This post from Guido Gianasso (Professor of Leadership at HEC Paris in Qatar / Honorary Consul of Romania in Geneva) has flashed up in my feed and currently has over 103,000 likes and loves, with several across my network. There isn't a single critical comment beneath it.
Read it, and you'll see he's co-opted Emma - with a MASSIVE picture of her on the post- to support his own pre-existing political views. He manages to crowbar Brexit in and also has the audacity to say that Emma is not British and is evidence that national identities are fading, which he thinks is a good thing, as he feels they can only be ethnocentrically based. This is fairly typical of the views advertised on the professional networking site LinkedIn and the "global citizens" that inhabit it:
"EMMA RADUCANU AND THE ILLUSION OF NATIONS
A new tennis champion has emerged. It is fascinating to observe the dynamics taking place around this young lady.
Emma's father is Romanian. Her name is Romanian and she speaks Romanian fluently. Hence she is considered Romanian by millions of Romanians. But Emma has actually never lived in Romania.
Emma's mother is Chinese. She speaks fluent Chinese, as a recent video available on YouTube shows. Hence she is considered a Chinese hero by millions of Chinese, who seem to forget that the PRC discourages international marriages.
Emma was born in Canada but has lived most of her life and trained in the UK. Hence she is considered British by most Britons and was publicly congratulated by the Queen. But the British public that now celebrates her success is the same that voted Brexit with the very objective to make it difficult for East Europeans such as Emma and her father to live in the UK.
The reality is that Emma is not Romanian, Chinese or British. She is much more. She is the outstanding result of the combination of Romanian talent, Chinese work ethics and British openness and sport infrastructure.
At a time when many countries are going back to very ethnocentric models and policies, Emma is the best evidence that National identities are fading and we must embrace a geocentric mindset. Emma Raducanu is the future of humankind."
It would be interesting to learn what Emma believes
I think I'd enjoy hearing from Emma on any subject but I sincerely hope she manages to stay out of politics so she can continue to focus on and enjoy her tennis.
What really pisses me off is people trying to exploit her success for their own political ends and attributing their own views to her. They seem to view her as a migrant first and a Brit second.
I find that insulting.
Thats what you get when stopping migration is and has been the singular political issue of this generation. People don't want migrants, especially those seen as low skilled and definitely don't want their kids. Until the kids grow up to become a world champion runner or tennis sensation.
Then they don't want migrant kids, but Mo / Emma are different. Its the same mindset as the "I don't like blacks but Frank Bruno is alright as he's world champion" comments you'd hear in the past. It'll never go away sadly.
How about - radical idea - we accept migrants as Brits if they self-identify as such. People like Emma Raducanu have a choice of nationalities and we should be delighted that they chose to be British. When people move to America for work so many of them naturalise - we could have been doing the same for the last few decades with Europeans instead of treating them with such disdain.
This old canard. Most people want controlled migration - neither no migration or uncontrolled migration.
Why is that so hard to understand?
I entirely get it! Its just that most people don't. They might say "I want controlled migration" but when you then ask which migrants they want to keep they can't answer you. Nor can the government, as the "let people in that we need" argument is being ignored for care homes factories tourism and logistics.
I specifically mentioned kids. The "old canard" is the anti-migration argument that foreign kids block up school places and are a burden. Emma Raducanu was 2. We like her because she's a British tennis sensation. But how do we know which migrant kids can be the same and which will be a burden?
When we aren't letting people in even when we need them, how can you say "controlled migration" is relevant when we're talking about a 2 year old? How do we know if the child of the migrant we don't want is the next Sajid Javid or not?
Ultimately, you have to accept some rules and rules-of-thumb to balance all the factors: rules on the type and mix of migration, and a cap on the overall numbers that commands public support.
Will some worthy cases fall on the wrong side of that?
Sure they will, but you have to draw the line somewhere and the alternative is to have no line at all, which won't command public support nor be sustainable.
This post from Guido Gianasso (Professor of Leadership at HEC Paris in Qatar / Honorary Consul of Romania in Geneva) has flashed up in my feed and currently has over 103,000 likes and loves, with several across my network. There isn't a single critical comment beneath it.
Read it, and you'll see he's co-opted Emma - with a MASSIVE picture of her on the post- to support his own pre-existing political views. He manages to crowbar Brexit in and also has the audacity to say that Emma is not British and is evidence that national identities are fading, which he thinks is a good thing, as he feels they can only be ethnocentrically based. This is fairly typical of the views advertised on the professional networking site LinkedIn and the "global citizens" that inhabit it:
"EMMA RADUCANU AND THE ILLUSION OF NATIONS
A new tennis champion has emerged. It is fascinating to observe the dynamics taking place around this young lady.
Emma was born in Canada but has lived most of her life and trained in the UK. Hence she is considered British by most Britons and was publicly congratulated by the Queen. But the British public that now celebrates her success is the same that voted Brexit with the very objective to make it difficult for East Europeans such as Emma and her father to live in the UK.
The reality is that Emma is not Romanian, Chinese or British. She is much more. She is the outstanding result of the combination of Romanian talent, Chinese work ethics and British openness and sport infrastructure.
At a time when many countries are going back to very ethnocentric models and policies, Emma is the best evidence that National identities are fading and we must embrace a geocentric mindset. Emma Raducanu is the future of humankind."
It's a bit wanky but also seems fundamentally true. Some people like to put themselves in boxes, and to put other people in boxes. Others don't. Right now the putting people in boxes crowd is fighting a pretty successful rear-guard action, but I suspect and hope that in the long run they will lose. The future is global, and the people who succeed will be the ones who are willing to embrace that.
Woah, hold on. The Left *love* to put people in boxes, provided it's a race, gender, or sexuality box. In fact, that's accelerated: what they hate is the national identity box, and to a lesser extent the religious box, as they view it as false consciousness.
But if your argument is that people can chose their identity then you can't fundamentally advocate they can pick their sex and gender identity but cannot do so for national identity as well because it's all a personal choice.
Personally I think national Identity will always be relevant and complimentary with others, as will religious identity, and I see no evidence whatever that will ever end. It's complex: people can have overlapping and complimentary identities, and emphasise some of them to greater degrees than others, but it's about to what and to whom you feel allegiance with - and it's absolutely not racially bound.
This post by this Professor isn't a progressive post; it's a highly regressive one.
I think I agree with all of that, but maybe my reading of the thing you quoted is different from yours. I read it as saying that people can have multiple and overlapping identities like you say, and to claim that someone like Raducanu is 100% one thing is kind of pointless. She has links to a number of countries, like a lot of people do. Not knowing her personally or having heard her opine on the subject, but knowing other young people in SE London with parental links outside the UK and/or born outside the UK, I would assume she identifies most with the UK. (This is why I disagree strongly with the policy of stripping people of UK citizenship based on sometimes tenuous links to their countries, incidentally). Identity politics on the Left I tend to see more as a response to prejudice and barriers that specific groups face, rather than a desire to put people in boxes. I guess I can see how it might look like the latter, especially for people who think that things like institutional/structural racism aren't a thing. Whether it is ultimately helpful or not is a different question, but I think the motivation is understandable.
He literally titles his post the "illusion of nations". He then ends it by saying "national identities are fading" and that Emma is "the future of humankind".
At no point does he even make a hat-tip to what Emma herself might think - he simply co-opts his own to her to make his point.
His motivation is very clear.
To be fair, the point about lack of mention about what the young lady herself might think is reasonable. The oldest of my half-Thai grandchildren, at 15, is starting to think seriously about her heritages.
As the world's population travel more and become more educated and integrated the ideas of national identity and particularly nationalism (with it's emphasis on exceptionalism - insert British, French Scottish, whatever), become to appear more absurd. It is a deliberately provocative post, and it proves people can have more than one allegiance, and for that reason it is a good post. The fact that it hasn't had more swivel-eyed frothing from right wingers who want to make themselves look silly is a little disappointing, but it might just be that there are not too many Col Blimps with LinkedIn accounts.
Do you advocate a single global state? If not, then you need to rethink your assumptions because that's the logic of your position.
What would be the downsides of a single global state?
I guess it would be the difficulty of maintaining a proper degree of understanding of local needs at the central level. The necessary devolution of responsibility would probably make it start to look remarkably like the current set of nation states and local fiefdoms we have now, but from a top-down rather than middle-out starting point.
To me, the biggest problem with One World Government is what happens if Donald Trump Part Deux (or worse) gets elected...
Monopoly of government seems little different to a monopoly of industry. Avoid.
This post from Guido Gianasso (Professor of Leadership at HEC Paris in Qatar / Honorary Consul of Romania in Geneva) has flashed up in my feed and currently has over 103,000 likes and loves, with several across my network. There isn't a single critical comment beneath it.
Read it, and you'll see he's co-opted Emma - with a MASSIVE picture of her on the post- to support his own pre-existing political views. He manages to crowbar Brexit in and also has the audacity to say that Emma is not British and is evidence that national identities are fading, which he thinks is a good thing, as he feels they can only be ethnocentrically based. This is fairly typical of the views advertised on the professional networking site LinkedIn and the "global citizens" that inhabit it:
"EMMA RADUCANU AND THE ILLUSION OF NATIONS
A new tennis champion has emerged. It is fascinating to observe the dynamics taking place around this young lady.
Emma's father is Romanian. Her name is Romanian and she speaks Romanian fluently. Hence she is considered Romanian by millions of Romanians. But Emma has actually never lived in Romania.
Emma's mother is Chinese. She speaks fluent Chinese, as a recent video available on YouTube shows. Hence she is considered a Chinese hero by millions of Chinese, who seem to forget that the PRC discourages international marriages.
Emma was born in Canada but has lived most of her life and trained in the UK. Hence she is considered British by most Britons and was publicly congratulated by the Queen. But the British public that now celebrates her success is the same that voted Brexit with the very objective to make it difficult for East Europeans such as Emma and her father to live in the UK.
The reality is that Emma is not Romanian, Chinese or British. She is much more. She is the outstanding result of the combination of Romanian talent, Chinese work ethics and British openness and sport infrastructure.
At a time when many countries are going back to very ethnocentric models and policies, Emma is the best evidence that National identities are fading and we must embrace a geocentric mindset. Emma Raducanu is the future of humankind."
It would be interesting to learn what Emma believes
I think I'd enjoy hearing from Emma on any subject but I sincerely hope she manages to stay out of politics so she can continue to focus on and enjoy her tennis.
What really pisses me off is people trying to exploit her success for their own political ends and attributing their own views to her. They seem to view her as a migrant first and a Brit second.
I find that insulting.
Thats what you get when stopping migration is and has been the singular political issue of this generation. People don't want migrants, especially those seen as low skilled and definitely don't want their kids. Until the kids grow up to become a world champion runner or tennis sensation.
Then they don't want migrant kids, but Mo / Emma are different. Its the same mindset as the "I don't like blacks but Frank Bruno is alright as he's world champion" comments you'd hear in the past. It'll never go away sadly.
How about - radical idea - we accept migrants as Brits if they self-identify as such. People like Emma Raducanu have a choice of nationalities and we should be delighted that they chose to be British. When people move to America for work so many of them naturalise - we could have been doing the same for the last few decades with Europeans instead of treating them with such disdain.
This old canard. Most people want controlled migration - neither no migration or uncontrolled migration.
Why is that so hard to understand?
People don’t want to understand they just want to apply their personal prejudices to a debate. Migration is not a binary all or nothing choice. People support migration. During the referendum The leave campaign made it clear they would rather have skilled migrants from commonwealth countries than unskilled migrants from the EU. It was the controlled element some people wilfully misrepresent.
The opportunity to demonstrate how much people want migration is now. We have unfillable vacancies in critical things we need. The solution is migration and yet the government are not opening the door to controlled migration from any location to fill the vacancies. Why not?
To go back to Emma Raducanu she does rather make my point. Migration is a binary choice - do we let this person in or not? I assume that we would be happy to let a 2 year old migrate here now with banker parents. Does their career determine her potential? How about if Emma Raducanu 2037 wants to arrives here now with a Romanian parent who will drive a truck? She woudn't be allowed in.
So yes to a points based system and choices. We need people now, we aren't letting them in.
This post from Guido Gianasso (Professor of Leadership at HEC Paris in Qatar / Honorary Consul of Romania in Geneva) has flashed up in my feed and currently has over 103,000 likes and loves, with several across my network. There isn't a single critical comment beneath it.
Read it, and you'll see he's co-opted Emma - with a MASSIVE picture of her on the post- to support his own pre-existing political views. He manages to crowbar Brexit in and also has the audacity to say that Emma is not British and is evidence that national identities are fading, which he thinks is a good thing, as he feels they can only be ethnocentrically based. This is fairly typical of the views advertised on the professional networking site LinkedIn and the "global citizens" that inhabit it:
"EMMA RADUCANU AND THE ILLUSION OF NATIONS
A new tennis champion has emerged. It is fascinating to observe the dynamics taking place around this young lady.
Emma's father is Romanian. Her name is Romanian and she speaks Romanian fluently. Hence she is considered Romanian by millions of Romanians. But Emma has actually never lived in Romania.
Emma's mother is Chinese. She speaks fluent Chinese, as a recent video available on YouTube shows. Hence she is considered a Chinese hero by millions of Chinese, who seem to forget that the PRC discourages international marriages.
Emma was born in Canada but has lived most of her life and trained in the UK. Hence she is considered British by most Britons and was publicly congratulated by the Queen. But the British public that now celebrates her success is the same that voted Brexit with the very objective to make it difficult for East Europeans such as Emma and her father to live in the UK.
The reality is that Emma is not Romanian, Chinese or British. She is much more. She is the outstanding result of the combination of Romanian talent, Chinese work ethics and British openness and sport infrastructure.
At a time when many countries are going back to very ethnocentric models and policies, Emma is the best evidence that National identities are fading and we must embrace a geocentric mindset. Emma Raducanu is the future of humankind."
It would be interesting to learn what Emma believes
I think I'd enjoy hearing from Emma on any subject but I sincerely hope she manages to stay out of politics so she can continue to focus on and enjoy her tennis.
What really pisses me off is people trying to exploit her success for their own political ends and attributing their own views to her. They seem to view her as a migrant first and a Brit second.
I find that insulting.
Thats what you get when stopping migration is and has been the singular political issue of this generation. People don't want migrants, especially those seen as low skilled and definitely don't want their kids. Until the kids grow up to become a world champion runner or tennis sensation.
Then they don't want migrant kids, but Mo / Emma are different. Its the same mindset as the "I don't like blacks but Frank Bruno is alright as he's world champion" comments you'd hear in the past. It'll never go away sadly.
How about - radical idea - we accept migrants as Brits if they self-identify as such. People like Emma Raducanu have a choice of nationalities and we should be delighted that they chose to be British. When people move to America for work so many of them naturalise - we could have been doing the same for the last few decades with Europeans instead of treating them with such disdain.
This old canard. Most people want controlled migration - neither no migration or uncontrolled migration.
Why is that so hard to understand?
People don’t want to understand they just want to apply their personal prejudices to a debate. Migration is not a binary all or nothing choice. People support migration. During the referendum The leave campaign made it clear they would rather have skilled migrants from commonwealth countries than unskilled migrants from the EU. It was the controlled element some people wilfully misrepresent.
What the majority of people want from an immigration system, is priority given to those who can be net contributors, who have skills we need, or are investors in Britian.
Bringing in six million mostly low-paid service workers, to live in crowded accommodation, reducing productivity, holding wages down and putting pressure on public services - that was the problem.
It doesn’t matter who comes from where, it was the all-or-nothing approach of the EU that drove the vote to leave.
Big ‘the board has full confidence in lights and their ability to stay on this winter’ energy. Reassuring.
For those that can afford twice the price
Yep. Having a series of very comfortable Cons ministers (OE Kwasi this morning) say how everything will be ok and for no one to worry about a few hundred pounds more here or there might be the thing that clicks with the voting public.
What clicks ?
We've had over a decade of "climate change must be stopped" from the establishment.
Do people think that doesn't come without a price tag ?
There's a spike in the cost of a fossil fuel and it's the fault of people who want to stop using fossil fuels?
If the greenies had their way we wouldn't be burning fossil fuels for electricity and we'd be sitting pretty while the rest of the world struggled with a spike in gas prices.
Though we are needing to burn gas because the wind farms we built aren't working right now and gas does work. That's an issue.
That's a base load issue. The base needs to be consistent and green emission free (so nuclear) but that's got a different set of issues.
"so nuclear" - bullshit.
A dozen tidal lagoon power stations around our coast would produce power that was:
a) consistent b) green c) emission free d) WASTE FREE e) have a capital cost of construction about a third that of nuclear f) produce electricity at about a 40-50% discount to the cost of nuclear g) have abandonment costs orders of magnitude lower than nuclear but h) as they last three times longer than a nuclear power station on the base case - probably many times that in practice - you won't need to abandon them.
And yet for reasons unknown we have decided not to use Tidal power even though we had more suitable locations than anywhere else in the world.
Any idea why that is?
Financial. I firmly believe that the era of tidal is coming because the other generating costs are going up. I also think there is a huge green blob that hates the idea of tidal lagoons as there will be impact on the natural world. Like nuclear, they want us not to use certain solutions to avoiding climate change, and I think would prefer us all to starve, neuter ourselves and go extinct.
"neuter ourselves and go extinct."
Now we're talking!
Definitely the best option for the planet.
In some ways yes - a return to the days before man, and allow the natural world to go on about its natural way for ever, or until the heat death of the exploding sun. The sadness would be no-one to see the beauty or record things passing. How many species that have walked the earth are now extinct? Vitrtually all of them, and only we know. Does you dog care for a nice sunset, or the delicate shape of a dahlia? Does a fish wonder what came before, or after?
What will actually happen is the eradication of life on earth as every nuclear plant on the planet sooner or later goes Chernobyl. We are that toxic even after we've gone.
This post from Guido Gianasso (Professor of Leadership at HEC Paris in Qatar / Honorary Consul of Romania in Geneva) has flashed up in my feed and currently has over 103,000 likes and loves, with several across my network. There isn't a single critical comment beneath it.
Read it, and you'll see he's co-opted Emma - with a MASSIVE picture of her on the post- to support his own pre-existing political views. He manages to crowbar Brexit in and also has the audacity to say that Emma is not British and is evidence that national identities are fading, which he thinks is a good thing, as he feels they can only be ethnocentrically based. This is fairly typical of the views advertised on the professional networking site LinkedIn and the "global citizens" that inhabit it:
"EMMA RADUCANU AND THE ILLUSION OF NATIONS
A new tennis champion has emerged. It is fascinating to observe the dynamics taking place around this young lady.
Emma's father is Romanian. Her name is Romanian and she speaks Romanian fluently. Hence she is considered Romanian by millions of Romanians. But Emma has actually never lived in Romania.
Emma's mother is Chinese. She speaks fluent Chinese, as a recent video available on YouTube shows. Hence she is considered a Chinese hero by millions of Chinese, who seem to forget that the PRC discourages international marriages.
Emma was born in Canada but has lived most of her life and trained in the UK. Hence she is considered British by most Britons and was publicly congratulated by the Queen. But the British public that now celebrates her success is the same that voted Brexit with the very objective to make it difficult for East Europeans such as Emma and her father to live in the UK.
The reality is that Emma is not Romanian, Chinese or British. She is much more. She is the outstanding result of the combination of Romanian talent, Chinese work ethics and British openness and sport infrastructure.
At a time when many countries are going back to very ethnocentric models and policies, Emma is the best evidence that National identities are fading and we must embrace a geocentric mindset. Emma Raducanu is the future of humankind."
What a hopeful and refreshing read; the Professor's piece I mean.
I have grandchildren who are half-British, half Thai and live in Thailand. Two of them are very keen on, and appear quite good at, sport. They could, and probably would, play for either Britain or Thailand if one or the other came calling.
Yes, I thought you'd like it.
It's a great totem for flushing out those with utterly moronic views.
Happy little soul, aren't you. I might, and do, disagree with you on occasion, but when I have actually been rude to you.
I'm not the one trying to abuse and exploit Emma for my own political ends. I find that extremely rude, and the post itself is softly bigoted.
If you find it "helpful and refreshing" then, yes, I'm afraid you do have moronic views.
I certainly wouldn't try to ' abuse and exploit Emma for my own political ends'. The fact is that as a result of globalisation she's got a very diverse background, and seeing that recognised is good. I find it quite amusing to see various nationalists tying themselves in knots trying to 'claim' her.
Who are these "nationalists" you speak of that are trying to "claim" her? You mean people celebrating the fact that someone British who's proudly competing as a Briton has secured a British win? Because if you do, then you're saying most of the population here are "nationalist" on the basis that someone with mixed ancestry must always be seen as a migrant first, and a Briton second. I find that offensive.
The only ones doing the claiming here are the softly-bigoted progressive Left.
I went to an international school. My sister was born in Canada. My parents were born in India. I have half-British/half-Columbian cousins. My Uncle lives in Australia. My other cousin married a Kenyan lady. My wife is Bulgarian. My daughter is British, but with Bulgarian ancestry too, and I have other family members who married fellow Britons too.
It might surprise you to we all celebrated Emma's win, and we all have an affection for the UK and common roots here too.
There's nothing exclusive or anachronistic about national identity, and long may it remain so.
I think we are beginning to dance around the head of a pin. I agree that 'There's nothing exclusive or anachronistic about national identity', provided that it doesn't lead to hostility to those whose national identity is different. My back story isn't as cosmopolitan as yours, but I've got relations in other countries and both my sons spent part of their Uni courses outside the UK.
Thanks. My background is very imperial, actually.
Both my grandparents served in the Indian Army, and my two Uncles (different sides of the family) in the RAN and the Canadian Army, as well as my cousin in the British Army. So we feel strong links to India, Australia and Canada, as well as the UK - several of us have little time for the EU but lots for the Commonwealth.
It's amazing how much has changed in just one lifetime, but there are lots of shared bonds and values there still too.
Interesting. I've got an interest in Family History and have discovered that one ancestor, the son of a publican in S Wales, in 1840 or so qualified as a doctor but left his girl-friend and 'bastard (from the baptism docs) son and moved to London. Where he married (!) and prosper. His grandson became an Army officer. His son followed him into the army, and was decorated. Meanwhile his first child, as so many in S Wales did at the time, went down the mines and, after several years died of the injuries received in an accident. I'm the first of that line never to have spent any time as a coalminer!
This post from Guido Gianasso (Professor of Leadership at HEC Paris in Qatar / Honorary Consul of Romania in Geneva) has flashed up in my feed and currently has over 103,000 likes and loves, with several across my network. There isn't a single critical comment beneath it.
Read it, and you'll see he's co-opted Emma - with a MASSIVE picture of her on the post- to support his own pre-existing political views. He manages to crowbar Brexit in and also has the audacity to say that Emma is not British and is evidence that national identities are fading, which he thinks is a good thing, as he feels they can only be ethnocentrically based. This is fairly typical of the views advertised on the professional networking site LinkedIn and the "global citizens" that inhabit it:
"EMMA RADUCANU AND THE ILLUSION OF NATIONS
A new tennis champion has emerged. It is fascinating to observe the dynamics taking place around this young lady.
Emma's father is Romanian. Her name is Romanian and she speaks Romanian fluently. Hence she is considered Romanian by millions of Romanians. But Emma has actually never lived in Romania.
Emma's mother is Chinese. She speaks fluent Chinese, as a recent video available on YouTube shows. Hence she is considered a Chinese hero by millions of Chinese, who seem to forget that the PRC discourages international marriages.
Emma was born in Canada but has lived most of her life and trained in the UK. Hence she is considered British by most Britons and was publicly congratulated by the Queen. But the British public that now celebrates her success is the same that voted Brexit with the very objective to make it difficult for East Europeans such as Emma and her father to live in the UK.
The reality is that Emma is not Romanian, Chinese or British. She is much more. She is the outstanding result of the combination of Romanian talent, Chinese work ethics and British openness and sport infrastructure.
At a time when many countries are going back to very ethnocentric models and policies, Emma is the best evidence that National identities are fading and we must embrace a geocentric mindset. Emma Raducanu is the future of humankind."
What a hopeful and refreshing read; the Professor's piece I mean.
I have grandchildren who are half-British, half Thai and live in Thailand. Two of them are very keen on, and appear quite good at, sport. They could, and probably would, play for either Britain or Thailand if one or the other came calling.
Yes, I thought you'd like it.
It's a great totem for flushing out those with utterly moronic views.
Happy little soul, aren't you. I might, and do, disagree with you on occasion, but when I have actually been rude to you.
I'm not the one trying to abuse and exploit Emma for my own political ends. I find that extremely rude, and the post itself is softly bigoted.
If you find it "helpful and refreshing" then, yes, I'm afraid you do have moronic views.
I certainly wouldn't try to ' abuse and exploit Emma for my own political ends'. The fact is that as a result of globalisation she's got a very diverse background, and seeing that recognised is good. I find it quite amusing to see various nationalists tying themselves in knots trying to 'claim' her.
Who are these "nationalists" you speak of that are trying to "claim" her? You mean people celebrating the fact that someone British who's proudly competing as a Briton has secured a British win? Because if you do, then you're saying most of the population here are "nationalist" on the basis that someone with mixed ancestry must always be seen as a migrant first, and a Briton second. I find that offensive.
The only ones doing the claiming here are the softly-bigoted progressive Left.
I went to an international school. My sister was born in Canada. My parents were born in India. I have half-British/half-Columbian cousins. My Uncle lives in Australia. My other cousin married a Kenyan lady. My wife is Bulgarian. My daughter is British, but with Bulgarian ancestry too, and I have other family members who married fellow Britons too.
It might surprise you to we all celebrated Emma's win, and we all have an affection for the UK and common roots here too.
There's nothing exclusive or anachronistic about national identity, and long may it remain so.
I think we are beginning to dance around the head of a pin. I agree that 'There's nothing exclusive or anachronistic about national identity', provided that it doesn't lead to hostility to those whose national identity is different. My back story isn't as cosmopolitan as yours, but I've got relations in other countries and both my sons spent part of their Uni courses outside the UK.
Thanks. My background is very imperial, actually.
Both my grandparents served in the Indian Army, and my two Uncles (different sides of the family) in the RAN and the Canadian Army, as well as my cousin in the British Army. So we feel strong links to India, Australia and Canada, as well as the UK - several of us have little time for the EU but lots for the Commonwealth.
It's amazing how much has changed in just one lifetime, but there are lots of shared bonds and values there still too.
Interesting. I've got an interest in Family History and have discovered that one ancestor, the son of a publican in S Wales, in 1840 or so qualified as a doctor but left his girl-friend and 'bastard (from the baptism docs) son and moved to London. Where he married (!) and prosper. His grandson became an Army officer. His son followed him into the army, and was decorated. Meanwhile his first child, as so many in S Wales did at the time, went down the mines and, after several years died of the injuries received in an accident. I'm the first of that line never to have spent any time as a coalminer!
This post from Guido Gianasso (Professor of Leadership at HEC Paris in Qatar / Honorary Consul of Romania in Geneva) has flashed up in my feed and currently has over 103,000 likes and loves, with several across my network. There isn't a single critical comment beneath it.
Read it, and you'll see he's co-opted Emma - with a MASSIVE picture of her on the post- to support his own pre-existing political views. He manages to crowbar Brexit in and also has the audacity to say that Emma is not British and is evidence that national identities are fading, which he thinks is a good thing, as he feels they can only be ethnocentrically based. This is fairly typical of the views advertised on the professional networking site LinkedIn and the "global citizens" that inhabit it:
"EMMA RADUCANU AND THE ILLUSION OF NATIONS
A new tennis champion has emerged. It is fascinating to observe the dynamics taking place around this young lady.
Emma's father is Romanian. Her name is Romanian and she speaks Romanian fluently. Hence she is considered Romanian by millions of Romanians. But Emma has actually never lived in Romania.
Emma's mother is Chinese. She speaks fluent Chinese, as a recent video available on YouTube shows. Hence she is considered a Chinese hero by millions of Chinese, who seem to forget that the PRC discourages international marriages.
Emma was born in Canada but has lived most of her life and trained in the UK. Hence she is considered British by most Britons and was publicly congratulated by the Queen. But the British public that now celebrates her success is the same that voted Brexit with the very objective to make it difficult for East Europeans such as Emma and her father to live in the UK.
The reality is that Emma is not Romanian, Chinese or British. She is much more. She is the outstanding result of the combination of Romanian talent, Chinese work ethics and British openness and sport infrastructure.
At a time when many countries are going back to very ethnocentric models and policies, Emma is the best evidence that National identities are fading and we must embrace a geocentric mindset. Emma Raducanu is the future of humankind."
It would be interesting to learn what Emma believes
I think I'd enjoy hearing from Emma on any subject but I sincerely hope she manages to stay out of politics so she can continue to focus on and enjoy her tennis.
What really pisses me off is people trying to exploit her success for their own political ends and attributing their own views to her. They seem to view her as a migrant first and a Brit second.
I find that insulting.
Thats what you get when stopping migration is and has been the singular political issue of this generation. People don't want migrants, especially those seen as low skilled and definitely don't want their kids. Until the kids grow up to become a world champion runner or tennis sensation.
Then they don't want migrant kids, but Mo / Emma are different. Its the same mindset as the "I don't like blacks but Frank Bruno is alright as he's world champion" comments you'd hear in the past. It'll never go away sadly.
How about - radical idea - we accept migrants as Brits if they self-identify as such. People like Emma Raducanu have a choice of nationalities and we should be delighted that they chose to be British. When people move to America for work so many of them naturalise - we could have been doing the same for the last few decades with Europeans instead of treating them with such disdain.
This old canard. Most people want controlled migration - neither no migration or uncontrolled migration.
Why is that so hard to understand?
I entirely get it! Its just that most people don't. They might say "I want controlled migration" but when you then ask which migrants they want to keep they can't answer you. Nor can the government, as the "let people in that we need" argument is being ignored for care homes factories tourism and logistics.
