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  • About Walter
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      • Arrival and First Impressions
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      • Training
      • Passing Out
    • Yaumati Cowboy >
      • Getting on the Streets
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      • Jumpers, pill poppers and the indoor BBQ
      • Into a Minefield.
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      • Baptism By Fire
      • Kai Tak with Mrs Thatcher.
      • Home; The Boy Returns
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    • Having a go: SDU
    • Starting a Chernobyl family
    • EOD - Don't touch anything
    • Semen Stains and the rules
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    • Blue Lights, Sirens & Grenades
    • Drugs, Broken Kids & A Plane Crash
    • 600 Happy Meals Please!
    • Hong Kong's Best Insurance
    • Riding the Iron Horse
  • Crime in Hong Kong
    • Falling Crime Rates - Why?
    • Triads
  • History of Hong Kong Policing
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    • History 1945 to 1967
    • Anatomy of the 50 cent Riot - 1966
    • The Fall of a Commissioner.
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    • The Blue Berets.
    • The African Korps and other tribes.
    • Getting About - Transport.
    • A Pub in every station
    • Bullshit Bingo & Meetings
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Walter's Blog

"But how can you live and have no story to tell?" Fyodor Dostoevsky
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Reflections on recent events, plus the occasional fact free rant unfiltered by rational argument. 

"If you want to read a blog to get a sense of what is going on in Hong Kong these days or a blog that would tell you wh at life was like living in colonial Hong Kong, this blog, WALTER'S BLOG, fits the bill."  Hong Kong Blog Review

23/12/2018 2 Comments

A Failure

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"The Brexit vote ... was a mass vote of defiance against a political and expert class that viewed the populace with disdain."
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If we’ve learnt anything from 2018, it's that politicians and their technocrats minions have failed the British people. Moreover, those same people appear hellbent on usurping the democratic will of the nation by orchestrating a false Brexit. As a Remainer, I take no joy watching this slow-paced putsch unfold. It’s evident the people who negotiated the deal have by a sleight of hand produced a non-Brexit. 

What’s on offer will leave the UK within the EU, without the ability to influence decisions. In effect, Britain has surrendered its right to assert an opinion or control policy. I’m afraid it is vassalage. This stunning achievement has arisen for many reasons. The establishment doesn’t want out, that’s clear.  Then you have endless infighting and cross-party posturing. No one in the political class walks away untainted from this monumental mess.  

That Mrs May is beholden to the Democratic Unionist Party for her tenure in Number 10 is crucial. It means the faux issue of the Northern Island border sits centre to the whole imbroglio. No one even thought about it at the time of the vote. Distracted by a bloody red bus with numbers and the implied cash flow to the NHS, the debate was facile.

And yet, the Brexit vote was about much more. It was a mass vote of defiance against a political and expert class that viewed the populace with disdain. I include all shapes of politics in that statement. That ‘war-criminal’ Tony Blair and his pet rottweiler Alsatian Campbell come out to scupper the deal is enough proof. The elites don’t like it that the people are dictating the agenda; thus they want to see the deal sunk. 

The avowed pro-European Westminster mandarins align with Brussels. It suits them well. The ‘I know best’ attitudes prevails, plus the offer of rich career pickings. For politicians cast aside, the EU is a fat paycheck.  Lord 'Mandy' Mandelson is one of many who trod that path. They adjudge the British people as ‘poorly educated and angry’ dismissing them to rob the popular vote of its agency. Only self-proclaimed clever people can decide matters. It’s not lost on us that many Brexit voters are less well-off than the Remainer elites. 

With such people in power, you have to question their commitment to democracy. Meanwhile, a proposed second referendum amounts to shirking responsibility. Although, it does affirm the failure of the politicians as if that needed highlighting. Elected to do a job; the whole lot has fallen down. 

Over in Parliament, a furore erupts over whether Jeremy Corbyn called Mrs May ‘a stupid woman.' Who gives a flying futtock? Indeed, not the ordinary folks, who would either agree or be indifferent. More attention is thrust on this issue than the growing numbers sleeping rough. 

Expert lip readers pour over the recordings of the incident to seek the ‘truth’. Even if he said it, there is nothing inherently sexists with the statement. That’s unless you are an emotionally-charged SJW seeking offence in every statement. This weaponisation of emotional utterances, allied to fake outrage, is a sorry pantomime with no laughs. 

In summary, you have to say the current crop inhabiting the Westminster bubble is incompetent, weak and deceitful.  Don’t expect Labour to deliver. The party is far from cohesive under Corbyn. The public recognises his frailties as his popularity falls further behind the besieged May. That he can’t rise above her dismal showing is beyond belief.

The hollowed out Liberals remain soiled by the Clegg years. He's run away to work for Facebook. As for the Tories, the old fault-lines are on display. Civil war is on the verge of breaking out if only the paper tigers - Rees-Mogg and Boris  - can summon the courage to act. Mrs May was always a place filler, who has extended her tenure way beyond what I expected. I’ve developed a grudging respect for the lady. She’s still at the helm, fighting every swell and wave while taking flak from the rear.

In 2019, there need to be new voices, new blood, and new direction. In truth, without it, British politics will wallow in a stalemate. Transformational change must come, with all its roughness, dislocation and mayhem. Unlike their ‘gilets jaunes’ French counterparts, the British people don’t usually take to the streets. They don’t burn down Starbucks or blockade the highways. I feel that unless things change, that might come.

2 Comments
Chris Emmett
24/12/2018 02:07:35 am

Since day one, the remainers have been working to obfuscate the issue into the long grass. 'It's just too difficult,' they moan. It's a phrase far more commonly heard in the UK than it is in Hong Kong. The elites reckon that emerging, authoritarian EU statehood is fine, so long as the metaphorical trains run on time. Meanwhile, we leavers are closet racists too thick to understand the issues.

Reply
Gloria Bing
24/12/2018 10:42:28 am

You know, Walter, you practically took the words right out of my keyboard. What we are seeing is an elitist putsch against democracy. But I still have hope. I was dead set against another referendum on constitutional grounds. Referenda are intended to settle the question at hand for a generation and should not just be repeated when the result isn’t the right one. That’s an EU tactic. It shows utter contempt for the voters. But now I am coming round to the idea that a second referendum on EU membership would be a good one. Why? Because I think that not only will it be the most direct way to cut the Gordian Knot deliberately created by the Elite, but I think it would then deliver a final shattering blow to the EU. People are frustrated. They see the forces ranged against their hard-won democratic rights, they see the devious nature of the pro-EU Establishment and I think they will show it even in the most gerrymandered referendum. Bring it on.

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    Walter De Havilland was one of the last of the colonial coppers. He served 35 years in the Royal Hong Kong Police and Hong Kong Police Force. He's long retired. 

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