Hard Brexit? Oh Matron!

I voted to remain in the European Union, I wish to make that incredibly clear. The EU may not function perfectly – it often adds an unnecessary level of bureaucracy, it is not perfectly democratic and the idea of currency union was obviously going to benefit larger states in the long run.

All of this being said, it does seem to be the case that those who wished us leave (at least those who were running the campaign) forgot that we all elected our own MEPs. This is especially convenient for everybody’s favourite opportunistic Neo-Nationalist Nigel Farage when you consider that he has been drawing his wage from the European Parliament since 1999, the year that his position was established. This is a man who detests the European Union so much that he once, allegedly, voted for the Green Party due to their allying Eurosceptic ideas. The incredible irony of a climate change denier voting for the Greens is, I suspect, not lost on many.

A roundup of recent post-Brexit news does not generally look positive for the UK in the short term or, for that matter, in the long term.

It is promising, however, that groups up and down the country are trying to deal with the job of deciding which pieces of legislature ought to be kept and which ought to be binned. It is promising to see that people can recognise that not every piece of European “red tape” has to be removed from these shores in order to reshape our country. It can only be hoped that both National and Local Government follow up on these suggestions.

What is quite concerning is the fact that Theresa May is unable to move on with negotiations without triggering Article 50 and yet still wishes to try and use the Royal Prerogative to push through her so-called plan without even discussing it with Parliament. It also confuses me somewhat how those who wished to “take back control” cannot accept that this is a perfectly reasonable request. If you wished to see the powers-that-be push through a deal that no one is quite sure that they want, you could have just let the EU negotiate TTIP.

Some more promising news can be seen in LIDL’s insistence on investing in the UK whilst all of this is going on. “Now Lidl invests in post-Brexit Britain with a £70million headquarters and 5,000 new jobs” proclaims the Mail. The Sun goes with “BREXIT BOOST: Lidl shows commitment to UK post-Brexit by announcing the creation of 5,000 jobs”. It even makes the Evening Express of Aberdeen. So do LIDL plan on investing in the Aberdeen area? No. Quite literally all of the investment is planned for London. The sub-headings let you know though. The Daily Mail’s also includes this gem – “Announcement comes after Lloyds of London moved fewer jobs than expected to Europe”.

Apparently that’s a positive. They’re still moving the jobs, but it’s okay because less of them are moving than expected. The Irish Independent suggests that Dublin could become the new EU base of operations. It also points out that if the UK Government can reach an agreement with the European Union over the financial sector’s access to the single market, then Lloyd’s may not need to move after all. That doesn’t seem to be the direction that Theresa May and her minions are heading in.

The Liberal Democrat stance on all of this is that there should be a second referendum on the Government’s Brexit deal. Some people would have you believe that this is the same as having the first referendum again. It is not. I would urge anyone wishing to keep the process of British democracy as transparent as possible to vote for the Liberal Democrats wherever possible.

This year has seen phenomenal by-election results for the party and I hope that these will continue into the new year.

Happy Christmas,

Daniel

We’re Not Dead (I Promise)

This blog has been inactive for a while, I know. It’s also driven away from politics quite considerably at times. The problem is that sometimes the personal and political line can be somewhat blurry. As such, I’ve set up a personal blog for myself at As The Free Bird Flies.

I will endeavour to keep both that blog and this one updated to a reasonable level, but part of my problem has been that I’ve suffered from a certain amount of writers’ block, feeling as though I have nothing important to say, despite a tumultuous 2016 in politics. But I’ll keep trying.

Obviously, I can’t speak for Michael and Dave, however I will update with a Brexit-related post in the coming week.

Be happy,

Daniel

When You Wish Upon a Star

Watching something you love break in your very hands is painful. Just ask any child born in the VHS era. When a favourite Disney film/cartoon got trapped in the machine, it was as though a part of you died.

For those of us lucky enough to have bridged the gap between video and DVD in our younger days, however, there was always that faint hope that you would receive an upgrade from your parents.
And, I suppose that is how life can be. You find yourself looking on as everything you care about crashes down around you, the myths that some child that you faintly remember being created crumbling like the White Cliffs of Dover. There comes a point where you say “enough”, as you realise that you can no longer continue hurting yourself for the sake of others.

So life gives you other opportunities, sometimes a route out, sometimes just time out.

Take it.

