No-Deal Brexit. Keep calm and carry on!

Since the EU Referendum vote the Remainiacs in the British Political and Media Establishments have promoted apocalyptic forecasts that there will be food, water, fuel and medicine shortages if Britain leaves the European Union without a “deal”.  Now I read that the government is considering imposing martial law and a curfew if there is a no-deal Brexit.   I can only assume that such extreme measures will be in order to protect the population from 650 hysterical and frenzied MPs running amok?

Incidentally, the British Army has been reduced in numbers until it is now considerably smaller than the Police Force.  That being the case I doubt we shall see an army checkpoint on every street corner!

When the politicians panic the vast majority of the population will keep calm and carry on!

Update 16th February.
I am pleased to report that a slightly modified version of the above post was published on the 2nd of February in the letters column of the Western Daily Press. 

Conservative and Labour manifestos "no longer worth the paper they are written on".

The shenanigans of some MPs, particularly Conservative ones like Dominic Grieve, Anna Soubry and Sarah Wollaston, who throw every parliamentary “spanner” they can find into the Brexit “works” in order  to prevent the result of the 2016 EU Referendum being implemented, has not gone unnoticed.  

It seems that ever greater numbers of voters now know that Labour and Conservative manifestos are merely optional for those parties’ candidates.  Such manifestos are not worth the paper they are written on as this letter I read in The Week on January 19, which first appeared in The Daily Telegraph, wittily points out.

Lucky-dip politics.

To The Daily Telegraph.

Imagine if, on top of the chaos Theresa May and Parliament are wreaking over Brexit, Britain was asked to vote in a general election to “settle” matters.  Neither party would be able to present a manifesto pledge that all, or even a majority, of its candidates could support.

After the last election, at which both main parties said that they would enact the people’s wishes as indicated in the referendum, it has become clear that manifesto pledges are no longer worth the paper they are written on.  Who, then, to vote for?  Perhaps, like the lottery, our ballot papers could have a lucky-dip box on them.

Paul Baron, Knutsford, Cheshire.

Professor John Denham, another "nationalist and xenophobe"? Of course not!

I have never heard of Gavin Jacobson or read any of his book reviews.  However he seems to have stirred John Denham, former Labour cabinet minister and MP for Southampton Itchen who now heads The University of Winchester’s Centre for English Identity and Politics, into writing to the New Statesman.

It seems that anyone who dares to mention any concern about migration is seen in some quarters as xenophobic!

John Denham’s letter, which I came across published in The Week on 15 December 2018, is reproduced below.  It first appeared in the New Statesman.

Not another xenophobe.

To the New Statesman

After the rush of EU migrants post-2004, the day rate for self-employed building workers in Southampton fell by 50%.  The 15,000 new arrivals were accommodated by private landlords turning family homes into multiple occupancies, thereby changing the character of streets and neighbourhoods.  Some schools were ill-equipped for their first non-English-language-speaking students.  At the time, I regarded these as legitimate concerns, but I learn from Gavin Jacobson that I was just another “nationalist and xenophobe”.  His assumption that any worry about immigration is evidence of a pernicious outlook skews his reviews of several important books on populism.

John Denham, Labour MP 1992-2015 and former cabinet minister.

The Church of St. John the Baptist in the village of Carhampton, West Somerset.

The red sandstone Church of St. John the Baptist stands not far from Dunster on the northern side of the A39 in the village of Carhampton, West Somerset.  Mentioned in the Domesday Book, Carhampton takes its name from the Old English car, ham and ton which means ‘A grief stricken home and enclosure’.  The original village church was dedicated to St. Carantoc, a Welsh monk of the fifth century.    

The Church of St. John the Baptist in the West Somerset village of Carhampton..

Carhampton is one of only two villages in Somerset, the other being Norton Fitzwarren, where the ancient  custom of wassailing the apple-trees takes place on Old Twelfth Night, which is 16 January.  The ceremony involves toasting bread on farm pitchforks over a blazing bonfire.  When ready the toast is dipped in mugs of cider and eaten.  A Wassail Queen is carried to the best tree in the orchard where she places some of the toast in its branches.  She then takes a drink of cider from an earthenware pitcher and pours the remains over the trunk and roots of the tree.  The Wassailing Song is then sung followed by cheers and the firing of old muzzle-loading guns through the branches of the tree.*

Carhampton’s Church of St. John the Baptist is noted for its interior which has a beautifully coloured rood screen.  The churchyard is reputed to be the largest in Somerset!

*Source: Somerset, Ralph Whitlock (B.T.Batsford Ltd, 1975).

The Church of St. Mary in Bishop's Lydeard, Somerset.

Leaving Taunton and driving along the A358 toward Williton one soon spots, just a field or two from the road, the distinctive tower of the Church of St. Mary in Bishop’s Lydeard.  It is easy to agree with Edward Hutton in his Highways and Byways of Somerset (Macmillan and Co. Ltd, 1912) who writes of the tower:

“Its noble blood-red, double-windowed tower is the finest in all this country, a thing to delight one in the memory of having seen it.  It was, perhaps, the first of such towers to rise in all this rich vale of Taunton Dean.”

Arthur Mee in his The King’s England, Somerset (Hodder and Stoughton, 1968) describes Bishop’s Lydeard and its Church of St Mary as follows:

“It is as red as the soil of its fields, its church and houses all made of the sandstone from its quarries.  High above them all rises its lovely tower, a fifteenth century masterpiece.  A narrow door, heavily clamped and plated, indicates that it was a tower of refuge as well as a storehouse for the arms of Sir John Stawell, the Royalist against whom the redoubtable Blake was sent with his army.”

The Church of St. Mary in Bishop's Lydeard, Somerset.