THE EGO & THE EISEGESIS

I've written a lot about my illnesses over the years.
I was a sickly child; the runt of the litter.
I suffered both physical & mental 'trauma' at an early age, and I became a statistic.

I'm now a sickly adult.
Some think it's hypochondria, others think I'm just a burden.

I've always been a show-off, some would say an ego-narcissist.

Perhaps it was attention-seeking from an early age?
Perhaps it was the trauma?
Perhaps some people are made that way?

Anyway.
Here I am.
And I'm dying.

Beckett said We give birth astride the grave, and that's never been more apposite.

I'm currently on my fourth-to-sixth day of Covid.
Despite being triple-vaccinated (and overly-cautious!) I managed to succumb.
She's a tricky mistress.
A minx.

It's vile!
I've had pneumonia, pleurisy, glandular fever, appendicitis, Bell's palsy, ringworm, eczema, psoriasis, arthritis, all of the poxes, influenza, and quite a few nasty colds in my lifetime.
(Weirdly I've never broken a bone or been involved in a car accident whilst driving, but I digress).

But I'm suffering.
I feel awful, and the thought of dealing with this without vaccination doesn't bear thinking about.

As well as a show-off, I'm also a gobshite.
I'm opinionated.
Some of my opinions are quite strong.

If you're still reading this (well done - it's taken me 48hrs to get this far with the writing!),
you're probably one of those aware of my feelings about constitutional reform, assisted dying, premiership football, women's sport, drug legislation, the modern 'pop festival', and environmental degradation.

I'm quite outspoken.
I'm fairly sure most people switch-off, unfollow, unfriend, or basically roll their eyes & ignore me.

So this may be my 'final shout'.
And I want to shout it loud.

IF YOU ARE VULNERABLE IN ANY WAY,
PLEASE GET THE VACCINATIONS FOR CORONAVIRUS!

If you're fit & healthy it's your choice.
If you're sceptical, ambivalent, or just 'exercising your right not to', that's fine.

But if you're susceptible, elderly, weak or ill, PLEASE take advantage of the FREE help that is on offer.

This isn't a plea to 'Save the NHS'.
This isn't condoning Boris Johnson's government! 
(I still have unfinished business with that twat, and would happily shit in his mouth given the chance).
This isn't because I'm an Ask No Questions 'sheep'.

(Day 3 of writing - Fuck I'm ill).

It's because this cocky little virus that has been with us for millennia, is finally having its day.
It's brutally effective at what it does.
And what it does is take over your body, and destroys it.

Many will survive, and be the better for it.
If you are vulnerable in any way, it's highly unlikely you will.
Unless you take the precautions that are available to us.

I truly believe (especially as I write this!) that this is just the beginning of our war with the Coronaviruses.
It will require a multi-faceted, several pronged attack to stop it doing what it's programmed to do.

(Day 4 - Praying for retro virals to arrive - My GP didn't even know I was on the At Risk List ffs!)

And it's disgusting!
It's horrific!
It robs you of all desire to carry on.
I'm utterly exhausted.
It's a true 'killer', and it is winning this war.

Many people in this world aren't as lucky as we are in the UK.
We've been given a gift-horse, and some of us are still staring at its tonsils.

PLEASE.
Don't be a dick - Go & get the prick!

I can't write anymore.
this will have to do.
not my best piece I'll admit, but y'know?
shit happens

did anyone watch the louis Theroux thing?

1393 'n All That.......

So there I was.
Cradling a Thatchers outside Beccles' Kings Head pub, enjoying the warm sunshine, and observing several hard-hats destroy the interior of the once lauded Covent Garden fresh fruit & vegetable shop.
  In wishing to take back control and make Britain great again, J.D.Wetherspoons Chief Executive Tim Martin has single-handedly destroyed the great British pub trade by purchasing a pub in every town, strangling it with corporate livery & questionable ethos, introducing 'pile it high & sell it cheap' global capitalist trading, and removing any local ties the establishment had with said town in the first place.
  In Beccles he was expanding his operation by knocking through to the greengrocers, and building yet another pizza oven, in order to make Wetherspoons even sexier to a nation of confused millennials and over-entitled yet cautious pensioners.
  It was the end of an era for the greengrocers that happily spilled colour & fragrance onto the pedestrianised walkway of this ancient Broads town.
 But it was also the end of the town's individual & long-cherished image. Another global, profit-obsessed chain, replacing an institution that had served the community, with the community, and for the community for several hundred years.
  The Kings Head would remain a local pub in all but name only.

