I found it lazy and thoughtless - the over-used trope of 'post-truth politics' is driving me mental at the moment.
Both major UK parties are to blame for failing to ensure that the impact of mass migration did not damage the working poor (or however you want to classify them).
They've had years to do so, and did not. Further (and this has continued right through the campaign), a large section of those who have prospered continue to just shriek 'racist' at every conceivable opportunity.
This is not post-truth politics. It's this-is-what-happens-when-you-ignore-half-your-voters politics.
In conclusion, I'd like to say: this is not rocket science, for fuck's sake.
CLAPS
Huh
. Migrants do the jobs that the indigenous Brits won't.
The usual casual bigotry and racism.
Migrants do the jobs for lower pay and under worse conditions and in a more servile manner is what you should have said.
Thats how you categorise it. Ask the farmers in Norfolk who cannot get brits to pull the crops..
Leave is full of lies, but so are Remain. The difference is that Leave are xenophobic in many of the things they say. Go and talk to some leavers on the street and all they say is that they want to stop immigration/ kick migrants out.. That's it.. its a one subject agenda.
-phobia: a disproportionate or irrational fear.
It's becoming fashionable at the moment, isn't it? Homophobic. Transphobic. Xenophobic. Makes you sound clever. Also, if you're using it, it means that you aren't whatever it is. I am tolerant, you are somethingphobic.
Whether we like it or not, there's a good chunk of people who have every reason to be fearful about mass immigration. Moreover, they would be stupid not to be.
Naturally, you'll keep using the term, because, as noted in passing, it makes you sound clever and virtuous. It also means you don't have to actually think about the issues. A lovely mixture of self regard and laziness. Thinkophobic, even.
I agree. Concern about immigration does NOT imply xenophobia.
I got pessimistic the last 48 hours that Remain would win but reading here and Politics section on Digital Spy am beginning to have optimism again that it might go Leave's way
I've just been browsing twitter with the 'brexit' hashtag.
Elizabeth Hurley's come out for Brexit!
(I still find myself expecting both outcomes at different moments.)
Lets get the nett cost of being in the EU (£140m per week) into perspective - this cost is about £2 a week for the each of the approx 70 million of us living in the UK. I do not buy the Sun, Express or Daily Mail but I am told the cost per week for taking any of these "admirable organs" is considerably more than this. So why are some people so upset about the amount of money we are currently paying to the EU? I wonder how many new hospitals could be built with the amount of money that people could save if they stopped buying these newspapers?
Let's actually do the real maths. The net contribution plus tariffs is about £190m per week, we have 32m people in work in the country. That's £5.93 per week or £300 per year. Which equates to 2p on the basic rate of tax for someone earning the national average wage.
If the government decided to pay up our EU membership rather than borrow the money we would have to add a minimum of 2p on income tax, but really more like 4p and then have the EU give most of it away to farmers to keep their land empty.
I got pessimistic the last 48 hours that Remain would win but reading here and Politics section on Digital Spy am beginning to have optimism again that it might go Leave's way
I found it lazy and thoughtless - the over-used trope of 'post-truth politics' is driving me mental at the moment.
Both major UK parties are to blame for failing to ensure that the impact of mass migration did not damage the working poor (or however you want to classify them).
They've had years to do so, and did not. Further (and this has continued right through the campaign), a large section of those who have prospered continue to just shriek 'racist' at every conceivable opportunity.
This is not post-truth politics. It's this-is-what-happens-when-you-ignore-half-your-voters politics.
In conclusion, I'd like to say: this is not rocket science, for fuck's sake.
CLAPS
Huh
. Migrants do the jobs that the indigenous Brits won't.
The usual casual bigotry and racism.
Migrants do the jobs for lower pay and under worse conditions and in a more servile manner is what you should have said.
Thats how you categorise it. Ask the farmers in Norfolk who cannot get brits to pull the crops..
Leave is full of lies, but so are Remain. The difference is that Leave are xenophobic in many of the things they say. Go and talk to some leavers on the street and all they say is that they want to stop immigration/ kick migrants out.. That's it.. its a one subject agenda.
So who did the Norfolk farmers get to pull the crops ten or twenty years ago ?
I suppose the Norfolk working class would now be classified as wicked layabouts for wanting enough wages to pay the rent on a proper house instead of living a dozen to a wooden hut.
It's a fair point. But what it also means is higher prices, or more imports and no jobs.
