Mauritius is crying crocodile tears over BIOT. Boris is right: look at a map. They are over 1,200 miles away. The Maldives or Seychelles would have a better claim, and that wouldn't be a good one either.
They want the fishing grounds and hate the MPA around it, which the Royal Navy occasionally police. So if the UK have decided to dance on leaseback then I suspect this is actually about alliance building in the Indian Ocean area. The UN vote is meaningless - people forget the sort of states actually in the UN and how they are bought and corralled by China. Fascinating that it was the African Union that initiated it.
The base is a strategic one and absolutely needed given China's ambitions to colonise every reef and atoll in the area.
So it will be kept come what may.
The Chagos Islands were part of the Crown Colony of Mauritius - so regardless of their distance from anywhere the British themselves considered the territories to be linked until they were forced to give up their control of Mauritius in 1968. At that time the British clung onto the Seychelles and the Chagos Islands. The Seychelles were later granted independence and the Chagossians were ethnically cleansed from their homeland in a Stalin-style forced population transfer so we could suck up to the Americans, the new big boys in the neighbourhood. Most of the exiled Chagossians have ended up in either Mauritius of the Seychelles - so again you can see why Mauritius might consider it their business. An utterly shameful affair. Very hard to imagine the white Falkland Islanders ever getting the same kind of treatment.
"They" - you are British.
Watch your mouth.
And I thought it was the left who were policing people's pronouns!
"Watch your mouth"? Bit early in the day for this kind of fighty talk, no?
No patriot refers to their country in the third party as if it has nothing to do with them.
It's a subtle tell. You should use "we".
All it tells you is that I've lived abroad for much of my working life and even in London most of my colleagues aren't British, so when I talk about Britain there is no assumption of "we" with respect to my audience. If I'm making a purely factual statement about the British state's actions or behaviour I'll refer to Britain. If I'm making a more subjective point about shared responsibility I'll say "we" like I did in the very comment you are referring to. You don't own patriotism - you don't even seem to like much of this country particularly - and you certainly have earned no right to lecture me on patriotism or tell me what I can or cannot say.
That makes you an enemy of the people in their eyes, like, erm, that judge who was a (whisper it) GAY.
Wasn’t he “blatantly” or “openly” gay, that particular judge?
I've never once stopped to wonder how big or small my grandfathers' penises were.
I sort of think that I'm on the "normal" side of this particular divide, but I really can't be sure.
I bet you have the tiniest penis on here.
It comes across with every post that you write.
Ever tried to measure a flatworm? Any zoologist knows that the statement of the length of something with a hydraulic endoskeleton has to be bound about with caveats and specifications.
I am routinely resiled as a Britain hater on here, but I’m about the only poster - apart from SeanF - who thinks the British Empire was pretty cool, all things considered.
I suspect the die was cast in the 1890s with the collapse of Home Rule for Ireland.
TBF one might rightly complain about some foreigners coming over, and insisting on operating your railways to suot themselves, and taking the profits out of the country. Even if the train service improved. As in India (which was n ot hard as there were zero railways anywhere at the relevant time of the UK takeover, the Tranent and Cockenzie Waggonway, Little Eaton Gangway, and similar operations aside).
It's just a shame that the PB rightwingers haven't quite cottoned on to the comparison with the current state of the realm.
Mauritius is crying crocodile tears over BIOT. Boris is right: look at a map. They are over 1,200 miles away. The Maldives or Seychelles would have a better claim, and that wouldn't be a good one either.
They want the fishing grounds and hate the MPA around it, which the Royal Navy occasionally police. So if the UK have decided to dance on leaseback then I suspect this is actually about alliance building in the Indian Ocean area. The UN vote is meaningless - people forget the sort of states actually in the UN and how they are bought and corralled by China. Fascinating that it was the African Union that initiated it.
The base is a strategic one and absolutely needed given China's ambitions to colonise every reef and atoll in the area.
So it will be kept come what may.
The Chagos Islands were part of the Crown Colony of Mauritius - so regardless of their distance from anywhere the British themselves considered the territories to be linked until they were forced to give up their control of Mauritius in 1968. At that time the British clung onto the Seychelles and the Chagos Islands. The Seychelles were later granted independence and the Chagossians were ethnically cleansed from their homeland in a Stalin-style forced population transfer so we could suck up to the Americans, the new big boys in the neighbourhood. Most of the exiled Chagossians have ended up in either Mauritius of the Seychelles - so again you can see why Mauritius might consider it their business. An utterly shameful affair. Very hard to imagine the white Falkland Islanders ever getting the same kind of treatment.
For way less than the cost of the Falklands War we could have bought all the islanders farms in the highlands of Wales and Scotland and given them each a load of sheep and they could have continued their lifestyle with better weather if fewer penguins. But, of course, despite what we were told it was never about the people living on the islands, but about the likelihood of oil beneath the seas all around.
No, it's about them allowing to live on the only islands they've ever called home and choose their own way of life.
So, quite a lot like the Chagos then?
I've never said the Chagos weren't badly treated. Nor that they shouldn't return.
It's the naïve self-flaggelating Britain haters (like you) who I'm calling out.
It seems to me it is the right who hate Britain, its peoples and institutions.
Being a patriot doesn't stop me being critical of the crimes of empire. This one within my lifetime.
The fact that the Chagossians were deported to Mauritius says to me that we understood the islands to be part of Mauritius.
I've never heard you saying a patriotic thing in your life.
I'm all ears.
You have clearly not been paying attention!
I have often extolled a different sort of patriotism to yours, the English radical tradition that goes back to Pelagius, continues through the Lollards, the folk tales of Robin Hood, the Puritan reformers of the 16th and 17th Centuries, the Levellers, the Diggers, the abolitionists, Peterloo, the Chartists, Corbett, Captain Swing, the Trade Unions, the factory reformers, the city leaders that built the civic institutions of our industrial cities, the Labour Party, Clement Attlee, etc etc.
"A different sort of patriotism" - in other words, celebrating all the Lefties in history. And only them.
Patriotism isn't partisan, like you seem to think it is; it's agnostic and about backing your country and people.
That's why I'd back Atlee in a corner as well as Churchill.
It's interesting that you see the Puritans, the Abolitionists, the factory reformers and civic fathers (I had in mind Joe Chamberlain and the like) as left wingers.
If you want a more recent example of a right wing Prime Minister that I am proud of, I would cite Harold MacMillain, who saw the winds of change and liberated the Empire, while consolidating the welfare state, and building more council houses per year than any other postwar PM.
So, you like Harold Macmillan because he was actually rather left-wing?
Got it!
Macmillan was driven by the conditions he'd seen in Stockton in the thirties. As I understood it he felt that it was the duty of the patrician to ensure that the plebs were properly housed and fed.
Also influenced by his experience fighting, and being wounded on the Western Front. He was undeniably upper class, but had a sense of social solidarity and fellow feeling that we don't see much of in the modern Conservative Party.
Disobliging knobs have entirely supplanted noblesse oblige..
Genuine problem for the political Right, even if (overall) we're right about the facts of life.
We do need an answer to the question "what happens to the losers in life's game?" And the most effective way to generate those answers is to have had direct experience of being poked with the shitty end of the stick through no fault of your own for a bit.
For a long time, wartime experience did that job. Then Major had compassion born of experience. Cameron had his experiences with his son. May had her vicarage upbringing (vicarious experience, but a start).
Without that, the Conservatives risk becoming a club for self made men where they worship their own creators. Rishi, on particular, does give off "why don't you all become hedge fund millionaires- it's easy" vibes.
We need that optimism, we need people like that. But it's not a basis to run an entire nation.
People who are rich and successful have a remarkable if perhaps predictable ability to attribute their success entirely to talent and hard work; the thought that they might have been picked out almost randomly as winners in life's lottery, perhaps by birth or contacts or plain chance, doesn't seem to appeal to them.
Possibly why Gove, even when he's wrong or being compulsively sneaky, is usually interesting. He's aware of the Sliding Doors moment in his life
I am routinely resiled as a Britain hater on here, but I’m about the only poster - apart from SeanF - who thinks the British Empire was pretty cool, all things considered.
I suspect the die was cast in the 1890s with the collapse of Home Rule for Ireland.
I think you’re right. Cecil Rhodes was himself a Home Ruler.
In the end, though, I think that democracy and nationalism are the destroyers of empires. Having these things at home, but not in the colonies, becomes unsustainable.
That, and the fact that these days, it’s much more cost-effective to get the goods you need through trading, rather than by occupying territory.
Mauritius is crying crocodile tears over BIOT. Boris is right: look at a map. They are over 1,200 miles away. The Maldives or Seychelles would have a better claim, and that wouldn't be a good one either.
They want the fishing grounds and hate the MPA around it, which the Royal Navy occasionally police. So if the UK have decided to dance on leaseback then I suspect this is actually about alliance building in the Indian Ocean area. The UN vote is meaningless - people forget the sort of states actually in the UN and how they are bought and corralled by China. Fascinating that it was the African Union that initiated it.
The base is a strategic one and absolutely needed given China's ambitions to colonise every reef and atoll in the area.
So it will be kept come what may.
The Chagos Islands were part of the Crown Colony of Mauritius - so regardless of their distance from anywhere the British themselves considered the territories to be linked until they were forced to give up their control of Mauritius in 1968. At that time the British clung onto the Seychelles and the Chagos Islands. The Seychelles were later granted independence and the Chagossians were ethnically cleansed from their homeland in a Stalin-style forced population transfer so we could suck up to the Americans, the new big boys in the neighbourhood. Most of the exiled Chagossians have ended up in either Mauritius of the Seychelles - so again you can see why Mauritius might consider it their business. An utterly shameful affair. Very hard to imagine the white Falkland Islanders ever getting the same kind of treatment.
For way less than the cost of the Falklands War we could have bought all the islanders farms in the highlands of Wales and Scotland and given them each a load of sheep and they could have continued their lifestyle with better weather if fewer penguins. But, of course, despite what we were told it was never about the people living on the islands, but about the likelihood of oil beneath the seas all around.
No, it's about them allowing to live on the only islands they've ever called home and choose their own way of life.
So, quite a lot like the Chagos then?
I've never said the Chagos weren't badly treated. Nor that they shouldn't return.
It's the naïve self-flaggelating Britain haters (like you) who I'm calling out.