I specifically mentioned kids. The "old canard" is the anti-migration argument that foreign kids block up school places and are a burden. Emma Raducanu was 2. We like her because she's a British tennis sensation. But how do we know which migrant kids can be the same and which will be a burden?
When we aren't letting people in even when we need them, how can you say "controlled migration" is relevant when we're talking about a 2 year old? How do we know if the child of the migrant we don't want is the next Sajid Javid or not?
Ultimately, you have to accept some rules and rules-of-thumb to balance all the factors: rules on the type and mix of migration, and a cap on the overall numbers that commands public support.
Will some worthy cases fall on the wrong side of that?
Sure they will, but you have to draw the line somewhere and the alternative is to have no line at all, which won't command public support nor be sustainable.
Has anyone argued for "no line at all"? Back when we were in the EU there was no "uncontrolled migration" - no tidal wave where the entire population of Romania moved here. Nor did we have no say over it - we had the power to restrict numbers and to deport any who could not sustain themselves after 3 months.
This post from Guido Gianasso (Professor of Leadership at HEC Paris in Qatar / Honorary Consul of Romania in Geneva) has flashed up in my feed and currently has over 103,000 likes and loves, with several across my network. There isn't a single critical comment beneath it.
Read it, and you'll see he's co-opted Emma - with a MASSIVE picture of her on the post- to support his own pre-existing political views. He manages to crowbar Brexit in and also has the audacity to say that Emma is not British and is evidence that national identities are fading, which he thinks is a good thing, as he feels they can only be ethnocentrically based. This is fairly typical of the views advertised on the professional networking site LinkedIn and the "global citizens" that inhabit it:
"EMMA RADUCANU AND THE ILLUSION OF NATIONS
A new tennis champion has emerged. It is fascinating to observe the dynamics taking place around this young lady.
Emma was born in Canada but has lived most of her life and trained in the UK. Hence she is considered British by most Britons and was publicly congratulated by the Queen. But the British public that now celebrates her success is the same that voted Brexit with the very objective to make it difficult for East Europeans such as Emma and her father to live in the UK.
The reality is that Emma is not Romanian, Chinese or British. She is much more. She is the outstanding result of the combination of Romanian talent, Chinese work ethics and British openness and sport infrastructure.
At a time when many countries are going back to very ethnocentric models and policies, Emma is the best evidence that National identities are fading and we must embrace a geocentric mindset. Emma Raducanu is the future of humankind."
It's a bit wanky but also seems fundamentally true. Some people like to put themselves in boxes, and to put other people in boxes. Others don't. Right now the putting people in boxes crowd is fighting a pretty successful rear-guard action, but I suspect and hope that in the long run they will lose. The future is global, and the people who succeed will be the ones who are willing to embrace that.
Woah, hold on. The Left *love* to put people in boxes, provided it's a race, gender, or sexuality box. In fact, that's accelerated: what they hate is the national identity box, and to a lesser extent the religious box, as they view it as false consciousness.
But if your argument is that people can chose their identity then you can't fundamentally advocate they can pick their sex and gender identity but cannot do so for national identity as well because it's all a personal choice.
Personally I think national Identity will always be relevant and complimentary with others, as will religious identity, and I see no evidence whatever that will ever end. It's complex: people can have overlapping and complimentary identities, and emphasise some of them to greater degrees than others, but it's about to what and to whom you feel allegiance with - and it's absolutely not racially bound.
This post by this Professor isn't a progressive post; it's a highly regressive one.
I think I agree with all of that, but maybe my reading of the thing you quoted is different from yours. I read it as saying that people can have multiple and overlapping identities like you say, and to claim that someone like Raducanu is 100% one thing is kind of pointless. She has links to a number of countries, like a lot of people do. Not knowing her personally or having heard her opine on the subject, but knowing other young people in SE London with parental links outside the UK and/or born outside the UK, I would assume she identifies most with the UK. (This is why I disagree strongly with the policy of stripping people of UK citizenship based on sometimes tenuous links to their countries, incidentally). Identity politics on the Left I tend to see more as a response to prejudice and barriers that specific groups face, rather than a desire to put people in boxes. I guess I can see how it might look like the latter, especially for people who think that things like institutional/structural racism aren't a thing. Whether it is ultimately helpful or not is a different question, but I think the motivation is understandable.
He literally titles his post the "illusion of nations". He then ends it by saying "national identities are fading" and that Emma is "the future of humankind".
At no point does he even make a hat-tip to what Emma herself might think - he simply co-opts his own to her to make his point.
His motivation is very clear.
To be fair, the point about lack of mention about what the young lady herself might think is reasonable. The oldest of my half-Thai grandchildren, at 15, is starting to think seriously about her heritages.
As the world's population travel more and become more educated and integrated the ideas of national identity and particularly nationalism (with it's emphasis on exceptionalism - insert British, French Scottish, whatever), become to appear more absurd. It is a deliberately provocative post, and it proves people can have more than one allegiance, and for that reason it is a good post. The fact that it hasn't had more swivel-eyed frothing from right wingers who want to make themselves look silly is a little disappointing, but it might just be that there are not too many Col Blimps with LinkedIn accounts.
You claim to be against nationalism but you seem to be an extremely ardent nationalist yourself. Just a European nationalist.
Yesterday you quoted Thatcher referring to getting free trade with the world's richest nations, richer even than the USA, but when it was pointed out that in the interceding decades that had changed and the richest nations and people of the world aren't European anymore and we should embrace the globe not a parochial part of it ... That doesn't compute for you.
You're every bit as self righteous a nationalist as malcolmg. Rude to anyone who sees the world differently. You've simply embraced Europe as your nation instead of Scotland.
The world is a very big place. Much bigger than England, Scotland or Europe.
Please, Philip, I know you are trying your best Sixth Form debating style, but misrepresenting me won't help your cause. I am not a "European nationalist", I can't think of little more ghastly. You, like all your simplistic English nationalist buddies simply try to obfuscate to justify your love of the poisonous creed of nationalism and English exceptionalism. You are, in your own miniscule way, a genuine purveyor of fake news. There is no such thing as "European nationalism" you silly boy. I also don't need to be told by a keyboard warrior the "world is a big place". Unlike you I suspect, I have travelled and done business in most of it.
An electoral system is a machine for turning inputs into governments. The question is, what inputs do we care to measure? In FPTP, one of the most important inputs is how spread out / concentrated your voters are. I don't understand why anyone would think it's necessary to have that reflected in the result.
My proposal would be for an electoral system that better reflects how many ACTUAL votes there are for a party. Wild, I know.
A comment which utterly misunderstands what people are actually voting for at an election.
Does it, though? Listen to people talking on this forum. People vote for parties, party leaders, and yes, individual candidates. Perhaps in that order.
The idea that each constituency is an island competition between individuals is a charming fiction, but perhaps 200 years out of date, if it ever was true even then.
Take Canada. There's been a fair amount of talk today about parties, and two or three leaders. How many of you who have commented have said anything about local issues or candidates? As Canada, so us.
Nope. Legally you are voting for an individual representative. That is the fundamental basis of our system. And more than a few of us still operate on that basis. Who that representative is beholden to within their party does play a part but by no means the most important part. We may use the shorthand of voting for or against a party but some of us at least still vote according to the way the system is supposed to work. That is why we allow MPs to cross the floor. Anything else puts far to much power in the hands of the parties and we should be trying to reduce that power not increase it.
We can retail the individualism of an MP or councillor able to cross the floor and elect them proportionately. As has just been pointed out FPTP wipes out the Tories in cities like Manchester which is absurd.
Up here I am about to start campaigning to become a LibDem councillor and we use STV for council elections. Its fair, it works, representatives are elected as individuals and are free to cross the floor (and often do).
The only way to do that is, as you say, with STV or with AV - something I voted for but which the public sadly rejected.
Any other PR system based on the proportion of votes gained by a party automatically gives the party the moral high ground in the claim that they can control MPs and that we are voting for a party not an individual representative. It gives more power to the parties rather than taking it away and is something that needs to be resisted. You can guess which systems the parties campaigning for electoral reform would prefer us to use.
Single Transferable Vote in Multi-Member Constituencies. You get proportionality, a choice of which representative to see if one is an anus, and you're still in control not a party who set a list.
The key balance would be how big a seat. As England is now set on "Metro Mayors" even in non-metro areas there is clearly a desire for some regional co-ordination. So why not copy Scotland - elect most members from a constituency and a smaller number elected by region.
The choice of number of MPs per STV constituency is very important. Nabavi has previously advocated for 3, as that requires parties to achieve relatively high levels of support to achieve representation, compared to, say, 5. With fewer rounds of voting and transfers likely to be required you would also expect the counting to be faster.
Generally I'm happy with a flexible approach, varying the number of MPs to fit the boundaries of communities where possible. So that would mean 4 MPs for a Bristol constituency, 3 for Stoke, 5 for Edinburgh. This can open the door to some gerrymandering though, if you have more MPs for each urban constituency than rural ones for example.
It would be good for us to widen the scope of where it was worthwhile for parties to campaign for votes. Give the Tories a chance of winning a seat in Liverpool, and Labour an opportunity in rural Hampshire.
This post from Guido Gianasso (Professor of Leadership at HEC Paris in Qatar / Honorary Consul of Romania in Geneva) has flashed up in my feed and currently has over 103,000 likes and loves, with several across my network. There isn't a single critical comment beneath it.
Read it, and you'll see he's co-opted Emma - with a MASSIVE picture of her on the post- to support his own pre-existing political views. He manages to crowbar Brexit in and also has the audacity to say that Emma is not British and is evidence that national identities are fading, which he thinks is a good thing, as he feels they can only be ethnocentrically based. This is fairly typical of the views advertised on the professional networking site LinkedIn and the "global citizens" that inhabit it:
"EMMA RADUCANU AND THE ILLUSION OF NATIONS
A new tennis champion has emerged. It is fascinating to observe the dynamics taking place around this young lady.
Emma's father is Romanian. Her name is Romanian and she speaks Romanian fluently. Hence she is considered Romanian by millions of Romanians. But Emma has actually never lived in Romania.
Emma's mother is Chinese. She speaks fluent Chinese, as a recent video available on YouTube shows. Hence she is considered a Chinese hero by millions of Chinese, who seem to forget that the PRC discourages international marriages.
Emma was born in Canada but has lived most of her life and trained in the UK. Hence she is considered British by most Britons and was publicly congratulated by the Queen. But the British public that now celebrates her success is the same that voted Brexit with the very objective to make it difficult for East Europeans such as Emma and her father to live in the UK.
The reality is that Emma is not Romanian, Chinese or British. She is much more. She is the outstanding result of the combination of Romanian talent, Chinese work ethics and British openness and sport infrastructure.
At a time when many countries are going back to very ethnocentric models and policies, Emma is the best evidence that National identities are fading and we must embrace a geocentric mindset. Emma Raducanu is the future of humankind."
What a hopeful and refreshing read; the Professor's piece I mean.
I have grandchildren who are half-British, half Thai and live in Thailand. Two of them are very keen on, and appear quite good at, sport. They could, and probably would, play for either Britain or Thailand if one or the other came calling.
Yes, I thought you'd like it.
It's a great totem for flushing out those with utterly moronic views.
Happy little soul, aren't you. I might, and do, disagree with you on occasion, but when I have actually been rude to you.
I'm not the one trying to abuse and exploit Emma for my own political ends. I find that extremely rude, and the post itself is softly bigoted.
If you find it "helpful and refreshing" then, yes, I'm afraid you do have moronic views.
I certainly wouldn't try to ' abuse and exploit Emma for my own political ends'. The fact is that as a result of globalisation she's got a very diverse background, and seeing that recognised is good. I find it quite amusing to see various nationalists tying themselves in knots trying to 'claim' her.
Who are these "nationalists" you speak of that are trying to "claim" her? You mean people celebrating the fact that someone British who's proudly competing as a Briton has secured a British win? Because if you do, then you're saying most of the population here are "nationalist" on the basis that someone with mixed ancestry must always be seen as a migrant first, and a Briton second. I find that offensive.
The only ones doing the claiming here are the softly-bigoted progressive Left.
I went to an international school. My sister was born in Canada. My parents were born in India. I have half-British/half-Columbian cousins. My Uncle lives in Australia. My other cousin married a Kenyan lady. My wife is Bulgarian. My daughter is British, but with Bulgarian ancestry too, and I have other family members who married fellow Britons too.
It might surprise you to we all celebrated Emma's win, and we all have an affection for the UK and common roots here too.
There's nothing exclusive or anachronistic about national identity, and long may it remain so.
I think we are beginning to dance around the head of a pin. I agree that 'There's nothing exclusive or anachronistic about national identity', provided that it doesn't lead to hostility to those whose national identity is different. My back story isn't as cosmopolitan as yours, but I've got relations in other countries and both my sons spent part of their Uni courses outside the UK.
Thanks. My background is very imperial, actually.
Both my grandparents served in the Indian Army, and my two Uncles (different sides of the family) in the RAN and the Canadian Army, as well as my cousin in the British Army. So we feel strong links to India, Australia and Canada, as well as the UK - several of us have little time for the EU but lots for the Commonwealth.
It's amazing how much has changed in just one lifetime, but there are lots of shared bonds and values there still too.
Interesting. I've got an interest in Family History and have discovered that one ancestor, the son of a publican in S Wales, in 1840 or so qualified as a doctor but left his girl-friend and 'bastard (from the baptism docs) son and moved to London. Where he married (!) and prosper. His grandson became an Army officer. His son followed him into the army, and was decorated. Meanwhile his first child, as so many in S Wales did at the time, went down the mines and, after several years died of the injuries received in an accident. I'm the first of that line never to have spent any time as a coalminer!
There's still time...
Not at 80+! I've been down a mine of course, to be educated, amazed and horrified at the working conditions.
This post from Guido Gianasso (Professor of Leadership at HEC Paris in Qatar / Honorary Consul of Romania in Geneva) has flashed up in my feed and currently has over 103,000 likes and loves, with several across my network. There isn't a single critical comment beneath it.
Read it, and you'll see he's co-opted Emma - with a MASSIVE picture of her on the post- to support his own pre-existing political views. He manages to crowbar Brexit in and also has the audacity to say that Emma is not British and is evidence that national identities are fading, which he thinks is a good thing, as he feels they can only be ethnocentrically based. This is fairly typical of the views advertised on the professional networking site LinkedIn and the "global citizens" that inhabit it:
"EMMA RADUCANU AND THE ILLUSION OF NATIONS
A new tennis champion has emerged. It is fascinating to observe the dynamics taking place around this young lady.
Emma was born in Canada but has lived most of her life and trained in the UK. Hence she is considered British by most Britons and was publicly congratulated by the Queen. But the British public that now celebrates her success is the same that voted Brexit with the very objective to make it difficult for East Europeans such as Emma and her father to live in the UK.
The reality is that Emma is not Romanian, Chinese or British. She is much more. She is the outstanding result of the combination of Romanian talent, Chinese work ethics and British openness and sport infrastructure.
At a time when many countries are going back to very ethnocentric models and policies, Emma is the best evidence that National identities are fading and we must embrace a geocentric mindset. Emma Raducanu is the future of humankind."
It's a bit wanky but also seems fundamentally true. Some people like to put themselves in boxes, and to put other people in boxes. Others don't. Right now the putting people in boxes crowd is fighting a pretty successful rear-guard action, but I suspect and hope that in the long run they will lose. The future is global, and the people who succeed will be the ones who are willing to embrace that.
Woah, hold on. The Left *love* to put people in boxes, provided it's a race, gender, or sexuality box. In fact, that's accelerated: what they hate is the national identity box, and to a lesser extent the religious box, as they view it as false consciousness.
But if your argument is that people can chose their identity then you can't fundamentally advocate they can pick their sex and gender identity but cannot do so for national identity as well because it's all a personal choice.
Personally I think national Identity will always be relevant and complimentary with others, as will religious identity, and I see no evidence whatever that will ever end. It's complex: people can have overlapping and complimentary identities, and emphasise some of them to greater degrees than others, but it's about to what and to whom you feel allegiance with - and it's absolutely not racially bound.
This post by this Professor isn't a progressive post; it's a highly regressive one.
I think I agree with all of that, but maybe my reading of the thing you quoted is different from yours. I read it as saying that people can have multiple and overlapping identities like you say, and to claim that someone like Raducanu is 100% one thing is kind of pointless. She has links to a number of countries, like a lot of people do. Not knowing her personally or having heard her opine on the subject, but knowing other young people in SE London with parental links outside the UK and/or born outside the UK, I would assume she identifies most with the UK. (This is why I disagree strongly with the policy of stripping people of UK citizenship based on sometimes tenuous links to their countries, incidentally). Identity politics on the Left I tend to see more as a response to prejudice and barriers that specific groups face, rather than a desire to put people in boxes. I guess I can see how it might look like the latter, especially for people who think that things like institutional/structural racism aren't a thing. Whether it is ultimately helpful or not is a different question, but I think the motivation is understandable.
He literally titles his post the "illusion of nations". He then ends it by saying "national identities are fading" and that Emma is "the future of humankind".
At no point does he even make a hat-tip to what Emma herself might think - he simply co-opts his own to her to make his point.
His motivation is very clear.
To be fair, the point about lack of mention about what the young lady herself might think is reasonable. The oldest of my half-Thai grandchildren, at 15, is starting to think seriously about her heritages.
As the world's population travel more and become more educated and integrated the ideas of national identity and particularly nationalism (with it's emphasis on exceptionalism - insert British, French Scottish, whatever), become to appear more absurd. It is a deliberately provocative post, and it proves people can have more than one allegiance, and for that reason it is a good post. The fact that it hasn't had more swivel-eyed frothing from right wingers who want to make themselves look silly is a little disappointing, but it might just be that there are not too many Col Blimps with LinkedIn accounts.
Do you advocate a single global state? If not, then you need to rethink your assumptions because that's the logic of your position.
What would be the downsides of a single global state?
I guess it would be the difficulty of maintaining a proper degree of understanding of local needs at the central level. The necessary devolution of responsibility would probably make it start to look remarkably like the current set of nation states and local fiefdoms we have now, but from a top-down rather than middle-out starting point.
To me, the biggest problem with One World Government is what happens if Donald Trump Part Deux (or worse) gets elected...
Monopoly of government seems little different to a monopoly of industry. Avoid.
That's a very good point. Regardless of your politics, a single global government is a very bad idea.
There would be no regulatory or legal diversity. No alternative to challenge its bad practices or decisions. It would be wholly overbearing, highly corrupt, self-interested, have nothing to check it, and would act ruthlessly to defend itself with every apparatus of the resources of the world available.
This post from Guido Gianasso (Professor of Leadership at HEC Paris in Qatar / Honorary Consul of Romania in Geneva) has flashed up in my feed and currently has over 103,000 likes and loves, with several across my network. There isn't a single critical comment beneath it.
Read it, and you'll see he's co-opted Emma - with a MASSIVE picture of her on the post- to support his own pre-existing political views. He manages to crowbar Brexit in and also has the audacity to say that Emma is not British and is evidence that national identities are fading, which he thinks is a good thing, as he feels they can only be ethnocentrically based. This is fairly typical of the views advertised on the professional networking site LinkedIn and the "global citizens" that inhabit it:
"EMMA RADUCANU AND THE ILLUSION OF NATIONS
A new tennis champion has emerged. It is fascinating to observe the dynamics taking place around this young lady.
Emma was born in Canada but has lived most of her life and trained in the UK. Hence she is considered British by most Britons and was publicly congratulated by the Queen. But the British public that now celebrates her success is the same that voted Brexit with the very objective to make it difficult for East Europeans such as Emma and her father to live in the UK.
The reality is that Emma is not Romanian, Chinese or British. She is much more. She is the outstanding result of the combination of Romanian talent, Chinese work ethics and British openness and sport infrastructure.
At a time when many countries are going back to very ethnocentric models and policies, Emma is the best evidence that National identities are fading and we must embrace a geocentric mindset. Emma Raducanu is the future of humankind."
It's a bit wanky but also seems fundamentally true. Some people like to put themselves in boxes, and to put other people in boxes. Others don't. Right now the putting people in boxes crowd is fighting a pretty successful rear-guard action, but I suspect and hope that in the long run they will lose. The future is global, and the people who succeed will be the ones who are willing to embrace that.
Woah, hold on. The Left *love* to put people in boxes, provided it's a race, gender, or sexuality box. In fact, that's accelerated: what they hate is the national identity box, and to a lesser extent the religious box, as they view it as false consciousness.
But if your argument is that people can chose their identity then you can't fundamentally advocate they can pick their sex and gender identity but cannot do so for national identity as well because it's all a personal choice.
Personally I think national Identity will always be relevant and complimentary with others, as will religious identity, and I see no evidence whatever that will ever end. It's complex: people can have overlapping and complimentary identities, and emphasise some of them to greater degrees than others, but it's about to what and to whom you feel allegiance with - and it's absolutely not racially bound.
This post by this Professor isn't a progressive post; it's a highly regressive one.
I think I agree with all of that, but maybe my reading of the thing you quoted is different from yours. I read it as saying that people can have multiple and overlapping identities like you say, and to claim that someone like Raducanu is 100% one thing is kind of pointless. She has links to a number of countries, like a lot of people do. Not knowing her personally or having heard her opine on the subject, but knowing other young people in SE London with parental links outside the UK and/or born outside the UK, I would assume she identifies most with the UK. (This is why I disagree strongly with the policy of stripping people of UK citizenship based on sometimes tenuous links to their countries, incidentally). Identity politics on the Left I tend to see more as a response to prejudice and barriers that specific groups face, rather than a desire to put people in boxes. I guess I can see how it might look like the latter, especially for people who think that things like institutional/structural racism aren't a thing. Whether it is ultimately helpful or not is a different question, but I think the motivation is understandable.
He literally titles his post the "illusion of nations". He then ends it by saying "national identities are fading" and that Emma is "the future of humankind".
At no point does he even make a hat-tip to what Emma herself might think - he simply co-opts his own to her to make his point.
His motivation is very clear.
To be fair, the point about lack of mention about what the young lady herself might think is reasonable. The oldest of my half-Thai grandchildren, at 15, is starting to think seriously about her heritages.
As the world's population travel more and become more educated and integrated the ideas of national identity and particularly nationalism (with it's emphasis on exceptionalism - insert British, French Scottish, whatever), become to appear more absurd. It is a deliberately provocative post, and it proves people can have more than one allegiance, and for that reason it is a good post. The fact that it hasn't had more swivel-eyed frothing from right wingers who want to make themselves look silly is a little disappointing, but it might just be that there are not too many Col Blimps with LinkedIn accounts.
Do you advocate a single global state? If not, then you need to rethink your assumptions because that's the logic of your position.
There are good security reasons for not wanting a One World Government that are nothing to do with national identity or anything like that. Governments sometimes malfunction, and nobody knows the perfect model, so it's good to be able to move between them if they break and potentially resist the broken ones from somewhere the broken state can't get at you.
The related point is that it's important for many states to accept refugees, because you never know when the state you're in is going to malfunction and you'll need to get out of there for safety and potentially try to fix it from outside.
This post from Guido Gianasso (Professor of Leadership at HEC Paris in Qatar / Honorary Consul of Romania in Geneva) has flashed up in my feed and currently has over 103,000 likes and loves, with several across my network. There isn't a single critical comment beneath it.
Read it, and you'll see he's co-opted Emma - with a MASSIVE picture of her on the post- to support his own pre-existing political views. He manages to crowbar Brexit in and also has the audacity to say that Emma is not British and is evidence that national identities are fading, which he thinks is a good thing, as he feels they can only be ethnocentrically based. This is fairly typical of the views advertised on the professional networking site LinkedIn and the "global citizens" that inhabit it:
"EMMA RADUCANU AND THE ILLUSION OF NATIONS
A new tennis champion has emerged. It is fascinating to observe the dynamics taking place around this young lady.
Emma's father is Romanian. Her name is Romanian and she speaks Romanian fluently. Hence she is considered Romanian by millions of Romanians. But Emma has actually never lived in Romania.
Emma's mother is Chinese. She speaks fluent Chinese, as a recent video available on YouTube shows. Hence she is considered a Chinese hero by millions of Chinese, who seem to forget that the PRC discourages international marriages.
Emma was born in Canada but has lived most of her life and trained in the UK. Hence she is considered British by most Britons and was publicly congratulated by the Queen. But the British public that now celebrates her success is the same that voted Brexit with the very objective to make it difficult for East Europeans such as Emma and her father to live in the UK.
The reality is that Emma is not Romanian, Chinese or British. She is much more. She is the outstanding result of the combination of Romanian talent, Chinese work ethics and British openness and sport infrastructure.
At a time when many countries are going back to very ethnocentric models and policies, Emma is the best evidence that National identities are fading and we must embrace a geocentric mindset. Emma Raducanu is the future of humankind."
It would be interesting to learn what Emma believes
I think I'd enjoy hearing from Emma on any subject but I sincerely hope she manages to stay out of politics so she can continue to focus on and enjoy her tennis.
What really pisses me off is people trying to exploit her success for their own political ends and attributing their own views to her. They seem to view her as a migrant first and a Brit second.
I find that insulting.
Thats what you get when stopping migration is and has been the singular political issue of this generation. People don't want migrants, especially those seen as low skilled and definitely don't want their kids. Until the kids grow up to become a world champion runner or tennis sensation.
Then they don't want migrant kids, but Mo / Emma are different. Its the same mindset as the "I don't like blacks but Frank Bruno is alright as he's world champion" comments you'd hear in the past. It'll never go away sadly.
How about - radical idea - we accept migrants as Brits if they self-identify as such. People like Emma Raducanu have a choice of nationalities and we should be delighted that they chose to be British. When people move to America for work so many of them naturalise - we could have been doing the same for the last few decades with Europeans instead of treating them with such disdain.
This old canard. Most people want controlled migration - neither no migration or uncontrolled migration.
Why is that so hard to understand?
I entirely get it! Its just that most people don't. They might say "I want controlled migration" but when you then ask which migrants they want to keep they can't answer you. Nor can the government, as the "let people in that we need" argument is being ignored for care homes factories tourism and logistics.
I specifically mentioned kids. The "old canard" is the anti-migration argument that foreign kids block up school places and are a burden. Emma Raducanu was 2. We like her because she's a British tennis sensation. But how do we know which migrant kids can be the same and which will be a burden?
When we aren't letting people in even when we need them, how can you say "controlled migration" is relevant when we're talking about a 2 year old? How do we know if the child of the migrant we don't want is the next Sajid Javid or not?
Ultimately, you have to accept some rules and rules-of-thumb to balance all the factors: rules on the type and mix of migration, and a cap on the overall numbers that commands public support.
Will some worthy cases fall on the wrong side of that?
Sure they will, but you have to draw the line somewhere and the alternative is to have no line at all, which won't command public support nor be sustainable.
Has anyone argued for "no line at all"? Back when we were in the EU there was no "uncontrolled migration" - no tidal wave where the entire population of Romania moved here. Nor did we have no say over it - we had the power to restrict numbers and to deport any who could not sustain themselves after 3 months.
Whilst we were in the EU there quite literally was "no line at all" - that's what free movement means.
And the numbers clearly did exceed what the British electorate would tolerate - just look at the inflows (in the millions) from 2004 onwards, and the social changes that occurred around the country as a result.
We didn't have any power to restrict numbers. If we had, that lever would have been used during the Cameron administration and shouted about from the rooftops during the referendum; they knew they had no answer.
This post from Guido Gianasso (Professor of Leadership at HEC Paris in Qatar / Honorary Consul of Romania in Geneva) has flashed up in my feed and currently has over 103,000 likes and loves, with several across my network. There isn't a single critical comment beneath it.
Read it, and you'll see he's co-opted Emma - with a MASSIVE picture of her on the post- to support his own pre-existing political views. He manages to crowbar Brexit in and also has the audacity to say that Emma is not British and is evidence that national identities are fading, which he thinks is a good thing, as he feels they can only be ethnocentrically based. This is fairly typical of the views advertised on the professional networking site LinkedIn and the "global citizens" that inhabit it:
"EMMA RADUCANU AND THE ILLUSION OF NATIONS
A new tennis champion has emerged. It is fascinating to observe the dynamics taking place around this young lady.
Emma was born in Canada but has lived most of her life and trained in the UK. Hence she is considered British by most Britons and was publicly congratulated by the Queen. But the British public that now celebrates her success is the same that voted Brexit with the very objective to make it difficult for East Europeans such as Emma and her father to live in the UK.
The reality is that Emma is not Romanian, Chinese or British. She is much more. She is the outstanding result of the combination of Romanian talent, Chinese work ethics and British openness and sport infrastructure.
At a time when many countries are going back to very ethnocentric models and policies, Emma is the best evidence that National identities are fading and we must embrace a geocentric mindset. Emma Raducanu is the future of humankind."
It's a bit wanky but also seems fundamentally true. Some people like to put themselves in boxes, and to put other people in boxes. Others don't. Right now the putting people in boxes crowd is fighting a pretty successful rear-guard action, but I suspect and hope that in the long run they will lose. The future is global, and the people who succeed will be the ones who are willing to embrace that.
Woah, hold on. The Left *love* to put people in boxes, provided it's a race, gender, or sexuality box. In fact, that's accelerated: what they hate is the national identity box, and to a lesser extent the religious box, as they view it as false consciousness.
But if your argument is that people can chose their identity then you can't fundamentally advocate they can pick their sex and gender identity but cannot do so for national identity as well because it's all a personal choice.
Personally I think national Identity will always be relevant and complimentary with others, as will religious identity, and I see no evidence whatever that will ever end. It's complex: people can have overlapping and complimentary identities, and emphasise some of them to greater degrees than others, but it's about to what and to whom you feel allegiance with - and it's absolutely not racially bound.