I found it lazy and thoughtless - the over-used trope of 'post-truth politics' is driving me mental at the moment.
Both major UK parties are to blame for failing to ensure that the impact of mass migration did not damage the working poor (or however you want to classify them).
They've had years to do so, and did not. Further (and this has continued right through the campaign), a large section of those who have prospered continue to just shriek 'racist' at every conceivable opportunity.
This is not post-truth politics. It's this-is-what-happens-when-you-ignore-half-your-voters politics.
In conclusion, I'd like to say: this is not rocket science, for fuck's sake.
CLAPS
Huh
. Migrants do the jobs that the indigenous Brits won't.
The usual casual bigotry and racism.
Migrants do the jobs for lower pay and under worse conditions and in a more servile manner is what you should have said.
Thats how you categorise it. Ask the farmers in Norfolk who cannot get brits to pull the crops..
Leave is full of lies, but so are Remain. The difference is that Leave are xenophobic in many of the things they say. Go and talk to some leavers on the street and all they say is that they want to stop immigration/ kick migrants out.. That's it.. its a one subject agenda.
So who did the Norfolk farmers get to pull the crops ten or twenty years ago ?
I suppose the Norfolk working class would now be classified as wicked layabouts for wanting enough wages to pay the rent on a proper house instead of living a dozen to a wooden hut.
Yes, I've done all those crap jobs - cleaning, food processing, warehouses, licking envelopes etc - back in the 80s/90s. All my workmates then were English and we had good banter. What people forget is how important camaraderie is when you are doing shit jobs. I couldn't imagine doing a 12 hour shift today with a group of people who speak pigeon English. Or more likely, who all speak eg Portuguese, or Slavic, or whatever, and therefore could talk to each other in their mother tongue. I think it's unfair to malign Brits who don't want those working conditions.
Leave get criticised for nasty xenophobia because they have campaigned with nasty xenophobic posters. Far too many Leavers, from the very top down, seem way too comfortable with making the white folks angry.
You can't do that and evade criticism. You might decide that paddling in that pool is worth it in the pursuit of a more important cause. That, however, speaks volumes about your priorities.
Has Phil Woolas come out for leave yet ?
Phil Woolas likes to "upset the whites" so that means he is with REMAIN I guess.
I got pessimistic the last 48 hours that Remain would win but reading here and Politics section on Digital Spy am beginning to have optimism again that it might go Leave's way
I got pessimistic the last 48 hours that Remain would win but reading here and Politics section on Digital Spy am beginning to have optimism again that it might go Leave's way
Assuming we do leave and in a decade or so wish to return, it would make sense to a) wait until the EU project has reached completion and we can see what we're aiming to join; b) become a member state, join in whole-heartedly and assimilate.
If we asked the USA to let us become another state of theirs, we'd expect to change our way of life to theirs. How is the USE any different?
Canada is a fully sovereign nation right on the doorstep of the US, and is hugely economically interconnected with it, yet preserves its own G8 seat, WTO seat, foreign influence and policy and much else besides.
There is no appetite, desire or need for it to join it as a state.
I think Britain's problem is that we want to be a very big global hitter but lack the confidence that we will be able to do it ourselves. So, instead, our elites are attracted to power blocs they hope to influence from the inside and don't mind the political price because they think they can control it.
By 'we want to be .....' you mean 'our elites want to be .....', I think.
So it's because our elites lack self-confidence? They want to have some sort of sock-puppet sitting at the big global tables?
And in fact these elites can't even produce a reasonable negotiation in the friendly local power bloc they want to use as a sock-puppet?
They are right to lack self-confidence. And something's gone drastically wrong with the process that these so-called elites go through to win that accolade.
For myself I don't care a toss about being a global hitter. A small off-shore island like Guernsey suits me just fine.
If, in spite of being so small, we end up as a global hitter, that's another matter.
But to start from wanting the global hitter when your elites haven't the self-confidence to negotiate their way out of a paper bag is Walter Mitty territory.
I found it lazy and thoughtless - the over-used trope of 'post-truth politics' is driving me mental at the moment.
Both major UK parties are to blame for failing to ensure that the impact of mass migration did not damage the working poor (or however you want to classify them).
They've had years to do so, and did not. Further (and this has continued right through the campaign), a large section of those who have prospered continue to just shriek 'racist' at every conceivable opportunity.
