Good OP, Buhi -

Living in the past is the refuge of the dreamer, the fantasist, the defeated.

Different from remembering the past - a perfectly normal and ( hopefully ) enjoyable experience.

It's great to reminisce - great to share stories with families and friends. It's a healthy part of the human condition.

Living in the past isn't -

It's unhealthy -

Obsessing over slights, gibbering about sitting on kerbs drinking lemonade while your parents got sloshed in the pub, re-fighting fights that you lost, moping about first loves lost, growling about multiple marriages and relationships going down the pan, snarling at being overlooked for promotion, hatred for those that chose a different path and did well - the list goes on.

I don't know anyone that lives in the past that is happy in the present.

Not a single person.

My ex anglo scottish wife and our anglo scottish sons share the same views as I. The sons, now mature adults are aghast at the referendum results. As are all my old friends, old being very factual, but they had the benefit of a liberal university education. Liberal, true meaning.

Was it the Brits or only the English who always liked to tell jokes at their own expense ?

Harry Lauder told a joke about Aberdonians being tight with money - which mutated into all Scots being tight with money.

Stoopid bastid.

It was a fellow from Edinburgh who told me that it was a Dutchman and a Scottish chap who invented copper wire, fighting over a penny 

My hope is that the young can undo the damage - and there are many in my age group ( 50 ) prepared to do anything we can to help.

I find it astonishing that people who have the benefit of international travel, freedom of movement, and the benefits of modern capitalism would vote for parochialism.

Any time I now see an Englishman refer to the Thais as xenophobes, I'll just have to laugh.

A contemptuous, grating laugh.

And some Englishmen will get it - others will never do so.

They'll never understand the hypocrisy of living in a foreign country while demanding that foreigners be prevented from living in their country.

Hail the morons, they have conquered that green and pleasant land. 

.............................................................................................................................


As a Scot, and I mean this - I have long known the English by one four letter word - and that word is - FAIR.

The entirety of English law and society was built on the pursuit of fairness.

I give the English more credit for that wonderful attribute than the Scots because their struggle for fairness under the law easily predates the Scottish struggle.

From well before the Magna Carta, the English struggled for fairness and equality. Village life was based upon the needs of the villagers, not the greed of villagers. Tithes of land would be allocated based upon family size, age etc. And you would be handed the land with the instruction - "don't step over the line."

Don't step over the line..... don't steal the bread from your neighbours table, don't destroy the village ethic of fairness.

The English nation stepped over the line last week - they stole the bread from their children's tables, they destroyed a thousand years of ethics in one day.

No wonder the world is aghast.

It really is that serious, that appalling, a national calamity.

And way too may of them can't see it.