This post by this Professor isn't a progressive post; it's a highly regressive one.
I think I agree with all of that, but maybe my reading of the thing you quoted is different from yours. I read it as saying that people can have multiple and overlapping identities like you say, and to claim that someone like Raducanu is 100% one thing is kind of pointless. She has links to a number of countries, like a lot of people do. Not knowing her personally or having heard her opine on the subject, but knowing other young people in SE London with parental links outside the UK and/or born outside the UK, I would assume she identifies most with the UK. (This is why I disagree strongly with the policy of stripping people of UK citizenship based on sometimes tenuous links to their countries, incidentally). Identity politics on the Left I tend to see more as a response to prejudice and barriers that specific groups face, rather than a desire to put people in boxes. I guess I can see how it might look like the latter, especially for people who think that things like institutional/structural racism aren't a thing. Whether it is ultimately helpful or not is a different question, but I think the motivation is understandable.
He literally titles his post the "illusion of nations". He then ends it by saying "national identities are fading" and that Emma is "the future of humankind".
At no point does he even make a hat-tip to what Emma herself might think - he simply co-opts his own to her to make his point.
His motivation is very clear.
To be fair, the point about lack of mention about what the young lady herself might think is reasonable. The oldest of my half-Thai grandchildren, at 15, is starting to think seriously about her heritages.
As the world's population travel more and become more educated and integrated the ideas of national identity and particularly nationalism (with it's emphasis on exceptionalism - insert British, French Scottish, whatever), become to appear more absurd. It is a deliberately provocative post, and it proves people can have more than one allegiance, and for that reason it is a good post. The fact that it hasn't had more swivel-eyed frothing from right wingers who want to make themselves look silly is a little disappointing, but it might just be that there are not too many Col Blimps with LinkedIn accounts.
Do you advocate a single global state? If not, then you need to rethink your assumptions because that's the logic of your position.
What would be the downsides of a single global state?
I guess it would be the difficulty of maintaining a proper degree of understanding of local needs at the central level. The necessary devolution of responsibility would probably make it start to look remarkably like the current set of nation states and local fiefdoms we have now, but from a top-down rather than middle-out starting point.
To me, the biggest problem with One World Government is what happens if Donald Trump Part Deux (or worse) gets elected...
Monopoly of government seems little different to a monopoly of industry. Avoid.
That's a very good point. Regardless of your politics, a single global government is a very bad idea.
There would be no regulatory or legal diversity. No alternative to challenge its bad practices or decisions. It would be wholly overbearing, highly corrupt, self-interested, have nothing to check it, and would act ruthlessly to defend itself with every apparatus of the resources of the world available.
No true liberal should support it.
For one moment, Mr Royale, I though you were talking about our Westminster Government.
This post from Guido Gianasso (Professor of Leadership at HEC Paris in Qatar / Honorary Consul of Romania in Geneva) has flashed up in my feed and currently has over 103,000 likes and loves, with several across my network. There isn't a single critical comment beneath it.
Read it, and you'll see he's co-opted Emma - with a MASSIVE picture of her on the post- to support his own pre-existing political views. He manages to crowbar Brexit in and also has the audacity to say that Emma is not British and is evidence that national identities are fading, which he thinks is a good thing, as he feels they can only be ethnocentrically based. This is fairly typical of the views advertised on the professional networking site LinkedIn and the "global citizens" that inhabit it:
"EMMA RADUCANU AND THE ILLUSION OF NATIONS
A new tennis champion has emerged. It is fascinating to observe the dynamics taking place around this young lady.
Emma's father is Romanian. Her name is Romanian and she speaks Romanian fluently. Hence she is considered Romanian by millions of Romanians. But Emma has actually never lived in Romania.
Emma's mother is Chinese. She speaks fluent Chinese, as a recent video available on YouTube shows. Hence she is considered a Chinese hero by millions of Chinese, who seem to forget that the PRC discourages international marriages.
Emma was born in Canada but has lived most of her life and trained in the UK. Hence she is considered British by most Britons and was publicly congratulated by the Queen. But the British public that now celebrates her success is the same that voted Brexit with the very objective to make it difficult for East Europeans such as Emma and her father to live in the UK.
The reality is that Emma is not Romanian, Chinese or British. She is much more. She is the outstanding result of the combination of Romanian talent, Chinese work ethics and British openness and sport infrastructure.
At a time when many countries are going back to very ethnocentric models and policies, Emma is the best evidence that National identities are fading and we must embrace a geocentric mindset. Emma Raducanu is the future of humankind."
It would be interesting to learn what Emma believes
I think I'd enjoy hearing from Emma on any subject but I sincerely hope she manages to stay out of politics so she can continue to focus on and enjoy her tennis.
What really pisses me off is people trying to exploit her success for their own political ends and attributing their own views to her. They seem to view her as a migrant first and a Brit second.
I find that insulting.
Thats what you get when stopping migration is and has been the singular political issue of this generation. People don't want migrants, especially those seen as low skilled and definitely don't want their kids. Until the kids grow up to become a world champion runner or tennis sensation.
Then they don't want migrant kids, but Mo / Emma are different. Its the same mindset as the "I don't like blacks but Frank Bruno is alright as he's world champion" comments you'd hear in the past. It'll never go away sadly.
How about - radical idea - we accept migrants as Brits if they self-identify as such. People like Emma Raducanu have a choice of nationalities and we should be delighted that they chose to be British. When people move to America for work so many of them naturalise - we could have been doing the same for the last few decades with Europeans instead of treating them with such disdain.
This old canard. Most people want controlled migration - neither no migration or uncontrolled migration.
Why is that so hard to understand?
People don’t want to understand they just want to apply their personal prejudices to a debate. Migration is not a binary all or nothing choice. People support migration. During the referendum The leave campaign made it clear they would rather have skilled migrants from commonwealth countries than unskilled migrants from the EU. It was the controlled element some people wilfully misrepresent.
What the majority of people want from an immigration system, is priority given to those who can be net contributors, who have skills we need, or are investors in Britian.
Bringing in six million mostly low-paid service workers, to live in crowded accommodation, reducing productivity, holding wages down and putting pressure on public services - that was the problem.
It doesn’t matter who comes from where, it was the all-or-nothing approach of the EU that drove the vote to leave.
I know you are some distance away but I think your definitions of "low-paid service workers" that is the issue. Your points about pay and overcrowding are perfectly sound and something could have been done about that.
It is how we define "service workers" that is the problem we face. Right now you can't migrate to the UK to do such jobs. Yet we have unfillable vacancies. Locals do not want seasonal back-breaking work picking fruit, or shift work in tourism and hospitality, or cleaning jobs in hospitals, or care home work, or driving trucks.
Yes there are issues around pay and conditions and the logistics industry have tried and failed to pay their way out of the problem. In reality there are plenty of jobs that our people refuse to do. The job is meaningless, dull, physical, menial. A huge increase in salary may attract a few but such cash can't be afforded by those companies nor would the upward pressure on wages elsewhere be welcomed.
So we're back to "do we want the jobs done or not". Where you the answer is yes hence the army of foreigners working in the UAE and its neighbours, because there are jobs the locals don't want to do.
Unless night shifts in a meat processing factory suddenly become desirable, we're going to need migrants. My example is always east anglia who voted so heavily for leave having spoken so passionately against the migrants doing the jobs they don't want to do.
This post from Guido Gianasso (Professor of Leadership at HEC Paris in Qatar / Honorary Consul of Romania in Geneva) has flashed up in my feed and currently has over 103,000 likes and loves, with several across my network. There isn't a single critical comment beneath it.
Read it, and you'll see he's co-opted Emma - with a MASSIVE picture of her on the post- to support his own pre-existing political views. He manages to crowbar Brexit in and also has the audacity to say that Emma is not British and is evidence that national identities are fading, which he thinks is a good thing, as he feels they can only be ethnocentrically based. This is fairly typical of the views advertised on the professional networking site LinkedIn and the "global citizens" that inhabit it:
"EMMA RADUCANU AND THE ILLUSION OF NATIONS
A new tennis champion has emerged. It is fascinating to observe the dynamics taking place around this young lady.
Emma was born in Canada but has lived most of her life and trained in the UK. Hence she is considered British by most Britons and was publicly congratulated by the Queen. But the British public that now celebrates her success is the same that voted Brexit with the very objective to make it difficult for East Europeans such as Emma and her father to live in the UK.
The reality is that Emma is not Romanian, Chinese or British. She is much more. She is the outstanding result of the combination of Romanian talent, Chinese work ethics and British openness and sport infrastructure.
At a time when many countries are going back to very ethnocentric models and policies, Emma is the best evidence that National identities are fading and we must embrace a geocentric mindset. Emma Raducanu is the future of humankind."
It's a bit wanky but also seems fundamentally true. Some people like to put themselves in boxes, and to put other people in boxes. Others don't. Right now the putting people in boxes crowd is fighting a pretty successful rear-guard action, but I suspect and hope that in the long run they will lose. The future is global, and the people who succeed will be the ones who are willing to embrace that.
Woah, hold on. The Left *love* to put people in boxes, provided it's a race, gender, or sexuality box. In fact, that's accelerated: what they hate is the national identity box, and to a lesser extent the religious box, as they view it as false consciousness.
But if your argument is that people can chose their identity then you can't fundamentally advocate they can pick their sex and gender identity but cannot do so for national identity as well because it's all a personal choice.
Personally I think national Identity will always be relevant and complimentary with others, as will religious identity, and I see no evidence whatever that will ever end. It's complex: people can have overlapping and complimentary identities, and emphasise some of them to greater degrees than others, but it's about to what and to whom you feel allegiance with - and it's absolutely not racially bound.
This post by this Professor isn't a progressive post; it's a highly regressive one.
I think I agree with all of that, but maybe my reading of the thing you quoted is different from yours. I read it as saying that people can have multiple and overlapping identities like you say, and to claim that someone like Raducanu is 100% one thing is kind of pointless. She has links to a number of countries, like a lot of people do. Not knowing her personally or having heard her opine on the subject, but knowing other young people in SE London with parental links outside the UK and/or born outside the UK, I would assume she identifies most with the UK. (This is why I disagree strongly with the policy of stripping people of UK citizenship based on sometimes tenuous links to their countries, incidentally). Identity politics on the Left I tend to see more as a response to prejudice and barriers that specific groups face, rather than a desire to put people in boxes. I guess I can see how it might look like the latter, especially for people who think that things like institutional/structural racism aren't a thing. Whether it is ultimately helpful or not is a different question, but I think the motivation is understandable.
He literally titles his post the "illusion of nations". He then ends it by saying "national identities are fading" and that Emma is "the future of humankind".
At no point does he even make a hat-tip to what Emma herself might think - he simply co-opts his own to her to make his point.
His motivation is very clear.
To be fair, the point about lack of mention about what the young lady herself might think is reasonable. The oldest of my half-Thai grandchildren, at 15, is starting to think seriously about her heritages.
As the world's population travel more and become more educated and integrated the ideas of national identity and particularly nationalism (with it's emphasis on exceptionalism - insert British, French Scottish, whatever), become to appear more absurd. It is a deliberately provocative post, and it proves people can have more than one allegiance, and for that reason it is a good post. The fact that it hasn't had more swivel-eyed frothing from right wingers who want to make themselves look silly is a little disappointing, but it might just be that there are not too many Col Blimps with LinkedIn accounts.
Do you advocate a single global state? If not, then you need to rethink your assumptions because that's the logic of your position.
There are good security reasons for not wanting a One World Government that are nothing to do with national identity or anything like that. Governments sometimes malfunction, and nobody knows the perfect model, so it's good to be able to move between them if they break and potentially resist the broken ones from somewhere the broken state can't get at you.
The related point is that it's important for many states to accept refugees, because you never know when the state you're in is going to malfunction and you'll need to get out of there for safety and potentially try to fix it from outside.
Yes, I don't agree with all of that but that's a good left-liberal argument against a one world government.
Big ‘the board has full confidence in lights and their ability to stay on this winter’ energy. Reassuring.
For those that can afford twice the price
Yep. Having a series of very comfortable Cons ministers (OE Kwasi this morning) say how everything will be ok and for no one to worry about a few hundred pounds more here or there might be the thing that clicks with the voting public.
What clicks ?
We've had over a decade of "climate change must be stopped" from the establishment.
Do people think that doesn't come without a price tag ?
There's a spike in the cost of a fossil fuel and it's the fault of people who want to stop using fossil fuels?
If the greenies had their way we wouldn't be burning fossil fuels for electricity and we'd be sitting pretty while the rest of the world struggled with a spike in gas prices.
Though we are needing to burn gas because the wind farms we built aren't working right now and gas does work. That's an issue.
That's a base load issue. The base needs to be consistent and green emission free (so nuclear) but that's got a different set of issues.
"so nuclear" - bullshit.
A dozen tidal lagoon power stations around our coast would produce power that was:
a) consistent b) green c) emission free d) WASTE FREE e) have a capital cost of construction about a third that of nuclear f) produce electricity at about a 40-50% discount to the cost of nuclear g) have abandonment costs orders of magnitude lower than nuclear but h) as they last three times longer than a nuclear power station on the base case - probably many times that in practice - you won't need to abandon them.
And yet for reasons unknown we have decided not to use Tidal power even though we had more suitable locations than anywhere else in the world.
Any idea why that is?
Financial. I firmly believe that the era of tidal is coming because the other generating costs are going up. I also think there is a huge green blob that hates the idea of tidal lagoons as there will be impact on the natural world. Like nuclear, they want us not to use certain solutions to avoiding climate change, and I think would prefer us all to starve, neuter ourselves and go extinct.
"neuter ourselves and go extinct."
Now we're talking!
Definitely the best option for the planet.
In some ways yes - a return to the days before man, and allow the natural world to go on about its natural way for ever, or until the heat death of the exploding sun. The sadness would be no-one to see the beauty or record things passing. How many species that have walked the earth are now extinct? Vitrtually all of them, and only we know. Does you dog care for a nice sunset, or the delicate shape of a dahlia? Does a fish wonder what came before, or after?
What will actually happen is the eradication of life on earth as every nuclear plant on the planet sooner or later goes Chernobyl. We are that toxic even after we've gone.
Thats if we all just vanish, if we decommission them first, less so. Plus you need to think timescales. Chernobyl now is a wildlife haven, and thats just a few decades...
This post from Guido Gianasso (Professor of Leadership at HEC Paris in Qatar / Honorary Consul of Romania in Geneva) has flashed up in my feed and currently has over 103,000 likes and loves, with several across my network. There isn't a single critical comment beneath it.
Read it, and you'll see he's co-opted Emma - with a MASSIVE picture of her on the post- to support his own pre-existing political views. He manages to crowbar Brexit in and also has the audacity to say that Emma is not British and is evidence that national identities are fading, which he thinks is a good thing, as he feels they can only be ethnocentrically based. This is fairly typical of the views advertised on the professional networking site LinkedIn and the "global citizens" that inhabit it:
"EMMA RADUCANU AND THE ILLUSION OF NATIONS
A new tennis champion has emerged. It is fascinating to observe the dynamics taking place around this young lady.
Emma was born in Canada but has lived most of her life and trained in the UK. Hence she is considered British by most Britons and was publicly congratulated by the Queen. But the British public that now celebrates her success is the same that voted Brexit with the very objective to make it difficult for East Europeans such as Emma and her father to live in the UK.
The reality is that Emma is not Romanian, Chinese or British. She is much more. She is the outstanding result of the combination of Romanian talent, Chinese work ethics and British openness and sport infrastructure.
At a time when many countries are going back to very ethnocentric models and policies, Emma is the best evidence that National identities are fading and we must embrace a geocentric mindset. Emma Raducanu is the future of humankind."
It's a bit wanky but also seems fundamentally true. Some people like to put themselves in boxes, and to put other people in boxes. Others don't. Right now the putting people in boxes crowd is fighting a pretty successful rear-guard action, but I suspect and hope that in the long run they will lose. The future is global, and the people who succeed will be the ones who are willing to embrace that.
Woah, hold on. The Left *love* to put people in boxes, provided it's a race, gender, or sexuality box. In fact, that's accelerated: what they hate is the national identity box, and to a lesser extent the religious box, as they view it as false consciousness.
But if your argument is that people can chose their identity then you can't fundamentally advocate they can pick their sex and gender identity but cannot do so for national identity as well because it's all a personal choice.
Personally I think national Identity will always be relevant and complimentary with others, as will religious identity, and I see no evidence whatever that will ever end. It's complex: people can have overlapping and complimentary identities, and emphasise some of them to greater degrees than others, but it's about to what and to whom you feel allegiance with - and it's absolutely not racially bound.
This post by this Professor isn't a progressive post; it's a highly regressive one.
I think I agree with all of that, but maybe my reading of the thing you quoted is different from yours. I read it as saying that people can have multiple and overlapping identities like you say, and to claim that someone like Raducanu is 100% one thing is kind of pointless. She has links to a number of countries, like a lot of people do. Not knowing her personally or having heard her opine on the subject, but knowing other young people in SE London with parental links outside the UK and/or born outside the UK, I would assume she identifies most with the UK. (This is why I disagree strongly with the policy of stripping people of UK citizenship based on sometimes tenuous links to their countries, incidentally). Identity politics on the Left I tend to see more as a response to prejudice and barriers that specific groups face, rather than a desire to put people in boxes. I guess I can see how it might look like the latter, especially for people who think that things like institutional/structural racism aren't a thing. Whether it is ultimately helpful or not is a different question, but I think the motivation is understandable.
He literally titles his post the "illusion of nations". He then ends it by saying "national identities are fading" and that Emma is "the future of humankind".
At no point does he even make a hat-tip to what Emma herself might think - he simply co-opts his own to her to make his point.
His motivation is very clear.
To be fair, the point about lack of mention about what the young lady herself might think is reasonable. The oldest of my half-Thai grandchildren, at 15, is starting to think seriously about her heritages.
As the world's population travel more and become more educated and integrated the ideas of national identity and particularly nationalism (with it's emphasis on exceptionalism - insert British, French Scottish, whatever), become to appear more absurd. It is a deliberately provocative post, and it proves people can have more than one allegiance, and for that reason it is a good post. The fact that it hasn't had more swivel-eyed frothing from right wingers who want to make themselves look silly is a little disappointing, but it might just be that there are not too many Col Blimps with LinkedIn accounts.
You claim to be against nationalism but you seem to be an extremely ardent nationalist yourself. Just a European nationalist.
Yesterday you quoted Thatcher referring to getting free trade with the world's richest nations, richer even than the USA, but when it was pointed out that in the interceding decades that had changed and the richest nations and people of the world aren't European anymore and we should embrace the globe not a parochial part of it ... That doesn't compute for you.
You're every bit as self righteous a nationalist as malcolmg. Rude to anyone who sees the world differently. You've simply embraced Europe as your nation instead of Scotland.
The world is a very big place. Much bigger than England, Scotland or Europe.
Please, Philip, I know you are trying your best Sixth Form debating style, but misrepresenting me won't help your cause. I am not a "European nationalist", I can't think of little more ghastly. You, like all your simplistic English nationalist buddies simply try to obfuscate to justify your love of the poisonous creed of nationalism and English exceptionalism. You are, in your own miniscule way, a genuine purveyor of fake news. There is no such thing as "European nationalism" you silly boy. I also don't need to be told by a keyboard warrior the "world is a big place". Unlike you I suspect, I have travelled and done business in most of it.
Please. Your desperation is showing.
There is such a thing as European nationalism and you exhibit it. That you can't see the beam in your own eye while you attack the mote in others, isn't sixth form.
You're incapable of even addressing why since the eighties facts have changed so considerably?
Why if not for European failure from Delors onwards does Europe no longer represent the wealthiest and most prosperous people in the world, like they did in the eighties?
Why is Europe so much smaller, rather than so much bigger, than the USA?
And why we should continue to turn our backs on free trade with the 21st century richest and most prosperous people in the world?
Brexit is the way to achieve what Thatcher wanted in the eighties. Because the facts have changed and stubbornness in the face of changing facts may suit your nationalism but it isn't wise.
This post from Guido Gianasso (Professor of Leadership at HEC Paris in Qatar / Honorary Consul of Romania in Geneva) has flashed up in my feed and currently has over 103,000 likes and loves, with several across my network. There isn't a single critical comment beneath it.
Read it, and you'll see he's co-opted Emma - with a MASSIVE picture of her on the post- to support his own pre-existing political views. He manages to crowbar Brexit in and also has the audacity to say that Emma is not British and is evidence that national identities are fading, which he thinks is a good thing, as he feels they can only be ethnocentrically based. This is fairly typical of the views advertised on the professional networking site LinkedIn and the "global citizens" that inhabit it:
"EMMA RADUCANU AND THE ILLUSION OF NATIONS
A new tennis champion has emerged. It is fascinating to observe the dynamics taking place around this young lady.
Emma was born in Canada but has lived most of her life and trained in the UK. Hence she is considered British by most Britons and was publicly congratulated by the Queen. But the British public that now celebrates her success is the same that voted Brexit with the very objective to make it difficult for East Europeans such as Emma and her father to live in the UK.
The reality is that Emma is not Romanian, Chinese or British. She is much more. She is the outstanding result of the combination of Romanian talent, Chinese work ethics and British openness and sport infrastructure.
At a time when many countries are going back to very ethnocentric models and policies, Emma is the best evidence that National identities are fading and we must embrace a geocentric mindset. Emma Raducanu is the future of humankind."
It's a bit wanky but also seems fundamentally true. Some people like to put themselves in boxes, and to put other people in boxes. Others don't. Right now the putting people in boxes crowd is fighting a pretty successful rear-guard action, but I suspect and hope that in the long run they will lose. The future is global, and the people who succeed will be the ones who are willing to embrace that.
Woah, hold on. The Left *love* to put people in boxes, provided it's a race, gender, or sexuality box. In fact, that's accelerated: what they hate is the national identity box, and to a lesser extent the religious box, as they view it as false consciousness.
But if your argument is that people can chose their identity then you can't fundamentally advocate they can pick their sex and gender identity but cannot do so for national identity as well because it's all a personal choice.
Personally I think national Identity will always be relevant and complimentary with others, as will religious identity, and I see no evidence whatever that will ever end. It's complex: people can have overlapping and complimentary identities, and emphasise some of them to greater degrees than others, but it's about to what and to whom you feel allegiance with - and it's absolutely not racially bound.
This post by this Professor isn't a progressive post; it's a highly regressive one.
I think I agree with all of that, but maybe my reading of the thing you quoted is different from yours. I read it as saying that people can have multiple and overlapping identities like you say, and to claim that someone like Raducanu is 100% one thing is kind of pointless. She has links to a number of countries, like a lot of people do. Not knowing her personally or having heard her opine on the subject, but knowing other young people in SE London with parental links outside the UK and/or born outside the UK, I would assume she identifies most with the UK. (This is why I disagree strongly with the policy of stripping people of UK citizenship based on sometimes tenuous links to their countries, incidentally). Identity politics on the Left I tend to see more as a response to prejudice and barriers that specific groups face, rather than a desire to put people in boxes. I guess I can see how it might look like the latter, especially for people who think that things like institutional/structural racism aren't a thing. Whether it is ultimately helpful or not is a different question, but I think the motivation is understandable.
He literally titles his post the "illusion of nations". He then ends it by saying "national identities are fading" and that Emma is "the future of humankind".
At no point does he even make a hat-tip to what Emma herself might think - he simply co-opts his own to her to make his point.
His motivation is very clear.
To be fair, the point about lack of mention about what the young lady herself might think is reasonable. The oldest of my half-Thai grandchildren, at 15, is starting to think seriously about her heritages.
As the world's population travel more and become more educated and integrated the ideas of national identity and particularly nationalism (with it's emphasis on exceptionalism - insert British, French Scottish, whatever), become to appear more absurd. It is a deliberately provocative post, and it proves people can have more than one allegiance, and for that reason it is a good post. The fact that it hasn't had more swivel-eyed frothing from right wingers who want to make themselves look silly is a little disappointing, but it might just be that there are not too many Col Blimps with LinkedIn accounts.
You claim to be against nationalism but you seem to be an extremely ardent nationalist yourself. Just a European nationalist.
Yesterday you quoted Thatcher referring to getting free trade with the world's richest nations, richer even than the USA, but when it was pointed out that in the interceding decades that had changed and the richest nations and people of the world aren't European anymore and we should embrace the globe not a parochial part of it ... That doesn't compute for you.
You're every bit as self righteous a nationalist as malcolmg. Rude to anyone who sees the world differently. You've simply embraced Europe as your nation instead of Scotland.
The world is a very big place. Much bigger than England, Scotland or Europe.
Please, Philip, I know you are trying your best Sixth Form debating style, but misrepresenting me won't help your cause. I am not a "European nationalist", I can't think of little more ghastly. You, like all your simplistic English nationalist buddies simply try to obfuscate to justify your love of the poisonous creed of nationalism and English exceptionalism. You are, in your own miniscule way, a genuine purveyor of fake news. There is no such thing as "European nationalism" you silly boy. I also don't need to be told by a keyboard warrior the "world is a big place". Unlike you I suspect, I have travelled and done business in most of it.
There is indeed European Nationalism, according to the definitions in -
This post from Guido Gianasso (Professor of Leadership at HEC Paris in Qatar / Honorary Consul of Romania in Geneva) has flashed up in my feed and currently has over 103,000 likes and loves, with several across my network. There isn't a single critical comment beneath it.
Read it, and you'll see he's co-opted Emma - with a MASSIVE picture of her on the post- to support his own pre-existing political views. He manages to crowbar Brexit in and also has the audacity to say that Emma is not British and is evidence that national identities are fading, which he thinks is a good thing, as he feels they can only be ethnocentrically based. This is fairly typical of the views advertised on the professional networking site LinkedIn and the "global citizens" that inhabit it:
"EMMA RADUCANU AND THE ILLUSION OF NATIONS
A new tennis champion has emerged. It is fascinating to observe the dynamics taking place around this young lady.
Emma's father is Romanian. Her name is Romanian and she speaks Romanian fluently. Hence she is considered Romanian by millions of Romanians. But Emma has actually never lived in Romania.
Emma's mother is Chinese. She speaks fluent Chinese, as a recent video available on YouTube shows. Hence she is considered a Chinese hero by millions of Chinese, who seem to forget that the PRC discourages international marriages.
Emma was born in Canada but has lived most of her life and trained in the UK. Hence she is considered British by most Britons and was publicly congratulated by the Queen. But the British public that now celebrates her success is the same that voted Brexit with the very objective to make it difficult for East Europeans such as Emma and her father to live in the UK.
The reality is that Emma is not Romanian, Chinese or British. She is much more. She is the outstanding result of the combination of Romanian talent, Chinese work ethics and British openness and sport infrastructure.
At a time when many countries are going back to very ethnocentric models and policies, Emma is the best evidence that National identities are fading and we must embrace a geocentric mindset. Emma Raducanu is the future of humankind."
It would be interesting to learn what Emma believes
I think I'd enjoy hearing from Emma on any subject but I sincerely hope she manages to stay out of politics so she can continue to focus on and enjoy her tennis.
What really pisses me off is people trying to exploit her success for their own political ends and attributing their own views to her. They seem to view her as a migrant first and a Brit second.
I find that insulting.
Thats what you get when stopping migration is and has been the singular political issue of this generation. People don't want migrants, especially those seen as low skilled and definitely don't want their kids. Until the kids grow up to become a world champion runner or tennis sensation.
Then they don't want migrant kids, but Mo / Emma are different. Its the same mindset as the "I don't like blacks but Frank Bruno is alright as he's world champion" comments you'd hear in the past. It'll never go away sadly.
How about - radical idea - we accept migrants as Brits if they self-identify as such. People like Emma Raducanu have a choice of nationalities and we should be delighted that they chose to be British. When people move to America for work so many of them naturalise - we could have been doing the same for the last few decades with Europeans instead of treating them with such disdain.
This old canard. Most people want controlled migration - neither no migration or uncontrolled migration.
Why is that so hard to understand?
I entirely get it! Its just that most people don't. They might say "I want controlled migration" but when you then ask which migrants they want to keep they can't answer you. Nor can the government, as the "let people in that we need" argument is being ignored for care homes factories tourism and logistics.
I specifically mentioned kids. The "old canard" is the anti-migration argument that foreign kids block up school places and are a burden. Emma Raducanu was 2. We like her because she's a British tennis sensation. But how do we know which migrant kids can be the same and which will be a burden?
When we aren't letting people in even when we need them, how can you say "controlled migration" is relevant when we're talking about a 2 year old? How do we know if the child of the migrant we don't want is the next Sajid Javid or not?
Ultimately, you have to accept some rules and rules-of-thumb to balance all the factors: rules on the type and mix of migration, and a cap on the overall numbers that commands public support.
Will some worthy cases fall on the wrong side of that?
Sure they will, but you have to draw the line somewhere and the alternative is to have no line at all, which won't command public support nor be sustainable.
Has anyone argued for "no line at all"? Back when we were in the EU there was no "uncontrolled migration" - no tidal wave where the entire population of Romania moved here. Nor did we have no say over it - we had the power to restrict numbers and to deport any who could not sustain themselves after 3 months.
Whilst we were in the EU there quite literally was "no line at all" - that's what free movement means.
And the numbers clearly did exceed what the British electorate would tolerate - just look at the inflows (in the millions) from 2004 onwards, and the social changes that occurred around the country as a result.
We didn't have any power to restrict numbers. If we had, that lever would have been used during the Cameron administration and shouted about from the rooftops during the referendum; they knew they had no answer.
We always had the power to deport people who were here and not working. But again if we are not going to have migrants doing the jobs we need but don't want to do ourselves then what is the solution?
Your "social changes" comment. Again with my east anglia example. Heavy leave vote, heavy upset about all the eastern europeans driving the vote. And yet the jobs need filling and nowhere near enough locals want to do them.
