Mr. Walker, she thrice put it to the Commons and a combination of Conservative MPs rebelling and the Labour Party (and other opposition MPs) en masse voted it down.
I said at the time that when you've got MPs who really like the EU and MPs who really dislike the EU voting the same way, someone's screwing it up.
The dumb soft pro-EU MPs of the Commons rejected everything and guaranteed that we'd leave on harder terms. It was epitomised by the lauded Grieve shrieking it was 'too late' when he was given the exact concession he'd asked for, but still didn't vote for it.
I know this is going over old ground, but people generally should try to at least learn something from it. To tie it into the football story, pointing at people and telling them they're wicked for disliking the EU, or a gesture associated with iconoclast barbarians, isn't going to persuade them. The Little Englander nonsense from Cameron was dumb as hell, yet there were plenty of pro-EU types here tittering about it.
Absolutely the "too late" remark was peak hubris.
The pro-EU MPs swallowed their own spin hook, line and sinker and thought they would win and overturn Brexit entirely rather than compromise on a BRINO Backstop that effectively kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union with the EU having a veto on us ever leaving it.
Seeing Grieve kicked out of the party after his behaviour, then comprehensively thrashed at Beaconsfield and an hard rather than soft Brexit follow was really enjoyable.
I actually can’t remember those tumultuous moments.
The key prize for Remainers (rather than pro-EU which probably describes very few) was a second vote.
May refused to concede that.
There was a clear majority for a softish Brexit, but the various parties could not coalesce and let the loons (mostly on the Brexity side) win.
This is Mark Francois’s Brexit: petty, painful, and underpinned by inchoate fantasies about “de Jarmins”.
Those in favour of the second referendum couldn’t see past that outcome, which led to sub-optimal game playing.
If Corbyn had persuaded a hundred MPs to abstain the meaningful vote in an ambush, he’d have torn the government (and the Conservative party) in half. Instead, by continually voting it down, he gave them enough space to reinvent themselves under a new leader, with the worst possible outcome - a thumping election defeat and Brexit happening anyway.
That is a fair assessment. A lot of people give Boris Johnson the "credit" for Brexit, and while I don't like him and think his support for it disingenuous, he did play his part, but the real credit/blame (delete according to view) for Brexit goes to Corbyn.
No. That is taking agency away from Boris. Who is to blame for Brexit, and indeed “this” Brexit. Who are the “guilty men”?
I would say, in order:
1. Boris 2. Farage 3. Corbyn 4. May 5. Gove
Boris doesn't deserve any "blame" he deserves "credit" for getting the Brexit he wanted - and blocking the Brexit he didn't. Same for Farage and Gove, this was far more a Brexit they wanted.
"Blame" needs to be assigned for when things go wrong, as far as Boris etc is concerned its not gone wrong. If you are assigning blame you need to look not at those who achieved victory, but those who grasped defeat from the jaws of victory.
So the blame surely should go:
1. Corbyn. 2. May. 3. Grieve. 4. Jo "Next Prime Minister" Swinson. 5. The Independent Group.
Boris did not get the Brexit he wanted. He did however become PM which was his sole objective.
As for blame, I simply write from the perspective of someone who remains clear that Brexit was a historical and potentially fatal mis-turn for the U.K.
He got almost exactly the Brexit he campaigned for in 2016 and united virtually every British leaver behind him 🤷♂️
And for blame you need to blame those who share that perspective and lost.
After Brazil lost the World Cup final 1-7 to Germany would anyone in Brazil have said that "blame" for the defeat was Tony Kroos' fault - or say that blame belonged to Brazil's Manager, Captain and Goalkeeper etc?
Haven't been listening to Hancock’s appearance this morning before the select committee, but Adam Boulton's tweet is interesting
'This hearing is not the roasting for Matt Hancock that Cummings tried to set up'
Either Hancock is telling the truth, and Cummings was lying, or vice-versa. He must be confident Cummings didn't take notes.
Can't both be true? Hancock says we did X because Y which no longer applies, whereas Cummings says we did X because Hancock's a twat. I've not got a checklist on front of me so my impression could be wrong but let's wait for those who have.
Have we learnt nothing about writing off a source just because we don't like it?
No, absolutely not. I will not recognise the Canary, or the Mail, or ZeroHedge as a credible source.
If there's a genuine story then it will be reported from credible sources.
This has nothing to do with what we like. I dislike the politics of the Guardian and the i but I recognise both of them as credible sources on the left, just as the Telegraph is a credible source on the right.
The Guardian exploit many of the same tricks as the Mail, where they conveniently miss out something pertinent.
Quite. The idea that the Guardian is reliable on an issue that really engages them - anything to do with race, Trump, gender, Wokeness, Brexit - is laughable. They are just as bad as the Mail. As has often been said, the two papers are eerie mirror images of each other
Here's a good example
"Ignore the conspiracy theories: scientists know Covid-19 wasn't created in a lab
By Peter Daszak
"Instead of following false claims, we should focus our efforts on the regions where the next pandemic is likely to emerge"
A piece that denounces lab leak as a conspiracy theory, when it fact the opposite is true. The real conspirators were trying to SQUASH the lab leak hypothesis, banning it from Facebook etc
And look at the end:
"This article was amended on 11 June 2020 to make clear the writer’s past work with researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology."
