Livid is not the word. I am beyond apoplectic. Britain is now a basket case.

After two and a half years of indecisiveness, secretive meetings, blocking, kicking the can down the road, arguing, gaslighting, throwing the subject off course, obfuscating, giving warnings of dire consequences if the vote is not respected, rejecting warnings of dire consequences if the vote is respected, we have now ended up with fewer than 60 days before we leave the EU, and we still don't have a fixed plan.

It could have been so much easier. If Theresa May had engaged with all parties in the negotiations to leave the EU from the very beginning, we could have had a much better consensus on our future direction. As it happened, she gave very little away and now we have a situation with less than 2 months to go where Parliament has had enough, is starting to get twitchy, and is attempting to remove the Brexit process from the government's responsibility.

Theresa May did nothing to consult anyone on the process. She just continually banged on in her robotic way about her wish to carry out the "will of the people" in the 2016 Referendum.

Firstly, a 52-48 outcome is not an adequately wide margin to accept even a minor change to the constitution of the local Women's Institute, let alone the destiny of a country of over 60 million people. Will of the people? Not to me, it isn't.

Secondly, I am furious with the opposition leadership. In fact, not just furious, I am monumentally enraged. I am incensed. Irate. Infuriated. Fuming. In short, Jeremy Corbyn's handling of the entire issue is at best misguided. At worst, it is the most blasé, nonchalant and unconcerned attitude any leader of the opposition has ever taken to a matter of such importance.

There was a time where I thought Corbyn was waiting for the PM to tie herself in knots. Now, I just think he's having some kind of 80s throwback fantasy, preferring to be in opposition, and loving this return to Tory rule where he can act out the fantasy of some Che Guevara-style action hero.

I never really warmed to Corbyn. I found him to be such a wet stick of celery. His parliamentary style, trying to take the poison out of debates with the PM, was a disaster. Theresa May, whose heart is so small and so deep black, despite not having a single idea of her own, manages to run rings around him every week.

Corbyn has spent the last two years being the "nearly man". When you consider, over a decade ago, when Gordon Brown took over from Tony Blair, it was like exchanging a Picasso for a rolled-up caricature of your grandpa made by a bloke in a tourist trap alleyway. Cameron, who is a snake oil salesman with a silver tongue and an empty soul, made Brown look like a total arse.

When Cameron won the 2010 election, and went into government with the contemplative nice guy Nick Clegg, I saw it as an opportunity to rein in the Tories' meanness. The public, with the goading of several hawkish newspapers, saw Clegg as "the guy who didn't see through his tuition fee promises", and wiped out the Liberal Democrats for probably ever. When Cameron narrowly won the 2015 election, much to everyone's surprise, he set the country on its current trajectory.

With the Lib Dems gone, that meant Britain could go back to being a 2-party state, to the delight of the dark forces in politics. With the Labour party infiltrated by left-wing entryists, its first act was to reject the statesmanlike David Miliband as leader and elect his nerdy brother Ed instead. Cameron tore lumps out of him. With the Labour Party's prodigious ability to choose totally unsuitable leaders in key areas (Michael Foot being one that springs to mind), and the grassroots membership's loathing of any leaders that actually do well (Tony Blair for example), they decided to choose someone who couldn't command a police-trained dog to sit, let alone half the House of Commons.

Step forward, Jeremy Corbyn.

Although I am by no means a Labour party supporter, it is to him I turned when I thought Theresa May was about to sell out her citizens overseas (including me). But he did nothing. All he did was waffle on about lost jobs and higher taxes, neglected communities and run-down town centres. Yes, I totally agree with the fact that the Tories have caused untold damage to poor people by ripping the soul out of their communities and flinging hundreds of thousands of poverty-stricken citizens on to the scrap heap known as Universal Credit.

But please, Jeremy, in the name of sanity, DO SOMETHING!!!!!!!

