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.
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.
Well, it also depends on how the next generation is affected by growing up in a Britain outside the EU.
They may come to view the idea of joining the EU as completely alien. They may find it hard to believe that we were ever a member.
I don't think it can be taken for granted that they will all be solidly in favour of joining the EU. Their views are not yet formed.
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.
The speech was planned well in advance of any knowledge of his fine or no fine. No journalist mutterings yet on his fate, The Sun however saying they understand nothing from Durham Police likely today
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.
Many could "do a lot better than Boris" but still "backfire".
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.
Well, I started school during the war and remember air raids. I also remember that it was very very unusual to have school trips out of the British Isles when I was at school during the 50s; I think I went on one, to Austria and I don't think my younger sister went at all. We did though both go on Worldfriends trips to Europe. That was an organisation promoting fellowship among young people. Many of my male friends spent two years they didn't like in Germany doing their national service, where they were not encouraged to fraternise with the locals.
Sir Keir Starmer will on Monday signal that Labour is willing to fight Boris Johnson over his Brexit legacy at the next election, setting out a five-point plan to tackle the economic pain caused by Britain’s EU exit.
In a big tactical shift, Starmer will use a speech to denounce the “mess” created by the UK prime minister’s 2020 Brexit deal and the breakdown of trust with the EU caused by the row over the trading arrangements for Northern Ireland.
The Labour leader has until now shied away from talking about Brexit, fearing it would alienate Leave voters, but he has been emboldened by emerging evidence of the hit the departure has inflicted on the economy.
He will claim that Labour can “make Brexit work”, arguing that Johnson’s Brexit deal had contributed to a sense of a country that was “stuck”, with wages and growth stagnating and broken public services.
...
“Nothing about revisiting those rows will help stimulate growth or bring down food prices or help British business thrive in the modern world — it would simply be a recipe for more division,” he will say.
Labour would seek a veterinary agreement with the EU to cut onerous agrifood checks, mutual recognition of product standards and a deal on mobility to facilitate short business trips and help artists tour in Europe.
Starmer would use the agrifood deal to remove most checks on trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland and negotiate a trusted trader scheme to end the stand-off with Brussels over the rules, contained in the part of the Brexit deal called the Northern Ireland Protocol.
So he’s saying he will accept the EU’s proposal then?
To paraphrase Tony Blair, what matters is what works. What does it matter whose proposal this is? What we have now does not work. So we fix it.
It works for the EU not the UK.
They are demanding dynamic alignment.
If the EU stuck to their agreement on a sensible trusted trader scheme this would all be resolved
As we do not stick to agreements there can be no trusted trader scheme. We cannot be trusted. A new government can fix this. And again, we are aligned to the EEA and we will remain so. We have abandoned - permanently - the plan to have different standards and maintain a difference. With no ability to check anything coming into the GB from the EU a different standards regime is a fantasy. What they do we will get. By default.
De facto is different to de jure
If you accept dynamic alignment you create a massive strategic vulnerability
And we can be trusted to keep to agreements. The issue is the EU is refusing to discuss the implementation of the current agreement in good faith
Sir Keir Starmer will on Monday signal that Labour is willing to fight Boris Johnson over his Brexit legacy at the next election, setting out a five-point plan to tackle the economic pain caused by Britain’s EU exit.
In a big tactical shift, Starmer will use a speech to denounce the “mess” created by the UK prime minister’s 2020 Brexit deal and the breakdown of trust with the EU caused by the row over the trading arrangements for Northern Ireland.
The Labour leader has until now shied away from talking about Brexit, fearing it would alienate Leave voters, but he has been emboldened by emerging evidence of the hit the departure has inflicted on the economy.
He will claim that Labour can “make Brexit work”, arguing that Johnson’s Brexit deal had contributed to a sense of a country that was “stuck”, with wages and growth stagnating and broken public services.
...
“Nothing about revisiting those rows will help stimulate growth or bring down food prices or help British business thrive in the modern world — it would simply be a recipe for more division,” he will say.
Labour would seek a veterinary agreement with the EU to cut onerous agrifood checks, mutual recognition of product standards and a deal on mobility to facilitate short business trips and help artists tour in Europe.
Starmer would use the agrifood deal to remove most checks on trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland and negotiate a trusted trader scheme to end the stand-off with Brussels over the rules, contained in the part of the Brexit deal called the Northern Ireland Protocol.
So he’s saying he will accept the EU’s proposal then?
To paraphrase Tony Blair, what matters is what works. What does it matter whose proposal this is? What we have now does not work. So we fix it.
It works for the EU not the UK.
They are demanding dynamic alignment.
If the EU stuck to their agreement on a sensible trusted trader scheme this would all be resolved
As we do not stick to agreements there can be no trusted trader scheme. We cannot be trusted. A new government can fix this. And again, we are aligned to the EEA and we will remain so. We have abandoned - permanently - the plan to have different standards and maintain a difference. With no ability to check anything coming into the GB from the EU a different standards regime is a fantasy. What they do we will get. By default.
De facto is different to de jure
If you accept dynamic alignment you create a massive strategic vulnerability
And we can be trusted to keep to agreements. The issue is the EU is refusing to discuss the implementation of the current agreement in good faith
As I understand it our government has said specifically that it cannot be trusted to keep agreements!
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.
I wouldn't put all three as sharing the same stance on that issue.
Malc is (to put it mildly) vociferous, Dickson is sneeringly blatant, and TUD dresses it up in a kind of “more in sorrow than anger” sanctimony. But they’re all united on this question.
Sir Keir Starmer will today attempt to draw a line under Labour's internal Brexit row by setting out in plain terms what the party's policy is:
1. UK will not rejoin EU 2. UK will not join single market 3. UK will not join customs union 4. No return of freedom of movement
Big mistake and completely unnecessary.
Haff the Leavers approved of three of those.
But you miss the point - that policy is designed so that Bozo can't use differences between the Tories and Labour as a campaign point at the next election.
Which means Labour can focus on how crap Brexit has been implemented and Bozo can't change the topic towards future differences....
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?