Unless we let migration fill the unfillable vacancies we need a wholesale rebuilding of our economy. An anglian meat processor cannot pay the kind of wages needed to attract young locals into endless nightshift factory work. Not unless we all accept vastly more expensive food - or in reality imports. Which leaves us back to being overly-reliant on jobs in the retail and service sectors that can just migrate to wherever is cheapest leaving us stuck.
This post from Guido Gianasso (Professor of Leadership at HEC Paris in Qatar / Honorary Consul of Romania in Geneva) has flashed up in my feed and currently has over 103,000 likes and loves, with several across my network. There isn't a single critical comment beneath it.
Read it, and you'll see he's co-opted Emma - with a MASSIVE picture of her on the post- to support his own pre-existing political views. He manages to crowbar Brexit in and also has the audacity to say that Emma is not British and is evidence that national identities are fading, which he thinks is a good thing, as he feels they can only be ethnocentrically based. This is fairly typical of the views advertised on the professional networking site LinkedIn and the "global citizens" that inhabit it:
"EMMA RADUCANU AND THE ILLUSION OF NATIONS
A new tennis champion has emerged. It is fascinating to observe the dynamics taking place around this young lady.
Emma's father is Romanian. Her name is Romanian and she speaks Romanian fluently. Hence she is considered Romanian by millions of Romanians. But Emma has actually never lived in Romania.
Emma's mother is Chinese. She speaks fluent Chinese, as a recent video available on YouTube shows. Hence she is considered a Chinese hero by millions of Chinese, who seem to forget that the PRC discourages international marriages.
Emma was born in Canada but has lived most of her life and trained in the UK. Hence she is considered British by most Britons and was publicly congratulated by the Queen. But the British public that now celebrates her success is the same that voted Brexit with the very objective to make it difficult for East Europeans such as Emma and her father to live in the UK.
The reality is that Emma is not Romanian, Chinese or British. She is much more. She is the outstanding result of the combination of Romanian talent, Chinese work ethics and British openness and sport infrastructure.
At a time when many countries are going back to very ethnocentric models and policies, Emma is the best evidence that National identities are fading and we must embrace a geocentric mindset. Emma Raducanu is the future of humankind."
It would be interesting to learn what Emma believes
I think I'd enjoy hearing from Emma on any subject but I sincerely hope she manages to stay out of politics so she can continue to focus on and enjoy her tennis.
What really pisses me off is people trying to exploit her success for their own political ends and attributing their own views to her. They seem to view her as a migrant first and a Brit second.
I find that insulting.
Thats what you get when stopping migration is and has been the singular political issue of this generation. People don't want migrants, especially those seen as low skilled and definitely don't want their kids. Until the kids grow up to become a world champion runner or tennis sensation.
Then they don't want migrant kids, but Mo / Emma are different. Its the same mindset as the "I don't like blacks but Frank Bruno is alright as he's world champion" comments you'd hear in the past. It'll never go away sadly.
How about - radical idea - we accept migrants as Brits if they self-identify as such. People like Emma Raducanu have a choice of nationalities and we should be delighted that they chose to be British. When people move to America for work so many of them naturalise - we could have been doing the same for the last few decades with Europeans instead of treating them with such disdain.
This old canard. Most people want controlled migration - neither no migration or uncontrolled migration.
Why is that so hard to understand?
People don’t want to understand they just want to apply their personal prejudices to a debate. Migration is not a binary all or nothing choice. People support migration. During the referendum The leave campaign made it clear they would rather have skilled migrants from commonwealth countries than unskilled migrants from the EU. It was the controlled element some people wilfully misrepresent.
What the majority of people want from an immigration system, is priority given to those who can be net contributors, who have skills we need, or are investors in Britian.
Bringing in six million mostly low-paid service workers, to live in crowded accommodation, reducing productivity, holding wages down and putting pressure on public services - that was the problem.
It doesn’t matter who comes from where, it was the all-or-nothing approach of the EU that drove the vote to leave.
I know you are some distance away but I think your definitions of "low-paid service workers" that is the issue. Your points about pay and overcrowding are perfectly sound and something could have been done about that.
It is how we define "service workers" that is the problem we face. Right now you can't migrate to the UK to do such jobs. Yet we have unfillable vacancies. Locals do not want seasonal back-breaking work picking fruit, or shift work in tourism and hospitality, or cleaning jobs in hospitals, or care home work, or driving trucks.
Yes there are issues around pay and conditions and the logistics industry have tried and failed to pay their way out of the problem. In reality there are plenty of jobs that our people refuse to do. The job is meaningless, dull, physical, menial. A huge increase in salary may attract a few but such cash can't be afforded by those companies nor would the upward pressure on wages elsewhere be welcomed.
So we're back to "do we want the jobs done or not". Where you the answer is yes hence the army of foreigners working in the UAE and its neighbours, because there are jobs the locals don't want to do.
Unless night shifts in a meat processing factory suddenly become desirable, we're going to need migrants. My example is always east anglia who voted so heavily for leave having spoken so passionately against the migrants doing the jobs they don't want to do.
The statistics say that (outside central London) the workforce in such "menial jobs" is, and has always been, a mixture of UK residents and immigrant labour.
This post from Guido Gianasso (Professor of Leadership at HEC Paris in Qatar / Honorary Consul of Romania in Geneva) has flashed up in my feed and currently has over 103,000 likes and loves, with several across my network. There isn't a single critical comment beneath it.
Read it, and you'll see he's co-opted Emma - with a MASSIVE picture of her on the post- to support his own pre-existing political views. He manages to crowbar Brexit in and also has the audacity to say that Emma is not British and is evidence that national identities are fading, which he thinks is a good thing, as he feels they can only be ethnocentrically based. This is fairly typical of the views advertised on the professional networking site LinkedIn and the "global citizens" that inhabit it:
"EMMA RADUCANU AND THE ILLUSION OF NATIONS
A new tennis champion has emerged. It is fascinating to observe the dynamics taking place around this young lady.
Emma's father is Romanian. Her name is Romanian and she speaks Romanian fluently. Hence she is considered Romanian by millions of Romanians. But Emma has actually never lived in Romania.
Emma's mother is Chinese. She speaks fluent Chinese, as a recent video available on YouTube shows. Hence she is considered a Chinese hero by millions of Chinese, who seem to forget that the PRC discourages international marriages.
Emma was born in Canada but has lived most of her life and trained in the UK. Hence she is considered British by most Britons and was publicly congratulated by the Queen. But the British public that now celebrates her success is the same that voted Brexit with the very objective to make it difficult for East Europeans such as Emma and her father to live in the UK.
The reality is that Emma is not Romanian, Chinese or British. She is much more. She is the outstanding result of the combination of Romanian talent, Chinese work ethics and British openness and sport infrastructure.
At a time when many countries are going back to very ethnocentric models and policies, Emma is the best evidence that National identities are fading and we must embrace a geocentric mindset. Emma Raducanu is the future of humankind."
What a hopeful and refreshing read; the Professor's piece I mean.
I have grandchildren who are half-British, half Thai and live in Thailand. Two of them are very keen on, and appear quite good at, sport. They could, and probably would, play for either Britain or Thailand if one or the other came calling.
Yes, I thought you'd like it.
It's a great totem for flushing out those with utterly moronic views.
Happy little soul, aren't you. I might, and do, disagree with you on occasion, but when I have actually been rude to you.
I'm not the one trying to abuse and exploit Emma for my own political ends. I find that extremely rude, and the post itself is softly bigoted.
If you find it "helpful and refreshing" then, yes, I'm afraid you do have moronic views.
I certainly wouldn't try to ' abuse and exploit Emma for my own political ends'. The fact is that as a result of globalisation she's got a very diverse background, and seeing that recognised is good. I find it quite amusing to see various nationalists tying themselves in knots trying to 'claim' her.
Who are these "nationalists" you speak of that are trying to "claim" her? You mean people celebrating the fact that someone British who's proudly competing as a Briton has secured a British win? Because if you do, then you're saying most of the population here are "nationalist" on the basis that someone with mixed ancestry must always be seen as a migrant first, and a Briton second. I find that offensive.
The only ones doing the claiming here are the softly-bigoted progressive Left.
I went to an international school. My sister was born in Canada. My parents were born in India. I have half-British/half-Columbian cousins. My Uncle lives in Australia. My other cousin married a Kenyan lady. My wife is Bulgarian. My daughter is British, but with Bulgarian ancestry too, and I have other family members who married fellow Britons too.
It might surprise you to we all celebrated Emma's win, and we all have an affection for the UK and common roots here too.
There's nothing exclusive or anachronistic about national identity, and long may it remain so.
Linkedin = woke propoganda feed. It is only good for professional news, it is not a good gauge of public opinion.
However, national identity is rooted very deeply in the human psyche. It cannot be deconstructed to nothing as Prof Gianosso and his fellow woke propogandists desperately hope. Nationalism is very much alive, particularly in supposedly progressive countries. Look at Scotland for example. There is a definite birther movement there, that has in the past revealed itself in comments on this website.
My own life experience living in supposedly progressive european countries (and not really amongst the woke elite) is that Nationalism is very much in existence, and that I would be accepted as a guest but would never be regarded as one of them.
In the end I have come to believe that Britain is unique in being able to successfully absorb immigrants within its national identity; but it is the exception rather than the rule; a historical abberation. It is this quality that many people around the world admire. This realisation was a turning point - it made me proud to be British.
Yes, I agree. Good post.
I think it's also the case on LinkedIn that those who disagree (like me) simply don't say anything. To do so would be to risk a pile on that would probably be fatal to my professional career, and it would be broadcast to your whole network at the same time.
That's why I'm venting on here instead.
I use LinkedIn regularly. There are some (and that post is an example) who use click-bait to gain "likes" and shares to raise their following and profile. Most, like yourself, are sensible enough to keep their political views to themselves. To suggest LinkedIn is "woke" is utter bollocks though. It is a business social media platform. Most people who do business avoid posting controversial views, and should any views be posted they tend to be relatively mainstream/centrist as a result. A regular put down on LinkedIn is "this is not Facebook". Nor is it PB.
This post from Guido Gianasso (Professor of Leadership at HEC Paris in Qatar / Honorary Consul of Romania in Geneva) has flashed up in my feed and currently has over 103,000 likes and loves, with several across my network. There isn't a single critical comment beneath it.
Read it, and you'll see he's co-opted Emma - with a MASSIVE picture of her on the post- to support his own pre-existing political views. He manages to crowbar Brexit in and also has the audacity to say that Emma is not British and is evidence that national identities are fading, which he thinks is a good thing, as he feels they can only be ethnocentrically based. This is fairly typical of the views advertised on the professional networking site LinkedIn and the "global citizens" that inhabit it:
"EMMA RADUCANU AND THE ILLUSION OF NATIONS
A new tennis champion has emerged. It is fascinating to observe the dynamics taking place around this young lady.
Emma's father is Romanian. Her name is Romanian and she speaks Romanian fluently. Hence she is considered Romanian by millions of Romanians. But Emma has actually never lived in Romania.
Emma's mother is Chinese. She speaks fluent Chinese, as a recent video available on YouTube shows. Hence she is considered a Chinese hero by millions of Chinese, who seem to forget that the PRC discourages international marriages.
Emma was born in Canada but has lived most of her life and trained in the UK. Hence she is considered British by most Britons and was publicly congratulated by the Queen. But the British public that now celebrates her success is the same that voted Brexit with the very objective to make it difficult for East Europeans such as Emma and her father to live in the UK.
The reality is that Emma is not Romanian, Chinese or British. She is much more. She is the outstanding result of the combination of Romanian talent, Chinese work ethics and British openness and sport infrastructure.
At a time when many countries are going back to very ethnocentric models and policies, Emma is the best evidence that National identities are fading and we must embrace a geocentric mindset. Emma Raducanu is the future of humankind."
What a hopeful and refreshing read; the Professor's piece I mean.
I have grandchildren who are half-British, half Thai and live in Thailand. Two of them are very keen on, and appear quite good at, sport. They could, and probably would, play for either Britain or Thailand if one or the other came calling.
Yes, I thought you'd like it.
It's a great totem for flushing out those with utterly moronic views.
Happy little soul, aren't you. I might, and do, disagree with you on occasion, but when I have actually been rude to you.
I'm not the one trying to abuse and exploit Emma for my own political ends. I find that extremely rude, and the post itself is softly bigoted.
If you find it "helpful and refreshing" then, yes, I'm afraid you do have moronic views.
I certainly wouldn't try to ' abuse and exploit Emma for my own political ends'. The fact is that as a result of globalisation she's got a very diverse background, and seeing that recognised is good. I find it quite amusing to see various nationalists tying themselves in knots trying to 'claim' her.
Who are these "nationalists" you speak of that are trying to "claim" her? You mean people celebrating the fact that someone British who's proudly competing as a Briton has secured a British win? Because if you do, then you're saying most of the population here are "nationalist" on the basis that someone with mixed ancestry must always be seen as a migrant first, and a Briton second. I find that offensive.
The only ones doing the claiming here are the softly-bigoted progressive Left.
I went to an international school. My sister was born in Canada. My parents were born in India. I have half-British/half-Columbian cousins. My Uncle lives in Australia. My other cousin married a Kenyan lady. My wife is Bulgarian. My daughter is British, but with Bulgarian ancestry too, and I have other family members who married fellow Britons too.
It might surprise you to we all celebrated Emma's win, and we all have an affection for the UK and common roots here too.
There's nothing exclusive or anachronistic about national identity, and long may it remain so.
I think we are beginning to dance around the head of a pin. I agree that 'There's nothing exclusive or anachronistic about national identity', provided that it doesn't lead to hostility to those whose national identity is different. My back story isn't as cosmopolitan as yours, but I've got relations in other countries and both my sons spent part of their Uni courses outside the UK.
Thanks. My background is very imperial, actually.
Both my grandparents served in the Indian Army, and my two Uncles (different sides of the family) in the RAN and the Canadian Army, as well as my cousin in the British Army. So we feel strong links to India, Australia and Canada, as well as the UK - several of us have little time for the EU but lots for the Commonwealth.
It's amazing how much has changed in just one lifetime, but there are lots of shared bonds and values there still too.
Interesting. I've got an interest in Family History and have discovered that one ancestor, the son of a publican in S Wales, in 1840 or so qualified as a doctor but left his girl-friend and 'bastard (from the baptism docs) son and moved to London. Where he married (!) and prosper. His grandson became an Army officer. His son followed him into the army, and was decorated. Meanwhile his first child, as so many in S Wales did at the time, went down the mines and, after several years died of the injuries received in an accident. I'm the first of that line never to have spent any time as a coalminer!
Sorry to hear that. Coalmining was (and is) a horrible job. One I hope we can largely consign to the history books now, aside from getting some out with robots for steam trains!
This post from Guido Gianasso (Professor of Leadership at HEC Paris in Qatar / Honorary Consul of Romania in Geneva) has flashed up in my feed and currently has over 103,000 likes and loves, with several across my network. There isn't a single critical comment beneath it.
Read it, and you'll see he's co-opted Emma - with a MASSIVE picture of her on the post- to support his own pre-existing political views. He manages to crowbar Brexit in and also has the audacity to say that Emma is not British and is evidence that national identities are fading, which he thinks is a good thing, as he feels they can only be ethnocentrically based. This is fairly typical of the views advertised on the professional networking site LinkedIn and the "global citizens" that inhabit it:
"EMMA RADUCANU AND THE ILLUSION OF NATIONS
A new tennis champion has emerged. It is fascinating to observe the dynamics taking place around this young lady.
Emma was born in Canada but has lived most of her life and trained in the UK. Hence she is considered British by most Britons and was publicly congratulated by the Queen. But the British public that now celebrates her success is the same that voted Brexit with the very objective to make it difficult for East Europeans such as Emma and her father to live in the UK.
The reality is that Emma is not Romanian, Chinese or British. She is much more. She is the outstanding result of the combination of Romanian talent, Chinese work ethics and British openness and sport infrastructure.
At a time when many countries are going back to very ethnocentric models and policies, Emma is the best evidence that National identities are fading and we must embrace a geocentric mindset. Emma Raducanu is the future of humankind."
It's a bit wanky but also seems fundamentally true. Some people like to put themselves in boxes, and to put other people in boxes. Others don't. Right now the putting people in boxes crowd is fighting a pretty successful rear-guard action, but I suspect and hope that in the long run they will lose. The future is global, and the people who succeed will be the ones who are willing to embrace that.
Woah, hold on. The Left *love* to put people in boxes, provided it's a race, gender, or sexuality box. In fact, that's accelerated: what they hate is the national identity box, and to a lesser extent the religious box, as they view it as false consciousness.
But if your argument is that people can chose their identity then you can't fundamentally advocate they can pick their sex and gender identity but cannot do so for national identity as well because it's all a personal choice.
Personally I think national Identity will always be relevant and complimentary with others, as will religious identity, and I see no evidence whatever that will ever end. It's complex: people can have overlapping and complimentary identities, and emphasise some of them to greater degrees than others, but it's about to what and to whom you feel allegiance with - and it's absolutely not racially bound.
This post by this Professor isn't a progressive post; it's a highly regressive one.
I think I agree with all of that, but maybe my reading of the thing you quoted is different from yours. I read it as saying that people can have multiple and overlapping identities like you say, and to claim that someone like Raducanu is 100% one thing is kind of pointless. She has links to a number of countries, like a lot of people do. Not knowing her personally or having heard her opine on the subject, but knowing other young people in SE London with parental links outside the UK and/or born outside the UK, I would assume she identifies most with the UK. (This is why I disagree strongly with the policy of stripping people of UK citizenship based on sometimes tenuous links to their countries, incidentally). Identity politics on the Left I tend to see more as a response to prejudice and barriers that specific groups face, rather than a desire to put people in boxes. I guess I can see how it might look like the latter, especially for people who think that things like institutional/structural racism aren't a thing. Whether it is ultimately helpful or not is a different question, but I think the motivation is understandable.
He literally titles his post the "illusion of nations". He then ends it by saying "national identities are fading" and that Emma is "the future of humankind".
At no point does he even make a hat-tip to what Emma herself might think - he simply co-opts his own to her to make his point.
His motivation is very clear.
To be fair, the point about lack of mention about what the young lady herself might think is reasonable. The oldest of my half-Thai grandchildren, at 15, is starting to think seriously about her heritages.
As the world's population travel more and become more educated and integrated the ideas of national identity and particularly nationalism (with it's emphasis on exceptionalism - insert British, French Scottish, whatever), become to appear more absurd. It is a deliberately provocative post, and it proves people can have more than one allegiance, and for that reason it is a good post. The fact that it hasn't had more swivel-eyed frothing from right wingers who want to make themselves look silly is a little disappointing, but it might just be that there are not too many Col Blimps with LinkedIn accounts.
You claim to be against nationalism but you seem to be an extremely ardent nationalist yourself. Just a European nationalist.
Yesterday you quoted Thatcher referring to getting free trade with the world's richest nations, richer even than the USA, but when it was pointed out that in the interceding decades that had changed and the richest nations and people of the world aren't European anymore and we should embrace the globe not a parochial part of it ... That doesn't compute for you.
You're every bit as self righteous a nationalist as malcolmg. Rude to anyone who sees the world differently. You've simply embraced Europe as your nation instead of Scotland.
The world is a very big place. Much bigger than England, Scotland or Europe.
Please, Philip, I know you are trying your best Sixth Form debating style, but misrepresenting me won't help your cause. I am not a "European nationalist", I can't think of little more ghastly. You, like all your simplistic English nationalist buddies simply try to obfuscate to justify your love of the poisonous creed of nationalism and English exceptionalism. You are, in your own miniscule way, a genuine purveyor of fake news. There is no such thing as "European nationalism" you silly boy. I also don't need to be told by a keyboard warrior the "world is a big place". Unlike you I suspect, I have travelled and done business in most of it.
Please. Your desperation is showing.
There is such a thing as European nationalism and you exhibit it. That you can't see the beam in your own eye while you attack the mote in others, isn't sixth form.
You're incapable of even addressing why since the eighties facts have changed so considerably?
Why if not for European failure from Delors onwards does Europe no longer represent the wealthiest and most prosperous people in the world, like they did in the eighties?
Why is Europe so much smaller, rather than so much bigger, than the USA?
And why we should continue to turn our backs on free trade with the 21st century richest and most prosperous people in the world?
Brexit is the way to achieve what Thatcher wanted in the eighties. Because the facts have changed and stubbornness in the face of changing facts may suit your nationalism but it isn't wise.
Change the record Philip. Your side "won" the referendum. The Sixth Form debaters persuaded the masses. We have left, but you still are trying to convince yourself, because you are not stupid and you know it was pointless.
An electoral system is a machine for turning inputs into governments. The question is, what inputs do we care to measure? In FPTP, one of the most important inputs is how spread out / concentrated your voters are. I don't understand why anyone would think it's necessary to have that reflected in the result.
My proposal would be for an electoral system that better reflects how many ACTUAL votes there are for a party. Wild, I know.
A comment which utterly misunderstands what people are actually voting for at an election.
Does it, though? Listen to people talking on this forum. People vote for parties, party leaders, and yes, individual candidates. Perhaps in that order.
The idea that each constituency is an island competition between individuals is a charming fiction, but perhaps 200 years out of date, if it ever was true even then.
Take Canada. There's been a fair amount of talk today about parties, and two or three leaders. How many of you who have commented have said anything about local issues or candidates? As Canada, so us.
Nope. Legally you are voting for an individual representative. That is the fundamental basis of our system. And more than a few of us still operate on that basis. Who that representative is beholden to within their party does play a part but by no means the most important part. We may use the shorthand of voting for or against a party but some of us at least still vote according to the way the system is supposed to work. That is why we allow MPs to cross the floor. Anything else puts far to much power in the hands of the parties and we should be trying to reduce that power not increase it.
We can retail the individualism of an MP or councillor able to cross the floor and elect them proportionately. As has just been pointed out FPTP wipes out the Tories in cities like Manchester which is absurd.
Up here I am about to start campaigning to become a LibDem councillor and we use STV for council elections. Its fair, it works, representatives are elected as individuals and are free to cross the floor (and often do).
The only way to do that is, as you say, with STV or with AV - something I voted for but which the public sadly rejected.
Any other PR system based on the proportion of votes gained by a party automatically gives the party the moral high ground in the claim that they can control MPs and that we are voting for a party not an individual representative. It gives more power to the parties rather than taking it away and is something that needs to be resisted. You can guess which systems the parties campaigning for electoral reform would prefer us to use.
Single Transferable Vote in Multi-Member Constituencies. You get proportionality, a choice of which representative to see if one is an anus, and you're still in control not a party who set a list.
The key balance would be how big a seat. As England is now set on "Metro Mayors" even in non-metro areas there is clearly a desire for some regional co-ordination. So why not copy Scotland - elect most members from a constituency and a smaller number elected by region.
Because again it puts too much power in the hands of the parties. It is not even a case that we should be standing still on this. We should be actively reversing the ability of parties to coerce the individual representatives we elect. Moving to any system that is proportional based on party votes does yet more damage to democracy.
So are you proposing that we have direct democracy where we abolish political parties? I am proposing a system that is proportional based on votes for the individual. Under STV-MMC you may well have 3 candidates from each party chasing the 3 seats available, but you vote for individuals not the party.
Oh yes Direct Democracy would be much better. But I realise for many that is a step too far.
What I have proposed on here many times before is that we reduce the power of the parties by removing the power of the whips. Treat whipping in the same way we now treat bribing or blackmail - after all that is what it is just in an apparently more acceptable form. Make every vote in Parliament a free vote and make the penalties for trying to coerce MPs to vote a particular way the same as it would be if it were being done by someone outside Parliament.
Correct me if I'm wrong but don't most Republican voters believe the election was stolen from Trump? Is anyone going to be able to change their mind on this? 14/1 may be generous but at the moment a Trump or Trumpian candidate looks likely.
Ipsos had it at 56%. But if you think Trump made up a huge lie to support an attempted coup d'etat and most of his party supported him in it, why are you still in the GOP right now? The current membership doesn't necessarily represent the 2024 primary electorate.
This post from Guido Gianasso (Professor of Leadership at HEC Paris in Qatar / Honorary Consul of Romania in Geneva) has flashed up in my feed and currently has over 103,000 likes and loves, with several across my network. There isn't a single critical comment beneath it.
Read it, and you'll see he's co-opted Emma - with a MASSIVE picture of her on the post- to support his own pre-existing political views. He manages to crowbar Brexit in and also has the audacity to say that Emma is not British and is evidence that national identities are fading, which he thinks is a good thing, as he feels they can only be ethnocentrically based. This is fairly typical of the views advertised on the professional networking site LinkedIn and the "global citizens" that inhabit it:
"EMMA RADUCANU AND THE ILLUSION OF NATIONS
A new tennis champion has emerged. It is fascinating to observe the dynamics taking place around this young lady.
Emma was born in Canada but has lived most of her life and trained in the UK. Hence she is considered British by most Britons and was publicly congratulated by the Queen. But the British public that now celebrates her success is the same that voted Brexit with the very objective to make it difficult for East Europeans such as Emma and her father to live in the UK.
The reality is that Emma is not Romanian, Chinese or British. She is much more. She is the outstanding result of the combination of Romanian talent, Chinese work ethics and British openness and sport infrastructure.
At a time when many countries are going back to very ethnocentric models and policies, Emma is the best evidence that National identities are fading and we must embrace a geocentric mindset. Emma Raducanu is the future of humankind."
It's a bit wanky but also seems fundamentally true. Some people like to put themselves in boxes, and to put other people in boxes. Others don't. Right now the putting people in boxes crowd is fighting a pretty successful rear-guard action, but I suspect and hope that in the long run they will lose. The future is global, and the people who succeed will be the ones who are willing to embrace that.
Woah, hold on. The Left *love* to put people in boxes, provided it's a race, gender, or sexuality box. In fact, that's accelerated: what they hate is the national identity box, and to a lesser extent the religious box, as they view it as false consciousness.
But if your argument is that people can chose their identity then you can't fundamentally advocate they can pick their sex and gender identity but cannot do so for national identity as well because it's all a personal choice.
Personally I think national Identity will always be relevant and complimentary with others, as will religious identity, and I see no evidence whatever that will ever end. It's complex: people can have overlapping and complimentary identities, and emphasise some of them to greater degrees than others, but it's about to what and to whom you feel allegiance with - and it's absolutely not racially bound.
This post by this Professor isn't a progressive post; it's a highly regressive one.
I think I agree with all of that, but maybe my reading of the thing you quoted is different from yours. I read it as saying that people can have multiple and overlapping identities like you say, and to claim that someone like Raducanu is 100% one thing is kind of pointless. She has links to a number of countries, like a lot of people do. Not knowing her personally or having heard her opine on the subject, but knowing other young people in SE London with parental links outside the UK and/or born outside the UK, I would assume she identifies most with the UK. (This is why I disagree strongly with the policy of stripping people of UK citizenship based on sometimes tenuous links to their countries, incidentally). Identity politics on the Left I tend to see more as a response to prejudice and barriers that specific groups face, rather than a desire to put people in boxes. I guess I can see how it might look like the latter, especially for people who think that things like institutional/structural racism aren't a thing. Whether it is ultimately helpful or not is a different question, but I think the motivation is understandable.
He literally titles his post the "illusion of nations". He then ends it by saying "national identities are fading" and that Emma is "the future of humankind".
At no point does he even make a hat-tip to what Emma herself might think - he simply co-opts his own to her to make his point.
His motivation is very clear.
To be fair, the point about lack of mention about what the young lady herself might think is reasonable. The oldest of my half-Thai grandchildren, at 15, is starting to think seriously about her heritages.
As the world's population travel more and become more educated and integrated the ideas of national identity and particularly nationalism (with it's emphasis on exceptionalism - insert British, French Scottish, whatever), become to appear more absurd. It is a deliberately provocative post, and it proves people can have more than one allegiance, and for that reason it is a good post. The fact that it hasn't had more swivel-eyed frothing from right wingers who want to make themselves look silly is a little disappointing, but it might just be that there are not too many Col Blimps with LinkedIn accounts.
You claim to be against nationalism but you seem to be an extremely ardent nationalist yourself. Just a European nationalist.
Yesterday you quoted Thatcher referring to getting free trade with the world's richest nations, richer even than the USA, but when it was pointed out that in the interceding decades that had changed and the richest nations and people of the world aren't European anymore and we should embrace the globe not a parochial part of it ... That doesn't compute for you.
You're every bit as self righteous a nationalist as malcolmg. Rude to anyone who sees the world differently. You've simply embraced Europe as your nation instead of Scotland.
The world is a very big place. Much bigger than England, Scotland or Europe.
Please, Philip, I know you are trying your best Sixth Form debating style, but misrepresenting me won't help your cause. I am not a "European nationalist", I can't think of little more ghastly. You, like all your simplistic English nationalist buddies simply try to obfuscate to justify your love of the poisonous creed of nationalism and English exceptionalism. You are, in your own miniscule way, a genuine purveyor of fake news. There is no such thing as "European nationalism" you silly boy. I also don't need to be told by a keyboard warrior the "world is a big place". Unlike you I suspect, I have travelled and done business in most of it.
There is indeed European Nationalism, according to the definitions in -
This post from Guido Gianasso (Professor of Leadership at HEC Paris in Qatar / Honorary Consul of Romania in Geneva) has flashed up in my feed and currently has over 103,000 likes and loves, with several across my network. There isn't a single critical comment beneath it.
Read it, and you'll see he's co-opted Emma - with a MASSIVE picture of her on the post- to support his own pre-existing political views. He manages to crowbar Brexit in and also has the audacity to say that Emma is not British and is evidence that national identities are fading, which he thinks is a good thing, as he feels they can only be ethnocentrically based. This is fairly typical of the views advertised on the professional networking site LinkedIn and the "global citizens" that inhabit it:
"EMMA RADUCANU AND THE ILLUSION OF NATIONS
A new tennis champion has emerged. It is fascinating to observe the dynamics taking place around this young lady.
