Of course I can dismiss those who believe in inequality with marriage as wrong. Just as I can dismiss anyone who thinks interracial marriage should be illegal is wrong. The fact people held bad views in the past doesn't make them better now - though I'm not going to judge people from the past by today's standards I will more than happily judge anyone still clinging to such views TODAY.
As a married atheist I'm also prepared to dismiss anyone who brings religion into a debate on marriage as wrong too. Marriage is a civil institution that is not religious. Keep your religion in your Church and not the law.
You can certainly dismiss them as wrong, but you need to understand that in the future, your own views will be dismissed as wrong. And not just because views have moved further along a traditional to 'woke' continuum, but potentially because they have gone into reverse gear, or shifted completely in ways we cannot contemplate currently. To a large extent, we are merely responding to the social mores of our time. Much of what we believe now will one day seen to be as much a vulgar extreme of the early 21st century as the perriwigs or witch burnings of previous eras.
Indeed. We look back at the past and wonder "how could they have been so stupid"? And in the future they will think that of us, and - as you say - not in a predictable direction.
That thought occurs to me on an almost daily basis. I don’t get how people assume the latest decisions are the most correct without pause for thought
Or the next Reagan? He was widely believed in the 1970s to be too rightwing to be electable
Thinking beyond the US, I'm finding it much easier to think of examples of winners who had seemed to be too right-wing to be electable than winners who had seemed to be too left-wing to be electable.
"Boris Johnson intends to impose full customs checks on all goods coming into the UK from the EU, in a break with previous government policy, according to reports.
“We are planning full checks on all EU imports – export declarations, security declarations, animal health checks and all supermarket goods to pass through border inspection posts,” the Daily Telegraph reported a senior Whitehall source as saying. “This will double the practical challenge at the border in January 2021.”
The paper reports that businesses will be informed of the policy on 10 February."
Maybe I being thick after last night's wine, but how does this work with no border in Ireland/NI?
This is the first thing the government has said that actually makes any kind of sense on trade policy. It definitely means the EU will need to think about their objectives as well given that it looks like the UK isn't interested in any kind of relationship that goes beyond trade. I wouldn't be surprised if the UK removes security co-operation from the EU and shifts that to a more bilateral or multilateral relationship with specific countries that can be trusted to have our back rather than the EU which can't.
Sharing information on terrorism with Belgium is apparently problematic, for example.
Absolutely no ability, or even an attempt, to understand why people might have voted Leave (beyond stupid, racist, deluded, the daily mail, etc).
If brexit has done one invaluable thing, it has revealed that our nation’s intelligentsia are anything but. I wonder if this is true for other countries. I suspect it is.
We must have read different versions, as I can't recall him saying these things (other than right wing media issue).
Just read it - a superb polemic. Every sentence is thought provoking and pointed. There's no doubt that the forces that brought us Brexit, equipped with the same toolkit, will now turn to even darker schemes. At least we're now fully warned.
Lol. It’s just mad. The fact you agree with it just shows you share the same mad cow disease. McEwan literally thinks we will now have to rip up all our hedges to be like Iowa. He’s a nutter.
For balance, this is a much smarter, sometimes brilliant analysis of Brexit, also in today’s guardian. It shows why a 2nd vote was always dangerously mad, and also underlines the perils now facing Boris. I am less pessimistic than the writer, but this is a genuinely good piece (unlike the McEwan vomitus)
So you think our farming ('flowering grasses, and fields shadowing Domesday lines') can compete quite happily with the vast agricultural output of the Great Plains? Keep drinking the moonshine.
Well it is doing very well at the moment. In recent years UK wheat has been cheaper than US wheat - before you even take into account transport costs. So much so that we have been exporting wheat to the US. Right now US wheat costs around £160 a tonne whereas UK wheat is at around £143 a tonne and our production is up 20% on last year.
To be honest in terms of his impact and to maintain your musical analogy, he is looking more like the Chuck Berry of politics at the moment. He has changed everything.
In that case they'd better check for hidden cameras in no 10's lavvies.
Not getting the connection on that one. Was Chuck a bad boy?
Yep.
'In 1990, he was sued by several women who claimed that he had installed a video camera in the bathroom. Berry claimed that he had had the camera installed to catch a worker who was suspected of stealing from the restaurant. Although his guilt was never proven in court, Berry opted for a class action settlement. One of his biographers, Bruce Pegg, estimated that with 59 women it cost Berry over $1.2 million plus legal fees'
Ooo nasty. Shame when your heroes turn out to be tarnished.
Absolutely no ability, or even an attempt, to understand why people might have voted Leave (beyond stupid, racist, deluded, the daily mail, etc).
If brexit has done one invaluable thing, it has revealed that our nation’s intelligentsia are anything but. I wonder if this is true for other countries. I suspect it is.
We must have read different versions, as I can't recall him saying these things (other than right wing media issue).
Just read it - a superb polemic. Every sentence is thought provoking and pointed. There's no doubt that the forces that brought us Brexit, equipped with the same toolkit, will now turn to even darker schemes. At least we're now fully warned.
Lol. It’s just mad. The fact you agree with it just shows you share the same mad cow disease. McEwan literally thinks we will now have to rip up all our hedges to be like Iowa. He’s a nutter.
