British General Election

Ocean Gem
Geoff & Eileen Mander
Fri 9 Jun 2017 09:33
Date: Friday 9th June 2017

During the preceding few weeks we have been splendidly isolated from the rest of the world with very little in the way of news percolating through the poor quality internet signals we’ve been able to use. During most of this period a general election campaign has been taking place in the UK that will determine the countries government for the next few years. Missing all of the intensive electioneering has been one of the unexpected privileges of being at sea.

However this morning I turned on my computer and looked at the news of the election results. I wished that I hadn’t because my immediate visceral reaction was one of intense disgust followed by nausea. It turns out that large numbers of my ‘fellow’ countrymen have given their support to politicians that would make Donald Trump look like an easy going moderate.

Fortunately the Labour Party, the official opposition, failed to win enough seats to form a government, but only just. Their leaders are collectively an irredeemable bunch of extreme socialists that want to bring back most of the policies that bankrupted the UK back in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Their leader a man called Jeremy Corbyn is a lackwitted, poorly educated, geriatric who actively supports organisations like the IRA and numerous Middle East based terrorist groups and has been on the wrong side of practically every political issue since he entered politics in the in the 1960’s. The man who would be his chancellor is a campaigning marxist who supports terrorist organisations even more strongly than his leader.

I apologise for bringing politics into what should be a sailing blog but this event has caused me to reconsider my sailing plans more than any weather event or other natural catastrophe. Over the last 15 years I've spent very little time back in the UK, but until yesterday my plans involved returning to the UK to spend more time there. But I simply cannot make a positive choice to live in a country where so many of the population seem to have such harmful political views. To bring things back to a nautical theme I feel like the captain of a small cutter who has been sailing large distances to rejoin the mother ship only to hear news that the crew of the mother ship have been trying to hole her below the waterline.

So I don’t know what I am going to do now. I’ll probably still sail back to the UK, but I doubt that I will stay there for very long.