The Guardian originally ran this as a think piece by an apparently neutral scientist. They didn't tell their readers the author worked, and is still working, with the Wuhan Lab, so might just have a bit of an agenda
Accompanied by a cartoon of a crying white woman, it claims that mainstream feminism supports 'the root causes of sexual violence' and even appears to suggest that reporting rape is 'contemptible'.
----
I wonder who makes who a big chunk of their donations?
None of this stuff makes sense anymore.
They'd do well to focus on their staff sexually exploiting those who are in their care, some of whom I suspect hide behind incoherent Wokery like this.
Oxfam have a brass neck to be commenting on these issues at all, given that their record is so vile.
Other charities have had to close down for far less.
I actually see this policy as a continuing part of Oxfam's inability to reconcile its humanitarian existence with its proven track record of cementing white superiority to the extent that it was facilitating sexual crimes on a scale not seen outside the established churches.
FPT - yes, there are cases here too (including my plumber).
But, if they're not progressing to significant numbers of hospitalisations then it may be best to ensure vaccination, use a bit of common sense and let it wash.
From previous threads, what I have been saying for a while is -
1) We are not at herd immunity(*) for COVID 2) It will be very difficult to reach herd immunity. It may well not be possible. 3) Unlocking will therefore cause a rise in cases. 4) The hope/intention is that the cases will not lead to a rise in serious illness/deaths, due to vaccinations 5) The political problem is vulnerable groups
*Meaning R is below 1 for no restrictions. COVID dies out by itself.
Won't herd immunity eventually arrive one way or another by the remaining unvaxed population getting infected until the threshold is hit? Barring significant reinfection, that's what one would expect to occur.
Say we achieve 90% of adults vaxed at 90% efficacy and the threshold is 95% of adults (I'm being simplistic here, and ignoring the kids - they make the maths more complex, ), then one would expect that about 14% of adults (skewed heavily towards the unvaxed) would eventually catch it, then immunity should be reached. So long as that vax gap isn't too big and ideally skews young, this doesn't sound like too big a crisis to me - and as other commenters have noted, better to get it over with in the summer than let it go in the autumn.
Accompanied by a cartoon of a crying white woman, it claims that mainstream feminism supports 'the root causes of sexual violence' and even appears to suggest that reporting rape is 'contemptible'.
----
I wonder who makes who a big chunk of their donations?
None of this stuff makes sense anymore.
They'd do well to focus on their staff sexually exploiting those who are in their care, some of whom I suspect hide behind incoherent Wokery like this.
Oxfam have a brass neck to be commenting on these issues at all, given that their record is so vile.
They should lose their charitable status.
At the least be disbarred for five years from receiving a penny from state funds.
As Michael Beloff put it (in a different context) "It's like receiving a lecture on moral philosophy form the devil."
Mr. Walker, she thrice put it to the Commons and a combination of Conservative MPs rebelling and the Labour Party (and other opposition MPs) en masse voted it down.
I said at the time that when you've got MPs who really like the EU and MPs who really dislike the EU voting the same way, someone's screwing it up.
The dumb soft pro-EU MPs of the Commons rejected everything and guaranteed that we'd leave on harder terms. It was epitomised by the lauded Grieve shrieking it was 'too late' when he was given the exact concession he'd asked for, but still didn't vote for it.
I know this is going over old ground, but people generally should try to at least learn something from it. To tie it into the football story, pointing at people and telling them they're wicked for disliking the EU, or a gesture associated with iconoclast barbarians, isn't going to persuade them. The Little Englander nonsense from Cameron was dumb as hell, yet there were plenty of pro-EU types here tittering about it.
Absolutely the "too late" remark was peak hubris.
The pro-EU MPs swallowed their own spin hook, line and sinker and thought they would win and overturn Brexit entirely rather than compromise on a BRINO Backstop that effectively kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union with the EU having a veto on us ever leaving it.
Seeing Grieve kicked out of the party after his behaviour, then comprehensively thrashed at Beaconsfield and an hard rather than soft Brexit follow was really enjoyable.
I actually can’t remember those tumultuous moments.
The key prize for Remainers (rather than pro-EU which probably describes very few) was a second vote.
May refused to concede that.
There was a clear majority for a softish Brexit, but the various parties could not coalesce and let the loons (mostly on the Brexity side) win.
This is Mark Francois’s Brexit: petty, painful, and underpinned by inchoate fantasies about “de Jarmins”.
Those in favour of the second referendum couldn’t see past that outcome, which led to sub-optimal game playing.
If Corbyn had persuaded a hundred MPs to abstain the meaningful vote in an ambush, he’d have torn the government (and the Conservative party) in half. Instead, by continually voting it down, he gave them enough space to reinvent themselves under a new leader, with the worst possible outcome - a thumping election defeat and Brexit happening anyway.