Indeed
I was tempted to tell him that DALL-E 2 could produce better and more interesting images of the Scottish coast than his in 5 seconds… which is true… however I then considered how I will feel when GPT6 starts 3D printing perfect flint sex toys
I will probably be a sad angry revulsion as my creative purpose is ended. Like him
Sir Keir Starmer will today attempt to draw a line under Labour's internal Brexit row by setting out in plain terms what the party's policy is:
1. UK will not rejoin EU 2. UK will not join single market 3. UK will not join customs union 4. No return of freedom of movement
Big mistake and completely unnecessary.
Haff the Leavers approved of three of those.
The EU won’t have us back, we can’t join the SM without EU approval, there’s no Customs Union without being in the EU and the Europeans don’t want the English moving to Europe anyway. So it makes logical sense. We can’t rejoin the SM - it’s impossible.
I remember way way before the EU referendum was even a glint in anyone's eye (2010 or thereabouts) a friend of my fiancee arguing in favour of the EU. It was entirely along cultural grounds - "if you're not with the EU then you're basically with America" and had nothing to do with business or economics. And so it was with the referendum, both the pro and the anti side making it entirely about identity and culture, rather than practicalities and economics where the case for the EU really stacks up. Allowing the shift to the much more favourable (For the leave side) identity/culture arguments - which has stuck basically makes rejoining electorally impossible until such time has passed as those forces can win a GE (They can't at the moment hence Starmer's speech). Economics and business has just been binned off by everyone.
Sir Keir Starmer will on Monday signal that Labour is willing to fight Boris Johnson over his Brexit legacy at the next election, setting out a five-point plan to tackle the economic pain caused by Britain’s EU exit.
In a big tactical shift, Starmer will use a speech to denounce the “mess” created by the UK prime minister’s 2020 Brexit deal and the breakdown of trust with the EU caused by the row over the trading arrangements for Northern Ireland.
The Labour leader has until now shied away from talking about Brexit, fearing it would alienate Leave voters, but he has been emboldened by emerging evidence of the hit the departure has inflicted on the economy.
He will claim that Labour can “make Brexit work”, arguing that Johnson’s Brexit deal had contributed to a sense of a country that was “stuck”, with wages and growth stagnating and broken public services.
...
“Nothing about revisiting those rows will help stimulate growth or bring down food prices or help British business thrive in the modern world — it would simply be a recipe for more division,” he will say.
Labour would seek a veterinary agreement with the EU to cut onerous agrifood checks, mutual recognition of product standards and a deal on mobility to facilitate short business trips and help artists tour in Europe.
Starmer would use the agrifood deal to remove most checks on trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland and negotiate a trusted trader scheme to end the stand-off with Brussels over the rules, contained in the part of the Brexit deal called the Northern Ireland Protocol.
So he’s saying he will accept the EU’s proposal then?
To paraphrase Tony Blair, what matters is what works. What does it matter whose proposal this is? What we have now does not work. So we fix it.
It works for the EU not the UK.
They are demanding dynamic alignment.
If the EU stuck to their agreement on a sensible trusted trader scheme this would all be resolved
As we do not stick to agreements there can be no trusted trader scheme. We cannot be trusted. A new government can fix this. And again, we are aligned to the EEA and we will remain so. We have abandoned - permanently - the plan to have different standards and maintain a difference. With no ability to check anything coming into the GB from the EU a different standards regime is a fantasy. What they do we will get. By default.
De facto is different to de jure
If you accept dynamic alignment you create a massive strategic vulnerability
And we can be trusted to keep to agreements. The issue is the EU is refusing to discuss the implementation of the current agreement in good faith
The problem with that argument is that with Bozo and co in charge we can't be trusted to keep to agreements.
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.
Well, it also depends on how the next generation is affected by growing up in a Britain outside the EU.
They may come to view the idea of joining the EU as completely alien. They may find it hard to believe that we were ever a member.
I don't think it can be taken for granted that they will all be solidly in favour of joining the EU. Their views are not yet formed.
The future's not ours to see, sure. Not yet, anyway.
But unless the rising generation are as solidly Brexity as the departing generation (and the most recent YouGov has 5 % of 18-24 year olds thinking that the UK was right to leave, 63 % of 65+ voters thinking the UK was right to leave), the total is only going one way.
Brexit as a concept has to run awfully fast, just to stand still. Maybe it will.
"NHS: you have been in close contact with someone who has recently tested positive for the omicron variant. You are required to order a test kit via: omicron.id -80.com."
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.
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?
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.
Well, it also depends on how the next generation is affected by growing up in a Britain outside the EU.
They may come to view the idea of joining the EU as completely alien. They may find it hard to believe that we were ever a member.
I don't think it can be taken for granted that they will all be solidly in favour of joining the EU. Their views are not yet formed.
The future's not ours to see, sure. Not yet, anyway.
But unless the rising generation are as solidly Brexity as the departing generation (and the most recent YouGov has 5 % of 18-24 year olds thinking that the UK was right to leave, 63 % of 65+ voters thinking the UK was right to leave), the total is only going one way.
Brexit as a concept has to run awfully fast, just to stand still. Maybe it will.
Your making the classic mistake of thinking that it’s up to us. The door to the EU has been closed by the Selfish Generation for good. We will never be allowed back. There will be no appetite for more drama from the U.K.
Most English people don’t understand how much we are hated outside our borders. The Europeans don’t want us.
Morning all! The problem with "just build a lot more houses" is that the developers build for profit rather than need. The country does not need another exclusive development of executive homes. It needs apartment blocks in towns with communal facilities like restaurants and open spaces.
London seems to manage to build these - albeit at "market rates" which means the price is stupid. But little anywhere else. Doesn't help that post Grenfell nobody trusts the industry or the government not to build death traps for profit.
As I have said before the solution is to spin out Housing Associations to commercially build these snazzy apartment blocks who h are never ever up for sale. Increase supply of property people need at prices they can afford, take the lunacy out of the market and rebalance things so that renting - at same prices that don't pay someone else's mortgage - becomes normal as it is in places like Germany.
Have a look at how very large chunks of London were built between 1897 and 1907 - streets laid out, transport and services setup, plots sold off with conditions on the quality and look of the properties to be built. A major difference with today - not selling all the plots in an area to a single developer.