Daniel

This World of Ours

Given recent events, it seems pertinent to rekindle the fires that have never burned particularly brightly on this blog of ours.

I’d like to start by adding that this is not merely about love versus hate. I believe that inside every mind there is both love and hate and, whilst not everyone has the capacity to kill, most will have an inclination to commit some sort of hate-crime. They also have enough self-awareness to realise that this is completely irrational.

By definition, both of these recent attacks in Orlando and in Birstall, can be defined as terrorism. But does that honestly matter? When the motivation behind murder is extreme political ideology, it doesn’t really matter what we call. If we examine history, our past is riddled with terrorism. Every colonial war, every state-sponsored genocide is terrorism – killing for political reasons. One man’s terrorist is another man’s hero.

We have spent so much glorifying our country’s great history, but when will these neo-Nationalistic pains-in-arses like Farage and Golding stop and realise that what made us ‘great’ was our ability to invade less technologically advanced cultures, take their best words and implant our values upon them?

I digress.

It is within our human nature to both love and hate, but when hate overrides love, shit hits the proverbial fan. Our very essence is, perhaps, defined by the background we find ourselves living in.

That is not to say our parents, but our entire situation. I spent a large chunk of my teenage years feeling intensely angry at my surroundings and was, at times physically violent to those who I would consider friends. There is not necessarily anything particularly unusual about that, but some people never get over that.

Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.

Dalai Lama

In the end, all we can do is show our love and compassion and hope that that is enough to impact on those around you.

Daniel

The drug war- the new age of this conflict.

This piece is different, this is not a plan. Whilst I have thought of both sides of the argument, I did not intend to write this piece. It was going to be a piece on how likely Donald Trump is going to win, and what we can do to minimise his effects on the world, or even just how to deal with it. So, as is the way, I went on the net to find some statistics to back my points up. Now I’m no American, and know only a handful of the news outlets that exist, but I do know of CNN, which relatively speaking isn’t too biased  from what I’ve seen of them. I clicked on the US section, to which I find:

Story highlights

• Overdose deaths from opioids, including prescription painkillers and heroin, have nearly quadrupled since 1999
• Saturday was National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day, which encourages Americans to turn over old or unwanted pills
• Eight people overdose in one Massachusetts town, two die

I’m not usually moved by this, but this is something else. Some part of me expected this figure to go down, bearing in mind how much of a priority it seems to Police in America. This demonstrates more than a turn of a head, a blind eye if you must. I’ll leave the rest to your imagination.

However, these headlines show more, it shows not only abuse of illegal drugs, but legal. Painkillers? Who would’ve thought these small tablets designed to ease a headache would be one of the biggest killers. And that’s entirely why, much like tobacco and alcohol (as is discussed further in Daniel’s article I am a Cider Drinker, I Drink it Only When it is Socially Acceptable), it turns from a small, whisper, to a nagging pester, to a scream that drowns out anything you ever loved. You can see why lots of these drugs have been banned from consumer usage.

But to put these drugs out of a lawful eye to someone who wants to sell you more and more for their benefit is hardly an ethical, or even an effective means to stop people taking hard drugs. And as seen in Portugal, legalising all drugs can have it’s benefits, as shown in this chart:

Source: Transform

These articles really provoked me to think of the drug war, and who is to blame. Where does the line end with legalisation? Should we have further control on some legal drugs? Feel free to respectfully discuss below, and I hope you have a good time.

Dave

Side note: when I said a day, I meant a fortnight, obviously.

 

Bibliography:

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/04/30/health/opioid-heroin-overdoses-drug-takeback-day/index.html

http://mic.com/articles/110344/14-years-after-portugal-decriminalized-all-drugs-here-s-what-s-happening#.XKCDJWBBR

 

For in That Sleep of Death What Dreams May Come?

Despite the current political climate being full of drama and rife with possible topics for a blog post, I find myself with writer’s block. At first this was going to be about refugee children. Then I thought about the local elections and the fantastic gains made by the Lib Dems. And then I started thinking about Hamlet, oddly enough. So that is where the inspiration for this post has come from.

The famous ‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy has been a source of inspiration for centuries now. A piece that many self-respecting actors would give anything to say in its proper context. A speech used to inspire music and poetry.

Yet at its heart, it is a much sadder, more traumatic spinning of Shakespeare’s linguistic magic than many people ever realise. There are three small segments that I want to cover, and not in the order they appear in the speech.

