Unearthing The Marker

A year ago, I wrote a blog about putting down a marker - a prediction for how the next year or so would spin out, following the result of the General Election the day before.

Of course, there's a Black Swan here that had no small impact on basically everything. Mister Coronavirus. First detected around about the time I wrote that first blog, actually, I think. That kind of means a bunch of predictions can't be assessed based on how we voted as a nation.

For example - all the predictions about everything getting worse for people who work for a living and have to pay rent and such, that was just a general look at how things were going in the first place, and an indication that under Johnson they would continue to slide assward. Which they have, though the Pandemic is just really seeking to heighten those difficulties and disparities.

Luckily, another tower block didn't burn down - but nothing has come of Grenfell. Total whitewash. As predicted.

We did, indeed, not get 50,000 more nurses. Government spending on the NHS wasn't ideal in any way, in fact. We also didn't get 20,000 more police officers.

I was wrong about there being precious little protest, though. And it was a protest that needed to happen.

A thing I couldn't take into account, as I said in that original post, was Brexit - and just how much of a shitshow that would be. We went from No Deal being "a million to one chance"...

...to it being basically inevitable by the end of the week. We went from everything would be great, to "we haven't lost our current trade deals with Canada so that's alright". Fisheries? The former department of Nigel Farage? Yeah, now we have some goons demanding that the Government dispatch the ROYAL NAVY to guard our fish stocks. Literal gunboat diplomacy.

And when we voted, last year, admit it - there was a swathe of people that wanted Boris Johnson as Prime Minister because it was funny, yes? Like, he promised Brexit, but also, he's funny and goofy and hahaha if you ignore the fact that he's a fetid prick with a serious tendency toward bigotry.

Well. Turns out that having a joke for a Prime Minister who promised you a good Brexit, means that you have a joke for a Prime Minister trying to negotiate your good Brexit, and that means you don't get one.

This whole thing is going to be an absolute disaster, and puff pieces are being run in the press even now, demanding that Remainers not gloat about the sorry state that this country is going to be in, in three weeks.

We aren't. We're going to be too busy worrying about our jobs, trying to afford groceries as they get more expensive, navigating a world wherein everything was made more difficult for everyone below a certain income bracket for....

...for what?

So the very wealthy can dodge a bunch of tax loopholes being closed and then make an absolute mint on the collapse of a nation's economy?

So the Tory Party can be more united, as was David Cameron's original plan back in the early-to-mid 2010s?

So our bananas can be bendy again?

Was anything, anything at all, worth what we are facing right now?

I don't think so. And I'm not smug about that. I'm tired, and in physical pain, and I'm sad, and I'm angry, and I'm afraid for the future of my friends and family and loved ones. Because we're the ones that have been sold up the river. We're the ones that will suffer the consequences - and a percentage of us will do so while grimly and doggedly believing that this was better than the alternative.

Oh, and by the way, an Australia-type deal IS No Deal.