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Looking ahead to 2022 Senate Elections – politicalbetting.com

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  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 41,958
    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Scott_xP said:

    One step more constructive, but no more.

    It's not idealistic, it's not dignified, it may not even be in the UK's best economic interest.

    But as long as the UK is still at 50:50ish on the subject, it's what's pragmatic, and it reduces the harm in the meantime.

    Interesting thread...

    1/6. I'm seeing a lot of despair amongst remainers/rejoiners about @UKLabour's current stance on Brexit. I think this despair is misplaced and that we are already on the path to rejoining. It's just that nobody wants to talk about it.
    https://twitter.com/RichardBentall/status/1543858215011614722
    Deluded.

    How on earth will we persuade the eu to allow us to rejoin without entering the single currency?

    It’s more fundamental than that. A Euro fudge could be reached but but won’t let us rejoin if there’s a chance that 5 years later we leave again. You can’t have yo-yo membership.


    The other elephant in the room with respect to our rejoining is Scotland. Scotland will likely be an EU member by the time England would reapply on its own. There is no way on God’s good Earth that the Scots would want out of one Union with the English to be saddled with another one. Not only would it mean a return of FOM of people from England to Scotland it would mean English Commissoners and MEPs having a say on Scots affairs. No way would the ScotNats have that. They would veto, the Irish for the same reason.
    This is an odd argument. An independent Scotland in the EU would be much happier with its largest trading partner inside the EU than outside. It would ease barriers to trade hugely. And the degree of power that England would have over Scotland as a fellow EU member is an order of magnitude lower than it currently has in the UK. Scotland would be a strong cheerleader of England's EU membership.
    It’s more a question of identity. Scotland and the Scot wants to be seen as both the anti England and anti English. There are no votes in Scotland or Ireland in being pro English. Any party that was seen to be collaborating with the hated coloniser would be punished in the polls. It’s a question of identity and Scotland’s is strongly anglophobic.
    That is bollocks.
    I refer the honourable poster to @malcolmg , @StuartDickson and @Theuniondivvie of this parish.
    Citing three anonymous posters on PB (one of whom doesn't live in Scotland) is hardly compelling evidence. Especially as I wouldn't characterise all of these three as anti-English anyway (one of them is maybe). I grew up in Scotland with English parents (who still live there) and so I think I am probably well placed to be aware of whether anti English prejudice is widespread in Scotland. You are way off-beam.
    Thanks (dangerously assuming I'm not the one who is maybe anti-English :) )

    It's a weird correlation that certain PB posters who have a prolapse at any suggestion that xenophobia, racism, exceptionalism, nationalism and all that other good stuff are inherent characteristics of the English are awfully keen on similar generalised opinions about Scotland and the Scots. Too tedious to speculate why, but..
    Oh the sanctimony. I’ve accepted it. You constantly paint the English as being racist to all and then get all pious when I have the temerity to suggest that maybe, just maybe, you guys might be a more than a little prejudiced against one specific group.
    Can you link to my constant painting of the English as being racist to all? If not I'll put you down as another thin skinned hysteric attached to an article of faith with no supporting evidence*.

    *Too late!
  • Stark_DawningStark_Dawning Posts: 9,679
    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Scott_xP said:

    DougSeal said:

    For reasons set out we can’t rejoin.

    Of course we can.

    There will come a day when rejoining is not only the obvious but popular choice.
    Here maybe but we need the EU’s agreement to rejoin. Ain’t happening. If one of the countries I’ve mentioned doesn’t veto us another will. We’ve burned our bridges. They’re sick to death of us all. No application will be successful.
    The EU might look sympathetically on Britain's re-joining at some point in the future, but Boris will have to be as distant in time and relevance then as, say, Jim Callaghan is now.
    So in nearly half a century?
    I'd say we're looking at thirty years at the earliest.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 35,990

    I'd say we're looking at thirty years at the earliest.

    I think it depends how successfully the Conservative and Unionist Party can flush the Brexiteer poison from its veins.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 35,990
    . @AnasSarwar says the next election will not be Scotland vs England but Boris vs Britain. And Britain will win.
    https://twitter.com/EmmaBurnell_/status/1543894926580219906
  • Scott_xP said:

    Every single Tory leadership contender would beat Jeremy Hunt in the final 2 according to latest ConHome survey...

    Even Steve Baker!

    https://conservativehome.com/2022/07/04/next-tory-leader-play-offs-ninth-jeremy-hunt/

    Steve Baker could make a very good leader and would be a clean break from Boris.

    He's really shown consistent, liberal principles in recent years. He was a sound critic on Covid, and he's been extremely critical on partygate. What's not to like? 👍
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,921
    First Conservative Home next Tory leader runoff survey results have Jeremy Hunt trailing,

    Wallace 72%
    Hunt 14%

    Mordaunt 63%
    Hunt 18%

    Zahawi 60%
    Hunt 18%

    Sunak 55%
    Hunt 20%

    Tugendhat 42%
    Hunt 21%

    Truss 59%
    Hunt 24%

    Badenoch 52%
    Hunt 24%

    Baker 48%
    Hunt 27%

    https://conservativehome.com/2022/07/04/next-tory-leader-play-offs-ninth-jeremy-hunt/
  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 12,541

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Scott_xP said:

    One step more constructive, but no more.

    It's not idealistic, it's not dignified, it may not even be in the UK's best economic interest.

    But as long as the UK is still at 50:50ish on the subject, it's what's pragmatic, and it reduces the harm in the meantime.

    Interesting thread...

    1/6. I'm seeing a lot of despair amongst remainers/rejoiners about @UKLabour's current stance on Brexit. I think this despair is misplaced and that we are already on the path to rejoining. It's just that nobody wants to talk about it.
    https://twitter.com/RichardBentall/status/1543858215011614722
    Deluded.

    How on earth will we persuade the eu to allow us to rejoin without entering the single currency?

    It’s more fundamental than that. A Euro fudge could be reached but but won’t let us rejoin if there’s a chance that 5 years later we leave again. You can’t have yo-yo membership.


    The other elephant in the room with respect to our rejoining is Scotland. Scotland will likely be an EU member by the time England would reapply on its own. There is no way on God’s good Earth that the Scots would want out of one Union with the English to be saddled with another one. Not only would it mean a return of FOM of people from England to Scotland it would mean English Commissoners and MEPs having a say on Scots affairs. No way would the ScotNats have that. They would veto, the Irish for the same reason.
    This is an odd argument. An independent Scotland in the EU would be much happier with its largest trading partner inside the EU than outside. It would ease barriers to trade hugely. And the degree of power that England would have over Scotland as a fellow EU member is an order of magnitude lower than it currently has in the UK. Scotland would be a strong cheerleader of England's EU membership.
    It’s more a question of identity. Scotland and the Scot wants to be seen as both the anti England and anti English. There are no votes in Scotland or Ireland in being pro English. Any party that was seen to be collaborating with the hated coloniser would be punished in the polls. It’s a question of identity and Scotland’s is strongly anglophobic.
    That is bollocks.
    I refer the honourable poster to @malcolmg , @StuartDickson and @Theuniondivvie of this parish.
    Citing three anonymous posters on PB (one of whom doesn't live in Scotland) is hardly compelling evidence. Especially as I wouldn't characterise all of these three as anti-English anyway (one of them is maybe). I grew up in Scotland with English parents (who still live there) and so I think I am probably well placed to be aware of whether anti English prejudice is widespread in Scotland. You are way off-beam.
    Thanks (dangerously assuming I'm not the one who is maybe anti-English :) )

    It's a weird correlation that certain PB posters who have a prolapse at any suggestion that xenophobia, racism, exceptionalism, nationalism and all that other good stuff are inherent characteristics of the English are awfully keen on similar generalised opinions about Scotland and the Scots. Too tedious to speculate why, but..
    Oh the sanctimony. I’ve accepted it. You constantly paint the English as being racist to all and then get all pious when I have the temerity to suggest that maybe, just maybe, you guys might be a more than a little prejudiced against one specific group.
    Can you link to my constant painting of the English as being racist to all? If not I'll put you down as another thin skinned hysteric attached to an article of faith with no supporting evidence*.

    *Too late!
    Pray, how can I link to something “constant”? Anyway, looks like I’ve touched a nerve. Sorry. Maybe look in the mirror before throwing accusations at others? Oh, and maybe stop being Anglophobic and people will stop accusing you of it? Just a thought.
  • DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Scott_xP said:

    One step more constructive, but no more.

    It's not idealistic, it's not dignified, it may not even be in the UK's best economic interest.

    But as long as the UK is still at 50:50ish on the subject, it's what's pragmatic, and it reduces the harm in the meantime.

    Interesting thread...

    1/6. I'm seeing a lot of despair amongst remainers/rejoiners about @UKLabour's current stance on Brexit. I think this despair is misplaced and that we are already on the path to rejoining. It's just that nobody wants to talk about it.
    https://twitter.com/RichardBentall/status/1543858215011614722
    Deluded.

    How on earth will we persuade the eu to allow us to rejoin without entering the single currency?

    It’s more fundamental than that. A Euro fudge could be reached but but won’t let us rejoin if there’s a chance that 5 years later we leave again. You can’t have yo-yo membership.


    The other elephant in the room with respect to our rejoining is Scotland. Scotland will likely be an EU member by the time England would reapply on its own. There is no way on God’s good Earth that the Scots would want out of one Union with the English to be saddled with another one. Not only would it mean a return of FOM of people from England to Scotland it would mean English Commissoners and MEPs having a say on Scots affairs. No way would the ScotNats have that. They would veto, the Irish for the same reason.
    This is an odd argument. An independent Scotland in the EU would be much happier with its largest trading partner inside the EU than outside. It would ease barriers to trade hugely. And the degree of power that England would have over Scotland as a fellow EU member is an order of magnitude lower than it currently has in the UK. Scotland would be a strong cheerleader of England's EU membership.
    It’s more a question of identity. Scotland and the Scot wants to be seen as both the anti England and anti English. There are no votes in Scotland or Ireland in being pro English. Any party that was seen to be collaborating with the hated coloniser would be punished in the polls. It’s a question of identity and Scotland’s is strongly anglophobic.
    That is bollocks.
    I refer the honourable poster to @malcolmg , @StuartDickson and @Theuniondivvie of this parish.
    Citing three anonymous posters on PB (one of whom doesn't live in Scotland) is hardly compelling evidence. Especially as I wouldn't characterise all of these three as anti-English anyway (one of them is maybe). I grew up in Scotland with English parents (who still live there) and so I think I am probably well placed to be aware of whether anti English prejudice is widespread in Scotland. You are way off-beam.
    Thanks (dangerously assuming I'm not the one who is maybe anti-English :) )

    It's a weird correlation that certain PB posters who have a prolapse at any suggestion that xenophobia, racism, exceptionalism, nationalism and all that other good stuff are inherent characteristics of the English are awfully keen on similar generalised opinions about Scotland and the Scots. Too tedious to speculate why, but..
    Oh the sanctimony. I’ve accepted it. You constantly paint the English as being racist to all and then get all pious when I have the temerity to suggest that maybe, just maybe, you guys might be a more than a little prejudiced against one specific group.
    Can you link to my constant painting of the English as being racist to all? If not I'll put you down as another thin skinned hysteric attached to an article of faith with no supporting evidence*.

    *Too late!
    You're the only one of the three that I wouldn't say is anti-English.

    Stuart absolutely is, and rather unabashedly so.

    Malcom isn't specifically anti-English, more anti-everybody, but the English fall within that.
  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 12,541
    Scott_xP said:

    . @AnasSarwar says the next election will not be Scotland vs England but Boris vs Britain. And Britain will win.
    https://twitter.com/EmmaBurnell_/status/1543894926580219906

    Every election, indeed everything, in Scotland these days is Scotland v England. Why don’t they just declare UDI?
  • HYUFD said:

    First Conservative Home next Tory leader runoff survey results have Jeremy Hunt trailing,

    Wallace 72%
    Hunt 14%

    Mordaunt 63%
    Hunt 18%

    Zahawi 60%
    Hunt 18%

    Sunak 55%
    Hunt 20%

    Tugendhat 42%
    Hunt 21%

    Truss 59%
    Hunt 24%

    Badenoch 52%
    Hunt 24%

    Baker 48%
    Hunt 27%

    https://conservativehome.com/2022/07/04/next-tory-leader-play-offs-ninth-jeremy-hunt/

    Legitimately the Tory Party is dead then.
  • Beibheirli_CBeibheirli_C Posts: 8,163
    edited July 2022

    DougSeal said:

    Scott_xP said:

    One step more constructive, but no more.

    It's not idealistic, it's not dignified, it may not even be in the UK's best economic interest.

    But as long as the UK is still at 50:50ish on the subject, it's what's pragmatic, and it reduces the harm in the meantime.

    Interesting thread...

    1/6. I'm seeing a lot of despair amongst remainers/rejoiners about @UKLabour's current stance on Brexit. I think this despair is misplaced and that we are already on the path to rejoining. It's just that nobody wants to talk about it.
    https://twitter.com/RichardBentall/status/1543858215011614722
    Deluded.

    How on earth will we persuade the eu to allow us to rejoin without entering the single currency?

    It’s more fundamental than that. A Euro fudge could be reached but but won’t let us rejoin if there’s a chance that 5 years later we leave again. You can’t have yo-yo membership.

    Which is why the pro-EU side have to decisively win the argument on the anti-EU side's terrain - identity. This is not an easy task.

    A sullen toleration of EU membership because there's perceived to be no economically viable alternative simply isn't going to be durable.
    Demographics will do a lot of the heavy lifting on this. Younger voters already feel more European than the boomers, and having their EU identity snatched from them has only strengthened those feelings.
    It seems that Labour has decided that it doesn't want to hurt Leave voters' feelings. That probably makes sense, but is pretty depressing. How much longer are we going to have to be poorer because nobody dares to tell these snowflakes that they fucked up?
    How did the Boomer generation end up so anti-EU? [snip!]
    Probably because they were the last generation that grew up with "acceptable rascism". When I was growing up, people happily used the N word or the P word (for Asians), foreigners were inferior in many ways and people were quite open about it. The programme "Love Thy Neighbour" regularly used rascist terms and it was pre-watershed viewing.