It seems to me it is the right who hate Britain, its peoples and institutions.
Being a patriot doesn't stop me being critical of the crimes of empire. This one within my lifetime.
The fact that the Chagossians were deported to Mauritius says to me that we understood the islands to be part of Mauritius.
I've never heard you saying a patriotic thing in your life.
I'm all ears.
You have clearly not been paying attention!
I have often extolled a different sort of patriotism to yours, the English radical tradition that goes back to Pelagius, continues through the Lollards, the folk tales of Robin Hood, the Puritan reformers of the 16th and 17th Centuries, the Levellers, the Diggers, the abolitionists, Peterloo, the Chartists, Corbett, Captain Swing, the Trade Unions, the factory reformers, the city leaders that built the civic institutions of our industrial cities, the Labour Party, Clement Attlee, etc etc.
"A different sort of patriotism" - in other words, celebrating all the Lefties in history. And only them.
Patriotism isn't partisan, like you seem to think it is; it's agnostic and about backing your country and people.
That's why I'd back Atlee in a corner as well as Churchill.
It's interesting that you see the Puritans, the Abolitionists, the factory reformers and civic fathers (I had in mind Joe Chamberlain and the like) as left wingers.
If you want a more recent example of a right wing Prime Minister that I am proud of, I would cite Harold MacMillain, who saw the winds of change and liberated the Empire, while consolidating the welfare state, and building more council houses per year than any other postwar PM.
So, you like Harold Macmillan because he was actually rather left-wing?
Got it!
Macmillan was driven by the conditions he'd seen in Stockton in the thirties. As I understood it he felt that it was the duty of the patrician to ensure that the plebs were properly housed and fed.
Also influenced by his experience fighting, and being wounded on the Western Front. He was undeniably upper class, but had a sense of social solidarity and fellow feeling that we don't see much of in the modern Conservative Party.
Disobliging knobs have entirely supplanted noblesse oblige..
Genuine problem for the political Right, even if (overall) we're right about the facts of life.
We do need an answer to the question "what happens to the losers in life's game?" And the most effective way to generate those answers is to have had direct experience of being poked with the shitty end of the stick through no fault of your own for a bit.
For a long time, wartime experience did that job. Then Major had compassion born of experience. Cameron had his experiences with his son. May had her vicarage upbringing (vicarious experience, but a start).
Without that, the Conservatives risk becoming a club for self made men where they worship their own creators. Rishi, on particular, does give off "why don't you all become hedge fund millionaires- it's easy" vibes.
We need that optimism, we need people like that. But it's not a basis to run an entire nation.
People who are rich and successful have a remarkable if perhaps predictable ability to attribute their success entirely to talent and hard work; the thought that they might have been picked out almost randomly as winners in life's lottery, perhaps by birth or contacts or plain chance, doesn't seem to appeal to them.
Possibly why Gove, even when he's wrong or being compulsively sneaky, is usually interesting. He's aware of the Sliding Doors moment in his life
"A different sort of patriotism" - in other words, celebrating all the Lefties in history. And only them.
Patriotism isn't partisan, like you seem to think it is; it's agnostic and about backing your country and people.
That's why I'd back Atlee in a corner as well as Churchill.
I agree it should be non-partisan, and it's natural to support your side in sport etc.. But affection for familiar surroundings shouldn't extend to bias. I wouldn't back my country unless I felt it was right, would you? Say our cricket team was accused of nefarious manipulation of the ball - would you support it anyway, or dismiss the allegation out of hand?
Mauritius is crying crocodile tears over BIOT. Boris is right: look at a map. They are over 1,200 miles away. The Maldives or Seychelles would have a better claim, and that wouldn't be a good one either.
They want the fishing grounds and hate the MPA around it, which the Royal Navy occasionally police. So if the UK have decided to dance on leaseback then I suspect this is actually about alliance building in the Indian Ocean area. The UN vote is meaningless - people forget the sort of states actually in the UN and how they are bought and corralled by China. Fascinating that it was the African Union that initiated it.
The base is a strategic one and absolutely needed given China's ambitions to colonise every reef and atoll in the area.
So it will be kept come what may.
The Chagos Islands were part of the Crown Colony of Mauritius - so regardless of their distance from anywhere the British themselves considered the territories to be linked until they were forced to give up their control of Mauritius in 1968. At that time the British clung onto the Seychelles and the Chagos Islands. The Seychelles were later granted independence and the Chagossians were ethnically cleansed from their homeland in a Stalin-style forced population transfer so we could suck up to the Americans, the new big boys in the neighbourhood. Most of the exiled Chagossians have ended up in either Mauritius of the Seychelles - so again you can see why Mauritius might consider it their business. An utterly shameful affair. Very hard to imagine the white Falkland Islanders ever getting the same kind of treatment.
For way less than the cost of the Falklands War we could have bought all the islanders farms in the highlands of Wales and Scotland and given them each a load of sheep and they could have continued their lifestyle with better weather if fewer penguins. But, of course, despite what we were told it was never about the people living on the islands, but about the likelihood of oil beneath the seas all around.
No, it's about them allowing to live on the only islands they've ever called home and choose their own way of life.
So, quite a lot like the Chagos then?
I've never said the Chagos weren't badly treated. Nor that they shouldn't return.
It's the naïve self-flaggelating Britain haters (like you) who I'm calling out.
It seems to me it is the right who hate Britain, its peoples and institutions.
Being a patriot doesn't stop me being critical of the crimes of empire. This one within my lifetime.
The fact that the Chagossians were deported to Mauritius says to me that we understood the islands to be part of Mauritius.
I've never heard you saying a patriotic thing in your life.
I'm all ears.
You have clearly not been paying attention!
I have often extolled a different sort of patriotism to yours, the English radical tradition that goes back to Pelagius, continues through the Lollards, the folk tales of Robin Hood, the Puritan reformers of the 16th and 17th Centuries, the Levellers, the Diggers, the abolitionists, Peterloo, the Chartists, Corbett, Captain Swing, the Trade Unions, the factory reformers, the city leaders that built the civic institutions of our industrial cities, the Labour Party, Clement Attlee, etc etc.
"A different sort of patriotism" - in other words, celebrating all the Lefties in history. And only them.
Patriotism isn't partisan, like you seem to think it is; it's agnostic and about backing your country and people.
That's why I'd back Atlee in a corner as well as Churchill.
It's interesting that you see the Puritans, the Abolitionists, the factory reformers and civic fathers (I had in mind Joe Chamberlain and the like) as left wingers.
If you want a more recent example of a right wing Prime Minister that I am proud of, I would cite Harold MacMillain, who saw the winds of change and liberated the Empire, while consolidating the welfare state, and building more council houses per year than any other postwar PM.
The Puritans don't fit easily into left or right. They're more like the rulers of Iran.
The Puritans are responsible for the fact that a lot of British people today walk around with miserable looks on their faces, whereas the same kinds of people in places like Spain, Italy, Portugal are happier, or at least appear happier.
One thing I've, reluctantly, noticed recently is just how tubby British men are - even the young ones, who sort of hide it with larger polos/sweatshirts, beards and a casual demeanour.
It seems that young women are slightly better at keeping it under control, certainly to how I remember 10-15 years ago, so not quite sure what's happened here.
I noticed the exact same phenomenon in France, last week. Paunchy young men. Stats confirm that the French are indeed chubbing out
They can’t be very appealing to young women. They have smaller penises, lower testosterone, bigger guts, lower IQs, and less earning power - than their fathers and grandfathers
Of course, compared to all the sad lonely semi-retired or unemployed/unemployable lefty men on here - who have nothing better to do than inhabit this blog for Guardian mutual wanks 18-hourd a day, day-in, day-out
See what I mean about rightwingers hating Britons?
I hate Britons who hate themselves and us, and are rather pathetic and desperate about how they go about it.
This really isn't hard, Foxy.
Learn it.
I hate no one, least of all my own people and country.
It is you with the anger and hate issues. You need to chill a bit and take a bit more pleasure in the beautiful variety of modern Britain.
Mauritius is crying crocodile tears over BIOT. Boris is right: look at a map. They are over 1,200 miles away. The Maldives or Seychelles would have a better claim, and that wouldn't be a good one either.
They want the fishing grounds and hate the MPA around it, which the Royal Navy occasionally police. So if the UK have decided to dance on leaseback then I suspect this is actually about alliance building in the Indian Ocean area. The UN vote is meaningless - people forget the sort of states actually in the UN and how they are bought and corralled by China. Fascinating that it was the African Union that initiated it.
The base is a strategic one and absolutely needed given China's ambitions to colonise every reef and atoll in the area.
So it will be kept come what may.
The Chagos Islands were part of the Crown Colony of Mauritius - so regardless of their distance from anywhere the British themselves considered the territories to be linked until they were forced to give up their control of Mauritius in 1968. At that time the British clung onto the Seychelles and the Chagos Islands. The Seychelles were later granted independence and the Chagossians were ethnically cleansed from their homeland in a Stalin-style forced population transfer so we could suck up to the Americans, the new big boys in the neighbourhood. Most of the exiled Chagossians have ended up in either Mauritius of the Seychelles - so again you can see why Mauritius might consider it their business. An utterly shameful affair. Very hard to imagine the white Falkland Islanders ever getting the same kind of treatment.
For way less than the cost of the Falklands War we could have bought all the islanders farms in the highlands of Wales and Scotland and given them each a load of sheep and they could have continued their lifestyle with better weather if fewer penguins. But, of course, despite what we were told it was never about the people living on the islands, but about the likelihood of oil beneath the seas all around.
No, it's about them allowing to live on the only islands they've ever called home and choose their own way of life.
So, quite a lot like the Chagos then?
I've never said the Chagos weren't badly treated. Nor that they shouldn't return.
It's the naïve self-flaggelating Britain haters (like you) who I'm calling out.
It seems to me it is the right who hate Britain, its peoples and institutions.
Being a patriot doesn't stop me being critical of the crimes of empire. This one within my lifetime.
The fact that the Chagossians were deported to Mauritius says to me that we understood the islands to be part of Mauritius.
I've never heard you saying a patriotic thing in your life.
I'm all ears.
You have clearly not been paying attention!