My drinking partner, a true local and not a jumped-up 'blow-in' like me, observed the pub sign that once swung from the gibbet-like gallows on the corner of the building:

 " That was the original pub sign. It'd been there for years.
Now it's just golden sign-writing in typical Spoon's font"
she grumbled into her Swedish blackcurrant Cider of Sorts.

The well-worn wooden sign displayed a chubby Henry VIII in full Reformation splendour. The paint had dulled over the years and cracks were beginning to show, but there was no doubt;
when this pub was first opened, it was to one of England's most famous kings that it doffed its coaching inn head & tricorn hat to.

Or did it?

In 1393, King Richard II issued a decree making it compulsory for ALL inns to have a sign, making it identifiable to the official royal ale-taster.
Why this position no longer exists we shall never know?
For this Tim Martin will be thankful.

  According to Alfred Inigo Suckling's History & Antiquities of the County of Sufffolk, the Kings Head in Beccles has had a hostelry on the New Market site since 1668.

George Cocke was the landlord.
His latter day rivals across the road in The Falcon were the Balls.
(This never ceases to amuse!)

Although this is the first recorded note, we cannot completely dismiss the possible presence of an earlier inn, but the Great Fire of 1586 and the subsequent Not So Great Fires of the 1660s, have put paid to any tangible evidence.

  Fellow Waveney Valley town Bungay also has a Kings Head hotel dating from the same time, and any early Victorian photographic evidence of the two, appears to show that they both had similar pub signs, with similar kings' heads painted on them.

(Kings Head Hotel, Bungay)

  So which of the kings was that image of ?
The one that the sign-writers were commissioned to bestow upon these much-favoured places of entertainment?
   It's no secret that both Beccles and Bungay have had their run-ins with the monarchy over the years. The legendary Bigods (Sheriffs & Earls of Norfolk) regularly swapped sides in the 12th and 13th centuries, meaning their loyalties towards any of the first three Henrys, Richard the Lionheart, Bad king John, Stephen and/or Matilda, were stretched to say the very least.

The earliest photos on record (from the Reeve's brilliant Bungay To Beccles) appears to show a sign with just the text  -  KINGS HEAD HOTEL - in both 1900 and 1908.
Debra Watkins' marvellous blog Relics Of Beccles seems to confirm this with a 1910 photo, pre-dating Morlings Music Centre, that also shows text-only on the swinging board.

It's not until 1937, a year after the first ever (and last ever) Inn Signs Exhibition in London, that we find photographic evidence of a pictorial king's head on the pub's gables.
 The brewers Youngs & Crawshay of Norwich put signs on both the Kings Head in Beccles, and in Bungay.
The image was of an early English king, stoic, bearded, crowned, and Plantagenet in style.
This was not Henry VIII!

So was it Edward I, 'Hammer of the Scots' and eradicator of the Jews?
(See Norwich's grim discovery in the old Jewish Quarter, now known as Chapelfield Shopping Centre).
Was it his feckless son Edward II, lover of Piers Gaveston and he of the hot-poker ending?
Was it the third Edward, victorious at Crecy and instigator of the Hundred Years War?
Could it have been a 14th century representation of East Anglia's King Edwy - or Eadwig the Land-Giver, who in the 10th century granted the backwater defence of Beccles to the monks of Bury St.Edmunds, resulting in land-grabs and herring-fortune battles between church, state and the Bigod aristocracy?
Or was it simply a painting of the 9th century Frankish hero Charlemagne, depicted on the Middle Ages popular playing cards as the King of Hearts?

Youngs & Crawshay closed their brewery in 1958, and with them disappeared any references to the heritage and history of the sign.
Francis Frith in 1960 shows us that the sign persisted after the closure of ale purveyors, but the weather-beaten wood was perished and almost illegible by then.

Then in 1963 along came a new sign!
The fore-runner to the good king Henry painting of yesteryear.
Along with AA & RAC approved livery, the pubs new landlords gave a makeover to the fascia, and there in all his childlike petulance and peasant-revolting ermine is.................... Richard II.

(With thanks to Alamy).

Not 'Couer de Lion' Richard of the Crusades.
Not Shakespeare's villainous hunchback Richard III.
Not even Richard's uncle the Black Prince!