For balance, this is a much smarter, sometimes brilliant analysis of Brexit, also in today’s guardian. It shows why a 2nd vote was always dangerously mad, and also underlines the perils now facing Boris. I am less pessimistic than the writer, but this is a genuinely good piece (unlike the McEwan vomitus)
So you think our farming ('flowering grasses, and fields shadowing Domesday lines') can compete quite happily with the vast agricultural output of the Great Plains? Keep drinking the moonshine.
We are going to match the subsidies that pretty much every advanced country pays its farmers. UK farmers tend to be pretty efficient, in general.
To be honest in terms of his impact and to maintain your musical analogy, he is looking more like the Chuck Berry of politics at the moment. He has changed everything.
To be honest in terms of his impact and to maintain your musical analogy, he is looking more like the Chuck Berry of politics at the moment. He has changed everything.
In that case they'd better check for hidden cameras in no 10's lavvies.
Not getting the connection on that one. Was Chuck a bad boy?
Yep.
'In 1990, he was sued by several women who claimed that he had installed a video camera in the bathroom. Berry claimed that he had had the camera installed to catch a worker who was suspected of stealing from the restaurant. Although his guilt was never proven in court, Berry opted for a class action settlement. One of his biographers, Bruce Pegg, estimated that with 59 women it cost Berry over $1.2 million plus legal fees'
Ooo nasty. Shame when your heroes turn out to be tarnished.
It's the tawdriness really, I'd rather a coked up car chase while waving handguns about. Chuck's candid camera is the My Ding-a-ling of rock star transgressions.
I strongly recommend reading that Runciman piece in the Guardian I linked below. It agrees with all you’ve said: democracy IS functioning which is why the vote had to be honored and a 2nd vote was always a dangerous fantasy.
It also points out that Cummings is a proper genius but then posits that Boris now faces a huge challenge which could cripple the Tory party for a generation as Iraq damaged Labour
It’s acute and judicious.
Not comfortable with "genius" to describe an extraordinary facility to leverage the baser instincts of a populace into votes. But OK, if we must.
The bolded bit is true and IMO was the most important thing to grasp throughout the Brexit impasse. That 2nd Ref was NEVER going to happen. It was an absurd proposition. I mean literally absurd. Lots of very intelligent people (on here and in RW) got too bogged down in minutae and micro analysis to see that.
Of course I can dismiss those who believe in inequality with marriage as wrong. Just as I can dismiss anyone who thinks interracial marriage should be illegal is wrong. The fact people held bad views in the past doesn't make them better now - though I'm not going to judge people from the past by today's standards I will more than happily judge anyone still clinging to such views TODAY.
As a married atheist I'm also prepared to dismiss anyone who brings religion into a debate on marriage as wrong too. Marriage is a civil institution that is not religious. Keep your religion in your Church and not the law.
Sorry Philip, I disagree. Nothing good can come of being dismissive or disrespectful of those who hold different values to you; you can certainly point out you very strongly disagree, but respectively.
For what it's worth, my wife and I got married in a CoE church; that was very special and important to us. We both feel (and felt) that getting married in a registry office is more a spectated legal transaction than a real marriage, but we'd never be so disrespectful as to tell our friends who chose that path that.
Some values deserve respect. Some don't.
If your values are extreme and despicable in my eyes - if you believe women should be men's chattel, if you don't believe people should be treated equally before the law etc, etc, etc then I'm not going to pretend to respect that. I don't.
Of course, there's a limit. I wouldn't respect the Nazis values, or those of ISIS,for example.
But, I'd still think the best way of steering most people away from those would be to engage with them and argue with respect to change their minds.
Deradicalisation adopts this approach all the time.
Indeed, simply calling them all "deplorables" is extremely counter productive.
Hillary Clinton still thinks her 2016 defeat was a mathematical aberration and nothing to do with her.
She's a real smart political operator, that one.
For someone who is clearly very clever, she's a proper moron.
There is a theory, that to create a truly stupid result, you need a committee of very, very bright people of the right kind. Exibit A - betting your bank on house prices going up everywhere in the world. Forever.
"Boris Johnson intends to impose full customs checks on all goods coming into the UK from the EU, in a break with previous government policy, according to reports.
“We are planning full checks on all EU imports – export declarations, security declarations, animal health checks and all supermarket goods to pass through border inspection posts,” the Daily Telegraph reported a senior Whitehall source as saying. “This will double the practical challenge at the border in January 2021.”
The paper reports that businesses will be informed of the policy on 10 February."
Maybe I being thick after last night's wine, but how does this work with no border in Ireland/NI?
This is the first thing the government has said that actually makes any kind of sense on trade policy. It definitely means the EU will need to think about their objectives as well given that it looks like the UK isn't interested in any kind of relationship that goes beyond trade. I wouldn't be surprised if the UK removes security co-operation from the EU and shifts that to a more bilateral or multilateral relationship with specific countries that can be trusted to have our back rather than the EU which can't.
Curiously enough, Macron has been being a bit nicer to the UK recently. France (which is now stuck as the only serious military power in the EU, the Germans being useless,) and the UK have a mutual interest in working together in this sphere.
A compromise on trade is achievable if both sides are willing and can demonstrate sufficient goodwill. This sort of thing might help.
"Boris Johnson intends to impose full customs checks on all goods coming into the UK from the EU, in a break with previous government policy, according to reports.