    They say that many attitudes and prejudices are formed in your early years as a child and pre-teen and I would think that growing up in that sort of era it would not be too surprising if many had absorbed that way of thinking which they now suppress because nowadays attitudes are very different. Suppressing stuff long term often leads to rage, anger and resentment. Which is why it is largely passing away as the older voters die...
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 29,402

    HYUFD said:

    First Conservative Home next Tory leader runoff survey results have Jeremy Hunt trailing,

    Wallace 72%
    Hunt 14%

    Mordaunt 63%
    Hunt 18%

    Zahawi 60%
    Hunt 18%

    Sunak 55%
    Hunt 20%

    Tugendhat 42%
    Hunt 21%

    Truss 59%
    Hunt 24%

    Badenoch 52%
    Hunt 24%

    Baker 48%
    Hunt 27%

    https://conservativehome.com/2022/07/04/next-tory-leader-play-offs-ninth-jeremy-hunt/

    Legitimately the Tory Party is dead then.
    Would be interesting to see some other head to heads.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 41,958
    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Scott_xP said:

    One step more constructive, but no more.

    It's not idealistic, it's not dignified, it may not even be in the UK's best economic interest.

    But as long as the UK is still at 50:50ish on the subject, it's what's pragmatic, and it reduces the harm in the meantime.

    Interesting thread...

    1/6. I'm seeing a lot of despair amongst remainers/rejoiners about @UKLabour's current stance on Brexit. I think this despair is misplaced and that we are already on the path to rejoining. It's just that nobody wants to talk about it.
    https://twitter.com/RichardBentall/status/1543858215011614722
    Deluded.

    How on earth will we persuade the eu to allow us to rejoin without entering the single currency?

    It’s more fundamental than that. A Euro fudge could be reached but but won’t let us rejoin if there’s a chance that 5 years later we leave again. You can’t have yo-yo membership.


    The other elephant in the room with respect to our rejoining is Scotland. Scotland will likely be an EU member by the time England would reapply on its own. There is no way on God’s good Earth that the Scots would want out of one Union with the English to be saddled with another one. Not only would it mean a return of FOM of people from England to Scotland it would mean English Commissoners and MEPs having a say on Scots affairs. No way would the ScotNats have that. They would veto, the Irish for the same reason.
    This is an odd argument. An independent Scotland in the EU would be much happier with its largest trading partner inside the EU than outside. It would ease barriers to trade hugely. And the degree of power that England would have over Scotland as a fellow EU member is an order of magnitude lower than it currently has in the UK. Scotland would be a strong cheerleader of England's EU membership.
    It’s more a question of identity. Scotland and the Scot wants to be seen as both the anti England and anti English. There are no votes in Scotland or Ireland in being pro English. Any party that was seen to be collaborating with the hated coloniser would be punished in the polls. It’s a question of identity and Scotland’s is strongly anglophobic.
    That is bollocks.
    I refer the honourable poster to @malcolmg , @StuartDickson and @Theuniondivvie of this parish.
    Citing three anonymous posters on PB (one of whom doesn't live in Scotland) is hardly compelling evidence. Especially as I wouldn't characterise all of these three as anti-English anyway (one of them is maybe). I grew up in Scotland with English parents (who still live there) and so I think I am probably well placed to be aware of whether anti English prejudice is widespread in Scotland. You are way off-beam.
    Thanks (dangerously assuming I'm not the one who is maybe anti-English :) )

    It's a weird correlation that certain PB posters who have a prolapse at any suggestion that xenophobia, racism, exceptionalism, nationalism and all that other good stuff are inherent characteristics of the English are awfully keen on similar generalised opinions about Scotland and the Scots. Too tedious to speculate why, but..
    Oh the sanctimony. I’ve accepted it. You constantly paint the English as being racist to all and then get all pious when I have the temerity to suggest that maybe, just maybe, you guys might be a more than a little prejudiced against one specific group.
    Can you link to my constant painting of the English as being racist to all? If not I'll put you down as another thin skinned hysteric attached to an article of faith with no supporting evidence*.

    *Too late!
    Pray, how can I link to something “constant”? Anyway, looks like I’ve touched a nerve. Sorry. Maybe look in the mirror before throwing accusations at others? Oh, and maybe stop being Anglophobic and people will stop accusing you of it? Just a thought.
    Touched a nerve klaxon, the last resort of a shit arguer.

    To appropriate your form of advice, if I accuse you of being a thin skinned twat with a weird obsession with Scotland, will that have any effect?
  • NorthofStokeNorthofStoke Posts: 1,758
    Pulpstar said:

    Parity with the Euro would be an astonishing failure. They're far more on the hook for Ukraine & the Russian grain and hydrocarbons than we are.
    Sterling SHOULD be tacking away, north from the Euro.

    Right on cue sterling is up.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,070

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Scott_xP said:

    DougSeal said:

    For reasons set out we can’t rejoin.

    Of course we can.

    There will come a day when rejoining is not only the obvious but popular choice.
    Here maybe but we need the EU’s agreement to rejoin. Ain’t happening. If one of the countries I’ve mentioned doesn’t veto us another will. We’ve burned our bridges. They’re sick to death of us all. No application will be successful.
    The EU might look sympathetically on Britain's re-joining at some point in the future, but Boris will have to be as distant in time and relevance then as, say, Jim Callaghan is now.
    So in nearly half a century?
    I'd say we're looking at thirty years at the earliest.
    It's not always time that counts; it's also how radical the change in circumstances.
    Witness Ukraine's candidate status.
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Alistair said:

    Leon said:


    I think all those are pretty cool. Given that it generated them in 5-10 seconds

    Any of them - except the girl - could illustrate a satirical article about people believing in Flying Spaghetti Monsters

    Yes, but that is the point I'm trying to make.

    They all fit the prompt well apart from 16% of them which is a catastrophic failure (but is in its way super interesting as to thinking _why/how_ Dalle generated it). If I was a wanker with a dalle invite who wanted to discredit Dalle I could spend all day picking the shit image from my prompts and posting them.

    TBH I think people are existentially threatened by GPT3 and DALL-E 2 etc, because it really does feel like the first glimpse of the monster in the movie, the briefly-seen shark’s fin in the water. The monster may yet be a mirage (I’d bet it isn’t) but it still spooks viewers. Hence the emotional response

    eg I showed some of DALL-E 2’s work to an artist friend of mine. He didn’t just dislike them, he hated them and feared them. He went into a kind of rant, “what is this soulless repetitive shit, it is not art, it is disgusting” and so on

    It was way over the top and quite telling. We’re still friends…. but I’ve stopped showing him computer art
    Depends what you want the art for.

    Art 1 is Art as a creative act, to set the soul free.

    Art 2 Is Art as a tool to illustrate ideas or make the world look pretty. Computers look like they can do a decent job of churning that out, and even if 90 % of it is rubbish, the flow is so cheap and rapid that it doesn't matter. You just need someone to pick out the 10 % or 1 % at the end.

    There's a massive career progression problem (lots of creatives do Art 2 to pay the bills to create the time to do Art 1, and Art 2 is how people develop the technical proficency to do Art 1 well), and an emotional problem (nobody likes being overtaken by a robot), but I'm not sure it's existential yet. After all, having lots of cheap servants is normally considered a good thing.

    (Disclosure: a lot of my science degree was crystallography. Large chunks of that got overtaken by computing and graphics in the 1990s. Hey ho.)
    It is existential for most photographers, many illustrators, cartoonists, graphic designers and the like

    DALLE-2 can do just about everything they do but for free and in 10 seconds. The market tells you where that is going

    But the existential threat is deeper than that. We can argue forever whether these things are or ever will be “conscious” - the question is maybe unanswerable - but what is not disputed is that computers are exhibiting traits we thought uniquely human: humour, “imagination”, creativity, wit, the ability to fashion beauty

    That’s threatening
    I'm guessing there are two elements to DALLE-2. First it hunts images from the internet based on your text input, which it also uses to determine how they should be spatially arranged. Then there's another process that restyles all the images in a particular way so it looks a unified work, rather than a hotchpotch. If you could utilize only the second bit that would probably be a useful tool for graphic designers in itself (assuming that something like it isn't already available).
    No, first it takes a humongous set of labelled images and takes hundreds of thousand of computer hours to compresses them across billions of parameters.

    The computer cost of this stage is astronomical.

    Then in response to your prompt it turns your text into categories matching the parameters in its model, generates some random pixels, sees how close those pixels are to your prompt and then repeats until the error is low.

    That you get such good results with such a primative process (especially the style matching) is the thin that makes it so amazing.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 35,990
    Nigelb said:

    It's not always time that counts; it's also how radical the change in circumstances.
    Witness Ukraine's candidate status.

    I haven't heard a credible argument from BoZo us leaving was great but Ukraine joining is also great...
  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 12,541

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Scott_xP said:

    One step more constructive, but no more.

    It's not idealistic, it's not dignified, it may not even be in the UK's best economic interest.

    But as long as the UK is still at 50:50ish on the subject, it's what's pragmatic, and it reduces the harm in the meantime.

    Interesting thread...

    1/6. I'm seeing a lot of despair amongst remainers/rejoiners about @UKLabour's current stance on Brexit. I think this despair is misplaced and that we are already on the path to rejoining. It's just that nobody wants to talk about it.
    https://twitter.com/RichardBentall/status/1543858215011614722
    Deluded.

    How on earth will we persuade the eu to allow us to rejoin without entering the single currency?

    It’s more fundamental than that. A Euro fudge could be reached but but won’t let us rejoin if there’s a chance that 5 years later we leave again. You can’t have yo-yo membership.


    The other elephant in the room with respect to our rejoining is Scotland. Scotland will likely be an EU member by the time England would reapply on its own. There is no way on God’s good Earth that the Scots would want out of one Union with the English to be saddled with another one. Not only would it mean a return of FOM of people from England to Scotland it would mean English Commissoners and MEPs having a say on Scots affairs. No way would the ScotNats have that. They would veto, the Irish for the same reason.
    This is an odd argument. An independent Scotland in the EU would be much happier with its largest trading partner inside the EU than outside. It would ease barriers to trade hugely. And the degree of power that England would have over Scotland as a fellow EU member is an order of magnitude lower than it currently has in the UK. Scotland would be a strong cheerleader of England's EU membership.
    It’s more a question of identity. Scotland and the Scot wants to be seen as both the anti England and anti English. There are no votes in Scotland or Ireland in being pro English. Any party that was seen to be collaborating with the hated coloniser would be punished in the polls. It’s a question of identity and Scotland’s is strongly anglophobic.
    That is bollocks.
    I refer the honourable poster to @malcolmg , @StuartDickson and @Theuniondivvie of this parish.
    Citing three anonymous posters on PB (one of whom doesn't live in Scotland) is hardly compelling evidence. Especially as I wouldn't characterise all of these three as anti-English anyway (one of them is maybe). I grew up in Scotland with English parents (who still live there) and so I think I am probably well placed to be aware of whether anti English prejudice is widespread in Scotland. You are way off-beam.
    Thanks (dangerously assuming I'm not the one who is maybe anti-English :) )

    It's a weird correlation that certain PB posters who have a prolapse at any suggestion that xenophobia, racism, exceptionalism, nationalism and all that other good stuff are inherent characteristics of the English are awfully keen on similar generalised opinions about Scotland and the Scots. Too tedious to speculate why, but..
    Oh the sanctimony. I’ve accepted it. You constantly paint the English as being racist to all and then get all pious when I have the temerity to suggest that maybe, just maybe, you guys might be a more than a little prejudiced against one specific group.
    Can you link to my constant painting of the English as being racist to all? If not I'll put you down as another thin skinned hysteric attached to an article of faith with no supporting evidence*.

    *Too late!
    Pray, how can I link to something “constant”? Anyway, looks like I’ve touched a nerve. Sorry. Maybe look in the mirror before throwing accusations at others? Oh, and maybe stop being Anglophobic and people will stop accusing you of it? Just a thought.
    Touched a nerve klaxon, the last resort of a shit arguer.

    To appropriate your form of advice, if I accuse you of being a thin skinned twat with a weird obsession with Scotland, will that have any effect?
    Sure, if you want to deflect attention on to me, I will gladly accept being all of those things, and if it makes you happy please add on that I’m a bottom feeding troll with half a brain cell who regularly has intimate relations with his mother. Doesn’t stop you being a narrow minded nationalist with a very unhealthy hatred of an entire nation with enough pious sanctimony to sink a ship..
  • Scott_xP said:

    Nigelb said:

    It's not always time that counts; it's also how radical the change in circumstances.
    Witness Ukraine's candidate status.

    I haven't heard a credible argument from BoZo us leaving was great but Ukraine joining is also great...
    There is an extremely credible argument, but you won't find it credible, as you are a zealot.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 13,677

    Scott_xP said:

    Every single Tory leadership contender would beat Jeremy Hunt in the final 2 according to latest ConHome survey...

    Even Steve Baker!

    https://conservativehome.com/2022/07/04/next-tory-leader-play-offs-ninth-jeremy-hunt/

    Steve Baker could make a very good leader and would be a clean break from Boris.

    He's really shown consistent, liberal principles in recent years. He was a sound critic on Covid, and he's been extremely critical on partygate. What's not to like? 👍
    Fanatical god botherer.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,070
    First hurdle overcome in this lawsuit.

    Fox and friends confront billion-dollar US lawsuits over election fraud claims
    https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/jul/04/fox-oan-newsmax-lawsuits-election-fraud-claims
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,278
    Well at least we know the Scot Nats really DO hate the English
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 35,990
    BoZo wordcloud


  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 18,361

    Mr. Boy, possibly, but people do change their views as they age and it's likely that the EU and UK will diverge simply by dint of no longer being politically linked.

    Macron's interesting comments on a wider, non-EU but European organisation could potentially bridge this gap, should anything actually come of it.

    Sure, but what is there in Brexit to make anyone think "you know what, this is going fabulously. I was dead against leaving but I was so wrong. Thank God we aren't in that nasty EU anymore"?
    To me? Nothing. But to me, that was never the point.

    But over time the EU and England (with or without the rest of the UK) will evolve in different directions, just as plenty of other neighbouring nations evolve differently around the world.

    I always make the metaphor that England/UK is to the EU what Canada is to the USA. Yes if things had evolved differently in the past Canada could have joined the USA/we could have remained in the EU, but they didn't join and we did leave and our nations will evolve differently as a result.