This is not post-truth politics. It's this-is-what-happens-when-you-ignore-half-your-voters politics.
In conclusion, I'd like to say: this is not rocket science, for fuck's sake.
CLAPS
Huh
. Migrants do the jobs that the indigenous Brits won't.
The usual casual bigotry and racism.
Migrants do the jobs for lower pay and under worse conditions and in a more servile manner is what you should have said.
Thats how you categorise it. Ask the farmers in Norfolk who cannot get brits to pull the crops..
Leave is full of lies, but so are Remain. The difference is that Leave are xenophobic in many of the things they say. Go and talk to some leavers on the street and all they say is that they want to stop immigration/ kick migrants out.. That's it.. its a one subject agenda.
So who did the Norfolk farmers get to pull the crops ten or twenty years ago ?
I suppose the Norfolk working class would now be classified as wicked layabouts for wanting enough wages to pay the rent on a proper house instead of living a dozen to a wooden hut.
I was told by a nulab remainer on another forum that it is basically their own fault for not getting on their bikes (or is it aeroplanes) and going and working in Lithuania or Romania. After all, Auf Wiedersen Pet shows there are loads of jobs available there....
I got pessimistic the last 48 hours that Remain would win but reading here and Politics section on Digital Spy am beginning to have optimism again that it might go Leave's way
I got pessimistic the last 48 hours that Remain would win but reading here and Politics section on Digital Spy am beginning to have optimism again that it might go Leave's way
In the last decade Wales has had around £6 billion in additional funding (some of it matched funding from HMG) from the EU. If the EU gave me six billion smackers, I'd love them too .
Cardiff really is a very nice place to visit - the Bay is lovely.
I got pessimistic the last 48 hours that Remain would win but reading here and Politics section on Digital Spy am beginning to have optimism again that it might go Leave's way
@SamCoatesTimes: Lady Warsi to The Times: “Are we prepared to tell lies, to spread hate and xenophobia just to win a campaign? For me that’s a step too far.”
It's good to see so many on here now convinced of the importance of high wages and good working conditions for UK workers. Time to revisit anti-union legislation?
A: In order to make weather forecasters look good.
In my defence I have to say that I've not ignored them. Read the IFS report. Check. The IMF report. Check. Various economic thought pieces. Check. European economists. Check.
The primary issue is that with the honorable exception of the IFS report, most of them concentrate on near-term effects, which we don't really need experts for.
Any fule no that the markets are going to go berserk on the 24th. The £ will drop sharply towards historic lows against the euro and dollar. The FTSE will head back to 2011 territory. And so on and so forth.
After that, only the IFS have really had a stab at it.
@SamCoatesTimes: Lady Warsi to The Times: “Are we prepared to tell lies, to spread hate and xenophobia just to win a campaign? For me that’s a step too far.”
Defection? I don't remember her doing anything for Leave.
1) Clarify exactly why you object to the concept of an (opt in) EU army? 2) How would the UK leaving the EU make any difference to the establishment of said EU army?
I have no objection to European countries cooperating pan-Europe on defence. But, if so, that should only be done through multilateral agreement by national parliaments.
To let one be established under the powers of the EU treaties to an EU that has legal identity to promote its foreign policy and support its 'power projection' is very different.
I should have thought the difference was obvious
I don't quite know why people get their knickers in a twist about a European army? It is perfectly logical to have one to deal with global issues.
If it was an Army led by the US, Britain will have no problem. We like being America's sidekick.
Interesting article David, however my take is that if we leave, and that the EU then reforms, those necessary reforms would involve ending political union, rethinking Schengen and crucially stopping the expansion of the Eurozone and indeed possibly shrinking it.
In those circumstances rejoining would be less of a problem.
If the EU does not perform serious reform it will break up. If it does it would become a looser club and many may wish to join.
There are also other opportunities out there, but your article obviously presumes that the EU looks more attractive at the time.
In the last decade Wales has had around £6 billion in additional funding (some of it matched funding from HMG) from the EU. If the EU gave me six billion smackers, I'd love them too .
Cardiff really is a very nice place to visit - the Bay is lovely.
You mean in the last decade Wales has had an additional £6 billion of the UK tax payer's money laundered back to them by the EU but only on the proviso the UK Government also spends more tax payers money on them as well.
@SamCoatesTimes: Lady Warsi to The Times: “Are we prepared to tell lies, to spread hate and xenophobia just to win a campaign? For me that’s a step too far.”