I have often extolled a different sort of patriotism to yours, the English radical tradition that goes back to Pelagius, continues through the Lollards, the folk tales of Robin Hood, the Puritan reformers of the 16th and 17th Centuries, the Levellers, the Diggers, the abolitionists, Peterloo, the Chartists, Corbett, Captain Swing, the Trade Unions, the factory reformers, the city leaders that built the civic institutions of our industrial cities, the Labour Party, Clement Attlee, etc etc.
"A different sort of patriotism" - in other words, celebrating all the Lefties in history. And only them.
Patriotism isn't partisan, like you seem to think it is; it's agnostic and about backing your country and people.
That's why I'd back Atlee in a corner as well as Churchill.
It's interesting that you see the Puritans, the Abolitionists, the factory reformers and civic fathers (I had in mind Joe Chamberlain and the like) as left wingers.
If you want a more recent example of a right wing Prime Minister that I am proud of, I would cite Harold MacMillain, who saw the winds of change and liberated the Empire, while consolidating the welfare state, and building more council houses per year than any other postwar PM.
So, you like Harold Macmillan because he was actually rather left-wing?
Got it!
Macmillan was driven by the conditions he'd seen in Stockton in the thirties. As I understood it he felt that it was the duty of the patrician to ensure that the plebs were properly housed and fed.
Also influenced by his experience fighting, and being wounded on the Western Front. He was undeniably upper class, but had a sense of social solidarity and fellow feeling that we don't see much of in the modern Conservative Party.
Disobliging knobs have entirely supplanted noblesse oblige..
Genuine problem for the political Right, even if (overall) we're right about the facts of life.
We do need an answer to the question "what happens to the losers in life's game?" And the most effective way to generate those answers is to have had direct experience of being poked with the shitty end of the stick through no fault of your own for a bit.
For a long time, wartime experience did that job. Then Major had compassion born of experience. Cameron had his experiences with his son. May had her vicarage upbringing (vicarious experience, but a start).
Without that, the Conservatives risk becoming a club for self made men where they worship their own creators. Rishi, on particular, does give off "why don't you all become hedge fund millionaires- it's easy" vibes.
We need that optimism, we need people like that. But it's not a basis to run an entire nation.
People who are rich and successful have a remarkable if perhaps predictable ability to attribute their success entirely to talent and hard work; the thought that they might have been picked out almost randomly as winners in life's lottery, perhaps by birth or contacts or plain chance, doesn't seem to appeal to them.
Possibly why Gove, even when he's wrong or being compulsively sneaky, is usually interesting. He's aware of the Sliding Doors moment in his life
"Some people might say: “But we’ve got to, we’ve got to show that we’re on the right side, we’ve got to accomplish it, even if other people don’t do it.” I think that’s the politics of narcissism: “I want to feel good.” But in the meantime, you’re wasting resources and you’re wasting time. There is a serious possibility that we’re now in the early stages of runaway climate change. We should be focusing everything we’ve got — not on having an infinitesimal impact on global carbon levels, which would be the case even if the whole net-zero programme was implemented, but on policies of adaptation. And adaptation is not going to be easy. Remember, most climate scientists agree that once human-induced climate change is in the works, it goes on for decades or even centuries. You can’t just stop it. There’s a general idea among environmentalists that we started this so we can stop it. They are wrong. We started it, probably, but we can’t stop it."
"I’ve said previously we’re living in an age of tragedy. I’m not too sure about that anymore. I think we’ve advanced further than tragedy. We’re entering an age of absurdity. Consider German climate policy. Germany, as we keep hearing, is incomparably more adult, more advanced, more modern, and in every way superior to bungling Britain. But in Germany, the result of their closing down of nuclear and going for renewables has been an increased reliance on the dirtiest kind of coal. Well, this is tragic, but it’s even more than tragic. It is completely absurd.
And it’s difficult to put these arguments forward because people start shouting at you or they start crying or they say they can’t get up in the morning. I rather brutally suggest: “Well don’t. Stay in bed until you get a better reason for getting up. And if you don’t, well, there we are. Progress always has casualties.”
This is very negative. It's seeming to say that because doing what is necessary to ameliorate climate change is difficult we should stop trying. Maybe just abandon some coastal communities? Scientists say that we can achieve net zero with the tools we have already and doing so will stop things getting too much worse - probably catastrophically worse if we get into a positive feedback loop. John Gray is launching attacks on people who "start shouting at you or they start crying". Who cares? We should tackle the known problems with the known solutions and get the added benefit of energy security with cleaner air at a long term lower cost.
I think the problem is that he is deriding 'net zero' as having no merit at all. There is obviously some point in having policies that seek to radically reduce carbon emissions. However the structural gains come with the construction of new infrastructure, and probably also now adaptation which is happening at nowhere near the pace it should. The problem he is describing well is that the response to climate change is being turned in to a moral drama that is experienced at the level of the individual, with punitive policies that hit the poorest in society hardest fuelling popular revolts. This is not going to solve the broader problems.
I am routinely resiled as a Britain hater on here, but I’m about the only poster - apart from SeanF - who thinks the British Empire was pretty cool, all things considered.
I suspect the die was cast in the 1890s with the collapse of Home Rule for Ireland.
I think you’re right. Cecil Rhodes was himself a Home Ruler.
In the end, though, I think that democracy and nationalism are the destroyers of empires. Having these things at home, but not in the colonies, becomes unsustainable.
Empires in the sense we commonly think about are of course unsustainable.
But, the US is an “empire” as well. Russia too.
The UK, US, and Russia all “colonised” large landmasses in the 19th century. The US and Russia kept their conquests, though.
Mauritius is crying crocodile tears over BIOT. Boris is right: look at a map. They are over 1,200 miles away. The Maldives or Seychelles would have a better claim, and that wouldn't be a good one either.
They want the fishing grounds and hate the MPA around it, which the Royal Navy occasionally police. So if the UK have decided to dance on leaseback then I suspect this is actually about alliance building in the Indian Ocean area. The UN vote is meaningless - people forget the sort of states actually in the UN and how they are bought and corralled by China. Fascinating that it was the African Union that initiated it.
The base is a strategic one and absolutely needed given China's ambitions to colonise every reef and atoll in the area.
So it will be kept come what may.
The Chagos Islands were part of the Crown Colony of Mauritius - so regardless of their distance from anywhere the British themselves considered the territories to be linked until they were forced to give up their control of Mauritius in 1968. At that time the British clung onto the Seychelles and the Chagos Islands. The Seychelles were later granted independence and the Chagossians were ethnically cleansed from their homeland in a Stalin-style forced population transfer so we could suck up to the Americans, the new big boys in the neighbourhood. Most of the exiled Chagossians have ended up in either Mauritius of the Seychelles - so again you can see why Mauritius might consider it their business. An utterly shameful affair. Very hard to imagine the white Falkland Islanders ever getting the same kind of treatment.
"They" - you are British.
Watch your mouth.
And I thought it was the left who were policing people's pronouns!
"Watch your mouth"? Bit early in the day for this kind of fighty talk, no?
No patriot refers to their country in the third party as if it has nothing to do with them.
It's a subtle tell. You should use "we".
All it tells you is that I've lived abroad for much of my working life and even in London most of my colleagues aren't British, so when I talk about Britain there is no assumption of "we" with respect to my audience. If I'm making a purely factual statement about the British state's actions or behaviour I'll refer to Britain. If I'm making a more subjective point about shared responsibility I'll say "we" like I did in the very comment you are referring to. You don't own patriotism - you don't even seem to like much of this country particularly - and you certainly have earned no right to lecture me on patriotism or tell me what I can or cannot say.
With respect, fuck off, old boy.
I love everything about this country and my contempt is solely reserved for those who denigrate or undermine it.
I have a foreign wife and went to an international school. I will take absolutely no lectures whatsoever from you about objectivity or my awareness of other audiences.
I am routinely resiled as a Britain hater on here, but I’m about the only poster - apart from SeanF - who thinks the British Empire was pretty cool, all things considered.
I suspect the die was cast in the 1890s with the collapse of Home Rule for Ireland.
Mauritius is crying crocodile tears over BIOT. Boris is right: look at a map. They are over 1,200 miles away. The Maldives or Seychelles would have a better claim, and that wouldn't be a good one either.
They want the fishing grounds and hate the MPA around it, which the Royal Navy occasionally police. So if the UK have decided to dance on leaseback then I suspect this is actually about alliance building in the Indian Ocean area. The UN vote is meaningless - people forget the sort of states actually in the UN and how they are bought and corralled by China. Fascinating that it was the African Union that initiated it.
The base is a strategic one and absolutely needed given China's ambitions to colonise every reef and atoll in the area.
So it will be kept come what may.
The Chagos Islands were part of the Crown Colony of Mauritius - so regardless of their distance from anywhere the British themselves considered the territories to be linked until they were forced to give up their control of Mauritius in 1968. At that time the British clung onto the Seychelles and the Chagos Islands. The Seychelles were later granted independence and the Chagossians were ethnically cleansed from their homeland in a Stalin-style forced population transfer so we could suck up to the Americans, the new big boys in the neighbourhood. Most of the exiled Chagossians have ended up in either Mauritius of the Seychelles - so again you can see why Mauritius might consider it their business. An utterly shameful affair. Very hard to imagine the white Falkland Islanders ever getting the same kind of treatment.
For way less than the cost of the Falklands War we could have bought all the islanders farms in the highlands of Wales and Scotland and given them each a load of sheep and they could have continued their lifestyle with better weather if fewer penguins. But, of course, despite what we were told it was never about the people living on the islands, but about the likelihood of oil beneath the seas all around.
No, it's about them allowing to live on the only islands they've ever called home and choose their own way of life.
So, quite a lot like the Chagos then?
I've never said the Chagos weren't badly treated. Nor that they shouldn't return.
It's the naïve self-flaggelating Britain haters (like you) who I'm calling out.
It seems to me it is the right who hate Britain, its peoples and institutions.
Being a patriot doesn't stop me being critical of the crimes of empire. This one within my lifetime.
The fact that the Chagossians were deported to Mauritius says to me that we understood the islands to be part of Mauritius.
I've never heard you saying a patriotic thing in your life.
I'm all ears.
You have clearly not been paying attention!
I have often extolled a different sort of patriotism to yours, the English radical tradition that goes back to Pelagius, continues through the Lollards, the folk tales of Robin Hood, the Puritan reformers of the 16th and 17th Centuries, the Levellers, the Diggers, the abolitionists, Peterloo, the Chartists, Corbett, Captain Swing, the Trade Unions, the factory reformers, the city leaders that built the civic institutions of our industrial cities, the Labour Party, Clement Attlee, etc etc.
