Let's talk about the war

I got this from Calum Mathieson's Facebook page. 

From the cover of the Bella Caledonia magazine today, I also got this:

                                 How we escape the delusions of Brexit Britain 

There are quite a few pernicious delusions stalking the UK. I would like to say these delusions are limited to England, but sadly they can be found everywhere in Brexit Britain.

1 The UK has lost control over its laws and is being told what to do by the EU.  Only 13% of laws in the UK owe their origins to the EU. 87% of laws originate in the UK.

2 The people in the EU Parliament and on the EU Commission are unelected. In fact, all representatives in the EU Parliament are elected by the voters of their home countries and members of the EU Commission are nominated by their home governments. If you don't vote, you don't get the government you want in the UK (even if you do vote in some parts of the UK) or the MEPs you want - and your elected politicians in Westminster will nominate people to the EU Commission whom you probably don't approve of. 

3 The EU is run by Germany for its own benefit. Germany is a powerful member of the EU, because of its population alone but also because it has a buoyant and healthy economy. Germany struggled to absorb the former East Germany when Communism fell but it did it. The former Communist states of eastern Europe are also being successfully absorbed into the EU. When Czechia and Slovakia split in 1993, they did so peacefully and have now been welcomed into the EU. When the former Yugoslavia split, it was a complete disaster for all of the population, which culminated in a civil war and it will take a long time for the various countries to recover and find their place in Europe, assuming they want one. 

France, the UK, Spain and Italy are equally powerful members of the EU and they also pay in to the EU to support other, poorer countries. 

There is no 'top dog' in the EU. 

Is that what bothers some people in the UK? Do they imagine they are entitled to be a top nation? A world power? Up there with the USA, China and Russia? That honestly is impossible. The UK is a set of islands off the coast of western Europe. Great Britain is the name for the biggest of these islands. It's not a description of how good or powerful the UK is. 

Within the EU, the UK is part of a team. It's not adapting very well to this role and sadly a lot of politicians encourage people to be backward looking and to harbour resentment of other EU nations, even though the UK has been a member of the EU 'club' for 42 years now.  

4 The UK won 'a glorious victory' against Nazism. That is a complete lie. The Russians won that victory for us. 80% of the casualties of the second world war were Russians defending their country against a Nazi invasion. 

It can't be healthy to constantly refer to events that ended so long ago: it's a century since the first world war ended; 73 years in the case of the second world war. I reckon there's no one left who can remember the first world war and gey few who remember the second. You'd have to be born about 1930 to remember the events of the second world war. 

Up above, the Telegraph uses words like 'hate' and 'shameful' when talking about our German neighbours. I've heard similar references to France and French people. I have to tell you the Germans don't talk about the UK that way. The French also don't talk about their German neighbours that way and I've met a lot of French and German people who are confused about why the UK can't seem to move on from the second world war. It's worth pointing out that while most of western Europe has been occupied, tramped over by invading armies and subjected to appalling levels of mistreatment by their neighbours, England and Wales never have. Not since 1066 anyway. I can't say the same for either Ireland or Scotland, since what has happened in both of these countries looks to me like an occupation lasting centuries. 

As for the Telegraph 'celebrating' events in the history of Europe that killed millions of people for the second time in successive generations, words fail me... 

5 The willingness of some UK patriots to use fascist ideology while hiding behind WW2 past. Let's start with the UK press: how on earth have we ended up with the most extreme right wing press in - I suspect - the world? Almost all foreign-owned, some of them nothing more than vanity projects for rich men but others - sinisterly - following an agenda that the USA's Tea Party would be pleased with. If you want to know where fake news came from, check the pages of the Mail, Telegraph and the  Express.

Then there's UKIP. the definition of political failure: a one-story party which should have disappeared off the TV screens and newspaper pages once Brexit had been achieved. Instead, it hangs on with no policies, no ideas and no MPs. Ironically, the only place it has representation is the EU Parliament. And it doesn't have to answer for anything that happens in Brexit. Who carries the can? Who will pay? Why, you and me - of course.  

Even more to the right are groups like Britain First, the EDL and the SDL. We saw the SDL in action in 2014 after the Scottish Independence Referendum. Flag-waving in George Square, trying to intimidate pro-independence supporters, and threatening SNP and Green MSPs online. Britain First has the distinction of inspiring Thomas Mair who assassinated Jo Cox and Darren Osborne who killed a worshiper leaving the mosque in Finsbury Park. 

The fascist ideology described by KS up above allows newspapers and political parties in the UK to dismiss people with brown and black faces as foreigners: women wearing hijabs, folk who speak a different language and worship a different prophet. Then we can deny them their rights in law and let them live under the constant threat of being 'repatriated.' That is, picked up off the street, locked up in detention centres, kicked out of the country.

Most crushing of all, in my opinion, is the failure to see that we need these people. Every country in the EU has benefitted for centuries from migration. Scotland is richer for the arrival of Russian Jews, Poles, Italians, Irish people, Chileans, Indians and Pakistanis. Now we welcome Syrians. Like all the other migrants who have come here, they will repay our willingness to welcome them many times over.