When I see dippy old troglodytes spouting nonsense like "Britain stood alone once before, and we can do it again!" or "Let's go to WTO rules!" I truly despair. These daft souls have learned nothing in the last 3 years, and don't believe any of the warnings raised by experts and those in trade and industry. One rather idiotic old git last week said it would do the country good to miss out for a while, to see what they once had. These people get airtime on the BBC. Yet Corbyn does not take the opportunity to put anyone straight, to the delight of the ERG and their supporters.

He deflects attention, doesn't stick to any point, answers his own questions, refuses to deny in a clear way that he is an anti-Semite, and lets the Tory press walk all over him.

We thought Gordon Brown was a terrible Labour leader. Then Ed Miliband came along and we realised there were even greater depths. Then Corbyn arrived, and it turned out the bottom of the barrel was in fact quite a lot further down. We wonder who will follow him - let's hope we don't discover a new nether region.

In my opinion, the Tories have capitalised on the "niceness" of leaders of other parties - they excoriated Gordon Brown, vilified Nick Clegg, ignored Vince Cable, patronised Caroline Lucas, laughed at Ed Miliband, but there is one party whose leaders they still keep at arm's length - the SNP. They seem to be absolutely terrified of them, and with good reason. Nicola Sturgeon seems to be the only party leader whose reach is wide enough to put a massive dent in the Tories' plans. In fact, there are anti-Brexit English and Welsh people who look to her, rather than Corbyn, as the person most likely to stick up for them in public discourse.

And right they are. Nicola Sturgeon is going to be the first Prime Minister of an independent Scotland. The recent developments in Westminster have set the country on a trajectory that cannot now be reversed. I have always been British, and if you look through my posts around the time of the last Scottish referendum, I was vehemently in favour of preserving the Union.

Now, though, I would totally understand if the Scottish decided they were going to cast off the English and set sail for European climes. I am quite sure they would be fast-tracked to EU membership. Then, the Northern Irish, who are currently having a bit of an existential crisis, may choose to reunite their island. Without the Scots, who have more to do with them than the English, they won't be able to call themselves "British" any more. (As an aside, I would hope the DUP would suffer the same fate as the Lib Dems by going into government with the Tories, but politics over there are deeply entrenched.)

This will leave the English and Welsh. The once great country of empire, cradle of the Industrial Revolution, birthplace of some of the world's greatest sports, now reduced to a friendless husk of isolationist reactionaries and Blitz-spirit circus freaks. The country has been sold off and broken up by disaster capitalists all for the sake of a financial dividend.

Yesterday's seven-fold vote in the House of Commons proved one thing: Theresa May can't find a way out of the impasse, so she is setting up the EU for a fall. When they reject her approaches over this idea to revisit the Northern Ireland backstop, which they have already done, she can blame them for their intransigence and inflexibility, whereas in fact they are just protecting their own (Rep. of Ireland). They owe Britain no favours.

So yes, I am bloody fuming. The Tories always seem to find a way to blame someone else and stay in power on the backs of the gullible and the easily-led. Funnily enough, I haven't met anyone who admits voting for them, but if I did, I will not be responsible for my actions.

They wasted valuable airtime telling everyone that Jeremy Corbyn is an IRA/PLO/Chavez/Argentine Malvinas (delete as appropriate) sympathiser whilst themselves cosying up to the Saudis and selling arms to some of the nastiest dictators around the world.

They trashed the reputation of the Liberal Democrats by inviting them to form a government then hung them out to dry by rejecting the Lib Dems' flagship policy on tuition fees, almost wiping them off the electoral map.

They profess to care about the less well-off and the needy, despite raging with indignation when the United Nations criticised them for their austerity politics.

They blame immigration, especially EU immigration, for causing wages to drop over time, hospitals to become overcrowded, adequate housing to become scarce and expensive, and schools to become saturated, yet refuse to introduce simple legislation requiring everyone who comes into the country to register with the local council, making it mandatory for those nationals to leave the country after 3 or 6 months of unemployment, and counting people in and out as they come, something other EU countries have done rather effectively.

