The persecution of love

Huguenot Lovers on St Bartholomew’s Day by John Everett Millais, oil on canvas, 1852. Image: Wikipedia

If you are living in a mixed-nationality marriage in the hostile environment of the modern UK, true love and hard work are not enough to stop you from being forcibly separated from your family. “Oh, it couldn’t happen here”. Oh, yes it could, and it is happening now.

Only the rich will survive in Brexit Britain.

“FOR RICHER, FOR POORER by Lib Dem Immigrants

Many people who’ve not had cause to find out the hard way don’t realise that mixed-nationality couples can be forbidden from living together in the UK if they don’t earn enough. We want to raise awareness of this, and we’re proud that Lib Dem policy is to oppose it. If you’re married to a British person, you should be allowed to live with them. No means-testing. For richer, for poorer. 🐾

Lina is a Dachshund from Munich, Germany; Jamie is an English Bulldog from Croydon. Jamie worries about whether Brexit will mean Lina can’t come and live with him.

Kuniko is a Shiba Inu from Kyoto, Japan. Gary is a Jack Russell Terrier from Bolton. Gary’s income is just enough for Kuniko to be allowed here — but not enough for their puppies too. They don’t know what they should do.

Malcolm is an Old English Sheepdog from Hexham; Brigitte is a Bichon Frise from Toulouse, France. Brigitte is looking forward to the country life, but first she needs to find out what paperwork she’ll need, and the Home Office isn’t answering her questions.

Maryam is a Persian cat from Isfahan, Iran. Tom is a Yorkshire Terrier from Leeds. Maryam expects to get a good job in the UK — but the Home Office won’t count that as income while she’s still in Iran. The stress is affecting both of them.

Rick is an English Bulldog from Solihull; Ernesto is a chihuahua from Ciudad Juarez in Chihuahua, Mexico. Unfortunately Rick lost his job as a security guard, and his benefits don’t come to enough for Ernesto to join him.

Rachel is a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel from Southampton; Dietrich is a Bernese Mountain Dog from Bern, Switzerland. Dietrich is trying to sort out Settled Status but that needs an Android smartphone and his big paws aren’t good with phones.

Shirley is a Bearded Collie from Durham; Jane is a Shih Tzu from Shenzhen, China. Same-sex marriages aren’t recognized in China; Shirley and Jane wonder if this will affect their rights in the UK.

Morag is a West Highland Terrier from Ardnamurchan, and Paweł is a Pomeranian from Gdańsk in Pomerania, Poland. Morag hopes that Paweł won’t experience the abuse that many Poles in the UK have had.

Rhys is a Collie from near Aberystwyth; no-one is quite sure where Ziggy is from, but Rhys loves them anyway.

* Liberal Democrat Immigrants exists to represent those members of the Liberal Democrats who have chosen to come to live in the UK from elsewhere. It also seeks to represent the interests of immigrants to the UK in general and to highlight those issues that disproportionately affect immigrants.”

#hostileenvironment #FBPE #Remain

A King Charles Spaniel by Manet, oil on canvas, c. 1866

The look on a dog’s face that says people have lost their minds. They had happiness within their grasp and they have thrown the ball away. Stop Brexit. STAY!

Iridescence

Natural pearl and diamond pendant, 18th century;
set with an oval diamond supporting a diamond bow motif
and a baroque drop-shaped natural pearl measuring approximately 16 × 18 × 26mm.

A natural pearl and diamond jewel of delicately wrought beauty once belonged to history’s most glamorous scapegoats for the abuses and injustices of autocracy, the victim of nationalism and misogyny, reviled by women and men, the hated l’autrichienne, the Austrian bitch, Maria-Antonia von Habsburg-Lothringin, known as Marie Antoinette, queen of France.

Political assassination is arguably justified, character assassination is not. Of all the offensive insults thrust at her, the most hurtful, far worse than all the salacious sexual slurs, the one that cut deepest, more humiliating than being deprived of shoes and false teeth in prison, more painful than beheading, was the Tribunal’s allegation of incest with her son.

“If I have not replied it is because Nature itself refuses to answer such a charge laid against a mother. I appeal to all mothers here present – is it true?”

Marie Antoinette on her way to the guillotine, drawn by David, 16 October 1793. Image: Wikipedia.
She was 37 years old. Usually, press reports about celebrity women degrade them by mentioning their age, but in this case the vulgar habit of prejudging by numbers is justified by the shock of
this woman’s premature ageing due to suffering

She, who was brought up to be a dynastic pawn, a bride and mother of kings, became the Eternal Feminine demonized. She was never expected to have control of her identity; her often derided play-acting at being a fashionably Romantic shepherdess in a pastoral idyll was her attempt at self-emancipation.

The modern perception of Marie Antoinette has shifted away from the inverted fairy story heroine, the romanticized narrative of an over-privileged but misunderstood star of the diamond-studded, blood-stained Versailles reality show, to the universal figure in women’s history of wronged mother and foreigner.

Marie-Antoinette and her children by Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, 1787

While she was imprisoned, she was separated from her children. As she prepared for death, her chief anxiety was about their fate. An 18th century princess endured the kind of degradation and psychological torture that tyranny in the modern world still inflicts on female immigrants and their families.

And there’s the jewel itself, the progeny of animals and human skill, that natural pearl of iridescence beyond price, a man-made thing lovely enough to be the symbol of our atonement for our sins against nature and each other, sold for silly money, £25 million that should be spent on environmental conservation and humanitarian missions to reunite migrant families and release political prisoners.