That is a fair assessment. A lot of people give Boris Johnson the "credit" for Brexit, and while I don't like him and think his support for it disingenuous, he did play his part, but the real credit/blame (delete according to view) for Brexit goes to Corbyn.
No. That is taking agency away from Boris. Who is to blame for Brexit, and indeed “this” Brexit. Who are the “guilty men”?
I would say, in order:
1. Boris 2. Farage 3. Corbyn 4. May 5. Gove
Boris doesn't deserve any "blame" he deserves "credit" for getting the Brexit he wanted - and blocking the Brexit he didn't. Same for Farage and Gove, this was far more a Brexit they wanted.
"Blame" needs to be assigned for when things go wrong, as far as Boris etc is concerned its not gone wrong. If you are assigning blame you need to look not at those who achieved victory, but those who grasped defeat from the jaws of victory.
So the blame surely should go:
1. Corbyn. 2. May. 3. Grieve. 4. Jo "Next Prime Minister" Swinson. 5. The Independent Group.
Boris did not get the Brexit he wanted. He did however become PM which was his sole objective.
As for blame, I simply write from the perspective of someone who remains clear that Brexit was a historical and potentially fatal mis-turn for the U.K.
He got almost exactly the Brexit he campaigned for in 2016 and united virtually every British leaver behind him 🤷♂️
And for blame you need to blame those who share that perspective and lost.
After Brazil lost the World Cup final 1-7 to Germany would anyone in Brazil have said that "blame" for the defeat was Tony Kroos' fault - or say that blame belonged to Brazil's Manager, Captain and Goalkeeper etc?
Boris promised all sorts of guff in 2016 and continues to do so. Useful idiots continue to enable him.
Interesting. Not having the tables in front of me are trans people really "one of the most discriminated against" in the UK?
I suppose if the proportion of trans people who are discriminated against is higher that the proportion of other minorities then perhaps. Who has the stats?
I mean of course one trans person discriminated against is one too much but what a strange thing for SKS to say.
Impolitic perhaps, but not strange, since it's quite likely true.
You won't find any 'tables' since for reasons which ought to be obvious, it's not a group easy for statisticians to identify even if it were a priority for them, which it hasn't been.
Even the government's own publications suggest as much. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/721642/GEO-LGBT-factsheet.pdf How many trans people are there? We don’t know. No robust data on the UK trans population exists. We tentatively estimate that there are approximately 200,000-500,000 trans people in the UK. The Office for National Statistics is researching whether and how to develop a population estimate. Facts and Figures 41% of trans men and trans women responding to a Stonewall survey said they had experienced a hate crime or incident because of their gender identity in the last 12 months. They also found that 25% of trans people had experienced homelessness at some point in their lives. Our national LGBT survey found similar results, with 67% of trans respondents saying they had avoided being open about their gender identity for fear of a negative reaction from others...
I'd be wary about believing what Stonewall issues these days on this topic since they give out misleading and incorrect advice on what the law on sex-based rights actually is. This ought to be a bigger scandal than it is, especially given that they are paid by a lot of government departments and other big companies to issue advice. Lying about what the law says in order to suit a particular agenda is utterly disgraceful.
This is a constant GC talking point: that Stonewall gave incorrect & misleading advice on the law on sex based rights.
Can you point to the actual text that you believe overstepped the legal stipulation? I’d like to compare it with the recent judgement in the High Court where the attempt to have a judicial review of the EHRC guidance on the Equality Act & it’s implications was refused by the judge on the grounds that the EHRC’s interpretation of the law was the correct one.
“Schools, colleges and settings should ensure that a trans child or young person is supported to use the toilets and changing rooms they feel most comfortable with, including the facilities matching their gender.
Under the Equality Act a trans child or young person can use the toilets and changing rooms that match their gender.
Under the Act, a school can only prevent a trans child or young person from using the facilities matching their gender if they can demonstrate that doing so is a ‘proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim’, which is a high legal bar to clear. Schools, colleges and settings should also support trans children and young people to use gender-neutral facilities or a private space, if that is what they prefer. The most important thing is to talk to the child or young person rather than making assumptions about the facilities they would like to use.”
Which seems in line with the judgement in AEA vs EHRC - i.e. this is a “should”, not a “must” & exceptions can & do apply - but it’s posible that this is not the original document & that Stonewall has (rightly if so) updated the text since the judgement in that case was published.
There is this. The report for Essex University concluded that Stonewall was misrepresenting the law on free speech/
Have we learnt nothing about writing off a source just because we don't like it?
No, absolutely not. I will not recognise the Canary, or the Mail, or ZeroHedge as a credible source.
If there's a genuine story then it will be reported from credible sources.
This has nothing to do with what we like. I dislike the politics of the Guardian and the i but I recognise both of them as credible sources on the left, just as the Telegraph is a credible source on the right.
The Guardian exploit many of the same tricks as the Mail, where they conveniently miss out something pertinent.
