Most of us watched in awe as the new aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth edged slowly under the Forth Rail Bridge on Tuesday evening, a magnificent piece of engineering - both of them that is. One reminded us of our past glories, the other a stark vision of what a lonely future we face.
Europe - A Messy Divorce?
We elected as a nation to break away from the European Union a little over a year ago this week. No matter which way you look at it there has been political turmoil ever since. On our own, we are facing a very Unsteady future indeed. One can only be amazed at the sheer stupidity of some voters, not realising that it was going to take years to untie the apron strings, and in the untying, it was going to be messy - very messy indeed.
And we have yet to start the real negotiations.
It will take a ball-park figure of £100 million to get us free. So, where is that money coming from when our NHS, Schools and Social Care and Social projects are at breaking point? It is a fact, we received more - in most cases from the EU - than we ever gave. Sadly, another fact is that it was those areas of the Country who receive the most in financial incentives that voted to leave. So where pray tell, is the logic in that?
Some voted for a rose-tinted view of what this country once was, a tea at four paradise that ruled 1/3 of the world, where well-fed children skipped happily to school in order to produce the next generation of Empire Builders.
We may have won the war in 1945, but we have lost the peace ever since. Britain is a small country, about to get smaller, marginalised on the edge of Europe, now faced with the bleak prospect of forever fondly looking Southward, hat in hand, trying to get back in a game we opted out of.
What can we do now?
Nothing, apart from holding another referendum, or continuing down the path some chose 12 months ago.
There has been a rather feeble excuse put about by certain sections of the voting public, that they were ill-informed on the choices they had to make. Rubbish! Certainly credible 50 years ago when the world was a smaller place, but not now, when the internet can give us a million options a second, and phones can find any piece of information in half that time.
The NO's were promised an extra £300 million a week for the NHS for example...so how was that one possible then, when we are giving the DUP an extra £1 Billion over two years to stabilise the unstable and everyone is complaining?
We need strong and firm leadership, not some flaky suck-it-and-see notion, that it will all work out fine in the end. Sorry folks, but it won't, we have saddled ourselves and our children with insurmountable debts, and if you think the austerity of the past 10 years has been bad, boy we ain't seen nothing yet!