    Evolution works up by incremental changes, not giant leaps. Eventually we'll be a different "species" to Europe as Canada is to America such that the very notion of us being members would be alien - even if there's no individual thing you could point at and say "that, that is the reason we are out".
    Why weren't the Canadian colonies part of the rebellion by the thirteen colonies?
  • edmundintokyoedmundintokyo Posts: 17,708
    Nigelb said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Scott_xP said:

    DougSeal said:

    For reasons set out we can’t rejoin.

    Of course we can.

    There will come a day when rejoining is not only the obvious but popular choice.
    Here maybe but we need the EU’s agreement to rejoin. Ain’t happening. If one of the countries I’ve mentioned doesn’t veto us another will. We’ve burned our bridges. They’re sick to death of us all. No application will be successful.
    The EU might look sympathetically on Britain's re-joining at some point in the future, but Boris will have to be as distant in time and relevance then as, say, Jim Callaghan is now.
    So in nearly half a century?
    I'd say we're looking at thirty years at the earliest.
    It's not always time that counts; it's also how radical the change in circumstances.
    Witness Ukraine's candidate status.
    You never know for sure with 28 vetoes but I think the UK end is the bottleneck more than the EU. Geopolitics trumps everything else and Brexit was obviously at least in part a Russian op, so if the British voted to unputinify themselves there would be a lot of pressure brought to bear on any member states that tried to play silly buggers.

    Obviously this is kind of moot since there's no short-term route for the British to vote to rejoin, and by the time they do the geopolitical situation will probably be different.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 78,191

    DougSeal said:

    Scott_xP said:

    One step more constructive, but no more.

    It's not idealistic, it's not dignified, it may not even be in the UK's best economic interest.

    But as long as the UK is still at 50:50ish on the subject, it's what's pragmatic, and it reduces the harm in the meantime.

    Interesting thread...

    1/6. I'm seeing a lot of despair amongst remainers/rejoiners about @UKLabour's current stance on Brexit. I think this despair is misplaced and that we are already on the path to rejoining. It's just that nobody wants to talk about it.
    https://twitter.com/RichardBentall/status/1543858215011614722
    Deluded.

    How on earth will we persuade the eu to allow us to rejoin without entering the single currency?

    It’s more fundamental than that. A Euro fudge could be reached but but won’t let us rejoin if there’s a chance that 5 years later we leave again. You can’t have yo-yo membership.

    Which is why the pro-EU side have to decisively win the argument on the anti-EU side's terrain - identity. This is not an easy task.

    A sullen toleration of EU membership because there's perceived to be no economically viable alternative simply isn't going to be durable.
    Demographics will do a lot of the heavy lifting on this. Younger voters already feel more European than the boomers, and having their EU identity snatched from them has only strengthened those feelings.
    It seems that Labour has decided that it doesn't want to hurt Leave voters' feelings. That probably makes sense, but is pretty depressing. How much longer are we going to have to be poorer because nobody dares to tell these snowflakes that they fucked up?
    How did the Boomer generation end up so anti-EU? [snip!]
    Probably because they were the last generation that grew up with "acceptable rascism". When I was growing up, people happily used the N word or the P word (for Asians), foreigners were inferior in many ways and people were quite open about it. The programme "Love Thy Neighbour" regularly used rascist terms and it was pre-watershed viewing.

    They say that many attitudes and prejudices are formed in your early years as a child and pre-teen and I would think that growing up in that sort of era it would not be too surprising if many had absorbed that way of thinking which they now suppress because nowadays attitudes are very different. Suppressing stuff long term often leads to rage, anger and resentment. Which is why it is largely passing away as the older voters die...
    It finished 5 years before I was born but I've watched a few eps of 'Love thy neighbour' to see what it was about, obviously it's a bit dated as anything from the 70s is but the core message seemed to be pointing out the absurdities of racism with Eddie's OTT behaviour and attitudes being the subject of the jokes rather than the Reynolds.
  • Scott_xP said:

    BoZo wordcloud


    Boring Keir Starmer is a net positive for Labour, with more people voting for Labour than against, because of him.

    The public is waking up, boring is on the menu.
  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 12,541

    Nigelb said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Scott_xP said:

    DougSeal said:

    For reasons set out we can’t rejoin.

    Of course we can.

    There will come a day when rejoining is not only the obvious but popular choice.
    Here maybe but we need the EU’s agreement to rejoin. Ain’t happening. If one of the countries I’ve mentioned doesn’t veto us another will. We’ve burned our bridges. They’re sick to death of us all. No application will be successful.
    The EU might look sympathetically on Britain's re-joining at some point in the future, but Boris will have to be as distant in time and relevance then as, say, Jim Callaghan is now.
    So in nearly half a century?
    I'd say we're looking at thirty years at the earliest.
    It's not always time that counts; it's also how radical the change in circumstances.
    Witness Ukraine's candidate status.
    You never know for sure with 28 vetoes but I think the UK end is the bottleneck more than the EU. Geopolitics trumps everything else and Brexit was obviously at least in part a Russian op, so if the British voted to unputinify themselves there would be a lot of pressure brought to bear on any member states that tried to play silly buggers.

    Obviously this is kind of moot since there's no short-term route for the British to vote to rejoin, and by the time they do the geopolitical situation will probably be different.
    How would we get round the French, Irish and (possibly) Scots vetos ?
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 62,716
    HYUFD said:

    First Conservative Home next Tory leader runoff survey results have Jeremy Hunt trailing,

    Wallace 72%
    Hunt 14%

    Mordaunt 63%
    Hunt 18%

    Zahawi 60%
    Hunt 18%

    Sunak 55%
    Hunt 20%

    Tugendhat 42%
    Hunt 21%

    Truss 59%
    Hunt 24%

    Badenoch 52%
    Hunt 24%

    Baker 48%
    Hunt 27%

    https://conservativehome.com/2022/07/04/next-tory-leader-play-offs-ninth-jeremy-hunt/

    Sounds about right. God forbid that the membership would actually vote for someone who could actually do the job.
  • TheValiantTheValiant Posts: 1,874
    Scott_xP said:

    Ministerial charm offensive latest: according to Playbook, group of Tory MPs were in the Tea Room talking about how rumors of further defections were nonsense. Nadine Dorries came over and said rebels should defect because “we’re going to withdraw the whip from them all anyway.”
    https://twitter.com/JAHeale/status/1543864306965614592

    Mad Nad there!

    Conservative MP total: 359
    Others: 283
    Sinn Fein: 7
    Speaker: 1
    Government majority: +76

    OR:
    Conservative MP total: 211
    Others: 431
    Sinn Fein: 7
    Speaker: 1

    Government minority: -110

    It's a view I suppose.........

    (If the Conservatives did withdraw the whip from 148 MPs, they'd only have 11 more than Labour. It'd risk a change of government mid term just to prove a point?)
  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 12,541

    Mr. Boy, possibly, but people do change their views as they age and it's likely that the EU and UK will diverge simply by dint of no longer being politically linked.

    Macron's interesting comments on a wider, non-EU but European organisation could potentially bridge this gap, should anything actually come of it.

    Sure, but what is there in Brexit to make anyone think "you know what, this is going fabulously. I was dead against leaving but I was so wrong. Thank God we aren't in that nasty EU anymore"?
    To me? Nothing. But to me, that was never the point.

    But over time the EU and England (with or without the rest of the UK) will evolve in different directions, just as plenty of other neighbouring nations evolve differently around the world.

    I always make the metaphor that England/UK is to the EU what Canada is to the USA. Yes if things had evolved differently in the past Canada could have joined the USA/we could have remained in the EU, but they didn't join and we did leave and our nations will evolve differently as a result.

    Evolution works up by incremental changes, not giant leaps. Eventually we'll be a different "species" to Europe as Canada is to America such that the very notion of us being members would be alien - even if there's no individual thing you could point at and say "that, that is the reason we are out".
    Why weren't the Canadian colonies part of the rebellion by the thirteen colonies?
    Largely because they didn’t have colonial self government being Crown colonies. They were not losing anything by the Intolerable Acts while the 13 Colonies perceived themselves to have had liberties taken away.
  • RH1992RH1992 Posts: 788
    Scott_xP said:

    Nigelb said:

    It's not always time that counts; it's also how radical the change in circumstances.
    Witness Ukraine's candidate status.

    I haven't heard a credible argument from BoZo us leaving was great but Ukraine joining is also great...
    You must have missed or ignored the many posts on this site about how easy a point that is to answer.

    "What is right for one country isn't always right for another country. While leaving the EU was the right decision for Britain, we support our Ukrainian friends' right to choose their future and understand that for them, the European Union offers many benefits."
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 35,990

    Geopolitics trumps everything else and Brexit was obviously at least in part a Russian op, so if the British voted to unputinify themselves there would be a lot of pressure brought to bear on any member states that tried to play silly buggers.

    Brexit (and Trump) tested the theory that you can create an electoral reality that causes a majority to vote against their own interests.

    Although it worked, I don't believe it is sustainable in the long term
  • edmundintokyoedmundintokyo Posts: 17,708
    DougSeal said:

    Nigelb said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Scott_xP said:

    DougSeal said:

    For reasons set out we can’t rejoin.

    Of course we can.

    There will come a day when rejoining is not only the obvious but popular choice.
    Here maybe but we need the EU’s agreement to rejoin. Ain’t happening. If one of the countries I’ve mentioned doesn’t veto us another will. We’ve burned our bridges. They’re sick to death of us all. No application will be successful.
    The EU might look sympathetically on Britain's re-joining at some point in the future, but Boris will have to be as distant in time and relevance then as, say, Jim Callaghan is now.
    So in nearly half a century?
    I'd say we're looking at thirty years at the earliest.
    It's not always time that counts; it's also how radical the change in circumstances.
    Witness Ukraine's candidate status.
    You never know for sure with 28 vetoes but I think the UK end is the bottleneck more than the EU. Geopolitics trumps everything else and Brexit was obviously at least in part a Russian op, so if the British voted to unputinify themselves there would be a lot of pressure brought to bear on any member states that tried to play silly buggers.

    Obviously this is kind of moot since there's no short-term route for the British to vote to rejoin, and by the time they do the geopolitical situation will probably be different.
    How would we get round the French, Irish and (possibly) Scots vetos ?
    I very much doubt the Irish would veto, Brexit is a huge practical PITA for them. With the French it's possible but like I say I think the anti-Putin angle would win out.

    You can never quite be sure because all politics is domestic and telling the British to fuck off would definitely be *fun* for the voters in those countries if it were to become an issue in a campaign, but you'd need some unfortunate election timing or something to trip up on that.
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 61,788
    Mr. Pulpstar, reckon that's down to the Bank of England being weak on interest rates?
  • Scots Labour leader @AnasSarwar says there will be no deal with SNP after next election - even if Labour wins w/o majority, they'll dare the SNP not to back them.

    "Regardless of the outcome of the next UK general election, Labour will do no deal with the SNP.”

    https://twitter.com/PippaCrerar/status/1543902117446008832

    And so we said goodbye to the Tories' favourite attack line
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 18,361
    HYUFD said:

    First Conservative Home next Tory leader runoff survey results have Jeremy Hunt trailing,

    Wallace 72%
    Hunt 14%

    Mordaunt 63%
    Hunt 18%

    Zahawi 60%
    Hunt 18%

    Sunak 55%
    Hunt 20%

    Tugendhat 42%
    Hunt 21%

    Truss 59%
    Hunt 24%

    Badenoch 52%
    Hunt 24%

    Baker 48%
    Hunt 27%

    https://conservativehome.com/2022/07/04/next-tory-leader-play-offs-ninth-jeremy-hunt/

    Any figures for Raab, Javid or Patel?

    Interesting that Hunt doesn't just lose against everyone. He's absolutely crushed. Does this kill his chances among MPs as well?
  • FairlieredFairliered Posts: 4,931
    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Scott_xP said:

    DougSeal said:

    For reasons set out we can’t rejoin.

    Of course we can.

    There will come a day when rejoining is not only the obvious but popular choice.
    Here maybe but we need the EU’s agreement to rejoin. Ain’t happening. If one of the countries I’ve mentioned doesn’t veto us another will. We’ve burned our bridges. They’re sick to death of us all. No application will be successful.
    The EU might look sympathetically on Britain's re-joining at some point in the future, but Boris will have to be as distant in time and relevance then as, say, Jim Callaghan is now.
    So in nearly half a century?
    A generation? 🤔
  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 12,541

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Scott_xP said:

    DougSeal said:

    For reasons set out we can’t rejoin.

    Of course we can.

    There will come a day when rejoining is not only the obvious but popular choice.
    Here maybe but we need the EU’s agreement to rejoin. Ain’t happening. If one of the countries I’ve mentioned doesn’t veto us another will. We’ve burned our bridges. They’re sick to death of us all. No application will be successful.
    The EU might look sympathetically on Britain's re-joining at some point in the future, but Boris will have to be as distant in time and relevance then as, say, Jim Callaghan is now.
    So in nearly half a century?
    A generation? 🤔
    Isn’t that more than one?
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 15,781
    Leon said:

    Well at least we know the Scot Nats really DO hate the English

    That's like saying all Brexit voters are racist. Most racists voted for Brexit, but most Brexit voters are not racist.* Most anti-English Scots are Scot Nats, but most Scot Nats are not anti-English.

    *Stewart Lee has a great joke on this theme but I won't repeat it here.
  • It doesn't matter who leads the Tories, with the coming recession they will be out of office for a generation
  • MattWMattW Posts: 23,160
    Leon said:

    Alistair said:

    Leon said:


    I think all those are pretty cool. Given that it generated them in 5-10 seconds

    Any of them - except the girl - could illustrate a satirical article about people believing in Flying Spaghetti Monsters

    Yes, but that is the point I'm trying to make.

    They all fit the prompt well apart from 16% of them which is a catastrophic failure (but is in its way super interesting as to thinking _why/how_ Dalle generated it). If I was a wanker with a dalle invite who wanted to discredit Dalle I could spend all day picking the shit image from my prompts and posting them.

    TBH I think people are existentially threatened by GPT3 and DALL-E 2 etc, because it really does feel like the first glimpse of the monster in the movie, the briefly-seen shark’s fin in the water. The monster may yet be a mirage (I’d bet it isn’t) but it still spooks viewers. Hence the emotional response

    eg I showed some of DALL-E 2’s work to an artist friend of mine. He didn’t just dislike them, he hated them and feared them. He went into a kind of rant, “what is this soulless repetitive shit, it is not art, it is disgusting” and so on

    It was way over the top and quite telling. We’re still friends…. but I’ve stopped showing him computer art
    That's interesting.