Pompous, arrogant, haughty, teenage scourge of the Barons, and enemy of Parliament, Richard II.
The man who made inn signs compulsory!

It seems fitting that Wetherspoons have continued with this pub.
Perhaps in years to come, drinkers will look at the discarded picture of Henry and wonder if it was a photo of Tim Martin?
Or maybe King Tim will have his own pub signs done?
A spicy chicken wing in one hand, a flagon of Bombardier ale in the other, and a strap-line that reads:

"I'm Tim Martin of the UK, I am, I am.
Twas me that broke with Parliament, Rome, the Franks & the Saxons.
Would you like to trade-up to a Drink & Meal Deal, and do you have a table number?"

(We Three Kings........)

           A CHAMBER-POTTED HISTORY OF THE ART OF DWILE FLONKING

 CHAPTER 1. 

1.

In March of 1742, Evangeline Yallop – daughter of the Reverend Stanley Barsham, vicar of Darsham, wrote in her diary of her father and her husband George:

 “ They were full of ale and fick as dogs.
No-one more merrier than the fool who haf flonked and loft, on thif beautiful fpring day of Lent, purple-tinged with funshine and merriment….”[1]

Was the word ‘flonked’ intended to be the linguistically more appropriate ‘slonked’  

(meaning partaking in the act of slonking, a commonplace activity during times of rural penitence)?
Was it the earliest reference to dwile flonking, the Dutch having taken up residency in England’s flat-lands for some 200 years or more.
Or was Evangeline’s saccharine quill nib just broken and on the way out?

We shall never know.

Photo of a woman writing. (Source unknown).

What we do know however, is that Evangeline goes on to say that George ‘flept with the dogs, his breath fo bitter and noxious. And he did clutch in his hand a fugarbeet from laft years harveft’[2]


It’s this tiny bit of information regarding the sugarbeet, that leads us to make a massive assumption.

George had been dwile flonking.
(And George was quite probably drunk!)

[1] A book I once read about Darsham, Suffolk – E.Yallop. 1744. Bungay.

[2] Ibid.

2.

In his seminal masterpiece Sporting, Gaming & Idling Miscellany, Benjamin Schott tells us that the noble art of dwile flonking probably had its roots in the 9^th century sport of ‘Spile Troshing’.[1]
Although there is no substantial evidence to corroborate his findings, we like to think that he is correct.
If indeed dwile flonking had been played in rural parts for nearly a millennium, then it’s fair to say that the immigrant Dutch bastardisation of the sport (see Soccer or Cycling) was highly likely, and not really worth going into.

‘Dwile’ has long been associated with the Walloons (and latterly the Phlegms) and literally means ‘dishcloth’.

George II’s rural England had embraced ‘the Strangers’ wholeheartedly, very much like the people of the Lincolnshire Fens embrace Romanians today, and most took to working in the fields if their mums wouldn’t let them spin wool.
Most of East Anglia had already embraced Charles ‘Turnip’ Townshend’s new fangled crop rotation methods, unlike the rather backwards people of the West, and despite the humble turnip being the favoured root crop of the great man, the people of the Waveney & Blyth Valleys would focus their attentions on sugarbeet come harvest time.

The middling classes such as George & Evangeline Yallop would drink copious amounts of tea & coffee, but their sugar still came from the West Indies.
It would be another five years before the Germans showed us how to refine sugar from beet.
This leads us to conclude that just as Townshend grew turnips for his livestock, the folk of Beccles, Bungay and Halesworth probably grew beet as a food supplement for their cattle & horses. [2]

---

[1] Sporting, Gaming & Idling Miscellany – B.Schott. 2004. Bloomsbury.
[2] If I remember correctly, I was told this by a bloke in the Bear & Bells Public House. –
Beccles. 2011.

3.

                                                              The book we mentioned earlier.

So why was George Yallop clutching a sugarbeet in his ale-soaked hands?

A scroll detaling the rules of dwile flonking were found by one of the 1960s Revivalists that dated to some 400 years earlier.
Although the sugarbeet is mentioned as a way of determining who ‘girts’ first, there is no mention as to what happens to the beet after the flonking has ceased.

Was it a trophy?
Was the game played at harvest-time, and George was retaining it for pig feed?
Or was the game played in Spring, and this was just the last of the produce laid-down in storage?

Sadly we will never know, and if we’re honest, we don’t really care.