Quite. The idea that the Guardian is reliable on an issue that really engages them - anything to do with race, Trump, gender, Wokeness, Brexit - is laughable. They are just as bad as the Mail. As has often been said, the two papers are eerie mirror images of each other
Here's a good example
"Ignore the conspiracy theories: scientists know Covid-19 wasn't created in a lab
By Peter Daszak
"Instead of following false claims, we should focus our efforts on the regions where the next pandemic is likely to emerge"
A piece that denounces lab leak as a conspiracy theory, when it fact the opposite is true. The real conspirators were trying to SQUASH the lab leak hypothesis, banning it from Facebook etc
And look at the end:
"This article was amended on 11 June 2020 to make clear the writer’s past work with researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology."
The Guardian originally ran this as a think piece by an apparently neutral scientist. They didn't tell their readers the author worked, and is still working, with the Wuhan Lab, so might just have a bit of an agenda
lol. It's presented as a statement of scientific facts, with multiple links to "evidence" - which turn out to be a dubious paper written by K G Andersen, the guy who said to Fauci the virus was potentially engineered, then weirdly changed his mind about 6 hours later, then deleted 4000 tweets, then deleted his Twitter account
Have we learnt nothing about writing off a source just because we don't like it?
No, absolutely not. I will not recognise the Canary, or the Mail, or ZeroHedge as a credible source.
If there's a genuine story then it will be reported from credible sources.
This has nothing to do with what we like. I dislike the politics of the Guardian and the i but I recognise both of them as credible sources on the left, just as the Telegraph is a credible source on the right.
"..the Telegraph is a credible source on the right." LOL! Your gullibility index has just shot off the scale.
I would say that the Telegraph has about equal credibility with the Guardian.
Which is not saying much.
The Telegraph more than equals the Guardian for bias but it's way inferior on quality.
FPT - yes, there are cases here too (including my plumber).
But, if they're not progressing to significant numbers of hospitalisations then it may be best to ensure vaccination, use a bit of common sense and let it wash.
From previous threads, what I have been saying for a while is -
1) We are not at herd immunity(*) for COVID 2) It will be very difficult to reach herd immunity. It may well not be possible. 3) Unlocking will therefore cause a rise in cases. 4) The hope/intention is that the cases will not lead to a rise in serious illness/deaths, due to vaccinations 5) The political problem is vulnerable groups
*Meaning R is below 1 for no restrictions. COVID dies out by itself.
Won't herd immunity eventually arrive one way or another by the remaining unvaxed population getting infected until the threshold is hit? Barring significant reinfection, that's what one would expect to occur.
Say we achieve 90% of adults vaxed at 90% efficacy and the threshold is 95% of adults (I'm being simplistic here, and ignoring the kids - they make the maths more complex, ), then one would expect that about 14% of adults (skewed heavily towards the unvaxed) would eventually catch it, then immunity should be reached. So long as that vax gap isn't too big and ideally skews young, this doesn't sound like too big a crisis to me - and as other commenters have noted, better to get it over with in the summer than let it go in the autumn.
Indeed. By hook (vaccination) or by crook (catching Covid), our population should be good by the autumn.....
This is bad news as the view in Whitehall has long been that only safe to do a big bang reopening if Indian variant is 'only' 30 percent more transmissible than the Kent one
Official estimates expected to conclude today that the Indian variant is 60% more transmissible than Kent strain
In a defence of Starmer, despite his invisibility as LOTO, he is up against Johnson who the voters have perceived has had an inch-perfect, error-free pandemic.
Johnson's genius has been his non-stop campaigning throughout the pandemic (something I was critical of, considering it tasteless during the height of a pandemic where thousands of people were dying each week). The campaigning has paid dividends and has given the impression that vaccine, procurement, programming and delivery were all entirely his gift to the nation, and now we a reaping the benefits- a nation unlocked and Covid vanquished. (Remember, perception, not reality, although the link between Covid and deaths seems over).
I still cannot see past the early stages of a chaotic economy this time next year, which is why I feel Johnson should go very, very, early Spring/ early Autumn 2022. I believe the economic strife will take a year or so to fully make its mark on Johnson, which is why 2024 is too late.
What strife?
Companies are reporting difficulties in filling vacancies. The economy is rebounding strongly. Confidence is pretty much at a record level. That forwards momentum will take us through the end of furlough and allow those whose companies don't reopen post-lockdown to find companies desperate for staff.
At that point the economic strife as well as the health strife will have been dealt with.
Since you're so convinced the economic strife is coming, if I'm right and the economy gets through this fine with the government support laid out then a post-pandemic rebound . . . would that confounding of your expectations make you consider voting for a Boris led Tory Party in 2023/24 or would that never happen?
I have been very specific when economic strife will take effect. You are in cloud cuckoo land if you believe there will be no economic consequences from the last 14 months. Try getting out more, the signs are already here, quality businesses not reopening, and not just retail that has gone online.
Boom first, then bust!
Formerly quality businesses closing down for good happens all the time, especially every recession.
