The island nation decides: Why I’m already dusting off my passport

British Prime Minister David Cameron (left) walks with his wife Samantha as he prepares to speak to the press in front of 10 Downing Street in central London on June 24, 2016. Britain has voted to break out of the European Union. PHOTO| AFP

What you need to know:

  • In one camp were the sober-sides, who highlighted the economic dangers in severing links with the continent.
  • A probable plunging pound, foreign employers closing UK factories, years of trying to renegotiate trade agreements, a weakened National Health Service stemming from a lack of immigrant doctors and nurses.

You would have to be from the planet Mars not to realise that a kind of fever has gripped the people of Britain these last many weeks. This pandemic was represented by two words: REMAIN and LEAVE.

They referred to whether the country should continue to be a member of the European Union or quit and go it alone. It is a question that has rumbled on for many years, never more evidently than within the ranks of the ruling Conservative party.

Prime Minister David Cameron decided earlier this year to lance the boil and put the question to a national referendum. I doubt if he anticipated the emotions his decision would stir.

In one camp were the sobersides, who highlighted the economic dangers in severing links with the continent: A probable plunging pound, foreign employers closing UK factories, years of trying to renegotiate trade agreements, a weakened National Health Service stemming from a lack of immigrant doctors and nurses. Their slogan: Out of Europe, Out of Work.

The super-patriots of Leave argued that the national economy was strong enough to sustain any immediate negative effects and it was time Britain returned to the way it was, proud, independent, unallied with bureaucratic, distant Brussels, and above all free to control the inflow of immigrants as it wished. If you should detect a whiff of racism here, you would not be alone.

I write this before the referendum last Thursday, but sticking my neck out, I’m prepared to guess that the good guys of Remain have won. If not, I will be dusting off my passport.

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I was in a bar in Beirut years ago when I was offered a puff on a cannabis cigarette. Looking at the soggy end after other guys had used it, I declined. That was the beginning and end of my personal experience of drugs. Nothing laudatory about it, they just didn’t seem to be around in my younger days.

It’s different now. Three girls were rushed to hospital in Salford after taking so-called “Teddy tablets” containing the drug ecstasy. The girls were aged 12, thought to be the youngest people in the United Kingdom to have fallen ill after taking the drug.

“Teddy tablets” might sound like fun but ecstasy is not. Last month a girl aged 17 died in Manchester after suffering an adverse reaction to the drug.

Police said indications were the 12-year-olds would make a full recovery.

A man and a woman were arrested on suspicion of being in possession of a controlled substance.

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What do you do when your microwave cooker starts banging and thumping, blinking, flashing and creating a series of muffled explosions? You hastily pull the plug and buy a new one.

WASTE COLLECTION SCHEME

Fine, but what about the smoking, old heap of junk in your kitchen?

The store which delivered the new microwave won’t take it away and you are not allowed to put such an item in your garbage. You can take it to the Household Waste Recycling Collection Point, otherwise known as The Tip, but for that you need transport.

The Council will pick it up under their Bulky Waste Collection Scheme, but they will charge you £40 (Sh6,000), which seems excessive for something measuring 45x30x25 cms.

So you do the obvious thing and ask at the pub. “Just leave it outside your back door,” everybody says. “It will disappear like magic.”

I live in a rather posh suburb, so I was a bit dubious about this form of heavy littering. What if the neighbours saw me? Early in the morning, I crept out into the lane, dumped the machine outside next door’s gate and scuttled back home.

And guess what? Pouff! It was gone. It seems the city is full of sharp-eyed scavengers scouring back lanes for metal objects. The microwave was doubtless hustled to the nearest scrapyard, promptly weighed and turned into cash money. The lucky finder was probably in the pub drinking the rewards for his efforts before I got back to bed.

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The Rev Smith lived a good life, always trying his best for God and neighbour, but when he passed away, St Peter said: “You got 99 out of 100, so just one little bit of purgatory before we let you into heaven.” For the next week, Rev Smith floated on a cloud, unfortunately not alone but sharing space with the ugliest, foulest, smelliest, worst-tempered old hag in the world, or rather out of it.

You can imagine the parson’s indignation when floating by on another cloud, he saw his own bishop along with the actress Scarlett Johansson, one of the most beautiful women in the world.

Rev Smith protested angrily at the unfairness of this, to which the Keeper of the Keys replied: “Scarlett has to do her little bit of purgatory, too.”