EU vote is over, like it or not. . .
THE recent vote to leave Europe has finally prompted me to drag my carcass over to the keyboard and bang away at the keys like an unhinged rhesus monkey.
If you must know, I voted to get out. Why? Well, there were various reasons.
Firstly, if you were to walk from Rochdale in any direction, you would eventually end up waist-deep in something cold, wet and splashy. It’s called the sea.
Basically, this is because we are an island and unless God has something deeply unpleasant up his sleeve, we always will be.
Secondly, if someone was to tell you they were going to spend the next six months touring Europe, you wouldn’t immediately wonder if they would be starting off in Grimsby, would you?
You immediately think Spain, France, Italy and all the rest of them over there.
Conversely, I have always heard people from across the Channel refer to us as Britain or England – never Europe.
And let’s be honest, why would they? We have been at war with most of them since Homo became a sapien and, if my experiences over there are anything to go by, they hate us for it.
Especially when I mention getting them off the hook in two world wars, which just happens to be quite frequently.
What irks me about the result and prompts me to shout at the television most evenings is the fact that according to experts, people who voted for exit were poor, thick, racist Northerners.
Now, while I have nothing against being called a Northerner, I take liberty at the other three labels.
Just for the record, I have a well-paid job, have two degrees, I can eat a meal off a plate without dribbling most of it down my shirt and I am certainly no racist.
Yes, immigration is a concern which is ironic since both my parents were immigrants after the war.
My father was Ukrainian and my mother was Italian.
At the end of the day, there are only so many beans you can cram into a tin.
Anyway, the vote is now over and something called democracy has elected that we leave.
Get over it. Stop with the demonstrations, the whining, sooth-saying and calls for a second vote. It ain’t happening. Yes, there will be a bit of turmoil to start off with like the pound having a blip, but then again if there is a bus crash in Carlisle it gives the banks the jitters.
It is just like the River Roch reopening – whether you like it or not, it is done and dusted.
Talking of which, I feel another letter coming on. Peter Baran Rochdale
‘MINORITY’ TELL CORBYN TO GO
DEPUTY council leader, Allen Brett offers a very curious explanation for his decision to join the small minority of Labour councillors (a few hundred out of more than seven thousand nationwide) urging the democratically elected leader of the Labour Party to ‘make way for a new leadership’ whom Coun Brett fails to specify.
He told the Rochdale Observer (July 6) that ‘the result of the EU referendum had convinced him’ while asserting that he does not think that Jeremy Corbyn ‘campaigned hard enough to remain in the EU.’
Thoughts of ‘pots and kettles’ spring instantly to mind, unless Coun Brett is, in fact, woefully ignorant of the relevant facts.
I am thinking firstly of the fact that in contrast to the Rochdale borough where Coun Brett is deputy leader of the council and where less than 40 per cent voted for remain, in Islington where Jeremy Corbyn is one of the two MPs, over 75 per cent of voters voted for remain.
Secondly, the fact that 63 per cent of those who voted Labour in 2015 also voted remain in 2016 and the fact that this was essentially the same proportion as the 64 per cent of SNP voters who also voted remain.
And thirdly, the fact that it was the possible ‘stalking horse’ MP Angela Eagle who shortly before referendum day told us ‘Jeremy is up and down the country, pursuing an itinerary that would make a 25-year old tired, he has not stopped.’
Indeed, it is abundantly clear that Jeremy Corbyn did, in fact, make many public speeches and many media statements in support of a remain vote.
The much more pertinent question here in Rochdale, Heywood and Middleton may, however, be that of how many public speeches councillors Brett, McCarthy, Martin, O’Rourke, Heakin or Hartley made for the remain cause in their local communities and council wards?
How many such speeches did Coun Brett make in his Milkstone and Deeplish ward?
How many remain events did Coun Hartley organise in Littleborough during the campaign?
I am left wondering whether these six grumbling councillors may perhaps be displacing guilty feelings about their own inactivity in support of the remain campaign.
Or could it be that their support for the Blairiteled and very undemocratic coup attempt is, in fact, the product of other motivations and influences? Pat Sanchez High Peak
ELECTION MAY BE A PROBLEM
THE provisions of the Fixed Term Parliaments Act of 2011 mean that the yet to be selected Tory leader will not be able to call an early General Election and seek a so called ‘mandate’, without the co-operation of the Labour party, which may not be forthcoming.
If an election is held it will create an intriguing dilemma for the leadership of Rochdale Labour Party.
The national party does not seem to be in any great hurry to lift the suspension of Simon Danczuk.
This could lead to a situation where the local party finds itself facing an election campaign without an approved candidate and less than a month to find one.
If Labour is to stand a chance of winning the Rochdale seat in an early election it needs to begin the process of disengaging itself from Mr Danczuk as soon as possible. Les May Rochdale