"A different sort of patriotism" - in other words, celebrating all the Lefties in history. And only them.
Patriotism isn't partisan, like you seem to think it is; it's agnostic and about backing your country and people.
That's why I'd back Atlee in a corner as well as Churchill.
It's interesting that you see the Puritans, the Abolitionists, the factory reformers and civic fathers (I had in mind Joe Chamberlain and the like) as left wingers.
If you want a more recent example of a right wing Prime Minister that I am proud of, I would cite Harold MacMillain, who saw the winds of change and liberated the Empire, while consolidating the welfare state, and building more council houses per year than any other postwar PM.
The Puritans don't fit easily into left or right. They're more like the rulers of Iran.
The Puritans are responsible for the fact that a lot of British people today walk around with miserable looks on their faces, whereas the same kinds of people in places like Spain, Italy, Portugal are happier, or at least appear happier.
One thing I've, reluctantly, noticed recently is just how tubby British men are - even the young ones, who sort of hide it with larger polos/sweatshirts, beards and a casual demeanour.
It seems that young women are slightly better at keeping it under control, certainly to how I remember 10-15 years ago, so not quite sure what's happened here.
I noticed the exact same phenomenon in France, last week. Paunchy young men. Stats confirm that the French are indeed chubbing out
They can’t be very appealing to young women. They have smaller penises, lower testosterone, bigger guts, lower IQs, and less earning power - than their fathers and grandfathers
Of course, compared to all the sad lonely semi-retired or unemployed/unemployable lefty men on here - who have nothing better to do than inhabit this blog for Guardian mutual wanks 18-hourd a day, day-in, day-out - we have large penises, trim bodies, higher IQs, work for a living and have very good and contemporary earning power.
Just like our fathers and grandfathers.
..
This site is lucky to have such a esteemed and venerated poster on it.
Mauritius is crying crocodile tears over BIOT. Boris is right: look at a map. They are over 1,200 miles away. The Maldives or Seychelles would have a better claim, and that wouldn't be a good one either.
They want the fishing grounds and hate the MPA around it, which the Royal Navy occasionally police. So if the UK have decided to dance on leaseback then I suspect this is actually about alliance building in the Indian Ocean area. The UN vote is meaningless - people forget the sort of states actually in the UN and how they are bought and corralled by China. Fascinating that it was the African Union that initiated it.
The base is a strategic one and absolutely needed given China's ambitions to colonise every reef and atoll in the area.
So it will be kept come what may.
The Chagos Islands were part of the Crown Colony of Mauritius - so regardless of their distance from anywhere the British themselves considered the territories to be linked until they were forced to give up their control of Mauritius in 1968. At that time the British clung onto the Seychelles and the Chagos Islands. The Seychelles were later granted independence and the Chagossians were ethnically cleansed from their homeland in a Stalin-style forced population transfer so we could suck up to the Americans, the new big boys in the neighbourhood. Most of the exiled Chagossians have ended up in either Mauritius of the Seychelles - so again you can see why Mauritius might consider it their business. An utterly shameful affair. Very hard to imagine the white Falkland Islanders ever getting the same kind of treatment.
"They" - you are British.
Watch your mouth.
And I thought it was the left who were policing people's pronouns!
"Watch your mouth"? Bit early in the day for this kind of fighty talk, no?
No patriot refers to their country in the third party as if it has nothing to do with them.
It's a subtle tell. You should use "we".
All it tells you is that I've lived abroad for much of my working life and even in London most of my colleagues aren't British, so when I talk about Britain there is no assumption of "we" with respect to my audience. If I'm making a purely factual statement about the British state's actions or behaviour I'll refer to Britain. If I'm making a more subjective point about shared responsibility I'll say "we" like I did in the very comment you are referring to. You don't own patriotism - you don't even seem to like much of this country particularly - and you certainly have earned no right to lecture me on patriotism or tell me what I can or cannot say.
I am routinely resiled as a Britain hater on here, but I’m about the only poster - apart from SeanF - who thinks the British Empire was pretty cool, all things considered.
I suspect the die was cast in the 1890s with the collapse of Home Rule for Ireland.
I think you’re right. Cecil Rhodes was himself a Home Ruler.
In the end, though, I think that democracy and nationalism are the destroyers of empires. Having these things at home, but not in the colonies, becomes unsustainable.
Empires in the sense we commonly think about are of course unsustainable.
But, the US is an “empire” as well. Russia too.
The UK, US, and Russia all “colonised” large landmasses in the 19th century. The US and Russia kept their conquests, though.
China also. The unpleasant truth is that ethnic cleansing and/or forcible assimilation are the two sure methods of ensuring that conquests are permanent.
Quick note on cyclists running red lights - here in Melbourne, cyclists and pedestrians share a traffic phase, but only in one direction (and if you're turning left out right, you have to give way to the pedestrians. This is the same for drivers on their phase).
Interesting solution, with vulnerable road users grouped together.
Interesting, so if I have that correctly that's 4 phases and pedestrians can always cross the roads walking say N-S when traffic or cyclists are also going N-S, and both the latter have to give way if turning both ways?
And there is no phase where pedestrians are moving across an arm of the junction where no motor or cycle traffic cannot go along it according to the signal pattern?
That seems to go against the principle of separation of vulnerable modes of travel in space and/or time.
Interesting contrast to the phasing on a UK CYCLOPs junction as mainly seen in Manchester (parallel cycle and pedestrian routes round the outside which get their own all-motor-traffic-stopped phase) or the Dutch "all green" design (phase where motors are all stopped, and pedestrians and cyclists can go anywhere).
Yep exactly. There is a deliberate mixing of contrary pedestrian, cyclist and vehicle phases, and without exception drivers/cyclists turning left/right give way to everyone else.
It's similar with uncontrolled junctions too - cars always give way for pedestrians and cyclists who are heading straight on (as they should in the UK...)
The only downside is the massive tram network means the chance of getting caught in a rail is high - but the cycle lane design forces you to cross at 90, reducing the risk somewhat.
The Puritans introduced the philosophy that how you fare in life is mainly down to your own decisions, and so if you're not doing well it's mostly your own fault. In Catholic countries it's more a case of God's will, and so you can't blame yourself too much if things aren't going as well as you'd like them to. The former is more likely to produce miserable people than the latter.
So a fairly right wing view in modern terms, yet CR thinks the Puritans left wing.
There's a great deal of historical discussion on the link between Puritanism, and more generally Calvinism, Presbyterianism, Quakerism, etc. etc., and the work ethic and the rise of modern capitalism.
Partly also however because they had to go into business very often. The Tories of the day were so bitterly opposed to such people - freedom,. what freedom? - that they defined them as second class people not allowed to enter the universities and the professions, or hold offices under the Crown. If anyone was being religiously intolerant in England it was the right wing royalists and C of E conservatives.
Only after Cromwell had executed the King, forced royalists into hiding or exile and banned the Book of Common Prayer and high church Anglican services when Lord Protector
Of course, the Laudian Book of Common Prayer had been imposed on the Scots in the first place, by KCI, which is what kicked it all off ioriginally. So it was a bit much of the Royalists to whine about it being banned.
Mauritius is crying crocodile tears over BIOT. Boris is right: look at a map. They are over 1,200 miles away. The Maldives or Seychelles would have a better claim, and that wouldn't be a good one either.
They want the fishing grounds and hate the MPA around it, which the Royal Navy occasionally police. So if the UK have decided to dance on leaseback then I suspect this is actually about alliance building in the Indian Ocean area. The UN vote is meaningless - people forget the sort of states actually in the UN and how they are bought and corralled by China. Fascinating that it was the African Union that initiated it.
The base is a strategic one and absolutely needed given China's ambitions to colonise every reef and atoll in the area.
So it will be kept come what may.
The Chagos Islands were part of the Crown Colony of Mauritius - so regardless of their distance from anywhere the British themselves considered the territories to be linked until they were forced to give up their control of Mauritius in 1968. At that time the British clung onto the Seychelles and the Chagos Islands. The Seychelles were later granted independence and the Chagossians were ethnically cleansed from their homeland in a Stalin-style forced population transfer so we could suck up to the Americans, the new big boys in the neighbourhood. Most of the exiled Chagossians have ended up in either Mauritius of the Seychelles - so again you can see why Mauritius might consider it their business. An utterly shameful affair. Very hard to imagine the white Falkland Islanders ever getting the same kind of treatment.
For way less than the cost of the Falklands War we could have bought all the islanders farms in the highlands of Wales and Scotland and given them each a load of sheep and they could have continued their lifestyle with better weather if fewer penguins. But, of course, despite what we were told it was never about the people living on the islands, but about the likelihood of oil beneath the seas all around.
No, it's about them allowing to live on the only islands they've ever called home and choose their own way of life.
So, quite a lot like the Chagos then?
I've never said the Chagos weren't badly treated. Nor that they shouldn't return.
It's the naïve self-flaggelating Britain haters (like you) who I'm calling out.
It seems to me it is the right who hate Britain, its peoples and institutions.
Being a patriot doesn't stop me being critical of the crimes of empire. This one within my lifetime.
The fact that the Chagossians were deported to Mauritius says to me that we understood the islands to be part of Mauritius.
I've never heard you saying a patriotic thing in your life.
I'm all ears.
You have clearly not been paying attention!
I have often extolled a different sort of patriotism to yours, the English radical tradition that goes back to Pelagius, continues through the Lollards, the folk tales of Robin Hood, the Puritan reformers of the 16th and 17th Centuries, the Levellers, the Diggers, the abolitionists, Peterloo, the Chartists, Corbett, Captain Swing, the Trade Unions, the factory reformers, the city leaders that built the civic institutions of our industrial cities, the Labour Party, Clement Attlee, etc etc.
"A different sort of patriotism" - in other words, celebrating all the Lefties in history. And only them.
Patriotism isn't partisan, like you seem to think it is; it's agnostic and about backing your country and people.
That's why I'd back Atlee in a corner as well as Churchill.
It's interesting that you see the Puritans, the Abolitionists, the factory reformers and civic fathers (I had in mind Joe Chamberlain and the like) as left wingers.
