Day 80. This place is coming like a ghost place. (21/3/19)

(Soundtrack: Dexys' last album, 'Let The Record Show: Dexys Do Irish And Country Soul. It's not what I intended. I intended the last Eels album, but Apple Music has decided I'm signed out so I've had to sign out and sign back in again. Which is a pain in the arse. As is the fact that the Mac is blowing air again. Seriously, I'm not using that much power, get a grip. I could have gone for a previous Eels album but my iPod - my first iPod, not my second, the second is for podcasts and more recent albums - appears to have died. Which is slightly inconvenient, seeing as it has the bulk of my CD collection on it. Still, realised last week that this Dexys album is infinitely better than I thought on  release. I found it underwhelming at the time, it's actually excellent. Think of it as a companion piece to the much maligned but frankly wonderful 'My Beauty', the solo Kevin Rowland album that supposedly sank Creation Records.

The reason I wanted to play Eels? Mark 'E' Everett's dad was the scientist who first put forward a genuine scientific theory of an infinite multiverse where anything that could happen, had. Where every possible future, every possible past, every twist and turn that you dream, actually existed.

And this is on my mind because?

Because we seriously need an alternate bloody reality at the moment.

Still, an album containing traditional and new Irish songs [amongst others] seems apposite, as what we're going to talk about in a second is going to take Ireland back forty years, in the worst way possible.)

It's been a day. It's been a day where there are at least two things that I can't talk to you about. One is very good. The other I'm not allowed an opinion on. You can figure that one out.

So, let's talk Brexit again, shall we?

As the FT announces that the UK has lost £1tn (that's one trillion) of investments due to Brexit, let's look back and see what could have happened that may have avoided this.

Call this the equivalent of Marvel Comics' old 'What If' series (coming soon to Disney + in an animated format) - What If Aunt May became Spiderman? What If the Avengers hadn't discovered Captain America? What If Deadpool were actually as amusing as people have been led to believe? What If Gambit wasn't shit? That kind of thing.

How does the world look if the following happens/doesn't happen? WHAT IF...

Gordon Brown turns his bloody mic off when he gets in the car.

The media go "what if that old woman IS a bigot?" (I've no idea if she is but let's ask the question)

Nick Clegg forgets the name of somebody talking to him in the debate and so doesn't look like the sodding golden boy of politics instead of a grabbing, opportunist shit.

Simon Cowell doesn't become so big that he not only destroys the singles chart forever but the TV companies decide it's time for X-Factor politics

Gordon Brown accidentally says that Labour saved the Western economy and the media admits that "yeah, you know what? They bloody did. The bail out of the banks was a necessity and Brown and Darling developed the system that America used to steady their economy".

In fairness, What If Brown doesn't loosen the banks into a self governing system that goes "governing? Where we're going we don't need governing."

The investment bankers of the world aren't a bunch of coked up alpha males who are already richer than they need to be and play with other people's money like it's a huge frigging Monopoly board

The right wing press doesn't use a photo of Ed Miliband failing to eat a bacon butty as a propaganda tool

The right wing press wasn't owned by billionaires who have no link to the country financially other than making sure our laws benefit the profits they're squirrelling away in the Caymans

Ed didn't stand against his brother Dave. Dave may be the middle of the road but he'd have been a damn sight more electable. The media would have fawned. We might not be as socialist as we'd like but we wouldn't have had austerity for this bloody long. Sorry Ed, I thought you were a good idea to be honest. I've been wrong before, I'll be wrong again, I'm pretty bloody worried about Jeremy at the moment. We haven't had an opposition, we've had nobody who's gone for the throat on anything. But I don't think that's Corbyn's fault: as Labour has grown in numbers its strength has vanished. We're now an anonymous party.

Have I Got News For You's bookers realise that Boris Johnson isn't an amusing bumbling comedy oaf and is actually a hideous racist who shouldn't be allowed on the telly.

BBC Question Times realise that Nigel Farage isn't...  etc. etc

No, etc. etc. isn't bloody good enough. The BBC kept giving airtime to this appalling little Nazi despite the fact he had no MPs. They gave him access to voters. He had no right to access to voters. His tactics from that point on were straight out of the Goeebbels playbook for turning the minds of the disenfranchised, middle of the country voters: "I know you've never actually met an immigrant but here they are and they're all awful and they're taking all your jobs and not doing any work and living on benefits at the same time". And there are people who fall for this because the Tories have made bloody sure that education has suffered by putting Gove and Hunt in the job. There's a reason that newsreaders keep getting Hunt's name wrong in a comedy manner: it's because the comedy manner is accurate. (It's a rhyme thing if that was a little too vague. It's the word we don't use. It's the only word I can think when I see these people on TV)

David Cameron has the balls to actually go "you know what, these chums of mine on the back benches won't actually defect to Farage's Wehrmacht, they'll realise that way lies political doom" and not give us all a referendum that nobody but the racists were actively asking for.

Rees-Mogg and his pathetic little ERG group would be ignored. Back benchers who've done nothing and should have no influence. Chaos capitalists who will make more money from a No Deal Brexit than any other version so have made bloody sure we head toward it. There is nothing that would be good enough for them. Apart from a damn good thrashing from nanny. They'd love that, be like boarding school all over again.

16 year olds were allowed to vote on their futures. Since they have to live there longer than most.

The public were allowed as many votes on their future as Theresa May is.

The Tory party gave a shit about anybody that wasn't a member of the Tory party. And understood what they're triggering in Ireland.

But all these are What Ifs. They're all gone. All those moments, lost in time, like tears in the rain.

And what we have is the EU granting an extension. But only until the 22nd of May. And only if our pathetic incumbent PM can convince a room full of people who can see through her that her madness has merit.

Meanwhile, over a million of us have signed a petition demanding that Article 50 be revoked in the last twenty-four hours.

Because that is the only thing that makes sense.

Obviously we're being ignored.