Sunday 26 June 2016

NEW POLITICAL CLASS AND NO NEGATIVITY PLEASE

First of all what a week, exciting and terrifying.  Power is going back into the hands of the people. They have spoken. The Brexiters did not like the EU as it stands today. It is not the democracy we in England had all hoped for, we were battling with the Federal State for many years. I think everybody would agree that we all had the best intentions for it, but it is not working. We like our vote to mean something. It did not. There were so many areas that did not work, eg The fisherman, the huge amount of money after the subsidies which we had no control over, the voting system, the band, the army, etc. We know all this. As you support the Green Party I totally understand that you worry that the sytem was in place and although it was not perfect we should try and work at it. The unfair advantages to parts of the UK were not great. We live in a bubble in London protected from the reality of the rest of Britain that is often suffering. I personally want to see proportional representation, even if I do not approve of UKIP they received a huge amount of votes in the last election and although I do not like the rascism Mr Farage is force to be reackoned with. a voice that the People listen to. The Green party too. I also think there should be a second chamber in our parliament that is elected with real power too, the house of Lords is great and worked for quite a few years but our constitution is in need of updating. This could become a true mixture of parties and genuinely exciting. If we can take anything from this referendum,I think if we want peace please can we stop using the word Xenophobia. Nobody is this but political correctness only makes people boil over. Today I was in Vodaphone they were all from ethnic minorities and all had voted Brexit, they were young too no older than 26. They said if there was another referendum they would take all their friends who could vote as they did not like The European government that did not understand the people existing in the UK already. Remember we are not the size of France sadly, we have a population of over 64 million and France over 66. The new government within the UK could then be ready to help with the exciting new deals we will be offered from around the world from our safetyboat. We do not need to exclude who is already here and already helping with our society but everybody does need to pay tax from the rich to the poor alike. We need rich foreigners too. I disagree with most people on this, I do not know why The Conservatives were so hostile to them.

What we cannot do is fight like this between the Remainers who feel they are losing Europe, it is after all still just accross the boarder and they will hopefully come back when they realise we are not going to give them 9 billion? We won't stop being sold Mercedes and Fiats over night. We still need banks.


The 9 billion really is needed in parts of the UK for small schools and hospitals. They work better in the country and I do not know why they were got rid of in the first place. A school should remain a school and a hospital too. Just times change. Industry should be encouraged back into the UK eg electricity and some manufacturing. The Green party should have a huge say in some areas that have encouraged fracking. Unless we really need oil do we need this? Can't we use other methods eg solar etc. It should be a balanced parliament. If anything taught us over this, it is that people from different sides do work well together with a little positive pushing. If we take egos out of it and put patience. We are all humans are truly we want the same things. We cannot kill luck and talent by high taxation it does not work, the clever move away, but we need to make people want to help others. As for manners they are slipping away. A child who behaves badly should be told off. spitting is never great. There is so much to say but perhaps this helps a little . . Of course the boys in Parliament have plans and actually give them some credit. They worked non stop. There are areas that could have been explained better and there are areas that were shoved down our throat. After all we are still alive nothing drastic happened, so the city played with our money, it will go round in a circle, where from the general clean up we can start a cleaner fresher start with people more involved and more humanity towards others. We need to be calm and patient.
It's fine there will be a whole new political class,a better standard and then a cleaner Europe please. New fresh blood cannot be a bad thing. Boris Johnson should be there somewhere and hopefully a good strong cabinet will be formed. Lets enjoy the show from the comfort of our boat.
L.

Friday 24 June 2016

WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE

What do I think about the Election? I think everybody on facebook who knows me understands my position.

As the elite and the working classes voted Leave to get a fairer deal, then perhaps they had bubbling resentment being called educationally and mentally subnormal Little Englanders? It was all so patronising. 

On the night of the election I was at a party of only Brexiters, there was nobody stupid in the room, on the contrary, it was the best of British, the clever, the entrepreneurs., the brilliant. No journalists, though.  The night before I was being scared by an editor and asked who was voting Brexit, nobody of consequence.? Really that was the whole point it is the vote of the people of the UK, not celebrities and being sent endless leaflets from artists.