The housing market isn’t a unified whole across the country. People want to stay in “their” area - university mixes people around a bit by forcing hem to live elsewhere for 3 years or so (sometimes). But most people don’t want to move around the country. So if a developer is doing all the development in a radius of a couple of miles, they are close to a monopoly in that sub market. The incentive to slowly add houses to the market becomes obvious..
Sir Keir Starmer will today attempt to draw a line under Labour's internal Brexit row by setting out in plain terms what the party's policy is:
1. UK will not rejoin EU 2. UK will not join single market 3. UK will not join customs union 4. No return of freedom of movement
Big mistake and completely unnecessary.
Haff the Leavers approved of three of those.
Huge opportunity for the Lib Dems Greens and Scot Nats
There is no surprise in this as both Starmer and Lammy confirmed over a week ago there will be no return to the single market as I posted several times
It seems the conservatives and labour are on much the same page not only on this, but also Indyref2
I would support a return to the single market but it seems it is a distant dream for those wanting a closer relationship and certainly re-joining is off the agenda for the forceable future
I remember way way before the EU referendum was even a glint in anyone's eye (2010 or thereabouts) a friend of my fiancee arguing in favour of the EU. It was entirely along cultural grounds - "if you're not with the EU then you're basically with America" and had nothing to do with business or economics. And so it was with the referendum, both the pro and the anti side making it entirely about identity and culture, rather than practicalities and economics where the case for the EU really stacks up. Allowing the shift to the much more favourable (For the leave side) identity/culture arguments - which has stuck basically makes rejoining electorally impossible until such time has passed as those forces can win a GE (They can't at the moment hence Starmer's speech). Economics and business has just been binned off by everyone.
Ed Miliband bashing bankers for five years also made it impossible to argue that being in the EU was good for the City.
Sir Keir Starmer will today attempt to draw a line under Labour's internal Brexit row by setting out in plain terms what the party's policy is:
1. UK will not rejoin EU 2. UK will not join single market 3. UK will not join customs union 4. No return of freedom of movement
Big mistake and completely unnecessary.
Haff the Leavers approved of three of those.
The EU won’t have us back, we can’t join the SM without EU approval, there’s no Customs Union without being in the EU and the Europeans don’t want the English moving to Europe anyway. So it makes logical sense. We can’t rejoin the SM - it’s impossible.
Charlie Kennedy made his reputation by being anti the war in Iraq. It didn't matter that he couldn't affect the decision in any way. Politics is about getting people on board and supporting their values. Making this announcement makes no sense at all. It just suggests that Johnson/Farage got it right
I remember way way before the EU referendum was even a glint in anyone's eye (2010 or thereabouts) a friend of my fiancee arguing in favour of the EU. It was entirely along cultural grounds - "if you're not with the EU then you're basically with America" and had nothing to do with business or economics. And so it was with the referendum, both the pro and the anti side making it entirely about identity and culture, rather than practicalities and economics where the case for the EU really stacks up. Allowing the shift to the much more favourable (For the leave side) identity/culture arguments - which has stuck basically makes rejoining electorally impossible until such time has passed as those forces can win a GE (They can't at the moment hence Starmer's speech). Economics and business has just been binned off by everyone.
The rejoin argument also won't get anywhere while people are still refighting the 2016 referendum.
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.
Well, it also depends on how the next generation is affected by growing up in a Britain outside the EU.
They may come to view the idea of joining the EU as completely alien. They may find it hard to believe that we were ever a member.
I don't think it can be taken for granted that they will all be solidly in favour of joining the EU. Their views are not yet formed.
The future's not ours to see, sure. Not yet, anyway.
But unless the rising generation are as solidly Brexity as the departing generation (and the most recent YouGov has 5 % of 18-24 year olds thinking that the UK was right to leave, 63 % of 65+ voters thinking the UK was right to leave), the total is only going one way.
Brexit as a concept has to run awfully fast, just to stand still. Maybe it will.
Your making the classic mistake of thinking that it’s up to us. The door to the EU has been closed by the Selfish Generation for good. We will never be allowed back. There will be no appetite for more drama from the U.K.
Most English people don’t understand how much we are hated outside our borders. The Europeans don’t want us.
If I recall correctly, Mr Seal, you have days, you say, when you feel that everything is against you. Are you having one of those today? You are not usually as negative.
Sir Keir Starmer will today attempt to draw a line under Labour's internal Brexit row by setting out in plain terms what the party's policy is:
1. UK will not rejoin EU 2. UK will not join single market 3. UK will not join customs union 4. No return of freedom of movement
Big mistake and completely unnecessary.
Haff the Leavers approved of three of those.
The EU won’t have us back, we can’t join the SM without EU approval, there’s no Customs Union without being in the EU and the Europeans don’t want the English moving to Europe anyway. So it makes logical sense. We can’t rejoin the SM - it’s impossible.
Charlie Kennedy made his reputation by being anti the war in Iraq. It didn't matter that he couldn't affect the decision in any way. Politics is about getting people on board and supporting their values. Making this announcement makes no sense at all. It just suggests that Johnson/Farage got it right
Roger, it’s not up to us, it’s up to the EU ultimately. And the EU won’t let us back. Ever. They hate us. We are their enemy.
Why promise something you can’t deliver. The Iraq War was an event, not an institution, and he could oppose it with no consequences.
Sir Keir Starmer will today attempt to draw a line under Labour's internal Brexit row by setting out in plain terms what the party's policy is:
1. UK will not rejoin EU 2. UK will not join single market 3. UK will not join customs union 4. No return of freedom of movement
Big mistake and completely unnecessary.
Haff the Leavers approved of three of those.
The EU won’t have us back, we can’t join the SM without EU approval, there’s no Customs Union without being in the EU and the Europeans don’t want the English moving to Europe anyway. So it makes logical sense. We can’t rejoin the SM - it’s impossible.
Charlie Kennedy made his reputation by being anti the war in Iraq. It didn't matter that he couldn't affect the decision in any way. Politics is about getting people on board and supporting their values. Making this announcement makes no sense at all. It just suggests that Johnson/Farage got it right
No, its accepting that the British got it right.
They did. Johnson and Farage had just 2 votes between them, not 17.4 million.
Sir Keir Starmer will on Monday signal that Labour is willing to fight Boris Johnson over his Brexit legacy at the next election, setting out a five-point plan to tackle the economic pain caused by Britain’s EU exit.
