Taking the Dog on it’s daily walk I was struck by the similarities of Brexit and Dog Poo. I was taking the dog out on its walk and it suddenly struck me that I had not brought out any dog poo bags with me. Rather than turn about and go back to the house I decided that there may be an opportunity to rectify my mistake by simply looking around for a discarded bag that often litter the area. This is an unfortunate truth that our social areas are often so littered by such items which are not hard to find because they are all around. It did not take me very hard to find one in a short space of time. Having found one I bent down to pick one up when I was suddenly alarmed by the weight of the bag which I had presumed to be empty. It became clear that the bag was not empty but had in fact been discarded not in a bin and disposed of properly but instead simply thrown on the ground. This act of littering alarmed me because it would have been better to have left the dog poo on the ground to decompose but the act of wrapping it up in a piece of plastic was worse than if it had been left on the ground to decompose naturally. The person who did this must have been ignorant of the problems associated with adding plastic to the environment. It struck me about the levels of ignorance and indifference that exist in so many people around us in our immediate localities and the impact that this has on others who inhabit the same localities. Taking this into a wider level of consequences really scares me.
So what are the similarities between this Dog Poo and Brexit?
Well to start with David Cameron could be compared to the irresponsible dog owner that bought the dog in the first place. It was David Cameron that ushered in the idea of Brexit which then got wrapped up in shiny plastic bag and was packaged up to look nice and palatable for the public. Now the stench of Brexit will not go away it has become as pervasive and indestructible as this dog poo that I picked up.: unable to decompose naturally.
The next similarity would be is the sheer level of ignorance associated with the disposal of this particular dog poo. You have to ask yourself who would be this ignorant and irresponsible to do this? The same thing could be said of Brexit. Who voted for it and who and why would they support it and continue to support it even after all the facts have come to be seen and the consequences for the economy are now there to be clearly seen. There seems to exist in British Society and in the British psyche a desire to to be reckless and to act in an irresponsible manner despite the facts. Where this ignorance and recklessness and utter disregard for the rights of others comes from could be traced back to lack of education or possibly just that there is a large portion of the British population that is just plain dumb. So again there seems to be a correlation between Brexit and the dog poo incident that both required a level of stupidity and ignorance.
Unfortunately this poses a larger question about the nature of democracy in the UK. If the stupidity of Brexit triumphed over the voice of reason then there must be something fundamentally flawed about democracy itself. Even despite the facts about the consequences of Brexit it appears that Brexit still has some support amongst many people in the UK. Maybe now this may not be as much as 3yrs ago as the European Elections showed as the majority of actual votes when taken across all parties it appears that there has been a swing towards parties who would be prepared to either stop Brexit or to offer the public a second referendum.
However even a no deal Brexit scenario still seems to have a great deal of support despite it being essentially a complete act of recklessness that has huge potentially disastrous consequences for the majority of UK citizens. Again I draw similarities between Brexit and the dog poo incident. Both are essentially acts of recklessness that impact on the lives of others or on the environment as a whole.
It would appear that it is the composition of our society which dictates how successful democracy is
This seems to call into question the very nature of democracy and how successful that it can be. It is the composition of of our societies that contribute to how a democracy operates. All things being equal then a democratic situation should be able to operate. However when things get imbalanced within a democracy then situations can arise whereby democracy could offend what might be considered to be reasonable arguments. Unfortunately both Brexit and the dog poo incident have demonstrated that there are things amiss in the UK at the moment.
Democracy is failing in the UK and has failed those who present the most reasonable and logical arguments
All things being equal and democracy will or should work. However where there is an imbalance then democratic decision making will always reflect these imbalances and then democratic decisions will start to look rather silly. This is truly what has happened in the case of Brexit. Our dog poo offender was either very reckless or ignorant or just plain stupid but he or she was part of the composition of our democratic society that we are so proud of. There are I am sure many more of them and in a democratic society we put our faith in people to be wise enough to make the right decisions. Unfortunately in reality we are putting our faith and futures in people like the dog poo offenders. I for one feel uncomfortable putting faith in these sorts of people to determine the future of the UK economy trusting that this level of recklessness, ignorance and disregard for others will not be reflected in the outcome of our democratic decision making process. For the most part it works because you also have the moderation of Parliament and the parliamentary processes to keep things sane. However in the instance of Brexit this process has been turned upside down allowing people to make the final choice. Under these circumstances democracy becomes both unstable and dangerous.