Brexitwatch: Kent's Brexit bogs - is Boris Johnson planning his greatest double cross?

There's a story doing the rounds that the UK could rejoin the EU in short order under Article 49. I personally do not give it a lot of credence. Nor do I think we should arrogantly assume that other EU members would want us back after the way we've behaved over the last four years.

Still, it does make you wonder. As I've noted many times, anything you say about Boris Johnson has to be highly speculative because you can't believe a word he says. 

So why is Johnson's government building 'Farage Garages' all over the place to accommodate lorry drivers stranded by Brexit, and why is Kent being turned into a public toilet that you'll need a passport to get in and out of?

Is this just the inevitable result of a no-deal Brexit or whatever lousy bare bones deal Johnson manages to do?

Or is it to ram home to the Brexiters what a disaster leaving the EU is going to be (Kent voted 59% for Brexit in the referendum), and to soften them up for an eventual application to rejoin or at least to agree a relationship that keeps us in the Single Market and the Customs Union? After all, it's quite clear that Johnson knows perfectly well that Brexit is a thoroughly foolish idea for the UK, however much it may have advanced him personally.

I don't believe this is Johnson's game, and I wouldn't put any money on it, but he knows that if he is not to go down in history as the UK's worst ever (and possibly last) prime minister, then at some point he needs to pivot away from disaster.

The benefits of storms

Thirty years after the Great Storm of 1987 - Britain's worst since 1703 - it is worth considering some of the benefits of storms. It is a topic I tackle in my book Storm: Nature and Culture.

The tempest brought down about 15 million trees in Britain, and in one place that had been badly hit, Toys Hill in Kent, the National Trust did an experiment. One area was cleared and replanted, while an other was left alone so nature could take its course. This one did better, producing a far wider variety of trees and flowers.

In the US, some scientists said that while storms like Sandy and 'Snowtober' also felled trees, they too brought an explosion of biodiversity in animals, birds, insects, plants and fungi. Another benefit claimed for storms is that native species tend to survive them better than imported ones.

Lightning can liberate nitrogen atoms in the air which fall to the earth with water and act as natural fertilisers. While fires started by strikes clear undergrowth and debris from woods, turning it into nutrients, and they allow sunlight and water to penetrate through to germinating seeds on the forest floor.

For more, see Storm: Nature and Culture, published by Reaktion Books.

Britain's deadliest earthquake

This day 432 years ago saw perhaps the deadliest earthquake Britain has ever known.    Just over a decade later, it was still significant enough to get a mention in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, with the bard noting it was 11 years ‘since the earthquake’.

On April 6, 1580, people in Kent said they heard a ‘marvellous great noise’ apparently from the Channel, followed by a ‘fierce and terrible’ shaking.    A passenger on a boat reported seeing a wave 50 feet high, and up to 30 vessels were sunk.

Parts of the White Cliffs of Dover collapsed, as did sections of the wall at Dover Castle, while there was damage to churches at Broadstairs and Sandwich.   Across the Channel, Calais, Boulogne and Lille also suffered structural damage, while at Oudenaarde in Belgium, people were killed and injured by falling chimneys and tiles.

There was also flooding at Boulogne and Calais, where a number of people drowned.   The total death toll was said to have run into hundreds.

Britain's 20 Worst Military Disasters 11 - the Battle of New Orleans

The year 1815 is celebrated in British history for the great victory at Waterloo, but there was also a great defeat – at New Orleans on January 8.   Britain and the infant United States had fallen out over Britain’s press-ganging of American sailors, her attempts to impose a blockade against Napoleonic France, and American territorial ambitions in Canada.

In fact, the battle should never have been fought, as the two combatants had made peace at Ghent on Christmas Eve 1814, but the news had still not reached America.     If it had, the British would probably have been disappointed.   They had 8,000 professional soldiers, many of whom had helped defeat the French in the Peninsular War, and fancied themselves to rout General Andrew Jackson’s untrained frontiersmen.

The American ranks, though, were packed with sharpshooters, and Jackson had constructed his defences well and sited his artillery very effectively.    When the British charged, they were cut down in dozens.

