What are you doing while the world burns?

 

We still have a choice.
We either continue to self-medicate or we get off the sofa and fight. If we are financially able, we must give money
to those who need it more.
If we are physically able, we must resist and protest.

England, 2019

"Many of us...have a feeling that we are living in a country where fanatics, hooligans and eccentrics
have got the upper hand."
Horace Rumbold, British Ambassador to Berlin, 1933

"My God. History will condemn this period. It will condemn those who’ve sat back and kept their view to themselves, who haven’t stood up and tried to stop all this nonsense.”
Anna Soubry MP, 2017

Clio, Muse of History reading a scroll
Attic red-figure lekythos, ca. 435-425 BC. From Boeotia. Louvre. Image: Wikipedia

“I don’t want to be known as the last prime minister of the United Kingdom”
attributed to Theresa May, Prime Minister, 2019

"When I am dead and opened, you shall find Calais engraved on my heart".
Mary I, 1558, referring to the humiliating incompetence of losing England's last stronghold in continental Europe

Jan Swart van Groningen, Woman Lamenting by a Burning City 1550-55
Pen in black, brush in brown,
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Image: WGA

The moment modern Britain got back its dignity

Dominic Grieve's magisterial speech at The People's Vote rally on 13 November was an historic moment to remember, whatever the outcome of the movement to save our disunited kingdom will be. All the speakers found new reserves of passion and determination, and, in some cases, humility, showing the time has come to put our country above all personal interests. This was patriotism, not nationalism.

The Misgovernment of Britain

“THE UNCERTAINTY, MUDDLE AND DRIFT [OF BREXIT SHOWS]THAT VICTORIAN THEORIES OF GOVERNMENT SIMPLY DON’T DESCRIBE ANY LONGER THE REALITY OF HOW THE UK IS MISGOVERNED”
Tim O’Connor, Attorney at Law

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CONDEMNED BY HISTORY

"My God. History will condemn this period. It will condemn those who’ve sat back and kept their view to themselves, who haven’t stood up and tried to stop all this nonsense.”

A rare black swan in the dismal swamp of Brexit Parliamentary politics - Anna Soubry:
"I am simply not prepared to stand back and watch my country fall off a cliff edge. If that means voting against my party, so be it."

"It’s like the counter-revolutionary forces of Chairman Mao or Joe Stalin. It’s not enough that you went against everything you ever believed in; you have to sign up in blood. It’s like Orwell’s thought police and the reign of terror combined"

ANNA SOUBRY INTERVIEWED IN THE OBSERVER

The Autonomous Woman

Jane Austen meets Artemisia Gentileschi

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Gift of Kings

NATURE’S GREAT MASTERPIECE, AN ELEPHANT (THE ONLY HARMLESS GREAT THING) John Donne

"[I WILL] PUT [MY] DECISION ON HOLD UNTIL SUCH TIME AS I REVIEW ALL .... FACTS” Donald Trump

 

 

The democratic right to change our minds

THE BRITISH PEOPLE STILL HAVE A CHOICE ON BREXIT

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Lord Cardigan leading the Charge of the Light Brigade

ONCE OUT, THERE IS NO WAY BACK

 

 Lord Kerr 

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Like a Virgin

Barbara Palmer (née Villiers), Duchess of Cleveland with her son, Charles FitzRoy,
as the Virgin and Child, by Lely

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Lying in our hearts

Horse Frightened by a Storm, watercolour by Eugene Delacroix, 1824. Image source: WGA

Why won't the patient take his medicine?

Will this country die from obstinacy?

 Increased support among European nations including UK for EU following Brexit

I'm standing on the wall, berating destiny. Call me Cassandra, if you like. You may think I'm mad and ignore me, but you need me as a particle of collective consciousness in the grand muddle of truth.

