The love of
my life and best friend is an American, we have been married for 27 years and
we have two children, one is American and one is English, I have a son who
lives in America while we all live in England. We moved back in 2004 after
living 25 years in America.
I don’t
think any of us know quite what to say about the last year; my wife and I are trying
to explain to our 9-year-old how a man with absolutely no credible
qualifications, who has run a campaign for the last 18 months based of bigotry,
racism, sexist comments and behaviour has become the next President of the
United States and at the same time explain to my friends and family in America, how we could opt out of the European Community without any clear plan for the
future.
I can only
come to one conclusion; you, the Politicians have stopped listening and we the
people have reached the end of our tolerance for your indifference to our
needs. You think you listen but you don’t, you simply give us lip service then
go about your business as usual. So a racist, bigot stands up and regurgitates the
thoughts that so many people have asked, things like why does an illegal immigrant
appear to get better treatment than someone who was born in the US, has served the US and been willing to die for the US, but now must declare bankruptcy in
order to pay for the injuries sustained during a war he fought defending the
freedom of the illegal immigrant. In Great Britain we ask, why does it appear that
we are paying more and more to the EU and getting less and less in return. Why
is it we appear to be losing control of our country? Then along comes our own
version of Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, espousing the same homophobic, racist bigotry
and sets the minds of so many thinking that he is listening to them by regurgitating
those questions and tuning them into hate. Our Prime Minister put it to a
national vote and the people, many of who are simply angry and tired after so
many years of not being listened to, make their voice heard. We awake to find
out that we have exited the EU with no clear strategy for the future, the United States wakes up to find that it has an unqualified reality TV star as the next president.
We and the
good people of the United States don’t care though because at last we have had
our say and we would rather be right that successful in both cases.
My
suggestion is to all Politicians is that you listen, really listen to what the
people want, after all you are only Managers not Dictators and you represent
and fight for what the people want, not what you thing is best for them. In a
day and age when the majority of people were uneducated and untraveled that
might have worked, but the majority of us be we ever so humble are well
travelled and well educated and it does not work anymore. Try something new.
Listen. Really listen.
I did not
vote to leave the EU and I would never in my life vote for Donald Trump, but I
fully understand why people did both.