To be or not to be-that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And, by opposing, end them.

This part of the text really starts us off. What is Hamlet contemplating? His own suicide.

Is it better for him to take his own life or to just accept that life has been unfair and carry on living his painful life.

In our modern society, the peak period for committing suicide is middle age, although there is a peak amongst the elderly too. This is becoming a more and more prevalent issue, and whilst some of the stigma around mental health issues has been reduced, many people – especially men – do not want to talk about their issues.

Samaritans are a charity who are there to be spoken to if ever you feel that your life is falling apart. Their number is 116 123.

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all

It’s not uncommon for people to just pass on by someone who is actually in need of company. Whilst not what Shakespeare actually meant, this can be a message to us all – for many people the social conscience is stronger than the moral conscience.

People see someone who is upset or lonely and leave them be as it is not their problem. That person who sits on the street? Talk to them. Listen to them. They had hopes and dreams once too.

Which brings me quite nicely to my final section. For me, this is the part of the soliloquy which resonates the most:

To die, to sleep –
To sleep, perchance to dream. Aye, there’s the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

Life is unpredictable; for every trough, there is a peak – every low has a high.

Whatever your situation, wherever your life takes you, remember that you are not alone. If your life is ended, what chance is there for you to change your situation?

There is always something more for you achieve, someone waiting for you around the corner.

And if nobody has told you this lately, you are loved.

Daniel

Update blog from Dave

This isn’t anything political, but it has been a long time since any of us have posted (let alone me). So I thought I would give you the reasons why and what has been going on recently.

However I must apologise for not posting recently.

Anyway, as some of the younger readers will know, in Britain anyway, the exam period is coming up very soon. Studying has therefore occupied a lot of what would’ve been free time. I hope you can understand.

Secondly, lot’s of things also occupy my (not free?) time. As much as I find studying is integral, we all still need to do other things to keep ourselves, our social lives, and our loved ones mentally afloat. Therefore this blog has taken a step back in my life.

Finally, I’ve not found much I can’t talk about myself. I’m not a very creative person, and as much as it is fair to distribute information. There’s only so many times you can hear some raving leftist discuss (in a completely unbiased fashion may I add) the denial of the 3,000 Syrian child refugees, or the Panama scandal before you call it in a day and go and stare at Pingu gifs for an hour (a favoured pastime of mine).

Don’t worry, I will be doing a political piece later today, and I promise it won’t be clichéd (coming from the guy who has done an update blog).

And I’m confident in saying that after the exam period is up, we will be more active on this blog.

Dave.

Here We Go Again

This post is not, first and foremost, majorly political. I just felt the need to put some thoughts down and given that this blog has not been updated in several months and has a very, very small following, it seems as good a place as any.

It’s Daniel here, in case you’re wondering.

As an 18 year old living in a Britain increasingly targeted towards middle-aged and elderly people, it is understandable that I am stressed beyond belief. It is understandable that I struggle to keep up with my surroundings. And it is understandable that I sometimes fail to maintain what little motivation that I have from one day to the next.

What is not understandable is that nobody in power seems to have major concerns about this.

Last academic year was horrendous. Not only did I have to contend with attempting to make the vast leap between GCSE and A-Level, I also lost my grandpa. It still hurts and it always will, but life carries on and I am determined that the pride that he had in me will be continued. My desire to become an actor has never been greater.

Earlier in that year, as some readers may know, there was road traffic incident involving 4 pupils and an ex-pupil from my school. I was not especially close to them, but had previously been in a performing arts class with the two girls who died.

Since then I have started to make progress. I had a few months of counselling at a local children’s centre and I will ever thankful to my counsellor. Progress was made, I learnt that sometimes I just need to talk.

At least that’s how it felt at first. Towards the end of the school year, I decided to drop one of my subjects, which I did not, perhaps, deal well with to the subject teacher, but I apologised for that and as far as I am concerned that issue is out of the way now.

This year started reasonably well but as it has progressed, I have regressed. Dark thoughts will likely always be a part of who I am now. I accept that. I have never actively thought about suicide, even if I have sometimes wondered whether things would have been better were I not around.

I have auditioned for two acting schools thus far and been rejected by both. Good start, right?

Admittedly, it is the case that people are regularly turned away after the first audition. Again, I accept this. I just wish that I was in with the next step of the journey already.

