Brexitwatch: Get your council to fight for a People's Vote

The Scottish Parliament has become the latest democratic body to support the demand for a 'People's Vote' referendum on any Brexit terms that Theresa May may secure. Other supporters include trade unions and local councils, including a dozen London boroughs. More, including Brent, Islington, Kingston, Redbridge and Southwark are due to decide whether to join up soon. My own council, Camden, is due to take a view on Monday.

Below is the email I have sent to my local councillors. Please note: it is crucial that any vote contains a 'Remain' option. Without it, any referendum will be a sham.

Dear Councillors,

I understand that the council is deciding on November 12 whether to join the many democratic bodies now demanding that there be a 'People's Vote' referendum on any exit arrangement negotiated by the government with the EU.

I trust you will support this demand, and that you will also insist that any vote must include a 'Remain' option. Without that, any vote will plainly be an undemocratic sham.

If I were to list all the reasons why you should support a People's Vote, you would not have time to read them, but here are just a few:

1. Any Brexit will seriously damage the UK, and particularly the people Labour is supposed to care about.

2. The people of Camden are aware of this and overwhelmingly reject Brexit.

3. The Brexit promised by the Leave campaign cannot and will not be delivered.

4. The referendum of 2016 was won by lies, criminality, gerrymandering of the electorate etc.

History will judge very harshly those who supported, facilitated or failed to do their best to stop Brexit. Don't be one of them. Do the right thing.

Yours sincerely

John Withington

Swine flu worsens + the real "Great Fire"

Since my last blog on Monday, swine flu has taken quite a turn for the worse in the UK. Then there were 4 deaths, now there have been 15 – meaning the death rate may be around one in 500 rather than the 1 in 1,875 we were talking about five days ago. We have also had the first death of someone without any other underlying medical problems.

The government is still stressing that for the vast majority of people, it will be a mild infection from which they soon make a complete recovery, but if they are right that the number of new cases may reach 100,000 a day by the end of next month, plainly many more people will die.

One of the disturbing things about the 1918 pandemic was how it appeared in the spring as a relatively mild illness, but by the autumn it had become much more lethal. Of course, today we have weapons that doctors lacked 90 years ago, like anti-viral drugs and perhaps soon a vaccine, but the ending of the swine flu story is one that we do not yet know.

On this day….797 years ago (or perhaps 796 – historians cannot agree), London suffered what may have been its deadliest ever peacetime fire. This “Great Fire” broke out to the south of the Thames in Southwark, and spread quickly. Crowds had poured onto London Bridge – some to try to rescue people from its buildings, others just to watch – when the flames leapfrogged them, and set buildings on the north bank ablaze, trapping them.

Some estimates put the number of people killed at an astonishing 3,000. That is hard to accept, but this fire certainly killed many more than the “Great Fire” of 1666, though that devastated a much bigger area. To learn more, see The Disastrous History of London.