Blyth Valley still flonk at harvest-time.[1]
Waveney folk always celebrate at May Fayre.[2]
When you flonk is not all that important.
It’s how you flonk, and how long you flonk for that really matters.
(But Yallop does say ‘laft year’s harveft’, so I think we can assume that the Blyth lot are idiots).

---

[1] Folk East Festival – Glemham Hall.

[2] WVDFT – Geldeston. Locks Inn.

4.


(In the next chapter we’ll discover what happened when the brewing industry fell foul of licensing laws, and how J.D.Wetherspoon annihilated the independent pub trade).

The rules from the Interregnum Period c. Jan 30, 1649 – May 29, 1660.
Flonking was often cited as the final insult to Cromwell’s puritanical rule.[1]

---

[1] The World Turned Upside Down – C.Hill. Oxford. 1972.

JANUARY TOO


On the ninth day of Christmas…………

I emptied the bins, but found nowhere to put all the recycling.
Assuming the fish, the birds, the dolphins and all the other stuff on Blue Planet II have the same time-off as us, could I get away with putting some of it in the normal trash?

I saw no women dancing.
Nor ladies.
Not one.

But the first day was lovely.
Just like usual.
Traditional.
How we like it.

No pears.
No partridges.
And I didn’t phone Dad because he died in April.
And I didn’t walk the horse either, because he died in August.
And I didn’t give the wife her pressie because she ran off in March.
But other than that, it was lovely.

The second day was fairly similar, but thankfully we ate all of the dead animals cold.
Like polar bears.
With pickles.
And cheese.

The third day of Christmas was technically a Bank Holiday, but most people I know went back to work.
It wasn’t double-time, but when you’re on zero-hours, the money is quite welcome.
(The new iPhone is so cool, but the contract won’t pay for itself).
Tesco is open again but I struggled to find three French hens.
Most of them came from Poland.
Or Lenwade in Norfolk.

I was a bit down on the fourth day.
I’ve never had 4 calling birds in my back garden.
But recently there’s been a couple of turtle doves.
And I got to thinking they were reincarnations of Mum & Dad.
But they didn’t turn up today
So I was emoticon sad face.
I put out some leftover Cornish Wafers from the second day
and hoped for the best.

By day five I was beginning to wish I’d gone away for the holidays.
The fridge hummed with putrefying ‘stuff’, the bins still weren’t emptied, the medical centre was shut, and most of the telly was just boring repeats.

I watched Come Dine With Me Series 11.
Then went to bed early.

And the day before yesterday was New Year’s Eve.
I swapped over my desk diaries and said goodbye to my own personal
Annus Horribilis.
British Gas offered me 50% off a case of Virgin wines.
I politely declined.

So........
Au Revoir smashed avocado & salted caramel kimchi.
Au Revoir seas of empty plastic bottles.
Adios pulled pork & kale smoothies.
Adios carpets of Amazon cardboard.
Bye Bye artisan ganache, wahaca stock pots,
and stand & stuff, gluten-free, pork & stilton giblets.
Bye Bye Baby Jesus, rancid headless turkeys and his royal highness Sir Jeremy Clarkson.
I'm sure we will see you again next year.
(I believe the 12 days start in October?)

INTO THE MOUTHS OF BABES

So. (Interactional agenda conjunction)

Last week we covered the Nativity.
We’re not going to examine the role of the shepherds or the donkey at this point.
It could be argued that they are benign plot devices shoe-horned in, in order to drive the narrative in favour of multiple junior acting roles.
But we disagree.
This week we’re going to look at drugs;  and more importantly, states of inebriation.

SPOILER ALERT:
The following piece does question the very existence of Father Christmas.
(It’s a free country though).

Saint Nicholas, Santa Claus, Old Nick, Kris Kringle, or ‘out-of-work pantomime actor in false beard’.
We all know that the benevolent house-breaker was another fantastical fable-hijack from the Christian church.
Krampus had been putting naughty children to the sword way before the dark ages, and it was only really sclerotic adherence to catholic dogma, coupled with an obsessive desire to imbibe ergot-ridden body bread and hooch strength blood wine, that really paved the way for Saint Nicholas.
Beatification, canonisation and intercessional prayers were the mainstay of medieval Christianity.
Add all of this to the hysteria caused by the presence of relics, and your Average Joseph could reach serotonal heights that crack, meth and even Fentanyl would struggle to replicate.
Every one of the holiest of holies had a feast day, and good old Sant a la Nicklaus had THREE!
All in December – All slap bang in the middle of the pagan feast of Yuletide.
God, Baby Jesus & their extended celestial family had the Winter Solstice at gunpoint, way before explosive weapons were invented.

