'The Russians Are Coming!!' - Well Actually.......
"THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING!!!"
The reason I have mocked the Ministry of Attack's blatant attempts to fill shortfalls in its budget by crying wolf is that it plays on fears born from our complete ignorance of the way the modern world works, and that ignorance fuels our inability to comprehend the real enemy.
The Russians aren't coming.
They don't need to. They are already here.
As are the Germans, the French, the Dutch, the Spanish, the Italians, the Americans, the Canadians, the Chinese, the Malaysians.....the list goes on.
Invasion, by the Old World understanding of the word, is an outdated and unnecessary concept. One nation used to invade another to control its people and resources, to bleed its wells dry, to farm its labour. We should know, after all, we practically invented it.
Who needs to invade now? It is too expensive both financially and in terms of lives. All you need to do now is find a country selling all its assets and buy them.
Welcome to UK PLC.
This island was sold down the river the day privatisation became the accepted means of running public services, manufacturing and industry. Once we set a foot down that road we were finished, and now you look around today and wonder what it is we actually DO.
The answer is very little. We have no heavy industry. That was sold off, stripped back and shut down. We have no manufacturing base. That was crippled by Thatcherism when the banks were deregulated and the pound throttled the life out of our factories and plants. And we have little or no control over even the simplest of daily requirements.
Look at the railways. The Germans run Chiltern, Cross Country, Grand Central, London Overground, Northern, Tyne & Wear Metro and Wales & Borders. The French State runs (or part-runs) Docklands Light Railway, Gatwick Express, London Midland, Southern, South Eastern and Thameslink. The Italian State runs Essex Thameside. The Dutch State runs Greater Anglia and Scotland The French and Belgian State co-run Eurostar.....that's not conspiracy theory by the way, just Google it.
Then there's our power suppliers. The new nuclear plants will be run and controlled by the French and Chinese governments; the French own EDF; German companies run EON and NPower; Scottish Power is Spanish.
Water companies. Northumbrian Water, Cambridge Water, Essex and Sussex Water.....all run from Hong Kong; Affinity Water is US owned; Anglian US and Canadian; Bristol Water is Canada, Spain and Japan; Bournemouth Water run by a Singapore-based company; South Eastern Water is joint Canadian and Australian.
The list goes on. The country YOU want "back" was sold from underneath your feet by successive governments over four decades of neoliberalism; it was started by the Tories, but New Labour were more than happy to carry it on, until now, when there is very little left to call your own. Some of you even bought f***ing SHARES in it!
The EU was a player in this process for certain, but anyone who thinks Brexit will deliver a return of 'sovereignty' over this island needs to have a long hard look at who owns the things you take for granted, because it sure as hell isn't you.
Until the people of this country wake up and see their enemy is not a specific body but an entire system, we are doomed to carry on down this path getting poorer and poorer and blaming anyone but ourselves.
Without a sustained program of renationalisation, all Brexit will deliver is a union flag waved by people who haven't read the little label in the corner.
If they took a closer look, that label would contain three words.
"Made in China"