IF the Brexit Projections come true, we are about to be plunged into a world of pain and austerity. We’ll lose work, be cut off from our world and forced to live a new life among strangers.
I know exactly how that feels. Welcome to my life!
Like a travel guide who goes ahead to test the facilities, I’ve been living in Hotel Reduced Circumstances, on the Boulevard of Broken Dreams, since November. And do you know, I wish I’d done it sooner.
Having suffered two chronic wounds, cancer and a marriage breakdown last year, I know exactly how ‘reduced circumstances’ feel. But take it from this ‘Exiter’, it was well worth it.
Now that God’s served notice on my life, I’m determined to enjoy the positives of what’s left of it!
Thanks to my condition, these days my entire social circle is in either the transport or health sectors. I’m one of those people that relishes a chat in a clinic, coffee shop and a cab. Svetlana in the Costa Coffee franchise of Mayday Hospital might be one of the few people I’ll speak to all day. So I try to have a quality conversation.
I may feel like a refugee from a lawful wedded life (the first ‘l’ is silent), but many of the nurses, taxi drivers, railway staff and coffee shop workers I talk to have escaped from far worse oppression. One nurse and her family saw such awful atrocities in Congo that her daughter is still traumatised. But she was shocked when she got to Britain, and worked on the wards, to see how miserable and negative some people here are. We don’t realise how lucky we are!
You won’t hear this on the BBC or Channel 4, but the consensus among my new friends (a survey sample of around 50) is that Britain is a great country.
Yes, the Dutch health service is much better organised than ours, a nurse said, but she still moved on and came to Britain. There must be a reason why people think we’re an attractive destination.
A young Slovakian nurse told me she had absolutely no intention of leaving – and that was on the day she’d had to confront the most obnoxious drug addict in Croydon (a title for which there’s pretty fierce competition).
A man who walked across Europe didn’t want to stop until he finally got to Britain. Why did he reject Germany and France to choose us? Is it because we’re not that bad? (Don’t try telling Paul Mason or Jon Snow that.)
Another who left Bangladesh and lived in Rome said he liked it, but Stepney is better. Less racism, more inclusive, more sense of community.
So yes, our hospitals are chaotic, the patients are rude and many mini-cab passengers are a bit rum – but Britain is better than anywhere else in Europe. So my new friends say.
We’re more tolerant and we offer better opportunities to work and assimilate. That’s not my opinion, it’s the unanimous sentiment from all the nurses, coffee shop workers and taxi drivers I hang around with these days.
They, in turn, are a pretty ambitious and industrious lot. (Maybe I got lucky with my survey sample. Maybe this is typical.) I know of two Bangladeshi cab drivers whose kids are at university. A Romanian nurse who’s studied for a degree in her spare time. And now she’s starting on another! I’ve been given an education on Polish booze and West African cuisine.
I don’t know about the wider diaspora, but I’m constantly in awe of the immigrants on my hospital circuit survey sample. They, in turn, seem to think Britain is a great place to live.
But you wouldn’t think so if you listened to the Remainiacs. If you listened to any of the Herd Left’s fantasies about Britain, you’d think we lived in a brutal dystopia.
Why would they want to do that?
People are risking life and limb to get here. Some die. Why would they be so desperate to leave the Sunlit Uplands of Europe to plunge into the valley of despair that Remainiacs say is modern Britain?
The lethal Type 2 racism of the Remainiacs (many of whom don’t realise they are carriers) does more damage than Bernard Manning ever could. Through their relentless projected negativity they send an awful message out to the people who might like to come and contribute to our society. I think it’s a control mechanism – like a form of Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy.
Everyone in my survey sample seems to like this country. But not the Swinsons and the Cables and the Lammys. Shame on them, and anyone else who abuse their position and tremendous privileges to make cheap, cynical points. I wish Swinson and Co would get full-time jobs in Brussels, so they could make way for a few more Bangladeshi cab drivers and Albanian nurses.
