Brexit's going badly.
London's Corona is going badly.
Merry Christmas.
You want more? I'm not sure what else to say at this point. I've fortunately been able to procure some musical equipment and am spending my time wisely constructing retro synth (because its cheaper) music. Or trying to. Apropos of nothing, musical software is disgustingly expensive. Like three hundred quid for a virtual musical instrument (ie a synth program). I'm sure a lot of hard work, blah blah blah, goes into such things, but honestly I find this borderline offensive. Music should be emancipating and for everyone, skilled or otherwise (and I don't enjoy punk!). Being able to play an instrument is a wonderful thing. But because of the cancer that is the music industry the tools needed are, by and large, way beyond what most people could reasonably afford. I think that's wrong. When you have rich old rock stars collecting guitars, the price of what they got cheap from a pawn shop back in the day becomes exorbitant. This is wrong. When you have music studios owned and frequented by the professionals this software, used in these places, becomes expensive and out of reach for the rest of us. It shouldn't be that way, especially given how technology is meant to be liberating.
I'm not an antivaxxer by any means. I've received vaccines, including relatively later in life when I went to university just over twenty years ago. Got a meningitis vaccine. Didn't turn me into an ideologically driven weirdo who spends his time talking bollocks online (that was the chemtrails, did that!). However when the government, in the form of covid-impersonating business secretary, Alok Sharma, offers assurances that the approval process was 'meticulous', I worry. I'm sure it's fine, I'm just not sure about anything these liars have said. Of course they will approve this, it's the only thing they have now working for them in terms of a covid strategy given that we're inevitably going to see Lockdown 3.0 after Christmas.
Won't that be fun. In the dull tinsel vacuum of January, when people's wages have taken (another) big hit from the inevitable Festive Mortgage, and the days are at their coldest, shortest, and dullest. Maybe we'll be let out to play when the sun finally returns. Oh come all ye faithful, get your booster shots! Another three months and.... Well that's the question, isn't it?
Imagine the likes of our media and ruling class bragging at the twin cusp of Brexit and Vaccine that 'we got their first'. What hollow victory is this? Are they trying to piss of the people we need to ensure we can get more? Enough of the stuff? It's crazy. But we aren't ruled by policy, we are led by the nose through ideology and exceptionalism. It doesn't matter what you vote for anymore, everyone, when questioned, will say they want the same things (all the good things because no one wants to identity as being awful and nasty, not even Tories). Instead all that matters is who you vote for. How long can that hold?
Apparently negotiations could fail on the oven ready Brexit deal that Boris won an election with. You know the one, definitely not Theresa May's old deal, fresh from the dustbin (Boris chasing the recycling lorry down the road, desperate to fish through the refuse for anything to save his career). Oven ready folks, in the way that things are oven ready when you have no oven, no electricity, and no food to cook in the oven you haven't got. Honestly I can't see what the problem is: our government only went and lied to everyone. Persuaded voters that the deal was so good not even the Queen needed to read it. Then when the PM, having won the election, went and read it, along with his ERG (sounds more like an energy drink) mates, decided it was so bad that had to risk their negotiating position by breaking the law.
Sorted.
So how much time is there left to ratify a deal, should one appear from the lake clutching a sword in the name of the once and forever king? It looks very likely that it will be after the transition period ends leading to a period, finite or otherwise, of possible chaos, including the procurement of further vaccine supply. To say nothing of the food and other medicines we kinda need. Yet people believe this is sovereignty. They will happily accept that the EU did this, deliberately out of spite. Yes, because a continental ruling elite (they are capitalists, regardless of where you stand) want to mug us off rather than continue trading with us which has been happening relatively easily for the last four decades.
Ideology, folks. The colour of your tie.
There isn't really insight on offer here. The EU is a capitalist institution, with all the problems that entails. However it is a more preferable capitalist institution than the one we're going to be left with, in the form of the British State and it's monomaniacal anachronisms masquerading as politicians. I would thus rather remain in the EU because I think that benefits socialists: it allows us our economy to survive which helps the working class, and allows us to travel and mix with other working class communities across the continent. Internationalism is a thing and it's important because socialism can't be limited to a single country. Without that internationalism efforts at home to fight the Tories and capital become, in my view, harder. Ultimately I reject the EU just as I reject the British state, but this referendum was forced upon us and so my position is, hopefully, informed by what's best for my class and I don't think that's served by exceptionalism and isolation, especially as we need the trade we are throwing away.
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