If you want a more recent example of a right wing Prime Minister that I am proud of, I would cite Harold MacMillain, who saw the winds of change and liberated the Empire, while consolidating the welfare state, and building more council houses per year than any other postwar PM.
The Puritans don't fit easily into left or right. They're more like the rulers of Iran.
The Puritans are responsible for the fact that a lot of British people today walk around with miserable looks on their faces, whereas the same kinds of people in places like Spain, Italy, Portugal are happier, or at least appear happier.
One thing I've, reluctantly, noticed recently is just how tubby British men are - even the young ones, who sort of hide it with larger polos/sweatshirts, beards and a casual demeanour.
It seems that young women are slightly better at keeping it under control, certainly to how I remember 10-15 years ago, so not quite sure what's happened here.
I noticed the exact same phenomenon in France, last week. Paunchy young men. Stats confirm that the French are indeed chubbing out
They can’t be very appealing to young women. They have smaller penises, lower testosterone, bigger guts, lower IQs, and less earning power - than their fathers and grandfathers
Of course, compared to all the sad lonely semi-retired or unemployed/unemployable lefty men on here - who have nothing better to do than inhabit this blog for Guardian mutual wanks 18-hourd a day, day-in, day-out
See what I mean about rightwingers hating Britons?
I hate Britons who hate themselves and us, and are rather pathetic and desperate about how they go about it.
This really isn't hard, Foxy.
Learn it.
I hate no one, least of all my own people and country.
It is you with the anger and hate issues. You need to chill a bit and take a bit more pleasure in the beautiful variety of modern Britain.
I take pleasure in all of it.
It's just your posts and bullshit that pisses me off.
If you want that to stop then start talking more about what you love about this country and in a non-partisan way.
I am routinely resiled as a Britain hater on here, but I’m about the only poster - apart from SeanF - who thinks the British Empire was pretty cool, all things considered.
I suspect the die was cast in the 1890s with the collapse of Home Rule for Ireland.
I think you’re right. Cecil Rhodes was himself a Home Ruler.
In the end, though, I think that democracy and nationalism are the destroyers of empires. Having these things at home, but not in the colonies, becomes unsustainable.
Empires in the sense we commonly think about are of course unsustainable.
But, the US is an “empire” as well. Russia too.
The UK, US, and Russia all “colonised” large landmasses in the 19th century. The US and Russia kept their conquests, though.
China also. The unpleasant truth is that ethnic cleansing and/or forcible assimilation are the two sure methods of ensuring that conquests are permanent.
Jacksonian ethnic cleansing is a nasty stain on American history, up there with slavery. And it’s not so obvious to me that it was even “necessary”.
America did very well to seize California when it did, just a few years before gold nuggets were discovered in San Francisco. For many years it was thought and feared that Britain might annex it.
Mauritius is crying crocodile tears over BIOT. Boris is right: look at a map. They are over 1,200 miles away. The Maldives or Seychelles would have a better claim, and that wouldn't be a good one either.
They want the fishing grounds and hate the MPA around it, which the Royal Navy occasionally police. So if the UK have decided to dance on leaseback then I suspect this is actually about alliance building in the Indian Ocean area. The UN vote is meaningless - people forget the sort of states actually in the UN and how they are bought and corralled by China. Fascinating that it was the African Union that initiated it.
The base is a strategic one and absolutely needed given China's ambitions to colonise every reef and atoll in the area.
So it will be kept come what may.
The Chagos Islands were part of the Crown Colony of Mauritius - so regardless of their distance from anywhere the British themselves considered the territories to be linked until they were forced to give up their control of Mauritius in 1968. At that time the British clung onto the Seychelles and the Chagos Islands. The Seychelles were later granted independence and the Chagossians were ethnically cleansed from their homeland in a Stalin-style forced population transfer so we could suck up to the Americans, the new big boys in the neighbourhood. Most of the exiled Chagossians have ended up in either Mauritius of the Seychelles - so again you can see why Mauritius might consider it their business. An utterly shameful affair. Very hard to imagine the white Falkland Islanders ever getting the same kind of treatment.
For way less than the cost of the Falklands War we could have bought all the islanders farms in the highlands of Wales and Scotland and given them each a load of sheep and they could have continued their lifestyle with better weather if fewer penguins. But, of course, despite what we were told it was never about the people living on the islands, but about the likelihood of oil beneath the seas all around.
No, it's about them allowing to live on the only islands they've ever called home and choose their own way of life.
So, quite a lot like the Chagos then?
I've never said the Chagos weren't badly treated. Nor that they shouldn't return.
It's the naïve self-flaggelating Britain haters (like you) who I'm calling out.
It seems to me it is the right who hate Britain, its peoples and institutions.
Being a patriot doesn't stop me being critical of the crimes of empire. This one within my lifetime.
The fact that the Chagossians were deported to Mauritius says to me that we understood the islands to be part of Mauritius.
I've never heard you saying a patriotic thing in your life.
I'm all ears.
You have clearly not been paying attention!
I have often extolled a different sort of patriotism to yours, the English radical tradition that goes back to Pelagius, continues through the Lollards, the folk tales of Robin Hood, the Puritan reformers of the 16th and 17th Centuries, the Levellers, the Diggers, the abolitionists, Peterloo, the Chartists, Corbett, Captain Swing, the Trade Unions, the factory reformers, the city leaders that built the civic institutions of our industrial cities, the Labour Party, Clement Attlee, etc etc.
"A different sort of patriotism" - in other words, celebrating all the Lefties in history. And only them.
Patriotism isn't partisan, like you seem to think it is; it's agnostic and about backing your country and people.
That's why I'd back Atlee in a corner as well as Churchill.
It's interesting that you see the Puritans, the Abolitionists, the factory reformers and civic fathers (I had in mind Joe Chamberlain and the like) as left wingers.
If you want a more recent example of a right wing Prime Minister that I am proud of, I would cite Harold MacMillain, who saw the winds of change and liberated the Empire, while consolidating the welfare state, and building more council houses per year than any other postwar PM.
The Puritans don't fit easily into left or right. They're more like the rulers of Iran.
The Puritans are responsible for the fact that a lot of British people today walk around with miserable looks on their faces, whereas the same kinds of people in places like Spain, Italy, Portugal are happier, or at least appear happier.
One thing I've, reluctantly, noticed recently is just how tubby British men are - even the young ones, who sort of hide it with larger polos/sweatshirts, beards and a casual demeanour.
It seems that young women are slightly better at keeping it under control, certainly to how I remember 10-15 years ago, so not quite sure what's happened here.
I noticed the exact same phenomenon in France, last week. Paunchy young men. Stats confirm that the French are indeed chubbing out
They can’t be very appealing to young women. They have smaller penises, lower testosterone, bigger guts, lower IQs, and less earning power - than their fathers and grandfathers
And yet they have one of the highest fertility rates in western Europe.
"Some people might say: “But we’ve got to, we’ve got to show that we’re on the right side, we’ve got to accomplish it, even if other people don’t do it.” I think that’s the politics of narcissism: “I want to feel good.” But in the meantime, you’re wasting resources and you’re wasting time. There is a serious possibility that we’re now in the early stages of runaway climate change. We should be focusing everything we’ve got — not on having an infinitesimal impact on global carbon levels, which would be the case even if the whole net-zero programme was implemented, but on policies of adaptation. And adaptation is not going to be easy. Remember, most climate scientists agree that once human-induced climate change is in the works, it goes on for decades or even centuries. You can’t just stop it. There’s a general idea among environmentalists that we started this so we can stop it. They are wrong. We started it, probably, but we can’t stop it."
"I’ve said previously we’re living in an age of tragedy. I’m not too sure about that anymore. I think we’ve advanced further than tragedy. We’re entering an age of absurdity. Consider German climate policy. Germany, as we keep hearing, is incomparably more adult, more advanced, more modern, and in every way superior to bungling Britain. But in Germany, the result of their closing down of nuclear and going for renewables has been an increased reliance on the dirtiest kind of coal. Well, this is tragic, but it’s even more than tragic. It is completely absurd.
And it’s difficult to put these arguments forward because people start shouting at you or they start crying or they say they can’t get up in the morning. I rather brutally suggest: “Well don’t. Stay in bed until you get a better reason for getting up. And if you don’t, well, there we are. Progress always has casualties.”
This is very negative. It's seeming to say that because doing what is necessary to ameliorate climate change is difficult we should stop trying. Maybe just abandon some coastal communities? Scientists say that we can achieve net zero with the tools we have already and doing so will stop things getting too much worse - probably catastrophically worse if we get into a positive feedback loop. John Gray is launching attacks on people who "start shouting at you or they start crying". Who cares? We should tackle the known problems with the known solutions and get the added benefit of energy security with cleaner air at a long term lower cost.
I think the problem is that he is deriding 'net zero' as having no merit at all. There is obviously some point in having policies that seek to radically reduce carbon emissions. However the structural gains come with the construction of new infrastructure, and probably also now adaptation which is happening at nowhere near the pace it should. The problem he is describing well is that the response to climate change is being turned in to a moral drama that is experienced at the level of the individual, with punitive policies that hit the poorest in society hardest fuelling popular revolts. This is not going to solve the broader problems.
But isn't the point (made quite strongly in the latest IPCC reports) that the cost of adaptation is likely to be by far the highest of all the potential mitigations - and that there is therefore a simple economic case for reducing the amount of adaptation that will eventually be needed.
"When you're in a hole, stop digging" and all that.
I am routinely resiled as a Britain hater on here, but I’m about the only poster - apart from SeanF - who thinks the British Empire was pretty cool, all things considered.
I suspect the die was cast in the 1890s with the collapse of Home Rule for Ireland.
What’s that quote about Gladstone?
That he’d spent 20 years studying the Irish Question. But that every time he found an answer, the Irish changed the question?
Mauritius is crying crocodile tears over BIOT. Boris is right: look at a map. They are over 1,200 miles away. The Maldives or Seychelles would have a better claim, and that wouldn't be a good one either.
They want the fishing grounds and hate the MPA around it, which the Royal Navy occasionally police. So if the UK have decided to dance on leaseback then I suspect this is actually about alliance building in the Indian Ocean area. The UN vote is meaningless - people forget the sort of states actually in the UN and how they are bought and corralled by China. Fascinating that it was the African Union that initiated it.