“We are planning full checks on all EU imports – export declarations, security declarations, animal health checks and all supermarket goods to pass through border inspection posts,” the Daily Telegraph reported a senior Whitehall source as saying. “This will double the practical challenge at the border in January 2021.”
The paper reports that businesses will be informed of the policy on 10 February."
Maybe I being thick after last night's wine, but how does this work with no border in Ireland/NI?
You are not being thick. It doesn't.
For all the talk of another Scottish Independence vote I would not be surprised to see the next referendum on political status being a unification poll in NI.
Presumably it works perfectly well with a customs border in the Irish Sea? And I somehow doubt that the Government would care much about Northern Ireland going. On the contrary, it would obviously make the Irish border problem disappear overnight and would transfer the entire cost of looking after the province from London to Dublin (releasing lots of extra money to spend in places that vote Tory rather than ones that never will.) I mean, from their point of view, what's not to like?
I 100% agree. Dublin taking Belfast off our hands would be something I would definitely cheer.
Then again I'd cheer Scottish independence too so I'm not a normal Conservative on these matters.
Well, they are the Conservative and Unionist Party, the latter part being quite self-sacrificing given the circumstances. The closer the UK/England Venn diagram moves towards being a single circle, the more secure that both the public finances and the Tory position become, and the safer the country is made from the depredations of the Corbynite Loony Left.
Certainly if Scotland votes to go first then it's hard to see Northern Ireland lasting very long afterwards.
Or the next Reagan? He was widely believed in the 1970s to be too rightwing to be electable
Personally, I imagine he'll be the Democrats' Corbyn - Corbyn 2017, that is. He'll put up a reasonable show, and get closer than most people think, boosted by the enthusiasm of minorities and the young, but it won't quite be enough, as lots of the WWC will still be tempted by Trump.
I strongly recommend reading that Runciman piece in the Guardian I linked below. It agrees with all you’ve said: democracy IS functioning which is why the vote had to be honored and a 2nd vote was always a dangerous fantasy.
It also points out that Cummings is a proper genius but then posits that Boris now faces a huge challenge which could cripple the Tory party for a generation as Iraq damaged Labour
It’s acute and judicious.
Not comfortable with "genius" to describe an extraordinary facility to leverage the baser instincts of a populace into votes. But OK, if we must.
The bolded bit is true and IMO was the most important thing to grasp throughout the Brexit impasse. That 2nd Ref was NEVER going to happen. It was an absurd proposition. I mean literally absurd. Lots of very intelligent people (on here and in RW) got too bogged down in minutae and micro analysis to see that.
The one thing many senior Remainers are claiming is "a soft Brexit was never on offer". It is a clear lie. Remainers had a majority in parliament and control of the order paper. If all those pushing for a second referendum had backed a EEA+CU Brexit we would have got it.
Then if Remainers had supported May's deal we would have had a CU.
What is jaw dropping is that Remainers are going to make the same mistake a third time. The UK is going to say we want A + B. The EU is going to say "if you want B you also need C" even on issues where B and C are only tangentially linked. Remainers are going to back the EU's hardline stance. Boris is going to try to negotiate for B without C but run out of time. Remainers are going to make it politically embarrassing as possible to extend. So Boris will say "fine we will only have A then". Remainers will say how terrible it is again, blame the Tories but not realise their own actions will have led to an even harder Brexit for the third time.
Or the next Reagan? He was widely believed in the 1970s to be too rightwing to be electable
Thinking beyond the US, I'm finding it much easier to think of examples of winners who had seemed to be too right-wing to be electable than winners who had seemed to be too left-wing to be electable.
Quite a few thought it to be true of Thatcher in the late 1970s - and had Callaghan called an election in 1978 that view might have been vindicated.
That man Cummings is a genius. Denying it is futile. His record of wins now speaks for itself.
He’s the Lionel Messi of British politics. Annoyingly good if you’re on the wrong side.
If he's angry in that clip it's at the journalist harassing him as he goes about his business and asking him repetitive questions.
Admittedly that's part of the job, and he shouldn't bite, but I don't think you can say he's angry at having won.
From all I’ve heard, Cummings is a very bright man, indeed inspiring for many, but quite bad tempered and prone to depression and dark moods. I do not know him personally, just relaying.
There are striking similarities with Alistair Campbell, though I’d say Cummings has already achieved a lot lot more.
Campbell was famously irritable the day Blair won his huge majority
Yes, I think that can easily happen to very intelligent people. They get tortured by their own intelligence.
Campbell seems more physically aggressive, and less intellectual, than Cummings though. But maybe more practical and engaging in the real world when he's not got black dog and bullying others.
That thought occurs to me on an almost daily basis. I don’t get how people assume the latest decisions are the most correct without pause for thought
The direction of travel (in everything) is towards greater enlightenment but a perfect state of enlightenment can never be reached. We look back and see that we are more enlightened than we used to be. We look forward and know that we will be more enlightened than we are now. And so it goes. This is progress and it is inevitable. It is not to be fought.
"Boris Johnson intends to impose full customs checks on all goods coming into the UK from the EU, in a break with previous government policy, according to reports.
“We are planning full checks on all EU imports – export declarations, security declarations, animal health checks and all supermarket goods to pass through border inspection posts,” the Daily Telegraph reported a senior Whitehall source as saying. “This will double the practical challenge at the border in January 2021.”
The paper reports that businesses will be informed of the policy on 10 February."