Instead, they go complaining to Brussels that they won't let the UK have concessions on free movement of people.

They are about to do the same smoke-and-mirrors trick - they are lining up their cards. When the EU rebuffs their wish to renegotiate the Irish backstop, they will blame them and turn more people against the EU, even though it is their own fault. This is the ultimate sign of a coward and a cad - if you can't own up to your faults, you are obviously a dishonourable shyster and a cheat.

Finally, when this utter catastrofuck finally gets under way, I hope it ruins the careers and reputations of a lot of Quitlings and their acolytes. They will, however, probably find a way to escape the fate that should befall them, like some Bond villain that gets out of a burning factory by sending for a helicopter, leaving the rest to perish.

In any case, the next few weeks should be programmatic for the years ahead - maybe parties will split, or new ones will be formed. Maybe someone finally gets some balls and says what everyone else knows - that the referendum was fraudulent and unconstitutional. But that's a rant for another day.

Why is anti-establishment sentiment thriving even after Brexit?

Photograph: Yui Mok/PA

There was quite a gloating article in the Guardian this week on Brexit and its consequences on the rest of Europe. In a nutshell, it said that Europe had been revolted by the self-harm the UK has inflicted on itself and the instability it has unleashed on the British economy, its politics and society in general. Despite its "I told you so" theme, it is not wrong. But the battle for the soul of Britain has been hijacked by two opposing factions: the rich on one side and the poor on the other, with paradoxically the poor unwittingly doing the bidding of those who would like to subjugate them. Anti-establishment fever tilted the vote towards Brexit, not a genuine desire to leave the EU.

Oh David Cameron, what have you unleashed? In fact, I could replace the former Prime Minister in that sentence with a number of people, like the present incumbent (whoever that is at the time you read this), or maybe a few media moguls. But this all goes back decades. It is a seething collection of pustules that has been awaiting its time to spew its fetid contents all over the skin of public life and drag the victim into a chronic downward spiral of health and well-being.

There is a correlation between the Brexit vote and the current malaise in society - let me explain...

Successive governments have run public services into the ground through cutting costs, economy drives and selling off tenders to the private sector. None of this needed to happen if it were not for ideology-driven politicians whether in national government or local councils, and their chums in the private sector from lobbyists to energy conglomerates, pharmaceutical companies to building contractors. Every one of them is partly to blame for the current situation. The situation is clear: for the last 40 years, cheap is best, and to hell with the consequences. Hospitals and health workers, infrastructure building, public hygiene, education facilities and staff, police, firefighters, the military, even libraries, have been affected by the scything down of their expenses all so that governments, councils and their contractors can say to their clients (that's you), that they have been saving money in your name.

Well I don't know about you, but as far as I am aware, it's the exact opposite of that method that leads to good running of public services. Money needs to be put into their systems, not removed. That means that instead of reducing our income tax bills, VAT payments and council charges, the powers that be should be raising them, or at least looking for ways to maximise returns. When some suited chinless wonder from the richer side of public life comes on TV and warns against voting for various politicians because "your bills will go up", people need to remember that this bozo from the landed gentry is actually worried about his own costs going up. He will be the first to see a reduction in his own income because he is earning more per year than most earn in ten or twenty years. Why is Jeremy Corbyn being picked out for special treatment? Precisely because of that. He wants public services to run properly and rich dudes fear that if they do, not only will they lose money, they'll lose the opportunity to buy into them when lobbyists have finished convincing politicians to sell.