All the scaremongering of failing money markets, and bitching of the Remain party, the glossy brochure costing all us nine million pounds, did nothing to change the minds or the majority of voters.  The pencils with REMAIN on it in the polling stations were anything but democratic, the endless nagging and adverting where to vote,  egging the Brexiters to wake up.  The Brexiters  had none of the in government advertising, and advantages, but they had three forceful characters, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and the hardworking Nigel Farage who had the thankless task of representing UKIP. They spoke eloquently and knew how to get us up on a vile rainy day.  
They worked full time often against huge difficulties. Then the sadness of Jo Cox who appears to have lost her life needlessly.     
Surely you understand we had to leave,  the poor fisherman, the unfair costs, the unfair advantages, the EU army, the band, the  greedy MEPS, the banks, the inflexibility of the Federal State, hiding the secrecy of what was really going on,   and lastly immigration.
It is not surprising  that the Remain team won in London, a bubble of Gucci and Prada, Mercedes Cars and bursting property prices.  The remains did not consider for a second the poverty of the North, the country full with a population of 64 million, nearly the same as France's 66 million and the ramifications of that. No, they thought about themselves and are proving poor losers.  They have the power of media, yet  have shown that their spiteful tongues and fears did not sway the British voter. They were hardly egalitarian. I personally had so many people nagging me, but they were only thinking about themselves. They are living the ME generation so beautifully described by the Editor of Vogue China, Angelika Cheung, at a lecture I went to recently. She said that they lived in a bubble of social media and computers. They only cared about themselves.



However, the "remain" vote lost because of the young people, who did not vote because it was raining.   The young  now complain on Facebook and social media.  They now need another vote,  they made a mistake, they need only the under 30's to vote and so on. They need to grow a backbone None of them voted enough and were weak.  The irony is the left wing Northerners voted against the left-wing intellectuals. Blame the cardigan and weakness of  Mr Corbyn. Blame Ed Milliband who created this. Nigel Farage meant to be right wing has become their leader.  David Cameron looked more hysterical every day against the brilliant academically superior Boris Johnson. 

Let' us move on, there will be more of a salami effect so we must have humour and make this work. Let's try to keep everything calm. If you don't love England than we won't delay you, but if you love England, find a way around it.  pick up the telephone create new opportunities. Make yourself useful. We are lucky to be in a lifeboat where we can pick up clean and fresh deals in a most positive and democratic way, instead of hanging around in The Titanic, with the old Federal State of the EU, where even the flag cannot burn.

Sunday 5 June 2016

SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO? It's my party and I will cry if I want to.

This week I have received pamphlet after pamphlet to either leave Brexit, or stay in Europe. The English generally want to leave and the visitors within this country wish us to stay. I really do not understand why anyone would remain and fight the dysfunction? Set up after the war it had good intentions for prosperous trade, peace, and free movement of people within it. We entered later than anyone else and had to put up with the unfairness of our deal, at the time of Maggie Thatcher we were paying roughly three billion this has increased after subsidies to 9 billion.

Some people wish to stay for freedom of movement, for fear of change, for cheap roaming charges, for cheap holidays and flights,  but frankly why not have properly run borders and keep passport control in place?. It seriously does not harm anybody. As for roaming charges, "What's app" does the trick and there are always cheap holidays on offer. We have of course benefited being part of Europe, but sometimes it has been at the cost of our labourers eg the Polish Builders against the British, the Uber drivers against our Black Taxi's, good Italian food against our Sunday Roast, and many other complaints. People are nervous of our too strong pound falling, and property prices collapsing but this is unrealistic if the pound drops we are likely to sell more houses.
Despite the original good intentions, the  European Union has become a failure of mounting paperwork, bureaucracy, endless committees without voting power, price fixing, extravagant expenses, heavy costs, and poor trade deals for Great Britain. The MEP's get a whopping £300,000 pounds a year and the guarantee of benefits. The MEP's could have sorted this all out between them, but their greed took over.

There is no need to have trade deals, as they are not a necessity.  If people want a car they can buy one easily if they think it is the right price, and they can buy it over the net. The other problem is the price fixing, especially regarding the food mountains, as there are millions dying of hunger in the world, it is all a bit sick.

The argument to stay or leave is not classist or racist as suggested, but the Europeans and those representing us, are. When I checked the people representing the English, I found out they are mostly old school, so the argument you do not want to be run by the elite is out, as they are representing us there solidly. It is not a Parliament as we know it.  There is no democracy. It is run by big organisations like Morgan Stanley.  Europe is a stagnant economy whereas the rest of the world is not.  Then there are thousands of petty laws make it nearly impossible for small businesses to succeed. For example, there are 5 laws for pillow cases, 10 laws for alarm clocks, 32 laws for toothbrushes, shampoo has 118 laws, 1,200 laws for bread.