Maybe I being thick after last night's wine, but how does this work with no border in Ireland/NI?
This is the first thing the government has said that actually makes any kind of sense on trade policy. It definitely means the EU will need to think about their objectives as well given that it looks like the UK isn't interested in any kind of relationship that goes beyond trade. I wouldn't be surprised if the UK removes security co-operation from the EU and shifts that to a more bilateral or multilateral relationship with specific countries that can be trusted to have our back rather than the EU which can't.
I think that is right. It is the Commission rather than the countries that presents problems. Not being a member allows us to bypass it.
Absolutely no ability, or even an attempt, to understand why people might have voted Leave (beyond stupid, racist, deluded, the daily mail, etc).
If brexit has done one invaluable thing, it has revealed that our nation’s intelligentsia are anything but. I wonder if this is true for other countries. I suspect it is.
We must have read different versions, as I can't recall him saying these things (other than right wing media issue).
Just read it - a superb polemic. Every sentence is thought provoking and pointed. There's no doubt that the forces that brought us Brexit, equipped with the same toolkit, will now turn to even darker schemes. At least we're now fully warned.
Lol. It’s just mad. The fact you agree with it just shows you share the same mad cow disease. McEwan literally thinks we will now have to rip up all our hedges to be like Iowa. He’s a nutter.
For balance, this is a much smarter, sometimes brilliant analysis of Brexit, also in today’s guardian. It shows why a 2nd vote was always dangerously mad, and also underlines the perils now facing Boris. I am less pessimistic than the writer, but this is a genuinely good piece (unlike the McEwan vomitus)
So you think our farming ('flowering grasses, and fields shadowing Domesday lines') can compete quite happily with the vast agricultural output of the Great Plains? Keep drinking the moonshine.
Well it is doing very well at the moment. In recent years UK wheat has been cheaper than US wheat - before you even take into account transport costs. So much so that we have been exporting wheat to the US. Right now US wheat costs around £160 a tonne whereas UK wheat is at around £143 a tonne and our production is up 20% on last year.
I don't think UK farming has anything to fear from free and open global competition, provided it's fair.
"Boris Johnson intends to impose full customs checks on all goods coming into the UK from the EU, in a break with previous government policy, according to reports.
“We are planning full checks on all EU imports – export declarations, security declarations, animal health checks and all supermarket goods to pass through border inspection posts,” the Daily Telegraph reported a senior Whitehall source as saying. “This will double the practical challenge at the border in January 2021.”
The paper reports that businesses will be informed of the policy on 10 February."
Maybe I being thick after last night's wine, but how does this work with no border in Ireland/NI?
It's more an analogy than a diagnosis. Somebody once made a coherent (although not one I found conclusive ) argument that right-wing people had tapeworms - it explained why so many of the points were visceral. You could make an argument that levels of lead or drug use have influenced politics. We tend to think that politics is a rational process, but to be honest, it's tribal and emotive.
There’s a quite convincing argument that feline toxoplasmosis, a parasite in cats that can leap to people and affect human behavior, was responsible for the entire witch-burning craze of the 15th-17th centuries
I didn't know that. Most interesting: I'll remember it, thank you.
"Boris Johnson intends to impose full customs checks on all goods coming into the UK from the EU, in a break with previous government policy, according to reports.
“We are planning full checks on all EU imports – export declarations, security declarations, animal health checks and all supermarket goods to pass through border inspection posts,” the Daily Telegraph reported a senior Whitehall source as saying. “This will double the practical challenge at the border in January 2021.”
The paper reports that businesses will be informed of the policy on 10 February."
Maybe I being thick after last night's wine, but how does this work with no border in Ireland/NI?
This is the first thing the government has said that actually makes any kind of sense on trade policy. It definitely means the EU will need to think about their objectives as well given that it looks like the UK isn't interested in any kind of relationship that goes beyond trade. I wouldn't be surprised if the UK removes security co-operation from the EU and shifts that to a more bilateral or multilateral relationship with specific countries that can be trusted to have our back rather than the EU which can't.
Curiously enough, Macron has been being a bit nicer to the UK recently. France (which is now stuck as the only serious military power in the EU, the Germans being useless,) and the UK have a mutual interest in working together in this sphere.
A compromise on trade is achievable if both sides are willing and can demonstrate sufficient goodwill. This sort of thing might help.
There was semi-serious interest in France building one or more copies of the Uk carriers. Their own design has essentially failed.
I strongly recommend reading that Runciman piece in the Guardian I linked below. It agrees with all you’ve said: democracy IS functioning which is why the vote had to be honored and a 2nd vote was always a dangerous fantasy.
It also points out that Cummings is a proper genius but then posits that Boris now faces a huge challenge which could cripple the Tory party for a generation as Iraq damaged Labour
It’s acute and judicious.
Not comfortable with "genius" to describe an extraordinary facility to leverage the baser instincts of a populace into votes. But OK, if we must.
The bolded bit is true and IMO was the most important thing to grasp throughout the Brexit impasse. That 2nd Ref was NEVER going to happen. It was an absurd proposition. I mean literally absurd. Lots of very intelligent people (on here and in RW) got too bogged down in minutae and micro analysis to see that.
Yes exactly. If you step back and think about it, properly, a 2nd vote was just lunatic, and a damaging diversion.