The base is a strategic one and absolutely needed given China's ambitions to colonise every reef and atoll in the area.
So it will be kept come what may.
The Chagos Islands were part of the Crown Colony of Mauritius - so regardless of their distance from anywhere the British themselves considered the territories to be linked until they were forced to give up their control of Mauritius in 1968. At that time the British clung onto the Seychelles and the Chagos Islands. The Seychelles were later granted independence and the Chagossians were ethnically cleansed from their homeland in a Stalin-style forced population transfer so we could suck up to the Americans, the new big boys in the neighbourhood. Most of the exiled Chagossians have ended up in either Mauritius of the Seychelles - so again you can see why Mauritius might consider it their business. An utterly shameful affair. Very hard to imagine the white Falkland Islanders ever getting the same kind of treatment.
For way less than the cost of the Falklands War we could have bought all the islanders farms in the highlands of Wales and Scotland and given them each a load of sheep and they could have continued their lifestyle with better weather if fewer penguins. But, of course, despite what we were told it was never about the people living on the islands, but about the likelihood of oil beneath the seas all around.
No, it's about them allowing to live on the only islands they've ever called home and choose their own way of life.
So, quite a lot like the Chagos then?
I've never said the Chagos weren't badly treated. Nor that they shouldn't return.
It's the naïve self-flaggelating Britain haters (like you) who I'm calling out.
It seems to me it is the right who hate Britain, its peoples and institutions.
Being a patriot doesn't stop me being critical of the crimes of empire. This one within my lifetime.
The fact that the Chagossians were deported to Mauritius says to me that we understood the islands to be part of Mauritius.
I've never heard you saying a patriotic thing in your life.
I'm all ears.
You have clearly not been paying attention!
I have often extolled a different sort of patriotism to yours, the English radical tradition that goes back to Pelagius, continues through the Lollards, the folk tales of Robin Hood, the Puritan reformers of the 16th and 17th Centuries, the Levellers, the Diggers, the abolitionists, Peterloo, the Chartists, Corbett, Captain Swing, the Trade Unions, the factory reformers, the city leaders that built the civic institutions of our industrial cities, the Labour Party, Clement Attlee, etc etc.
"A different sort of patriotism" - in other words, celebrating all the Lefties in history. And only them.
Patriotism isn't partisan, like you seem to think it is; it's agnostic and about backing your country and people.
That's why I'd back Atlee in a corner as well as Churchill.
It's interesting that you see the Puritans, the Abolitionists, the factory reformers and civic fathers (I had in mind Joe Chamberlain and the like) as left wingers.
If you want a more recent example of a right wing Prime Minister that I am proud of, I would cite Harold MacMillain, who saw the winds of change and liberated the Empire, while consolidating the welfare state, and building more council houses per year than any other postwar PM.
The Puritans don't fit easily into left or right. They're more like the rulers of Iran.
The Puritans are responsible for the fact that a lot of British people today walk around with miserable looks on their faces, whereas the same kinds of people in places like Spain, Italy, Portugal are happier, or at least appear happier.
One thing I've, reluctantly, noticed recently is just how tubby British men are - even the young ones, who sort of hide it with larger polos/sweatshirts, beards and a casual demeanour.
It seems that young women are slightly better at keeping it under control, certainly to how I remember 10-15 years ago, so not quite sure what's happened here.
I noticed the exact same phenomenon in France, last week. Paunchy young men. Stats confirm that the French are indeed chubbing out
They can’t be very appealing to young women. They have smaller penises, lower testosterone, bigger guts, lower IQs, and less earning power - than their fathers and grandfathers
And yet they have one of the highest fertility rates in western Europe.
Scotland, however...
French TFR is boosted almost entirely by recent migrants (as is the UK’s)
Births amongst native white French mothers are as low as anywhere (again, Britain is the same)
One of the biggest contradictions with Britain is that it is consumed by introspection and self loathing. But in my experience, outsiders generally express enormous admiration for Britain. I always struggle to reconcile the two perspectives.
One of the biggest contradictions with Britain is that it is consumed by introspection and self loathing. But in my experience, outsiders generally express enormous admiration for Britain. I always struggle to reconcile the two perspectives.
Britain, like France, lives in the shadow of a greater history. Modern reality thereby inspires out-of-proportion anger and contempt.
One of the biggest contradictions with Britain is that it is consumed by introspection and self loathing. But in my experience, outsiders generally express enormous admiration for Britain. I always struggle to reconcile the two perspectives.
It’s not especially uncommon.
To hear some French people the place is a shambles. Likewise many Germans joke at Germany - and especially ridicule “German efficiency”
One of the biggest contradictions with Britain is that it is consumed by introspection and self loathing. But in my experience, outsiders generally express enormous admiration for Britain. I always struggle to reconcile the two perspectives.
Britain, like France, lives in the shadow of a greater history. Modern reality thereby inspires out-of-proportion anger and contempt.
"A different sort of patriotism" - in other words, celebrating all the Lefties in history. And only them.
Patriotism isn't partisan, like you seem to think it is; it's agnostic and about backing your country and people.
That's why I'd back Atlee in a corner as well as Churchill.
I agree it should be non-partisan, and it's natural to support your side in sport etc.. But affection for familiar surroundings shouldn't extend to bias. I wouldn't back my country unless I felt it was right, would you? Say our cricket team was accused of nefarious manipulation of the ball - would you support it anyway, or dismiss the allegation out of hand?
If the country was in a corner, I'd back it right or wrong as my fellow citizens lives and livelihoods would be on the line.
In normal times, particularly in national debates, I'd be robust where I disagreed.
Mauritius is crying crocodile tears over BIOT. Boris is right: look at a map. They are over 1,200 miles away. The Maldives or Seychelles would have a better claim, and that wouldn't be a good one either.
They want the fishing grounds and hate the MPA around it, which the Royal Navy occasionally police. So if the UK have decided to dance on leaseback then I suspect this is actually about alliance building in the Indian Ocean area. The UN vote is meaningless - people forget the sort of states actually in the UN and how they are bought and corralled by China. Fascinating that it was the African Union that initiated it.
The base is a strategic one and absolutely needed given China's ambitions to colonise every reef and atoll in the area.
So it will be kept come what may.
The Chagos Islands were part of the Crown Colony of Mauritius - so regardless of their distance from anywhere the British themselves considered the territories to be linked until they were forced to give up their control of Mauritius in 1968. At that time the British clung onto the Seychelles and the Chagos Islands. The Seychelles were later granted independence and the Chagossians were ethnically cleansed from their homeland in a Stalin-style forced population transfer so we could suck up to the Americans, the new big boys in the neighbourhood. Most of the exiled Chagossians have ended up in either Mauritius of the Seychelles - so again you can see why Mauritius might consider it their business. An utterly shameful affair. Very hard to imagine the white Falkland Islanders ever getting the same kind of treatment.
For way less than the cost of the Falklands War we could have bought all the islanders farms in the highlands of Wales and Scotland and given them each a load of sheep and they could have continued their lifestyle with better weather if fewer penguins. But, of course, despite what we were told it was never about the people living on the islands, but about the likelihood of oil beneath the seas all around.
No, it's about them allowing to live on the only islands they've ever called home and choose their own way of life.
So, quite a lot like the Chagos then?
I've never said the Chagos weren't badly treated. Nor that they shouldn't return.
It's the naïve self-flaggelating Britain haters (like you) who I'm calling out.
It seems to me it is the right who hate Britain, its peoples and institutions.
Being a patriot doesn't stop me being critical of the crimes of empire. This one within my lifetime.
The fact that the Chagossians were deported to Mauritius says to me that we understood the islands to be part of Mauritius.
I've never heard you saying a patriotic thing in your life.
I'm all ears.
You have clearly not been paying attention!
I have often extolled a different sort of patriotism to yours, the English radical tradition that goes back to Pelagius, continues through the Lollards, the folk tales of Robin Hood, the Puritan reformers of the 16th and 17th Centuries, the Levellers, the Diggers, the abolitionists, Peterloo, the Chartists, Corbett, Captain Swing, the Trade Unions, the factory reformers, the city leaders that built the civic institutions of our industrial cities, the Labour Party, Clement Attlee, etc etc.
"A different sort of patriotism" - in other words, celebrating all the Lefties in history. And only them.
Patriotism isn't partisan, like you seem to think it is; it's agnostic and about backing your country and people.
That's why I'd back Atlee in a corner as well as Churchill.
It's interesting that you see the Puritans, the Abolitionists, the factory reformers and civic fathers (I had in mind Joe Chamberlain and the like) as left wingers.
If you want a more recent example of a right wing Prime Minister that I am proud of, I would cite Harold MacMillain, who saw the winds of change and liberated the Empire, while consolidating the welfare state, and building more council houses per year than any other postwar PM.
The Puritans don't fit easily into left or right. They're more like the rulers of Iran.
The Puritans are responsible for the fact that a lot of British people today walk around with miserable looks on their faces, whereas the same kinds of people in places like Spain, Italy, Portugal are happier, or at least appear happier.
One thing I've, reluctantly, noticed recently is just how tubby British men are - even the young ones, who sort of hide it with larger polos/sweatshirts, beards and a casual demeanour.
It seems that young women are slightly better at keeping it under control, certainly to how I remember 10-15 years ago, so not quite sure what's happened here.
I noticed the exact same phenomenon in France, last week. Paunchy young men. Stats confirm that the French are indeed chubbing out
They can’t be very appealing to young women. They have smaller penises, lower testosterone, bigger guts, lower IQs, and less earning power - than their fathers and grandfathers
And yet they have one of the highest fertility rates in western Europe.
Scotland, however...
French TFR is boosted almost entirely by recent migrants (as is the UK’s)
Births amongst native white French mothers are as low as anywhere (again, Britain is the same)
Are you suggesting that white people have smaller penises, lower testosterone, bigger guts, lower IQs, and less earning power?
"Some people might say: “But we’ve got to, we’ve got to show that we’re on the right side, we’ve got to accomplish it, even if other people don’t do it.” I think that’s the politics of narcissism: “I want to feel good.” But in the meantime, you’re wasting resources and you’re wasting time. There is a serious possibility that we’re now in the early stages of runaway climate change. We should be focusing everything we’ve got — not on having an infinitesimal impact on global carbon levels, which would be the case even if the whole net-zero programme was implemented, but on policies of adaptation. And adaptation is not going to be easy. Remember, most climate scientists agree that once human-induced climate change is in the works, it goes on for decades or even centuries. You can’t just stop it. There’s a general idea among environmentalists that we started this so we can stop it. They are wrong. We started it, probably, but we can’t stop it."
