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Quote by Stewart Lee

“Now was the moment and the moment was now. For in perhaps as little as twenty weeks' time, ill-informed voters, stuffed with incoherent arguments, like hissing geese force-fed nostalgia and hate to produce an idelible pâté of groundless opinion, would be asked to decide nothing less than what sort of country we want to live in and bequeath to those who come after us.”

Quote by Stewart Lee

Book:Content Provider: Selected Short Prose Pieces, 2011–2016
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Content Provider: Selected Short Prose Pieces, 2011–2016

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Author

Stewart Lee
Stewart Lee

Stewart Lee is a British comedian, writer, and director known for his distinctive humor style and sharp讽刺. His work often addresses social and political issues, renowned for its wit and incisiveness. more

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“Nearly all human cultures plant gardens, and the garden itself has ancient religious connections. For a long time, I've been interested in pre-Christian European beliefs, and the pagan devotions to sacred groves of trees and sacred springs. My German translator gave me a fascinating book on the archaeology of Old Europe, and in it I discovered ancient artifacts that showed that the Old European cultures once revered snakes, just as we Pueblo Indian people still do. So I decided to take all these elements - orchids, gladiolus, ancient gardens, Victorian gardens, Native American gardens, Old European figures of Snake-bird Goddesses - and write a novel about two young sisters at the turn of the century.”

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“It may seem strange to call this slow collapse invisible since so much of it is obvious: the deep uncertainties about the union after the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 and the establishment of the Scottish Parliament the following year; the consequent rise of English nationalism; the profound regional inequalities within England itself; the generational divergence of values and aspirations; the undermining of the welfare state and its promise of shared citizenship; the contempt for the poor and vulnerable expressed through austerity; the rise of a sensationally self-indulgent and clownish ruling class. But the collective effects of these inter-related developments seem to have been barely visible within the political mainstream until David Cameron accidentally took the lid off by calling the EU referendum and asked people to endorse the status quo. What we see with the mask pulled back and the fog of fantasies at last beginning to dissipate is the revelation that Brexit is much less about Britain's relationship with the EU than it is about Britain's relationship with itself. It is the projection outwards of an inner turmoil. An archaic political system carried on even while its foundations in a collective sense of belonging were crumbling. Brexit in one way alone has done a real service: it has forced the old system to play out its death throes in public. The spectacle is ugly, but at least it shows that a fissiparous four-nation state cannot be governed without radical social and cconstitutional change.”

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“Like many, he’d been watching the country tear itself apart over Brexit and whilst he’d never had any real interest in politics, it was fairly clear that the growing social tension was not only fuelling resentment and division, it was creating a political vacuum. If Billy knew one thing, it’s that any kind of vacuum equalled opportunity and whilst he had no idea how that might manifest itself, he’d suspected that working with the veterans and having a group of lads at his beck and call might well prove advantageous at some point. All he had to do was make sure that whatever form that opportunity might take, he had to be ready to grab it with both hands when the time came.”

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“It’s not that I hate everyone outside of England. I don’t. I don’t hate people from Syria, Afghanistan or Somalia. How could I? I don’t know them. How could I hate someone I don’t even know? That would take a special kind of madness. But if they refuse to make a useful contribution to society then we should send them back where they came from because we just can’t afford them anymore. It’s 10.30 p.m. and my front door’s locked. Why? Certainly not because I hate everyone OUTSIDE the front door, but because I love everyone INSIDE. Nobody’s telling me not to not to lock my front door. Or are they? The EU certainly is.”

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“I talked to Llewellyn and got a thick briefing packet with the key arguments on both sides. The problem, for those who wanted to stay in the EU, was that many of the arguments for Brexit were built on lies: about how much the UK paid into the European Union; about how Brexit wouldn’t hurt the British economy. Another problem was that the Brexit campaign was tapping into the same sense of nationalism and nostalgia that the Trump campaign was promoting back home: the days of Churchill, the absence of immigrants and intrusive international institutions. The arguments for staying in the EU were grounded in facts, not emotion: The EU was Britain’s largest market. The EU offered Britain a stronger voice in global affairs. Even the name of the campaign—Remain—sounded like a concession that life wasn’t going to be all that you hoped it would be.”

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