The British commander, Edward Pakenham was killed, as was another British general, and within 25 minutes, the Redcoats had to withdraw, having lost 2,000 killed, wounded or captured against just 300 casualties on the American side.

*A review of Britain’s 20 Worst Military Disasters from Kent on Sunday.

http://www.kentnews.co.uk/news/how_kent_s_military_disasters_changed_the_course_of_history_1_1147200

Britain's 20 Worst Military Disasters 4 - the Anglo-Saxon Conquest

Germanic raiders who became known collectively as ‘Saxons’ had been attacking England since the 3^rd century, but after the Romans left at the beginning of the 5^th century, one of the Britons’ leaders, named Vortigern, had the bright idea of hiring Saxons as mercenaries to fight the Picts and Scots who had been raiding northern England.

So in 449, the brothers Hengest and Horsa arrived in Kent.   They were very successful against the Picts and Scots, but when the Britons tried to defy their increasing demands for land, the Saxons fought and heavily defeated their employers, perhaps at Aylesford in Kent in 455.

Two years later, the Britons suffered an even more decisive defeat, perhaps at Crayford.   They are said to have lost 4,000 killed, while the survivors ‘fled to London in great terror’.  

In the late fifth or early sixth century, the Britons had a series of successes, perhaps under King Arthur, but the year 577 saw another crushing defeat at Dyrham, near Bath, where three British kings were killed, and by 600 most of what had been Roman Britain was in Saxon hands.

*This is an interview with me on British Forces Broadcasting about my new book – Britain’s 20 Worst Military Disasters

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIpb64ZpBno

Darfur war crimes + warship explosion

Further evidence of a growing determination to hold suspected war criminals to account. For the first time ever the International Criminal Court has called on the UN Security Council to take action against a country for failing to arrest suspects.

The country in question is Sudan, and the suspects former Humanitarian Affairs (!) Minister Ahmed Haroun - who allegedly recruited and armed the Janjaweed militia - and Ali Muhammad Abd-Al-Rahman, one of the militia leaders – both accused of war crimes in Darfur. Today Omar al-Bashir, himself an alleged war criminal, begins a new term as Sudan’s president. More than 300,000 people are believed to have been killed in Darfur. (See my blogs of March 4 and Aug 6, 2009).

On this day…..95 years ago, a huge explosion ripped through HMS Princess Irene, a British navy minelayer berthed at Sheerness in Kent. Aboard were 300 Royal Navy personnel plus 76 dockyard workers. Just one of them survived.

As the First World War was raging at the time, there were all sort of rumours that the blast had been caused by dastardly and ingenious enemy action, but an official inquiry came to the conclusion that it was actually a faulty mine primer. For more details, see A Disastrous History of Britain.

"War on terrror" + Kent a millennium ago

According to the independent Iraq Body Count group, 4,497 civilians met violent deaths in the country last year. That’s not quite as bad as the figure of 9,226 for 2008, but horrifying enough when you think how profoundly we in Britain were shocked by the loss of 56 people in the bus and train bombings of 2005.

Meanwhile in Pakistan, the death toll from the suicide bomb at a volleyball match in the north-west of the country has risen to 93. Altogether, more than 600 people have died in militant attacks since the army launched an offensive against Taliban strongholds in October.

A millennium ago this winter, Kent was suffering a reign of terror of its own after an “immense” Viking army arrived to plunder and extort protection money. Canterbury paid out a huge sum to get them to go away, which they did for a while – sacking towns like Oxford, Cambridge and Northampton instead.

In 1011, they returned, and burned Canterbury to the ground, killing, it is said, nine tenths of the inhabitants. They carried off Archbishop Alphege, but he bravely insisted that no ransom should be paid for him, so the Vikings murdered him, making him the first Archbishop of Canterbury to be martyred. I have just written the story for Kent on Sunday, and it can be accessed here on page 17:
http://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk/digital_editions/Page17_dceedd34-e22b-4c41-ba22-4b45e0962c66_8c14e057-f400-4ae2-a814-91554b91ef1c.aspx