Emma was born in Canada but has lived most of her life and trained in the UK. Hence she is considered British by most Britons and was publicly congratulated by the Queen. But the British public that now celebrates her success is the same that voted Brexit with the very objective to make it difficult for East Europeans such as Emma and her father to live in the UK.
The reality is that Emma is not Romanian, Chinese or British. She is much more. She is the outstanding result of the combination of Romanian talent, Chinese work ethics and British openness and sport infrastructure.
At a time when many countries are going back to very ethnocentric models and policies, Emma is the best evidence that National identities are fading and we must embrace a geocentric mindset. Emma Raducanu is the future of humankind."
It's a bit wanky but also seems fundamentally true. Some people like to put themselves in boxes, and to put other people in boxes. Others don't. Right now the putting people in boxes crowd is fighting a pretty successful rear-guard action, but I suspect and hope that in the long run they will lose. The future is global, and the people who succeed will be the ones who are willing to embrace that.
Woah, hold on. The Left *love* to put people in boxes, provided it's a race, gender, or sexuality box. In fact, that's accelerated: what they hate is the national identity box, and to a lesser extent the religious box, as they view it as false consciousness.
But if your argument is that people can chose their identity then you can't fundamentally advocate they can pick their sex and gender identity but cannot do so for national identity as well because it's all a personal choice.
Personally I think national Identity will always be relevant and complimentary with others, as will religious identity, and I see no evidence whatever that will ever end. It's complex: people can have overlapping and complimentary identities, and emphasise some of them to greater degrees than others, but it's about to what and to whom you feel allegiance with - and it's absolutely not racially bound.
This post by this Professor isn't a progressive post; it's a highly regressive one.
I think I agree with all of that, but maybe my reading of the thing you quoted is different from yours. I read it as saying that people can have multiple and overlapping identities like you say, and to claim that someone like Raducanu is 100% one thing is kind of pointless. She has links to a number of countries, like a lot of people do. Not knowing her personally or having heard her opine on the subject, but knowing other young people in SE London with parental links outside the UK and/or born outside the UK, I would assume she identifies most with the UK. (This is why I disagree strongly with the policy of stripping people of UK citizenship based on sometimes tenuous links to their countries, incidentally). Identity politics on the Left I tend to see more as a response to prejudice and barriers that specific groups face, rather than a desire to put people in boxes. I guess I can see how it might look like the latter, especially for people who think that things like institutional/structural racism aren't a thing. Whether it is ultimately helpful or not is a different question, but I think the motivation is understandable.
He literally titles his post the "illusion of nations". He then ends it by saying "national identities are fading" and that Emma is "the future of humankind".
At no point does he even make a hat-tip to what Emma herself might think - he simply co-opts his own to her to make his point.
His motivation is very clear.
To be fair, the point about lack of mention about what the young lady herself might think is reasonable. The oldest of my half-Thai grandchildren, at 15, is starting to think seriously about her heritages.
As the world's population travel more and become more educated and integrated the ideas of national identity and particularly nationalism (with it's emphasis on exceptionalism - insert British, French Scottish, whatever), become to appear more absurd. It is a deliberately provocative post, and it proves people can have more than one allegiance, and for that reason it is a good post. The fact that it hasn't had more swivel-eyed frothing from right wingers who want to make themselves look silly is a little disappointing, but it might just be that there are not too many Col Blimps with LinkedIn accounts.
You claim to be against nationalism but you seem to be an extremely ardent nationalist yourself. Just a European nationalist.
Yesterday you quoted Thatcher referring to getting free trade with the world's richest nations, richer even than the USA, but when it was pointed out that in the interceding decades that had changed and the richest nations and people of the world aren't European anymore and we should embrace the globe not a parochial part of it ... That doesn't compute for you.
You're every bit as self righteous a nationalist as malcolmg. Rude to anyone who sees the world differently. You've simply embraced Europe as your nation instead of Scotland.
The world is a very big place. Much bigger than England, Scotland or Europe.
Please, Philip, I know you are trying your best Sixth Form debating style, but misrepresenting me won't help your cause. I am not a "European nationalist", I can't think of little more ghastly. You, like all your simplistic English nationalist buddies simply try to obfuscate to justify your love of the poisonous creed of nationalism and English exceptionalism. You are, in your own miniscule way, a genuine purveyor of fake news. There is no such thing as "European nationalism" you silly boy. I also don't need to be told by a keyboard warrior the "world is a big place". Unlike you I suspect, I have travelled and done business in most of it.
Please. Your desperation is showing.
There is such a thing as European nationalism and you exhibit it. That you can't see the beam in your own eye while you attack the mote in others, isn't sixth form.
You're incapable of even addressing why since the eighties facts have changed so considerably?
Why if not for European failure from Delors onwards does Europe no longer represent the wealthiest and most prosperous people in the world, like they did in the eighties?
Why is Europe so much smaller, rather than so much bigger, than the USA?
And why we should continue to turn our backs on free trade with the 21st century richest and most prosperous people in the world?
Brexit is the way to achieve what Thatcher wanted in the eighties. Because the facts have changed and stubbornness in the face of changing facts may suit your nationalism but it isn't wise.
Change the record Philip. Your side "won" the referendum. The Sixth Form debaters persuaded the masses. We have left, but you still are trying to convince yourself, because you are not stupid and you know it was pointless.
I know you and I agree on many things these days but on this I still believe you are wrong. From my perspective it was anything but pointless. It has removed us from the spectre of 'ever closer union' and is just one step on the way to having a more accountable system of governance. What we need to do now is concentrate on fundamental changes within the British system of government and make Parliament far more accountable to the electorate. But that is something that would have been pointless when so much regulation was being made in a supranational body even more remote than Parliament. It is just a step in the right direction.
What we need to do now is concentrate on fundamental changes within the British system of government and make Parliament far more accountable to the electorate. But that is something that would have been pointless when so much regulation was being made in a supranational body even more remote than Parliament. It is just a step in the right direction.
If you view it as a continuum, the election of BoZo on a mandate to "Get Brexit Done" has been a retrograde step.
He is removing power from Parliament and consolidating it in his own hands.
Electricity shortages Inflation warnings Crops rotting in fields Empty shelves GP service no longer working Northern Irish export collapse
But let’s all get worked up by a random post by a random poster on a random social network site instead.
The country is in a remarkably poor state right now. I've not regretted our decision to move back here 11 years ago, even after Brexit, until now. I don't even mind my six figure tax bill, but when I look at public services crumbling before my eyes, opportunities for our kids shrinking, and even basic stuff like having food in the shops not working properly anymore, I am starting to wonder why we are still living here.
My daughter's school recently had sports day, postponed from the end of last year so parents could come without restrictions.
First to third in every event got a sticker, at the end of the day my daughter asked why some of her friends got lots of stickers and she didn't get any. But she understood that she didn't win the race and that's ok. We were proud of her that she tried her best even if she didn't win the race.
My primary school had an "all must get prizes" mentality and it's unhealthy. I'm glad that her school doesn't and I'm hoping it's something schools have put behind them.
It's incredible that some people think "all must get prizes" should apply to democracy too. If the likes of UKIP lose every race they compete in, then they lost fair and square. Maybe they should work to try and win next time, not change the system so all get prizes just for taking part?
Is democracy a sport? I guess on a site about gambling on it like a sport, it might seem that way.
Yes. Hence the term First Past The Post.
That doesn't mean you have to back "your team" through thick and thin though but some people do of course.
I think the term "First past the post" derived from the days when we had 2 parties only (19th Century etc) when the winner would get more than 50%, hence the winning post was the 50% point. It doesn't really apply now, as winning candidates can achieve much less.
An electoral system is a machine for turning inputs into governments. The question is, what inputs do we care to measure? In FPTP, one of the most important inputs is how spread out / concentrated your voters are. I don't understand why anyone would think it's necessary to have that reflected in the result.
My proposal would be for an electoral system that better reflects how many ACTUAL votes there are for a party. Wild, I know.
A comment which utterly misunderstands what people are actually voting for at an election.
Does it, though? Listen to people talking on this forum. People vote for parties, party leaders, and yes, individual candidates. Perhaps in that order.
The idea that each constituency is an island competition between individuals is a charming fiction, but perhaps 200 years out of date, if it ever was true even then.
Take Canada. There's been a fair amount of talk today about parties, and two or three leaders. How many of you who have commented have said anything about local issues or candidates? As Canada, so us.
Nope. Legally you are voting for an individual representative. That is the fundamental basis of our system. And more than a few of us still operate on that basis. Who that representative is beholden to within their party does play a part but by no means the most important part. We may use the shorthand of voting for or against a party but some of us at least still vote according to the way the system is supposed to work. That is why we allow MPs to cross the floor. Anything else puts far to much power in the hands of the parties and we should be trying to reduce that power not increase it.
We can retail the individualism of an MP or councillor able to cross the floor and elect them proportionately. As has just been pointed out FPTP wipes out the Tories in cities like Manchester which is absurd.
Up here I am about to start campaigning to become a LibDem councillor and we use STV for council elections. Its fair, it works, representatives are elected as individuals and are free to cross the floor (and often do).
The only way to do that is, as you say, with STV or with AV - something I voted for but which the public sadly rejected.
Any other PR system based on the proportion of votes gained by a party automatically gives the party the moral high ground in the claim that they can control MPs and that we are voting for a party not an individual representative. It gives more power to the parties rather than taking it away and is something that needs to be resisted. You can guess which systems the parties campaigning for electoral reform would prefer us to use.
Single Transferable Vote in Multi-Member Constituencies. You get proportionality, a choice of which representative to see if one is an anus, and you're still in control not a party who set a list.
The key balance would be how big a seat. As England is now set on "Metro Mayors" even in non-metro areas there is clearly a desire for some regional co-ordination. So why not copy Scotland - elect most members from a constituency and a smaller number elected by region.
Because again it puts too much power in the hands of the parties. It is not even a case that we should be standing still on this. We should be actively reversing the ability of parties to coerce the individual representatives we elect. Moving to any system that is proportional based on party votes does yet more damage to democracy.
So are you proposing that we have direct democracy where we abolish political parties? I am proposing a system that is proportional based on votes for the individual. Under STV-MMC you may well have 3 candidates from each party chasing the 3 seats available, but you vote for individuals not the party.
The Irish seem to manage STV very well, with Independents getting elected as well as party apparatchiks.
One of the problems in this country is that the local Party committee in a 'safe seat' is, effectively, the 'electorate'.
And that is something FPTP embeds. And when you end up with one party in power for a generation we get idiocy, corruption and waste.
See Newham. Labour has been in power since the borough was created in 1964. The last election where Labour won fewer than 54 seats out of 60 was 1974. And nobody can claim Newham is a beacon of great local governance. I doubt very much that the 60 Labour councillors elected at the last election just happened to be the 60 very best and most qualified candidates.
Mr. Boy, if it makes you feel any better, most of the problems we face are temporary and shared to some degree by similar nations.
The pandemic and its logistical impact are affecting many places. We're also suffering the prolonged tomfoolery of energy policies over decades that focused on green headlines over keeping the lights on.
Wind being intermittent isn't some new discovery, it's an obvious fact that apparently eluded ministers from multiple parties for a long time...
Big ‘the board has full confidence in lights and their ability to stay on this winter’ energy. Reassuring.
For those that can afford twice the price
Yep. Having a series of very comfortable Cons ministers (OE Kwasi this morning) say how everything will be ok and for no one to worry about a few hundred pounds more here or there might be the thing that clicks with the voting public.
What clicks ?
We've had over a decade of "climate change must be stopped" from the establishment.
Do people think that doesn't come without a price tag ?
There's a spike in the cost of a fossil fuel and it's the fault of people who want to stop using fossil fuels?
If the greenies had their way we wouldn't be burning fossil fuels for electricity and we'd be sitting pretty while the rest of the world struggled with a spike in gas prices.
Though we are needing to burn gas because the wind farms we built aren't working right now and gas does work. That's an issue.
That's a base load issue. The base needs to be consistent and green emission free (so nuclear) but that's got a different set of issues.
"so nuclear" - bullshit.
A dozen tidal lagoon power stations around our coast would produce power that was:
a) consistent b) green c) emission free d) WASTE FREE e) have a capital cost of construction about a third that of nuclear f) produce electricity at about a 40-50% discount to the cost of nuclear g) have abandonment costs orders of magnitude lower than nuclear but h) as they last three times longer than a nuclear power station on the base case - probably many times that in practice - you won't need to abandon them.
And yet for reasons unknown we have decided not to use Tidal power even though we had more suitable locations than anywhere else in the world.
Any idea why that is?
The nuclear power lobby is ridiculously powerful....
This post from Guido Gianasso (Professor of Leadership at HEC Paris in Qatar / Honorary Consul of Romania in Geneva) has flashed up in my feed and currently has over 103,000 likes and loves, with several across my network. There isn't a single critical comment beneath it.
Read it, and you'll see he's co-opted Emma - with a MASSIVE picture of her on the post- to support his own pre-existing political views. He manages to crowbar Brexit in and also has the audacity to say that Emma is not British and is evidence that national identities are fading, which he thinks is a good thing, as he feels they can only be ethnocentrically based. This is fairly typical of the views advertised on the professional networking site LinkedIn and the "global citizens" that inhabit it:
"EMMA RADUCANU AND THE ILLUSION OF NATIONS
A new tennis champion has emerged. It is fascinating to observe the dynamics taking place around this young lady.
Emma's father is Romanian. Her name is Romanian and she speaks Romanian fluently. Hence she is considered Romanian by millions of Romanians. But Emma has actually never lived in Romania.
Emma's mother is Chinese. She speaks fluent Chinese, as a recent video available on YouTube shows. Hence she is considered a Chinese hero by millions of Chinese, who seem to forget that the PRC discourages international marriages.
Emma was born in Canada but has lived most of her life and trained in the UK. Hence she is considered British by most Britons and was publicly congratulated by the Queen. But the British public that now celebrates her success is the same that voted Brexit with the very objective to make it difficult for East Europeans such as Emma and her father to live in the UK.
The reality is that Emma is not Romanian, Chinese or British. She is much more. She is the outstanding result of the combination of Romanian talent, Chinese work ethics and British openness and sport infrastructure.
At a time when many countries are going back to very ethnocentric models and policies, Emma is the best evidence that National identities are fading and we must embrace a geocentric mindset. Emma Raducanu is the future of humankind."
It would be interesting to learn what Emma believes
I think I'd enjoy hearing from Emma on any subject but I sincerely hope she manages to stay out of politics so she can continue to focus on and enjoy her tennis.
What really pisses me off is people trying to exploit her success for their own political ends and attributing their own views to her. They seem to view her as a migrant first and a Brit second.
I find that insulting.
Thats what you get when stopping migration is and has been the singular political issue of this generation. People don't want migrants, especially those seen as low skilled and definitely don't want their kids. Until the kids grow up to become a world champion runner or tennis sensation.
Then they don't want migrant kids, but Mo / Emma are different. Its the same mindset as the "I don't like blacks but Frank Bruno is alright as he's world champion" comments you'd hear in the past. It'll never go away sadly.
How about - radical idea - we accept migrants as Brits if they self-identify as such. People like Emma Raducanu have a choice of nationalities and we should be delighted that they chose to be British. When people move to America for work so many of them naturalise - we could have been doing the same for the last few decades with Europeans instead of treating them with such disdain.
This old canard. Most people want controlled migration - neither no migration or uncontrolled migration.
Why is that so hard to understand?
I entirely get it! Its just that most people don't. They might say "I want controlled migration" but when you then ask which migrants they want to keep they can't answer you. Nor can the government, as the "let people in that we need" argument is being ignored for care homes factories tourism and logistics.
I specifically mentioned kids. The "old canard" is the anti-migration argument that foreign kids block up school places and are a burden. Emma Raducanu was 2. We like her because she's a British tennis sensation. But how do we know which migrant kids can be the same and which will be a burden?
When we aren't letting people in even when we need them, how can you say "controlled migration" is relevant when we're talking about a 2 year old? How do we know if the child of the migrant we don't want is the next Sajid Javid or not?
Ultimately, you have to accept some rules and rules-of-thumb to balance all the factors: rules on the type and mix of migration, and a cap on the overall numbers that commands public support.
Will some worthy cases fall on the wrong side of that?
Sure they will, but you have to draw the line somewhere and the alternative is to have no line at all, which won't command public support nor be sustainable.
Has anyone argued for "no line at all"? Back when we were in the EU there was no "uncontrolled migration" - no tidal wave where the entire population of Romania moved here. Nor did we have no say over it - we had the power to restrict numbers and to deport any who could not sustain themselves after 3 months.
Whilst we were in the EU there quite literally was "no line at all" - that's what free movement means.
And the numbers clearly did exceed what the British electorate would tolerate - just look at the inflows (in the millions) from 2004 onwards, and the social changes that occurred around the country as a result.
We didn't have any power to restrict numbers. If we had, that lever would have been used during the Cameron administration and shouted about from the rooftops during the referendum; they knew they had no answer.
In one way we had the worst of both worlds pre-Brexit. Not only did we not have any control of immigration (which I wasn't too bothered by personally at the time) but in response to high unskilled immigration numbers of Europeans we had ever higher restrictions on non-Europeans.
The restrictions are so ludicrous nowadays that even people married to Brits for decades with British children can struggle to move to the UK.
I emigrated to Australia when I was young for a few years. For my Aussie classmates without British citizenship the hoops they need to jump through to get to this country now are insane.
A more liberal but fair immigration system that treats people from the whole planet fairly, instead of ridiculously open for one fraction and ridiculously illiberal for the rest, is an improvement.
Electricity shortages Inflation warnings Crops rotting in fields Empty shelves GP service no longer working Northern Irish export collapse
But let’s all get worked up by a random post by a random poster on a random social network site instead.
The country is in a remarkably poor state right now. I've not regretted our decision to move back here 11 years ago, even after Brexit, until now. I don't even mind my six figure tax bill, but when I look at public services crumbling before my eyes, opportunities for our kids shrinking, and even basic stuff like having food in the shops not working properly anymore, I am starting to wonder why we are still living here.
It’s clearly going backwards. I should have added tax hikes and benefits cuts above.
Brexit, Covid, and the government’s “executive project” have conspired to make it a noticeably less congenial place to live.
I am leaving in a few months. It has forced me to look around a bit and remind myself that London and Britain still have remarkable charm, but many of the things I treasure most are currently in a sad state.
This post from Guido Gianasso (Professor of Leadership at HEC Paris in Qatar / Honorary Consul of Romania in Geneva) has flashed up in my feed and currently has over 103,000 likes and loves, with several across my network. There isn't a single critical comment beneath it.
Read it, and you'll see he's co-opted Emma - with a MASSIVE picture of her on the post- to support his own pre-existing political views. He manages to crowbar Brexit in and also has the audacity to say that Emma is not British and is evidence that national identities are fading, which he thinks is a good thing, as he feels they can only be ethnocentrically based. This is fairly typical of the views advertised on the professional networking site LinkedIn and the "global citizens" that inhabit it:
"EMMA RADUCANU AND THE ILLUSION OF NATIONS
A new tennis champion has emerged. It is fascinating to observe the dynamics taking place around this young lady.
Emma was born in Canada but has lived most of her life and trained in the UK. Hence she is considered British by most Britons and was publicly congratulated by the Queen. But the British public that now celebrates her success is the same that voted Brexit with the very objective to make it difficult for East Europeans such as Emma and her father to live in the UK.
The reality is that Emma is not Romanian, Chinese or British. She is much more. She is the outstanding result of the combination of Romanian talent, Chinese work ethics and British openness and sport infrastructure.
At a time when many countries are going back to very ethnocentric models and policies, Emma is the best evidence that National identities are fading and we must embrace a geocentric mindset. Emma Raducanu is the future of humankind."
It's a bit wanky but also seems fundamentally true. Some people like to put themselves in boxes, and to put other people in boxes. Others don't. Right now the putting people in boxes crowd is fighting a pretty successful rear-guard action, but I suspect and hope that in the long run they will lose. The future is global, and the people who succeed will be the ones who are willing to embrace that.
Woah, hold on. The Left *love* to put people in boxes, provided it's a race, gender, or sexuality box. In fact, that's accelerated: what they hate is the national identity box, and to a lesser extent the religious box, as they view it as false consciousness.
But if your argument is that people can chose their identity then you can't fundamentally advocate they can pick their sex and gender identity but cannot do so for national identity as well because it's all a personal choice.
Personally I think national Identity will always be relevant and complimentary with others, as will religious identity, and I see no evidence whatever that will ever end. It's complex: people can have overlapping and complimentary identities, and emphasise some of them to greater degrees than others, but it's about to what and to whom you feel allegiance with - and it's absolutely not racially bound.
This post by this Professor isn't a progressive post; it's a highly regressive one.
I think I agree with all of that, but maybe my reading of the thing you quoted is different from yours. I read it as saying that people can have multiple and overlapping identities like you say, and to claim that someone like Raducanu is 100% one thing is kind of pointless. She has links to a number of countries, like a lot of people do. Not knowing her personally or having heard her opine on the subject, but knowing other young people in SE London with parental links outside the UK and/or born outside the UK, I would assume she identifies most with the UK. (This is why I disagree strongly with the policy of stripping people of UK citizenship based on sometimes tenuous links to their countries, incidentally). Identity politics on the Left I tend to see more as a response to prejudice and barriers that specific groups face, rather than a desire to put people in boxes. I guess I can see how it might look like the latter, especially for people who think that things like institutional/structural racism aren't a thing. Whether it is ultimately helpful or not is a different question, but I think the motivation is understandable.
He literally titles his post the "illusion of nations". He then ends it by saying "national identities are fading" and that Emma is "the future of humankind".
At no point does he even make a hat-tip to what Emma herself might think - he simply co-opts his own to her to make his point.
His motivation is very clear.
To be fair, the point about lack of mention about what the young lady herself might think is reasonable. The oldest of my half-Thai grandchildren, at 15, is starting to think seriously about her heritages.
As the world's population travel more and become more educated and integrated the ideas of national identity and particularly nationalism (with it's emphasis on exceptionalism - insert British, French Scottish, whatever), become to appear more absurd. It is a deliberately provocative post, and it proves people can have more than one allegiance, and for that reason it is a good post. The fact that it hasn't had more swivel-eyed frothing from right wingers who want to make themselves look silly is a little disappointing, but it might just be that there are not too many Col Blimps with LinkedIn accounts.
You claim to be against nationalism but you seem to be an extremely ardent nationalist yourself. Just a European nationalist.
Yesterday you quoted Thatcher referring to getting free trade with the world's richest nations, richer even than the USA, but when it was pointed out that in the interceding decades that had changed and the richest nations and people of the world aren't European anymore and we should embrace the globe not a parochial part of it ... That doesn't compute for you.
You're every bit as self righteous a nationalist as malcolmg. Rude to anyone who sees the world differently. You've simply embraced Europe as your nation instead of Scotland.
The world is a very big place. Much bigger than England, Scotland or Europe.
Please, Philip, I know you are trying your best Sixth Form debating style, but misrepresenting me won't help your cause. I am not a "European nationalist", I can't think of little more ghastly. You, like all your simplistic English nationalist buddies simply try to obfuscate to justify your love of the poisonous creed of nationalism and English exceptionalism. You are, in your own miniscule way, a genuine purveyor of fake news. There is no such thing as "European nationalism" you silly boy. I also don't need to be told by a keyboard warrior the "world is a big place". Unlike you I suspect, I have travelled and done business in most of it.
Please. Your desperation is showing.
There is such a thing as European nationalism and you exhibit it. That you can't see the beam in your own eye while you attack the mote in others, isn't sixth form.
You're incapable of even addressing why since the eighties facts have changed so considerably?
Why if not for European failure from Delors onwards does Europe no longer represent the wealthiest and most prosperous people in the world, like they did in the eighties?
Why is Europe so much smaller, rather than so much bigger, than the USA?
And why we should continue to turn our backs on free trade with the 21st century richest and most prosperous people in the world?
Brexit is the way to achieve what Thatcher wanted in the eighties. Because the facts have changed and stubbornness in the face of changing facts may suit your nationalism but it isn't wise.
Change the record Philip. Your side "won" the referendum. The Sixth Form debaters persuaded the masses. We have left, but you still are trying to convince yourself, because you are not stupid and you know it was pointless.
I know you and I agree on many things these days but on this I still believe you are wrong. From my perspective it was anything but pointless. It has removed us from the spectre of 'ever closer union' and is just one step on the way to having a more accountable system of governance. What we need to do now is concentrate on fundamental changes within the British system of government and make Parliament far more accountable to the electorate. But that is something that would have been pointless when so much regulation was being made in a supranational body even more remote than Parliament. It is just a step in the right direction.
Oh good. We won the right to re-arrange the deckchairs on the Titanic.
This post from Guido Gianasso (Professor of Leadership at HEC Paris in Qatar / Honorary Consul of Romania in Geneva) has flashed up in my feed and currently has over 103,000 likes and loves, with several across my network. There isn't a single critical comment beneath it.
Read it, and you'll see he's co-opted Emma - with a MASSIVE picture of her on the post- to support his own pre-existing political views. He manages to crowbar Brexit in and also has the audacity to say that Emma is not British and is evidence that national identities are fading, which he thinks is a good thing, as he feels they can only be ethnocentrically based. This is fairly typical of the views advertised on the professional networking site LinkedIn and the "global citizens" that inhabit it:
"EMMA RADUCANU AND THE ILLUSION OF NATIONS
A new tennis champion has emerged. It is fascinating to observe the dynamics taking place around this young lady.
Emma was born in Canada but has lived most of her life and trained in the UK. Hence she is considered British by most Britons and was publicly congratulated by the Queen. But the British public that now celebrates her success is the same that voted Brexit with the very objective to make it difficult for East Europeans such as Emma and her father to live in the UK.
The reality is that Emma is not Romanian, Chinese or British. She is much more. She is the outstanding result of the combination of Romanian talent, Chinese work ethics and British openness and sport infrastructure.
At a time when many countries are going back to very ethnocentric models and policies, Emma is the best evidence that National identities are fading and we must embrace a geocentric mindset. Emma Raducanu is the future of humankind."
It's a bit wanky but also seems fundamentally true. Some people like to put themselves in boxes, and to put other people in boxes. Others don't. Right now the putting people in boxes crowd is fighting a pretty successful rear-guard action, but I suspect and hope that in the long run they will lose. The future is global, and the people who succeed will be the ones who are willing to embrace that.
Woah, hold on. The Left *love* to put people in boxes, provided it's a race, gender, or sexuality box. In fact, that's accelerated: what they hate is the national identity box, and to a lesser extent the religious box, as they view it as false consciousness.
But if your argument is that people can chose their identity then you can't fundamentally advocate they can pick their sex and gender identity but cannot do so for national identity as well because it's all a personal choice.
Personally I think national Identity will always be relevant and complimentary with others, as will religious identity, and I see no evidence whatever that will ever end. It's complex: people can have overlapping and complimentary identities, and emphasise some of them to greater degrees than others, but it's about to what and to whom you feel allegiance with - and it's absolutely not racially bound.
This post by this Professor isn't a progressive post; it's a highly regressive one.
I think I agree with all of that, but maybe my reading of the thing you quoted is different from yours. I read it as saying that people can have multiple and overlapping identities like you say, and to claim that someone like Raducanu is 100% one thing is kind of pointless. She has links to a number of countries, like a lot of people do. Not knowing her personally or having heard her opine on the subject, but knowing other young people in SE London with parental links outside the UK and/or born outside the UK, I would assume she identifies most with the UK. (This is why I disagree strongly with the policy of stripping people of UK citizenship based on sometimes tenuous links to their countries, incidentally). Identity politics on the Left I tend to see more as a response to prejudice and barriers that specific groups face, rather than a desire to put people in boxes. I guess I can see how it might look like the latter, especially for people who think that things like institutional/structural racism aren't a thing. Whether it is ultimately helpful or not is a different question, but I think the motivation is understandable.
He literally titles his post the "illusion of nations". He then ends it by saying "national identities are fading" and that Emma is "the future of humankind".
At no point does he even make a hat-tip to what Emma herself might think - he simply co-opts his own to her to make his point.
His motivation is very clear.
To be fair, the point about lack of mention about what the young lady herself might think is reasonable. The oldest of my half-Thai grandchildren, at 15, is starting to think seriously about her heritages.
As the world's population travel more and become more educated and integrated the ideas of national identity and particularly nationalism (with it's emphasis on exceptionalism - insert British, French Scottish, whatever), become to appear more absurd. It is a deliberately provocative post, and it proves people can have more than one allegiance, and for that reason it is a good post. The fact that it hasn't had more swivel-eyed frothing from right wingers who want to make themselves look silly is a little disappointing, but it might just be that there are not too many Col Blimps with LinkedIn accounts.
You claim to be against nationalism but you seem to be an extremely ardent nationalist yourself. Just a European nationalist.
Yesterday you quoted Thatcher referring to getting free trade with the world's richest nations, richer even than the USA, but when it was pointed out that in the interceding decades that had changed and the richest nations and people of the world aren't European anymore and we should embrace the globe not a parochial part of it ... That doesn't compute for you.
You're every bit as self righteous a nationalist as malcolmg. Rude to anyone who sees the world differently. You've simply embraced Europe as your nation instead of Scotland.
The world is a very big place. Much bigger than England, Scotland or Europe.
Please, Philip, I know you are trying your best Sixth Form debating style, but misrepresenting me won't help your cause. I am not a "European nationalist", I can't think of little more ghastly. You, like all your simplistic English nationalist buddies simply try to obfuscate to justify your love of the poisonous creed of nationalism and English exceptionalism. You are, in your own miniscule way, a genuine purveyor of fake news. There is no such thing as "European nationalism" you silly boy. I also don't need to be told by a keyboard warrior the "world is a big place". Unlike you I suspect, I have travelled and done business in most of it.