Any formerly quality business not reopening is not that bad macroeconomically if there is a staffing shortage in other businesses at the same time as the employees formerly working it the former business can find alternative jobs to go too.
What would be far worse is businesses reopening but then closing down again due to failure one after another leading to mass unemployment, a downturn, no businesses hiring and a vicious feedback loop. That looked possible a year ago, it doesn't look at all probable now.
Mr. Walker, she thrice put it to the Commons and a combination of Conservative MPs rebelling and the Labour Party (and other opposition MPs) en masse voted it down.
I said at the time that when you've got MPs who really like the EU and MPs who really dislike the EU voting the same way, someone's screwing it up.
The dumb soft pro-EU MPs of the Commons rejected everything and guaranteed that we'd leave on harder terms. It was epitomised by the lauded Grieve shrieking it was 'too late' when he was given the exact concession he'd asked for, but still didn't vote for it.
I know this is going over old ground, but people generally should try to at least learn something from it. To tie it into the football story, pointing at people and telling them they're wicked for disliking the EU, or a gesture associated with iconoclast barbarians, isn't going to persuade them. The Little Englander nonsense from Cameron was dumb as hell, yet there were plenty of pro-EU types here tittering about it.
Absolutely the "too late" remark was peak hubris.
The pro-EU MPs swallowed their own spin hook, line and sinker and thought they would win and overturn Brexit entirely rather than compromise on a BRINO Backstop that effectively kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union with the EU having a veto on us ever leaving it.
Seeing Grieve kicked out of the party after his behaviour, then comprehensively thrashed at Beaconsfield and an hard rather than soft Brexit follow was really enjoyable.
I actually can’t remember those tumultuous moments.
The key prize for Remainers (rather than pro-EU which probably describes very few) was a second vote.
May refused to concede that.
There was a clear majority for a softish Brexit, but the various parties could not coalesce and let the loons (mostly on the Brexity side) win.
This is Mark Francois’s Brexit: petty, painful, and underpinned by inchoate fantasies about “de Jarmins”.
Those in favour of the second referendum couldn’t see past that outcome, which led to sub-optimal game playing.
If Corbyn had persuaded a hundred MPs to abstain the meaningful vote in an ambush, he’d have torn the government (and the Conservative party) in half. Instead, by continually voting it down, he gave them enough space to reinvent themselves under a new leader, with the worst possible outcome - a thumping election defeat and Brexit happening anyway.
That is a fair assessment. A lot of people give Boris Johnson the "credit" for Brexit, and while I don't like him and think his support for it disingenuous, he did play his part, but the real credit/blame (delete according to view) for Brexit goes to Corbyn.
No. That is taking agency away from Boris. Who is to blame for Brexit, and indeed “this” Brexit. Who are the “guilty men”?
I would say, in order:
1. Boris 2. Farage 3. Corbyn 4. May 5. Gove
Boris doesn't deserve any "blame" he deserves "credit" for getting the Brexit he wanted - and blocking the Brexit he didn't. Same for Farage and Gove, this was far more a Brexit they wanted.
"Blame" needs to be assigned for when things go wrong, as far as Boris etc is concerned its not gone wrong. If you are assigning blame you need to look not at those who achieved victory, but those who grasped defeat from the jaws of victory.
So the blame surely should go:
1. Corbyn. 2. May. 3. Grieve. 4. Jo "Next Prime Minister" Swinson. 5. The Independent Group.
Boris did not get the Brexit he wanted. He did however become PM which was his sole objective.
As for blame, I simply write from the perspective of someone who remains clear that Brexit was a historical and potentially fatal mis-turn for the U.K.
He got almost exactly the Brexit he campaigned for in 2016 and united virtually every British leaver behind him 🤷♂️
And for blame you need to blame those who share that perspective and lost.
After Brazil lost the World Cup final 1-7 to Germany would anyone in Brazil have said that "blame" for the defeat was Tony Kroos' fault - or say that blame belonged to Brazil's Manager, Captain and Goalkeeper etc?
Boris promised all sorts of guff in 2016 and continues to do so. Useful idiots continue to enable him.
Perhaps you can give your Top 3 of guff he promised in 2016 which he has let us down on?
Otherwise it seems to me it wasn't guff and he's achieved what he said he would. That you dislike what he said he'd achieve and has done is neither here nor there.
Have we learnt nothing about writing off a source just because we don't like it?
No, absolutely not. I will not recognise the Canary, or the Mail, or ZeroHedge as a credible source.
If there's a genuine story then it will be reported from credible sources.
This has nothing to do with what we like. I dislike the politics of the Guardian and the i but I recognise both of them as credible sources on the left, just as the Telegraph is a credible source on the right.
"..the Telegraph is a credible source on the right." LOL! Your gullibility index has just shot off the scale.
I would say that the Telegraph has about equal credibility with the Guardian.
Which is not saying much.
The Telegraph more than equals the Guardian for bias but it's way inferior on quality.
Both publish plenty of discreditable stories.
Guardian published a comment piece after the Mumbai attacks blaming them on Indian economic success - it was classic piece of victim blaming.
