Our English writer, Terry Field, is once more in Florida for the winter. From his warm haven in the sun, he spins a story for Americans of a thinly disguised United Kingdom that is hurdling toward its exit from the European Union in March of 2019. Here are our writer's latest fearful words on this turn in British history. I have inserted some 'translations' to ease our Americans understanding of this essay.
Mr. Field is not the only person concerned about Brexit. The December 22, 2019 Washington Post carries an opinion piece by Anne Applebaum echoing the words below. It is worthy of taking the time to google. What will the new year bring for our many friends in the United Kingdom? We shall soon see. - GNH
Bexit for Americans by Terrance Field
For Americans looking at Britain across the Atlantic, I suggest they consider their country as follows in order to get a flavor of what is happening in Britain at present.
Let is call that
country 'Briterica'. Here is the picture I ask Americans to paint in their
minds.
I am an Briterican.
MY country does not have a population of approximately 60 millions, with space
all around. (As does the USA.) My country is more like 1.4 billion, crowded into about half the nation. (If the U.K. had the geographical area of the USA.)
The rest is composed of hills and heather with the odd strange person
wearing a colourful unisex plaid skirt, running around in it and asking after
the next 'dram' or fried Mars-bar.
Like Shakespeare often did, our Briterican (Terry Field, left, coins a new word whilst at leisure mulling great thoughts.
My country, Briterica
has no natural resources at all, save for some good-quality anthracite coal,
that sadly cannot be burned save for the sad outcome of destroying the planet's
climate.
MY country is 23 miles
away from a gigantic continent (Europe) containing one much more powerful economy and
half a dozen more or less similar sized economics, The whole being about six
times my country's GDP.
My country, Briterica,
is socially divided and there is a cultural and political war that has caused
my political system to paralyse and cease to function ( That at least is
similar to America).
As a solution to my
social and economic problems, of which the principle characteristics are all
but no depth of industrial scale from design to output, save for armaments ( a
little like Russia) and only one massive income earner, a thing called 'The
City', a time-zone finance centre that can disappear like the morning dew if
European competitors decide to do the same thing on a serious scale).
Briterica's auto and
auto industry is a screwdriver shed operation, putting together major
components trucked in from the continent and from Japanese owned factories
around the central belt of the globe.
My education system, a
little like America's is not globally competitive. It is losing ground to the
best of the rest. Similar to America's. However, there is one very big
difference between Briterica's educaton system, and Americas. In Briterica,
about ten percent of the children are educated in very high quality private
schools. the rest are educated via state or nation-funded schools. The ten
percent get well over 80 percent of the best and well paid professional roles.
That means less than
20 percent go to the eighty percent who attend 'state' schools.
The people were given
a choice. (The 2016 nation-wide referendum to stay or not to stay in the European Union with its rules, regulations and shared tariffs, customs and some laws.)
Do we wish to build
a fence down the entire length of the Nississipi (the English Channel) with holes called customs
posts, and border guards to stop people crossing between the two halves, as well
as walls between the outside super continent and Briterica or not. The
alternative was to keep the present trade, human discourse and social
arraignments in place.
The people, before
they decided to vote, were told by some of the politicians in favour of
building the massive customs wall down the Nississipi that, if the people voted
for the change, there would be a large green bird with blue spots who would fly
over Briterica, and reign down free drugs for all the sick, and offer do-it
yourself scalpels to allow all the very ill to correct their illnesses for
free, Morphine would be provided, but it would be the type that had NO risk of
any kind of addiction. (Terry here is referring to promises made to better fund the National Health Service.)
The people of
Briterica believed these politicians, and, dreaming of the scalpels and drugs
coming down for the sky, voted to divide the country and build the fence down
the Nississipi.
Each side of the
fence, by each entry point, there were built gigantic truck-parks, each the
size of half the state they were found in. As the goods passed
east and west through these fence holes, customs officers checked
everything.
Thoroughly and
slowly. Thus trucks took three
weeks to make the crossing. Including salad vegetables.
As all trade was to be
run by WTO terms, all goods passing across the Nisssissipi were subject to tariffs, varying between 6% for all industrial and related goods, to 46% for
agricultural goods, livestock and the like.
To add flavor for an
American, Briterica also started out, before this change, with a living
standard 60% that of the average American income, and with real estate prices
anything up to three hundred percent the American level.
As this new regime of
hard borders, customs posts, high tariffs and dislocated economic failure takes
hold, a little schoolboy in Peoria, Illinois stands up, and asks the teacher,
" Miss, why
did British adults do this??? Over the twenty mile stretch of Water, Great
Germania, a much bigger country than Briterica, and Imperial Japanica, a
massive country in the Mythical East, are closing ALL their factories!!!"
A school boy in Briteria will observe that no drugs (medicines) have fallen
from heaven. One scalpel did arrive by GS mail, but Daddy had lost his job in
The Baguar factory that closed, and he used it to slit his throat." Can I
have free school lunches now? You cancelled them for lack of money???
Aaaaaaarrrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!
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