Lottsathoughts

Sometimes, less is more. This can certainly be true in situations of disagreement or confrontation and let's face it, t he Brexit referendum has introduced confrontation and disagreement into our society on a scale unprecedented in many of our lifetimes. Confrontation is unsettling - many people avoid it if possible, others swing in with gusto and aggression, mistaking antagonism and hostility for strength. A better approach is neither avoidance nor hostility but the courage of calm assertiveness, along with a refusal to be distracted from the issue at stake. This is where so many of us in this country have gone wrong in the last 28 months. Too many, on both sides of the argument, are either attacking each other or spinning off in ever more detailed and tangential debates. From the Leave supporters, the slew of bizarre claims continues. The EU accounts are never audited. EU politicians are unelected. Why can't we trade with non-EU countries? Membership of the EU has turne...

If you want to know what democracy looks like, yesterday was it. 700,000 ordinary people giving up their weekend, travelling from all over the country and abroad, marching in solidarity against liars and those who would steal power by deception at the election booth. In the maelstrom of emotion of the last two years, one constant thread has been the argument that we must respect the will of “The People” along with urgent and sometimes aggressive assertions that anyone resisting Brexit is anti-democracy. We must all have searched our own hearts and motivations repeatedly to see if this is possibly true. But yesterday finally settled that question – because who are we, the 700,000, if we are not “The People”? "The People" is such a problematic term because of exactly this. You can never define who exactly is in and who is out. The people who voted two years ago but have since died - are they still "The People"? The people that were too young then but are n...

So now Mrs May has "promised" to overhaul our immigration system and thereby to ensure that low-skilled workers are denied entry to the UK. For the quadrillionth time in two years, I'm baffled. My ongoing resistance isn't some ideological stance, (though of course my starting point in any controversy is to assume that cooperation and friendship with neighbours is advisable). But I just don't understand how this latest news from May is a desirable goal. Who is going to do the low skilled jobs? Who is going to pick our fruit and veg? Who is going to staff our care homes? These jobs are already short-staffed and as the employers will tell you, Brits don't want to do these jobs. In the long term, doesn't this tend to a situation where Brits get all the low skilled, hence low paid, jobs while immigrants get the better positions? Doesn't this in fact condemn the British work force to remain on the lower rungs of employability? And if you think ...