In a defence of Starmer, despite his invisibility as LOTO, he is up against Johnson who the voters have perceived has had an inch-perfect, error-free pandemic.
Johnson's genius has been his non-stop campaigning throughout the pandemic (something I was critical of, considering it tasteless during the height of a pandemic where thousands of people were dying each week). The campaigning has paid dividends and has given the impression that vaccine, procurement, programming and delivery were all entirely his gift to the nation, and now we a reaping the benefits- a nation unlocked and Covid vanquished. (Remember, perception, not reality, although the link between Covid and deaths seems over).
I still cannot see past the early stages of a chaotic economy this time next year, which is why I feel Johnson should go very, very, early Spring/ early Autumn 2022. I believe the economic strife will take a year or so to fully make its mark on Johnson, which is why 2024 is too late.
What strife?
Companies are reporting difficulties in filling vacancies. The economy is rebounding strongly. Confidence is pretty much at a record level. That forwards momentum will take us through the end of furlough and allow those whose companies don't reopen post-lockdown to find companies desperate for staff.
At that point the economic strife as well as the health strife will have been dealt with.
Since you're so convinced the economic strife is coming, if I'm right and the economy gets through this fine with the government support laid out then a post-pandemic rebound . . . would that confounding of your expectations make you consider voting for a Boris led Tory Party in 2023/24 or would that never happen?
I have been very specific when economic strife will take effect. You are in cloud cuckoo land if you believe there will be no economic consequences from the last 14 months. Try getting out more, the signs are already here, quality businesses not reopening, and not just retail that has gone online.
Boom first, then bust!
Formerly quality businesses closing down for good happens all the time, especially every recession.
Any formerly quality business not reopening is not that bad macroeconomically if there is a staffing shortage in other businesses at the same time as the employees formerly working it the former business can find alternative jobs to go too.
What would be far worse is businesses reopening but then closing down again due to failure one after another leading to mass unemployment, a downturn, no businesses hiring and a vicious feedback loop. That looked possible a year ago, it doesn't look at all probable now.
I am looking for a new job and have been approached by recruiters three times in the past week (not sure I want any of them).
There is no doubt there is a boom and it would be depressing if there wasn’t one given the scale of last year’s collapse.
It’s not possible to make prediction much beyond the next six months except that it looks like resource shortages and loss of market access (ie Brexit) will bear down on economic growth potential.
In America, white women are often believed and protected at all costs, even at the expense of black lives. In 1955, it was a white woman who falsely accused 14-year-old Emmett Till of whistling at her in Mississippi, which led to him being brutally beaten and killed. Fast-forward to recent years and we still learn about black people being arrested or assaulted because a white woman called the police unnecessarily. Becky and Karen memes and jokes should be understood in this context, part of a long tradition to use humor to try to cope with the realities of white privilege and anti-blackness.
Or read 'White Privilege' (a New York Times number 1 bestseller), in which Doctor Robin DiAngelo 'sets aside a whole chapter for the self-indulgent tears of white women, so distraught at the country’s legacy of racist terrorism that they force people of color to drink from the firehose of their feelings about it.' At heart, anybody who is surprised that this kind of material is out there just hasn't been paying attention.
We do seem to have reached a point where no issue can be sufficiently hyperbolised. I was just looking at one article which branded Senator Joe Manchin an upholder of Jim Crow, because he doesn't want to end the filibuster. What is striking is the amount of vitriol directed at people who are largely on the same side, but disagree over specifics.
In America, white women are often believed and protected at all costs, even at the expense of black lives. In 1955, it was a white woman who falsely accused 14-year-old Emmett Till of whistling at her in Mississippi, which led to him being brutally beaten and killed. Fast-forward to recent years and we still learn about black people being arrested or assaulted because a white woman called the police unnecessarily. Becky and Karen memes and jokes should be understood in this context, part of a long tradition to use humor to try to cope with the realities of white privilege and anti-blackness.
Or read 'White Privilege' (a New York Times number 1 bestseller), in which Doctor Robin DiAngelo 'sets aside a whole chapter for the self-indulgent tears of white women, so distraught at the country’s legacy of racist terrorism that they force people of color to drink from the firehose of their feelings about it.' At heart, anybody who is surprised that this kind of material is out there just hasn't been paying attention.
That very book has been pushed by EDI advisors as a "must read" in my workplace.
Mr. Walker, she thrice put it to the Commons and a combination of Conservative MPs rebelling and the Labour Party (and other opposition MPs) en masse voted it down.
I said at the time that when you've got MPs who really like the EU and MPs who really dislike the EU voting the same way, someone's screwing it up.
The dumb soft pro-EU MPs of the Commons rejected everything and guaranteed that we'd leave on harder terms. It was epitomised by the lauded Grieve shrieking it was 'too late' when he was given the exact concession he'd asked for, but still didn't vote for it.
I know this is going over old ground, but people generally should try to at least learn something from it. To tie it into the football story, pointing at people and telling them they're wicked for disliking the EU, or a gesture associated with iconoclast barbarians, isn't going to persuade them. The Little Englander nonsense from Cameron was dumb as hell, yet there were plenty of pro-EU types here tittering about it.