Cassandra, Cassandra, You're fated to madness, it's out of your hands Destined to say what no one wants to know

'Cassandra', Famiglia album, written by Sophie Michelle Ellis-Bextor, Ed Harcourt, sung by Sophie Ellis Bextor

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The Denialists

Woman Lamenting by a Burning City

1550-55
Pen in black, brush in brown Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

by Jan Swart van Groningen. Image: WGA

The woman might be Cassandra, the prophetess whose warnings no-one believed or one of Lot's daughters, or just any mad woman weeping for her ruined country while it's harried by politicians eating babies and kissing chips [sic] - nobody knows.

Give back her future

The New Cosette, marching to Unite for Europe on 25 March, 2017 © Martin Hübscher

If you were young today, how would you be feeling about your future that was decided by your elders in a badly informed opinion poll last year?

 

 

Augustus Leopold Egg Past and Present 2 © Tate

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The air in my country

“The air in my country is very foul”
Ian McEwan, at a press conference in Barcelona, March, 2017

 Pieter Breughel the Elder, The Fall of the Rebel Angels 1562
Oil on oak, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels. Image: WGA

"Now is not the time to obstruct the will of the people" Theresa May in the House of Commons, 2017.

"Terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is therefore an emanation of virtue; it is not so much a special principle as it is a consequence of the general principle of democracy applied to our country's most urgent needs." Robespierre, in a speech to the National Convention, 1794.

Maximilien Robespierre, oil on canvas by Pierre-Roch Vigneron, 1786; in the Museum of French History, Palace of Versailles. Image: Britannica.com The embodiment of the people 's will, and the exponent of State terrorism: Maximilien Robespierre, smiling his sweet megalomaniac's smile, before the Revolution.

We are being bullied into acquiescence with a disastrous rupture with Europe. Our economy and civilization are being degraded, people we love might be torn from us, and we are told to be silent.

Brexit is being imposed upon us in a reign of Terror, in which dissent is suppressed and the rule of law threatened.

"Any institution which does not suppose the people good, and the magistrate corruptible, is evil." Robespierre.

"Enemies of the people"
Daily Mail denouncing the judges of the High Court who upheld Gina Miller's case for parliamentary sovereignty.

Our centuries' old representative parliamentary democracy is broken, smashed under the weight of public opinion polls and political opportunism.

This is not democracy; this is authoritarianism.

If you don't like Brexit, and you love your country, don't shut up.  Never stop protesting.

“It is the right of those of us who voted to remain to continue to speak for what we believe is in our country’s best interest and not allow ourselves to be cowed into silence.”
Ian McEwan, March, 2017

Detail from The Rape of Europa, bronze by Il Riccio (Andreo Briasco), 1520.
Szépmûvészeti Múzeum, Budapest. Image: WGA

  Great Britain self-destructs:

IF ONLY IT WAS A BAD DREAM
DON'T LEAVE, TIFFANY
DOING THE MACARENA TO CATASTROPHE
ALFRED'S DOOMS
48-52

 

The Compelling Entertainment of Catastrophe

Sofa by the Spanish cartoon artist Ekhi-Guinea

GRABS POPCORN is how humanity self-medicated its way to disaster instead of getting off the sofa to resist and protest.

 THE LAST POST?

Don't Leave, Tiffany

 

The Awakening Conscience by Holman Hunt, 1853

"Tiffany told everyone she was too good to be there and stormed out without realizing she had no money for a taxi, her phone was dead, and she was 3 miles from the nearest subway # Brexit"

Alfred's dooms

THE GUARDIAN OF DEMOCRACY

If only it was a bad dream

Gustave Doré, illustration to Tennyson's Idylls of the King, 1868. Vivien leaves Merlin sleeping in the oak tree in which she has ensnared him "and the forest echoed 'fool'".

DOING THE MACARENA - TO CATASTROPHE

THE FATE OF THE UNITED KINGDOM AFTER BREXIT VOTE

You have to remember one thing about the will of the people: it wasn't that long ago that we were swept away by the Macarena.

Jon Stewart

The Destiny of Man is to unite, not to divide. If you keep on dividing you end up as monkeys throwing nuts at each other out of separate trees.
T.H.White, The Once and Future King

48 - 52

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