Forgive me if I feel a little depressed at the moment. There are a lot of contributory factors — among them the massacre of my ducks by an otter, the unstoppable rise of Donald Trump, and of course the European Union referendum campaign. This last is especially dispiriting, as I am tired of it already and there are still nearly three months to go before the vote. The first propaganda letter plopped through my letterbox last week, and doubtless it will be the first of many such. It was from the ‘Leave.EU’ campaign and its only effect was to strengthen me in my decision to vote to stay in. Written by a rich, fat businessman called Peter Hargreaves, it had a most disagreeable tone, questioning not only the wisdom but also the motives of those who don’t want to leave the EU.
These Europhiles, it said, were people from organisations that accepted payment from Brussels, whose ‘cushy lives’ would be disrupted by change, and who were engaging in ‘ludicrous’ scaremongering to protect their own interests. ‘Our politicians should champion a balanced view, but their own political futures seem to be taking precedence,’ it went on. ‘The future of the United Kingdom is at stake, which is infinitely more important than political careers.’ Apart from implying that all politicians who supported EU membership were doing so only out of self-interest, Mr Hargreaves is hardly an example of someone who champions ‘a balanced view’. In fact, I can’t imagine what he means by it.
It is possible that I would be less affected by this kind of thing if I wasn’t also a little concerned about the state of my aortic valve. I know nothing about biology, and I wasn’t even aware until recently that I had such a thing as an aortic valve to help my heart pump blood around my body.
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