Defection? I don't remember her doing anything for Leave.
There has been talk about the EU punishing the UK for leaving, and to some extent needing to punish the UK, pour encourager les autres.
I just had this wild idea that they will put a "no rebate" price on access to the single market. It would be funny if we actually ended up paying £350 million a week if we left the EU.
We would just say no. The single market is not worth that much. It would be cheaper for us to just go with WTO tariffs.
WTO tariffs would cost £4.6 billion so we are in a sort of buy one, pay for two deal.
@SamCoatesTimes: Lady Warsi to The Times: “Are we prepared to tell lies, to spread hate and xenophobia just to win a campaign? For me that’s a step too far.”
Defection? I don't remember her doing anything for Leave.
In the last decade Wales has had around £6 billion in additional funding (some of it matched funding from HMG) from the EU. If the EU gave me six billion smackers, I'd love them too .
Cardiff really is a very nice place to visit - the Bay is lovely.
I went to a wedding down the Bay yesterday snd ended up going to bed at half eight this morning. Hell of a shape.
Was a nice view from the fifth floor of St David's Hotel out across the Bristol Channel to Flatholm and Steepholm at five this morning as the sun rose. Sat on the balcony drinking gin.
It's good to see so many on here now convinced of the importance of high wages and good working conditions for UK workers. Time to revisit anti-union legislation?
Stop trolling SO . More seriously, do you think it would help? My knowledge of trades union legislation is shocking.
@SamCoatesTimes: Lady Warsi to The Times: “Are we prepared to tell lies, to spread hate and xenophobia just to win a campaign? For me that’s a step too far.”
A very intelligent article wrt to the risk of us re-entering. However it doesn't answer the key question of why we would choose to rejoin, at the very most we'd go into the EFTA for the trade benefits.
It would probably be a similar reason to first time around: a loss of national self confidence set against a successful continent. At present, that looks unlikely in the near future but then in 1975 you'd have said that a Thatcher 1980s would have looked unlikely. Another alternative would be if the USA went isolationist - always a risk - and Russia started to really throw its weight about, though I suspect that would lead more to co-operation within a EuroNATO than to rejoining, though it'd be a step in that direction.
The Russians don't have the economy to support any kind of sustained conflict. They're what, somewhere between Spain and Italy? Resource based to boot, so reasonably susceptible to sanctions.
I appreciate that that economic clout isn't the sole determinant of power projection capabilities.
I've been hearing 'the Russians are coming' my entire life. However, as we learned post Cold War, the USSR was very much a paper tiger. Perhaps I'm in danger of leaning too far the other way now.
Putin needs bogeymen for his own purposes, but then, so do we.
Putin has successfully taken parts of Georgia and the Ukraine into Russia. I'd be extremely worried about the future of NATO if I was one of the Baltic states.
@SamCoatesTimes: Lady Warsi to The Times: “Are we prepared to tell lies, to spread hate and xenophobia just to win a campaign? For me that’s a step too far.”
Defection? I don't remember her doing anything for Leave.
I agree that I thought Tusk was the sensible one. Which begs the question why he pumped up the rhetoric to the max with "the end of Western Civilisation" last week, and made himself look rather silly.
I was in Wales last week and therefore riding steam trains and communing with dragons, so missed that. By and large, Tusk has been sensible. I don't know the context of that comment but I'd hope it wasn't quite as down-the-line as the quote makes it sound.
"As a historian I fear Brexit could be the beginning of the destruction of not only the EU but also Western political civilisation in its entirety." - to Bild.
Ah. "Could" encompasses a multitude of possibilities!
It's good to see so many on here now convinced of the importance of high wages and good working conditions for UK workers. Time to revisit anti-union legislation?
Stop trolling SO . More seriously, do you think it would help? My knowledge of trades union legislation is shocking.
One of the reasons people end up in low pay, poor condition jobs is that unions have been emasculated in this country.
In the last decade Wales has had around £6 billion in additional funding (some of it matched funding from HMG) from the EU. If the EU gave me six billion smackers, I'd love them too .
Cardiff really is a very nice place to visit - the Bay is lovely.
I went to a wedding down the Bay yesterday snd ended up going to bed at half eight this morning. Hell of a shape.
Was a nice view from the fifth floor of St David's Hotel out across the Bristol Channel to Flatholm and Steepholm at five this morning as the sun rose. Sat on the balcony drinking gin.