In a big tactical shift, Starmer will use a speech to denounce the “mess” created by the UK prime minister’s 2020 Brexit deal and the breakdown of trust with the EU caused by the row over the trading arrangements for Northern Ireland.
The Labour leader has until now shied away from talking about Brexit, fearing it would alienate Leave voters, but he has been emboldened by emerging evidence of the hit the departure has inflicted on the economy.
He will claim that Labour can “make Brexit work”, arguing that Johnson’s Brexit deal had contributed to a sense of a country that was “stuck”, with wages and growth stagnating and broken public services.
...
“Nothing about revisiting those rows will help stimulate growth or bring down food prices or help British business thrive in the modern world — it would simply be a recipe for more division,” he will say.
Labour would seek a veterinary agreement with the EU to cut onerous agrifood checks, mutual recognition of product standards and a deal on mobility to facilitate short business trips and help artists tour in Europe.
Starmer would use the agrifood deal to remove most checks on trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland and negotiate a trusted trader scheme to end the stand-off with Brussels over the rules, contained in the part of the Brexit deal called the Northern Ireland Protocol.
So he’s saying he will accept the EU’s proposal then?
To paraphrase Tony Blair, what matters is what works. What does it matter whose proposal this is? What we have now does not work. So we fix it.
It works for the EU not the UK.
They are demanding dynamic alignment.
If the EU stuck to their agreement on a sensible trusted trader scheme this would all be resolved
As we do not stick to agreements there can be no trusted trader scheme. We cannot be trusted. A new government can fix this. And again, we are aligned to the EEA and we will remain so. We have abandoned - permanently - the plan to have different standards and maintain a difference. With no ability to check anything coming into the GB from the EU a different standards regime is a fantasy. What they do we will get. By default.
De facto is different to de jure
If you accept dynamic alignment you create a massive strategic vulnerability
And we can be trusted to keep to agreements. The issue is the EU is refusing to discuss the implementation of the current agreement in good faith
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.
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.
I was punched once in Dumfries for being English by a couple of Neds so my experience might be skewed.
But, I heard a lot of chippy "banter" during my time there, and my accent was often a trigger, so I can't just dismiss it I'm afraid.
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.
That is, I'm afraid, a completely bizarre statement. Why would they veto it?
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.
Well, it also depends on how the next generation is affected by growing up in a Britain outside the EU.
They may come to view the idea of joining the EU as completely alien. They may find it hard to believe that we were ever a member.
I don't think it can be taken for granted that they will all be solidly in favour of joining the EU. Their views are not yet formed.
The future's not ours to see, sure. Not yet, anyway.
But unless the rising generation are as solidly Brexity as the departing generation (and the most recent YouGov has 5 % of 18-24 year olds thinking that the UK was right to leave, 63 % of 65+ voters thinking the UK was right to leave), the total is only going one way.
Brexit as a concept has to run awfully fast, just to stand still. Maybe it will.
Your making the classic mistake of thinking that it’s up to us. The door to the EU has been closed by the Selfish Generation for good. We will never be allowed back. There will be no appetite for more drama from the U.K.
Most English people don’t understand how much we are hated outside our borders. The Europeans don’t want us.
The English are loved in Armenia, Georgia and Montenegro. Seriously. It’s probably because they don’t see many of us. And because people in these countries yearn for the “civilised west” - modernity, security, pop culture - and we represent that (along with France, USA &c)
Martin Amis has a great riff in London Fields when he describes the relationship between a hot single girl in a converted house of flats where she has the top flat
Amis says the guy in the flat right beneath her hates her, because of the noise she makes, the music and dancing, AND he can hear her screwing other men
The guy two floors down is neutral. She doesn’t annoy him but he doesn’t see her or hear her enough to have a massive opinion
The guy in the basement is totally in love with her. He looks up at her, yearningly, from his grimy window as she skips down the stoop, heading out
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.
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.
I was punched once in Dumfries for being English by a couple of Neds so my experience might be skewed.
But, I heard a lot of chippy "banter" during my time there, and my accent was often a trigger, so I can't just dismiss it I'm afraid.
One of my sons, when at Lancaster University, was knocked about in a pub for speaking with a south Essex accent!
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.
I was not saying that Love Thy Neighbour (or Alf Garnet) caused racism, but the attitudes of the time had sufficient latitude for racist terms to be used in family sitcoms between 6pm and 9pm. They were in general usage in large parts of society at the time and that will have affected the attitudes and beliefs of those growing up then.
I remember way way before the EU referendum was even a glint in anyone's eye (2010 or thereabouts) a friend of my fiancee arguing in favour of the EU. It was entirely along cultural grounds - "if you're not with the EU then you're basically with America" and had nothing to do with business or economics. And so it was with the referendum, both the pro and the anti side making it entirely about identity and culture, rather than practicalities and economics where the case for the EU really stacks up. Allowing the shift to the much more favourable (For the leave side) identity/culture arguments - which has stuck basically makes rejoining electorally impossible until such time has passed as those forces can win a GE (They can't at the moment hence Starmer's speech). Economics and business has just been binned off by everyone.
The rejoin argument also won't get anywhere while people are still refighting the 2016 referendum.
The campaign to remain in the EU was terrible, the refusal to accept by the 17-19 parliament was worse and salted the earth for any sort of rejoin argument.
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.
I was not saying that Love Thy Neighbour (or Alf Garnet) caused racism, but the attitudes of the time had sufficient latitude for racist terms to be used in family sitcoms between 6pm and 9pm. They were in general usage in large parts of society at the time and that will have affected the attitudes and beliefs of those growing up then.
Don't forget Mind Your Language. Which wasn't even supposed to motivated by anti-racism. Just half an hour laughing at funny foreign stereotypes who couldn't even speak English of a Saturday night.
The EU won’t have us back, we can’t join the SM without EU approval, there’s no Customs Union without being in the EU and the Europeans don’t want the English moving to Europe anyway. So it makes logical sense. We can’t rejoin the SM - it’s impossible.
I think the EU would have us back in a flash. For all their talk of 'appeasing Putin', at this point the EU needs to start facing up to the fact that the biggest challenge coming down the line is the Soviet Union Russian Federation.
Getting the UK back in the fold would do wonders in helping with that. It's why I think we should rejoin EFTA. Piss off Putin.
