Brexit has Broken Britain

Tristan Palmer - London
2 min readMay 8, 2017

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I met a particularly uninspiring woman at the gym today who when in conversation in the sauna (as I do) I mentioned I’d been in London (The gym is only 15 miles away from St Pauls Cathedral) said.

“Oh I’d never go there, no one speaks English anymore” and added “And I don’t wan’t to be blown up by the jihadis” and “aren’t they filthy” and then laughed.

She spoke quite well, seemed quite normal, not angry and yet wasn’t joking really. I gently teased “really, oh come on, what about the theatre or museums, or restaurants” and she said she wasn’t joking, and never went to London any more and was “quite sick of the country being invaded by foreigners” and London was “the worst”

No one said things like this to strangers a few years ago. Not in a Virgin Active gym with a car park mostly full of expensive cars (and vans) She thought this was an acceptable conversation as obviously everyone she meets agrees that this, like discussing the weather or what you watched on the TV is now just normal pass the time everyday talk between middle class ish middle aged white people, and is fact.

I don’t know who to be angrier with. David Cameron for allowing Farage and Hannan to use the swivel eyed racists to get their referendum, Theresa May for then encouraging more of the same to grab more power or Jeremy Corbyn for not really seeming to care about Europe or modern Britain and not standing down already as the country is taken back to the 1970’s and 80’s when we were racists and we had skinheads and yellow laces on Dr Martens boots. Yes we can also blame Farage or the Mail or Murdock as well. They have all decided that hate and fear is the cheapest currency to power, but it’s actually those who are in charge who are responsible for holding the debating line, and setting the tone.

It took years to pull this country into intelligent debate. There was active effort (I believe) from all sides to rise above thug mentality. It’s back though, give the mob what they want because whilst they get it we can sit on top the crumbling pile and loot everything.

This isn’t a nightmare anymore.

It’s real.

And I don’t know what’s best to do.

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Tristan Palmer - London

Consumer with opinions. Gardener, technologist, horologist, bee keeper, burner. Just occasionally I write some things down.