‘What, you’re gonna ask the people to vote again, on an issue they’ve already decided but you decided you didn’t like their answer So you didn’t enact their decision. How are you going to explain that? Why should the people bother voting ever again, on this or anything? What’s the question this time? Why shouldn’t the losers ask for a 3rd vote, or a 10th vote?’
On and on and on.
Total craziness. And yet it engulfed many serious thinkers. Thank fuck we avoided THAT
enjoy the day, everyone.
Phase 1: Collect underpants Phase 2: ? Phase 3: Leavers will blame May/Boris/Farage etc. and tearfully rejoin the human race. If we let them.
I strongly recommend reading that Runciman piece in the Guardian I linked below. It agrees with all you’ve said: democracy IS functioning which is why the vote had to be honored and a 2nd vote was always a dangerous fantasy.
It also points out that Cummings is a proper genius but then posits that Boris now faces a huge challenge which could cripple the Tory party for a generation as Iraq damaged Labour
It’s acute and judicious.
Not comfortable with "genius" to describe an extraordinary facility to leverage the baser instincts of a populace into votes. But OK, if we must.
The bolded bit is true and IMO was the most important thing to grasp throughout the Brexit impasse. That 2nd Ref was NEVER going to happen. It was an absurd proposition. I mean literally absurd. Lots of very intelligent people (on here and in RW) got too bogged down in minutae and micro analysis to see that.
The one thing many senior Remainers are claiming is "a soft Brexit was never on offer". It is a clear lie. Remainers had a majority in parliament and control of the order paper. If all those pushing for a second referendum had backed a EEA+CU Brexit we would have got it.
Then if Remainers had supported May's deal we would have had a CU.
What is jaw dropping is that Remainers are going to make the same mistake a third time. The UK is going to say we want A + B. The EU is going to say "if you want B you also need C" even on issues where B and C are only tangentially linked. Remainers are going to back the EU's hardline stance. Boris is going to try to negotiate for B without C but run out of time. Remainers are going to make it politically embarrassing as possible to extend. So Boris will say "fine we will only have A then". Remainers will say how terrible it is again, blame the Tories but not realise their own actions will have led to an even harder Brexit for the third time.
Absolutely no ability, or even an attempt, to understand why people might have voted Leave (beyond stupid, racist, deluded, the daily mail, etc).
If brexit has done one invaluable thing, it has revealed that our nation’s intelligentsia are anything but. I wonder if this is true for other countries. I suspect it is.
I'm getting a whiff of a multiple personality disorder here, with the novel twist of all the personalities being identical.
Is it normal on this site to accuse someone of being mentally disabled because of their second ever comment?
It's not the site, it's the poster.
In my experience, the defining characteristic of the Intelligensia/The Blob/The People Who Know etc is their total certainty with which they pick the winners. And have a track record that would get laughed at in any William Hill.
That thought occurs to me on an almost daily basis. I don’t get how people assume the latest decisions are the most correct without pause for thought
The direction of travel (in everything) is towards greater enlightenment but a perfect state of enlightenment can never be reached. We look back and see that we are more enlightened than we used to be. We look forward and know that we will be more enlightened than we are now. And so it goes. This is progress and it is inevitable. It is not to be fought.
The problem is that it assumes that Progressives know which way is progress.
The one thing many senior Remainers are claiming is "a soft Brexit was never on offer". It is a clear lie. Remainers had a majority in parliament and control of the order paper. If all those pushing for a second referendum had backed a EEA+CU Brexit we would have got it.
Then if Remainers had supported May's deal we would have had a CU.
Snipped the para I don't want to comment on.
But this - yes - is undeniably true. The May Deal was (via the Backstop) steering to a soft Brexit. It could have been passed. When it wasn't and there was instead the search for alternatives, Norway, or May + CU, i.e. even softer Brexits, could also have been passed.
Brexit in 2019 was inevitable - because of 23/6/16 - but this Brexit and "Boris" and a Tory landslide GE win was not.
Of course I can dismiss those who believe in inequality with marriage as wrong. Just as I can dismiss anyone who thinks interracial marriage should be illegal is wrong. The fact people held bad views in the past doesn't make them better now - though I'm not going to judge people from the past by today's standards I will more than happily judge anyone still clinging to such views TODAY.
As a married atheist I'm also prepared to dismiss anyone who brings religion into a debate on marriage as wrong too. Marriage is a civil institution that is not religious. Keep your religion in your Church and not the law.
You can certainly dismiss them as wrong, but you need to understand that in the future, your own views will be dismissed as wrong. And not just because views have moved further along a traditional to 'woke' continuum, but potentially because they have gone into reverse gear, or shifted completely in ways we cannot contemplate currently. To a large extent, we are merely responding to the social mores of our time. Much of what we believe now will one day seen to be as much a vulgar extreme of the early 21st century as the perriwigs or witch burnings of previous eras.
Indeed. We look back at the past and wonder "how could they have been so stupid"? And in the future they will think that of us, and - as you say - not in a predictable direction.
That thought occurs to me on an almost daily basis. I don’t get how people assume the latest decisions are the most correct without pause for thought
The same serial delusion applies to science. Of necessity perhaps. Every generation thinks Right, this is how the universe works, our forefathers were blinkered fools, the truth is settled. And then the entire truth changes and the next generation feels the same complacency. It’s a bug, or a feature, in human cognition.
Right, I’m off to read Viv Albertine’s memoir, which EVERYONE says is amazebombs. We shall see.