    Why does the artist thinks he gets to tell the whole world what "art" is?
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 60,440

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Scott_xP said:

    One step more constructive, but no more.

    It's not idealistic, it's not dignified, it may not even be in the UK's best economic interest.

    But as long as the UK is still at 50:50ish on the subject, it's what's pragmatic, and it reduces the harm in the meantime.

    Interesting thread...

    1/6. I'm seeing a lot of despair amongst remainers/rejoiners about @UKLabour's current stance on Brexit. I think this despair is misplaced and that we are already on the path to rejoining. It's just that nobody wants to talk about it.
    https://twitter.com/RichardBentall/status/1543858215011614722
    Deluded.

    How on earth will we persuade the eu to allow us to rejoin without entering the single currency?

    It’s more fundamental than that. A Euro fudge could be reached but but won’t let us rejoin if there’s a chance that 5 years later we leave again. You can’t have yo-yo membership.


    The other elephant in the room with respect to our rejoining is Scotland. Scotland will likely be an EU member by the time England would reapply on its own. There is no way on God’s good Earth that the Scots would want out of one Union with the English to be saddled with another one. Not only would it mean a return of FOM of people from England to Scotland it would mean English Commissoners and MEPs having a say on Scots affairs. No way would the ScotNats have that. They would veto, the Irish for the same reason.
    This is an odd argument. An independent Scotland in the EU would be much happier with its largest trading partner inside the EU than outside. It would ease barriers to trade hugely. And the degree of power that England would have over Scotland as a fellow EU member is an order of magnitude lower than it currently has in the UK. Scotland would be a strong cheerleader of England's EU membership.
    It’s more a question of identity. Scotland and the Scot wants to be seen as both the anti England and anti English. There are no votes in Scotland or Ireland in being pro English. Any party that was seen to be collaborating with the hated coloniser would be punished in the polls. It’s a question of identity and Scotland’s is strongly anglophobic.
    That is bollocks.
    I refer the honourable poster to @malcolmg , @StuartDickson and @Theuniondivvie of this parish.
    Citing three anonymous posters on PB (one of whom doesn't live in Scotland) is hardly compelling evidence. Especially as I wouldn't characterise all of these three as anti-English anyway (one of them is maybe). I grew up in Scotland with English parents (who still live there) and so I think I am probably well placed to be aware of whether anti English prejudice is widespread in Scotland. You are way off-beam.
    I grew up in Scotland too.

    Anti-English prejudice is widespread.
  • NorthofStokeNorthofStoke Posts: 1,758

    HYUFD said:

    First Conservative Home next Tory leader runoff survey results have Jeremy Hunt trailing,

    Wallace 72%
    Hunt 14%

    Mordaunt 63%
    Hunt 18%

    Zahawi 60%
    Hunt 18%

    Sunak 55%
    Hunt 20%

    Tugendhat 42%
    Hunt 21%

    Truss 59%
    Hunt 24%

    Badenoch 52%
    Hunt 24%

    Baker 48%
    Hunt 27%

    https://conservativehome.com/2022/07/04/next-tory-leader-play-offs-ninth-jeremy-hunt/

    Sounds about right. God forbid that the membership would actually vote for someone who could actually do the job.
    My gut feeling is that Hunt lacks voter appeal although a very capable person in office. From that list and considering voter appeal only Truss would backfire badly. All the others would do a lot better than Boris. Still think Mordaunt would be best electoral bet.
  • RogerRoger Posts: 19,913
    dixiedean said:

    Roger said:

    Quite a bit of chat on twitter about the £ and the Euro reaching parity in the next few months. Any informed opinion on the likelihood of that?

    'The unkindest cut of all'

    (1.07 is the lowest I remember it. Parity would be une catastrophe)
    Would make joining it relatively straightforward mind.
    It would wouln't it. Might even give us a Trumpian soundbite.
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 61,788
    Mr. W, if you consider art to be a creative endeavour and a robot or AI can do it, does the AI count as alive? Is sentient creativity meaningful if it can be replicated by an algorithm?
  • FairlieredFairliered Posts: 4,931

    Scots Labour leader @AnasSarwar says there will be no deal with SNP after next election - even if Labour wins w/o majority, they'll dare the SNP not to back them.

    "Regardless of the outcome of the next UK general election, Labour will do no deal with the SNP.”

    https://twitter.com/PippaCrerar/status/1543902117446008832

    And so we said goodbye to the Tories' favourite attack line

    The SNP could vote against everyone and dare Labour to govern with the support of the Tories.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 60,440

    Completely off topic but can I ask a question for the other parents of (primary) school age children here?

    Our kids school seems to have a fundraising casual clothes day with a theme now almost every other week it seems. All asking for donations to the school for some cause or other, and all with a theme for whichever cause it is for. In the past month we've had "yellow day" (anti-bullying/mental health), "green day" (environment) and today is "sparkle day" to support a charity that supports primary schools following the sudden death of a pupil. Have other parents here noticed a pattern like this?

    I recall as a kid casual clothes days as a fundraising technique being very infrequent but this year there's been lots of them. The kids are loving it, I'm curious if its our new Head Teacher signing the school up for every charity going, or if schools more widely are doing it deliberately perhaps post-Covid?

    Our school have been great this year making allowances post-Covid, they've been deliberately trying to build kids confidences and offering support, and they've been approving term-time holidays to make up for the fact many people haven't been able to take a proper break in two years. I know a lot of other schools aren't doing that.

    Our school has done two in the last two weeks, but this is for the school fair and donations of raffle prizes was required. (See below, but the school fair raise money for the PTA.... and the PTA donate to the school itself by buying books and materials)

    It does seem to happen a lot more than when I was at primary school. In fact, other than the school trip, we were in uniform the entire year. My daughter probably has two 'mufti' days a term now.
    I'm not convinced they are all for a charity. I think some of them are simply for the school, so bereft of proper funding is it.
    Yeah I have the same suspicion as you. Today's one is linked to a named charity, so I would like to think all the money we donated today will end up at the named charity, but the other ones haven't been. They've been fundraising for a theme, but the specifics of where that money goes or how its used is not clarified.

    One could certainly imagine the money raised for "green day" going to pay for the school's recycling services or for 'clean' electricity which are "green" causes but are costs the school would have to be paying either way.

    Still, it doesn't bother me either way if the school is pocketing the money rather than handing it over to "proper" charities. Many charities nowadays seem to be just businesses in the business of raising more money in the name of charity anyway, so if the funds raised are going to help the girls education instead of that, then I'm OK with that.
    I agree with you. I've no problem with giving money to the school. I'm slightly annoyed at the underhand way it is dressed up as a donation however. Allowing your child to dress in own clothes, but requiring a donation. The school know the peer pressure to wear own clothes is so intense that you've got to make the donation - so it's not really a donation.

    I'd be interested in the reaction if you:
    1) Refused to send child in own clothes and sent them in uniform instead; or
    2) Sent child in own clothes without a donation.

    As to the point about charities, I completely agree. I think it may have been this site that pointed out that SHELTER doesn't actually shelter anyone. It merely offers advice on how to avoid homelessness.
    The large national charities are barely worthy of the name with spending of 30% or less of their income on what they should be spending it on.
    (Yes, yes - guff about 'having to pay people well to attract the best'..... bollocks. The CEO and other head honchoes should be working for free - hence the word CHARITY. Our little charity, every Trustee is unpaid. One Trustee spends four days a week on the charity (her husband brings home vast amounts of cash, so rather than be a lady of leisure, she devotes her time to charity)).
    In practice, nothing happens if you do (2) and accompany it with a quiet word with the teacher or headmaster.
  • HYUFD said:

    First Conservative Home next Tory leader runoff survey results have Jeremy Hunt trailing,

    Wallace 72%
    Hunt 14%

    Mordaunt 63%
    Hunt 18%

    Zahawi 60%
    Hunt 18%

    Sunak 55%
    Hunt 20%

    Tugendhat 42%
    Hunt 21%

    Truss 59%
    Hunt 24%

    Badenoch 52%
    Hunt 24%

    Baker 48%
    Hunt 27%

    https://conservativehome.com/2022/07/04/next-tory-leader-play-offs-ninth-jeremy-hunt/

    Sounds about right. God forbid that the membership would actually vote for someone who could actually do the job.
    My gut feeling is that Hunt lacks voter appeal although a very capable person in office. From that list and considering voter appeal only Truss would backfire badly. All the others would do a lot better than Boris. Still think Mordaunt would be best electoral bet.
    What does she have to offer to the Red Wall? Bearing in mind she will need to reinvent the Tory Party again
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 35,990

    What does she have to offer to the Red Wall? Bearing in mind she will need to reinvent the Tory Party again

    40 new hospitals...
  • FairlieredFairliered Posts: 4,931

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Scott_xP said:

    One step more constructive, but no more.

    It's not idealistic, it's not dignified, it may not even be in the UK's best economic interest.

    But as long as the UK is still at 50:50ish on the subject, it's what's pragmatic, and it reduces the harm in the meantime.

    Interesting thread...

    1/6. I'm seeing a lot of despair amongst remainers/rejoiners about @UKLabour's current stance on Brexit. I think this despair is misplaced and that we are already on the path to rejoining. It's just that nobody wants to talk about it.
    https://twitter.com/RichardBentall/status/1543858215011614722
    Deluded.

    How on earth will we persuade the eu to allow us to rejoin without entering the single currency?

    It’s more fundamental than that. A Euro fudge could be reached but but won’t let us rejoin if there’s a chance that 5 years later we leave again. You can’t have yo-yo membership.


    The other elephant in the room with respect to our rejoining is Scotland. Scotland will likely be an EU member by the time England would reapply on its own. There is no way on God’s good Earth that the Scots would want out of one Union with the English to be saddled with another one. Not only would it mean a return of FOM of people from England to Scotland it would mean English Commissoners and MEPs having a say on Scots affairs. No way would the ScotNats have that. They would veto, the Irish for the same reason.
    This is an odd argument. An independent Scotland in the EU would be much happier with its largest trading partner inside the EU than outside. It would ease barriers to trade hugely. And the degree of power that England would have over Scotland as a fellow EU member is an order of magnitude lower than it currently has in the UK. Scotland would be a strong cheerleader of England's EU membership.
    It’s more a question of identity. Scotland and the Scot wants to be seen as both the anti England and anti English. There are no votes in Scotland or Ireland in being pro English. Any party that was seen to be collaborating with the hated coloniser would be punished in the polls. It’s a question of identity and Scotland’s is strongly anglophobic.
    That is bollocks.
    I refer the honourable poster to @malcolmg , @StuartDickson and @Theuniondivvie of this parish.
    Citing three anonymous posters on PB (one of whom doesn't live in Scotland) is hardly compelling evidence. Especially as I wouldn't characterise all of these three as anti-English anyway (one of them is maybe). I grew up in Scotland with English parents (who still live there) and so I think I am probably well placed to be aware of whether anti English prejudice is widespread in Scotland. You are way off-beam.
    I grew up in Scotland too.

    Anti-English prejudice is widespread.
    Most Scots have a disrespect for arseholes of all nationalities, including other Scots.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 60,440
    Pulpstar said:

    Parity with the Euro would be an astonishing failure. They're far more on the hook for Ukraine & the Russian grain and hydrocarbons than we are.
    Sterling SHOULD be tacking away, north from the Euro.

    We went down from 1.47 at the height of the 2007 boom to 1.08 during the GFC. And that was with a brewing Eurozone crisis whilst our jobs market proved fairly resilient and we were inside the EU at the time.

    I think people can read too much into currency movements.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 78,191
    edited July 2022
    Chasing at Edgbaston will be tougher than any of the 3 splendid vs NZ 4th innings efforts. Facing a full bowling attack and more runs here.
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 15,781

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Scott_xP said:

    One step more constructive, but no more.

    It's not idealistic, it's not dignified, it may not even be in the UK's best economic interest.

    But as long as the UK is still at 50:50ish on the subject, it's what's pragmatic, and it reduces the harm in the meantime.

    Interesting thread...

    1/6. I'm seeing a lot of despair amongst remainers/rejoiners about @UKLabour's current stance on Brexit. I think this despair is misplaced and that we are already on the path to rejoining. It's just that nobody wants to talk about it.
    https://twitter.com/RichardBentall/status/1543858215011614722
    Deluded.

    How on earth will we persuade the eu to allow us to rejoin without entering the single currency?

    It’s more fundamental than that. A Euro fudge could be reached but but won’t let us rejoin if there’s a chance that 5 years later we leave again. You can’t have yo-yo membership.


    The other elephant in the room with respect to our rejoining is Scotland. Scotland will likely be an EU member by the time England would reapply on its own. There is no way on God’s good Earth that the Scots would want out of one Union with the English to be saddled with another one. Not only would it mean a return of FOM of people from England to Scotland it would mean English Commissoners and MEPs having a say on Scots affairs. No way would the ScotNats have that. They would veto, the Irish for the same reason.
    This is an odd argument. An independent Scotland in the EU would be much happier with its largest trading partner inside the EU than outside. It would ease barriers to trade hugely. And the degree of power that England would have over Scotland as a fellow EU member is an order of magnitude lower than it currently has in the UK. Scotland would be a strong cheerleader of England's EU membership.
    It’s more a question of identity. Scotland and the Scot wants to be seen as both the anti England and anti English. There are no votes in Scotland or Ireland in being pro English. Any party that was seen to be collaborating with the hated coloniser would be punished in the polls. It’s a question of identity and Scotland’s is strongly anglophobic.
    That is bollocks.
    I refer the honourable poster to @malcolmg , @StuartDickson and @Theuniondivvie of this parish.
    Citing three anonymous posters on PB (one of whom doesn't live in Scotland) is hardly compelling evidence. Especially as I wouldn't characterise all of these three as anti-English anyway (one of them is maybe). I grew up in Scotland with English parents (who still live there) and so I think I am probably well placed to be aware of whether anti English prejudice is widespread in Scotland. You are way off-beam.
    I grew up in Scotland too.

    Anti-English prejudice is widespread.
    Really wasn't my experience. A bit or mild banter? Yes, definitely. Genuine prejudice? No. My wife experienced a lot more prejudice growing up in England than I did growing up in Scotland.
  • BartholomewRobertsBartholomewRoberts Posts: 21,971
    edited July 2022
    DougSeal said:

    Mr. Boy, possibly, but people do change their views as they age and it's likely that the EU and UK will diverge simply by dint of no longer being politically linked.

