders what they thought. They both voted leave, but didn't expect it to happen. One is now scared and the other worries if he did the right thing - if you weren't sure with a decision of this magnitude and which affects so much - why did you vote that way? Oh let me guess it'll have been because of those immigrants who come and take our jobs. I reckon the job centres will be full on Monday with people desperate to take those jobs picking potatoes, processing chickens and cleaning old folks home that those selfish buggers from Eastern Europe have been claiming for themselves. By the following weekend I fully expect all the car wash places that have sprung up because people can't be arsed to wash their own -"I'll just get the Poles to do it for a fiver" will be inundated with new white British workers whistling Land of Hope and Glory as they polish your alloy wheels!

You may have sensed I'm a tad pissed off - you'd be right.

On a purely personal level this decision will have monumental effects on how the rest of my life is to be lived. Moving to France in a couple of years is no longer a certainty, me and Beccy can no longer plan on being able to go to live in Brittany as simply as we could before. The right of movement goes two ways. Yes we probably will be able to go and live there, but we won't simply be able to turn up one day and just not go home. If we won't automatically accept French people into our green and pleasant land - why would they automatically accept us. I have no skills that are of any use to anybody not involved in Customs & Immigration work - so would fail miserably on any points based system. Our only hope is that we become like Switzerland and accept freedom of movement in order to accept free trade - but then if you voted on the basis of " keeping those bloody job stealing immigrants out" that would have been a bit of a wasted vote then wouldn't it!

Like I said normal service will resume when I'll tell you all about the Whittle's trip, the summer ball, dog & kitten rescue and all the frivolities of Cyprus. In the meantime I'm off for a beer and a lie on the sunbed