"I’ve said previously we’re living in an age of tragedy. I’m not too sure about that anymore. I think we’ve advanced further than tragedy. We’re entering an age of absurdity. Consider German climate policy. Germany, as we keep hearing, is incomparably more adult, more advanced, more modern, and in every way superior to bungling Britain. But in Germany, the result of their closing down of nuclear and going for renewables has been an increased reliance on the dirtiest kind of coal. Well, this is tragic, but it’s even more than tragic. It is completely absurd.
And it’s difficult to put these arguments forward because people start shouting at you or they start crying or they say they can’t get up in the morning. I rather brutally suggest: “Well don’t. Stay in bed until you get a better reason for getting up. And if you don’t, well, there we are. Progress always has casualties.”
This is very negative. It's seeming to say that because doing what is necessary to ameliorate climate change is difficult we should stop trying. Maybe just abandon some coastal communities? Scientists say that we can achieve net zero with the tools we have already and doing so will stop things getting too much worse - probably catastrophically worse if we get into a positive feedback loop. John Gray is launching attacks on people who "start shouting at you or they start crying". Who cares? We should tackle the known problems with the known solutions and get the added benefit of energy security with cleaner air at a long term lower cost.
I think the problem is that he is deriding 'net zero' as having no merit at all. There is obviously some point in having policies that seek to radically reduce carbon emissions. However the structural gains come with the construction of new infrastructure, and probably also now adaptation which is happening at nowhere near the pace it should. The problem he is describing well is that the response to climate change is being turned in to a moral drama that is experienced at the level of the individual, with punitive policies that hit the poorest in society hardest fuelling popular revolts. This is not going to solve the broader problems.
But isn't the point (made quite strongly in the latest IPCC reports) that the cost of adaptation is likely to be by far the highest of all the potential mitigations - and that there is therefore a simple economic case for reducing the amount of adaptation that will eventually be needed.
"When you're in a hole, stop digging" and all that.
The trajectory of systems strongly suggests that once you achieve net zero, even if you tried to stop the process, it would go carbon negative.
Given that we are in the early stages for using atmospheric CO2 for various things, I think it is inevitable.
Yes, it will take a long while to reduce to former levels of CO2, but it will happen, almost certainly.
kjh asked: "While not disagreeing with that why pick out Obama as a narcissist? Just interested in what I am missing as nothing springs to mind."
This famous quote may help answer your question: '“I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters,” Mr. Obama told Patrick Gaspard, his political director, at the start of the 2008 campaign, according to The New Yorker. “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m going to think I’m a better political director than my political director.”' source: https://www.aei.org/foreign-and-defense-policy/obama-im-a-better-intelligence-briefer-than-my-intelligence-briefers/
Mauritius is crying crocodile tears over BIOT. Boris is right: look at a map. They are over 1,200 miles away. The Maldives or Seychelles would have a better claim, and that wouldn't be a good one either.
They want the fishing grounds and hate the MPA around it, which the Royal Navy occasionally police. So if the UK have decided to dance on leaseback then I suspect this is actually about alliance building in the Indian Ocean area. The UN vote is meaningless - people forget the sort of states actually in the UN and how they are bought and corralled by China. Fascinating that it was the African Union that initiated it.
The base is a strategic one and absolutely needed given China's ambitions to colonise every reef and atoll in the area.
So it will be kept come what may.
The Chagos Islands were part of the Crown Colony of Mauritius - so regardless of their distance from anywhere the British themselves considered the territories to be linked until they were forced to give up their control of Mauritius in 1968. At that time the British clung onto the Seychelles and the Chagos Islands. The Seychelles were later granted independence and the Chagossians were ethnically cleansed from their homeland in a Stalin-style forced population transfer so we could suck up to the Americans, the new big boys in the neighbourhood. Most of the exiled Chagossians have ended up in either Mauritius of the Seychelles - so again you can see why Mauritius might consider it their business. An utterly shameful affair. Very hard to imagine the white Falkland Islanders ever getting the same kind of treatment.
"They" - you are British.
Watch your mouth.
And I thought it was the left who were policing people's pronouns!
"Watch your mouth"? Bit early in the day for this kind of fighty talk, no?
No patriot refers to their country in the third party as if it has nothing to do with them.
It's a subtle tell. You should use "we".
All it tells you is that I've lived abroad for much of my working life and even in London most of my colleagues aren't British, so when I talk about Britain there is no assumption of "we" with respect to my audience. If I'm making a purely factual statement about the British state's actions or behaviour I'll refer to Britain. If I'm making a more subjective point about shared responsibility I'll say "we" like I did in the very comment you are referring to. You don't own patriotism - you don't even seem to like much of this country particularly - and you certainly have earned no right to lecture me on patriotism or tell me what I can or cannot say.
With respect, fuck off, old boy.
I love everything about this country and my contempt is solely reserved for those who denigrate or undermine it.
I have a foreign wife and went to an international school. I will take absolutely no lectures whatsoever from you about objectivity or my awareness of other audiences.
Everything?
Everything?
The woke bits? The slobby bits? The bits that want to take your earnings off you?
Unless you want to argue that they aren't really Britain, I doubt that you, or anyone else loves everything about this country.
And that's fine, really it is. We all have an emotional connection to this place. Most of us love it. But love isn't in unquestioning agreement with everything that happens. Sometimes that's despite things that happen. And sometimes that love includes wishing that some things were different.
But a patriotism that doesn't include casting a quizzical eye over the nation can get into the sea. For starters, it's not particularly British.
kjh asked: "While not disagreeing with that why pick out Obama as a narcissist? Just interested in what I am missing as nothing springs to mind."
This famous quote may help answer your question: '“I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters,” Mr. Obama told Patrick Gaspard, his political director, at the start of the 2008 campaign, according to The New Yorker. “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m going to think I’m a better political director than my political director.”' source: https://www.aei.org/foreign-and-defense-policy/obama-im-a-better-intelligence-briefer-than-my-intelligence-briefers/
There's another example at the source.
Maybe was was a better speech writer, policy director and political director?
I think the historical consensus forming on Obama is that he was over-cautious and much of his administration a wasted opportunity.
But there’s no denying his oratorical skills and his outstanding political (if not personal, by accounts) charisma.
I've never once stopped to wonder how big or small my grandfathers' penises were.
I sort of think that I'm on the "normal" side of this particular divide, but I really can't be sure.
I bet you have the tiniest penis on here.
It comes across with every post that you write.
No, I am Tiniestpenus!
Fascinating that you admit it.
Again, explains a lot.
Fascinating (not very) that you can't recognise a joke which explains most of your choleric output.
Obviously I have no idea of the endowment of PBers, but since the penises (penii?) of your fellow posters and grandfathers are never far from your thoughts, perhaps you have well researched charts that you could share with us?
One of the biggest contradictions with Britain is that it is consumed by introspection and self loathing. But in my experience, outsiders generally express enormous admiration for Britain. I always struggle to reconcile the two perspectives.
The USA is the same, with the juxtrposition of the place being horrifically racist, against a massive illegal immigration problem and huge demand from Latinos and Africans to move there.
The discussion that Dr. Foxy started reminds me of poll findings that I saw years ago. At that time, about half of Democrats thought that the US was a bad nation, with some redeeming features. At the time, few Republicans shared that opinion, instead thinking the US is a good nation, with some faults.
And the same was true at the time of members of the Labour Party and the Conservative Party; about half of Labour Party members thought the UK was a bad country, while few Conservative Party members shared that opinion.
It would be hard to consider anyone a patriot, if they think their own nation is mostly bad. So, where do you come down on that question, Dr. Foxy?
I haven't seen similar polls recently, but haven't looked for them, either.
(For the record: I think both nations mostly good, and am worried that so many citizens in both don't seem to even see their accomplishments.
One of the biggest contradictions with Britain is that it is consumed by introspection and self loathing. But in my experience, outsiders generally express enormous admiration for Britain. I always struggle to reconcile the two perspectives.
The USA is the same, with the juxtrposition of the place being horrifically racist, against a massive illegal immigration problem and huge demand from Latinos and Africans to move there.
Isn't this explained by successful countries never becoming complacent, never being satisfied with the progress they have made?
If we all sat around feeling good about ourselves we'd be quickly overtaken. With the HS2 "mutilation" and sabotage of our fastest growing sector (net zero), you start to wonder whether we have already fallen into that trap.
"Some people might say: “But we’ve got to, we’ve got to show that we’re on the right side, we’ve got to accomplish it, even if other people don’t do it.” I think that’s the politics of narcissism: “I want to feel good.” But in the meantime, you’re wasting resources and you’re wasting time. There is a serious possibility that we’re now in the early stages of runaway climate change. We should be focusing everything we’ve got — not on having an infinitesimal impact on global carbon levels, which would be the case even if the whole net-zero programme was implemented, but on policies of adaptation. And adaptation is not going to be easy. Remember, most climate scientists agree that once human-induced climate change is in the works, it goes on for decades or even centuries. You can’t just stop it. There’s a general idea among environmentalists that we started this so we can stop it. They are wrong. We started it, probably, but we can’t stop it."
"I’ve said previously we’re living in an age of tragedy. I’m not too sure about that anymore. I think we’ve advanced further than tragedy. We’re entering an age of absurdity. Consider German climate policy. Germany, as we keep hearing, is incomparably more adult, more advanced, more modern, and in every way superior to bungling Britain. But in Germany, the result of their closing down of nuclear and going for renewables has been an increased reliance on the dirtiest kind of coal. Well, this is tragic, but it’s even more than tragic. It is completely absurd.
And it’s difficult to put these arguments forward because people start shouting at you or they start crying or they say they can’t get up in the morning. I rather brutally suggest: “Well don’t. Stay in bed until you get a better reason for getting up. And if you don’t, well, there we are. Progress always has casualties.”
This is very negative. It's seeming to say that because doing what is necessary to ameliorate climate change is difficult we should stop trying. Maybe just abandon some coastal communities? Scientists say that we can achieve net zero with the tools we have already and doing so will stop things getting too much worse - probably catastrophically worse if we get into a positive feedback loop. John Gray is launching attacks on people who "start shouting at you or they start crying". Who cares? We should tackle the known problems with the known solutions and get the added benefit of energy security with cleaner air at a long term lower cost.
