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To Remain

 

Look, I like having legal rights; to be a citizen not just a subject,
but I’m not without doubts about this great European project.
No, I don’t fear drowning in seas of asylum seekers some’d prefer out of my backyard
but the far right’s rise darkens my night skies and I find some truths really are quite hard.
Yes, the status quo is twisted so some not so nice people do too well off it,
but I fear if we leave now, only the very nastiest of people really profit.
If I’m wrong I will happily sit and eat my hat,
though I know many a Toff Tory won’t be happy with that,
for they expect me to doff it, and tug me forelock…
but bwoy, I’m two quarters Yardy and one quarter Scot
and even the English bit ain’t loyal to the crown
as it remembers all the serfs, peasants and right-less workers these royalist have put down
in the name of building a nation of which we might all be rightly proud…
and so when their anthems are played only my silence is loud.
Peace trumps pounds, pomp and pageantry
even when it’s been all dressed up in markets and sophistry
‘Cos I’m sure ALL those who fell in war must never be forgotten
yet a century on, some would have us celebrate The Somme
which shows those who knows the history of the Tommy, something’s surely rotten.
So, unless you favour all our disputes of thought, fought on the Fields of Flanders again,
I would beg you all to vote, and to vote, to remain.

PoliticsEUreferendumvotevotingEuropeRemainthe sommeeconomicsunioneuropeanflanders

◄ Young and wrinkly

Poetic linings ►

Comments

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Mark Mr T Thompson

Thu 2nd Jun 2016 22:36

See I thought those, like the two great grandfather's of mine who fought in WW1, did so in the war to end all war.

Then when my grandfather fought in WWII was shot down over the Mediterranean and then transported to POW camp attached to a concentration camp, he thought he was fighting facism and for the freedom of other Europeans?

I was under the impression that neither war was entered by the British as a response to a direct attack on British sovereignty (cousins don't often attack each other directly), but instead because we were bound by bureaucratic pacts.

So in WWI as the murderous Haig was sending brave pals regiments to the slaughter in slow moving waves, weighed down like so many mules, where was this self determination? Where was it when the slaughtered their own, over 300 of them, because they got scared and couldn't fight.

Harry Patch was the last British Tommy. He made sure all who would listen knew exactly what he thought. I think he and I would have more common ground than you and I, but despite polite requests to avoid commenting on my work, you are back again.

We don't agree.

I don't want to hear your opinion (again).

Since you have absolutely nothing to share but argument, I ask you once again, please not to comment on my writing.

You must have more important things to do than than this.

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M.C. Newberry

Thu 2nd Jun 2016 17:45

Before anyone rushes to shut the cell door, consider this:
Tony Benn is reported to have asked the following:
What power do you have?
Where did you get it?
In whose interests do you exercise it?
To whom are you accountable?
How can we get rid of you?
Then consider the EU Commissioners and their self-
generating power to invent laws designed to take
precedence over our own - and DO...with who-knows-
what to come in the steathily planned and executed federal creation.
My maternal uncle was killed in action in August 1916
during the Somme campaign. I don't think he would go
along with any concept that says goodbye to the
country and the cause of self-determination he fought and died for.

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