Steepholm was crystal clear in view early last night too. Really noteworthy.
@SamCoatesTimes: Lady Warsi to The Times: “Are we prepared to tell lies, to spread hate and xenophobia just to win a campaign? For me that’s a step too far.”
Defection? I don't remember her doing anything for Leave.
In the last decade Wales has had around £6 billion in additional funding (some of it matched funding from HMG) from the EU. If the EU gave me six billion smackers, I'd love them too .
Cardiff really is a very nice place to visit - the Bay is lovely.
There is no such thing as EU Money! There is only taxpayers' money!
I found it lazy and thoughtless - the over-used trope of 'post-truth politics' is driving me mental at the moment.
Both major UK parties are to blame for failing to ensure that the impact of mass migration did not damage the working poor (or however you want to classify them).
They've had years to do so, and did not. Further (and this has continued right through the campaign), a large section of those who have prospered continue to just shriek 'racist' at every conceivable opportunity.
This is not post-truth politics. It's this-is-what-happens-when-you-ignore-half-your-voters politics.
In conclusion, I'd like to say: this is not rocket science, for fuck's sake.
CLAPS
Huh
. Migrants do the jobs that the indigenous Brits won't.
The usual casual bigotry and racism.
Migrants do the jobs for lower pay and under worse conditions and in a more servile manner is what you should have said.
Thats how you categorise it. Ask the farmers in Norfolk who cannot get brits to pull the crops..
Leave is full of lies, but so are Remain. The difference is that Leave are xenophobic in many of the things they say. Go and talk to some leavers on the street and all they say is that they want to stop immigration/ kick migrants out.. That's it.. its a one subject agenda.
So who did the Norfolk farmers get to pull the crops ten or twenty years ago ?
I suppose the Norfolk working class would now be classified as wicked layabouts for wanting enough wages to pay the rent on a proper house instead of living a dozen to a wooden hut.
I was told by a nulab remainer on another forum that it is basically their own fault for not getting on their bikes (or is it aeroplanes) and going and working in Lithuania or Romania. After all, Auf Wiedersen Pet shows there are loads of jobs available there....
He was being serious.
The British people are an inconvenience to the sort of Britain the establishment wants.
It would be so much easier for them if 50m Britons emigrated and were replaced by 100m lower paid, more servile immigrants.
A very intelligent article wrt to the risk of us re-entering. However it doesn't answer the key question of why we would choose to rejoin, at the very most we'd go into the EFTA for the trade benefits.
It would probably be a similar reason to first time around: a loss of national self confidence set against a successful continent. At present, that looks unlikely in the near future but then in 1975 you'd have said that a Thatcher 1980s would have looked unlikely. Another alternative would be if the USA went isolationist - always a risk - and Russia started to really throw its weight about, though I suspect that would lead more to co-operation within a EuroNATO than to rejoining, though it'd be a step in that direction.
The Russians don't have the economy to support any kind of sustained conflict. They're what, somewhere between Spain and Italy? Resource based to boot, so reasonably susceptible to sanctions.
I appreciate that that economic clout isn't the sole determinant of power projection capabilities.
I've been hearing 'the Russians are coming' my entire life. However, as we learned post Cold War, the USSR was very much a paper tiger. Perhaps I'm in danger of leaning too far the other way now.
Putin needs bogeymen for his own purposes, but then, so do we.
Putin has successfully taken parts of Georgia and the Ukraine into Russia. I'd be extremely worried about the future of NATO if I was one of the Baltic states.
Lets get the nett cost of being in the EU (£140m per week) into perspective - this cost is about £2 a week for the each of the approx 70 million of us living in the UK. I do not buy the Sun, Express or Daily Mail but I am told the cost per week for taking any of these "admirable organs" is considerably more than this. So why are some people so upset about the amount of money we are currently paying to the EU? I wonder how many new hospitals could be built with the amount of money that people could save if they stopped buying these newspapers?
Let's actually do the real maths. The net contribution plus tariffs is about £190m per week, we have 32m people in work in the country. That's £5.93 per week or £300 per year. Which equates to 2p on the basic rate of tax for someone earning the national average wage.
If the government decided to pay up our EU membership rather than borrow the money we would have to add a minimum of 2p on income tax, but really more like 4p and then have the EU give most of it away to farmers to keep their land empty.