Unworthy England’s Lost Prize

NATIONAL MYTH

“God bless us, every one!” Tiny Tim, in A Christmas Carol, 1843, by Charles Dickens

This fortress built by Nature for herself,
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands;
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England…

Shakespeare, Richard II, c. 1595

 NATIONAL TASK

We have to convince all other countries that the Nazi tyranny is going to be finally broken.

The right to guide the course of world history is the noblest prize of victory….The task which lies before us immediately is at once more practical, more simple and more stern.

I hope – indeed, I pray – that we shall not be found unworthy of our victory if after toil and tribulation it is granted to us.

For the rest, we have to gain the victory.

That is our task.
Winston Churchill, ‘The Few’, August 20th, 1940

NATIONALIST REALITY

Reported in

The Northern Echo

28th December, 2017

Muslim man says he was beaten in Durham for saying ‘Merry Christmas’

The truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it, ignorance may deride it,
malice may distort it, but there it is.
Winston Churchill, May 17th 1916.

Shame on Britain, shame on all of us if we let it happen

“It is worth your knowing that the proposed agreement [between UK Government and EU] directly affects our family. We now have nowhere our family’s right to stay together and live as as a family is guaranteed.

In the UK, my wife is not, it transpires, eligible for permanent residency, because she didn’t have private health insurance (it’s essential for non-UK EU nationals living in the UK – who knew?) when we had our daughter – and so, in the official view, benefited from NHS support illegitimately (this was not queried at the time, and we were not billed).

As a result of today’s accord, I no longer have the right to live in Italy. It is now discretionary: Italy can make me apply for temporary leave to stay, and reapply for permanent status.

Both I and my wife, despite her native citizenship, would both be subject to systematic criminal checks, and could be deported before appeal. And, worse still, our exercise of free movement to any other EU states is now defined as a “life choice”, not a right. Theresa May has totally caved in on our rights, to save her own face.

It is a shameful day for the Government, and for the UK, for allowing them to get away with it. We were encouraged to be European in our outlook and the practical details of our lives, which we have built around the idea of being citizens of the EU. It will be a bleak day for us all if the European Parliament votes to accept these terms.”

Mark Alexander

The impact on EU Citizens residing in the UK of the British Government’s agreement with the EU that ECJ will guarantee their rights for 8 years only, not for life

Save Britain from self-harm

Petition Against Brexit

IT IS NOT TOO LATE

John Constable Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows c. 1830
Private collection. Oil on canvas. Image source: WGA

You don’t have to be someone who voted Remain to send a message to the Government that they must change course if any of the things we need and value are to be salvaged. Leavers are being betrayed, too.

The country that Brexit will create is not the one we love. The fight to stop Brexit is bigger than the fight to stay in Europe.

If you want a united, modern, fair country, stop Brexit.

The British Government is betraying its people. It either doesn’t understand the consequences of its policies, or it doesn’t care.

Brexit will impoverish our economy, our health service and our culture. It will make many of the working poor destitute. It will split families and blight future generations. It is idiotic, xenophobic, unrealistic. It does not represent the best of Britain.

“In a healthy political culture, this would be a moment for reappraisal” Ian Dunt.

The political culture in England is sick, and it will infect the whole of the United Kingdom and your own families, everything you love, unless you act now to STOP BREXIT.

Save us, by all the means at your disposal.

 

Sentience Protocol

“The Government’s refusal to accept this amendment [to EU Withdrawal Bill] is simply absurd – and their continued insistence that sentience is covered in Animal Welfare legislation is wrong. Britain been forward thinking animal welfare over the years, which is why ditching this provision would be such a backwards step. The UK Government led on introducing this EU protocol in the first place, and it’s only an obsession with refusing changes to the EU Withdrawal Bill that’s stopping Ministers adopting this amendment now.” Caroline Lucas, co-leader of the Green Party of England and Wales

The Brexit Government, irrationally consumed with hatred of everything EU, is treating animal rights the same way it is treating the rights of EU Nationals living in Britain.

The Government should confirm their existing rights under EU law now.

Van Dyck, The Five Eldest Children of Charles I 1637. Royal Collection.
Image: Wikipedia

The problem for a Government on the run screaming FAKE NEWS is the implicit acknowledgment that it’s at least partly true. As politics is all about presentation, anyway, using the FN plea is an admission of incompetence, at best.

In this meta-weary world, we have got used to the duality of Truth in the modern democratic State. The wonder of Trump is not that a lying, bullying, pussy-grabbing monster was elected, but that people don’t care that he lies, bullies, pussy-grabs.

The political hue and cry in the UK over animal sentience confirms that Fake News, not Real News, is the radar for Zeitgeist – it reveals the conscious and unconscious fears of both the public and its rulers.

The first indisputable fact is that MPs voted to exclude the clause regarding animal sentience from the EU Withdrawal Bill.

The second fact is that, for a couple of days, Leavers and Remainers, including Conservative voters, were united in believing that the Brexit Government was capable of denying that animals feel pain and emotion. We were shocked, but not surprised. That’s not a vote of confidence in either the Government or Brexit.

The problem for Remainers is to prove the link between the incoherence of this incompetent Government’s policies and the unfeasability of Brexit itself.

Truthfully, Brexit must be stopped.

“Man is the reasoning animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute. Indeed, my experiments have proven to me that he is the Unreasoning Animal….His record is the fantastic record of a maniac.  I consider that the strongest count against his intelligence is the fact that ….he blandly sets himself up as the head animal of the lot:
whereas by his own standards he is the bottom one.”
Mark Twain, The Lowest Animal, 1896