I think the problem is that he is deriding 'net zero' as having no merit at all. There is obviously some point in having policies that seek to radically reduce carbon emissions. However the structural gains come with the construction of new infrastructure, and probably also now adaptation which is happening at nowhere near the pace it should. The problem he is describing well is that the response to climate change is being turned in to a moral drama that is experienced at the level of the individual, with punitive policies that hit the poorest in society hardest fuelling popular revolts. This is not going to solve the broader problems.
But isn't the point (made quite strongly in the latest IPCC reports) that the cost of adaptation is likely to be by far the highest of all the potential mitigations - and that there is therefore a simple economic case for reducing the amount of adaptation that will eventually be needed.
"When you're in a hole, stop digging" and all that.
The trajectory of systems strongly suggests that once you achieve net zero, even if you tried to stop the process, it would go carbon negative.
Given that we are in the early stages for using atmospheric CO2 for various things, I think it is inevitable.
Yes, it will take a long while to reduce to former levels of CO2, but it will happen, almost certainly.
I believe that most of the projected pathways to a 1.5°C rise in 2100 include some degree of net negative CO2 after 2050 (presumably through CCS but I guess stuff like alternative concrete chemistries and large-scale enhanced weathering projects might play a role too).
Part of the issue with modelling this is that the lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere is pretty uncertain, and is likely to vary according to concentration (with higher concentration meaning longer lifetime, unfortunately). It's common to read estimates of 400 years, but it could be anything from 200 to 2000 in reality.
The discussion that Dr. Foxy started reminds me of poll findings that I saw years ago. At that time, about half of Democrats thought that the US was a bad nation, with some redeeming features. At the time, few Republicans shared that opinion, instead thinking the US is a good nation, with some faults.
And the same was true at the time of members of the Labour Party and the Conservative Party; about half of Labour Party members thought the UK was a bad country, while few Conservative Party members shared that opinion.
It would be hard to consider anyone a patriot, if they think their own nation is mostly bad. So, where do you come down on that question, Dr. Foxy?
I haven't seen similar polls recently, but haven't looked for them, either.
(For the record: I think both nations mostly good, and am worried that so many citizens in both don't seem to even see their accomplishments.
There's a certain amount of talking at cross-purposes here. For the likes of Casino, the act of judging is itself invalid. Casino doesn't care whether the UK is good or bad. You have to belong and conform or you are bad. Questions are seditious.
Mauritius is crying crocodile tears over BIOT. Boris is right: look at a map. They are over 1,200 miles away. The Maldives or Seychelles would have a better claim, and that wouldn't be a good one either.
They want the fishing grounds and hate the MPA around it, which the Royal Navy occasionally police. So if the UK have decided to dance on leaseback then I suspect this is actually about alliance building in the Indian Ocean area. The UN vote is meaningless - people forget the sort of states actually in the UN and how they are bought and corralled by China. Fascinating that it was the African Union that initiated it.
The base is a strategic one and absolutely needed given China's ambitions to colonise every reef and atoll in the area.
So it will be kept come what may.
The Chagos Islands were part of the Crown Colony of Mauritius - so regardless of their distance from anywhere the British themselves considered the territories to be linked until they were forced to give up their control of Mauritius in 1968. At that time the British clung onto the Seychelles and the Chagos Islands. The Seychelles were later granted independence and the Chagossians were ethnically cleansed from their homeland in a Stalin-style forced population transfer so we could suck up to the Americans, the new big boys in the neighbourhood. Most of the exiled Chagossians have ended up in either Mauritius of the Seychelles - so again you can see why Mauritius might consider it their business. An utterly shameful affair. Very hard to imagine the white Falkland Islanders ever getting the same kind of treatment.
"They" - you are British.
Watch your mouth.
And I thought it was the left who were policing people's pronouns!
"Watch your mouth"? Bit early in the day for this kind of fighty talk, no?
No patriot refers to their country in the third party as if it has nothing to do with them.
It's a subtle tell. You should use "we".
All it tells you is that I've lived abroad for much of my working life and even in London most of my colleagues aren't British, so when I talk about Britain there is no assumption of "we" with respect to my audience. If I'm making a purely factual statement about the British state's actions or behaviour I'll refer to Britain. If I'm making a more subjective point about shared responsibility I'll say "we" like I did in the very comment you are referring to. You don't own patriotism - you don't even seem to like much of this country particularly - and you certainly have earned no right to lecture me on patriotism or tell me what I can or cannot say.
With respect, fuck off, old boy.
I love everything about this country and my contempt is solely reserved for those who denigrate or undermine it.
I have a foreign wife and went to an international school. I will take absolutely no lectures whatsoever from you about objectivity or my awareness of other audiences.
You've got to admit, this post positively reeks of big dick energy.
Ukraine is now suggesting that ‘dozens’ were killed and wounded in yesterday’s Storm Shadow attack on the Black Sea Fleet HQ at Sevastopol, where a meeting of senior officers was taking place.
Ukraine is now suggesting that ‘dozens’ were killed and wounded in yesterday’s Storm Shadow attack on the Black Sea Fleet HQ at Sevastopol, where a meeting of senior officers was taking place.
The videos from that strike are pretty astonishing. In terms of terrain that isn't under threat of Ukrainian attack, have the Russians actually made a net loss since February '22?
We need the dog to tell how big the mountains are.
. .
Your dog is an absolute star. What a beautiful breed . He should have his own Facebook page !
He has his own Instagram account, which keeps him busy enough. Especially as I have to do the typing as his paws are too big for the letters on the keyboard.
Comments
It's just a shame that the PB rightwingers haven't quite cottoned on to the comparison with the current state of the realm.
In the end, though, I think that democracy and nationalism are the destroyers of empires. Having these things at home, but not in the colonies, becomes unsustainable.
That, and the fact that these days, it’s much more cost-effective to get the goods you need through trading, rather than by occupying territory.
It is you with the anger and hate issues. You need to chill a bit and take a bit more pleasure in the beautiful variety of modern Britain.
But, the US is an “empire” as well.
Russia too.
The UK, US, and Russia all “colonised” large landmasses in the 19th century. The US and Russia kept their conquests, though.
I love everything about this country and my contempt is solely reserved for those who denigrate or undermine it.
I have a foreign wife and went to an international school. I will take absolutely no lectures whatsoever from you about objectivity or my awareness of other audiences.
Not sure about Fred West.
Sorry, what or who are we backing Attlee against?
On the new doctrine that the quality of patriotism depends on anatomical attributes ...
https://www.gourmetnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Veroni-Giant-Mortadella-copy.jpg
I You see, you don't deny it.
Microcock.
It's similar with uncontrolled junctions too - cars always give way for pedestrians and cyclists who are heading straight on (as they should in the UK...)
The only downside is the massive tram network means the chance of getting caught in a rail is high - but the cycle lane design forces you to cross at 90, reducing the risk somewhat.
It's just your posts and bullshit that pisses me off.
If you want that to stop then start talking more about what you love about this country and in a non-partisan way.
America did very well to seize California when it did, just a few years before gold nuggets were discovered in San Francisco. For many years it was thought and feared that Britain might annex it.
Scotland, however...
"When you're in a hole, stop digging" and all that.
That he’d spent 20 years studying the Irish Question. But that every time he found an answer, the Irish changed the question?
Births amongst native white French mothers are as low as anywhere (again, Britain is the same)
To hear some French people the place is a shambles. Likewise many Germans joke at Germany - and especially ridicule “German efficiency”
I If the country was in a corner, I'd back it right or wrong as my fellow citizens lives and livelihoods would be on the line.
In normal times, particularly in national debates, I'd be robust where I disagreed.
Given that we are in the early stages for using atmospheric CO2 for various things, I think it is inevitable.
Yes, it will take a long while to reduce to former levels of CO2, but it will happen, almost certainly.
Again, explains a lot.
This famous quote may help answer your question: '“I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters,” Mr. Obama told Patrick Gaspard, his political director, at the start of the 2008 campaign, according to The New Yorker. “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m going to think I’m a better political director than my political director.”'
source: https://www.aei.org/foreign-and-defense-policy/obama-im-a-better-intelligence-briefer-than-my-intelligence-briefers/
There's another example at the source.
Everything?
The woke bits? The slobby bits? The bits that want to take your earnings off you?
Unless you want to argue that they aren't really Britain, I doubt that you, or anyone else loves everything about this country.
And that's fine, really it is. We all have an emotional connection to this place. Most of us love it. But love isn't in unquestioning agreement with everything that happens. Sometimes that's despite things that happen. And sometimes that love includes wishing that some things were different.
But a patriotism that doesn't include casting a quizzical eye over the nation can get into the sea. For starters, it's not particularly British.
I think the historical consensus forming on Obama is that he was over-cautious and much of his administration a wasted opportunity.
But there’s no denying his oratorical skills and his outstanding political (if not personal, by accounts) charisma.
Then again, nor have I.
Obviously I have no idea of the endowment of PBers, but since the penises (penii?) of your fellow posters and grandfathers are never far from your thoughts, perhaps you have well researched charts that you could share with us?
And the same was true at the time of members of the Labour Party and the Conservative Party; about half of Labour Party members thought the UK was a bad country, while few Conservative Party members shared that opinion.
It would be hard to consider anyone a patriot, if they think their own nation is mostly bad. So, where do you come down on that question, Dr. Foxy?
I haven't seen similar polls recently, but haven't looked for them, either.
(For the record: I think both nations mostly good, and am worried that so many citizens in both don't seem to even see their accomplishments.
If we all sat around feeling good about ourselves we'd be quickly overtaken. With the HS2 "mutilation" and sabotage of our fastest growing sector (net zero), you start to wonder whether we have already fallen into that trap.
Part of the issue with modelling this is that the lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere is pretty uncertain, and is likely to vary according to concentration (with higher concentration meaning longer lifetime, unfortunately). It's common to read estimates of 400 years, but it could be anything from 200 to 2000 in reality.
Fornication: but that was in another country,
And besides, the wench is dead.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/09/23/storm-shadow-black-sea-fleet-crimea-russia-romanchuk-tseko/