Absolutely the "too late" remark was peak hubris.
The pro-EU MPs swallowed their own spin hook, line and sinker and thought they would win and overturn Brexit entirely rather than compromise on a BRINO Backstop that effectively kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union with the EU having a veto on us ever leaving it.
Seeing Grieve kicked out of the party after his behaviour, then comprehensively thrashed at Beaconsfield and an hard rather than soft Brexit follow was really enjoyable.
I actually can’t remember those tumultuous moments.
The key prize for Remainers (rather than pro-EU which probably describes very few) was a second vote.
May refused to concede that.
There was a clear majority for a softish Brexit, but the various parties could not coalesce and let the loons (mostly on the Brexity side) win.
This is Mark Francois’s Brexit: petty, painful, and underpinned by inchoate fantasies about “de Jarmins”.
We'll never know how a second vote would have gone but, if Remain had narrowly won it, the country and our political system would have gone apeshit.
The fall out would have totally dominated our politics for years. With lots of anger and disorder as well.
There was no putting it back into Pandora's Box. The die was cast when we voted Leave, IMHO, and at that point we had to Leave - the best thing Remainers could have done was to influence its form and play the long game.
Cummings predicted civil strife if we'd had a second vote without enacting the first, and I believe he was right
Imagine the anger. The biggest mandate in British democratic history - 17.4 million voters - simply ignored? Overruled? Cancelled?
The stupidity of those that avowed a "people's vote" is quite something. They would also have trashed democracy for generations. Why bother voting for anything if the elite can just ignore it. So we become North Korea. Where elections are charades. With Potemkin referendums. Imagine doing the same in the Scottish indyref. Imagine if that had produced a YES vote (taking it out of the EU at the time), would ANYONE have suggested overruling it?
No. So why was it deemed permissible to overturn Brexit?
The campaign for a 2nd vote was also self-defeating, as you say. If the Remainers had accepted the first vote, then got behind ultra-soft Brexit, we would have got exactly that; they might even have kept Freedom of Movement inside EFTA
How many times do you need to be reminded that hard Brexit was committed to by May in 2016, and indicative votes on a soft Brexit (CU/SM) were voted down as a result of Tory whipping, with Labour overwhelmingly voting for it. It was the Tory obsession with a hard Brexit that prevented a soft Brexit, not Remainer opposition.
I've always admitted this. TMay (a Remainer) is as much to blame as the leftwing Remainers. Her insane red lines boxed her in from the start
However the push for a 2nd vote made Brexiteers worry that the whole thing would be overturned, which persuaded many Leavers to go for a Hard, irreversible Brexit. The two sides conspired to get a Brexit very few originally desired.
It will be a poignant passage in Brexit: the History
No, Brexiteers went for a hard Brexit because that was what they wanted. Was May a Remainer? Barely. She gave Cameron the minimal support necessary in the referendum campaign and immediately adopted these crazy red lines under the influence of Nick Timothy. Most Remainers were pragmatic and pushed for a soft Brexit but were met with inplacable hostility from Leavers, who insisted that they had won and would dictate terms. Personally I would have been OK with a 2nd referendum but a soft Brexit was preferable because it honoured the vote, however imperfect a process that was. By the time the referendum was lost there were no good outcomes.
Yes. The vote sparked a bizarre kulturkamp almost from the beginning, with Remainers and the EU accused of treachery with increasing fervour.
It made me realise I am not British, which I had previously assumed I was.
Yeah I have felt increasingly semi-detached from this country since 2016. I still live here, and probably always will, but I have less and less emotional involvement, like a kind of out of body experience.
In America, white women are often believed and protected at all costs, even at the expense of black lives. In 1955, it was a white woman who falsely accused 14-year-old Emmett Till of whistling at her in Mississippi, which led to him being brutally beaten and killed. Fast-forward to recent years and we still learn about black people being arrested or assaulted because a white woman called the police unnecessarily. Becky and Karen memes and jokes should be understood in this context, part of a long tradition to use humor to try to cope with the realities of white privilege and anti-blackness.
Or read 'White Privilege' (a New York Times number 1 bestseller), in which Doctor Robin DiAngelo 'sets aside a whole chapter for the self-indulgent tears of white women, so distraught at the country’s legacy of racist terrorism that they force people of color to drink from the firehose of their feelings about it.' At heart, anybody who is surprised that this kind of material is out there just hasn't been paying attention.
We do seem to have reached a point where no issue can be sufficiently hyperbolised. I was just looking at one article which branded Senator Joe Manchin an upholder of Jim Crow, because he doesn't want to end the filibuster. What is striking is the amount of vitriol directed at people who are largely on the same side, but disagree over specifics.
Have we learnt nothing about writing off a source just because we don't like it?
No, absolutely not. I will not recognise the Canary, or the Mail, or ZeroHedge as a credible source.
If there's a genuine story then it will be reported from credible sources.
