The cost of interrupting essential maintenance work on Big Ben to 'Bong' for Brexit has been estimated at £500,000 based on bringing back the striking mechanism and installing a temporary floor - £120,000 - and the cost of delaying the conservation work - up to £400,000 (based on an estimate of £100,000 a week).
There is a greater cost. Brexit has been one of the most divisive issues this country has faced. Celebrating in the manner suggested conveys a message of triumphalism when we should be striving to heal divisions.
According to latest reports there is a revised plan to project a giant clock face onto Downing Street on evening of 31 January, 2020.
Better still, those inclined could play the above video at no cost without the risk of offending others.
Ny sentiments coincide exactly with your own.
ReplyDeleteSo do mine.
DeleteCodswallop.
DeleteTriumphalist or not I for one should like to hear the bells ring to mark the occasion, and for the usual price of £14,200.
Curmudgeonly miserable poor loser Remoaning whingers be damned.
@ Episcopos:
DeleteOne of the truly engaging attributes of Brexiteers is their generous magnanimity in victory ...
The vast majority were entirely magnanimous in the days following the result.
DeleteThen began the whinging by shell-shocked Remoaning sore losers, complaining that 17.4 million people didn't know enough about the subject, didn't understand the consequences of that for which they had voted, were the elderly who were robbing the younger generation of their future and all of whom should shuffle off and die in good time for a second referendum to be held and the required outcome be achieved.
Added to which, for good measure, a Remoaner Parliament doing everything in its power to thwart the decision to leave.
You have reaped only what you have sown.
I entirely accept the result of last month's general election. Indeed I was ahead of the game, in that when we learned that the Brexit party had come out on top in the European parliamentary elections last May, it seemed to me absolutely clear that the majority of Brits had opted to leave the EU come what may.
DeleteWhich is their democratic right. Just as it's my democratic right, in a free society, to characterize them as thick, nostalgic, 'rule Britannia' lead-brains. The world has changed hugely in the last century; but as far as I can see the majority of English - and Welsh - voters still seem to think that the Britain of the third decade of the 21st century is unchanged from what it was in the era of Lord Palmerston in the middle of the 19th century.
Which is pure fantasy.
Who gifted you with such omniscient insight?
DeleteHow Christian of you.
Such generalisation and characterisation of any group of people as "thick, nostalgic lead-brains" reveals far more about you than it says of pro-Brexit voters.
Would you refer to other groups similarly, for example, all Muslims, Jews, Blacks, gays, Liberals, Boris Johnson supporters, Donald Trump supporters? What about those who won't accept women priests and bishops? Or those who long for the return of the book of Common Prayer to regular use?
Perhaps your omniscience doesn't extend as far as your own attitudes and you only recognise discrimination in others.
Have you told the Labour Party of you being so far ahead of the game?
DeleteI hear they have a vacancy at present for someone to lead them out of the wilderness.
@Ruth and Episkopos
DeleteWell said.
I voted Remain in the referendum but I accept others have an equal right to a different point of view and should be able to openly express it without being subjected to such rude remarks.
Unlike some I also accepted the result with good grace and humour even though I didn't like it. Has there been a second "people's" referendum I would have chosen to vote leave as a means of supporting the original democratic decision simultaneously expressing my shame and disgust for comments made like those of John Ellis.
As a former Remainer I wish to completely disassociate myself from the likes of him and his remarks.
Shame on you John Ellis.
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DeleteJohn Ellis might do well to read the articles by Janet Daley and Julie Burchill on page 20 of today's Sunday Telegraph.
DeleteThe same arrogant high-handed attitude previously displayed by bully boy --Barry Morgan, Barack Obama and Bob Geldof in telling people how they 'should' vote.
DeleteI shall settle for a Bongless Brexit if I have to.
Deletehttps://www.binlabour.com/2020/01/the-week-in-cartoons-19-25-jan-2020.html?fbclid=IwAR195IfgBzw_zEE-zDe3agpvZfBnXri6rOugqZt0MLGFVzz7uOGkBHO-SzY
:-)
Well, what a lot of responses - apologies if I fail to do credit to all of them.
Delete1. No one gifted me with 'omniscient insight'. I simply state my opinion, and if you don't like it you're the one with the problem and not me. I don't really care one way or the other.
2. I'm neither a member of the Labour party nor a Labour voter. So I don't really much care what political position they adopt, on Brexit or on anything else.
3. I entirely accept the right of every voter to come to their own conclusion about any political issue. I seem to recall that at the 2010 general election 3.8 million people voted for UKIP candidates, and yet, due to our cr@p electoral system, UKIP didn't win even one seat in the Commons. That strikes me as an absolute scandal, reinforcing the need for a radical change in our electoral system.
But even so, as far as I'm concerned as an individual citizen, I think that UKIP is a camel's rectum of a political party. As is its successor, the Brexit party. Which is my right as a citizen in a free society. But no one made me a judge or divider over others, and they must judge as they see right and good.