There is indeed European Nationalism, according to the definitions in -
People over history have transferred their nationalistic allegiances upward. Why is that wrong or even surprising?
Interesting, thanks. Seems oxymoronic to me. Certainly not something I would adhere to.
A theme of Orwell's interpretation of nationalism is that, quite often, the possessor/purveyor of said belief believes that his position is natural, obvious and the only sane concept. Everyone else is a loony, and a bit disgusting.
In the modern world, we have people who have transferred their nationalism to things such as environmentalism. People who feel more loyalty to the United States of Greenpeace than anything else...
An electoral system is a machine for turning inputs into governments. The question is, what inputs do we care to measure? In FPTP, one of the most important inputs is how spread out / concentrated your voters are. I don't understand why anyone would think it's necessary to have that reflected in the result.
My proposal would be for an electoral system that better reflects how many ACTUAL votes there are for a party. Wild, I know.
A comment which utterly misunderstands what people are actually voting for at an election.
Does it, though? Listen to people talking on this forum. People vote for parties, party leaders, and yes, individual candidates. Perhaps in that order.
The idea that each constituency is an island competition between individuals is a charming fiction, but perhaps 200 years out of date, if it ever was true even then.
Take Canada. There's been a fair amount of talk today about parties, and two or three leaders. How many of you who have commented have said anything about local issues or candidates? As Canada, so us.
Nope. Legally you are voting for an individual representative. That is the fundamental basis of our system. And more than a few of us still operate on that basis. Who that representative is beholden to within their party does play a part but by no means the most important part. We may use the shorthand of voting for or against a party but some of us at least still vote according to the way the system is supposed to work. That is why we allow MPs to cross the floor. Anything else puts far to much power in the hands of the parties and we should be trying to reduce that power not increase it.
We can retail the individualism of an MP or councillor able to cross the floor and elect them proportionately. As has just been pointed out FPTP wipes out the Tories in cities like Manchester which is absurd.
Up here I am about to start campaigning to become a LibDem councillor and we use STV for council elections. Its fair, it works, representatives are elected as individuals and are free to cross the floor (and often do).
The only way to do that is, as you say, with STV or with AV - something I voted for but which the public sadly rejected.
Any other PR system based on the proportion of votes gained by a party automatically gives the party the moral high ground in the claim that they can control MPs and that we are voting for a party not an individual representative. It gives more power to the parties rather than taking it away and is something that needs to be resisted. You can guess which systems the parties campaigning for electoral reform would prefer us to use.
Single Transferable Vote in Multi-Member Constituencies. You get proportionality, a choice of which representative to see if one is an anus, and you're still in control not a party who set a list.
The key balance would be how big a seat. As England is now set on "Metro Mayors" even in non-metro areas there is clearly a desire for some regional co-ordination. So why not copy Scotland - elect most members from a constituency and a smaller number elected by region.
Because again it puts too much power in the hands of the parties. It is not even a case that we should be standing still on this. We should be actively reversing the ability of parties to coerce the individual representatives we elect. Moving to any system that is proportional based on party votes does yet more damage to democracy.
So are you proposing that we have direct democracy where we abolish political parties? I am proposing a system that is proportional based on votes for the individual. Under STV-MMC you may well have 3 candidates from each party chasing the 3 seats available, but you vote for individuals not the party.
Oh yes Direct Democracy would be much better. But I realise for many that is a step too far.
What I have proposed on here many times before is that we reduce the power of the parties by removing the power of the whips. Treat whipping in the same way we now treat bribing or blackmail - after all that is what it is just in an apparently more acceptable form. Make every vote in Parliament a free vote and make the penalties for trying to coerce MPs to vote a particular way the same as it would be if it were being done by someone outside Parliament.
I like that idea and have never seen it before here (I obviously missed it), but I note you come up with some quite interesting ideas often Richard. Of course the subtle unmentioned blackmail of never getting a promotion is difficult to stop, but still worth implementing even if not 100% enforceable.
I to prefer STV or AV. Although a LD, I can think of instances where I would prefer a candidate of an opposing party, although I do not supporting that party. There are a number of posters here from both the right and the left who I would trust with my vote, but not trust the party they support with it ( @kinabalu , @Sandpit , @Sean_F , @TSE , etc, etc )
An electoral system is a machine for turning inputs into governments. The question is, what inputs do we care to measure? In FPTP, one of the most important inputs is how spread out / concentrated your voters are. I don't understand why anyone would think it's necessary to have that reflected in the result.
My proposal would be for an electoral system that better reflects how many ACTUAL votes there are for a party. Wild, I know.
A comment which utterly misunderstands what people are actually voting for at an election.
Does it, though? Listen to people talking on this forum. People vote for parties, party leaders, and yes, individual candidates. Perhaps in that order.
The idea that each constituency is an island competition between individuals is a charming fiction, but perhaps 200 years out of date, if it ever was true even then.
Take Canada. There's been a fair amount of talk today about parties, and two or three leaders. How many of you who have commented have said anything about local issues or candidates? As Canada, so us.
Nope. Legally you are voting for an individual representative. That is the fundamental basis of our system. And more than a few of us still operate on that basis. Who that representative is beholden to within their party does play a part but by no means the most important part. We may use the shorthand of voting for or against a party but some of us at least still vote according to the way the system is supposed to work. That is why we allow MPs to cross the floor. Anything else puts far to much power in the hands of the parties and we should be trying to reduce that power not increase it.
We can retail the individualism of an MP or councillor able to cross the floor and elect them proportionately. As has just been pointed out FPTP wipes out the Tories in cities like Manchester which is absurd.
Up here I am about to start campaigning to become a LibDem councillor and we use STV for council elections. Its fair, it works, representatives are elected as individuals and are free to cross the floor (and often do).
The only way to do that is, as you say, with STV or with AV - something I voted for but which the public sadly rejected.
Any other PR system based on the proportion of votes gained by a party automatically gives the party the moral high ground in the claim that they can control MPs and that we are voting for a party not an individual representative. It gives more power to the parties rather than taking it away and is something that needs to be resisted. You can guess which systems the parties campaigning for electoral reform would prefer us to use.
Single Transferable Vote in Multi-Member Constituencies. You get proportionality, a choice of which representative to see if one is an anus, and you're still in control not a party who set a list.
The key balance would be how big a seat. As England is now set on "Metro Mayors" even in non-metro areas there is clearly a desire for some regional co-ordination. So why not copy Scotland - elect most members from a constituency and a smaller number elected by region.
Because again it puts too much power in the hands of the parties. It is not even a case that we should be standing still on this. We should be actively reversing the ability of parties to coerce the individual representatives we elect. Moving to any system that is proportional based on party votes does yet more damage to democracy.
So are you proposing that we have direct democracy where we abolish political parties? I am proposing a system that is proportional based on votes for the individual. Under STV-MMC you may well have 3 candidates from each party chasing the 3 seats available, but you vote for individuals not the party.
The Irish seem to manage STV very well, with Independents getting elected as well as party apparatchiks.
One of the problems in this country is that the local Party committee in a 'safe seat' is, effectively, the 'electorate'.
With STV it is the 'excess votes' thing that I can't get my head around. Which votes are the excess? Do they just scoop up a pile of ballots and reallocate them or is there some kind of statistical analysis performed to determine the proportion that should go to each of the other remaining candidates? And when we get down to the 16th round of counting can they really be sure that ballots are being relocated correctly?
I want PR, but favour the simplicity of d'Hondt. The order of candidates for each party to be determined by primaries of party members.
STV means one person, one vote plus one vote one value. As long as an elector has a preference for one candidate over another they mark their ballot paper accordingly 1, 2, 3 etc until they don't mind. This determines how the vote count works. If there are 3 MPs to be elected for a largish constituency (say South Hampshire) I could choose the best candidates and mix parties if I wanted to - or order those from my favourite party. Once my vote has gone towards electing my first preference there may still be value in it if (s)he was very popular so it may also go towards electing my 2nd preference. Also if my 1st preference is eliminated my vote isn't wasted it could go towards helping my subsequent preference across the line.
After over 2 hours on this train it is next stop Wigan!
Will I have time to buy a pie?
Poole's is just across the road from the station (assuming you're at North Western, same side if it is Wallgate), but there'll be a queue. Finest pies in Wigan. Also there is Harry's Bar on the same row. The Wembley, Mecca and indeed Valhalla, home of the world pie eating Championship.
This post from Guido Gianasso (Professor of Leadership at HEC Paris in Qatar / Honorary Consul of Romania in Geneva) has flashed up in my feed and currently has over 103,000 likes and loves, with several across my network. There isn't a single critical comment beneath it.
Read it, and you'll see he's co-opted Emma - with a MASSIVE picture of her on the post- to support his own pre-existing political views. He manages to crowbar Brexit in and also has the audacity to say that Emma is not British and is evidence that national identities are fading, which he thinks is a good thing, as he feels they can only be ethnocentrically based. This is fairly typical of the views advertised on the professional networking site LinkedIn and the "global citizens" that inhabit it:
"EMMA RADUCANU AND THE ILLUSION OF NATIONS
A new tennis champion has emerged. It is fascinating to observe the dynamics taking place around this young lady.
Emma's father is Romanian. Her name is Romanian and she speaks Romanian fluently. Hence she is considered Romanian by millions of Romanians. But Emma has actually never lived in Romania.
Emma's mother is Chinese. She speaks fluent Chinese, as a recent video available on YouTube shows. Hence she is considered a Chinese hero by millions of Chinese, who seem to forget that the PRC discourages international marriages.
Emma was born in Canada but has lived most of her life and trained in the UK. Hence she is considered British by most Britons and was publicly congratulated by the Queen. But the British public that now celebrates her success is the same that voted Brexit with the very objective to make it difficult for East Europeans such as Emma and her father to live in the UK.
The reality is that Emma is not Romanian, Chinese or British. She is much more. She is the outstanding result of the combination of Romanian talent, Chinese work ethics and British openness and sport infrastructure.
At a time when many countries are going back to very ethnocentric models and policies, Emma is the best evidence that National identities are fading and we must embrace a geocentric mindset. Emma Raducanu is the future of humankind."
It would be interesting to learn what Emma believes
I think I'd enjoy hearing from Emma on any subject but I sincerely hope she manages to stay out of politics so she can continue to focus on and enjoy her tennis.
What really pisses me off is people trying to exploit her success for their own political ends and attributing their own views to her. They seem to view her as a migrant first and a Brit second.
I find that insulting.
Thats what you get when stopping migration is and has been the singular political issue of this generation. People don't want migrants, especially those seen as low skilled and definitely don't want their kids. Until the kids grow up to become a world champion runner or tennis sensation.
Then they don't want migrant kids, but Mo / Emma are different. Its the same mindset as the "I don't like blacks but Frank Bruno is alright as he's world champion" comments you'd hear in the past. It'll never go away sadly.
How about - radical idea - we accept migrants as Brits if they self-identify as such. People like Emma Raducanu have a choice of nationalities and we should be delighted that they chose to be British. When people move to America for work so many of them naturalise - we could have been doing the same for the last few decades with Europeans instead of treating them with such disdain.
This old canard. Most people want controlled migration - neither no migration or uncontrolled migration.
Why is that so hard to understand?
I entirely get it! Its just that most people don't. They might say "I want controlled migration" but when you then ask which migrants they want to keep they can't answer you. Nor can the government, as the "let people in that we need" argument is being ignored for care homes factories tourism and logistics.
I specifically mentioned kids. The "old canard" is the anti-migration argument that foreign kids block up school places and are a burden. Emma Raducanu was 2. We like her because she's a British tennis sensation. But how do we know which migrant kids can be the same and which will be a burden?
When we aren't letting people in even when we need them, how can you say "controlled migration" is relevant when we're talking about a 2 year old? How do we know if the child of the migrant we don't want is the next Sajid Javid or not?
Ultimately, you have to accept some rules and rules-of-thumb to balance all the factors: rules on the type and mix of migration, and a cap on the overall numbers that commands public support.
Will some worthy cases fall on the wrong side of that?
Sure they will, but you have to draw the line somewhere and the alternative is to have no line at all, which won't command public support nor be sustainable.
Has anyone argued for "no line at all"? Back when we were in the EU there was no "uncontrolled migration" - no tidal wave where the entire population of Romania moved here. Nor did we have no say over it - we had the power to restrict numbers and to deport any who could not sustain themselves after 3 months.
Whilst we were in the EU there quite literally was "no line at all" - that's what free movement means.
And the numbers clearly did exceed what the British electorate would tolerate - just look at the inflows (in the millions) from 2004 onwards, and the social changes that occurred around the country as a result.
We didn't have any power to restrict numbers. If we had, that lever would have been used during the Cameron administration and shouted about from the rooftops during the referendum; they knew they had no answer.
In one way we had the worst of both worlds pre-Brexit. Not only did we not have any control of immigration (which I wasn't too bothered by personally at the time) but in response to high unskilled immigration numbers of Europeans we had ever higher restrictions on non-Europeans.
The restrictions are so ludicrous nowadays that even people married to Brits for decades with British children can struggle to move to the UK.
I emigrated to Australia when I was young for a few years. For my Aussie classmates without British citizenship the hoops they need to jump through to get to this country now are insane.
A more liberal but fair immigration system that treats people from the whole planet fairly, instead of ridiculously open for one fraction and ridiculously illiberal for the rest, is an improvement.
Well said! Hopefully will slowly get better in the post-Brexit environment.
My issue with STV et al is that even I, an obvious genius, get confused about how it works.
Surprisingly, perhaps, I still support FPTP at Westminster. NZ is the only country I am know of to have moved from FPTP to PR and I am well aware of the pros and cons of both.
In local government, though, FPTP is an abomination.
The government’s plan to ban PR across the country is spiteful and anti-democratic, and a form of gerrymandering.
An electoral system is a machine for turning inputs into governments. The question is, what inputs do we care to measure? In FPTP, one of the most important inputs is how spread out / concentrated your voters are. I don't understand why anyone would think it's necessary to have that reflected in the result.
My proposal would be for an electoral system that better reflects how many ACTUAL votes there are for a party. Wild, I know.
A comment which utterly misunderstands what people are actually voting for at an election.
Does it, though? Listen to people talking on this forum. People vote for parties, party leaders, and yes, individual candidates. Perhaps in that order.
The idea that each constituency is an island competition between individuals is a charming fiction, but perhaps 200 years out of date, if it ever was true even then.
Take Canada. There's been a fair amount of talk today about parties, and two or three leaders. How many of you who have commented have said anything about local issues or candidates? As Canada, so us.
Nope. Legally you are voting for an individual representative. That is the fundamental basis of our system. And more than a few of us still operate on that basis. Who that representative is beholden to within their party does play a part but by no means the most important part. We may use the shorthand of voting for or against a party but some of us at least still vote according to the way the system is supposed to work. That is why we allow MPs to cross the floor. Anything else puts far to much power in the hands of the parties and we should be trying to reduce that power not increase it.
We can retail the individualism of an MP or councillor able to cross the floor and elect them proportionately. As has just been pointed out FPTP wipes out the Tories in cities like Manchester which is absurd.
Up here I am about to start campaigning to become a LibDem councillor and we use STV for council elections. Its fair, it works, representatives are elected as individuals and are free to cross the floor (and often do).
The only way to do that is, as you say, with STV or with AV - something I voted for but which the public sadly rejected.
Any other PR system based on the proportion of votes gained by a party automatically gives the party the moral high ground in the claim that they can control MPs and that we are voting for a party not an individual representative. It gives more power to the parties rather than taking it away and is something that needs to be resisted. You can guess which systems the parties campaigning for electoral reform would prefer us to use.
Single Transferable Vote in Multi-Member Constituencies. You get proportionality, a choice of which representative to see if one is an anus, and you're still in control not a party who set a list.
The key balance would be how big a seat. As England is now set on "Metro Mayors" even in non-metro areas there is clearly a desire for some regional co-ordination. So why not copy Scotland - elect most members from a constituency and a smaller number elected by region.
Because again it puts too much power in the hands of the parties. It is not even a case that we should be standing still on this. We should be actively reversing the ability of parties to coerce the individual representatives we elect. Moving to any system that is proportional based on party votes does yet more damage to democracy.
So are you proposing that we have direct democracy where we abolish political parties? I am proposing a system that is proportional based on votes for the individual. Under STV-MMC you may well have 3 candidates from each party chasing the 3 seats available, but you vote for individuals not the party.
The Irish seem to manage STV very well, with Independents getting elected as well as party apparatchiks.
One of the problems in this country is that the local Party committee in a 'safe seat' is, effectively, the 'electorate'.
With STV it is the 'excess votes' thing that I can't get my head around. Which votes are the excess? Do they just scoop up a pile of ballots and reallocate them or is there some kind of statistical analysis performed to determine the proportion that should go to each of the other remaining candidates? And when we get down to the 16th round of counting can they really be sure that ballots are being relocated correctly?
I want PR, but favour the simplicity of d'Hondt. The order of candidates for each party to be determined by primaries of party members.
STV means one person, one vote plus one vote one value. As long as an elector has a preference for one candidate over another they mark their ballot paper accordingly 1, 2, 3 etc until they don't mind. This determines how the vote count works. If there are 3 MPs to be elected for a largish constituency (say South Hampshire) I could choose the best candidates and mix parties if I wanted to - or order those from my favourite party. Once my vote has gone towards electing my first preference there may still be value in it if (s)he was very popular so it may also go towards electing my 2nd preference. Also if my 1st preference is eliminated my vote isn't wasted it could go towards helping my subsequent preference across the line.
That sounds quite agreeable. A candidates surplus could also be seen as a "wasted" vote, hence it's proportional transfer.
I wonder how many use the transfers all the way down. e.g. If a seat in NI assembly has 3 DUP candidates how many would stop at 3?
My issue with STV et al is that even I, an obvious genius, get confused about how it works.
Surprisingly, perhaps, I still support FPTP at Westminster. NZ is the only country I am know of to have moved from FPTP to PR and I am well aware of the pros and cons of both.
In local government, though, FPTP is an abomination.
The government’s plan to ban PR across the country is spiteful and anti-democratic, and a form of gerrymandering.
Isn't the ban because it currently wouldn't have impacted any result and multiple elections have shown that people don't understand how to actually vote correctly.
My issue with STV et al is that even I, an obvious genius, get confused about how it works.
Surprisingly, perhaps, I still support FPTP at Westminster. NZ is the only country I am know of to have moved from FPTP to PR and I am well aware of the pros and cons of both.
In local government, though, FPTP is an abomination.
The government’s plan to ban PR across the country is spiteful and anti-democratic, and a form of gerrymandering.
Isn't the ban because it currently wouldn't have impacted any result and multiple elections have shown that people don't understand how to actually vote correctly.
No.
The ban is because the right wing vote is concentrated with the Tory Party, and the left wing vote divided between Labour, Green and the Lib Dems.
My issue with STV et al is that even I, an obvious genius, get confused about how it works.
Surprisingly, perhaps, I still support FPTP at Westminster. NZ is the only country I am know of to have moved from FPTP to PR and I am well aware of the pros and cons of both.
In local government, though, FPTP is an abomination.
The government’s plan to ban PR across the country is spiteful and anti-democratic, and a form of gerrymandering.
Isn't the ban because it currently wouldn't have impacted any result and multiple elections have shown that people don't understand how to actually vote correctly.
This post from Guido Gianasso (Professor of Leadership at HEC Paris in Qatar / Honorary Consul of Romania in Geneva) has flashed up in my feed and currently has over 103,000 likes and loves, with several across my network. There isn't a single critical comment beneath it.
Read it, and you'll see he's co-opted Emma - with a MASSIVE picture of her on the post- to support his own pre-existing political views. He manages to crowbar Brexit in and also has the audacity to say that Emma is not British and is evidence that national identities are fading, which he thinks is a good thing, as he feels they can only be ethnocentrically based. This is fairly typical of the views advertised on the professional networking site LinkedIn and the "global citizens" that inhabit it:
"EMMA RADUCANU AND THE ILLUSION OF NATIONS
A new tennis champion has emerged. It is fascinating to observe the dynamics taking place around this young lady.
Emma's father is Romanian. Her name is Romanian and she speaks Romanian fluently. Hence she is considered Romanian by millions of Romanians. But Emma has actually never lived in Romania.
Emma's mother is Chinese. She speaks fluent Chinese, as a recent video available on YouTube shows. Hence she is considered a Chinese hero by millions of Chinese, who seem to forget that the PRC discourages international marriages.
Emma was born in Canada but has lived most of her life and trained in the UK. Hence she is considered British by most Britons and was publicly congratulated by the Queen. But the British public that now celebrates her success is the same that voted Brexit with the very objective to make it difficult for East Europeans such as Emma and her father to live in the UK.
The reality is that Emma is not Romanian, Chinese or British. She is much more. She is the outstanding result of the combination of Romanian talent, Chinese work ethics and British openness and sport infrastructure.
At a time when many countries are going back to very ethnocentric models and policies, Emma is the best evidence that National identities are fading and we must embrace a geocentric mindset. Emma Raducanu is the future of humankind."
What a hopeful and refreshing read; the Professor's piece I mean.
I have grandchildren who are half-British, half Thai and live in Thailand. Two of them are very keen on, and appear quite good at, sport. They could, and probably would, play for either Britain or Thailand if one or the other came calling.
Yes, I thought you'd like it.
It's a great totem for flushing out those with utterly moronic views.
Happy little soul, aren't you. I might, and do, disagree with you on occasion, but when I have actually been rude to you.
I'm not the one trying to abuse and exploit Emma for my own political ends. I find that extremely rude, and the post itself is softly bigoted.
If you find it "helpful and refreshing" then, yes, I'm afraid you do have moronic views.
I certainly wouldn't try to ' abuse and exploit Emma for my own political ends'. The fact is that as a result of globalisation she's got a very diverse background, and seeing that recognised is good. I find it quite amusing to see various nationalists tying themselves in knots trying to 'claim' her.
Who are these "nationalists" you speak of that are trying to "claim" her? You mean people celebrating the fact that someone British who's proudly competing as a Briton has secured a British win? Because if you do, then you're saying most of the population here are "nationalist" on the basis that someone with mixed ancestry must always be seen as a migrant first, and a Briton second. I find that offensive.
The only ones doing the claiming here are the softly-bigoted progressive Left.
I went to an international school. My sister was born in Canada. My parents were born in India. I have half-British/half-Columbian cousins. My Uncle lives in Australia. My other cousin married a Kenyan lady. My wife is Bulgarian. My daughter is British, but with Bulgarian ancestry too, and I have other family members who married fellow Britons too.
It might surprise you to we all celebrated Emma's win, and we all have an affection for the UK and common roots here too.
There's nothing exclusive or anachronistic about national identity, and long may it remain so.
Linkedin = woke propoganda feed. It is only good for professional news, it is not a good gauge of public opinion.
However, national identity is rooted very deeply in the human psyche. It cannot be deconstructed to nothing as Prof Gianosso and his fellow woke propogandists desperately hope. Nationalism is very much alive, particularly in supposedly progressive countries. Look at Scotland for example. There is a definite birther movement there, that has in the past revealed itself in comments on this website.
My own life experience living in supposedly progressive european countries (and not really amongst the woke elite) is that Nationalism is very much in existence, and that I would be accepted as a guest but would never be regarded as one of them.
In the end I have come to believe that Britain is unique in being able to successfully absorb immigrants within its national identity; but it is the exception rather than the rule; a historical abberation. It is this quality that many people around the world admire. This realisation was a turning point - it made me proud to be British.
Yes, I agree. Good post.
I think it's also the case on LinkedIn that those who disagree (like me) simply don't say anything. To do so would be to risk a pile on that would probably be fatal to my professional career, and it would be broadcast to your whole network at the same time.
That's why I'm venting on here instead.
I use LinkedIn regularly. There are some (and that post is an example) who use click-bait to gain "likes" and shares to raise their following and profile. Most, like yourself, are sensible enough to keep their political views to themselves. To suggest LinkedIn is "woke" is utter bollocks though. It is a business social media platform. Most people who do business avoid posting controversial views, and should any views be posted they tend to be relatively mainstream/centrist as a result. A regular put down on LinkedIn is "this is not Facebook". Nor is it PB.
No one was suggesting Linkedin is woke. But it is full of woke clickbait every time I log on. Plus, woke is the new centrist.
This post from Guido Gianasso (Professor of Leadership at HEC Paris in Qatar / Honorary Consul of Romania in Geneva) has flashed up in my feed and currently has over 103,000 likes and loves, with several across my network. There isn't a single critical comment beneath it.
Read it, and you'll see he's co-opted Emma - with a MASSIVE picture of her on the post- to support his own pre-existing political views. He manages to crowbar Brexit in and also has the audacity to say that Emma is not British and is evidence that national identities are fading, which he thinks is a good thing, as he feels they can only be ethnocentrically based. This is fairly typical of the views advertised on the professional networking site LinkedIn and the "global citizens" that inhabit it:
"EMMA RADUCANU AND THE ILLUSION OF NATIONS
A new tennis champion has emerged. It is fascinating to observe the dynamics taking place around this young lady.
Emma was born in Canada but has lived most of her life and trained in the UK. Hence she is considered British by most Britons and was publicly congratulated by the Queen. But the British public that now celebrates her success is the same that voted Brexit with the very objective to make it difficult for East Europeans such as Emma and her father to live in the UK.
The reality is that Emma is not Romanian, Chinese or British. She is much more. She is the outstanding result of the combination of Romanian talent, Chinese work ethics and British openness and sport infrastructure.
At a time when many countries are going back to very ethnocentric models and policies, Emma is the best evidence that National identities are fading and we must embrace a geocentric mindset. Emma Raducanu is the future of humankind."
It's a bit wanky but also seems fundamentally true. Some people like to put themselves in boxes, and to put other people in boxes. Others don't. Right now the putting people in boxes crowd is fighting a pretty successful rear-guard action, but I suspect and hope that in the long run they will lose. The future is global, and the people who succeed will be the ones who are willing to embrace that.
Woah, hold on. The Left *love* to put people in boxes, provided it's a race, gender, or sexuality box. In fact, that's accelerated: what they hate is the national identity box, and to a lesser extent the religious box, as they view it as false consciousness.
But if your argument is that people can chose their identity then you can't fundamentally advocate they can pick their sex and gender identity but cannot do so for national identity as well because it's all a personal choice.
Personally I think national Identity will always be relevant and complimentary with others, as will religious identity, and I see no evidence whatever that will ever end. It's complex: people can have overlapping and complimentary identities, and emphasise some of them to greater degrees than others, but it's about to what and to whom you feel allegiance with - and it's absolutely not racially bound.
This post by this Professor isn't a progressive post; it's a highly regressive one.
I think I agree with all of that, but maybe my reading of the thing you quoted is different from yours. I read it as saying that people can have multiple and overlapping identities like you say, and to claim that someone like Raducanu is 100% one thing is kind of pointless. She has links to a number of countries, like a lot of people do. Not knowing her personally or having heard her opine on the subject, but knowing other young people in SE London with parental links outside the UK and/or born outside the UK, I would assume she identifies most with the UK. (This is why I disagree strongly with the policy of stripping people of UK citizenship based on sometimes tenuous links to their countries, incidentally). Identity politics on the Left I tend to see more as a response to prejudice and barriers that specific groups face, rather than a desire to put people in boxes. I guess I can see how it might look like the latter, especially for people who think that things like institutional/structural racism aren't a thing. Whether it is ultimately helpful or not is a different question, but I think the motivation is understandable.
He literally titles his post the "illusion of nations". He then ends it by saying "national identities are fading" and that Emma is "the future of humankind".
At no point does he even make a hat-tip to what Emma herself might think - he simply co-opts his own to her to make his point.
His motivation is very clear.
To be fair, the point about lack of mention about what the young lady herself might think is reasonable. The oldest of my half-Thai grandchildren, at 15, is starting to think seriously about her heritages.
As the world's population travel more and become more educated and integrated the ideas of national identity and particularly nationalism (with it's emphasis on exceptionalism - insert British, French Scottish, whatever), become to appear more absurd. It is a deliberately provocative post, and it proves people can have more than one allegiance, and for that reason it is a good post. The fact that it hasn't had more swivel-eyed frothing from right wingers who want to make themselves look silly is a little disappointing, but it might just be that there are not too many Col Blimps with LinkedIn accounts.
You claim to be against nationalism but you seem to be an extremely ardent nationalist yourself. Just a European nationalist.
Yesterday you quoted Thatcher referring to getting free trade with the world's richest nations, richer even than the USA, but when it was pointed out that in the interceding decades that had changed and the richest nations and people of the world aren't European anymore and we should embrace the globe not a parochial part of it ... That doesn't compute for you.
You're every bit as self righteous a nationalist as malcolmg. Rude to anyone who sees the world differently. You've simply embraced Europe as your nation instead of Scotland.
The world is a very big place. Much bigger than England, Scotland or Europe.
Please, Philip, I know you are trying your best Sixth Form debating style, but misrepresenting me won't help your cause. I am not a "European nationalist", I can't think of little more ghastly. You, like all your simplistic English nationalist buddies simply try to obfuscate to justify your love of the poisonous creed of nationalism and English exceptionalism. You are, in your own miniscule way, a genuine purveyor of fake news. There is no such thing as "European nationalism" you silly boy. I also don't need to be told by a keyboard warrior the "world is a big place". Unlike you I suspect, I have travelled and done business in most of it.
There is indeed European Nationalism, according to the definitions in -
People over history have transferred their nationalistic allegiances upward. Why is that wrong or even surprising?
Interesting, thanks. Seems oxymoronic to me. Certainly not something I would adhere to.
A theme of Orwell's interpretation of nationalism is that, quite often, the possessor/purveyor of said belief believes that his position is natural, obvious and the only sane concept. Everyone else is a loony, and a bit disgusting.
