He’s back again! You remember Ital Tek? Of course you do, he’s the sound of Brexit
And, while I’d love to exercise my unparalleled skills of music journalism to dissect and discuss the… baselines… and chord progressions… and things… on Mr.Tek’s recent album, I feel it is only fair to the man that I use this opportunity for the third successive year to discuss the Brexit he is obviously so keen to ally himself with.
Brexit- and prepare yourself for a take so hot it’s practically blazing here- is an absolute fucking mess. The fact that it’s such a mess though is only approximately 12.7% to do with the logistics of leaving the EU itself, but rather the absolutely pitiful way people in the UK have responded to it. Or rather, because there hasn’t actually been any response to it at all.
It’s been
maybe a million days since Britain voted to leave the EU at some point in 2016 (there really is no way to know the exact day), maybe a million days for people on every side of the political divide to pull together many strategies that would see Britain leave the EU in a position that far better suit their agenda. Sure, we’d have the pasty faced Tory idiots with plans that would sacrifice certain financial benefits to stop Polish badgers riffling through their bins (or whatever), but there could also be radical left wing ideas that would be impossible under EU law. I voted remain, but it was with a heavy heart because I knew the EU was essentially a neoliberal project designed chiefly to protect big businesses. I’m a fan of free movement, but that’s not an idea exclusive to the EU (which, let’s not forget, threw millions of Euros at Colonel Gaddafi as a quasi-bribe to prevent African refugees from reaching Europe), I was looking forward to hearing what newer, more liberal immigration controls would be introduced outside the EUs control. We could now afford equal opportunities to non-EU citizens, and even give British people such as myself equal immigration rights to EU citizens in the UK (rights which they currently, no joke, have to move out of the country for at least 3 months to acquire in the UK). It was fascinating what kind of duelling proposals we would get to choose between!
Instead, maybe a thousand days past and we got bubkis.
We got maybe a thousand days of people reiterating how much they thought Brexit was a bad idea, facing other people reiterating how, actually, Brexit was a good idea. We’ve spent maybe a thousand days with half the country continually calling the other half racist, and then that half stressing that they’re not racist and that actually the people saying that are entitled elitists. OK… whatever… the reasons don’t matter the reality is that we’re leaving the EU, can we not debate that instead?
We did get an election, where the Conservatives ran on the suggestion that… y’know… hypothetically… maybe… Teresa May… probably… has a better plan for Brexit deal that she promised to consider telling us about if we’re nice. Meanwhile the other parties ran on the motion that they’d probably have a different plan to the Conservatives and, hypothetically, it’d probably be better than May’s. Jeremy Corbyn, to his credit, decided that it was none of his business and it wasn’t really his place to talk about it, and he has kept an honourable silence on the matter to this day. While the Lib Dem leader…
…
I wanna say…
Archibald…?
The Lib Dems maybe did something, there’s really no way of knowing.
Have these parties actually spent maybe a thousand days not even considering what might be the best way to leave the EU? Do they just think it will be a disaster and are relishing how bad it will make the Tories look and how great it’ll be politically for them in comparison? Or, do they actually have great plans but don’t want to share them less the Conservatives work them into their plans? I mean, sure, these plans may well be better for the country, but if leaving the EU is a success while Teresa is the Prime Minister then she’ll get the credit for it! There’s also a third possibility, that of Haclon’s Razor (Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity), where every politician in the country is just absolutely incompetent and has literally no idea what they’re doing. Depressingly and counter intuitively, that’s probably the possibility that makes them look better. Sad face…
How many articles on Brexit have you read since we voted to…
No, scrap that, I don’t think numbers go that high. I saw a live debate on BBC4 last night where Brian Cox was boasting how he could count up to eight million million, to which Jim Al-Khalili responded that he could count to eight million million and one. This drew audible gasps from the crowd, and we’re still waiting for Cox to return from his lab with a response. I don’t know how much of this was just big talk though, and it should probably be noted that both scientists literally had their trousers unbuckled and were waving their penises at each other at the time. It started with a disagreement on interstellar waveforms and just… just got out of hand…
How many articles about Brexit have you read this week? Conservatively, around sixteen thousand, right? How many of those sixteen thousand actually contained suggestions on the best way to leave the EU? How many were well thought out approaches to securing the best deal upon leaving the European Union?