An interesting example of the need to re-check basic facts regularly is the story of human chromosomes - the wrong number was "main stream" until 1955.
Good one. Thanks. But there is only one possible direction and that is to become more enlightened - which we do and will continue to do. Science is the obvious example but it applies to other things too. It's not a left v right matter. The left v right dimension is about the extent the which one embraces it. The "it" happens anyway.
Thinking beyond the US, I'm finding it much easier to think of examples of winners who had seemed to be too right-wing to be electable than winners who had seemed to be too left-wing to be electable.
Allende is the obvious one - almost nobody claims he wasn't elected fairly. With others one can debate "what is left-wing". The post-communists won an election in Poland , which everyone had thought was zealously anti-communist (they then screwed up royally but that's another story). Some felt that Mitterand was too far left, and Attlee was cerainly portrayed as a dangerous leftie with his socialised health and multiple nationalisations, up against a war hero. But I agree examples are thin on the ground. The image of "too extreme" is more enthusiastically projected by the media in most countries for the left than the right.
So today is the first day of the rest of our lives. I suppose you could have said the same about yesterday and could say the same about tomorrow.
Some of the language suggests the spirit of compromise may yet prove a tad elusive - I don't think we've even started the debate about the "new path" (whatever that means). Certainly, the coalition who voted LEAVE came from a range of perspectives with an equally diverse range of expectations united only by the desire to be outside the EU.
I have this sense of "What's Next?" - I genuinely don't know in which direction (if any) the country is going. As I've said before, I've no more desire to live in Singapore-on-Thames than I do to live in Caracas-on-Thames.There's a lot of guff about "Global Britain" which can mean anything to anyone.
We do, I suppose, have an opportunity to re-define the nation state in the 2020s and 2030s perhaps utilising technology, different ways of working, different ways of living and different forms of decision making and Government but do we have the courage to set out down that route?
Hasn't Aston Martin just had to completely refinance due to being in choppy waters?
The recent investment in AM was from the Lawrence Stroll - led consortium that already owns the Racing Point F1 Team. They’ve put in £175m for a 16% share, and Stroll himself becomes the Executive Chairman of Aston Martin.
The consortium is formed of some serious businessmen, most of whom are complete petrolheads who have made their money in other businesses and want to see AM prosper - as opposed to hedge funds who see every cost as a problem. It’s great news for Aston Martin and several thousand UK jobs.
Absolutely no ability, or even an attempt, to understand why people might have voted Leave (beyond stupid, racist, deluded, the daily mail, etc).
If brexit has done one invaluable thing, it has revealed that our nation’s intelligentsia are anything but. I wonder if this is true for other countries. I suspect it is.
I'm getting a whiff of a multiple personality disorder here, with the novel twist of all the personalities being identical.
Is it normal on this site to accuse someone of being mentally disabled because of their second ever comment?
It's not the site, it's the poster.
In my experience, the defining characteristic of the Intelligensia/The Blob/The People Who Know etc is their total certainty with which they pick the winners. And have a track record that would get laughed at in any William Hill.
The suggestion is not that anyone is mentally ill or even wrong. It is that the poster is an old friend under yet another name.
I strongly recommend reading that Runciman piece in the Guardian I linked below. It agrees with all you’ve said: democracy IS functioning which is why the vote had to be honored and a 2nd vote was always a dangerous fantasy.
It also points out that Cummings is a proper genius but then posits that Boris now faces a huge challenge which could cripple the Tory party for a generation as Iraq damaged Labour
It’s acute and judicious.
Not comfortable with "genius" to describe an extraordinary facility to leverage the baser instincts of a populace into votes. But OK, if we must.
The bolded bit is true and IMO was the most important thing to grasp throughout the Brexit impasse. That 2nd Ref was NEVER going to happen. It was an absurd proposition. I mean literally absurd. Lots of very intelligent people (on here and in RW) got too bogged down in minutae and micro analysis to see that.
Yes exactly. If you step back and think about it, properly, a 2nd vote was just lunatic, and a damaging diversion.
‘What, you’re gonna ask the people to vote again, on an issue they’ve already decided but you decided you didn’t like their answer So you didn’t enact their decision. How are you going to explain that? Why should the people bother voting ever again, on this or anything? What’s the question this time? Why shouldn’t the losers ask for a 3rd vote, or a 10th vote?’
On and on and on.
Total craziness. And yet it engulfed many serious thinkers. Thank fuck we avoided THAT
enjoy the day, everyone.
I’m still of the opinion that a second referendum would have resulted in a 60/40 vote to leave, on a 90% turnout. Millions of people who have been ambivalent their whole political lives, even at the 2016 referendum, would have turned out to tell the whole political establishment to go f... themselves for asking the same question twice.
Not a great fan of Macron but what a wonderful warm letter he’s posted on Facebook to the British people .
Once again an EU politician showing both class and dignity.
Expect to see a lot of bilateral talks on things like defence and intelligence between the U.K. and France. It’s in both countries’ interests to keep these lines of communication open.
I strongly recommend reading that Runciman piece in the Guardian I linked below. It agrees with all you’ve said: democracy IS functioning which is why the vote had to be honored and a 2nd vote was always a dangerous fantasy.
It also points out that Cummings is a proper genius but then posits that Boris now faces a huge challenge which could cripple the Tory party for a generation as Iraq damaged Labour
It’s acute and judicious.
