Good Old Fashioned
Entry by: KareninHove
17th June 2016
The celebrations began even before the full results of the referendum were announced. Those who watched the results coming in live and saw the exit polls were already popping corks and cracking cans. The next morning it was official. Britain had voted to leave the European Union. We were free at last! Britons never never shall be slaves! No more pettifogging Eurorules, no more interfering Eurocrats telling us how to run our country. Finally Britain was free to make its own destiny!
The vote to leave was so overwhelming that the Prime Minister resigned. The Government was dissolved, and a British National Unity Government was formed from a coalition of Brexit conservatives, UKIP, a few maverick Labour MPs who had backed 'leave' and the Ulster Unionists. Scottish MPs refused to participate once the Edinburgh Government had announced its intention to hold an immediate referendum on dissolving the Union and applying to join the EU as an independent nation. Some Plaid Cymru members of the Welsh Assembly advocated a similar course of action, but were overruled by the new UKIP majority in the Assembly.
The public mood was upbeat, if a little confused. What sort of Britain did its citizens want? Certainly not the metropolitan and multicultural country promoted by the Westminster elite, who were happy to employ Polish builders to extend their million-pound terraced houses in Islington and Romanian au pairs to look after their children, and who took their holidays in their rustic French farmhouses or their villas in Tuscany. It was their fault the honest British workman was out of a job and the British seaside resort was in deep decline.
The first act of the British National Unity Government - BNUG - was to rescind residence permission for all EU nationals living or working in the UK - or, as it became, the English Welsh and Northern Irish Union - and give them 21 days to leave the country. The only exceptions to this were diplomatic personnel, a maximum of ten per embassy. EU citizens across the country were given their marching orders and required to report at the airport of ferry port nearest to their place of residence. Only hand luggage was allowed for air passengers and ferry passengers on foot, while car drivers were permitted one suitcase per passenger. Animals were not allowed on the ferries departing for European posts. There were scenes of desperation as Eastern European families formed massive queues at every airport, and scuffles broke out when some were forced to leave behind buggies and wheelchairs.
All property belonging to EU citizens was requisitioned, and sold at knock-down prices to housing associations. In theory they were then to be allocated to those on local authority housing lists, but in practice, the majority of these properties passed into private hands and provoked a property feeding frenzy. Desirable houses, previously homes of French diplomats, Swedish technocrats or German bankers, were snapped up by English CEOs, while the more modest dwellings of Polish tradesmen and Lithuanian hotel workers went to the same English workers who had taken over their jobs.
This led to serious skills shortages in a number of sectors. Building firms were desperate for skilled staff, the hospitality sector was forded to rely on untrained school leavers, while agriculture kept going only by forcibly co-opting jobseekers and able-bodied benefit claimants into the fields to harvest sugar beet and potatoes on pain of having all benefits withdrawn. Agricultural productivity declined markedly. Women claimants with school-age children were offered the choice of working in chicken or fish gutting sheds or in warehouses. Low productivity led to a decline in both the quantity and quality of exports, with serious effects on the balance of payments. In response to the fall in export revenue, the government restricted child benefit to two children per family, state pensions to those under the age of seventy five, and introduced a £10 fee for GP consultations. This brought in less than they had hoped, as there was now a 6 weeks wait to see a GP that many people gave up, went to A&E, or died waiting. Hospital services were in crisis, with many departments staffed entirely by student nurses and 3rd
The vote to leave was so overwhelming that the Prime Minister resigned. The Government was dissolved, and a British National Unity Government was formed from a coalition of Brexit conservatives, UKIP, a few maverick Labour MPs who had backed 'leave' and the Ulster Unionists. Scottish MPs refused to participate once the Edinburgh Government had announced its intention to hold an immediate referendum on dissolving the Union and applying to join the EU as an independent nation. Some Plaid Cymru members of the Welsh Assembly advocated a similar course of action, but were overruled by the new UKIP majority in the Assembly.
The public mood was upbeat, if a little confused. What sort of Britain did its citizens want? Certainly not the metropolitan and multicultural country promoted by the Westminster elite, who were happy to employ Polish builders to extend their million-pound terraced houses in Islington and Romanian au pairs to look after their children, and who took their holidays in their rustic French farmhouses or their villas in Tuscany. It was their fault the honest British workman was out of a job and the British seaside resort was in deep decline.
The first act of the British National Unity Government - BNUG - was to rescind residence permission for all EU nationals living or working in the UK - or, as it became, the English Welsh and Northern Irish Union - and give them 21 days to leave the country. The only exceptions to this were diplomatic personnel, a maximum of ten per embassy. EU citizens across the country were given their marching orders and required to report at the airport of ferry port nearest to their place of residence. Only hand luggage was allowed for air passengers and ferry passengers on foot, while car drivers were permitted one suitcase per passenger. Animals were not allowed on the ferries departing for European posts. There were scenes of desperation as Eastern European families formed massive queues at every airport, and scuffles broke out when some were forced to leave behind buggies and wheelchairs.
All property belonging to EU citizens was requisitioned, and sold at knock-down prices to housing associations. In theory they were then to be allocated to those on local authority housing lists, but in practice, the majority of these properties passed into private hands and provoked a property feeding frenzy. Desirable houses, previously homes of French diplomats, Swedish technocrats or German bankers, were snapped up by English CEOs, while the more modest dwellings of Polish tradesmen and Lithuanian hotel workers went to the same English workers who had taken over their jobs.
This led to serious skills shortages in a number of sectors. Building firms were desperate for skilled staff, the hospitality sector was forded to rely on untrained school leavers, while agriculture kept going only by forcibly co-opting jobseekers and able-bodied benefit claimants into the fields to harvest sugar beet and potatoes on pain of having all benefits withdrawn. Agricultural productivity declined markedly. Women claimants with school-age children were offered the choice of working in chicken or fish gutting sheds or in warehouses. Low productivity led to a decline in both the quantity and quality of exports, with serious effects on the balance of payments. In response to the fall in export revenue, the government restricted child benefit to two children per family, state pensions to those under the age of seventy five, and introduced a £10 fee for GP consultations. This brought in less than they had hoped, as there was now a 6 weeks wait to see a GP that many people gave up, went to A&E, or died waiting. Hospital services were in crisis, with many departments staffed entirely by student nurses and 3rd
Follow us on Twitter
Follow us on Instagram