And despite the Reformation, and good old Oliver Cromwell’s attempts at banning Xmas, this is pretty much how it remained until the industrial revolution, when socio-economics, class, philanthropy and a century of opiate-addiction, changed the festive mural from one of religious fervour, to one of festive celebration.

And we all know what happened next!
Imperialism, enlightenment, state schooling, mass-production, the King of Norway, Quality Street & the quaker/slave dichotomy, Prince Albert, Weihnachten , Christkindl, Hitler, Bayer, Big Pharma, barbiturates, Eden, Suez and Morecambe & Wise.
All washed down with several bottles of sugar & cocaine………….

Our new god was Consumption.
Our ventromedial pre-frontal cortexes were ripe for exploitation.
And money would be the drug that opened our wallets with ease.

This new idol was a long way from the legend of Krampus.
But with enough inebriation we could easily equate the Amazonian Clarkson with a kidnapper.

But why the red & white livery you ask?
Why the invasion of the home for nefarious purposes?
Why always a man?
The answer pre-dates all of the above
Our traditions have their roots some thousands of years before Baby Jesus was even invented.

In the frozen lands of Northern Europe, the only things that grew in the perpetual darkness of an Ice Age Winter were hardy root crops and fungi.
Lack of vitamins C & D ensured a poor quality of health.
Any sustenance brought into the ubiquitous yurt (think Latitude or Glasters) was revered and given celebratory status.
The delivery man was the much-lauded shaman, and he would enter the abode via the only aperture, that also served as a chimney.
The best gift he could procure at these darkest of times was the hallucinatory toadstool, or fly agaric.
Its vermillion red cap dotted with white spots was a sign that health would be restored, celebrations would occur and the season would be merrier than anticipated.
Fly agaric contains the toxic ibotenic acid.
If steeped over several hours, the process produces the psychoactive drug Muscimol.
Shamen would eat the toadstools, then offer their urine for drinking!
Yep! Totes!
And a jolly good Yuletide would be had by all.
(This form of traditional celebration lasted for over 4000 years, relegating Coca Cola, Krampus, Saint Nick & Baby Jesus very much to the footnotes).


So. (Grammatically acceptable, but rather weak usage)
In summary:
When your children open their Hermes/Yodel/Amazon delivered gadgets, toys and unrecyclable tut, you’re actually just reviving the centuries-old ancient  tradition of pissing down their throats.

Happy Christmas!
Holidays are coming – Make sure it’s the Real Thing!

MIKE

In the interests of balance & equality,  I’d just like to say that my recent journey back from the West Country was faultless.
I am a curmudgeon when it comes to rail travel.

My tickets were valid, and accepted by both machine & man.
The trains arrived (almost) on time, and they were half-term busy, but not overcrowded.
South West Trains free wi-fi was again ‘excellent’, and Abellio managed to get me to my destination without too much hassle.

I would also like to re-iterate that I adore London Underground.
It’s a completely different kettle of fish when compared to the fractured, self-interested, privatised rail operators, and I am always amazed at how they manage to keep millions of us on the move;
efficiently, democratically (no First Class elitism here!) and daily, regardless of whether it is a weekend or a windy, leafy, rainy, hot day.

I saw the power of a smile today.
A Bakerloo train full of tourists and people of all shapes & sizes.
A little boy fascinated by his own reflection.
An infectious giggle, followed by a series of smiles, passed willingly around the carriage;
first with him, then all of us with each other.
I could’ve wept it was so sweet.
Let's be honest, there is far too much hate and resentment in this world; and even though I know I am a perpetrator of ill-feeling towards my ‘enemies’ and The Establishment and The Man, I would like it to be known that my anger is contained, and reserved entirely for social-media (and the odd demo).

But loving shit, as I'm learning albeit slowly, is so much easier than hating stuff.

