Car crash to independence
It’s about a quarter to eleven on the 31st December 2020 as I start to type this. I’m sitting here feeling like Scotland is an unwilling passenger in the UK car and we are going to crash into a wall. For over four years we have been heading for it, out of control because the driver, Boris has gone nuts. He has decided the UK needs to “reclaim independence” and claim back their “sovereignty”. Fact is nothing is going to immediately happen at the stroke of eleven. No carnage, no wrecked metal not even skid marks. (I just thought of Boris in Y fronts there for some reason?) Brexit is an economic wall and that kind of crash is going to take months to fully experience.
The UK government spent 4 years negotiating a bad deal, ripping it up and then renegotiated an even worse deal. This is not a good omen of what is to come next considering that the UKs GDP has already shrunk by 20% due to Covid19 (UK, Reuters 29th September 2020) while still under EU rules. Some reports say that the UK economy will shrink by a further 4% after Brexit (Bloomberg 29th November 2020 ). So there is room for lots more financial suffering to come.
I’m no economic expert but I have predict a few things that could effect us all. Let us wait and see what comes true in the coming months.
- Parts of the south of England will become lorry parks (not the rich parts). It won’t get any better for them as long lines of waiting lorries outside EU borders is perfectly normal for non-EU countries.
- Non-British drivers will be herded together into temporary cabins to eat and sleep. All for a fee to cover the expenses of the companies HM government shall contract to run these lorry parks.
- Medicines and PPE to fight Covid19 will get stuck at ports on both sides.
- Demand for skilled workers shall out strip supply and many organisations like the NHS will have to deal with short falls.
- Private medical insurers will advertise on TV more often as the NHS begins to be sold off to the private sector.
- Crime will increase and convictions will go down. With economic hardship comes rises in certain crimes like theft, burglary and robberies. Also access to criminal databases in the EU will become far more difficult. Allowing international criminals to operate when previously they would have been caught.
- Those on employment benefits will be made to do work previously done by immigrants in the fields, in restaurants, cleaning, packing etc… Not for minimum wage but to simply keep receiving benefits. Employers will start to count on this free labour supply.
- The need for food banks will increase but the supply of food will decrease. People like to donate when they have spare food and money but if the shop shelves are empty people donate less.
- Scotland will get its independence referendum. Yes this is a sneaky one but I want to end on a high. I believe the court case going through just now funded by the ordinary people of Scotland will win. We will not need the permission of anyone to hold an independence referendum. The SNP will announce the date and we will get a majority “yes” vote of between 60-65% of total voters by the end of 2021.
Dam look at the time it’s 2021 and the front of the car is crumpling.