    Macron's interesting comments on a wider, non-EU but European organisation could potentially bridge this gap, should anything actually come of it.

    Sure, but what is there in Brexit to make anyone think "you know what, this is going fabulously. I was dead against leaving but I was so wrong. Thank God we aren't in that nasty EU anymore"?
    To me? Nothing. But to me, that was never the point.

    But over time the EU and England (with or without the rest of the UK) will evolve in different directions, just as plenty of other neighbouring nations evolve differently around the world.

    I always make the metaphor that England/UK is to the EU what Canada is to the USA. Yes if things had evolved differently in the past Canada could have joined the USA/we could have remained in the EU, but they didn't join and we did leave and our nations will evolve differently as a result.

    Evolution works up by incremental changes, not giant leaps. Eventually we'll be a different "species" to Europe as Canada is to America such that the very notion of us being members would be alien - even if there's no individual thing you could point at and say "that, that is the reason we are out".
    Why weren't the Canadian colonies part of the rebellion by the thirteen colonies?
    Largely because they didn’t have colonial self government being Crown colonies. They were not losing anything by the Intolerable Acts while the 13 Colonies perceived themselves to have had liberties taken away.
    Actually Quebec did have significant colonial self-rule which was granted even further with the Quebec Act, which promised to safeguard the French legal system and language, and the Catholic Church, within British ruled Quebec. It also expanded the land granted to Quebec, incorporating land the American colonies wanted, so it was listed as one of the Intolerable Acts. The Quebec Act thus simultaneously fed American rebelliousness while making Quebec more loyal.

    Ironically considering the French themselves sided with the rebels, the French-speaking Quebec chose to side with the British because they found themselves better off with Britain. The French didn't want Quebec back, the British were promising to grant significant self-rule to Catholics of Quebec, while American Puritans were not as tolerant of Catholics and the Americans tried and failed to invade Quebec (expecting to be welcomed) which only pushed Quebec further into the arms of the British.

    Plus in the years leading up to the rebellion many "loyalists" felt unwelcome in New England anymore and fled New England to Nova Scotia and Quebec, which changed the profile of both leading Canadians to be more loyalist and Americans more republican as a result.
  • Beibheirli_CBeibheirli_C Posts: 8,163
    Pulpstar said:

    DougSeal said:

    Scott_xP said:

    One step more constructive, but no more.

    It's not idealistic, it's not dignified, it may not even be in the UK's best economic interest.

    But as long as the UK is still at 50:50ish on the subject, it's what's pragmatic, and it reduces the harm in the meantime.

    Interesting thread...

    1/6. I'm seeing a lot of despair amongst remainers/rejoiners about @UKLabour's current stance on Brexit. I think this despair is misplaced and that we are already on the path to rejoining. It's just that nobody wants to talk about it.
    https://twitter.com/RichardBentall/status/1543858215011614722
    Deluded.

    How on earth will we persuade the eu to allow us to rejoin without entering the single currency?

    It’s more fundamental than that. A Euro fudge could be reached but but won’t let us rejoin if there’s a chance that 5 years later we leave again. You can’t have yo-yo membership.

    Which is why the pro-EU side have to decisively win the argument on the anti-EU side's terrain - identity. This is not an easy task.

    A sullen toleration of EU membership because there's perceived to be no economically viable alternative simply isn't going to be durable.
    Demographics will do a lot of the heavy lifting on this. Younger voters already feel more European than the boomers, and having their EU identity snatched from them has only strengthened those feelings.
    It seems that Labour has decided that it doesn't want to hurt Leave voters' feelings. That probably makes sense, but is pretty depressing. How much longer are we going to have to be poorer because nobody dares to tell these snowflakes that they fucked up?
    How did the Boomer generation end up so anti-EU? [snip!]
    Probably because they were the last generation that grew up with "acceptable rascism". When I was growing up, people happily used the N word or the P word (for Asians), foreigners were inferior in many ways and people were quite open about it. The programme "Love Thy Neighbour" regularly used rascist terms and it was pre-watershed viewing.

    They say that many attitudes and prejudices are formed in your early years as a child and pre-teen and I would think that growing up in that sort of era it would not be too surprising if many had absorbed that way of thinking which they now suppress because nowadays attitudes are very different. Suppressing stuff long term often leads to rage, anger and resentment. Which is why it is largely passing away as the older voters die...
    It finished 5 years before I was born but I've watched a few eps of 'Love thy neighbour' to see what it was about, obviously it's a bit dated as anything from the 70s is but the core message seemed to be pointing out the absurdities of racism with Eddie's OTT behaviour and attitudes being the subject of the jokes rather than the Reynolds.
    It did show the absurdity of the racist position, but it also demonstrates how "normal" the use of racist language was in wider society at the time. The same could be said of Blazing Saddles in which the same message was put across, but if you tried making it these days you would probably be in jail.
  • pingping Posts: 3,805
    edited July 2022
    Gas currently £2.71/therm.

    I recon the October price cap is almost guaranteed to be >£3k/typical household, now.

    Ouch.

    Worth investing in some warm clothes.
  • I say this from the perspective of betting, not as a Labour fanboy, Morduant would need to win back the Red Wall voters who have gone to Labour/abstain, win back the Blue Wall and do this all after 13 years of Government whilst she defends things she stood for.

    Lightning never strikes twice. Is she just damage limitation?
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 29,402

    DougSeal said:

    Mr. Boy, possibly, but people do change their views as they age and it's likely that the EU and UK will diverge simply by dint of no longer being politically linked.

    Macron's interesting comments on a wider, non-EU but European organisation could potentially bridge this gap, should anything actually come of it.

    Sure, but what is there in Brexit to make anyone think "you know what, this is going fabulously. I was dead against leaving but I was so wrong. Thank God we aren't in that nasty EU anymore"?
    To me? Nothing. But to me, that was never the point.

    But over time the EU and England (with or without the rest of the UK) will evolve in different directions, just as plenty of other neighbouring nations evolve differently around the world.

    I always make the metaphor that England/UK is to the EU what Canada is to the USA. Yes if things had evolved differently in the past Canada could have joined the USA/we could have remained in the EU, but they didn't join and we did leave and our nations will evolve differently as a result.

    Evolution works up by incremental changes, not giant leaps. Eventually we'll be a different "species" to Europe as Canada is to America such that the very notion of us being members would be alien - even if there's no individual thing you could point at and say "that, that is the reason we are out".
    Why weren't the Canadian colonies part of the rebellion by the thirteen colonies?
    Largely because they didn’t have colonial self government being Crown colonies. They were not losing anything by the Intolerable Acts while the 13 Colonies perceived themselves to have had liberties taken away.
    Actually Quebec did have significant colonial self-rule which was granted even further with the Quebec Act, which promised to safeguard the French legal system and language, and the Catholic Church, within British ruled Quebec. It also expanded the land granted to Quebec, incorporating land the American colonies wanted, so it was listed as one of the Intolerable Acts. The Quebec Act thus simultaneously fed American rebelliousness while making Quebec more loyal.

    Ironically considering the French themselves sided with the rebels, the French-speaking Quebec chose to side with the British because they found themselves better off with Britain. The French didn't want Quebec back, the British were promising to grant significant self-rule to Catholics of Quebec, while American Puritans were not as tolerant of Catholics and the Americans tried and failed to invade Quebec (expecting to be welcomed) which only pushed Quebec further into the arms of the British.

    Plus in the years leading up to the rebellion many "loyalists" felt unwelcome in New England anymore and fled New England to Nova Scotia and Quebec, which changed the profile of both leading Canadians to be more loyalist and Americans more republican as a result.
    New Brunswick was specifically created due to the large number of Loyalists arriving there from the US.
  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 12,541

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Scott_xP said:

    One step more constructive, but no more.

    It's not idealistic, it's not dignified, it may not even be in the UK's best economic interest.

    But as long as the UK is still at 50:50ish on the subject, it's what's pragmatic, and it reduces the harm in the meantime.

    Interesting thread...

    1/6. I'm seeing a lot of despair amongst remainers/rejoiners about @UKLabour's current stance on Brexit. I think this despair is misplaced and that we are already on the path to rejoining. It's just that nobody wants to talk about it.
    https://twitter.com/RichardBentall/status/1543858215011614722
    Deluded.

    How on earth will we persuade the eu to allow us to rejoin without entering the single currency?

    It’s more fundamental than that. A Euro fudge could be reached but but won’t let us rejoin if there’s a chance that 5 years later we leave again. You can’t have yo-yo membership.


    The other elephant in the room with respect to our rejoining is Scotland. Scotland will likely be an EU member by the time England would reapply on its own. There is no way on God’s good Earth that the Scots would want out of one Union with the English to be saddled with another one. Not only would it mean a return of FOM of people from England to Scotland it would mean English Commissoners and MEPs having a say on Scots affairs. No way would the ScotNats have that. They would veto, the Irish for the same reason.
    This is an odd argument. An independent Scotland in the EU would be much happier with its largest trading partner inside the EU than outside. It would ease barriers to trade hugely. And the degree of power that England would have over Scotland as a fellow EU member is an order of magnitude lower than it currently has in the UK. Scotland would be a strong cheerleader of England's EU membership.
    It’s more a question of identity. Scotland and the Scot wants to be seen as both the anti England and anti English. There are no votes in Scotland or Ireland in being pro English. Any party that was seen to be collaborating with the hated coloniser would be punished in the polls. It’s a question of identity and Scotland’s is strongly anglophobic.
    That is bollocks.
    I refer the honourable poster to @malcolmg , @StuartDickson and @Theuniondivvie of this parish.
    Citing three anonymous posters on PB (one of whom doesn't live in Scotland) is hardly compelling evidence. Especially as I wouldn't characterise all of these three as anti-English anyway (one of them is maybe). I grew up in Scotland with English parents (who still live there) and so I think I am probably well placed to be aware of whether anti English prejudice is widespread in Scotland. You are way off-beam.
    I grew up in Scotland too.

    Anti-English prejudice is widespread.
    Really wasn't my experience. A bit or mild banter? Yes, definitely. Genuine prejudice? No. My wife experienced a lot more prejudice growing up in England than I did growing up in Scotland.
    Yeah, the English are all racist arseholes. The Scots are saints who can do no wrong. As we keep being reminded.
  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 12,541

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Scott_xP said:

    One step more constructive, but no more.

    It's not idealistic, it's not dignified, it may not even be in the UK's best economic interest.

    But as long as the UK is still at 50:50ish on the subject, it's what's pragmatic, and it reduces the harm in the meantime.

    Interesting thread...

    1/6. I'm seeing a lot of despair amongst remainers/rejoiners about @UKLabour's current stance on Brexit. I think this despair is misplaced and that we are already on the path to rejoining. It's just that nobody wants to talk about it.
    https://twitter.com/RichardBentall/status/1543858215011614722
    Deluded.

    How on earth will we persuade the eu to allow us to rejoin without entering the single currency?

    It’s more fundamental than that. A Euro fudge could be reached but but won’t let us rejoin if there’s a chance that 5 years later we leave again. You can’t have yo-yo membership.


    The other elephant in the room with respect to our rejoining is Scotland. Scotland will likely be an EU member by the time England would reapply on its own. There is no way on God’s good Earth that the Scots would want out of one Union with the English to be saddled with another one. Not only would it mean a return of FOM of people from England to Scotland it would mean English Commissoners and MEPs having a say on Scots affairs. No way would the ScotNats have that. They would veto, the Irish for the same reason.
    This is an odd argument. An independent Scotland in the EU would be much happier with its largest trading partner inside the EU than outside. It would ease barriers to trade hugely. And the degree of power that England would have over Scotland as a fellow EU member is an order of magnitude lower than it currently has in the UK. Scotland would be a strong cheerleader of England's EU membership.
    It’s more a question of identity. Scotland and the Scot wants to be seen as both the anti England and anti English. There are no votes in Scotland or Ireland in being pro English. Any party that was seen to be collaborating with the hated coloniser would be punished in the polls. It’s a question of identity and Scotland’s is strongly anglophobic.
    That is bollocks.
    I refer the honourable poster to @malcolmg , @StuartDickson and @Theuniondivvie of this parish.
    Citing three anonymous posters on PB (one of whom doesn't live in Scotland) is hardly compelling evidence. Especially as I wouldn't characterise all of these three as anti-English anyway (one of them is maybe). I grew up in Scotland with English parents (who still live there) and so I think I am probably well placed to be aware of whether anti English prejudice is widespread in Scotland. You are way off-beam.
    I grew up in Scotland too.

    Anti-English prejudice is widespread.
    Most Scots have a disrespect for arseholes of all nationalities, including other Scots.
    The problem is that most Scots consider “English” as being a synonym of “arsehole”.
  • NorthofStokeNorthofStoke Posts: 1,758

    HYUFD said:

    First Conservative Home next Tory leader runoff survey results have Jeremy Hunt trailing,

    Wallace 72%
    Hunt 14%

    Mordaunt 63%
    Hunt 18%

    Zahawi 60%
    Hunt 18%

    Sunak 55%
    Hunt 20%

    Tugendhat 42%
    Hunt 21%

    Truss 59%
    Hunt 24%

    Badenoch 52%
    Hunt 24%

    Baker 48%
    Hunt 27%

    https://conservativehome.com/2022/07/04/next-tory-leader-play-offs-ninth-jeremy-hunt/

    Sounds about right. God forbid that the membership would actually vote for someone who could actually do the job.
    My gut feeling is that Hunt lacks voter appeal although a very capable person in office. From that list and considering voter appeal only Truss would backfire badly. All the others would do a lot better than Boris. Still think Mordaunt would be best electoral bet.
    What does she have to offer to the Red Wall? Bearing in mind she will need to reinvent the Tory Party again
    Can make and take a joke, not "stuck up", armed forces background. Woman against stale male Starmer helps as well.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 18,361

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Scott_xP said:

    One step more constructive, but no more.

    It's not idealistic, it's not dignified, it may not even be in the UK's best economic interest.

    But as long as the UK is still at 50:50ish on the subject, it's what's pragmatic, and it reduces the harm in the meantime.

    Interesting thread...

