Page 16 - Phonebox Magazine May 2016

Ian Roberts
Iam helping to organise a fun day and night in aid of The Olney-Newton Link, it will be held on Saturday 25th June in the beer garden at The Two Brewers on the
High Street in Olney, we have a marquee just in case the weather decides to play up, but of course we’re hoping for sunshine. My part will be to organise the music which will go on most of the day and through the night until closing time, so if any bands or solo artists would like to perform for us then please get in touch. We’re also looking for any men who might want to have their beard or head shaved, maybe your back or your legs waxed for charity. We have a local barber who will be coming along on the day with his shavers and wax. Also if anyone would like to come along and do face painting for us then please get in touch. For more information on the Olney-Newton link please look here: www.olneynewtonlink.org.uk If you’d like to get involved then please email me: ian@ ianrobertsmusic.org.
Your Referendum....
So, voting eh? Here we go again, rst up is the local elections, now I don’t know about you but I’ve always voted on policies only, I don’t care how a politician looks or if he/ she wears a tie or not, and I certainly never listen to the press barons and the television, they inevitably have an agenda and they will always try to use their power to sway the gullible. Nowadays there are many parties to choose from and not just the traditional two and a half, the Greens have made massive steps forward for example, but I think this time around I’ll be looking at what the parties actually do and say, so for example if you like a bit of off-shore tax avoidance or evasion then you know who to vote for, if you want to save our NHS then there’s a party for that too, and I’m really not too sure about the other half a party since the infamous broken pledge on University tuition fees.
And then we have the EU referendum, now this one I can’t make head nor tail of, on the one side we have the right-wing PM David Cameron and on the other side we have the left-wing Jeremy Corbyn, oh hold on a minute I’ve just been told that they’re now on the same side, so what is going on?
Here’s what I think is really going on; there is a terrifying new trade agreement called TTIP that is coming from America (look it up, it’s massively important to all of us, and it will change the way that we do business and look after our workforce, and it will change it 16 Phonebox Magazine | May 2016
EU Referendum
forever). Now David Cameron fully supports TTIP and he’s doing all he can to make sure that it gets through Europe, and if he succeeds then it will be extremely dif cult – if not impossible – to ever change the laws that the TTIP agreement is demanding. Corporate businesses will have power that has never been seen before, oh and they’ll have the law on their side if they get their own way and TTIP gets through. Now with lots of these businesses already avoiding their taxes that are due and owed to this country by registering themselves off-shore I think the last thing we should be doing is giving them even more power through the TTIP agreement. And that’s where Jeremy Corbyn is on it, he’s vowed to collect their taxes, and he wants to stay in the EU to ght against TTIP and make sure that it doesn’t get through, he’s joining with other like-minded politicians in Europe to ght against TTIP, he believes that working together within the structure of the EU is the best thing for this country, we can only change the EU if we’re a part of it, we have no chance otherwise. So maybe I was wrong, the right and left can’t see eye to eye after all and it’s a battle of conscience deep inside the EU and the actual leaving or staying isn’t as important to our PM as TTIP seems to be to him? Now If you think that may seem like a good reason to leave the EU, then think again, because what worries me most of all is that even if we do decide to leave and go it alone then our PM who
has fought so hard on the side of TTIP won’t just give that up, he’ll rush TTIP through Westminster with ease, he’ll do it far easier with the Conservative Governments majority than he ever could in Europe. Now of course TTIP wants the whole of Europe and not just the UK, and Cameron is obviously aware
of that, now maybe that’s why Obama has poked his nose in eh? Within the EU there are many who are opposed to TTIP and it could go either way when it comes down to the vote, I personally think that we need to ght against any corporate businesses who refuse to pay their taxes, or only pay a tiny percentage of what they actually owe, it effects all of us, and if the people of this country have to pay their taxes then the massive corporate businesses should be treated no differently by this Government.
I do nd it hilarious though when I see the Brexit campaign complaining that Obama, the television news, the press, the IMF and almost every single survey carried out points to the fact that we’ll be better off staying in Europe. I never heard any of them moaning when that happened in the Scottish referendum, they were happy to support those gures spouting out of our telebox then, even happier to see the press scaremongering people into voting the way the Government wanted. And that’s what happening again now, we are all being brainwashed into doing something that someone else wants us to do. Who can we trust? I wish I could vote for my old mate David Pibworth, yes he may want to leave the EU, but I’d vote for him any day of the week based purely on the fact that he’s such a thoroughly decent chap.
But whichever way you decide to vote please do your homework rst, look and read the policies, seek out the facts, never listen to the media or your mate down the pub, look for the truth for yourself and vote with both your heart and your head.
As a nal note: I had ve lea ets posted through my door this week, two about staying in the EU, two about leaving the EU, and one about Zumba classes, so it’s in-out-in-out and shake it all about.