It's traditional to wish a happy new year in an opening post. I hope you do have one.
Despite that traditional greeting, I have a feeling that there are some very nasty times ahead.
I am trying to settle in Italy at the moment, and am dealing with the world's worst bureaucracy. That's not any kind of laughing matter but an example of the vicious contempt with which governments treat those they have subject to them.
I have been living there since November in order to try to retain my rights as a European citizen. They're silly little things like human, employment and pension rights and other trivial dignities that Theresa May has been determined to remove in Britain. Living in a country with a clear constitution, citizen rights and guaranteed rule of law suits me, but then maybe I'm just some kind of silly twit.
Given the crass utter shambles that the UK has made of Brexit, the UK's credibility on the continent and worldwide is shot. Nobody in politics or the press here on the European mainland now sees the UK government as anything other than a bunch of grossly arrogant retards who couldn't organise a V sign. From a previous position of respect, the UK is a pitiable laughing stock. Well done. Bravo. Clap clap.
Frankly, I don't care how the rest of this moronic Brexit shambles pans out. Britain's medieval parliamentary, electoral, diplomatic and other systems have proved unfit for the 21st century and need to be completely overhauled. Britain has a government that had a mandate from a mere 21% of the population, just one person in five. Go figure. But a thousand years of feudalism means that the populace in England just sits there and accepts whatever the establishment does to it. No gilets jaunes here.
Brexiteers now need to be held accountable for the mess that their gross ignorance, overweening arrogance, race hate and/or sneering malice is creating. They never had any coherent plan in mind, just destruction, like yobs. They have no credibility, honesty or shame. There's ample evidence now of foul play in winning the Brexit referendum vote, not to mention the government's steadfast avoidance of parliament in the process as much as it possibly could get away with. What contempt for the process of government, for law and for citizens! If the UK cannot agree a withdrawal deal with the EU, its main trade partner, for which there is a clear negotiating mechanism, how on earth does it expect to succeed in the far trickier and more protracted business of negotiating with other nations? That was the Brexiteer promise: better, easier, more advantageous trade deals all round. Yeah, right.
The stress of dealing with Brexit fallout on my work has damaged my health so I have closed my business, sold up, and am taking myself, my assets and my taxes away from that failing country and, as I no longer work, I will be spending the time damaging Brexiteer interests in return and actively fighting nationalism and racism. So many people have said to me "Brexit is bad for me but there's nothing I can do about it". This is what I am doing about it
As for Theresa May, the repellent Prime Minister, and her gang of incompetent, narcissistic ministers and supporters, their shamelessness, contempt and cruelty are unpardonable.
"But Sue," the reader starts to protest, "although I agree with all/some/none of the above, you write a transgender blog and what's all this got to do with being trans?"
The one apparently positive thing that May has tried to do is to make life easier for transitioning transsexuals, persuaded to do so by an openly lesbian former minister Justine Greening. The problem is that the association of trans rights with a government with an extremist and atrocious record does the trans community no good at all. I refused to participate in the consultation as I foresee a backlash when May is finally called to account. I think it highly probable that one of the first cuts in services as the economy tanks will be for "non-essentials" such as gender clinics and trans health services.
The other reason is that much of the wish to leave the European Union is bound to race hate, and that is linked to all other forms of xenophobia such as hatred for trans people. Soaring race attacks have been matched by soaring homophobic, transphobic and other crimes.
What a sick and evil mess.
Sue x
