Not just the English left-hand traffic confused me, but also the whole political situation in England. Even on the ferry from Santander to Portsmouth a Near-London-Grown-up meant to me that he once voted for Tony Blair, because he wanted to limit the fox hunt and wished to legalize Marihuhana (if that’s true, I have not checked, he said it so). But Blair told nothing about that he wanted to wage a war against Iraq and against Afghanistan. Since then this guy has avoided to go to elections. Even at the Brexit-elections he didn’t go. This is significant, because he lives in Spain. England appeared him to depressing now. In Spain he lives on a boat. He would still benefit from a good euro-pound exchange rate.
Later I still spoke with a Czech guy and two Asian woman (from Vietnam and Malaysia). They all have one thing in common: they want or perhaps need to go from England. I had previously thought that, political-psychologically viewed, France is the worst country in Europe. I’ve changed my mind a bit. Okay, France is in a bad shape, but England is even worse.
One thing I noticed when I thought about Brexit. If one wants to be Commonwealth, but at the same time have no foreigners – that’s a contradiction in terms. Commonwealth means that one has something to do with foreigners. Inevitably. And with ships and with planes and such things.
If one wants to earn money, one must inevitably suppress any other nation under capitalistic conditions (we Germans do that with our export strategy). At least subtle. Today, however, this is for the Englishman certainly no longer so easy. I could even imagine that the Indians say: Hey, you English, now you have oppressed us for a few years, now we turn the tables around times. So, Commonwealth is over, dear Englishman. Forget it. And if you throw out all foreigners, you have no one who does the dirty work. I can understand the poorer people though if they want to say “Fuck the EU”, or at least can comprehend the social mechanism behind it. But the Brexit was simply just bad, bad, bad. And you can feel the uncertainty everywhere in England. The Asian women from Malaysia told me that she does not know now if she can stay here to work after her university graduation.
And that’s too bad; because I like this strange country in Europe very much. The people are (mostly) polite and friendly. People have humor and so on. If you look on my cycling experience it was even quite hilly as I rode from the south to London. Overmore I went across the country and along the Thames, which is a really beutiful Cycle path. I now have to say goodbye from this strange country. Let’s see if I even get a visa at the next time! 🙂
Portsmouth – Ash Vale 69km
Ash Vale – London 72km