In the modern world, we have people who have transferred their nationalism to things such as environmentalism. People who feel more loyalty to the United States of Greenpeace than anything else...
Why do you see environmentalism as something to which people redirect their nationalist as opposed to, say, religious or philosophical beliefs? Environmentalism is at least a universal creed, rather than my-dungheap-is-better-than-yours, which would make religion a better fit. Does "the United States of Greenpeace" actually mean anything?
This post from Guido Gianasso (Professor of Leadership at HEC Paris in Qatar / Honorary Consul of Romania in Geneva) has flashed up in my feed and currently has over 103,000 likes and loves, with several across my network. There isn't a single critical comment beneath it.
Read it, and you'll see he's co-opted Emma - with a MASSIVE picture of her on the post- to support his own pre-existing political views. He manages to crowbar Brexit in and also has the audacity to say that Emma is not British and is evidence that national identities are fading, which he thinks is a good thing, as he feels they can only be ethnocentrically based. This is fairly typical of the views advertised on the professional networking site LinkedIn and the "global citizens" that inhabit it:
"EMMA RADUCANU AND THE ILLUSION OF NATIONS
A new tennis champion has emerged. It is fascinating to observe the dynamics taking place around this young lady.
Emma's father is Romanian. Her name is Romanian and she speaks Romanian fluently. Hence she is considered Romanian by millions of Romanians. But Emma has actually never lived in Romania.
Emma's mother is Chinese. She speaks fluent Chinese, as a recent video available on YouTube shows. Hence she is considered a Chinese hero by millions of Chinese, who seem to forget that the PRC discourages international marriages.
Emma was born in Canada but has lived most of her life and trained in the UK. Hence she is considered British by most Britons and was publicly congratulated by the Queen. But the British public that now celebrates her success is the same that voted Brexit with the very objective to make it difficult for East Europeans such as Emma and her father to live in the UK.
The reality is that Emma is not Romanian, Chinese or British. She is much more. She is the outstanding result of the combination of Romanian talent, Chinese work ethics and British openness and sport infrastructure.
At a time when many countries are going back to very ethnocentric models and policies, Emma is the best evidence that National identities are fading and we must embrace a geocentric mindset. Emma Raducanu is the future of humankind."
What a hopeful and refreshing read; the Professor's piece I mean.
I have grandchildren who are half-British, half Thai and live in Thailand. Two of them are very keen on, and appear quite good at, sport. They could, and probably would, play for either Britain or Thailand if one or the other came calling.
Yes, I thought you'd like it.
It's a great totem for flushing out those with utterly moronic views.
Happy little soul, aren't you. I might, and do, disagree with you on occasion, but when I have actually been rude to you.
I'm not the one trying to abuse and exploit Emma for my own political ends. I find that extremely rude, and the post itself is softly bigoted.
If you find it "helpful and refreshing" then, yes, I'm afraid you do have moronic views.
I certainly wouldn't try to ' abuse and exploit Emma for my own political ends'. The fact is that as a result of globalisation she's got a very diverse background, and seeing that recognised is good. I find it quite amusing to see various nationalists tying themselves in knots trying to 'claim' her.
Who are these "nationalists" you speak of that are trying to "claim" her? You mean people celebrating the fact that someone British who's proudly competing as a Briton has secured a British win? Because if you do, then you're saying most of the population here are "nationalist" on the basis that someone with mixed ancestry must always be seen as a migrant first, and a Briton second. I find that offensive.
The only ones doing the claiming here are the softly-bigoted progressive Left.
I went to an international school. My sister was born in Canada. My parents were born in India. I have half-British/half-Columbian cousins. My Uncle lives in Australia. My other cousin married a Kenyan lady. My wife is Bulgarian. My daughter is British, but with Bulgarian ancestry too, and I have other family members who married fellow Britons too.
It might surprise you to we all celebrated Emma's win, and we all have an affection for the UK and common roots here too.
There's nothing exclusive or anachronistic about national identity, and long may it remain so.
Linkedin = woke propoganda feed. It is only good for professional news, it is not a good gauge of public opinion.
However, national identity is rooted very deeply in the human psyche. It cannot be deconstructed to nothing as Prof Gianosso and his fellow woke propogandists desperately hope. Nationalism is very much alive, particularly in supposedly progressive countries. Look at Scotland for example. There is a definite birther movement there, that has in the past revealed itself in comments on this website.
My own life experience living in supposedly progressive european countries (and not really amongst the woke elite) is that Nationalism is very much in existence, and that I would be accepted as a guest but would never be regarded as one of them.
In the end I have come to believe that Britain is unique in being able to successfully absorb immigrants within its national identity; but it is the exception rather than the rule; a historical abberation. It is this quality that many people around the world admire. This realisation was a turning point - it made me proud to be British.
Yes, I agree. Good post.
I think it's also the case on LinkedIn that those who disagree (like me) simply don't say anything. To do so would be to risk a pile on that would probably be fatal to my professional career, and it would be broadcast to your whole network at the same time.
That's why I'm venting on here instead.
I use LinkedIn regularly. There are some (and that post is an example) who use click-bait to gain "likes" and shares to raise their following and profile. Most, like yourself, are sensible enough to keep their political views to themselves. To suggest LinkedIn is "woke" is utter bollocks though. It is a business social media platform. Most people who do business avoid posting controversial views, and should any views be posted they tend to be relatively mainstream/centrist as a result. A regular put down on LinkedIn is "this is not Facebook". Nor is it PB.
No one was suggesting Linkedin is woke. But it is full of woke clickbait every time I log on. Plus, woke is the new centrist.
Woke is business friendly - non-woke is politically incorrect which means you could upset potential customers.
Yes I do know that a lot of customers are non-woke but targetting them has a habit of upsetting people who know how linkedIn's banning algorithms work.
My issue with STV et al is that even I, an obvious genius, get confused about how it works.
Surprisingly, perhaps, I still support FPTP at Westminster. NZ is the only country I am know of to have moved from FPTP to PR and I am well aware of the pros and cons of both.
In local government, though, FPTP is an abomination.
The government’s plan to ban PR across the country is spiteful and anti-democratic, and a form of gerrymandering.
Isn't the ban because it currently wouldn't have impacted any result and multiple elections have shown that people don't understand how to actually vote correctly.
No.
The ban is because the right wing vote is concentrated with the Tory Party, and the left wing vote divided between Labour, Green and the Lib Dems.
FPTP therefore favours the Tories, in general.
Not necessarily and its a marginal difference if any.
In 2008 Boris beat Ken by 6.2% in the first round and 6.4% in the second. In 2012 Boris beat Ken by 3.7% in the first round and 3.0% in the second.
My issue with STV et al is that even I, an obvious genius, get confused about how it works.
Surprisingly, perhaps, I still support FPTP at Westminster. NZ is the only country I am know of to have moved from FPTP to PR and I am well aware of the pros and cons of both.
In local government, though, FPTP is an abomination.
The government’s plan to ban PR across the country is spiteful and anti-democratic, and a form of gerrymandering.
Isn't the ban because it currently wouldn't have impacted any result and multiple elections have shown that people don't understand how to actually vote correctly.
No.
The ban is because the right wing vote is concentrated with the Tory Party, and the left wing vote divided between Labour, Green and the Lib Dems.
FPTP therefore favours the Tories, in general.
The Cambridgeshire metromayor election flipped between rounds 1 and 2, but that's fairly unusual in being the sort of place with a 40:30:30 ish split on first preferences. There may be others, I don't know.
But it highlights the key structural benefit of FPTP- it rewards parties that sort out their coalition before the election, rather than afterwards. Which is good for getting more informed consent from voters.
Whether that's worth the perversities of FPTP outcomes, I'm not sure. SV with a single election day (contrast with the French system) is pretty terrible, though.
This post from Guido Gianasso (Professor of Leadership at HEC Paris in Qatar / Honorary Consul of Romania in Geneva) has flashed up in my feed and currently has over 103,000 likes and loves, with several across my network. There isn't a single critical comment beneath it.
Read it, and you'll see he's co-opted Emma - with a MASSIVE picture of her on the post- to support his own pre-existing political views. He manages to crowbar Brexit in and also has the audacity to say that Emma is not British and is evidence that national identities are fading, which he thinks is a good thing, as he feels they can only be ethnocentrically based. This is fairly typical of the views advertised on the professional networking site LinkedIn and the "global citizens" that inhabit it:
"EMMA RADUCANU AND THE ILLUSION OF NATIONS
A new tennis champion has emerged. It is fascinating to observe the dynamics taking place around this young lady.
Emma's father is Romanian. Her name is Romanian and she speaks Romanian fluently. Hence she is considered Romanian by millions of Romanians. But Emma has actually never lived in Romania.
Emma's mother is Chinese. She speaks fluent Chinese, as a recent video available on YouTube shows. Hence she is considered a Chinese hero by millions of Chinese, who seem to forget that the PRC discourages international marriages.
Emma was born in Canada but has lived most of her life and trained in the UK. Hence she is considered British by most Britons and was publicly congratulated by the Queen. But the British public that now celebrates her success is the same that voted Brexit with the very objective to make it difficult for East Europeans such as Emma and her father to live in the UK.
The reality is that Emma is not Romanian, Chinese or British. She is much more. She is the outstanding result of the combination of Romanian talent, Chinese work ethics and British openness and sport infrastructure.
At a time when many countries are going back to very ethnocentric models and policies, Emma is the best evidence that National identities are fading and we must embrace a geocentric mindset. Emma Raducanu is the future of humankind."
It would be interesting to learn what Emma believes
I think I'd enjoy hearing from Emma on any subject but I sincerely hope she manages to stay out of politics so she can continue to focus on and enjoy her tennis.
What really pisses me off is people trying to exploit her success for their own political ends and attributing their own views to her. They seem to view her as a migrant first and a Brit second.
I find that insulting.
Thats what you get when stopping migration is and has been the singular political issue of this generation. People don't want migrants, especially those seen as low skilled and definitely don't want their kids. Until the kids grow up to become a world champion runner or tennis sensation.
Then they don't want migrant kids, but Mo / Emma are different. Its the same mindset as the "I don't like blacks but Frank Bruno is alright as he's world champion" comments you'd hear in the past. It'll never go away sadly.
How about - radical idea - we accept migrants as Brits if they self-identify as such. People like Emma Raducanu have a choice of nationalities and we should be delighted that they chose to be British. When people move to America for work so many of them naturalise - we could have been doing the same for the last few decades with Europeans instead of treating them with such disdain.
This old canard. Most people want controlled migration - neither no migration or uncontrolled migration.
Why is that so hard to understand?
People don’t want to understand they just want to apply their personal prejudices to a debate. Migration is not a binary all or nothing choice. People support migration. During the referendum The leave campaign made it clear they would rather have skilled migrants from commonwealth countries than unskilled migrants from the EU. It was the controlled element some people wilfully misrepresent.
What the majority of people want from an immigration system, is priority given to those who can be net contributors, who have skills we need, or are investors in Britian.
Bringing in six million mostly low-paid service workers, to live in crowded accommodation, reducing productivity, holding wages down and putting pressure on public services - that was the problem.
It doesn’t matter who comes from where, it was the all-or-nothing approach of the EU that drove the vote to leave.
I know you are some distance away but I think your definitions of "low-paid service workers" that is the issue. Your points about pay and overcrowding are perfectly sound and something could have been done about that.
It is how we define "service workers" that is the problem we face. Right now you can't migrate to the UK to do such jobs. Yet we have unfillable vacancies. Locals do not want seasonal back-breaking work picking fruit, or shift work in tourism and hospitality, or cleaning jobs in hospitals, or care home work, or driving trucks.
Yes there are issues around pay and conditions and the logistics industry have tried and failed to pay their way out of the problem. In reality there are plenty of jobs that our people refuse to do. The job is meaningless, dull, physical, menial. A huge increase in salary may attract a few but such cash can't be afforded by those companies nor would the upward pressure on wages elsewhere be welcomed.
So we're back to "do we want the jobs done or not". Where you the answer is yes hence the army of foreigners working in the UAE and its neighbours, because there are jobs the locals don't want to do.
Unless night shifts in a meat processing factory suddenly become desirable, we're going to need migrants. My example is always east anglia who voted so heavily for leave having spoken so passionately against the migrants doing the jobs they don't want to do.
How much do night shifts in a meat packing factory pay?
If over £30k then can't they sponsor a migrant for a visa if that's required?
If under £30k then perhaps they can try paying more in first instance? Maybe people will take the job if it's not for minimum wage?
This post from Guido Gianasso (Professor of Leadership at HEC Paris in Qatar / Honorary Consul of Romania in Geneva) has flashed up in my feed and currently has over 103,000 likes and loves, with several across my network. There isn't a single critical comment beneath it.
Read it, and you'll see he's co-opted Emma - with a MASSIVE picture of her on the post- to support his own pre-existing political views. He manages to crowbar Brexit in and also has the audacity to say that Emma is not British and is evidence that national identities are fading, which he thinks is a good thing, as he feels they can only be ethnocentrically based. This is fairly typical of the views advertised on the professional networking site LinkedIn and the "global citizens" that inhabit it:
"EMMA RADUCANU AND THE ILLUSION OF NATIONS
A new tennis champion has emerged. It is fascinating to observe the dynamics taking place around this young lady.
Emma's father is Romanian. Her name is Romanian and she speaks Romanian fluently. Hence she is considered Romanian by millions of Romanians. But Emma has actually never lived in Romania.
Emma's mother is Chinese. She speaks fluent Chinese, as a recent video available on YouTube shows. Hence she is considered a Chinese hero by millions of Chinese, who seem to forget that the PRC discourages international marriages.
Emma was born in Canada but has lived most of her life and trained in the UK. Hence she is considered British by most Britons and was publicly congratulated by the Queen. But the British public that now celebrates her success is the same that voted Brexit with the very objective to make it difficult for East Europeans such as Emma and her father to live in the UK.
The reality is that Emma is not Romanian, Chinese or British. She is much more. She is the outstanding result of the combination of Romanian talent, Chinese work ethics and British openness and sport infrastructure.
At a time when many countries are going back to very ethnocentric models and policies, Emma is the best evidence that National identities are fading and we must embrace a geocentric mindset. Emma Raducanu is the future of humankind."
What a hopeful and refreshing read; the Professor's piece I mean.
I have grandchildren who are half-British, half Thai and live in Thailand. Two of them are very keen on, and appear quite good at, sport. They could, and probably would, play for either Britain or Thailand if one or the other came calling.
Yes, I thought you'd like it.
It's a great totem for flushing out those with utterly moronic views.
Happy little soul, aren't you. I might, and do, disagree with you on occasion, but when I have actually been rude to you.
I'm not the one trying to abuse and exploit Emma for my own political ends. I find that extremely rude, and the post itself is softly bigoted.
If you find it "helpful and refreshing" then, yes, I'm afraid you do have moronic views.
I certainly wouldn't try to ' abuse and exploit Emma for my own political ends'. The fact is that as a result of globalisation she's got a very diverse background, and seeing that recognised is good. I find it quite amusing to see various nationalists tying themselves in knots trying to 'claim' her.
Who are these "nationalists" you speak of that are trying to "claim" her? You mean people celebrating the fact that someone British who's proudly competing as a Briton has secured a British win? Because if you do, then you're saying most of the population here are "nationalist" on the basis that someone with mixed ancestry must always be seen as a migrant first, and a Briton second. I find that offensive.
The only ones doing the claiming here are the softly-bigoted progressive Left.
I went to an international school. My sister was born in Canada. My parents were born in India. I have half-British/half-Columbian cousins. My Uncle lives in Australia. My other cousin married a Kenyan lady. My wife is Bulgarian. My daughter is British, but with Bulgarian ancestry too, and I have other family members who married fellow Britons too.
It might surprise you to we all celebrated Emma's win, and we all have an affection for the UK and common roots here too.
There's nothing exclusive or anachronistic about national identity, and long may it remain so.
Linkedin = woke propoganda feed. It is only good for professional news, it is not a good gauge of public opinion.
However, national identity is rooted very deeply in the human psyche. It cannot be deconstructed to nothing as Prof Gianosso and his fellow woke propogandists desperately hope. Nationalism is very much alive, particularly in supposedly progressive countries. Look at Scotland for example. There is a definite birther movement there, that has in the past revealed itself in comments on this website.
My own life experience living in supposedly progressive european countries (and not really amongst the woke elite) is that Nationalism is very much in existence, and that I would be accepted as a guest but would never be regarded as one of them.
In the end I have come to believe that Britain is unique in being able to successfully absorb immigrants within its national identity; but it is the exception rather than the rule; a historical abberation. It is this quality that many people around the world admire. This realisation was a turning point - it made me proud to be British.
Yes, I agree. Good post.
I think it's also the case on LinkedIn that those who disagree (like me) simply don't say anything. To do so would be to risk a pile on that would probably be fatal to my professional career, and it would be broadcast to your whole network at the same time.
That's why I'm venting on here instead.
I use LinkedIn regularly. There are some (and that post is an example) who use click-bait to gain "likes" and shares to raise their following and profile. Most, like yourself, are sensible enough to keep their political views to themselves. To suggest LinkedIn is "woke" is utter bollocks though. It is a business social media platform. Most people who do business avoid posting controversial views, and should any views be posted they tend to be relatively mainstream/centrist as a result. A regular put down on LinkedIn is "this is not Facebook". Nor is it PB.
No one was suggesting Linkedin is woke. But it is full of woke clickbait every time I log on. Plus, woke is the new centrist.
It's probably the people you're connected to, or maybe you've been rage-clicking them and that makes the algorithm show you more.
I don't generally log into Linked In but when I did I always used to get a lot of career-self-improvement-ish worthiness showing up. I turned off the algorithm for twitter and just use most-recent first, which works a lot better for me. For Facebook I've been trying to train the algorithms to only show me ads with tits in, but the AI worked out that I ordered a 1980s vintage k-truck and keep trying to sell me more of those (which might just work tbf, there are so many great k-trucks) and also somebody out there really, really wants me to work in a factory in Kumagaya.
My issue with STV et al is that even I, an obvious genius, get confused about how it works.
Surprisingly, perhaps, I still support FPTP at Westminster. NZ is the only country I am know of to have moved from FPTP to PR and I am well aware of the pros and cons of both.
In local government, though, FPTP is an abomination.
The government’s plan to ban PR across the country is spiteful and anti-democratic, and a form of gerrymandering.
Isn't the ban because it currently wouldn't have impacted any result and multiple elections have shown that people don't understand how to actually vote correctly.
Sorry, people don't understand how to express their preferences by listing 1, 2, 3?
Lidl - almost no bottled water. Freezer shelves looking pretty bare. I got one of the last pizzas and last bag of oven chips. There was also post-it notes stickered on various shelves and freezer cabinets with handwritten numbers like 7/8. Not seen before: some kind of management emergency stock process?
My issue with STV et al is that even I, an obvious genius, get confused about how it works.
Surprisingly, perhaps, I still support FPTP at Westminster. NZ is the only country I am know of to have moved from FPTP to PR and I am well aware of the pros and cons of both.
In local government, though, FPTP is an abomination.
The government’s plan to ban PR across the country is spiteful and anti-democratic, and a form of gerrymandering.
Isn't the ban because it currently wouldn't have impacted any result and multiple elections have shown that people don't understand how to actually vote correctly.
Sorry, people don't understand how to express their preferences by listing 1, 2, 3?
That has been a problem on the supplementary vote papers - people were doing exactly that when they are supposed to put a cross in the second column on the other side of the form.
Because we have different elections with different formats people have a habit of getting things wrong. And as anyone who has worked on design / IT support will tell you, this is true, even if you show them exactly what they need to do.
When the wind turbines fail to produce sufficient energy to power supermarket freezers, the lack of stock will ensure no meat is spoiled. It's the new green strategy.
Lidl - almost no bottled water. Freezer shelves looking pretty bare. I got one of the last pizzas and last bag of oven chips. There was also post-it notes stickered on various shelves and freezer cabinets with handwritten numbers like 7/8. Not seen before: some kind of management emergency stock process?
Last year Ocado stopped doing bottled water to allow an additional delivery or 2 per van.
A lack of bottled water really doesn't surprise me if deliveries are an issue. This isn't a country where bottled water is required as drinking water.
My issue with STV et al is that even I, an obvious genius, get confused about how it works.
Surprisingly, perhaps, I still support FPTP at Westminster. NZ is the only country I am know of to have moved from FPTP to PR and I am well aware of the pros and cons of both.
In local government, though, FPTP is an abomination.
The government’s plan to ban PR across the country is spiteful and anti-democratic, and a form of gerrymandering.
Isn't the ban because it currently wouldn't have impacted any result and multiple elections have shown that people don't understand how to actually vote correctly.
Sorry, people don't understand how to express their preferences by listing 1, 2, 3?
That has been a problem on the supplementary vote papers - people were doing exactly that when they are supposed to put a cross in the second column on the other side of the form.
Because we have different elections with different formats people have a habit of getting things wrong. And as anyone who has worked on design / IT support will tell you, this is true, even if you show them exactly what they need to do.
But isn't there a "clear and obvious intenttion" rule? You can vote with a tick or a smiley rather than a cross? Surely 1, 2, 3 falls into that category? Or am I missing something?
Lidl - almost no bottled water. Freezer shelves looking pretty bare. I got one of the last pizzas and last bag of oven chips. There was also post-it notes stickered on various shelves and freezer cabinets with handwritten numbers like 7/8. Not seen before: some kind of management emergency stock process?
This post from Guido Gianasso (Professor of Leadership at HEC Paris in Qatar / Honorary Consul of Romania in Geneva) has flashed up in my feed and currently has over 103,000 likes and loves, with several across my network. There isn't a single critical comment beneath it.
Read it, and you'll see he's co-opted Emma - with a MASSIVE picture of her on the post- to support his own pre-existing political views. He manages to crowbar Brexit in and also has the audacity to say that Emma is not British and is evidence that national identities are fading, which he thinks is a good thing, as he feels they can only be ethnocentrically based. This is fairly typical of the views advertised on the professional networking site LinkedIn and the "global citizens" that inhabit it:
"EMMA RADUCANU AND THE ILLUSION OF NATIONS
A new tennis champion has emerged. It is fascinating to observe the dynamics taking place around this young lady.
Emma's father is Romanian. Her name is Romanian and she speaks Romanian fluently. Hence she is considered Romanian by millions of Romanians. But Emma has actually never lived in Romania.
Emma's mother is Chinese. She speaks fluent Chinese, as a recent video available on YouTube shows. Hence she is considered a Chinese hero by millions of Chinese, who seem to forget that the PRC discourages international marriages.
Emma was born in Canada but has lived most of her life and trained in the UK. Hence she is considered British by most Britons and was publicly congratulated by the Queen. But the British public that now celebrates her success is the same that voted Brexit with the very objective to make it difficult for East Europeans such as Emma and her father to live in the UK.
The reality is that Emma is not Romanian, Chinese or British. She is much more. She is the outstanding result of the combination of Romanian talent, Chinese work ethics and British openness and sport infrastructure.
At a time when many countries are going back to very ethnocentric models and policies, Emma is the best evidence that National identities are fading and we must embrace a geocentric mindset. Emma Raducanu is the future of humankind."
What a hopeful and refreshing read; the Professor's piece I mean.
I have grandchildren who are half-British, half Thai and live in Thailand. Two of them are very keen on, and appear quite good at, sport. They could, and probably would, play for either Britain or Thailand if one or the other came calling.
Yes, I thought you'd like it.
It's a great totem for flushing out those with utterly moronic views.
Happy little soul, aren't you. I might, and do, disagree with you on occasion, but when I have actually been rude to you.
I'm not the one trying to abuse and exploit Emma for my own political ends. I find that extremely rude, and the post itself is softly bigoted.
If you find it "helpful and refreshing" then, yes, I'm afraid you do have moronic views.
I certainly wouldn't try to ' abuse and exploit Emma for my own political ends'. The fact is that as a result of globalisation she's got a very diverse background, and seeing that recognised is good. I find it quite amusing to see various nationalists tying themselves in knots trying to 'claim' her.
Who are these "nationalists" you speak of that are trying to "claim" her? You mean people celebrating the fact that someone British who's proudly competing as a Briton has secured a British win? Because if you do, then you're saying most of the population here are "nationalist" on the basis that someone with mixed ancestry must always be seen as a migrant first, and a Briton second. I find that offensive.
The only ones doing the claiming here are the softly-bigoted progressive Left.
I went to an international school. My sister was born in Canada. My parents were born in India. I have half-British/half-Columbian cousins. My Uncle lives in Australia. My other cousin married a Kenyan lady. My wife is Bulgarian. My daughter is British, but with Bulgarian ancestry too, and I have other family members who married fellow Britons too.
It might surprise you to we all celebrated Emma's win, and we all have an affection for the UK and common roots here too.
There's nothing exclusive or anachronistic about national identity, and long may it remain so.
Linkedin = woke propoganda feed. It is only good for professional news, it is not a good gauge of public opinion.
However, national identity is rooted very deeply in the human psyche. It cannot be deconstructed to nothing as Prof Gianosso and his fellow woke propogandists desperately hope. Nationalism is very much alive, particularly in supposedly progressive countries. Look at Scotland for example. There is a definite birther movement there, that has in the past revealed itself in comments on this website.
My own life experience living in supposedly progressive european countries (and not really amongst the woke elite) is that Nationalism is very much in existence, and that I would be accepted as a guest but would never be regarded as one of them.
In the end I have come to believe that Britain is unique in being able to successfully absorb immigrants within its national identity; but it is the exception rather than the rule; a historical abberation. It is this quality that many people around the world admire. This realisation was a turning point - it made me proud to be British.
Yes, I agree. Good post.
I think it's also the case on LinkedIn that those who disagree (like me) simply don't say anything. To do so would be to risk a pile on that would probably be fatal to my professional career, and it would be broadcast to your whole network at the same time.
That's why I'm venting on here instead.
I use LinkedIn regularly. There are some (and that post is an example) who use click-bait to gain "likes" and shares to raise their following and profile. Most, like yourself, are sensible enough to keep their political views to themselves. To suggest LinkedIn is "woke" is utter bollocks though. It is a business social media platform. Most people who do business avoid posting controversial views, and should any views be posted they tend to be relatively mainstream/centrist as a result. A regular put down on LinkedIn is "this is not Facebook". Nor is it PB.
No one was suggesting Linkedin is woke. But it is full of woke clickbait every time I log on. Plus, woke is the new centrist.
Woke is business friendly - non-woke is politically incorrect which means you could upset potential customers.
Yes I do know that a lot of customers are non-woke but targetting them has a habit of upsetting people who know how linkedIn's banning algorithms work.
It’s way better discussion potentially divisive social issues on a pseudo-anonymous politics blog, than on a real-names, work-based social network!
This post from Guido Gianasso (Professor of Leadership at HEC Paris in Qatar / Honorary Consul of Romania in Geneva) has flashed up in my feed and currently has over 103,000 likes and loves, with several across my network. There isn't a single critical comment beneath it.
Read it, and you'll see he's co-opted Emma - with a MASSIVE picture of her on the post- to support his own pre-existing political views. He manages to crowbar Brexit in and also has the audacity to say that Emma is not British and is evidence that national identities are fading, which he thinks is a good thing, as he feels they can only be ethnocentrically based. This is fairly typical of the views advertised on the professional networking site LinkedIn and the "global citizens" that inhabit it:
"EMMA RADUCANU AND THE ILLUSION OF NATIONS
A new tennis champion has emerged. It is fascinating to observe the dynamics taking place around this young lady.
Emma's father is Romanian. Her name is Romanian and she speaks Romanian fluently. Hence she is considered Romanian by millions of Romanians. But Emma has actually never lived in Romania.
Emma's mother is Chinese. She speaks fluent Chinese, as a recent video available on YouTube shows. Hence she is considered a Chinese hero by millions of Chinese, who seem to forget that the PRC discourages international marriages.
Emma was born in Canada but has lived most of her life and trained in the UK. Hence she is considered British by most Britons and was publicly congratulated by the Queen. But the British public that now celebrates her success is the same that voted Brexit with the very objective to make it difficult for East Europeans such as Emma and her father to live in the UK.
The reality is that Emma is not Romanian, Chinese or British. She is much more. She is the outstanding result of the combination of Romanian talent, Chinese work ethics and British openness and sport infrastructure.
At a time when many countries are going back to very ethnocentric models and policies, Emma is the best evidence that National identities are fading and we must embrace a geocentric mindset. Emma Raducanu is the future of humankind."
It would be interesting to learn what Emma believes
I think I'd enjoy hearing from Emma on any subject but I sincerely hope she manages to stay out of politics so she can continue to focus on and enjoy her tennis.
What really pisses me off is people trying to exploit her success for their own political ends and attributing their own views to her. They seem to view her as a migrant first and a Brit second.
I find that insulting.
Thats what you get when stopping migration is and has been the singular political issue of this generation. People don't want migrants, especially those seen as low skilled and definitely don't want their kids. Until the kids grow up to become a world champion runner or tennis sensation.
Then they don't want migrant kids, but Mo / Emma are different. Its the same mindset as the "I don't like blacks but Frank Bruno is alright as he's world champion" comments you'd hear in the past. It'll never go away sadly.
How about - radical idea - we accept migrants as Brits if they self-identify as such. People like Emma Raducanu have a choice of nationalities and we should be delighted that they chose to be British. When people move to America for work so many of them naturalise - we could have been doing the same for the last few decades with Europeans instead of treating them with such disdain.
This old canard. Most people want controlled migration - neither no migration or uncontrolled migration.
Why is that so hard to understand?
People don’t want to understand they just want to apply their personal prejudices to a debate. Migration is not a binary all or nothing choice. People support migration. During the referendum The leave campaign made it clear they would rather have skilled migrants from commonwealth countries than unskilled migrants from the EU. It was the controlled element some people wilfully misrepresent.
