This rant will definitely strike a few nerves and believe me I did do my best to restrain myself from typing this one out, but I simply had to give in because the amount of cuntery and foolishness surrounding the whole Brexit event is nigh-on overwhelming.
As many of you are aware, whether you're from the UK or not, we had a vote on whether to leave the European Union with the outcome (surprisingly) being 52% (51.9%) to leave. I am personally very happy about that as the EU, while once being a friendly trading bloc, has become a greedy, megalomaniacal wannabe superstate with a constant lust for more power over its member states. This simply had to end so I personally voted to leave. If you voted to remain, that's your choice and I won't judge you for that. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
Unfortunately a lot of the people over in the Remain camp do not think that way.
I'm not going to bring up the recent petition on the UK Parliament's official site as that has been confirmed to have been compromised with some sources even claiming it was a 4chan prank. What I will say about this though is that this petition was hastily set up by a Leave supporter who proposed new rules for the referendum as he thought Remain was going to come out on top, This unfortunately backfired and the petition has now been abused by not only excessive numbers of Remain supporters failing to accept the referendum's outcome (some of these supporters are even willing to manipulate the petition illegally to get their way) but as well aforementioned bots allegedly set up by 4chan. Parliament removed a good chunk of signatures that were believed to be fraudulent but I'm pretty sure many still remain.
The cringeworthy petition can be found here.
With that out of the way I'll now shift over one of the main focuses of this rant.
A number of Remain voters have been looking to overturn the result of the referendum (hence the large number of signatures on the above petition.) This movement also appears to be gaining some ground in parliament as the Liberal Democrats have pledged to ignore the referendum and keep the UK within the EU despite a small majority voting to leave and with shit hitting the fan big style over in Labour a Lib Dem victory is sadly on the cards in the next general election. Sorry Corbyn, but if Labour can't get itself together then I may very well vote Tory just to keep the ironically anti-democratic Liberal "Democrats" out, that being said if TUSC contest my constituency again I'll probably hand my vote over to those guys. (TUSC is basically a left-wing UKIP, they strongly oppose EU membership while still upholding many of Labour's core beliefs.)
The largest issue within the whole shitstorm for me was the immense social divide it's created and how peoples' opinions of other people have changed. I am no exception to this - before the referendum I greatly adored the actor Sir Patrick Stewart, I was borderline fanatical over him, however now I have no strong feelings either way. On the reverse however I like John Cleese for his comedy work but when he announced his support for Brexit my opinion of him shot right up (Fawlty Towers and Monty Python anyone?)
I also have to say something about Richard Dawkins throughout all of this too. He's another one who I liked and I always assumed he took a neutral stance in it all, I'd also like to point that he more or less said that the general public are too stupid to vote on something like the EU, before the referendum I dismissed that completely but following the referendum he's fucking right. People voted because they assumed that their vote wouldn't have an impact and if you thought then go eat shit, and if you thought that and now you're part of the cringeworthy #REGREXIT movement then go eat more shit.
And throughout all this I'd to give a major fuck you to all those who are whining about having their future stolen from them by the older generations. If you (mainly my generation sadly) wanted to stay in you should've got out there and voted. Statistics show that only 36% of 18-24 year olds turned up to the vote and as for those who whine about how the old people will die soon and won't have to live as long with the consequences that may be true, but that is an absolutely vile and sickening way to think. These people fought through World War 2 and the elderly who didn't probably parents who did so or lived through that horror, and people are saying they shouldn't vote? Fuck you!
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| These are the people whose votes you want to deny. Show some fucking respect. (Image from Fact File.) |
Now I do agree that the official Vote Leave campaign placed an exceptionally heavy emphasis on immigration but I detest the notion that most leave voters were swung by immigration, although it was a major point for many people. Many people were swung by pledges (wrongly) announced by many high-profile campaigners. I never expected a lot of that to be true, nor did they have any influence on my vote - I had my own reasons for voting out.
So let's be clear.
I am a 20 year old college student (at the time of writing.)
I voted to LEAVE the European Union.
I am pretty much dead central on the political spectrum.
I did NOT vote to leave on the grounds of immigration.
I did NOT vote to leave on the grounds of any campaign pledges.
I voted to leave because the EU became power-hungry and hated what it had become.
I'd like to conclude this lengthy rant with this pic which has been circulating it round Twitter after the result.
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| Sadly a lot of people on both sides of the fence do not wish to follow this example. (Image originally posted by Caroline Farrow) |
28th June 2016 Update: A follow up rant for this has been put out - read it here.
