The Rusty Wire Service

Even though Euro-scepticism is very much the default position up here in Croppy Towers, the Brexit Referendum result in June was still received with more than a little despair by this venerable organ. After all, in the final analysis, even if we take the vote as a protest and a kick-up from the disenfranchised, the tone and timbre of debate in the run-up to polling day was by and large an ugly refrain of xenophobia and jingoistic nostalgia for an antiquated and insular little England that probably never existed in the first place (except perhaps in the minds of those whose fear of the future prevents them from embracing the possibilities of the present). My scepticism about the European project as it stands was never based on a vision of 'Cider with Rosie' bucolic idyll or a world of street parties for the Queen's jubilee. It was rather awakened by a profound mistrust of the neo-liberal vision of a Europe where small countries could be bullied into accepting...

The dispatches from Croppy Towers have been frankly scant over the past couple of years and for that I apologise. Indeed, it's hard to know where to start after a hiatus of this magnitude but if there are still readers out there: they are owed some kind of an explanation; however mealy-mouthed such an excuse might be. For openers, I no longer reside in sunny sarf east London. Of course, my heart remains in County Deptford but for now, Croppy Towers have relocated to Chelmsford in Essex. The reason for this move is also pertinent to the paucity of output on The Rusty Wire Service in recent years. Where does one start? A certain level of disillusionment crept into my dealings with the Fourth Estate after I realised that I was in effect flinging pennies at the moon in pursuit of the aim of speaking truth to power.  This became abundantly apparent to me when I found myself obliged to write for the financial press as a matter of personal pecuniary necessity back in 2012...