Yeah, maybe two. Including the article that I just linked to.
The other fifteen thousand nine hundred and ninety eight articles were instead divided into three counts. They were either the umpteenth article written by that particular journalist on why exactly Brexit was a bad idea, which is about as useful as writing another two thousand words on why ‘Be Here Now’ was a disappointing album. Or maybe they were two thousand words reiterating how either Britain voting Brexit proves or doesn’t prove their racist. Or maybe another article debating the soap opera Brexit has created in the Tory front bench. Or, most likely, it was a massive bog of verbs and nouns about why we should or shouldn’t have another Brexit vote.
The ‘People’s Vote’
is a terrible idea. I don’t know if I’m in the minority of people who voted to remain two years ago (two years!) who believe this, and I actually had the opposite opinion before a friend (who also voted to remain) convinced me otherwise recently. Firstly, the decision to have a vote on leaving the EU was an absolutely terrible idea in the first place, it created divisions and discord in the country like no other time I can remember and was unimaginably horrid. These divisions still exist, and the solution isn’t to do it all over again!
I’m sorry, but we need to go through Brexit. It’s happening. More people voted to leave the EU than have, literally, ever voted for anything in this country before. Hey, maybe we’ll do the vote again and 55% of people decide that staying in the UK is a better option. Then what happens with these 45% of people, most have whom have voted to leave twice? I think we need to show what leaving the EU does, we need to have proof that it’s either a good, bad, or freaking horrendous decision. The prospect of leaving the EU has created this 45-55% of the populace that need to be satiated, or we endanger creating a dangerous large minority of people who are convinced they aren’t being represented, and I believe the political movements this would create would be far worse than anything exiting the EU will produce.
Plus, do you not know the rules of a Two Out of Three Falls match? There would have to be a third vote, which would drag it all up again and likely end in the complete annihilation of the country.
I also can’t help but feel that a lot of people’s wishes for a second referendum stems from unhelpful feelings of tribalism that the original vote helped to spark. Many people feel that their ‘side’ lost, that the vote going against them somehow proved their vote ‘wrong, and that another vote is their only chance of getting their win back. These people shouldn’t worry: exiting the EU and it being is as terrible as a lot of people predict is the only way to actually prove they were right, and that sense of self-satisfaction will be priceless as you hunt for radioactive rats to eat in the apocalyptic post-Brexit Britain in 2020.
Also, if we’re redoing votes… you do realise the Conservatives are in parliament…?
53 Minutes
Listen, I don’t really like this album. I mean, it’s technically superb, and Mr. Tek is undoubtedly extremely talented, but his music frequently leaves me a bit cold and even bores me on occasion. However, I wanted the chance to talk about Brexit again, so I paid a tenner to him on BandCamp for his latest album for the opportunity. I couldn’t just pretend that I owned it, what if it was his greatest yet and deserved a far higher place on this list?? It isn’t. It’s pretty much more of the same. It definitely might wow you if you’ve never heard Ital Tek before, but there’s little to defrentiate it from his previous two albums. I wonder: would Ital Tek prefer it if I really liked his music, or just actually gave him money so I had an opportunity to talk about Brexit again? I mean, I hope he releases an album each year, and I will always buy it…
So yeah, 53 minutes is far too long, much like me spewing 1700 words on this review. Ho hum
Previous Entries
2016 (No.35)
2017 (No.57)
It’s becoming more and more difficult to justify a rant about Brexit…
necessaryevil.blog 
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