Not comfortable with "genius" to describe an extraordinary facility to leverage the baser instincts of a populace into votes. But OK, if we must.
The bolded bit is true and IMO was the most important thing to grasp throughout the Brexit impasse. That 2nd Ref was NEVER going to happen. It was an absurd proposition. I mean literally absurd. Lots of very intelligent people (on here and in RW) got too bogged down in minutae and micro analysis to see that.
Yes exactly. If you step back and think about it, properly, a 2nd vote was just lunatic, and a damaging diversion.
‘What, you’re gonna ask the people to vote again, on an issue they’ve already decided but you decided you didn’t like their answer So you didn’t enact their decision. How are you going to explain that? Why should the people bother voting ever again, on this or anything? What’s the question this time? Why shouldn’t the losers ask for a 3rd vote, or a 10th vote?’
On and on and on.
Total craziness. And yet it engulfed many serious thinkers. Thank fuck we avoided THAT
enjoy the day, everyone.
I’m still of the opinion that a second referendum would have resulted in a 60/40 vote to leave, on a 90% turnout. Millions of people who have been ambivalent their whole political lives, even at the 2016 referendum, would have turned out to tell the whole political establishment to go f... themselves for asking the same question twice.
The weekend after the referendum I posted here:
"A second referendum is desirable. But a second referendum requires a second deal [a variation of Cameron's deal] A second deal requires the UK to seek one and the EU to offer one. But the UK is not seeking one and the EU is not offering one. So there will be no second deal. So there will be no second referendum"
I’m still of the opinion that a second referendum would have resulted in a 60/40 vote to leave, on a 90% turnout. Millions of people who have been ambivalent their whole political lives, even at the 2016 referendum, would have turned out to tell the whole political establishment to go f... themselves for asking the same question twice.
I think -
1. Ref2 would have been a Remain win.
2. The majority really did want to Get Brexit Done.
Or the next Reagan? He was widely believed in the 1970s to be too rightwing to be electable
Personally, I imagine he'll be the Democrats' Corbyn - Corbyn 2017, that is. He'll put up a reasonable show, and get closer than most people think, boosted by the enthusiasm of minorities and the young, but it won't quite be enough, as lots of the WWC will still be tempted by Trump.
I refuse to believe Dems primary voters will be this stupid.
That thought occurs to me on an almost daily basis. I don’t get how people assume the latest decisions are the most correct without pause for thought
The direction of travel (in everything) is towards greater enlightenment but a perfect state of enlightenment can never be reached. We look back and see that we are more enlightened than we used to be. We look forward and know that we will be more enlightened than we are now. And so it goes. This is progress and it is inevitable. It is not to be fought.
I think there is a chance that many of the things that progressives campaign for, and consider enlightened, had been tried thousands of years ago and the subsequent, seemingly harsh and unfair, rules drawn up to deter people from them back then might be valid.
Mr. kinabalu, I agree that a second referendum would very likely have seen a Remain victory. But then, if Remain's campaign hadn't been dreadful, or if the EU had taken the prospect a bit more seriously, they would've won the first time.
So far 14 CLPs have today nominated Starmer with 2 for RLB.
If the Labour leadership was a boxing match, the ref would have stopped it..... None of the others are getting up off the canvas.
If it was the Tory race I’d agree (and I lost my shirt laying Boris in that market).
But we still have the open membership vote, and I’m not yet convinced we won’t see a huge push from Momentum and RLB - for a hundred thousand or two last minute registrations.
Mr. kinabalu, I agree that a second referendum would very likely have seen a Remain victory. But then, if Remain's campaign hadn't been dreadful, or if the EU had taken the prospect a bit more seriously, they would've won the first time.
I have a niche view of the 2016 result. It was 52/48 but IMO the mood of the country was far more clearly Leave than that. The government, all the political parties, business, the unions, almost all experts in every field recommended Remain. And Remain was the status quo which people, being risk averse, tend to go for if they do not feel strongly either way. Leaving most of the passion on the Leave side, i.e. the average Leave voter was more enthusiastic about Leave than the average Remain voter was for Remain. Put all that together and it was not close. it was not even close to being close. It was - in its essence, it's substance over form - a Leave Landslide.
Or the next Reagan? He was widely believed in the 1970s to be too rightwing to be electable
Personally, I imagine he'll be the Democrats' Corbyn - Corbyn 2017, that is. He'll put up a reasonable show, and get closer than most people think, boosted by the enthusiasm of minorities and the young, but it won't quite be enough, as lots of the WWC will still be tempted by Trump.
I refuse to believe Dems primary voters will be this stupid.
Joe Rogan commenting on the controversy he got dragged into, after he said (in response to a direct question) he’ll probably vote for Sanders in the California primary.
Quote of the day. “Here’s the point... I’m a f...ing moron. If you’re going to base your vote...for president... on what I like... I’m not balls-deep into this stuff.”
So far 14 CLPs have today nominated Starmer with 2 for RLB.
If the Labour leadership was a boxing match, the ref would have stopped it..... None of the others are getting up off the canvas.
If it was the Tory race I’d agree (and I lost my shirt laying Boris in that market).
But we still have the open membership vote, and I’m not yet convinced we won’t see a huge push from Momentum and RLB - for a hundred thousand or two last minute registrations.