Back in the 1980s, public services were run into the ground until the public clamour to sell those services off was so loud, that this was the most logical step. It was a tactic used time and again by the then government to make the case for its sale. This was true for water, energy, gas, telephony, public transport, even security services. What we saw, though, was a change in the accountability and rights of those public services, now they were private. Trains that were before late or didn't show up at all were blamed on strikes and militant worker-related action, whereas now the services are not much better and in some cases worse, despite being sold off. Outsourcing and selling off public services has led us nowhere, except that now those services need no longer be directly accountable to the government, and ultimately, the public. It also gives carte blanche to those companies to limit pay, reduce workers' rights and entitlements, all in the name of saving money. They have effectively written themselves out of any social responsibility.

It is this selfish ideology that has led to this moment in history (and yes, this is history - PhD theses will be written about this period in the not-too-distant future) where the gap between rich and poor has finally become too wide, and where injustice in society has become plain for all to see where once it was easier to sweep it aside with gimmicks and distractions, fobbing people off with standard soundbites and impersonal press releases.

And things are a lot more complicated than on the face of it. Far from being a country that's full to bursting, as landowners, right-wing politicians and lobbyists will tell you, there is plenty of room. Indeed, only a very small percentage of the land has been built on. The real issue is that it is a country whose infrastructure has not been invested in for a very long time, and citizens' roles in society are becoming less and less welcome, and it shows:

• the hospitals are maybe fully equipped, but many times there are staff shortages or there are not enough beds for patients, leading to dangerously long waiting times. If real investment were made to ensure there were enough fully-staffed hospitals for everyone, we would need to delve deep into our pockets 
• you should send your child to a local school no matter its ranking, meaning that pupils are liable to be turned down if their parents try to apply for a place in what might be a more suitable school outside their catchment area, even if it is just over a designated line. This means house prices in certain areas rise, and the rules prevent any logic from being used. The fallout from this is that people are being forced to do irrational things to get their children into the school of their choice
• the Royal Navy, once the envy of the world, is now a shadow of itself, as is the British Army and the Royal Air Force, all so the defence budget can be spent on a nuclear arsenal that nobody dare use
• there is a huge swathe of building land that is lying unused and empty because building companies refuse to build on it, meaning prices of houses go spiralling up, but more shockingly, their untouched land turns them a huge profit

There are many more examples of this, and people have become sick and tired of being treated like commodities. They know that successive governments have cut everything to the bone, they know the country is dangerously paired back to the very limits of manageability, they just haven't joined all the dots yet, but they are slowly becoming aware of it. 

Having an ideology of saving money for the sake of it has proven recently to be a myth that has badly exposed the long-term dangers of such recklessness in playing with people's dignity and respect, and nowhere has that been more evident than in the case of Grenfell Tower in West London. What has struck me is how someone came up with the idea of saving a few thousand measly pounds by choosing an inferior cladding material in a refurbishment project to make the outside of a tower block more aesthetically pleasing while neglecting the inside, where residents - who are human beings, by the way - live.

The sentiment of grief turned to anger very quickly, leading to a general feeling of ill-will towards the Prime Minister, the government, Kensington and Chelsea Borough Council, and various contracting firms. This is not surprising, but it is a microcosm of UK life in general. The protests we saw in Whitehall and at Kensington Town Hall are just a spit in the ocean of general British dissatisfaction with the way life is going at the moment, and this is manifesting itself in so many ways.

The Brexit referendum last year, in my opinion, was won by a three-way split between different sections of the public: 

• easily-led individuals who believe everything that the right-wing press tells them, as well as unadventurous, stay-at-home monolinguals who know nothing about the wider world except the two-week drunken jaunt they undertake every summer to some touristic Mediterranean concrete jungle
• people with vested interests in pulling out of the EU, such as some unscrupulous employers, financial investors and politicians, who have been heavily sponsored to say negative things about the EU, and finally
• genuinely disaffected, forgotten and ignored people all around the country who wanted to vote for a change and saw it as their way to stage a protest; effectively kicking the government where it hurts for their constant overlooking of their issues (it is these people I can forgive for voting the way they did - so would I, probably)

What the last group fails to realise, is that by voting the way they did, they have done exactly what the people who are profiting from making their lives a misery wanted them to do; that is to say, they are turkeys voting for Christmas, which makes this such a national tragedy. There is also a gap between the educated and the under-educated, leading to a startling decline in trust in true facts and expert opinions, and a worrying rise in people's willingness to tie their misery to any popular movement that will get them out of the terrible hole they are in, whether that be extremist religion, militant political organisations, support groups, pressure groups or general grumbling to mates at the pub. Brexit had very little to do with many people's actual wishes and more to do with a genuine national mood of dissatisfaction with their circumstances.