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.
Well, it also depends on how the next generation is affected by growing up in a Britain outside the EU.
They may come to view the idea of joining the EU as completely alien. They may find it hard to believe that we were ever a member.
I don't think it can be taken for granted that they will all be solidly in favour of joining the EU. Their views are not yet formed.
The future's not ours to see, sure. Not yet, anyway.
But unless the rising generation are as solidly Brexity as the departing generation (and the most recent YouGov has 5 % of 18-24 year olds thinking that the UK was right to leave, 63 % of 65+ voters thinking the UK was right to leave), the total is only going one way.
Brexit as a concept has to run awfully fast, just to stand still. Maybe it will.
Your making the classic mistake of thinking that it’s up to us. The door to the EU has been closed by the Selfish Generation for good. We will never be allowed back. There will be no appetite for more drama from the U.K.
Most English people don’t understand how much we are hated outside our borders. The Europeans don’t want us.
I don't think this is fixed. If you had a decade of a sensible British government cooperating with the EU, and there was evidence that Europhobia in British politics had been defeated and rejected, then I think they'd be only too delighted to welcome us back.
More joy in heaven over a sinner who repents and all that.
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.
Well, it also depends on how the next generation is affected by growing up in a Britain outside the EU.
They may come to view the idea of joining the EU as completely alien. They may find it hard to believe that we were ever a member.
I don't think it can be taken for granted that they will all be solidly in favour of joining the EU. Their views are not yet formed.
The future's not ours to see, sure. Not yet, anyway.
But unless the rising generation are as solidly Brexity as the departing generation (and the most recent YouGov has 5 % of 18-24 year olds thinking that the UK was right to leave, 63 % of 65+ voters thinking the UK was right to leave), the total is only going one way.
Brexit as a concept has to run awfully fast, just to stand still. Maybe it will.
Your making the classic mistake of thinking that it’s up to us. The door to the EU has been closed by the Selfish Generation for good. We will never be allowed back. There will be no appetite for more drama from the U.K.
Most English people don’t understand how much we are hated outside our borders. The Europeans don’t want us.
As an English person who has spent many years living in other EU countries, I find the idea that the English are widely hated on the continent very surprising.
In my experience, most people lost all interest in Brexit some time in 2016, and no doubt have no opinion on Britain rejoining (many aren't sure if Britain has even really left yet or not) - except those who quite like idea because it makes a few things easier. Many governments, and the EU institutions themselves, on the other hand are no doubt going to be solidly against for the foreseeable future - why start that whole mess again?
Morning all! The problem with "just build a lot more houses" is that the developers build for profit rather than need. The country does not need another exclusive development of executive homes. It needs apartment blocks in towns with communal facilities like restaurants and open spaces.
London seems to manage to build these - albeit at "market rates" which means the price is stupid. But little anywhere else. Doesn't help that post Grenfell nobody trusts the industry or the government not to build death traps for profit.
As I have said before the solution is to spin out Housing Associations to commercially build these snazzy apartment blocks who h are never ever up for sale. Increase supply of property people need at prices they can afford, take the lunacy out of the market and rebalance things so that renting - at same prices that don't pay someone else's mortgage - becomes normal as it is in places like Germany.
Have a look at how very large chunks of London were built between 1897 and 1907 - streets laid out, transport and services setup, plots sold off with conditions on the quality and look of the properties to be built. A major difference with today - not selling all the plots in an area to a single developer.
The housing market isn’t a unified whole across the country. People want to stay in “their” area - university mixes people around a bit by forcing hem to live elsewhere for 3 years or so (sometimes). But most people don’t want to move around the country. So if a developer is doing all the development in a radius of a couple of miles, they are close to a monopoly in that sub market. The incentive to slowly add houses to the market becomes obvious..
Much of inner Edinburgh was developed on the same basis as your bits of London, such as the New Town in the C18 and C19. Though it had a Dean of Guild Court that would control proposed development, and changes, in a sort of planning control system. At least in the areas where anyone was likely to complain!
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.
Well, it also depends on how the next generation is affected by growing up in a Britain outside the EU.
They may come to view the idea of joining the EU as completely alien. They may find it hard to believe that we were ever a member.
I don't think it can be taken for granted that they will all be solidly in favour of joining the EU. Their views are not yet formed.
The future's not ours to see, sure. Not yet, anyway.
But unless the rising generation are as solidly Brexity as the departing generation (and the most recent YouGov has 5 % of 18-24 year olds thinking that the UK was right to leave, 63 % of 65+ voters thinking the UK was right to leave), the total is only going one way.
Brexit as a concept has to run awfully fast, just to stand still. Maybe it will.
Your making the classic mistake of thinking that it’s up to us. The door to the EU has been closed by the Selfish Generation for good. We will never be allowed back. There will be no appetite for more drama from the U.K.
Most English people don’t understand how much we are hated outside our borders. The Europeans don’t want us.
I don't think this is fixed. If you had a decade of a sensible British government cooperating with the EU, and there was evidence that Europhobia in British politics had been defeated and rejected, then I think they'd be only too delighted to welcome us back.
More joy in heaven over a sinner who repents and all that.
It would need to be supported cross-party though. They wouldn't have us if they thought we'd be off at the next GE.
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.
That is, I'm afraid, a completely bizarre statement. Why would they veto it?
Because it would allow English voters, MEP’s and Commissioners a say (however small) in Scottish affairs. It would also cement FOM from England to Scotland.
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.
Well, it also depends on how the next generation is affected by growing up in a Britain outside the EU.
They may come to view the idea of joining the EU as completely alien. They may find it hard to believe that we were ever a member.
I don't think it can be taken for granted that they will all be solidly in favour of joining the EU. Their views are not yet formed.
The future's not ours to see, sure. Not yet, anyway.
But unless the rising generation are as solidly Brexity as the departing generation (and the most recent YouGov has 5 % of 18-24 year olds thinking that the UK was right to leave, 63 % of 65+ voters thinking the UK was right to leave), the total is only going one way.
Brexit as a concept has to run awfully fast, just to stand still. Maybe it will.
Your making the classic mistake of thinking that it’s up to us. The door to the EU has been closed by the Selfish Generation for good. We will never be allowed back. There will be no appetite for more drama from the U.K.