    1/6. I'm seeing a lot of despair amongst remainers/rejoiners about @UKLabour's current stance on Brexit. I think this despair is misplaced and that we are already on the path to rejoining. It's just that nobody wants to talk about it.
    https://twitter.com/RichardBentall/status/1543858215011614722
    Deluded.

    How on earth will we persuade the eu to allow us to rejoin without entering the single currency?

    It’s more fundamental than that. A Euro fudge could be reached but but won’t let us rejoin if there’s a chance that 5 years later we leave again. You can’t have yo-yo membership.


    The other elephant in the room with respect to our rejoining is Scotland. Scotland will likely be an EU member by the time England would reapply on its own. There is no way on God’s good Earth that the Scots would want out of one Union with the English to be saddled with another one. Not only would it mean a return of FOM of people from England to Scotland it would mean English Commissoners and MEPs having a say on Scots affairs. No way would the ScotNats have that. They would veto, the Irish for the same reason.
    This is an odd argument. An independent Scotland in the EU would be much happier with its largest trading partner inside the EU than outside. It would ease barriers to trade hugely. And the degree of power that England would have over Scotland as a fellow EU member is an order of magnitude lower than it currently has in the UK. Scotland would be a strong cheerleader of England's EU membership.
    It’s more a question of identity. Scotland and the Scot wants to be seen as both the anti England and anti English. There are no votes in Scotland or Ireland in being pro English. Any party that was seen to be collaborating with the hated coloniser would be punished in the polls. It’s a question of identity and Scotland’s is strongly anglophobic.
    That is bollocks.
    I refer the honourable poster to @malcolmg , @StuartDickson and @Theuniondivvie of this parish.
    Citing three anonymous posters on PB (one of whom doesn't live in Scotland) is hardly compelling evidence. Especially as I wouldn't characterise all of these three as anti-English anyway (one of them is maybe). I grew up in Scotland with English parents (who still live there) and so I think I am probably well placed to be aware of whether anti English prejudice is widespread in Scotland. You are way off-beam.
    I grew up in Scotland too.

    Anti-English prejudice is widespread.
    There are only two times when I've heard widespread cheering from the general neighborhood in Britain after a lifetime spent almost exclusively living in urban areas.

    Once in England, when England scored in the 4-1 defeat to Germany at the 2010 World Cup. The second time in Scotland, when Italy won the penalty shootout in the Euro finals.

    There is definitely something interesting happening psychologically to be so invested in the failure of another group.
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 15,781
    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Scott_xP said:

    One step more constructive, but no more.

    It's not idealistic, it's not dignified, it may not even be in the UK's best economic interest.

    But as long as the UK is still at 50:50ish on the subject, it's what's pragmatic, and it reduces the harm in the meantime.

    Interesting thread...

    1/6. I'm seeing a lot of despair amongst remainers/rejoiners about @UKLabour's current stance on Brexit. I think this despair is misplaced and that we are already on the path to rejoining. It's just that nobody wants to talk about it.
    https://twitter.com/RichardBentall/status/1543858215011614722
    Deluded.

    How on earth will we persuade the eu to allow us to rejoin without entering the single currency?

    It’s more fundamental than that. A Euro fudge could be reached but but won’t let us rejoin if there’s a chance that 5 years later we leave again. You can’t have yo-yo membership.


    The other elephant in the room with respect to our rejoining is Scotland. Scotland will likely be an EU member by the time England would reapply on its own. There is no way on God’s good Earth that the Scots would want out of one Union with the English to be saddled with another one. Not only would it mean a return of FOM of people from England to Scotland it would mean English Commissoners and MEPs having a say on Scots affairs. No way would the ScotNats have that. They would veto, the Irish for the same reason.
    This is an odd argument. An independent Scotland in the EU would be much happier with its largest trading partner inside the EU than outside. It would ease barriers to trade hugely. And the degree of power that England would have over Scotland as a fellow EU member is an order of magnitude lower than it currently has in the UK. Scotland would be a strong cheerleader of England's EU membership.
    It’s more a question of identity. Scotland and the Scot wants to be seen as both the anti England and anti English. There are no votes in Scotland or Ireland in being pro English. Any party that was seen to be collaborating with the hated coloniser would be punished in the polls. It’s a question of identity and Scotland’s is strongly anglophobic.
    That is bollocks.
    I refer the honourable poster to @malcolmg , @StuartDickson and @Theuniondivvie of this parish.
    Citing three anonymous posters on PB (one of whom doesn't live in Scotland) is hardly compelling evidence. Especially as I wouldn't characterise all of these three as anti-English anyway (one of them is maybe). I grew up in Scotland with English parents (who still live there) and so I think I am probably well placed to be aware of whether anti English prejudice is widespread in Scotland. You are way off-beam.
    I grew up in Scotland too.

    Anti-English prejudice is widespread.
    Really wasn't my experience. A bit or mild banter? Yes, definitely. Genuine prejudice? No. My wife experienced a lot more prejudice growing up in England than I did growing up in Scotland.
    Yeah, the English are all racist arseholes. The Scots are saints who can do no wrong. As we keep being reminded.
    I don't understand how you got that from my comments.
  • RochdalePioneersRochdalePioneers Posts: 28,901
    I've only been a "NewScot" English migrant up here for a year and a bit. So a fraction of the experience of some other posters. But in my 16 months I have experienced only a single derogatory comment about the English. Which was aimed at a specific person where the "English" tag was part of the reason they were crap.

    I am absolutely sure there will be anti-English sentiment in places along with anti-everything-that-isn't-me-and-mine. But if it was widespread wouldn't I have seen it? Nor is prejudice somehow only Scottish against English. Having been on the receiving end of "you're not from round here go home to Rochdale" abuse after 15 years on Teesside.
  • HYUFD said:

    First Conservative Home next Tory leader runoff survey results have Jeremy Hunt trailing,

    Wallace 72%
    Hunt 14%

    Mordaunt 63%
    Hunt 18%

    Zahawi 60%
    Hunt 18%

    Sunak 55%
    Hunt 20%

    Tugendhat 42%
    Hunt 21%

    Truss 59%
    Hunt 24%

    Badenoch 52%
    Hunt 24%

    Baker 48%
    Hunt 27%

    https://conservativehome.com/2022/07/04/next-tory-leader-play-offs-ninth-jeremy-hunt/

    Sounds about right. God forbid that the membership would actually vote for someone who could actually do the job.
    My gut feeling is that Hunt lacks voter appeal although a very capable person in office. From that list and considering voter appeal only Truss would backfire badly. All the others would do a lot better than Boris. Still think Mordaunt would be best electoral bet.
    What does she have to offer to the Red Wall? Bearing in mind she will need to reinvent the Tory Party again
    Can make and take a joke, not "stuck up", armed forces background. Woman against stale male Starmer helps as well.
    That's a good point, maybe worth a couple of quid then
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 18,361

    HYUFD said:

    First Conservative Home next Tory leader runoff survey results have Jeremy Hunt trailing,

    Wallace 72%
    Hunt 14%

    Mordaunt 63%
    Hunt 18%

    Zahawi 60%
    Hunt 18%

    Sunak 55%
    Hunt 20%

    Tugendhat 42%
    Hunt 21%

    Truss 59%
    Hunt 24%

    Badenoch 52%
    Hunt 24%

    Baker 48%
    Hunt 27%

    https://conservativehome.com/2022/07/04/next-tory-leader-play-offs-ninth-jeremy-hunt/

    Sounds about right. God forbid that the membership would actually vote for someone who could actually do the job.
    My gut feeling is that Hunt lacks voter appeal although a very capable person in office. From that list and considering voter appeal only Truss would backfire badly. All the others would do a lot better than Boris. Still think Mordaunt would be best electoral bet.
    I'm no fan of Liz Truss' politics, but I really don't understand why she appears to be so unpopular with the general public. For every other unpopular politician I've been able to understand why they didn't convince, or repelled the public, but I don't see why Truss has been taken against.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 41,958
    Fooled you once, shame on those lying feckers, fooled you for the 89th time, well…

    https://twitter.com/bellacaledonia/status/1543905026883600386?s=21&t=tEQeqLSR6XKyPebdgAqnRw
  • DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Scott_xP said:

    One step more constructive, but no more.

    It's not idealistic, it's not dignified, it may not even be in the UK's best economic interest.

    But as long as the UK is still at 50:50ish on the subject, it's what's pragmatic, and it reduces the harm in the meantime.

    Interesting thread...

    1/6. I'm seeing a lot of despair amongst remainers/rejoiners about @UKLabour's current stance on Brexit. I think this despair is misplaced and that we are already on the path to rejoining. It's just that nobody wants to talk about it.
    https://twitter.com/RichardBentall/status/1543858215011614722
    Deluded.

    How on earth will we persuade the eu to allow us to rejoin without entering the single currency?

    It’s more fundamental than that. A Euro fudge could be reached but but won’t let us rejoin if there’s a chance that 5 years later we leave again. You can’t have yo-yo membership.


    The other elephant in the room with respect to our rejoining is Scotland. Scotland will likely be an EU member by the time England would reapply on its own. There is no way on God’s good Earth that the Scots would want out of one Union with the English to be saddled with another one. Not only would it mean a return of FOM of people from England to Scotland it would mean English Commissoners and MEPs having a say on Scots affairs. No way would the ScotNats have that. They would veto, the Irish for the same reason.
    This is an odd argument. An independent Scotland in the EU would be much happier with its largest trading partner inside the EU than outside. It would ease barriers to trade hugely. And the degree of power that England would have over Scotland as a fellow EU member is an order of magnitude lower than it currently has in the UK. Scotland would be a strong cheerleader of England's EU membership.
    It’s more a question of identity. Scotland and the Scot wants to be seen as both the anti England and anti English. There are no votes in Scotland or Ireland in being pro English. Any party that was seen to be collaborating with the hated coloniser would be punished in the polls. It’s a question of identity and Scotland’s is strongly anglophobic.
    That is bollocks.
    I refer the honourable poster to @malcolmg , @StuartDickson and @Theuniondivvie of this parish.
    Citing three anonymous posters on PB (one of whom doesn't live in Scotland) is hardly compelling evidence. Especially as I wouldn't characterise all of these three as anti-English anyway (one of them is maybe). I grew up in Scotland with English parents (who still live there) and so I think I am probably well placed to be aware of whether anti English prejudice is widespread in Scotland. You are way off-beam.
    I grew up in Scotland too.

    Anti-English prejudice is widespread.
    There are only two times when I've heard widespread cheering from the general neighborhood in Britain after a lifetime spent almost exclusively living in urban areas.

    Once in England, when England scored in the 4-1 defeat to Germany at the 2010 World Cup. The second time in Scotland, when Italy won the penalty shootout in the Euro finals.

    There is definitely something interesting happening psychologically to be so invested in the failure of another group.
    Not remotely!

    How many people in 2009 and 2011 would have been cheering on Barcelona against Manchester United? I bet you pubs in Liverpool would have been full of people cheering on Barcelona as they beat their local rivals.

    Sports fans love banter and rivalry, its part of what makes sport fun.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,431

    DougSeal said:

    Scott_xP said:

    One step more constructive, but no more.

    It's not idealistic, it's not dignified, it may not even be in the UK's best economic interest.

    But as long as the UK is still at 50:50ish on the subject, it's what's pragmatic, and it reduces the harm in the meantime.

    Interesting thread...

    1/6. I'm seeing a lot of despair amongst remainers/rejoiners about @UKLabour's current stance on Brexit. I think this despair is misplaced and that we are already on the path to rejoining. It's just that nobody wants to talk about it.
    https://twitter.com/RichardBentall/status/1543858215011614722
    Deluded.

    How on earth will we persuade the eu to allow us to rejoin without entering the single currency?

    It’s more fundamental than that. A Euro fudge could be reached but but won’t let us rejoin if there’s a chance that 5 years later we leave again. You can’t have yo-yo membership.

    Which is why the pro-EU side have to decisively win the argument on the anti-EU side's terrain - identity. This is not an easy task.

    A sullen toleration of EU membership because there's perceived to be no economically viable alternative simply isn't going to be durable.
    Demographics will do a lot of the heavy lifting on this. Younger voters already feel more European than the boomers, and having their EU identity snatched from them has only strengthened those feelings.
    It seems that Labour has decided that it doesn't want to hurt Leave voters' feelings. That probably makes sense, but is pretty depressing. How much longer are we going to have to be poorer because nobody dares to tell these snowflakes that they fucked up?
    How did the Boomer generation end up so anti-EU?

    The Left/pro-EU side seem to be all tactics and no strategy. Ideas are shaped and opinions changed over long periods of time, but only one side seems to be competing in the long-term battle of ideas, while the other takes the rightness of their views to be self-evident, and concentrates on short-term tactics, because long-term victory is inevitable.

    That's why we keep on losing.
    Somebody the other day found the age breakdown of voters in the 1975 referendum.

    Younger people, now today's boomers were most likely to vote against. Interestingly they of course were the people brought up on Biggles and other war heroes!
  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 12,541

    I've only been a "NewScot" English migrant up here for a year and a bit. So a fraction of the experience of some other posters. But in my 16 months I have experienced only a single derogatory comment about the English. Which was aimed at a specific person where the "English" tag was part of the reason they were crap.

    I am absolutely sure there will be anti-English sentiment in places along with anti-everything-that-isn't-me-and-mine. But if it was widespread wouldn't I have seen it? Nor is prejudice somehow only Scottish against English. Having been on the receiving end of "you're not from round here go home to Rochdale" abuse after 15 years on Teesside.

    Again, the Scots are saintly creatures, and the benighted English beyond redemption.
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 61,788
    F1: less confident of this than other such recent bets but Russell each way to win in Austria at 19 is worth backing, I think (17 plus boost, third the odds top 2).

    I was surprised how much the gap seemed to be narrowed at the sharp end, particularly in race trim, by Mercedes. That, coupled with with potential reliability woe (although all of the top four finished last time) does make Russell worth backing, I think.
  • EXCLUSIVE: Keir Starmer has received notification of whether he will be fined and it will publicly announced at some point this week.

    I understand he will escape a fine.
  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 12,541

    Fooled you once, shame on those lying feckers, fooled you for the 89th time, well…

    https://twitter.com/bellacaledonia/status/1543905026883600386?s=21&t=tEQeqLSR6XKyPebdgAqnRw

    They’ve done it once, in 1999, albeit not to the extent most would like, why can’t they do it again?
  • YBarddCwscYBarddCwsc Posts: 7,172

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Scott_xP said:

    One step more constructive, but no more.

