Glob-a-log

Now, here’s an interesting idea for you:

An English village is so taken with the benefits of being Welsh, including free prescriptions and free hospital car parking, that it is holding a referendum on becoming part of Wales. Residents of Audlem, Cheshire, nine miles from the Welsh border, have organised an online poll asking villagers whether it is time to break away from England.

Short of the biggest constitutional shake-up since the 1284 Statute of Rhuddlan made Monmouthshire part of Wales, the village is unlikely to come under the control of the Welsh Assembly any time soon. However, residents say that simply holding the poll will tell politicians that there is an issue of increasing inequality between countries in Britain that needs addressing.

It’s a charming concept - and less messy than parliamentary elections or an actual revolution. It could become quite a popular idea as well.

We’ve heard the head of England’s Anglican church talk favourably about installing certain forms of Sharia law. Following Audlem’s example Archbishop Rowan Williams might just choose to pick up the old town of Canterbury and take it to Saudi Arabia.

Me, I’d like the Dutch town of Utrecht to become a part of the Czech republic, since our own beer is cheap, mass-produced shit that nevertheless sells for the price of plutonium - and because the bars and shops (and life) just never closes down in Prague and they don’t have these obsessive anti-smoking imbeciles around. That the Czech women are among the most beautiful in the world is an interesting bonus.

What’s more, whole countries could decide they’d rather burn their own flags and go marching to a different anthem altogether. Most of England would probably be glad to to leave both ‘New’ labour and the Tories behind and join Brazil. Not only would it rid them of all the usual stuff the English are forever complaining about, it would also give them an actual chance to win - Hell, to qualify for - another international football tournament.

On a much sadder note I’m quite sure that 99.9% of the people of Zimbabwe would love to be somewhere else - anywhere else, in fact, as long as it was far away from their own mad dictator and his evil thugs.

In the USA things could become quite interesting too. It’s God’s own country, as we all know only too well, so Americans wouldn’t want to opt out but they might, like the citizens of that small English town, want to rearrange things - along the formerly very bloody lines that were fought over during their civil war. The pro and anti Bushies could then divide the continent and call both parts America.

As I said, a bit like that old segregationist war, with one huge difference, of course and that’s that the plantation owners now actually rule in Washington.

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This entry was posted on Friday, April 25th, 2008 at 14:32 and is filed under Columns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.