First and foremost one now recognises who ones friends are as the fair weather friends of yesterday line up to show their contempt at the democratic decision of the people with dire warnings and an unseemly desire to hasten us to the door. Overnight we have become the pariah the unclean amongst the European Bureaucrat who's contempt for the 'democratic ideal' is clear as they line up to disdainfully show us the way out.
Both Donald Tusk, President of the European Council and Jean-Claud Juncker, President of the European Commission are keen to show themselves as unsympathetic hardball players who fearing other members of the Union might follow suite are going to make our withdrawal as unpleasant as they can.
And so after chucking in the secure job to risk it all on a flight of fancy one has to quickly discover new skills. Fronting the general public with your tray of knick-nacks, it was all so different dressed in a suit, with the company parking place, shuffling paper around, knowing a cheque would be paid into your bank account, irrespective !! Now each sale is hard won and equally easily lost. The payments are often delayed and the cash flow a constant worry, one never knows for a long time if you are solvent and you dread a call to discuss your overdraft arrangement with the bank. Eventually you settle into a routine and the monetary situation becomes less dire but the days of cosseted security in an office on the sixth floor whilst a distant memory still has a glow around it.
I see Moodie's, the credit rating agency, have already downgraded our financial rating and the Americans reminded us that we are at the back of the queue. With our borrowing at such a high percentage of GDP any increase in the rate we are charged to service the loan will be painful. Perhaps like Iceland we can ask for chapter 5 and claim bankruptcy.
Loosing the Prime Minister, George Osborn's position becomes very shaky, given he and Cameron were joined at the hip in the "IN" campaign, I would think the whole cabinet are at a loss to withstand the European hostility and negotiations are going to be tricky to say the least.
Like the teenager, free from parental suppression they are content to sustain a couple of bruises before becoming street wise and find new and innovative ways to live in the world. Occasionally they will glance at the oldies, not necessarily to envy them their cluttered memorabilia filled existence and routine which stifles all but the nearly moribund, but rather eager to do things "their" way
The skills are there we just need a young, fresh minded individuals to apply their brains not to aping the past, not to tinkering around the edges but to start afresh as if the sheet was clean. 1. Everyone should understand what austerity is and how there are no free lunches.
2. Welfare reform must go hand in hand with banking reform.
3. Taxation must be the cornerstone of income redistribution.
4. We must get away from Friedman style neo capitalism.
5. We must find more modern ways to educate our young and reappraise our drift towards the feminist impulse to cuddle our youth.
6. We must be made to understand that 'something for nothing' doesn't work for a country needing to balance its books without the aid of the donor cheque book.
We simply cannot afford to support certain aspects of what had become the norm in this 21st century.
7. We can not afford to support the single mother unless there are special circumstances arising from her condition.
8. A whole plethora of lifestyle treatments on the National Health should stop immediately.
9. People over a certain income should be asked to contribute to their treatment through compulsory insurance.
10. People have to learn again that the buck stops with them and they are wholly responsible for their actions and their condition.
11. Health tourism must be banished.
12. Economically affordable rented housing will have to be built on a massive scale to bring the private ownership market more into line with incomes.
13. Investment in property should make the ownership a national asset not a tax haven for illicit earnings offshore
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