    It's not idealistic, it's not dignified, it may not even be in the UK's best economic interest.

    But as long as the UK is still at 50:50ish on the subject, it's what's pragmatic, and it reduces the harm in the meantime.

    Interesting thread...

    1/6. I'm seeing a lot of despair amongst remainers/rejoiners about @UKLabour's current stance on Brexit. I think this despair is misplaced and that we are already on the path to rejoining. It's just that nobody wants to talk about it.
    https://twitter.com/RichardBentall/status/1543858215011614722
    Deluded.

    How on earth will we persuade the eu to allow us to rejoin without entering the single currency?

    It’s more fundamental than that. A Euro fudge could be reached but but won’t let us rejoin if there’s a chance that 5 years later we leave again. You can’t have yo-yo membership.


    The other elephant in the room with respect to our rejoining is Scotland. Scotland will likely be an EU member by the time England would reapply on its own. There is no way on God’s good Earth that the Scots would want out of one Union with the English to be saddled with another one. Not only would it mean a return of FOM of people from England to Scotland it would mean English Commissoners and MEPs having a say on Scots affairs. No way would the ScotNats have that. They would veto, the Irish for the same reason.
    This is an odd argument. An independent Scotland in the EU would be much happier with its largest trading partner inside the EU than outside. It would ease barriers to trade hugely. And the degree of power that England would have over Scotland as a fellow EU member is an order of magnitude lower than it currently has in the UK. Scotland would be a strong cheerleader of England's EU membership.
    It’s more a question of identity. Scotland and the Scot wants to be seen as both the anti England and anti English. There are no votes in Scotland or Ireland in being pro English. Any party that was seen to be collaborating with the hated coloniser would be punished in the polls. It’s a question of identity and Scotland’s is strongly anglophobic.
    That is bollocks.
    I refer the honourable poster to @malcolmg , @StuartDickson and @Theuniondivvie of this parish.
    Citing three anonymous posters on PB (one of whom doesn't live in Scotland) is hardly compelling evidence. Especially as I wouldn't characterise all of these three as anti-English anyway (one of them is maybe). I grew up in Scotland with English parents (who still live there) and so I think I am probably well placed to be aware of whether anti English prejudice is widespread in Scotland. You are way off-beam.
    I grew up in Scotland too.

    Anti-English prejudice is widespread.
    There are only two times when I've heard widespread cheering from the general neighborhood in Britain after a lifetime spent almost exclusively living in urban areas.

    Once in England, when England scored in the 4-1 defeat to Germany at the 2010 World Cup. The second time in Scotland, when Italy won the penalty shootout in the Euro finals.

    There is definitely something interesting happening psychologically to be so invested in the failure of another group.
    Your last sentence is an astute observation (of course the Welsh are at least as invested in English failure as the Scots).

    Does this phenomenon occur elsewhere in the world?

    Do Canadians feel a genuine thrill when Americans fail? Do the Flemish exult when the Dutch fail? Are New Zealanders joyful when Australians fail?
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 63,039

    I've only been a "NewScot" English migrant up here for a year and a bit. So a fraction of the experience of some other posters. But in my 16 months I have experienced only a single derogatory comment about the English. Which was aimed at a specific person where the "English" tag was part of the reason they were crap.

    I am absolutely sure there will be anti-English sentiment in places along with anti-everything-that-isn't-me-and-mine. But if it was widespread wouldn't I have seen it? Nor is prejudice somehow only Scottish against English. Having been on the receiving end of "you're not from round here go home to Rochdale" abuse after 15 years on Teesside.

    I have been married to a NE Scot for near 60 years, have lived in Edinburgh, and have extensive Scots family and I can honestly say in all the years I have experienced little anti English sentiment, though it does exist
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 29,402
    Points for anyone who knows why France retained St. Pierre et Miquelon without googling.
  • YBarddCwscYBarddCwsc Posts: 7,172
    dixiedean said:

    Points for anyone who knows why France retained St. Pierre et Miquelon without googling.

    It was foggy and no-one knew the tiny islands were there.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    EXCLUSIVE: Keir Starmer has received notification of whether he will be fined and it will publicly announced at some point this week.

    I understand he will escape a fine.

    Batty theory on twitter that he has been FPNed but got an injunction to conceal the fact.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 29,402

    DougSeal said:

    Scott_xP said:

    One step more constructive, but no more.

    It's not idealistic, it's not dignified, it may not even be in the UK's best economic interest.

    But as long as the UK is still at 50:50ish on the subject, it's what's pragmatic, and it reduces the harm in the meantime.

    Interesting thread...

    1/6. I'm seeing a lot of despair amongst remainers/rejoiners about @UKLabour's current stance on Brexit. I think this despair is misplaced and that we are already on the path to rejoining. It's just that nobody wants to talk about it.
    https://twitter.com/RichardBentall/status/1543858215011614722
    Deluded.

    How on earth will we persuade the eu to allow us to rejoin without entering the single currency?

    It’s more fundamental than that. A Euro fudge could be reached but but won’t let us rejoin if there’s a chance that 5 years later we leave again. You can’t have yo-yo membership.

    Which is why the pro-EU side have to decisively win the argument on the anti-EU side's terrain - identity. This is not an easy task.

    A sullen toleration of EU membership because there's perceived to be no economically viable alternative simply isn't going to be durable.
    Demographics will do a lot of the heavy lifting on this. Younger voters already feel more European than the boomers, and having their EU identity snatched from them has only strengthened those feelings.
    It seems that Labour has decided that it doesn't want to hurt Leave voters' feelings. That probably makes sense, but is pretty depressing. How much longer are we going to have to be poorer because nobody dares to tell these snowflakes that they fucked up?
    How did the Boomer generation end up so anti-EU?

    The Left/pro-EU side seem to be all tactics and no strategy. Ideas are shaped and opinions changed over long periods of time, but only one side seems to be competing in the long-term battle of ideas, while the other takes the rightness of their views to be self-evident, and concentrates on short-term tactics, because long-term victory is inevitable.

    That's why we keep on losing.
    Somebody the other day found the age breakdown of voters in the 1975 referendum.

    Younger people, now today's boomers were most likely to vote against. Interestingly they of course were the people brought up on Biggles and other war heroes!
    My Dad was a virulent No campaigner in 1975.
    He was barred from his local for plastering the bogs with No stickers. Many of his comrades at meetings were noticeably youthful.
    He later campaigned for Remain.
  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 12,541
    IshmaelZ said:

    EXCLUSIVE: Keir Starmer has received notification of whether he will be fined and it will publicly announced at some point this week.

    I understand he will escape a fine.

    Batty theory on twitter that he has been FPNed but got an injunction to conceal the fact.
    Legally impossible. Seriously.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    DougSeal said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    EXCLUSIVE: Keir Starmer has received notification of whether he will be fined and it will publicly announced at some point this week.

    I understand he will escape a fine.

    Batty theory on twitter that he has been FPNed but got an injunction to conceal the fact.
    Legally impossible. Seriously.
    Yes. I did say "batty."
  • kjhkjh Posts: 11,786
    Pulpstar said:

    DougSeal said:

    Scott_xP said:

    One step more constructive, but no more.

    It's not idealistic, it's not dignified, it may not even be in the UK's best economic interest.

    But as long as the UK is still at 50:50ish on the subject, it's what's pragmatic, and it reduces the harm in the meantime.

    Interesting thread...

    1/6. I'm seeing a lot of despair amongst remainers/rejoiners about @UKLabour's current stance on Brexit. I think this despair is misplaced and that we are already on the path to rejoining. It's just that nobody wants to talk about it.
    https://twitter.com/RichardBentall/status/1543858215011614722
    Deluded.

    How on earth will we persuade the eu to allow us to rejoin without entering the single currency?

    It’s more fundamental than that. A Euro fudge could be reached but but won’t let us rejoin if there’s a chance that 5 years later we leave again. You can’t have yo-yo membership.

    Which is why the pro-EU side have to decisively win the argument on the anti-EU side's terrain - identity. This is not an easy task.

    A sullen toleration of EU membership because there's perceived to be no economically viable alternative simply isn't going to be durable.
    Demographics will do a lot of the heavy lifting on this. Younger voters already feel more European than the boomers, and having their EU identity snatched from them has only strengthened those feelings.
    It seems that Labour has decided that it doesn't want to hurt Leave voters' feelings. That probably makes sense, but is pretty depressing. How much longer are we going to have to be poorer because nobody dares to tell these snowflakes that they fucked up?
    How did the Boomer generation end up so anti-EU? [snip!]
    Probably because they were the last generation that grew up with "acceptable rascism". When I was growing up, people happily used the N word or the P word (for Asians), foreigners were inferior in many ways and people were quite open about it. The programme "Love Thy Neighbour" regularly used rascist terms and it was pre-watershed viewing.

    They say that many attitudes and prejudices are formed in your early years as a child and pre-teen and I would think that growing up in that sort of era it would not be too surprising if many had absorbed that way of thinking which they now suppress because nowadays attitudes are very different. Suppressing stuff long term often leads to rage, anger and resentment. Which is why it is largely passing away as the older voters die...
    It finished 5 years before I was born but I've watched a few eps of 'Love thy neighbour' to see what it was about, obviously it's a bit dated as anything from the 70s is but the core message seemed to be pointing out the absurdities of racism with Eddie's OTT behaviour and attitudes being the subject of the jokes rather than the Reynolds.
    As was Till death do us part. Unfortunately some people are too stupid to realise they are the butt of the joke so don't get it is anti racism.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 41,958

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Scott_xP said:

    One step more constructive, but no more.

    It's not idealistic, it's not dignified, it may not even be in the UK's best economic interest.

    But as long as the UK is still at 50:50ish on the subject, it's what's pragmatic, and it reduces the harm in the meantime.

    Interesting thread...

    1/6. I'm seeing a lot of despair amongst remainers/rejoiners about @UKLabour's current stance on Brexit. I think this despair is misplaced and that we are already on the path to rejoining. It's just that nobody wants to talk about it.
    https://twitter.com/RichardBentall/status/1543858215011614722
    Deluded.

    How on earth will we persuade the eu to allow us to rejoin without entering the single currency?

    It’s more fundamental than that. A Euro fudge could be reached but but won’t let us rejoin if there’s a chance that 5 years later we leave again. You can’t have yo-yo membership.


    The other elephant in the room with respect to our rejoining is Scotland. Scotland will likely be an EU member by the time England would reapply on its own. There is no way on God’s good Earth that the Scots would want out of one Union with the English to be saddled with another one. Not only would it mean a return of FOM of people from England to Scotland it would mean English Commissoners and MEPs having a say on Scots affairs. No way would the ScotNats have that. They would veto, the Irish for the same reason.
    This is an odd argument. An independent Scotland in the EU would be much happier with its largest trading partner inside the EU than outside. It would ease barriers to trade hugely. And the degree of power that England would have over Scotland as a fellow EU member is an order of magnitude lower than it currently has in the UK. Scotland would be a strong cheerleader of England's EU membership.
    It’s more a question of identity. Scotland and the Scot wants to be seen as both the anti England and anti English. There are no votes in Scotland or Ireland in being pro English. Any party that was seen to be collaborating with the hated coloniser would be punished in the polls. It’s a question of identity and Scotland’s is strongly anglophobic.
    That is bollocks.
    I refer the honourable poster to @malcolmg , @StuartDickson and @Theuniondivvie of this parish.
    Citing three anonymous posters on PB (one of whom doesn't live in Scotland) is hardly compelling evidence. Especially as I wouldn't characterise all of these three as anti-English anyway (one of them is maybe). I grew up in Scotland with English parents (who still live there) and so I think I am probably well placed to be aware of whether anti English prejudice is widespread in Scotland. You are way off-beam.
    I grew up in Scotland too.

    Anti-English prejudice is widespread.
    There are only two times when I've heard widespread cheering from the general neighborhood in Britain after a lifetime spent almost exclusively living in urban areas.

    Once in England, when England scored in the 4-1 defeat to Germany at the 2010 World Cup. The second time in Scotland, when Italy won the penalty shootout in the Euro finals.

    There is definitely something interesting happening psychologically to be so invested in the failure of another group.
    Your last sentence is an astute observation (of course the Welsh are at least as invested in English failure as the Scots).

    Does this phenomenon occur elsewhere in the world?

    Do Canadians feel a genuine thrill when Americans fail? Do the Flemish exult when the Dutch fail? Are New Zealanders joyful when Australians fail?
    I’ve been told by a Dutchman that they and the Germans have that kind of thing going on, though he couldn’t really say what were the historical reasons for it.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    dixiedean said:

    Points for anyone who knows why France retained St. Pierre et Miquelon without googling.

    They were originally called the Eleven Thousand Virgins islands by the Portuguese, and the French asked for more time to rectify the situation.
  • IshmaelZ said:

    DougSeal said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    EXCLUSIVE: Keir Starmer has received notification of whether he will be fined and it will publicly announced at some point this week.

    I understand he will escape a fine.

    Batty theory on twitter that he has been FPNed but got an injunction to conceal the fact.
    Legally impossible. Seriously.
    Yes. I did say "batty."
    It seems to have started from somebody with Love Boris in their title, I am sure they will be reliable
  • DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Scott_xP said:

    One step more constructive, but no more.

    It's not idealistic, it's not dignified, it may not even be in the UK's best economic interest.

    But as long as the UK is still at 50:50ish on the subject, it's what's pragmatic, and it reduces the harm in the meantime.

    Interesting thread...

    1/6. I'm seeing a lot of despair amongst remainers/rejoiners about @UKLabour's current stance on Brexit. I think this despair is misplaced and that we are already on the path to rejoining. It's just that nobody wants to talk about it.
    https://twitter.com/RichardBentall/status/1543858215011614722
    Deluded.

    How on earth will we persuade the eu to allow us to rejoin without entering the single currency?

    It’s more fundamental than that. A Euro fudge could be reached but but won’t let us rejoin if there’s a chance that 5 years later we leave again. You can’t have yo-yo membership.