I spent the latter half of my journey chatting to a fella of a similar age, also from south of the Thames, also on his way to visit an ailing father in hospital.
He was struggling with modern public transport and needed a wee, so asked me to watch his bags.
When he returned we both discussed our inabilities to find a WC at Stratford.
I let him know about the one deep inside Westfield Shopping Centre, and we laughed about how it was never an issue back in the old days, when every station had a toilet, but we were young enough to hold on.
It then transpired that his father had been a Warrant Officer in the forces for many years, similar to my father. They had both been stationed in Aden & Cyprus, and were both of the same age.
They were also both in the throes of fighting their final battle, and we couldn’t help thinking that the Sergeants’ Mess  on ‘the other side’ was gearing up for an onslaught of Douglas Dakota aficionados.
Mike had recently been trying to arrange a series of football games between his two loves, Crystal Palace and Panionios in Southern Athens. They were amateur level games between supporters.
He had also seen a large influx of Syrian & Yemeni refugees to the area, and was hoping to develop tournaments that helped with the integration of the new population.
Panionios were famous for embracing migrants from Izmir in the early part of the last century.
And despite having no financial backing nor any assistance, Mike saw this as his raison d’etre.
I told him to contact the Eagles' biggest corporate sponsor Nestle’, and demand that they support his cause.
I insisted.
It was all I had.
I then shook his hand, wished him well and disembarked the train at Ipswich.

When Mike dumped his bag in front of me "busting for a piss",  I felt the same sort of affront that anyone does when they’ve claimed a table-seat all to themselves, only to have it snatched in a last minute coup, by an outsider or foreigner that insists on sharing.
I outlined my space with demarcation gadgets, coffee flasks and rail tickets, and made it clear that he wasn’t to sit opposite me at the window, by stretching out my dungaree’d leg barriers.
I immersed myself in the details of my phone’s message inbox, whilst peering surreptitiously from behind the safety of my paperback fence.

He wasn’t familiar to me.
Not a friend.
Not an acquaintance, nor even an eye-catching pretty girl.
A stranger who seemingly had nothing in common with me.
A public transport ‘refugee’,  from another place entirely.
None of my business.

That was until we established the fact that, at some point in our journeys, we both needed a wee.
A normal bodily function.
Just like everyone else.

I hope Mike got to see his dad before it was too late.
I hope no-one is denied access to their parents at times of crisis.

And I thank him for reminding me that despite our perceived differences, we are all essentially the same.

THE MORNING AFTER THE NIGHT BEFORE.

Ok.
So you wake-up on June 24^th and you haven’t won.
You’ve put your money and your ballot paper on the losers.
The complete opposite of what you wanted to happen has happened.
What do you do?

Do you accept graciously that the other team won fair & square?
It was a referendum.
Everyone that was eligible to vote was offered the vote.
There was a choice, and it was quite a simple one.
It wasn’t a complicated question like ‘Which one of these five candidates do you want to win?’.
It wasn’t complicated like asking you to put five candidates in order of preference.
It wasn’t asking you to decide which government you’d like to run the UK?
(It’s June 24^th 2016 – The Tory ‘majority’ is still very much in charge).
And it wasn’t asking you to ‘presidentially’ decide on the bad guy or the less bad woman.

It was a two-horse race, and more people put their money on the other horse.
Fair.
And square.

Or…….

Do you cry helplessly?  
Then move-on, as you did the week before, when England’s football team brexited early from the European Finals?

“There’s more to life than politics.
They're all pretty much the same anyway, and Wimbledon’s on the telly now.
C’mon Tim!
(And can we record Big Brother please?)”

Or……

Do you get angry?
Really fuckin’ angry!
You clearly live in a country populated by _________ (insert winner) idiots, that have no idea what they’ve voted for!

“And now we’re stuck with this decision/government/Tory party leader, and I’m going to change everyone’s way of thinking to mine, if it’s the last thing I do!
Grrrrrr!
This is criminal!
Where were the real choices anyway?
That was a referendum run on fear, not policy!
(And can we record Versailles please?)”

There was of course a ‘Third Option’.
It wasn’t ideal.
If anything, it said more about our so-called ‘democracy’ than it did our stance in or out of Europe.
But it was the only way we had of telling those that pledged this referendum that we as a people, required more information, more choices and properly elected politicians to make these complex decisions for us.

“Get the electoral system right – make it fairer, and more proportionally representative, and we’ll feel happier about you making those decisions on our behalf.
In the meantime, all we can do is register our disappointment at the way you have conducted this exercise.
But please don’t tell us your grandfather fought & died for our right to take part in this.
He fought & died for democracy.
For us to have viable choices.

Some of us were there in 2011 – Where were you?
(And can we turn the telly off now please?)"