Most English people don’t understand how much we are hated outside our borders. The Europeans don’t want us.
I don't think this is fixed. If you had a decade of a sensible British government cooperating with the EU, and there was evidence that Europhobia in British politics had been defeated and rejected, then I think they'd be only too delighted to welcome us back.
More joy in heaven over a sinner who repents and all that.
How do you get over the continental Anglophobia though? Why would they want the English back? The Scots and the Irish are fighting to get out of one Union with us. Why would they want us to join another one?
Mr. Pulpstar, from a pro-EU perspective, not even trying to tack on a second referendum in return for backing May's deal was bizarre.
I said it at the time, but pro-EU MPs marching through the lobbies with anti-EU MPs was crackers. By defeating May, what kind of fool would expect anything other than the Conservatives tacking more sceptical?
For all the attackers of some Leave MPs as being stupid, at least they were voting for what they wanted. Dominic Grieve petulantly shouting it was too late when the Government had offered him exactly what he wanted and he voted against them anyway was not necessarily indicative of making a smart move.
"MPs call for UK ban on two Chinese CCTV cameras that can recognise faces, eavesdrop on conversation and judge a person's mood
A group of 67 MPs and Lords have called for a ban on two Chinese CCTV systems Hikvision and Dahua are currently used in UK councils, schools and police forces But there have been concerns raised that the cameras can recognise faces, eavesdrop on conversations and even judge people's moods"
Fact of the day: More MPs have gone to jail in the last two decades — for dishonesty over their expenses, for perjury, and for sexual offences — than at any time in the last 200 years.
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.
Well, it also depends on how the next generation is affected by growing up in a Britain outside the EU.
They may come to view the idea of joining the EU as completely alien. They may find it hard to believe that we were ever a member.
I don't think it can be taken for granted that they will all be solidly in favour of joining the EU. Their views are not yet formed.
The future's not ours to see, sure. Not yet, anyway.
But unless the rising generation are as solidly Brexity as the departing generation (and the most recent YouGov has 5 % of 18-24 year olds thinking that the UK was right to leave, 63 % of 65+ voters thinking the UK was right to leave), the total is only going one way.
Brexit as a concept has to run awfully fast, just to stand still. Maybe it will.
Your making the classic mistake of thinking that it’s up to us. The door to the EU has been closed by the Selfish Generation for good. We will never be allowed back. There will be no appetite for more drama from the U.K.
Most English people don’t understand how much we are hated outside our borders. The Europeans don’t want us.
Hating a nation for a geo political choice of that nature would be astoundingly dumb. I think better of the EU than you.
I dont think they would want is back unless it was all in and irreversible, but hate? Pile of nonsense.
Fact of the day: More MPs have gone to jail in the last two decades — for dishonesty over their expenses, for perjury, and for sexual offences — than at any time in the last 200 years.
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.
Well, it also depends on how the next generation is affected by growing up in a Britain outside the EU.
They may come to view the idea of joining the EU as completely alien. They may find it hard to believe that we were ever a member.
I don't think it can be taken for granted that they will all be solidly in favour of joining the EU. Their views are not yet formed.
The future's not ours to see, sure. Not yet, anyway.
But unless the rising generation are as solidly Brexity as the departing generation (and the most recent YouGov has 5 % of 18-24 year olds thinking that the UK was right to leave, 63 % of 65+ voters thinking the UK was right to leave), the total is only going one way.
Brexit as a concept has to run awfully fast, just to stand still. Maybe it will.
The core problem for Brexit with the younger generation is that it is associated in most of their minds with boring prejudiced and dishonest old farts like Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson. This is not just an emotional correlation, but one born out by facts.
Fact of the day: More MPs have gone to jail in the last two decades — for dishonesty over their expenses, for perjury, and for sexual offences — than at any time in the last 200 years.
Better they are getting caught I guess.
Has Yoda taken over your speech pattern? Good point though!
Can we please try and be more civil towards one another?
If you don't, I'll be forced to remind you that I had another green weekend and tipped both the top 2 drivers pre-practice at double digit odds. And you wouldn't want that now, would you?
[As I said before, I've put a tiny sum on Russell at 19 each way. Less confident of this than earlier Perez/Sainz bets but I was surprised by how good the Mercedes was in the race].
Interesting that Hunt doesn't just lose against everyone. He's absolutely crushed. Does this kill his chances among MPs as well?
Hunt scores as if he's George Osborne redux, which I think is unfair.
I don't have any doubts in my mind about him but people suspect he's a secret Remainer.
Most Tories MPs are "secret remainers". The majority of them are not as thick as Nadine. They simply pretend to believe in it for their child like activists. It is a bit like a grown up fibbing to their children about Father Christmas. They see it as a white lie.
Interesting that Hunt doesn't just lose against everyone. He's absolutely crushed. Does this kill his chances among MPs as well?
Hunt scores as if he's George Osborne redux, which I think is unfair.
I don't have any doubts in my mind about him but people suspect he's a secret Remainer.
Most Tories MPs are "secret remainers". The majority of them are not as thick as Nadine. They simply pretend to believe in it for their child like activists. It is a bit like a grown up fibbing to their children about Father Christmas. They see it as a white lie.
I’m afraid your impression of Tory MPs is a decade out. They are as thick as fossilised pig shit.
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.
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.
Off there right now actually. Will report back.
Golfing?
Lakes then my sis in Dumf + Gall then St Andrews for Open. Quite a packed itinerary.
Sir Keir Starmer will on Monday signal that Labour is willing to fight Boris Johnson over his Brexit legacy at the next election, setting out a five-point plan to tackle the economic pain caused by Britain’s EU exit.
In a big tactical shift, Starmer will use a speech to denounce the “mess” created by the UK prime minister’s 2020 Brexit deal and the breakdown of trust with the EU caused by the row over the trading arrangements for Northern Ireland.
The Labour leader has until now shied away from talking about Brexit, fearing it would alienate Leave voters, but he has been emboldened by emerging evidence of the hit the departure has inflicted on the economy.
He will claim that Labour can “make Brexit work”, arguing that Johnson’s Brexit deal had contributed to a sense of a country that was “stuck”, with wages and growth stagnating and broken public services.
...
