Tuesday, April 11, 2017

Brexit: political hooliganism

They called it the English disease. Mindless rampages through foreign lands, for no purpose other than cause chaos and injury, often to themselves.

Where once there were drunken skinheads in designer clothes with dubious far-right leanings, now the choice of dress is tweed, lager has become warm ale, and the violence is in the rhetoric rather than the physical deed. Two world wars and one world cup, indeed.

The battleground is narrower - the European Parliament in Brussels, and the meeting rooms where the leaving negotiations will take place - but the recruiting grounds are the same. Those flags at England games with towns that never or seldom appear in the football results on Final Score... I'm fairly confident that they have MEPs (democratically elected!) whose purpose is to make themselves redundant and not actually fight for their constituents.

Perhaps a similar solution could be employed by the EU - ban England from European competition for five years.

Developing the parallel further, the close season jaunts to the other side of the world provide a bit more cash, but it's nothing compared to the ease and variety of trade available on the doorstep.

Now where's my Premier League-branded innovative jam?