the brilliantly leaping gazelle

Did you see it? I did and it wasn’t a surprise, more of of a predictable piece of nonsense that once again held Brexit up as the main causative factor behind whatever perceived ‘problem’ upsets the denizens of Kings Place. Today, ‘The Guardian’ was crying into its organic ridiculousness about:

Post-Brexit fall in English ownership of European second homes, figures show, screamed a prominent headline and when one clicked on it came the chilling news that a Government survey finds that less than 30% of holiday homes are on continent – compared with 40% a decade ago

The article went on to quote a couple of people who didn’t in any way whatsoever have a vested interest in blaming all their woes upon Brexit.

Annette de Vries, an estate agent in Monpazier, in the Dordogne, said that the additional bureaucracy of Brexit had deterred many people from buying in France.

“Less British people are looking for houses than before,” she said. “The main reason is Brexit. It’s so much more difficult for British people to buy something here. They need health insurance and that’s very difficult for them.”

Sylvie Mayer, an estate agent in Huelgoat, Brittany, said: “Many Britons have left the area. Since last summer, a lot of them have sold their second homes because the paperwork got too complicated for them to spend time here.”

All very Guardian were it not for the somewhat inconvenient truth that hot on the heels of Brexit came Covid and the one saving grace – for me anyway – was that not only did we have a glorious summer that year, but I also had a large garden to make the most of this unexpected good fortune. With the gradual easing of lockdown restrictions, came foreign holiday restrictions leading to the increase of holidays in the UK. Might that, a rational fear of another pandemic and lockdown, curbs on foreign travel make people think twice before buying a second home abroad? After all, what use is a second home if you can’t use it.

More importantly, someone who can afford a second home isn’t really someone I’m going to shed any tears for. If you can afford a second home, the chances are you didn’t vote for Brexit because you did enjoy some of the benefits that EU membership conferred. That possibly ‘health insurance’ and supposedly complicated ‘paperwork’ is the very definition of what a service industry is there to sort out?

Also, isn’t cutting back on air travel a good thing? Exactly a state of affairs that one would expect “The Guardian’ to be pleased about. Oh no, silly me, I was forgetting that ‘The Guardian’ serves a panderocracy, which they call readers but which are really their paymasters/shot-callers/proprietors/ and their self-serving double standards.

Must keep the flow of money flowing so even if is a story that has nothing to do with Brexit, well it happened after June 2016, so Brexit must have something to do with it.

I voted to Remain, by the way.