3. I left the Anglicanism because I believe that a communion which claims to be the Catholic church in this part of the world has no entitlement to depart unilaterally from the Catholic consensus as to who can be ordained into the order of priest and bishop. And never for a moment have I regretted doing so.
4. Nothing in the 'Telegraph' stable of newspapers interests me. The appalling Barclay brothers own the papers, and that's quite sufficienr to lead me to ignore their political dronings.
5. I got the measure of Barry Morgan way back in the 1970s when, in his days as Angican chaplain at UCNW Bangor, he also managed to secure the editorship of the previously excellent parish magazine insert 'The Welsh Churchman' and swiftly turned it into something that no ordinary church member could get his or her head round. It became a waste of space and I was instrumental in ensuring that it got dropped as the insert in the church magazine of the parish in which I lived at the time. His subsequent episcopates simply confirmed my view.
5. I don't see the relevance of Barack Obama or Bob Geldoff to this debate. If you can enlighten me, I'll be happy to respond.
1. Your rudeness, despite your 'right' to be rude, confirms where the problem lies.
Delete2. Nobody with a functioning brain much cares about the present day Labour party.
3a. UKIP accepted the electoral system both before and after the election without whinging about it afterwards (unlike Remoaners-at every opportunity-and who are still whinging). True democrats accept such results and just get on with life without being sore losers.
3b. Bully for you. Many thousands have left Anglicanism for the same or very similar reasons.
4. Information, facts and alternative points of view interest all open-minded individuals, regardless of the source (it was the Telegraph that unearthed the MPs expenses scandal, remember?) The Barclays or the Murdochs of this world are not the journalists or the Editors.
5a. Many had the measure of Barry Morgan from the time he was a miserable and lonely curate in Dinas Powis but it didn't prevent him floating to the top of the swamp and inflicting so much damage on everything he touched.
5b. Agreed. Obama and Geldof are utterly irrelevant to the Brexit debate and issue which begs the question, why did the Remain campaign wheel them out for support?
Get a sense of humour and enjoy the song that will be next weeks' No 1 in the charts.
https://order-order.com/2020/01/27/get-17-million-f-os-number-1-time-brexit/
1. Episkipos asserted his right to comment robustly, about which I make no complaint whatever - I'm not at all complaining about his 'rudeness', and that even though I'm one of the folk frequently derided by people of your faction as 'snowflakes'! I just responded in kind. And I suggest that no one who utilizes the vacuous and puerile term 'remoaner' is in any position to claim the high ground in respect of rudeness!
Delete2. We seem to be considerably of the same mind as regards the Labour party, though I do mourn its decline into incoherence. In the absence of any other significant opposition at the Westminster level, it has a negative impact on the democratic process.
3(a) (Mmm - failed to notice the two 'threes' and fives ... ! Comes of typing too late at night after a couple of vodkas.)
Really? I watched Mr Farage on the box expressing his disapprobation of the 'first past the post' electoral system only last night. He's already - as he runs his party by absolute diktat - committed them to campaign to change the voting system. And in that, if in little else, I think he's quite right.
And while you certainly get some remainers no less critical of 'first past the post' than Mr. F., I'm yet to hear any of them refusing to accept the recent - or, indeed, any other - general election result.
4. Sure, the 'Telegraph' deserves credit for its exposure of the parliamentary expenses scandal, but even a stopped clock is right twice a day and newspapers understandably prioritize a scoop bound to enhance reputation and boost sales over the possible embarrassment of their political friends. And if you're suggesting that the Murdochs and the Barclays play no part in the editorial stance of their respective newspapers I think you're being, deliberately or otherwise, entirely disingenuous.
5a. No disagreement there. As for 5b my impression was that Obama wheeled himself out, in a - probably entirely counter-productive! - attempt to be helpful to Cameron. As for Bob Geldoff, I hadn't even noticed a contribution from him. But he's as much a right to express his view as both you and I have.
All three devolved Parliaments have rejected the WA bill,but PM Johnson will proceed regardless.
ReplyDeleteThis is a clear sign that we are drifting towards undemocratic rule and autocracy.
The natural rhythm of the Big Ben bell is to bong with dignified pauses: Big Ben does not provide celebratory peals!
Therefore, just think for whom the bell might toll.
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DeleteWhat about the England parliament?
DeleteOh wait - they don't have one.
It must the devolved "parliaments" that are undemocratic! NONE have had an election as recently as the UK Parliament FACT.
Rubbish.
DeleteThe Welsh Assembly is nothing but an expensive irrelevant talking shop that does not represent the majority of the people in Wales.
Exactly like that other moribund useless institution, the Church in Wales.
Is there a little list somewhere of churches which are going to ring their bells to mark the demise of the U K from the E U?
ReplyDeleteBells ringing was a message of invasion - they should have been ringing since the Maastricht treaty
Delete