Causes
Now you'll have gathered about me that I feel strongly about certain issues and I'd like to highlight them here. If you agree – great. If you don't agree – great too. We don't have to agree on everything in order to like each other and be friends.
I believe that the UK should re-join the EU as soon as it is possible. I believe that Brexit will prove to have been one of the biggest political and economic mistakes this country has made and in an increasingly dangerous and polarised world, it makes absolute sense to join with our closest friends and allies.
As an openly gay man myself, I don’t think our community has ever had it so good in this country as we do now.Yes, there are still nasty elements of homophobia that rear their ugly head, but the cup is half full rather than half empty. We’ve come a massively long way since I came out on December 24, 1980.We are largely accepted right across all sections of society, and in many ways, we’ve joined the ‘mainstream’. The old stereotypes which saw us all as a joke have gone. It’s the same right across Western Europe, the Nordic countries, Canada, Australia, New Zealand. Anti-gay legislation is either being repealed or is being looked at with regard to being repealed in countries like Singapore, and Japan. And in Taiwan there is now equality. But in many other countries around the world, gay people are being marginalised, persecuted, and even threatened with death just for being gay. That’s why I’ve joined the ‘All Out’ campaign. Because I’m not free until every gay person is also free.
I know this is an evocative subject for some, but we need to remember that we’re dealing with human beings here. They’re not just numbers on a government report. And they’re not there to be used by politicians to go after votes.Contrary to populist belief the UK does not take ‘everybody’. Both Germany and France take more refugees than we do. And already impoverished countries in the third world take way more than we do. Let’s not forget that many of those who come to the UK do so, not because we’re a soft touch because we’re not, but because they speak English and therefore think that they’ve a better chance of making a future for themselves if they come here because of that.And we British are proud of the fact that our language is more international than any other.And some are running from war, persecution, and oppression. And yes, others are economic migrants. Just like the ‘ten pound poms’ who left the UK for Australia during the 50s, 60s, and 70s.
There’s a crisis in men’s mental health leading to suicide being the biggest killer of men in the UK. Something must be done not just out of a sense of it being right to do something, but so that kids can stop losing fathers, men and women can stop losing partners, and the men in our society can start to feel better and more confident about who they are, and where their place is in modern society.