What the majority of people want from an immigration system, is priority given to those who can be net contributors, who have skills we need, or are investors in Britian.
Bringing in six million mostly low-paid service workers, to live in crowded accommodation, reducing productivity, holding wages down and putting pressure on public services - that was the problem.
It doesn’t matter who comes from where, it was the all-or-nothing approach of the EU that drove the vote to leave.
I'm not convinced by any part of "six million mostly low-paid service workers". I think it is a bit of a straw man.
Those workers have had a key place in bringing Eastern European economies towards the Western European standard - many are returning, and many are staying. There are many in the City, and plumbers and construction workers etc are not low paid.
I'm just selling a bungalow to a couple with so many Zs in their name that it is a challenge for me to pronounce. They don't seem to be having any trouble financing it.
Even on the "low paid" claim, we have had one of the highest minimum wage levels in Europe for a good few years, now. The two obviously higher ones are Switzerland and Luxemburg iirc.
Lidl - almost no bottled water. Freezer shelves looking pretty bare. I got one of the last pizzas and last bag of oven chips. There was also post-it notes stickered on various shelves and freezer cabinets with handwritten numbers like 7/8. Not seen before: some kind of management emergency stock process?
Last year Ocado stopped doing bottled water to allow an additional delivery or 2 per van.
A lack of bottled water really doesn't surprise me if deliveries are an issue. This isn't a country where bottled water is required as drinking water.
When I'm in power I'll be tough on bottled water, and tough on the causes of bottled water. It's a wholly unnecessary indulgence. Environmentally damaging as well, occupying lorry/road space, and producing huge amounts of waste plastic. When travelling, empty bottles cam be filled from the tap.
Of course, I wouldn't ban it - far too illiberal. But I'd tax it until it cost, say, £20 per bottle of water, and if the rich want to throw their money away, fine.
Lidl - almost no bottled water. Freezer shelves looking pretty bare. I got one of the last pizzas and last bag of oven chips. There was also post-it notes stickered on various shelves and freezer cabinets with handwritten numbers like 7/8. Not seen before: some kind of management emergency stock process?
The 7/8 is pricing prep for the impending reversal of monetary decimalisation. We can be free of all that base-10 foreign crap now we're out of the EU
My issue with STV et al is that even I, an obvious genius, get confused about how it works.
Surprisingly, perhaps, I still support FPTP at Westminster. NZ is the only country I am know of to have moved from FPTP to PR and I am well aware of the pros and cons of both.
In local government, though, FPTP is an abomination.
The government’s plan to ban PR across the country is spiteful and anti-democratic, and a form of gerrymandering.
Isn't the ban because it currently wouldn't have impacted any result and multiple elections have shown that people don't understand how to actually vote correctly.
Sorry, people don't understand how to express their preferences by listing 1, 2, 3?
That has been a problem on the supplementary vote papers - people were doing exactly that when they are supposed to put a cross in the second column on the other side of the form.
Because we have different elections with different formats people have a habit of getting things wrong. And as anyone who has worked on design / IT support will tell you, this is true, even if you show them exactly what they need to do.
Damn users, being bloody humans who can’t follow instructions and forget how they’ve been told to behave!
My issue with STV et al is that even I, an obvious genius, get confused about how it works.
Surprisingly, perhaps, I still support FPTP at Westminster. NZ is the only country I am know of to have moved from FPTP to PR and I am well aware of the pros and cons of both.
In local government, though, FPTP is an abomination.
The government’s plan to ban PR across the country is spiteful and anti-democratic, and a form of gerrymandering.
Isn't the ban because it currently wouldn't have impacted any result and multiple elections have shown that people don't understand how to actually vote correctly.
Sorry, people don't understand how to express their preferences by listing 1, 2, 3?
That has been a problem on the supplementary vote papers - people were doing exactly that when they are supposed to put a cross in the second column on the other side of the form.
Because we have different elections with different formats people have a habit of getting things wrong. And as anyone who has worked on design / IT support will tell you, this is true, even if you show them exactly what they need to do.
But isn't there a "clear and obvious intenttion" rule? You can vote with a tick or a smiley rather than a cross? Surely 1, 2, 3 falls into that category? Or am I missing something?
Partly it's about the layout of the ballot paper, but also it's a problem with the SV system, Brit style. The way the votes are counted is that first preferences are counted, then the top two enter a runoff. If your first vote wasn't for one of them and your second vote was, that gets added.
So your second vote isn't really about second choice, it's about "of the two likely finalists, which do you prefer?" Assuming that you can predict who the two likely finalists are. (Which might have been some cynical gaming back when the system was introduced- it rewards ubernerds who unpick the system and the local political dynamic over everyone else. SV with a bit more campaigning and everyone voting once they know who is in the runoff... different matter.)
Just been to my local Aldi. As always, full shelves, no shortages. Actually sweetcorn was out of stock but that's the only thing in the supermarket and I was looking.
Could it simply be that the stock management of certain supermarkets is ... quasi-effective?
This post from Guido Gianasso (Professor of Leadership at HEC Paris in Qatar / Honorary Consul of Romania in Geneva) has flashed up in my feed and currently has over 103,000 likes and loves, with several across my network. There isn't a single critical comment beneath it.
Read it, and you'll see he's co-opted Emma - with a MASSIVE picture of her on the post- to support his own pre-existing political views. He manages to crowbar Brexit in and also has the audacity to say that Emma is not British and is evidence that national identities are fading, which he thinks is a good thing, as he feels they can only be ethnocentrically based. This is fairly typical of the views advertised on the professional networking site LinkedIn and the "global citizens" that inhabit it:
"EMMA RADUCANU AND THE ILLUSION OF NATIONS
A new tennis champion has emerged. It is fascinating to observe the dynamics taking place around this young lady.
Emma's father is Romanian. Her name is Romanian and she speaks Romanian fluently. Hence she is considered Romanian by millions of Romanians. But Emma has actually never lived in Romania.
Emma's mother is Chinese. She speaks fluent Chinese, as a recent video available on YouTube shows. Hence she is considered a Chinese hero by millions of Chinese, who seem to forget that the PRC discourages international marriages.
Emma was born in Canada but has lived most of her life and trained in the UK. Hence she is considered British by most Britons and was publicly congratulated by the Queen. But the British public that now celebrates her success is the same that voted Brexit with the very objective to make it difficult for East Europeans such as Emma and her father to live in the UK.
The reality is that Emma is not Romanian, Chinese or British. She is much more. She is the outstanding result of the combination of Romanian talent, Chinese work ethics and British openness and sport infrastructure.
At a time when many countries are going back to very ethnocentric models and policies, Emma is the best evidence that National identities are fading and we must embrace a geocentric mindset. Emma Raducanu is the future of humankind."
It would be interesting to learn what Emma believes
I think I'd enjoy hearing from Emma on any subject but I sincerely hope she manages to stay out of politics so she can continue to focus on and enjoy her tennis.
What really pisses me off is people trying to exploit her success for their own political ends and attributing their own views to her. They seem to view her as a migrant first and a Brit second.
I find that insulting.
Thats what you get when stopping migration is and has been the singular political issue of this generation. People don't want migrants, especially those seen as low skilled and definitely don't want their kids. Until the kids grow up to become a world champion runner or tennis sensation.
Then they don't want migrant kids, but Mo / Emma are different. Its the same mindset as the "I don't like blacks but Frank Bruno is alright as he's world champion" comments you'd hear in the past. It'll never go away sadly.
How about - radical idea - we accept migrants as Brits if they self-identify as such. People like Emma Raducanu have a choice of nationalities and we should be delighted that they chose to be British. When people move to America for work so many of them naturalise - we could have been doing the same for the last few decades with Europeans instead of treating them with such disdain.
This old canard. Most people want controlled migration - neither no migration or uncontrolled migration.
Why is that so hard to understand?
People don’t want to understand they just want to apply their personal prejudices to a debate. Migration is not a binary all or nothing choice. People support migration. During the referendum The leave campaign made it clear they would rather have skilled migrants from commonwealth countries than unskilled migrants from the EU. It was the controlled element some people wilfully misrepresent.
What the majority of people want from an immigration system, is priority given to those who can be net contributors, who have skills we need, or are investors in Britian.
Bringing in six million mostly low-paid service workers, to live in crowded accommodation, reducing productivity, holding wages down and putting pressure on public services - that was the problem.
It doesn’t matter who comes from where, it was the all-or-nothing approach of the EU that drove the vote to leave.
I'm not convinced by any part of "six million mostly low-paid service workers". I think it is a bit of a straw man.
Those workers have had a key place in bringing Eastern European economies towards the Western European standard - many are returning, and many are staying. There are many in the City, and plumbers and construction workers etc are not low paid.
I'm just selling a bungalow to a couple with so many Zs in their name that it is a challenge for me to pronounce. They don't seem to be having any trouble financing it.
Even on the "low paid" claim, we have had one of the highest minimum wage levels in Europe for a good few years, now. The two obviously higher ones are Switzerland and Luxemburg iirc.
Yes it was a slightly flippant comment, there are of course a number of professionals and skilled tradesmen from the EU in the UK, as there are from almost every country in the world.
Having one of the highest minimum wages in Europe was a huge pull factor for the unskilled though.
My issue with STV et al is that even I, an obvious genius, get confused about how it works.
Surprisingly, perhaps, I still support FPTP at Westminster. NZ is the only country I am know of to have moved from FPTP to PR and I am well aware of the pros and cons of both.
In local government, though, FPTP is an abomination.
The government’s plan to ban PR across the country is spiteful and anti-democratic, and a form of gerrymandering.
Isn't the ban because it currently wouldn't have impacted any result and multiple elections have shown that people don't understand how to actually vote correctly.
Sorry, people don't understand how to express their preferences by listing 1, 2, 3?
That has been a problem on the supplementary vote papers - people were doing exactly that when they are supposed to put a cross in the second column on the other side of the form.
Because we have different elections with different formats people have a habit of getting things wrong. And as anyone who has worked on design / IT support will tell you, this is true, even if you show them exactly what they need to do.
Damn users, being bloody humans who can’t follow instructions and forget how they’ve been told to behave!
The entertaining bit is that you need to ensure examples don't reflect the actual voting form. If they do, you discover 5% of voters will duplicate exactly what is on the voting form instead of voting for the actual candidate.
My issue with STV et al is that even I, an obvious genius, get confused about how it works.
Surprisingly, perhaps, I still support FPTP at Westminster. NZ is the only country I am know of to have moved from FPTP to PR and I am well aware of the pros and cons of both.
In local government, though, FPTP is an abomination.
The government’s plan to ban PR across the country is spiteful and anti-democratic, and a form of gerrymandering.
Isn't the ban because it currently wouldn't have impacted any result and multiple elections have shown that people don't understand how to actually vote correctly.
Sorry, people don't understand how to express their preferences by listing 1, 2, 3?
That has been a problem on the supplementary vote papers - people were doing exactly that when they are supposed to put a cross in the second column on the other side of the form.
Because we have different elections with different formats people have a habit of getting things wrong. And as anyone who has worked on design / IT support will tell you, this is true, even if you show them exactly what they need to do.
Damn users, being bloody humans who can’t follow instructions and forget how they’ve been told to behave!
The entertaining bit is that you need to ensure examples don't reflect the actual voting form. If they do, you discover 5% of voters will duplicate exactly what is on the voting form instead of voting for the actual candidate.
I had to laugh at bit at Trudeau's triumphalist tone. I mean, he has still won, if you are PM at the end it's a win, but he could have dialled back the rhetoric just a tad given it was a stand still election. Not that hed say as much directly, but less of the flowery celebration perhaps.
Just been to my local Aldi. As always, full shelves, no shortages. Actually sweetcorn was out of stock but that's the only thing in the supermarket and I was looking.
Could it simply be that the stock management of certain supermarkets is ... quasi-effective?
A relative is running a business which involves couriers and local delivery.
Apparently there are considerable variations in pay and conditions in the truck/van delivery business.
(a) Some organisations seem to have the view that there should be an infinite number of drivers out there ready to work at what ever work conditions they, the hiring company wishes. And if that is not correct, reality is wrong.
(b) Others have adapted by trying to find out what it is that the drivers want. And it is not always just more money - looking at you, Amazon.
Quite a few courier outfits have collapsed because of (a)
Just been to my local Aldi. As always, full shelves, no shortages. Actually sweetcorn was out of stock but that's the only thing in the supermarket and I was looking.
Could it simply be that the stock management of certain supermarkets is ... quasi-effective?
Or that high volume urban stores are prioritised for deliveries? Stores here have apology notices up prominently. Only one I've seen in Newcastle was in KFC.
My issue with STV et al is that even I, an obvious genius, get confused about how it works.
Surprisingly, perhaps, I still support FPTP at Westminster. NZ is the only country I am know of to have moved from FPTP to PR and I am well aware of the pros and cons of both.
In local government, though, FPTP is an abomination.
The government’s plan to ban PR across the country is spiteful and anti-democratic, and a form of gerrymandering.
Isn't the ban because it currently wouldn't have impacted any result and multiple elections have shown that people don't understand how to actually vote correctly.
Sorry, people don't understand how to express their preferences by listing 1, 2, 3?
That has been a problem on the supplementary vote papers - people were doing exactly that when they are supposed to put a cross in the second column on the other side of the form.
Because we have different elections with different formats people have a habit of getting things wrong. And as anyone who has worked on design / IT support will tell you, this is true, even if you show them exactly what they need to do.
But isn't there a "clear and obvious intenttion" rule? You can vote with a tick or a smiley rather than a cross? Surely 1, 2, 3 falls into that category? Or am I missing something?
Partly it's about the layout of the ballot paper, but also it's a problem with the SV system, Brit style. The way the votes are counted is that first preferences are counted, then the top two enter a runoff. If your first vote wasn't for one of them and your second vote was, that gets added.
So your second vote isn't really about second choice, it's about "of the two likely finalists, which do you prefer?" Assuming that you can predict who the two likely finalists are. (Which might have been some cynical gaming back when the system was introduced- it rewards ubernerds who unpick the system and the local political dynamic over everyone else. SV with a bit more campaigning and everyone voting once they know who is in the runoff... different matter.)
Yep - the UK version of SV without a second separate election could be summed up as
Have your protest vote, then pick the least worst of the likely winners.
Between that and a voting slip people couldn't understand it had no real value beyond an attempt to say we use a (completely useless, utterly insane) form of PR for elections.
I had to laugh at bit at Trudeau's triumphalist tone. I mean, he has still won, if you are PM at the end it's a win, but he could have dialled back the rhetoric just a tad given it was a stand still election. Not that hed say as much directly, but less of the flowery celebration perhaps.
I haven't followed, but did he have an attack of May sickness when calling it?
Lidl - almost no bottled water. Freezer shelves looking pretty bare. I got one of the last pizzas and last bag of oven chips. There was also post-it notes stickered on various shelves and freezer cabinets with handwritten numbers like 7/8. Not seen before: some kind of management emergency stock process?
Last year Ocado stopped doing bottled water to allow an additional delivery or 2 per van.
A lack of bottled water really doesn't surprise me if deliveries are an issue. This isn't a country where bottled water is required as drinking water.
When I'm in power I'll be tough on bottled water, and tough on the causes of bottled water. It's a wholly unnecessary indulgence. Environmentally damaging as well, occupying lorry/road space, and producing huge amounts of waste plastic. When travelling, empty bottles cam be filled from the tap.
Of course, I wouldn't ban it - far too illiberal. But I'd tax it until it cost, say, £20 per bottle of water, and if the rich want to throw their money away, fine.
I'm going to get booze off the shelves and back into pubs and off-licences where it belongs. And everything else I don't buy.
Lidl - almost no bottled water. Freezer shelves looking pretty bare. I got one of the last pizzas and last bag of oven chips. There was also post-it notes stickered on various shelves and freezer cabinets with handwritten numbers like 7/8. Not seen before: some kind of management emergency stock process?
Last year Ocado stopped doing bottled water to allow an additional delivery or 2 per van.
A lack of bottled water really doesn't surprise me if deliveries are an issue. This isn't a country where bottled water is required as drinking water.
When I'm in power I'll be tough on bottled water, and tough on the causes of bottled water. It's a wholly unnecessary indulgence. Environmentally damaging as well, occupying lorry/road space, and producing huge amounts of waste plastic. When travelling, empty bottles cam be filled from the tap.
Of course, I wouldn't ban it - far too illiberal. But I'd tax it until it cost, say, £20 per bottle of water, and if the rich want to throw their money away, fine.
You have my vote, sir. Hopefully you will be a wise and just leader.
My issue with STV et al is that even I, an obvious genius, get confused about how it works.
Surprisingly, perhaps, I still support FPTP at Westminster. NZ is the only country I am know of to have moved from FPTP to PR and I am well aware of the pros and cons of both.
In local government, though, FPTP is an abomination.
The government’s plan to ban PR across the country is spiteful and anti-democratic, and a form of gerrymandering.
Isn't the ban because it currently wouldn't have impacted any result and multiple elections have shown that people don't understand how to actually vote correctly.
Sorry, people don't understand how to express their preferences by listing 1, 2, 3?
That has been a problem on the supplementary vote papers - people were doing exactly that when they are supposed to put a cross in the second column on the other side of the form.
Because we have different elections with different formats people have a habit of getting things wrong. And as anyone who has worked on design / IT support will tell you, this is true, even if you show them exactly what they need to do.
Damn users, being bloody humans who can’t follow instructions and forget how they’ve been told to behave!
The entertaining bit is that you need to ensure examples don't reflect the actual voting form. If they do, you discover 5% of voters will duplicate exactly what is on the voting form instead of voting for the actual candidate.
Comments
Will some worthy cases fall on the wrong side of that?
Sure they will, but you have to draw the line somewhere and the alternative is to have no line at all, which won't command public support nor be sustainable.
To go back to Emma Raducanu she does rather make my point. Migration is a binary choice - do we let this person in or not? I assume that we would be happy to let a 2 year old migrate here now with banker parents. Does their career determine her potential? How about if Emma Raducanu 2037 wants to arrives here now with a Romanian parent who will drive a truck? She woudn't be allowed in.
So yes to a points based system and choices. We need people now, we aren't letting them in.
Bringing in six million mostly low-paid service workers, to live in crowded accommodation, reducing productivity, holding wages down and putting pressure on public services - that was the problem.
It doesn’t matter who comes from where, it was the all-or-nothing approach of the EU that drove the vote to leave.
Meanwhile his first child, as so many in S Wales did at the time, went down the mines and, after several years died of the injuries received in an accident. I'm the first of that line never to have spent any time as a coalminer!
It would have no competition, no innovation, no response to democracy. It would end up corrupt and sclerotic. There'd be no way to enact change.
It's not utopian, it's a dystopian nightmare to be avoided.
Generally I'm happy with a flexible approach, varying the number of MPs to fit the boundaries of communities where possible. So that would mean 4 MPs for a Bristol constituency, 3 for Stoke, 5 for Edinburgh. This can open the door to some gerrymandering though, if you have more MPs for each urban constituency than rural ones for example.
It would be good for us to widen the scope of where it was worthwhile for parties to campaign for votes. Give the Tories a chance of winning a seat in Liverpool, and Labour an opportunity in rural Hampshire.
I've been down a mine of course, to be educated, amazed and horrified at the working conditions.
There would be no regulatory or legal diversity. No alternative to challenge its bad practices or decisions. It would be wholly overbearing, highly corrupt, self-interested, have nothing to check it, and would act ruthlessly to defend itself with every apparatus of the resources of the world available.
No true liberal should support it.
The related point is that it's important for many states to accept refugees, because you never know when the state you're in is going to malfunction and you'll need to get out of there for safety and potentially try to fix it from outside.
And the numbers clearly did exceed what the British electorate would tolerate - just look at the inflows (in the millions) from 2004 onwards, and the social changes that occurred around the country as a result.
We didn't have any power to restrict numbers. If we had, that lever would have been used during the Cameron administration and shouted about from the rooftops during the referendum; they knew they had no answer.
It is how we define "service workers" that is the problem we face. Right now you can't migrate to the UK to do such jobs. Yet we have unfillable vacancies. Locals do not want seasonal back-breaking work picking fruit, or shift work in tourism and hospitality, or cleaning jobs in hospitals, or care home work, or driving trucks.
Yes there are issues around pay and conditions and the logistics industry have tried and failed to pay their way out of the problem. In reality there are plenty of jobs that our people refuse to do. The job is meaningless, dull, physical, menial. A huge increase in salary may attract a few but such cash can't be afforded by those companies nor would the upward pressure on wages elsewhere be welcomed.
So we're back to "do we want the jobs done or not". Where you the answer is yes hence the army of foreigners working in the UAE and its neighbours, because there are jobs the locals don't want to do.
Unless night shifts in a meat processing factory suddenly become desirable, we're going to need migrants. My example is always east anglia who voted so heavily for leave having spoken so passionately against the migrants doing the jobs they don't want to do.
There is such a thing as European nationalism and you exhibit it. That you can't see the beam in your own eye while you attack the mote in others, isn't sixth form.
You're incapable of even addressing why since the eighties facts have changed so considerably?
Why if not for European failure from Delors onwards does Europe no longer represent the wealthiest and most prosperous people in the world, like they did in the eighties?
Why is Europe so much smaller, rather than so much bigger, than the USA?
And why we should continue to turn our backs on free trade with the 21st century richest and most prosperous people in the world?
Brexit is the way to achieve what Thatcher wanted in the eighties. Because the facts have changed and stubbornness in the face of changing facts may suit your nationalism but it isn't wise.
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/notes-on-nationalism/
People over history have transferred their nationalistic allegiances upward. Why is that wrong or even surprising?
Will I have time to buy a pie?
Your "social changes" comment. Again with my east anglia example. Heavy leave vote, heavy upset about all the eastern europeans driving the vote. And yet the jobs need filling and nowhere near enough locals want to do them.
Unless we let migration fill the unfillable vacancies we need a wholesale rebuilding of our economy. An anglian meat processor cannot pay the kind of wages needed to attract young locals into endless nightshift factory work. Not unless we all accept vastly more expensive food - or in reality imports. Which leaves us back to being overly-reliant on jobs in the retail and service sectors that can just migrate to wherever is cheapest leaving us stuck.
What I have proposed on here many times before is that we reduce the power of the parties by removing the power of the whips. Treat whipping in the same way we now treat bribing or blackmail - after all that is what it is just in an apparently more acceptable form. Make every vote in Parliament a free vote and make the penalties for trying to coerce MPs to vote a particular way the same as it would be if it were being done by someone outside Parliament.
Inflation warnings
Crops rotting in fields
Empty shelves
GP service no longer working
Northern Irish export collapse
But let’s all get worked up by a random post by a random poster on a random social network site instead.
https://twitter.com/ryangrim/status/1439726034425892865
He is removing power from Parliament and consolidating it in his own hands.
Bonus points for the person who doesn't spot the sponsor of the advert.
The pandemic and its logistical impact are affecting many places. We're also suffering the prolonged tomfoolery of energy policies over decades that focused on green headlines over keeping the lights on.
Wind being intermittent isn't some new discovery, it's an obvious fact that apparently eluded ministers from multiple parties for a long time...
The restrictions are so ludicrous nowadays that even people married to Brits for decades with British children can struggle to move to the UK.
I emigrated to Australia when I was young for a few years. For my Aussie classmates without British citizenship the hoops they need to jump through to get to this country now are insane.
A more liberal but fair immigration system that treats people from the whole planet fairly, instead of ridiculously open for one fraction and ridiculously illiberal for the rest, is an improvement.
I should have added tax hikes and benefits cuts above.
Brexit, Covid, and the government’s “executive project” have conspired to make it a noticeably less congenial place to live.
I am leaving in a few months.
It has forced me to look around a bit and remind myself that London and Britain still have remarkable charm, but many of the things I treasure most are currently in a sad state.
In the modern world, we have people who have transferred their nationalism to things such as environmentalism. People who feel more loyalty to the United States of Greenpeace than anything else...
I to prefer STV or AV. Although a LD, I can think of instances where I would prefer a candidate of an opposing party, although I do not supporting that party. There are a number of posters here from both the right and the left who I would trust with my vote, but not trust the party they support with it ( @kinabalu , @Sandpit , @Sean_F , @TSE , etc, etc )
As long as an elector has a preference for one candidate over another they mark their ballot paper accordingly 1, 2, 3 etc until they don't mind. This determines how the vote count works.
If there are 3 MPs to be elected for a largish constituency (say South Hampshire) I could choose the best candidates and mix parties if I wanted to - or order those from my favourite party.
Once my vote has gone towards electing my first preference there may still be value in it if (s)he was very popular so it may also go towards electing my 2nd preference. Also if my 1st preference is eliminated my vote isn't wasted it could go towards helping my subsequent preference across the line.
Surprisingly, perhaps, I still support FPTP at Westminster. NZ is the only country I am know of to have moved from FPTP to PR and I am well aware of the pros and cons of both.
In local government, though, FPTP is an abomination.
The government’s plan to ban PR across the country is spiteful and anti-democratic, and a form of gerrymandering.
I wonder how many use the transfers all the way down. e.g. If a seat in NI assembly has 3 DUP candidates how many would stop at 3?
The ban is because the right wing vote is concentrated with the Tory Party, and the left wing vote divided between Labour, Green and the Lib Dems.
FPTP therefore favours the Tories, in general.
But it is full of woke clickbait every time I log on. Plus, woke is the new centrist.
Yes I do know that a lot of customers are non-woke but targetting them has a habit of upsetting people who know how linkedIn's banning algorithms work.
In 2008 Boris beat Ken by 6.2% in the first round and 6.4% in the second.
In 2012 Boris beat Ken by 3.7% in the first round and 3.0% in the second.
But it highlights the key structural benefit of FPTP- it rewards parties that sort out their coalition before the election, rather than afterwards. Which is good for getting more informed consent from voters.
Whether that's worth the perversities of FPTP outcomes, I'm not sure. SV with a single election day (contrast with the French system) is pretty terrible, though.
If over £30k then can't they sponsor a migrant for a visa if that's required?
If under £30k then perhaps they can try paying more in first instance? Maybe people will take the job if it's not for minimum wage?
https://twitter.com/HerveGrandjean/status/1440251833021128706
In many ways, the performance of the Attack submarine offered by France to the Australians was better than that offered by a nuclear submarine.
...
The Australian choice: bad news for... the Australians.
https://twitter.com/Barton_options/status/1440160147578384403
I thought I understood a bit about the issue but the reality is that real estate is 20% of the chinese economy because it's worth it.
For reference (as it may help explain the scale of the issue) 1yuan is currently worth 11pence.
I don't generally log into Linked In but when I did I always used to get a lot of career-self-improvement-ish worthiness showing up. I turned off the algorithm for twitter and just use most-recent first, which works a lot better for me. For Facebook I've been trying to train the algorithms to only show me ads with tits in, but the AI worked out that I ordered a 1980s vintage k-truck and keep trying to sell me more of those (which might just work tbf, there are so many great k-trucks) and also somebody out there really, really wants me to work in a factory in Kumagaya.
😂
https://order-order.com/2021/09/21/canadian-minister-who-called-taliban-our-brothers-loses-seat/
Lidl - almost no bottled water. Freezer shelves looking pretty bare. I got one of the last pizzas and last bag of oven chips. There was also post-it notes stickered on various shelves and freezer cabinets with handwritten numbers like 7/8. Not seen before: some kind of management emergency stock process?
https://www.politico.eu/article/coronavirus-vaccine-europe-astrazeneca-macron-quasi-ineffective-older-pe/
Because we have different elections with different formats people have a habit of getting things wrong. And as anyone who has worked on design / IT support will tell you, this is true, even if you show them exactly what they need to do.
When the wind turbines fail to produce sufficient energy to power supermarket freezers, the lack of stock will ensure no meat is spoiled. It's the new green strategy.
A lack of bottled water really doesn't surprise me if deliveries are an issue. This isn't a country where bottled water is required as drinking water.
Surely 1, 2, 3 falls into that category? Or am I missing something?
Those workers have had a key place in bringing Eastern European economies towards the Western European standard - many are returning, and many are staying. There are many in the City, and plumbers and construction workers etc are not low paid.
I'm just selling a bungalow to a couple with so many Zs in their name that it is a challenge for me to pronounce. They don't seem to be having any trouble financing it.
Even on the "low paid" claim, we have had one of the highest minimum wage levels in Europe for a good few years, now. The two obviously higher ones are Switzerland and Luxemburg iirc.
Of course, I wouldn't ban it - far too illiberal. But I'd tax it until it cost, say, £20 per bottle of water, and if the rich want to throw their money away, fine.
The way the votes are counted is that first preferences are counted, then the top two enter a runoff. If your first vote wasn't for one of them and your second vote was, that gets added.
So your second vote isn't really about second choice, it's about "of the two likely finalists, which do you prefer?" Assuming that you can predict who the two likely finalists are. (Which might have been some cynical gaming back when the system was introduced- it rewards ubernerds who unpick the system and the local political dynamic over everyone else. SV with a bit more campaigning and everyone voting once they know who is in the runoff... different matter.)
Could it simply be that the stock management of certain supermarkets is ... quasi-effective?
Having one of the highest minimum wages in Europe was a huge pull factor for the unskilled though.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36411509
Apparently there are considerable variations in pay and conditions in the truck/van delivery business.
(a) Some organisations seem to have the view that there should be an infinite number of drivers out there ready to work at what ever work conditions they, the hiring company wishes. And if that is not correct, reality is wrong.
(b) Others have adapted by trying to find out what it is that the drivers want. And it is not always just more money - looking at you, Amazon.
Quite a few courier outfits have collapsed because of (a)
Stores here have apology notices up prominently.
Only one I've seen in Newcastle was in KFC.
Have your protest vote, then pick the least worst of the likely winners.
Between that and a voting slip people couldn't understand it had no real value beyond an attempt to say we use a (completely useless, utterly insane) form of PR for elections.