What The Papers Say – The Guardian – Still Puzzled By The Brexit Vote? Take Yourself Off To Blakenall Heath.Still Puzzled By The Brexit Vote? Take Yourself Off To Blakenall Heath.
WHAT THE PAPERS SAY is an occasional series in which we feature articles from the Mainstream Media (MSM) which seem to echo our thoughts or that we find of interest. With this in mind, our attention was recntly drawn to an article – https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2017/oct/12/still-puzzled-by-the-brexit-vote-take-yourself-off-to-blakenall-heath?CMP=share_btn_fb – written by Rev Giles Fraser for the Guardian.We’ve reproduced it because we feel that it compliments the main thrust of the series of Liberal Future/BreXit Now! articles that we’ve been featuring. Links to these articles (and information about Liberal Future) can be found below the article by Rev Fraser. The Liberal Future articles and Rev Fraser’s article highlight the vast gulf between ordinary working families and the global elite – represented by the likes of multinational corporations, banks and their client politicians – regarding Brexit. We like the way Rev Fraser tells it as he see it – that, in respect of Brexit, many folks have little or nothing to lose – and we feel that Guardian readers especially need to hear it.
It goes without saying that there are no official links between Rev Giles Fraser, the Guardian and the National Liberal Party.
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Rev Giles Fraser is a Church of England priest, journalist and broadcaster. His weekly columns for the Guardian are thought-provoking as he tends to tell it as he see it. This is particularly so with this Brexit article which highlights the vast gulf that exists between ordinary working families and the global elite. Check out his other Guardian articles here: https://www.theguardian.com/profile/gilesfraser
The phone went one Sunday evening. It was the bishop of Wolverhampton, my then boss. There was this job he couldn’t find anyone to do. Would I go and look after a parish to the north of Walsall – https://www.theguardian.com/uk/walsall – called Blakenall Heath? Big barn of a church, no money, struggling. Just for a bit, he said. I’d like you to pack up and go there in a couple of weeks. We did, with a new baby and no idea what we were letting ourselves in for.
People generally didn’t go to Blakenall Heath unless they came from there. Unemployed men would sit around in their front gardens on discarded sofas, looking bored. Some of my parishioners spent all day in their dressing gowns. Burned-out cars decorated the roadside. Back then the vicarage was ringed by flats whose residents would frequently shoot at each other with air rifles. At night, the pellets would ping off our roof. Even the local police didn’t like going into Blakenall Heath. It was treated as a ghetto.
In Walsall, 67.9% voted leave in the referendum – https://www.expressandstar.com/news/politics/2016/06/24/eu-referendum-result-walsall-votes-to-leave-with-huge-majority/ – on a huge turnout. And then, this year, they voted out Walsall North’s londstanding Labour MP, David Winnick – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/politics/constituencies/E14001011 – who had campaigned to remain in the EU. Remainers will never understand what went on here if they think it’s just about money. Homo economicus – who seeks to optimise their economic prospects through rational self-interest – doesn’t live in Blakenall Heath. Homo economicus doesn’t buy his cooker through weekly instalments at BrightHouse at 69.9% APR – https://www.brighthouse.co.uk/on-finance A remain campaigner told me about a doorstep encounter he had on a bombsite of a council estate in the Midlands. “You have a lot to lose financially if we leave the EU,” he explained, rationally.
Date: October 31, 2017
Categories: Articles