Mona Hatoum World Map with lights Tate Gallery


The situation in the Middle East is distressing and regrettable and my thoughts go out to the refugees. It is a vast, complex subject with history. We must not make these unfortunate souls bear the brunt of the EU debate.   We have been interfering in the running these countries off and on, for years. Libya was ruled by the Italians, etc etc. As far as I presently can see , we should not have removed the people running them, but then we needed the oil and wealth of these countries. Are you aware that Afganistan has gold and diamonds too? It is not only about oil pipelines but about minerals.
As we welcome these other cultures with their strong ethnic way of life,  they clearly do not wish to morph under the Great British flag. Although we take down our flag and Father Christmas to not offend, what about us?  Statistics show we are a very limited country which has extended the arm of kindness to the point of weakness. We are compassionate and send millions to the starving around the world, yet we have our own homeless.  We have a limited pot. If we are contemplating not affording to not look after our own disabled  and can't house our own warriors then we should not think about other Nations.  How can we give out food parcels when in England we are giving out the red voucher for the food bank?

Let's have a bit more Made in England, a bit more Mary Porter. Learn to look after our own animals, grow our own vegetables, keep our fishing rights and bring back industry and apprenticeships and our own bread making techniques. Look at the success of companies like Daylesford's who do exactly this in a very English way?
If we stay in we are unlikely to keep our National Health Service which is the safety net for our society and it promises to be dismantled in Belgium shortly.
Why are we paying EDF for our electricity and what happened to LED?
There are many more problems but let's start with these?

Never forget as the fifth largest economy in the world,  the world is our oyster and we can import and export on a World basis.
Let's make Great Britain great again.



BREXIT THE MOVIE FULL FILM

Wednesday 1 June 2016

XANAX OR WATCHING THE KARDASHIAN's and it's hat time of year.

Mr Treacy's beautiful hat, I do love using Mr again.

I left home to visit The Cannes Film Festival and Valentino's Traviata, and on the way realised that my stomach spasms are completely caused by nerves, which I thought were a Victorian phenomenon and all I would have to do is loosen my corset, I had to have my gallbladder removed two years ago, from tightening the previous one.  Help, I have the vapours? I went to the doctor and he said that indeed they did exist, known as hysteria or mental fatigue.  I said to him "They hurt physically not mentally" He said rather sarcastically "Indeed" His recipe was sending my housekeeper out for one hundred Xanax, most people would be thrilled but I knew I was doomed. All I could think was that I would be unconscious for the next few weeks. Not great for a control freak like me. I like to be razor sharp.The Xanax would destroy my memory. Instead, I threw them all down the loo. I would rather have pain than be unconscious.

Why are extremes considered so very attractive? The highest note so admired, or the skinniest woman considered a beauty, it is neither desirable or pretty. Women like robust men to protect them, well I certainly do. Mentally strong and daring.  Why is a spoonful of food at a thousand pounds a teaspoonful, interesting? Why do we like poor foreigners, but not rich ones? Why are the rich considered to be bad and the poor good? There are so many questions. If you go back in history and see what people achieved. It was much more industrious with very little. We need culture otherwise, we fail massively and become soulless creatures without it. Why I say this is because I watched The Kardashian's for eight hours the other day to understand why they are so popular. I understand now, it is because they are comfortingly ordinary with an ounce of glamour,  just to make the whole debacle attractive. It is a ribbon on a rather plain box.  People, therefore,  relate to them easily, their normal boring  conversations, about whether a boyfriend was needing help or not, or whether poor Kim was in a bad mood with her family, or her Mother Chris was being a nag. Everything is sad because it is about money, ego and fashion. The programme was so boring that it was alluring and I began to truly love the family especially Kendall and Chris, the Xanax would have been useful, yet I didn't want to close my eyes and miss a second of it.


Violetta


Neiman Marcus, purveyor of cloth, in my opinion, was so right when he said "Women who wear black live colorful lives" My life is infinitely more fun than the big K's of Hollywood. I guarantee I laugh more and have more drama. I really do. If it was filmed it would be car crash television.
So back to Rome and architecture, history and music.
Definitely, the subtle changes of black with dashes of red and green for the costumes, in La Traviata, in Sofia Coppola's production were quite extraordinary and a huge coup for Rome.  Ah, for the love of Rome.  Mr. Valentino/ Garavani believed in black too. The real opening, not the opening for Mr.Valentino's friends with loads of celebrities and air kissing, was a huge success and worth all the nerves and drama getting there, but then that is another story. The traditional set by Nathan Crowley,  Batman's designer, was beautiful, sung by the young voice of Francesca Dotto for the part of Violetta. I was awake and alive, the interpretation, brilliant, so glad I threw away the big X. My feelings were more optimistic than the bitchy, jealous and jaded reviews it received. In my opinion, the combination of Valentino and Coppola have awakened the Opera world. If you had been there and disagreed, go again, concentrate and you will be taken in.
Thank god it's hat time of year.

Mr Jones's beautiful hat.