OK but if the BBC's figures are correct you're figures are wrong too: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-35943216 My point is valid whichever basis is used for the calculation. The current cost of the UK's membership of the EU is actually very good value from purely an economic viewpoint. Leaving the EU will obviously be disastrous for the UK economy along with all the ensuing consequences.
@SamCoatesTimes: Lady Warsi to The Times: “Are we prepared to tell lies, to spread hate and xenophobia just to win a campaign? For me that’s a step too far.”
The Baroness is for turning!
Playbook chapter 2
[Drumroll] "Unveil the sleepers and double-agents!"
Lets get the nett cost of being in the EU (£140m per week) into perspective - this cost is about £2 a week for the each of the approx 70 million of us living in the UK. I do not buy the Sun, Express or Daily Mail but I am told the cost per week for taking any of these "admirable organs" is considerably more than this. So why are some people so upset about the amount of money we are currently paying to the EU? I wonder how many new hospitals could be built with the amount of money that people could save if they stopped buying these newspapers?
Let's actually do the real maths. The net contribution plus tariffs is about £190m per week, we have 32m people in work in the country. That's £5.93 per week or £300 per year. Which equates to 2p on the basic rate of tax for someone earning the national average wage.
If the government decided to pay up our EU membership rather than borrow the money we would have to add a minimum of 2p on income tax, but really more like 4p and then have the EU give most of it away to farmers to keep their land empty.
OK but if the BBC's figures are correct you're figures are wrong too: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-35943216 My point is valid whichever basis is used for the calculation. The current cost of the UK's membership of the EU is actually very good value from purely an economic viewpoint. Leaving the EU will obviously be disastrous for the UK economy along with all the ensuing consequences.
It won't 'obviously be disastrous' - even the Treasury forecast shows GDP growth by 2018 if there's Brexit (Table 2c, p46).
I found it lazy and thoughtless - the over-used trope of 'post-truth politics' is driving me mental at the moment.
Both major UK parties are to blame for failing to ensure that the impact of mass migration did not damage the working poor (or however you want to classify them).
They've had years to do so, and did not. Further (and this has continued right through the campaign), a large section of those who have prospered continue to just shriek 'racist' at every conceivable opportunity.
This is not post-truth politics. It's this-is-what-happens-when-you-ignore-half-your-voters politics.
In conclusion, I'd like to say: this is not rocket science, for fuck's sake.
CLAPS
Huh
. Migrants do the jobs that the indigenous Brits won't.
The usual casual bigotry and racism.
Migrants do the jobs for lower pay and under worse conditions and in a more servile manner is what you should have said.
Thats how you categorise it. Ask the farmers in Norfolk who cannot get brits to pull the crops..
Leave is full of lies, but so are Remain. The difference is that Leave are xenophobic in many of the things they say. Go and talk to some leavers on the street and all they say is that they want to stop immigration/ kick migrants out.. That's it.. its a one subject agenda.
So who did the Norfolk farmers get to pull the crops ten or twenty years ago ?
I suppose the Norfolk working class would now be classified as wicked layabouts for wanting enough wages to pay the rent on a proper house instead of living a dozen to a wooden hut.
Yes, I've done all those crap jobs - cleaning, food processing, warehouses, licking envelopes etc - back in the 80s/90s. All my workmates then were English and we had good banter. What people forget is how important camaraderie is when you are doing shit jobs. I couldn't imagine doing a 12 hour shift today with a group of people who speak pigeon English. Or more likely, who all speak eg Portuguese, or Slavic, or whatever, and therefore could talk to each other in their mother tongue. I think it's unfair to malign Brits who don't want those working conditions.
Indeed.
There was also in the 1980s and 1990s far greater potential for economic mobility and for the young and/or low paid to buy a house.
I agree that I thought Tusk was the sensible one. Which begs the question why he pumped up the rhetoric to the max with "the end of Western Civilisation" last week, and made himself look rather silly.
I was in Wales last week and therefore riding steam trains and communing with dragons, so missed that. By and large, Tusk has been sensible. I don't know the context of that comment but I'd hope it wasn't quite as down-the-line as the quote makes it sound.
"As a historian I fear Brexit could be the beginning of the destruction of not only the EU but also Western political civilisation in its entirety." - to Bild.
Ah. "Could" encompasses a multitude of possibilities!
I foresee two possibilities.
