240 years or so ago, a group of people who were largely the descendants of English colonisers, but who felt increasingly estranged from their ancestral home, decided that taxation without representation was a drag, and decided to take actions to ensure their independence.

Last week, the descendants of those who stayed at home decided that taxation with representation was a drag, and elected to initiate a process leading to independence based on promises of “immigration controls” and reduced taxation, whilst maintaining a desire to remain part of a “single market”. The leaders of this movement, despite knowing full well that access to that market would have to be paid for and might well require free movement of workers, nevertheless played to the lowest common denominator of base ignorance. (If they didn’t know, one questions their intellectual capacity, rather than their disingenuousness.)

Effectively, one of the pioneering countries of liberal free market economics, and possibly the freest market on the planet, has voted for taxation without representation.

I wish I could proffer an explanation, but then again, I am certain some of the descendants of those colonisers might also struggle to “explain” Donald Trump.

We live in a mad world. Hobbies can provide a sanctuary from this.