I wonder how many of the readers of this post will have seen Brassed Off. It’s quite a moving piece, but one scene has particularly lodged itself into the darkest recesses of my brain.

Phil, played wonderfully by Stephen Tompkinson, loses almost everything and, after an expletive-laden rant dressed as a clown, attempts to hang himself at the pit that he’s worked at for most of his life.

The scene disturbed me incredibly from the off. The irony of a clown trying to end his life was not lost on me either.

I suppose the idea that someone has the power of life and death on their hands scares me slightly.

Anyway, after that minor detour, I return to what I was saying. Many people, older than I am, would say that they don’t regret anything that they have done. These people are either lucky or liars. Maybe I have an exceptional level of regret for an 18 year old? I don’t know.

But I will list the things that are my deepest regrets. I regret that:

• I didn’t make more of an effort to see my grandpa more frequently in months before his death.
• I have failed to live up to the expectations placed upon me academically.
• I have failed to balance my time effectively.
• I have a tiny amount of social life most weeks, yet cannot complete a homework outside of certain environments.

Today, I went to a friend’s house and revised.

Successfully.

That is something that I feel is quite an achievement for the day.

I have one of the best groups when it comes to people who I can talk to honestly and openly, and this post is dedicated to them. You know who you are.

Here’s to a new tomorrow and hopefully I’ll actually feel like getting up in the morning.

Shalom

I am a Cider Drinker, I Drink it Only When it is Socially Acceptable

Let me just apologise. It’s been just under a month since I last posted something to the blog. I’ve been busy and unfortunately A-levels come before hobbies.

I’ll start us off with a statistic: in 2013 there were 6,592 alcohol-related deaths in England. That’s taken from the “Statistics on Alcohol: England, 2015” report.

Now, I’m not here to tell you not to drink – it’s a personal choice, in the same way that religious beliefs and dog-owning are personal choices. The problem is that people need to be educated before they go out and drink, whether they binge or otherwise.

The likelihood is that you won’t suffer long-term effects of alcohol until it’s too late. You know what the short-term problems are; hangovers, loss of inhibitions, lack of awareness, sleep deprivation and so on, but how much do you understand about what’s going on inside you?

It’s different for men and women for a start. Basically, women are generally smaller than men and have a lower concentration of water, so the blood alcohol level increases faster. It should emphasised that we are talking about your sex here, whatever your gender may be. I’m not a biologist and I don’t claim to be an expert on this sort of thing, but that pretty much sums up what you need to know.

According the NHS’s Live Well website, most people who suffer with alcohol-related health problems aren’t even alcoholics, they just regularly exceed the recommended unit limit and have done for years. For those who aren’t sure, at time of writing the daily guidelines are 2-3 units for women and 3-4 units for men. So, if you were to drink a bottle of wine by yourself in one go, that would be around 9-12 units. That’s a binge drink. There are people who do that on a regular basis and it just isn’t safe. The risk of developing some sort of medical issue is phenomenally high. There isn’t a guarantee that the UK’s recommended limits are accurate for you either because it depends on so many individual factors, such as body mass, sex, age and pre-existing health problems.

A high-risk drinker is most likely to notice effects on their long-term health, obviously. Higher-risk drinking is defined by the NHS Live Well website as regularly drinking more than 8 units a day/50 units a week for men or regularly drinking more than 6 units a day/35 units a week for women. This could increase your risk of issues such as cancer of the mouth, neck and throat, liver cirrhosis, breast cancer, high blood pressure or an irregular heart beat. These are some of the physical, long-term issues which might be linked to binge drinking regularly. I don’t want to scare you but this is what the experts believe.

A lot of people drink alcohol as a coping mechanism. Imagine this: You’re a teacher, you’ve had a stressful day at work – kids running you ragged. You come home. You live alone. You crack open a bottle of wine and before you really realise what’s happening, it’s gone. Finished. You repeat this process every weekday of term-time. You aren’t an alcoholic. You don’t rely on alcohol to make you feel better. It just helps. Blurs the edges a little bit when you most need to escape. What you don’t realise, at first, is that the voices that you start hearing after years of the same old routine aren’t because you’ve left the radio on. They’re telling you that you aren’t good enough, that you should just end it all now. You’re a schizophrenic.