1: coming face to face with herself 30 years older would put her into shock and she'd simply pass out.
Or 2: the encounter could create a time paradox, the result of which could cause a chain reaction that would unravel the very fabric of the spacetime continuum and destroy the entire universe!!
Granted, that's a worst-case scenario. The destruction might in fact be very localised, limited to merely our own galaxy.
A very intelligent article wrt to the risk of us re-entering. However it doesn't answer the key question of why we would choose to rejoin, at the very most we'd go into the EFTA for the trade benefits.
It would probably be a similar reason to first time around: a loss of national self confidence set against a successful continent. At present, that looks unlikely in the near future but then in 1975 you'd have said that a Thatcher 1980s would have looked unlikely. Another alternative would be if the USA went isolationist - always a risk - and Russia started to really throw its weight about, though I suspect that would lead more to co-operation within a EuroNATO than to rejoining, though it'd be a step in that direction.
The Russians don't have the economy to support any kind of sustained conflict. They're what, somewhere between Spain and Italy? Resource based to boot, so reasonably susceptible to sanctions.
I appreciate that that economic clout isn't the sole determinant of power projection capabilities.
I've been hearing 'the Russians are coming' my entire life. However, as we learned post Cold War, the USSR was very much a paper tiger. Perhaps I'm in danger of leaning too far the other way now.
Putin needs bogeymen for his own purposes, but then, so do we.
Putin has successfully taken parts of Georgia and the Ukraine into Russia. I'd be extremely worried about the future of NATO if I was one of the Baltic states.
Me too. I'm very big on NATO.
With apologies to Krushchev:
"Kaliningrad is the testicle of Russia. When I want the Russians to scream, I squeeze on Kaliningrad!"
It's good to see so many on here now convinced of the importance of high wages and good working conditions for UK workers. Time to revisit anti-union legislation?
Stop trolling SO . More seriously, do you think it would help? My knowledge of trades union legislation is shocking.
One of the reasons people end up in low pay, poor condition jobs is that unions have been emasculated in this country.
@SamCoatesTimes: Lady Warsi to The Times: “Are we prepared to tell lies, to spread hate and xenophobia just to win a campaign? For me that’s a step too far.”
Defection? I don't remember her doing anything for Leave.
What a wretched figure in British politics.
I didn't even know she was for leave.
If you go to google and put in Baroness Warsi EU you don't get back a single item about her being for Leave in the first 5 pages. Nor under the news items.
I found it lazy and thoughtless - the over-used trope of 'post-truth politics' is driving me mental at the moment.
Both major UK parties are to blame for failing to ensure that the impact of mass migration did not damage the working poor (or however you want to classify them).
They've had years to do so, and did not. Further (and this has continued right through the campaign), a large section of those who have prospered continue to just shriek 'racist' at every conceivable opportunity.
This is not post-truth politics. It's this-is-what-happens-when-you-ignore-half-your-voters politics.
In conclusion, I'd like to say: this is not rocket science, for fuck's sake.
CLAPS
Huh
. Migrants do the jobs that the indigenous Brits won't.
The usual casual bigotry and racism.
Migrants do the jobs for lower pay and under worse conditions and in a more servile manner is what you should have said.
Thats how you categorise it. Ask the farmers in Norfolk who cannot get brits to pull the crops..
Leave is full of lies, but so are Remain. The difference is that Leave are xenophobic in many of the things they say. Go and talk to some leavers on the street and all they say is that they want to stop immigration/ kick migrants out.. That's it.. its a one subject agenda.
So who did the Norfolk farmers get to pull the crops ten or twenty years ago ?
I suppose the Norfolk working class would now be classified as wicked layabouts for wanting enough wages to pay the rent on a proper house instead of living a dozen to a wooden hut.
Yes, I've done all those crap jobs - cleaning, food processing, warehouses, licking envelopes etc - back in the 80s/90s. All my workmates then were Englishspeak pigeon English. Or more likely, who all speak eg Portuguese, or Slavic, or whatever, and therefore could talk to each other in their mother tongue. I think it's unfair to malign Brits who don't want those working conditions.
Indeed.
There was also in the 1980s and 1990s far greater potential for economic mobility and for the young and/or low paid to buy a house.
Comments
Elizabeth Hurley's come out for Brexit!
(I still find myself expecting both outcomes at different moments.)