What the UK needs right now is a long healing process and a coming to terms with the fact that the people have been lied to for many years for profit and nothing more. The recent election on 9th June reflected people's mistrust of the current incumbents and their handling of social matters as well as Brexit negotiations, where even the Daily Mail has revealed that 69% of people favour a softer departure from the EU. People need to regain a modicum of trust in their politicians and their public services.

Anti-establishment sentiment is thriving in lots of little pockets like local issues, or even as a cause of adverse personal experiences with authority, but when the dots get joined up and everyone realises that it is a national issue, there will be a mass protest at the gates of the high and mighty. People just don't realise yet who is to blame, but this is slowly revealing itself now that people see that cuts in services and selling out to corporate greed have led to the situation we find ourselves in the early summer of 2017.

If you want nice roses, you do not cut at the bottom.

UK Election 2017: tell your old folks their time is up

We live in an age where the source of your news will determine who you vote for and where in the social pyramid you probably find yourself. Most people will read from a news source, but there are stark differences in how those news sources treat various events and deal with diverse opinions. For one newspaper a scandal, for another an amusing anecdote. For one TV news broadcaster a waste of money, for another a long-term solid investment. Who to believe? And why does it matter to read all different sources of news?

My grandfather, who was also my uncle (long story cut short - my mother and her mother married two brothers), once gave me a very important life lesson. I asked him one day why he read a left-leaning newspaper but also a right-leaning one. His answer was clear: you have to know what the enemy is up to. I have never forgotten that line and I have stuck by it ever since.

Today, we live in a multi-faceted media world. We can get our news from someone's Facebook feed, or feeds from sources we ourselves have accepted. We can get it from watching Sky, Fox, ITN, or the BBC. Indeed, we can find it from a rejected newspaper in the train, or maybe we buy our newspapers at the corner shop every morning.

Newspaper readers in particular are very difficult to wean off their paper of choice. You could never give a Sun reader the Guardian and presume they will like it immediately. And vice-versa. Besides, it is not just a question of politics - it is also a matter or familiarity, intellect and taste. But it really matters. Because getting your information from one source is detrimental to acquiring a balanced opinion. Malcolm X once said, "If you aren't careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing." If you stick to one source of news, over time, you are likely to believe everything written in there.

I acquire my news from the BBC, the Guardian, Mail Online and the Independent. I sometimes read the Economist, the Telegraph and watch Channel Four News on their website. I also see a lot of posts on Facebook from very diverse outlets such as Al Jazeera, CNN, and France 24. Most treat issues with the same seriousness and neutrality. Some find a unique angle to report from, some give statistics, some show a non-commentary video to tell the story. But the vast majority do not try to influence you one way or the other, because most of us accept certain issues as already fact, or because the news outlet wants you to make up your own mind through what they present. That is not always the case when it comes to politics.

That brings me on to the upcoming general election in the UK.

Where to begin? Let us start with the spin and the influencing. Take Theresa May's non-appearance at the BBC Election Debate on Wednesday night. She was replaced by the Home Secretary, Amber Rudd. Predictably, the left-wing press said this was a mistake, and she was scared of meeting the people, terrified of debates and not interested in ordinary people. The right-wing press predictably said it was not worth her turning up as it was a waste of time because twice as many people were watching BGT on ITV and because she was out on the streets instead, talking to the people who matter.