This scenario might not seem the most realistic to you, but some of the most serious effects of alcohol abuse are the mental health effects. Personality disorders, schizophrenia, depression and anxiety are just some of these whilst, according to the Mental Health Foundation, up to 65% of suicides can be linked to excessive drinking and up to 70% of men who succeed in committing suicide are intoxicated. There is a massive gap here between men and women and it has to be said that we seriously need to encourage people, particularly men, who have alcohol-related problems to reach out for help.

It puts strain on relationships too. Due to the lowered inhibitions of many people, they often feel a heightened sense of happiness. There is a dangerous flip-side to this: a heightened sense of anger. You know the sort of thing. You walk down Silver Street in Doncaster too late at night and it gets you a chorus of “What you lookin’ at?” It’s not nice, but imagine what happens when this spills over into your relationships with people you care about. You start to argue all of the time. Your relationship becomes abusive. According to the Institute of Alcohol Studies’ “Binge Drinking and Europe” report, there is an increased risk of marital violence when the husband is a heavy drinker and in cases where the wife is a heavy drinker, spouses show a high rate of aggression. These women also often feel less desire to resolve conflicts between themselves and their spouses. The same report claims that “parental drinking can affect the environment in which a child grows up through financial strain, poor parenting, marital conflicts and negative role models”. In many reviews it has also been claimed that alcohol is a factor in child abuse 16% of the time.

If this problem is so massive, what do we do? In all honesty, the most logical option seems to be to reduce advertising. No billboards plastered with WKDs, in the same way as we no longer have bus stops with a packet of Marlboro cigarettes caked to their sides.

Would that work? I don’t know. But surely it’s worth a try?

Daniel

Read More:

• Statistics on Alcohol: England, 2015
• Cheers? Understanding the Relationship Between Alcohol and Mental Health
• Binge Drinking and Europe
• DrinkAware
• NHS Live Well
• Know Your Limits

Bah humbug, even A minor doesn’t sound the same anymore.

Hello everybody, I would like to firstly apologise for my lack of posting over this last fortnight, that is due to nothing beyond a lack of time and a lack of making such time. Again I apologise.

With that out of the way, I would like to discuss the issues I have with the music industry today. Now I know I sound like one of those old people sitting in their rocking chairs screaming about how they miss the days of  George Formby, Bob Dylan or even Albert J King, but I also recognise the 60’s, the 70’s (my favourite specific musical era) and the 80’s weren’t just amazing and filled with perfection (who remembers later Depeche mode?).

I just want to clarify that I do listen to (if not as regularly) music with pop influence, bands such as Scandal (not the Americans, and more their earlier stuff), the Police, and the Beatles are some of my favourites to relax on a Sunday afternoon.

However, I just can’t seem to find any songs I enjoy in the charts, I skip through channels on the TV and all I can find are the same canned notes and words, packed into a neatly arranged package with less genuine emotion than an episode of the antiques roadshow ready for the masses to eat up, perhaps dance to then forget about after a week or two.

Now granted, some ‘special’ songs do make it past the fortnight mark (happy, just happy…). It seems to worry me that historians WILL find this ditty and presume people really loved this ballad, and after listening to it will regard it as a classic along with the works of Beethoven, Bach and Mozart (shudder).

Another issue I have is the issues covered. Ever since the 50’s it’s always been sex and drugs, but where’s the rock and roll? I will admit this isn’t the most prominent issue, but a bit of variety here and there would do. Doesn’t even have to be deep, just heartfelt.

Why? Because it’s an easy buck: you don’t need to use different chords (if you want proof, watch the Axis of Awesome’s four chords song), it is quick, you can write about similar topics with basic words and structure, slap a big name on it, and there you are, sleeping in a bed of money. Whilst I am a strong believer in making a living, I am not a strong believer in making millions in a rinse repeat method leaving others dry.

Now if you do listen to this music, I do not mean to offend the music, simply how and why it is made, and I apologise if you feel offended; but I ask you to do one thing, listen to different music. It doesn’t have to be wildly different, just find related artists until you find your taste flourishes. It is surprisingly liberating, your perception of the world will be sharpened and you could meet new people/ make friends based off these tastes (stay safe).

I would like to conclude by saying that I will try my hardest to bring you more practical blogs every Sunday, and thank you for remaining patient.

Stay strong, David.

 

http://www.officialcharts.com/charts/singles-chart/

Just a warning, this video does contains infrequent strong language, I couldn’t find a version without (I’m sorry). But if you can, and put the URL (hyperlink, etc) in the comments, I will check it, and replace the previously existing video.