If the government decided to pay up our EU membership rather than borrow the money we would have to add a minimum of 2p on income tax, but really more like 4p and then have the EU give most of it away to farmers to keep their land empty.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/gillian-duffy-changed-course-election-8232751
edit: I see you knew!
Sounds like we also need stronger trade unions.
https://twitter.com/LouiseMensch/status/744633229353848834
"Here in Rochdale, many people come and talk to me about the referendum in the street - and everyone tells me they will be voting to leave.
I haven’t had a single person tell me that they want to stay in Europe."
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/gillian-duffy-changed-course-election-8232751
Great message...
Nothing to do with the referendum, just a football fact!
A: In order to make weather forecasters look good.
So it's because our elites lack self-confidence? They want to have some sort of sock-puppet sitting at the big global tables?
And in fact these elites can't even produce a reasonable negotiation in the friendly local power bloc they want to use as a sock-puppet?
They are right to lack self-confidence. And something's gone drastically wrong with the process that these so-called elites go through to win that accolade.
For myself I don't care a toss about being a global hitter. A small off-shore island like Guernsey suits me just fine.
If, in spite of being so small, we end up as a global hitter, that's another matter.
But to start from wanting the global hitter when your elites haven't the self-confidence to negotiate their way out of a paper bag is Walter Mitty territory.
David Cameron asked if he's a "21st Century Neville Chamberlain" during #bbcqt #EURef debate https://t.co/slOCKdj5NP https://t.co/whu7GrKcl7
That, to me, is the biggest worry.
Cardiff really is a very nice place to visit - the Bay is lovely.
You're beginning to believe your own propaganda. All you need is a majority in Parliament or aren't we a democracy.
Bit of a bore-draw between France and Switzerland, but both teams safely through.
@SamCoatesTimes: Lady Warsi to The Times: “Are we prepared to tell lies, to spread hate and xenophobia just to win a campaign? For me that’s a step too far.”
The primary issue is that with the honorable exception of the IFS report, most of them concentrate on near-term effects, which we don't really need experts for.
Any fule no that the markets are going to go berserk on the 24th. The £ will drop sharply towards historic lows against the euro and dollar. The FTSE will head back to 2011 territory. And so on and so forth.
After that, only the IFS have really had a stab at it.
What a wretched figure in British politics.
Rome: 5 Stars 64-68% PD 32-36%
Milan: PD 49-53% Right 47-51%
Turin: 5 Stars 50-54% PD 46-50%
Bologna: PD 54-58% Right 42-46%
Naples: De Magistris 61-65 Right 35-39
In those circumstances rejoining would be less of a problem.
If the EU does not perform serious reform it will break up. If it does it would become a looser club and many may wish to join.
There are also other opportunities out there, but your article obviously presumes that the EU looks more attractive at the time.
Their import duty would be £8.9 billion.
Was a nice view from the fifth floor of St David's Hotel out across the Bristol Channel to Flatholm and Steepholm at five this morning as the sun rose. Sat on the balcony drinking gin.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/19/boris-johnson-change-the-whole-course-of-european-history-by-bac/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
The British people are an inconvenience to the sort of Britain the establishment wants.
It would be so much easier for them if 50m Britons emigrated and were replaced by 100m lower paid, more servile immigrants.
Not sure how well that is going to go down.
My point is valid whichever basis is used for the calculation. The current cost of the UK's membership of the EU is actually very good value from purely an economic viewpoint.
Leaving the EU will obviously be disastrous for the UK economy along with all the ensuing consequences.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/20/world/europe/britain-referendum-brexit-european-union.html?ref=world&_r=0
[Drumroll] "Unveil the sleepers and double-agents!"
yawn...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayeeda_Warsi,_Baroness_Warsi#Political_career
Same old, same old.
http://www.churchill-society-london.org.uk/astonish.html
There was also in the 1980s and 1990s far greater potential for economic mobility and for the young and/or low paid to buy a house.
Subliminal Trump message
1: coming face to face with herself 30 years older would put her into shock and she'd simply pass out.
Or 2: the encounter could create a time paradox, the result of which could cause a chain reaction that would unravel the very fabric of the spacetime continuum and destroy the entire universe!!
Granted, that's a worst-case scenario. The destruction might in fact be very localised, limited to merely our own galaxy.
"Kaliningrad is the testicle of Russia. When I want the Russians to scream, I squeeze on Kaliningrad!"
Overall, I thought Cameron was excellent tonight.