Where does the truth lie here? It probably lies somewhere in the middle - Theresa May knew a few weeks ago that she was a country mile in front, so she thought it best to steer clear of controversy and stay on-message, however sterile and boring that is. Saying that, I would say this was a bad error of judgement, as it gave five of the other six debaters the chance to stick in the sword.

Then there were the debates themselves and how they were reported. I watched the last half, and I saw highlights of the rest on highlights clips on YouTube and Facebook. I thought Jeremy Corbyn, Tim Farron, Angus Robertson, Caroline Lucas and Leanne Wood were quite eloquent, but they spent a long time attacking each other and especially the Tories, and not enough time talking about their own party's credentials. Amber Rudd was robotic and smiled when the audience laughed at her comments, like "judge us on our record". It was as if she knew this was just a soundbite, and she realised the audience knew as well. Paul Nuttall was like a builder's bumcrack at a society ball. He was excess to requirements. He got nearly no applause and when he opened his mouth to speak, he came across like Sean Spicer's less talented stand-in.

How did the newspapers report it?

Take a look at this article in the Guardian, on how biased the media has been behaving against Jeremy Corbyn, which seems to have a lot of credence. This one attacks Corbyn for befriending terrorists, this one shows Corbyn as a security risk, and this one bemoans the left-wing bias of the BBC. They're all from the Daily Mail.

If one runs a Google search for Daily Mail articles on the Labour Party and Jeremy Corbyn, one can find hundreds and hundreds of them criticising and attacking. The same newspaper's treatment of the Conservatives and Theresa May? Pretty clement, even towards Boris Johnson, the current incumbent of the people's Naughty Step:

In the end, this article is about Boris Johnson's masterful handling of an ice cream known in Britain as a 99 and nothing about policy at all. Funnily enough, there were no negative stories at all, except the one on the PM's refusal to attack Trump for pulling out of the Paris Agreement, and a mild one on her decision not to go to the BBC debate. Press bias is a feature of both the left and the right, and although left-wing ones are quite strong, they don't hit nearly as hard. Nowhere is it more vitriolic and more effective in its premeditated viciousness and underhand manoeuvres than in the hands of the right-wing media. They manipulate stories, change angles and points of view depending on who they are defending or attacking. But now, the tide is turning and many reasonably-minded press outlets are calling them out. Here is one of those, handled very effectively by the Huffington Post.

So, before you put your mark on the ballot paper next week, do a lot of research and question everything. You may even end up changing your vote preferences. For that reason, we need to get the message to the old. They are the ones most heavily influenced by newspapers, especially the right-wing press, and the ones most likely to vote. Demographically, in 5 to 10 years, there will be a lot fewer of them around, and my own feeling is this time is seen by the oligarchs in charge of the UK's press as being the final opportunity to make a landgrab for more wealth and influence.

Fortunately, the young are fighting back. Hundreds of thousands of new registrations to vote have been placed recently, and mainly by the young. This has caused a massive tilt in the opinion polls and a surge towards Labour, but these young people are notoriously languid on polling day. We can only hope they do go out to vote in their droves. The UK needs an effective opposition, especially if the Conservatives win a majority.

The Internet is full of images and graphics, like this one below, debunking the myths and lies spread by the right-wing media. The problem is, old people do not see these things, because newspapers do not have the same scope as the Internet, and so many old people are unaware of these simple issues.

(continued below the images)

These images containing meaningful messages are doing the rounds on the Internet, and so I challenge anyone with a family member over 60 who is without Internet: dig around for 5 to 10 simple yet effective memes of this kind, put it on your laptop or tablets and visit your relative to persuade him/her to vote for a party that wants to look after everyone.

Let us face it, the old have had their day. They need to be told the world will still be going on once they have departed, and it will most certainly not be the same world we have now. The elderly need to be persuaded that in fact, they do not have to put up with the decisions they make. The young do. Make way for youth, go and persuade your grandad to stand aside for the benefit of his descendants.