“Nothing about revisiting those rows will help stimulate growth or bring down food prices or help British business thrive in the modern world — it would simply be a recipe for more division,” he will say.
Labour would seek a veterinary agreement with the EU to cut onerous agrifood checks, mutual recognition of product standards and a deal on mobility to facilitate short business trips and help artists tour in Europe.
Starmer would use the agrifood deal to remove most checks on trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland and negotiate a trusted trader scheme to end the stand-off with Brussels over the rules, contained in the part of the Brexit deal called the Northern Ireland Protocol.
So he’s saying he will accept the EU’s proposal then?
To paraphrase Tony Blair, what matters is what works. What does it matter whose proposal this is? What we have now does not work. So we fix it.
It works for the EU not the UK.
They are demanding dynamic alignment.
If the EU stuck to their agreement on a sensible trusted trader scheme this would all be resolved
As we do not stick to agreements there can be no trusted trader scheme. We cannot be trusted. A new government can fix this. And again, we are aligned to the EEA and we will remain so. We have abandoned - permanently - the plan to have different standards and maintain a difference. With no ability to check anything coming into the GB from the EU a different standards regime is a fantasy. What they do we will get. By default.
De facto is different to de jure
If you accept dynamic alignment you create a massive strategic vulnerability
And we can be trusted to keep to agreements. The issue is the EU is refusing to discuss the implementation of the current agreement in good faith
The problem with that argument is that with Bozo and co in charge we can't be trusted to keep to agreements.
I am not a fan of the current PM.
But we are in a situation where:
- the current agreement is not being adhered to by the EU (good faith discussions on trusted trader) - They are insisting on the stop gap solution (the protocol) which was not intended to be permanent - The protocol is proving to be damaging to the Belfast Agreement - The view of HMG is the Belfast Agreement is more important
If you accept the above (and, IMHO, 2&4 are factual statements) then you have 3 choices:
- you accept the EU position regardless of the fact it is bad faith - You implement Article 16 and try for arbitration - You overturn the protocol and implement a reasonable settlement
1 is impossible, 2 would be time consuming and likely ineffective (it’s been a while since I read the protocol but I’m assuming it’s not *binding arbitration*) and so the government is trying for 3. I suspect it is hoping that the threat of 3 is sufficient…
Sir Keir Starmer will on Monday signal that Labour is willing to fight Boris Johnson over his Brexit legacy at the next election, setting out a five-point plan to tackle the economic pain caused by Britain’s EU exit.
In a big tactical shift, Starmer will use a speech to denounce the “mess” created by the UK prime minister’s 2020 Brexit deal and the breakdown of trust with the EU caused by the row over the trading arrangements for Northern Ireland.
The Labour leader has until now shied away from talking about Brexit, fearing it would alienate Leave voters, but he has been emboldened by emerging evidence of the hit the departure has inflicted on the economy.
He will claim that Labour can “make Brexit work”, arguing that Johnson’s Brexit deal had contributed to a sense of a country that was “stuck”, with wages and growth stagnating and broken public services.
...
“Nothing about revisiting those rows will help stimulate growth or bring down food prices or help British business thrive in the modern world — it would simply be a recipe for more division,” he will say.
Labour would seek a veterinary agreement with the EU to cut onerous agrifood checks, mutual recognition of product standards and a deal on mobility to facilitate short business trips and help artists tour in Europe.
Starmer would use the agrifood deal to remove most checks on trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland and negotiate a trusted trader scheme to end the stand-off with Brussels over the rules, contained in the part of the Brexit deal called the Northern Ireland Protocol.
So he’s saying he will accept the EU’s proposal then?
To paraphrase Tony Blair, what matters is what works. What does it matter whose proposal this is? What we have now does not work. So we fix it.
It works for the EU not the UK.
They are demanding dynamic alignment.
If the EU stuck to their agreement on a sensible trusted trader scheme this would all be resolved
As we do not stick to agreements there can be no trusted trader scheme. We cannot be trusted. A new government can fix this. And again, we are aligned to the EEA and we will remain so. We have abandoned - permanently - the plan to have different standards and maintain a difference. With no ability to check anything coming into the GB from the EU a different standards regime is a fantasy. What they do we will get. By default.
De facto is different to de jure
If you accept dynamic alignment you create a massive strategic vulnerability
And we can be trusted to keep to agreements. The issue is the EU is refusing to discuss the implementation of the current agreement in good faith
Laughable
You made a statement and I challenged it. You provided no evidence your statement
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.
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.
I was punched once in Dumfries for being English by a couple of Neds so my experience might be skewed.
But, I heard a lot of chippy "banter" during my time there, and my accent was often a trigger, so I can't just dismiss it I'm afraid.
One of my sons, when at Lancaster University, was knocked about in a pub for speaking with a south Essex accent!
You weaselly arsehole Dougseal insulting me again. Shitface it is you that is hated not anything to do with being English. You are a whining , snivelling , cretinous arsewipe of the first order. Go F**k yourself you ignorant pompous little shit for brains creep. @DougSeal
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.
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.
I was punched once in Dumfries for being English by a couple of Neds so my experience might be skewed.
But, I heard a lot of chippy "banter" during my time there, and my accent was often a trigger, so I can't just dismiss it I'm afraid.
One of my sons, when at Lancaster University, was knocked about in a pub for speaking with a south Essex accent!
You weaselly arsehole Dougseal insulting me again. Shitface it is you that is hated not anything to do with being English. You are a whining , snivelling , cretinous arsewipe of the first order. Go F**k yourself you ignorant pompous little shit for brains creep. @DougSeal
Comments
Rishi Sunak: 31 per cent.
Nadhim Zahawi: 43 per cent.
Don’t know: 25 per cent.
(771 votes cast)
–
Rishi Sunak: 35 per cent.
Liz Truss: 50 per cent.
Don’t know: 18 per cent.
(771 votes cast)
–
Rishi Sunak: 33 per cent.
Penny Mordaunt: 58 per cent.
Don’t know: 19 per cent.
(773 votes cast)
–
Rishi Sunak: 25 per cent.
Ben Wallace: 59 per cent.
Don’t know: 16 per cent.