    The other elephant in the room with respect to our rejoining is Scotland. Scotland will likely be an EU member by the time England would reapply on its own. There is no way on God’s good Earth that the Scots would want out of one Union with the English to be saddled with another one. Not only would it mean a return of FOM of people from England to Scotland it would mean English Commissoners and MEPs having a say on Scots affairs. No way would the ScotNats have that. They would veto, the Irish for the same reason.
    This is an odd argument. An independent Scotland in the EU would be much happier with its largest trading partner inside the EU than outside. It would ease barriers to trade hugely. And the degree of power that England would have over Scotland as a fellow EU member is an order of magnitude lower than it currently has in the UK. Scotland would be a strong cheerleader of England's EU membership.
    It’s more a question of identity. Scotland and the Scot wants to be seen as both the anti England and anti English. There are no votes in Scotland or Ireland in being pro English. Any party that was seen to be collaborating with the hated coloniser would be punished in the polls. It’s a question of identity and Scotland’s is strongly anglophobic.
    That is bollocks.
    I refer the honourable poster to @malcolmg , @StuartDickson and @Theuniondivvie of this parish.
    Citing three anonymous posters on PB (one of whom doesn't live in Scotland) is hardly compelling evidence. Especially as I wouldn't characterise all of these three as anti-English anyway (one of them is maybe). I grew up in Scotland with English parents (who still live there) and so I think I am probably well placed to be aware of whether anti English prejudice is widespread in Scotland. You are way off-beam.
    I grew up in Scotland too.

    Anti-English prejudice is widespread.
    There are only two times when I've heard widespread cheering from the general neighborhood in Britain after a lifetime spent almost exclusively living in urban areas.

    Once in England, when England scored in the 4-1 defeat to Germany at the 2010 World Cup. The second time in Scotland, when Italy won the penalty shootout in the Euro finals.

    There is definitely something interesting happening psychologically to be so invested in the failure of another group.
    Your last sentence is an astute observation (of course the Welsh are at least as invested in English failure as the Scots).

    Does this phenomenon occur elsewhere in the world?

    Do Canadians feel a genuine thrill when Americans fail? Do the Flemish exult when the Dutch fail? Are New Zealanders joyful when Australians fail?
    Yes, sporting rivalries are exceedingly common around the world. At both club and national levels.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 29,402
    dixiedean said:

    Points for anyone who knows why France retained St. Pierre et Miquelon without googling.

    More boringly than the above suggestions they retained fishing rights off Newfoundland and needed a place to dry their fish.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 18,361
    dixiedean said:

    Points for anyone who knows why France retained St. Pierre et Miquelon without googling.

    It was settled by Scots who preferred French dominion to British?
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 62,716
    British filmmaker to be key witness in the insurrection hearings:



    "I'm not a psychiatrist. But my take was this is not a rational player."

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/07/04/filmmaker-sheds-light-donald-trumps-bizarre-world/
  • RogerRoger Posts: 19,913

    EXCLUSIVE: Keir Starmer has received notification of whether he will be fined and it will publicly announced at some point this week.

    I understand he will escape a fine.

    'Escape a fine' suggests guilt.

    Do you mean he did nothing wrong and the story was concocted by Dellingpole junior and spread by his sponsors 'The Mail"? If so I hope they land him with a charge of wasting police time.

    How much is six weeks of Durham police time worth?
  • FairlieredFairliered Posts: 4,931
    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Scott_xP said:

    One step more constructive, but no more.

    It's not idealistic, it's not dignified, it may not even be in the UK's best economic interest.

    But as long as the UK is still at 50:50ish on the subject, it's what's pragmatic, and it reduces the harm in the meantime.

    Interesting thread...

    1/6. I'm seeing a lot of despair amongst remainers/rejoiners about @UKLabour's current stance on Brexit. I think this despair is misplaced and that we are already on the path to rejoining. It's just that nobody wants to talk about it.
    https://twitter.com/RichardBentall/status/1543858215011614722
    Deluded.

    How on earth will we persuade the eu to allow us to rejoin without entering the single currency?

    It’s more fundamental than that. A Euro fudge could be reached but but won’t let us rejoin if there’s a chance that 5 years later we leave again. You can’t have yo-yo membership.


    The other elephant in the room with respect to our rejoining is Scotland. Scotland will likely be an EU member by the time England would reapply on its own. There is no way on God’s good Earth that the Scots would want out of one Union with the English to be saddled with another one. Not only would it mean a return of FOM of people from England to Scotland it would mean English Commissoners and MEPs having a say on Scots affairs. No way would the ScotNats have that. They would veto, the Irish for the same reason.
    This is an odd argument. An independent Scotland in the EU would be much happier with its largest trading partner inside the EU than outside. It would ease barriers to trade hugely. And the degree of power that England would have over Scotland as a fellow EU member is an order of magnitude lower than it currently has in the UK. Scotland would be a strong cheerleader of England's EU membership.
    It’s more a question of identity. Scotland and the Scot wants to be seen as both the anti England and anti English. There are no votes in Scotland or Ireland in being pro English. Any party that was seen to be collaborating with the hated coloniser would be punished in the polls. It’s a question of identity and Scotland’s is strongly anglophobic.
    That is bollocks.
    I refer the honourable poster to @malcolmg , @StuartDickson and @Theuniondivvie of this parish.
    Citing three anonymous posters on PB (one of whom doesn't live in Scotland) is hardly compelling evidence. Especially as I wouldn't characterise all of these three as anti-English anyway (one of them is maybe). I grew up in Scotland with English parents (who still live there) and so I think I am probably well placed to be aware of whether anti English prejudice is widespread in Scotland. You are way off-beam.
    I grew up in Scotland too.

    Anti-English prejudice is widespread.
    Most Scots have a disrespect for arseholes of all nationalities, including other Scots.
    The problem is that most Scots consider “English” as being a synonym of “arsehole”.
    So you are saying that I consider my mother, and all her family, as arseholes?
  • kjhkjh Posts: 11,786

    I've only been a "NewScot" English migrant up here for a year and a bit. So a fraction of the experience of some other posters. But in my 16 months I have experienced only a single derogatory comment about the English. Which was aimed at a specific person where the "English" tag was part of the reason they were crap.

    I am absolutely sure there will be anti-English sentiment in places along with anti-everything-that-isn't-me-and-mine. But if it was widespread wouldn't I have seen it? Nor is prejudice somehow only Scottish against English. Having been on the receiving end of "you're not from round here go home to Rochdale" abuse after 15 years on Teesside.

    I have been married to a NE Scot for near 60 years, have lived in Edinburgh, and have extensive Scots family and I can honestly say in all the years I have experienced little anti English sentiment, though it does exist
    Married to a Scot for 27 years. Never experienced any anti English stuff from anyone. Always very friendly. Always some banter, but that is it. Eg will give Scottish nationality to anyone playing England in a sporting event, but when the chips are down ends up supporting England.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,921
    edited July 2022
    Steve Baker beaten by most alternatives in today's ConHome runoff survey next round

    Steve Baker: 35 per cent

    Rishi Sunak: 44 per cent.

    Don’t know: 20 per cent.

    (778 votes cast)



    Steve Baker: 31 per cent.

    Kemi Badenoch: 38 per cent.

    Don’t know: 30 per cent.

    (783 votes cast)



    Steve Baker: 30 per cent.

    Liz Truss: 45 per cent.

    Don’t know: 24 per cent.

    (784 votes cast)



    Steve Baker: 30 per cent.

    Penny Mordaunt: 49 per cent.

    Don’t know: 21 per cent.

    (782 votes cast)



    Steve Baker: 29 per cent.

    Nadhim Zahawi: 48 per cent.

    Don’t Know: 22 per cent.

    (775 votes cast)



    Steve Baker: 23 per cent.

    Ben Wallace 61 per cent.

    Don’t know: 16 per cent.

    (780 votes cast)

    https://conservativehome.com/2022/07/04/next-tory-leader-play-offs-seventh-steve-baker/
  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 12,541

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Scott_xP said:

    One step more constructive, but no more.

    It's not idealistic, it's not dignified, it may not even be in the UK's best economic interest.

    But as long as the UK is still at 50:50ish on the subject, it's what's pragmatic, and it reduces the harm in the meantime.

    Interesting thread...

    1/6. I'm seeing a lot of despair amongst remainers/rejoiners about @UKLabour's current stance on Brexit. I think this despair is misplaced and that we are already on the path to rejoining. It's just that nobody wants to talk about it.
    https://twitter.com/RichardBentall/status/1543858215011614722
    Deluded.

    How on earth will we persuade the eu to allow us to rejoin without entering the single currency?

    It’s more fundamental than that. A Euro fudge could be reached but but won’t let us rejoin if there’s a chance that 5 years later we leave again. You can’t have yo-yo membership.


    The other elephant in the room with respect to our rejoining is Scotland. Scotland will likely be an EU member by the time England would reapply on its own. There is no way on God’s good Earth that the Scots would want out of one Union with the English to be saddled with another one. Not only would it mean a return of FOM of people from England to Scotland it would mean English Commissoners and MEPs having a say on Scots affairs. No way would the ScotNats have that. They would veto, the Irish for the same reason.
    This is an odd argument. An independent Scotland in the EU would be much happier with its largest trading partner inside the EU than outside. It would ease barriers to trade hugely. And the degree of power that England would have over Scotland as a fellow EU member is an order of magnitude lower than it currently has in the UK. Scotland would be a strong cheerleader of England's EU membership.
    It’s more a question of identity. Scotland and the Scot wants to be seen as both the anti England and anti English. There are no votes in Scotland or Ireland in being pro English. Any party that was seen to be collaborating with the hated coloniser would be punished in the polls. It’s a question of identity and Scotland’s is strongly anglophobic.
    That is bollocks.
    I refer the honourable poster to @malcolmg , @StuartDickson and @Theuniondivvie of this parish.
    Citing three anonymous posters on PB (one of whom doesn't live in Scotland) is hardly compelling evidence. Especially as I wouldn't characterise all of these three as anti-English anyway (one of them is maybe). I grew up in Scotland with English parents (who still live there) and so I think I am probably well placed to be aware of whether anti English prejudice is widespread in Scotland. You are way off-beam.
    I grew up in Scotland too.

    Anti-English prejudice is widespread.
    Most Scots have a disrespect for arseholes of all nationalities, including other Scots.
    The problem is that most Scots consider “English” as being a synonym of “arsehole”.
    So you are saying that I consider my mother, and all her family, as arseholes?
    As I said above, as a collective, not as individuals. I’m sure when people get to know people hey get on fine but as a collective the English, and England, are viewed in a pejorative light,
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 29,402

    EXCLUSIVE: Keir Starmer has received notification of whether he will be fined and it will publicly announced at some point this week.

    I understand he will escape a fine.

    Makes sense.
    He wouldn't be making a policy speech on Brexit were he off.
    Or even possibly off.
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 17,220

    DougSeal said:

    Scott_xP said:

    One step more constructive, but no more.

    It's not idealistic, it's not dignified, it may not even be in the UK's best economic interest.

    But as long as the UK is still at 50:50ish on the subject, it's what's pragmatic, and it reduces the harm in the meantime.

    Interesting thread...

    1/6. I'm seeing a lot of despair amongst remainers/rejoiners about @UKLabour's current stance on Brexit. I think this despair is misplaced and that we are already on the path to rejoining. It's just that nobody wants to talk about it.
    https://twitter.com/RichardBentall/status/1543858215011614722
    Deluded.

    How on earth will we persuade the eu to allow us to rejoin without entering the single currency?

    It’s more fundamental than that. A Euro fudge could be reached but but won’t let us rejoin if there’s a chance that 5 years later we leave again. You can’t have yo-yo membership.

    Which is why the pro-EU side have to decisively win the argument on the anti-EU side's terrain - identity. This is not an easy task.

    A sullen toleration of EU membership because there's perceived to be no economically viable alternative simply isn't going to be durable.
    Demographics will do a lot of the heavy lifting on this. Younger voters already feel more European than the boomers, and having their EU identity snatched from them has only strengthened those feelings.
    It seems that Labour has decided that it doesn't want to hurt Leave voters' feelings. That probably makes sense, but is pretty depressing. How much longer are we going to have to be poorer because nobody dares to tell these snowflakes that they fucked up?
    How did the Boomer generation end up so anti-EU?

    The Left/pro-EU side seem to be all tactics and no strategy. Ideas are shaped and opinions changed over long periods of time, but only one side seems to be competing in the long-term battle of ideas, while the other takes the rightness of their views to be self-evident, and concentrates on short-term tactics, because long-term victory is inevitable.

    That's why we keep on losing.
    Somebody the other day found the age breakdown of voters in the 1975 referendum.

    Younger people, now today's boomers were most likely to vote against. Interestingly they of course were the people brought up on Biggles and other war heroes!
    More generously, they are the generation who missed out on the feels of Euro integration both ways.

    Their parents got the emotional point- war is bad, never again. (Even in 2016, I think the very old were not as Leavey as the quite old.)

    Their children got the emotional point- hopping easily around different countries and having friends there makes life more fun. And nearby countries are much more useful for that than geographically distant ones.

    The Brexit bulge generation missed out on both of these, really, because they grew up in the 1950s and early 1960s.

    The important thing is that it isn't that entirely rational, it is about self-understanding, it is all a bit like religion and conversion is pretty rare.

    So either Brexit has to go stonkingly well to overcome that, or its democratic mandate fades over the next decade or two.
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 12,497

    As a pro-EU Labour supporter, I think Starmer is playing this right, and those, like Roger, who think we should be campaigning to rejoin are wrong. The main attack line from the Tories at the next GE will be 'you can't trust Labour with Brexit - they'll try to reverse it, just like they did last time'. Starmer just has to neutralise, well in advance, that attack line, or Labour will be doomed to defeat. The first step to improving our relations with the EU is a Labour victory, then we can take it from there. Sadly the economic arguments count for little when up against the 'we voted for Brexit whatever the cost' argument.

    If Labour want to lose the next election, they should promise to explore rejoining the EU.

    To win Labour need Tory votes in their millions. I don't think this can be done by a promise to rejoin.

    The whole issue is obscured by two related issues: The matter crosses party lines in such a way that you are trying to play lacrosse and football on the same pitch; and secondly there isn't a satisfactory way forward.

    The politics of the past 40 years got us to the point where neither being in nor being out was credible. The blame for this in truth attaches almost entirely to politicians now retired or dead who got us here without a series of referendums.

    There is no more a solution to these past errors than there is a solution to past carbon emissions or nuclear weapon production.

    That doesn't of course stop it being the fault of today's politicians.

This discussion has been closed.