Yeh, they wont want to let the opportunity to stop Labour winning in 2024 pass without a fight.
Mr. Richard, there should be a mechanism for promotion/relegation. it's sad to say but Italy haven't really kicked on in the decades they've been in the tournament.
I think there is a chance that many of the things that progressives campaign for, and consider enlightened, had been tried thousands of years ago and the subsequent, seemingly harsh and unfair, rules drawn up to deter people from them back then might be valid.
OK, you are not talking about science here - where you can never go backwards - you are talking about social and cultural matters. So, yes, I suppose it could just possibly be argued that there are certain things in the ancient past that we ought to consider returning to, but I cannot immediately think of any. And even if there are they would be of the "exception proving the rule" variety. Not that this phrase makes any kind of literal sense, but I'm sure you know what I mean.
Absolutely no ability, or even an attempt, to understand why people might have voted Leave (beyond stupid, racist, deluded, the daily mail, etc).
If brexit has done one invaluable thing, it has revealed that our nation’s intelligentsia are anything but. I wonder if this is true for other countries. I suspect it is.
I'm getting a whiff of a multiple personality disorder here, with the novel twist of all the personalities being identical.
Is it normal on this site to accuse someone of being mentally disabled because of their second ever comment?
It's not the site, it's the poster.
In my experience, the defining characteristic of the Intelligensia/The Blob/The People Who Know etc is their total certainty with which they pick the winners. And have a track record that would get laughed at in any William Hill.
The suggestion is not that anyone is mentally ill or even wrong. It is that the poster is an old friend under yet another name.
Hmm. I may have misjudged earlier. Apologies to @Theuniondivvie.
Comments
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fd3qXfF7hqE
The bolded bit is true and IMO was the most important thing to grasp throughout the Brexit impasse. That 2nd Ref was NEVER going to happen. It was an absurd proposition. I mean literally absurd. Lots of very intelligent people (on here and in RW) got too bogged down in minutae and micro analysis to see that.
A compromise on trade is achievable if both sides are willing and can demonstrate sufficient goodwill. This sort of thing might help.
Certainly if Scotland votes to go first then it's hard to see Northern Ireland lasting very long afterwards.
Then if Remainers had supported May's deal we would have had a CU.
What is jaw dropping is that Remainers are going to make the same mistake a third time. The UK is going to say we want A + B. The EU is going to say "if you want B you also need C" even on issues where B and C are only tangentially linked. Remainers are going to back the EU's hardline stance. Boris is going to try to negotiate for B without C but run out of time. Remainers are going to make it politically embarrassing as possible to extend. So Boris will say "fine we will only have A then". Remainers will say how terrible it is again, blame the Tories but not realise their own actions will have led to an even harder Brexit for the third time.
Campbell seems more physically aggressive, and less intellectual, than Cummings though. But maybe more practical and engaging in the real world when he's not got black dog and bullying others.
Phase 2: ?
Phase 3: Leavers will blame May/Boris/Farage etc. and tearfully rejoin the human race. If we let them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Some_Words_with_a_Mummy
But this - yes - is undeniably true. The May Deal was (via the Backstop) steering to a soft Brexit. It could have been passed. When it wasn't and there was instead the search for alternatives, Norway, or May + CU, i.e. even softer Brexits, could also have been passed.
Brexit in 2019 was inevitable - because of 23/6/16 - but this Brexit and "Boris" and a Tory landslide GE win was not.
Or do they intend to break their Treaty obligations and then get the right wing press to dupe the gullible into thinking the EU are being nasty .
So today is the first day of the rest of our lives. I suppose you could have said the same about yesterday and could say the same about tomorrow.
Some of the language suggests the spirit of compromise may yet prove a tad elusive - I don't think we've even started the debate about the "new path" (whatever that means). Certainly, the coalition who voted LEAVE came from a range of perspectives with an equally diverse range of expectations united only by the desire to be outside the EU.
I have this sense of "What's Next?" - I genuinely don't know in which direction (if any) the country is going. As I've said before, I've no more desire to live in Singapore-on-Thames than I do to live in Caracas-on-Thames.There's a lot of guff about "Global Britain" which can mean anything to anyone.
We do, I suppose, have an opportunity to re-define the nation state in the 2020s and 2030s perhaps utilising technology, different ways of working, different ways of living and different forms of decision making and Government but do we have the courage to set out down that route?
The consortium is formed of some serious businessmen, most of whom are complete petrolheads who have made their money in other businesses and want to see AM prosper - as opposed to hedge funds who see every cost as a problem. It’s great news for Aston Martin and several thousand UK jobs.
Once again an EU politician showing both class and dignity.
"A second referendum is desirable.
But a second referendum requires a second deal [a variation of Cameron's deal]
A second deal requires the UK to seek one and the EU to offer one.
But the UK is not seeking one and the EU is not offering one.
So there will be no second deal.
So there will be no second referendum"
1. Ref2 would have been a Remain win.
2. The majority really did want to Get Brexit Done.
And there is no contradiction there.
Japan would be putting up a better fight.
But we still have the open membership vote, and I’m not yet convinced we won’t see a huge push from Momentum and RLB - for a hundred thousand or two last minute registrations.
Quote of the day. “Here’s the point... I’m a f...ing moron. If you’re going to base your vote...for president... on what I like... I’m not balls-deep into this stuff.”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=P-KjcOQPVeI
New Fred