(774 votes cast)
https://conservativehome.com/2022/07/04/next-tory-leader-play-offs-sixth-rishi-sunak/
1. UK will not rejoin EU
2. UK will not join single market
3. UK will not join customs union
4. No return of freedom of movement
They may come to view the idea of joining the EU as completely alien. They may find it hard to believe that we were ever a member.
I don't think it can be taken for granted that they will all be solidly in favour of joining the EU. Their views are not yet formed.
No journalist mutterings yet on his fate, The Sun however saying they understand nothing from Durham Police likely today
Many of my male friends spent two years they didn't like in Germany doing their national service, where they were not encouraged to fraternise with the locals.
If you accept dynamic alignment you create a massive strategic vulnerability
And we can be trusted to keep to agreements. The issue is the EU is refusing to discuss the implementation of the current agreement in good faith
Haff the Leavers approved of three of those.
Huge opportunity for the Lib Dems Greens and Scot Nats
Which means Labour can focus on how crap Brexit has been implemented and Bozo can't change the topic towards future differences....
I was tempted to tell him that DALL-E 2 could produce better and more interesting images of the Scottish coast than his in 5 seconds… which is true… however I then considered how I will feel when GPT6 starts 3D printing perfect flint sex toys
I will probably be a sad angry revulsion as my creative purpose is ended. Like him
Allowing the shift to the much more favourable (For the leave side) identity/culture arguments - which has stuck basically makes rejoining electorally impossible until such time has passed as those forces can win a GE (They can't at the moment hence Starmer's speech). Economics and business has just been binned off by everyone.
But unless the rising generation are as solidly Brexity as the departing generation (and the most recent YouGov has 5 % of 18-24 year olds thinking that the UK was right to leave, 63 % of 65+ voters thinking the UK was right to leave), the total is only going one way.
Brexit as a concept has to run awfully fast, just to stand still. Maybe it will.
"NHS: you have been in close contact with someone who has recently tested positive for the omicron variant. You are required to order a test kit via: omicron.id -80.com."
Needless to say I haven't!
Most English people don’t understand how much we are hated outside our borders. The Europeans don’t want us.
The housing market isn’t a unified whole across the country. People want to stay in “their” area - university mixes people around a bit by forcing hem to live elsewhere for 3 years or so (sometimes). But most people don’t want to move around the country. So if a developer is doing all the development in a radius of a couple of miles, they are close to a monopoly in that sub market. The incentive to slowly add houses to the market becomes obvious..
It seems the conservatives and labour are on much the same page not only on this, but also Indyref2
I would support a return to the single market but it seems it is a distant dream for those wanting a closer relationship and certainly re-joining is off the agenda for the forceable future
Why promise something you can’t deliver. The Iraq War was an event, not an institution, and he could oppose it with no consequences.
I don't have any doubts in my mind about him but people suspect he's a secret Remainer.
They did. Johnson and Farage had just 2 votes between them, not 17.4 million.
But, I heard a lot of chippy "banter" during my time there, and my accent was often a trigger, so I can't just dismiss it I'm afraid.
Martin Amis has a great riff in London Fields when he describes the relationship between a hot single girl in a converted house of flats where she has the top flat
Amis says the guy in the flat right beneath her hates her, because of the noise she makes, the music and dancing, AND he can hear her screwing other men
The guy two floors down is neutral. She doesn’t annoy him but he doesn’t see her or hear her enough to have a massive opinion
The guy in the basement is totally in love with her. He looks up at her, yearningly, from his grimy window as she skips down the stoop, heading out
I’ve often wondered if countries are the same
Just half an hour laughing at funny foreign stereotypes who couldn't even speak English of a Saturday night.
For all their talk of 'appeasing Putin', at this point the EU needs to start facing up to the fact that the biggest challenge coming down the line is the
Soviet UnionRussian Federation.Getting the UK back in the fold would do wonders in helping with that.
It's why I think we should rejoin EFTA. Piss off Putin.
More joy in heaven over a sinner who repents and all that.
In my experience, most people lost all interest in Brexit some time in 2016, and no doubt have no opinion on Britain rejoining (many aren't sure if Britain has even really left yet or not) - except those who quite like idea because it makes a few things easier.
Many governments, and the EU institutions themselves, on the other hand are no doubt going to be solidly against for the foreseeable future - why start that whole mess again?
They wouldn't have us if they thought we'd be off at the next GE.
I said it at the time, but pro-EU MPs marching through the lobbies with anti-EU MPs was crackers. By defeating May, what kind of fool would expect anything other than the Conservatives tacking more sceptical?
For all the attackers of some Leave MPs as being stupid, at least they were voting for what they wanted. Dominic Grieve petulantly shouting it was too late when the Government had offered him exactly what he wanted and he voted against them anyway was not necessarily indicative of making a smart move.
A group of 67 MPs and Lords have called for a ban on two Chinese CCTV systems
Hikvision and Dahua are currently used in UK councils, schools and police forces
But there have been concerns raised that the cameras can recognise faces, eavesdrop on conversations and even judge people's moods"
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-10979931/MPs-call-UK-ban-two-Chinese-CCTV-cameras-eavesdrop-conversation.html
I dont think they would want is back unless it was all in and irreversible, but hate? Pile of nonsense.
If you don't, I'll be forced to remind you that I had another green weekend and tipped both the top 2 drivers pre-practice at double digit odds. And you wouldn't want that now, would you?
[As I said before, I've put a tiny sum on Russell at 19 each way. Less confident of this than earlier Perez/Sainz bets but I was surprised by how good the Mercedes was in the race].
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/chinese-ai-can-check-loyalty-of-party-members-92d97hgwv
But we are in a situation where:
- the current agreement is not being adhered to by the EU (good faith discussions on trusted trader)
- They are insisting on the stop gap solution (the protocol) which was not intended to be permanent
- The protocol is proving to be damaging to the Belfast Agreement
- The view of HMG is the Belfast Agreement is more important
If you accept the above (and, IMHO, 2&4 are factual statements) then you have 3 choices:
- you accept the EU position regardless of the fact it is bad faith
- You implement Article 16 and try for arbitration
- You overturn the protocol and implement a reasonable settlement
1 is impossible, 2 would be time consuming and likely ineffective (it’s been a while since I read the protocol but I’m assuming it’s not *binding arbitration*) and so the government is trying for 3. I suspect it is hoping that the threat of 3 is sufficient…