This has nothing to do with what we like. I dislike the politics of the Guardian and the i but I recognise both of them as credible sources on the left, just as the Telegraph is a credible source on the right.
The Guardian exploit many of the same tricks as the Mail, where they conveniently miss out something pertinent.
Quite. The idea that the Guardian is reliable on an issue that really engages them - anything to do with race, Trump, gender, Wokeness, Brexit - is laughable. They are just as bad as the Mail. As has often been said, the two papers are eerie mirror images of each other
Here's a good example
"Ignore the conspiracy theories: scientists know Covid-19 wasn't created in a lab
By Peter Daszak
"Instead of following false claims, we should focus our efforts on the regions where the next pandemic is likely to emerge"
A piece that denounces lab leak as a conspiracy theory, when it fact the opposite is true. The real conspirators were trying to SQUASH the lab leak hypothesis, banning it from Facebook etc
And look at the end:
"This article was amended on 11 June 2020 to make clear the writer’s past work with researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology."
The Guardian originally ran this as a think piece by an apparently neutral scientist. They didn't tell their readers the author worked, and is still working, with the Wuhan Lab, so might just have a bit of an agenda
Couple of points - first, it's comment, not reporting, which ought to be pretty clear from its appearing under "commentisfree". Secondly, the 'conspiracy theory' he denounced (and I'd agree that such language is unscientific) were around the claims (including the Nature article) that the virus was 'almost certainly' genetically engineered. Such claims remain completely untrue. Its not possible completely to disprove such a thesis, but it is exceedingly unlikely.
And remarkable for your being quite so exercised about an amendment a whole year ago.
Haven't been listening to Hancock’s appearance this morning before the select committee, but Adam Boulton's tweet is interesting
'This hearing is not the roasting for Matt Hancock that Cummings tried to set up'
Either Hancock is telling the truth, and Cummings was lying, or vice-versa. He must be confident Cummings didn't take notes.
Can't both be true? Hancock says we did X because Y which no longer applies, whereas Cummings says we did X because Hancock's a twat. I've not got a checklist on front of me so my impression could be wrong but let's wait for those who have.
Have we learnt nothing about writing off a source just because we don't like it?
No, absolutely not. I will not recognise the Canary, or the Mail, or ZeroHedge as a credible source.
If there's a genuine story then it will be reported from credible sources.
This has nothing to do with what we like. I dislike the politics of the Guardian and the i but I recognise both of them as credible sources on the left, just as the Telegraph is a credible source on the right.
"..the Telegraph is a credible source on the right." LOL! Your gullibility index has just shot off the scale.
I would say that the Telegraph has about equal credibility with the Guardian.
Which is not saying much.
The Telegraph more than equals the Guardian for bias but it's way inferior on quality.
Both publish plenty of discreditable stories.
Guardian published a comment piece after the Mumbai attacks blaming them on Indian economic success - it was classic piece of victim blaming.
For a long time the Guardian was in the habit of publishing a victim-blaming piece after just about every similar attack. It's one of the paper's most vomitous features.
Mr. Walker, she thrice put it to the Commons and a combination of Conservative MPs rebelling and the Labour Party (and other opposition MPs) en masse voted it down.
I said at the time that when you've got MPs who really like the EU and MPs who really dislike the EU voting the same way, someone's screwing it up.
The dumb soft pro-EU MPs of the Commons rejected everything and guaranteed that we'd leave on harder terms. It was epitomised by the lauded Grieve shrieking it was 'too late' when he was given the exact concession he'd asked for, but still didn't vote for it.
I know this is going over old ground, but people generally should try to at least learn something from it. To tie it into the football story, pointing at people and telling them they're wicked for disliking the EU, or a gesture associated with iconoclast barbarians, isn't going to persuade them. The Little Englander nonsense from Cameron was dumb as hell, yet there were plenty of pro-EU types here tittering about it.
Absolutely the "too late" remark was peak hubris.
The pro-EU MPs swallowed their own spin hook, line and sinker and thought they would win and overturn Brexit entirely rather than compromise on a BRINO Backstop that effectively kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union with the EU having a veto on us ever leaving it.
Seeing Grieve kicked out of the party after his behaviour, then comprehensively thrashed at Beaconsfield and an hard rather than soft Brexit follow was really enjoyable.
I actually can’t remember those tumultuous moments.
The key prize for Remainers (rather than pro-EU which probably describes very few) was a second vote.
May refused to concede that.
There was a clear majority for a softish Brexit, but the various parties could not coalesce and let the loons (mostly on the Brexity side) win.
This is Mark Francois’s Brexit: petty, painful, and underpinned by inchoate fantasies about “de Jarmins”.
We'll never know how a second vote would have gone but, if Remain had narrowly won it, the country and our political system would have gone apeshit.
The fall out would have totally dominated our politics for years. With lots of anger and disorder as well.
There was no putting it back into Pandora's Box. The die was cast when we voted Leave, IMHO, and at that point we had to Leave - the best thing Remainers could have done was to influence its form and play the long game.
Cummings predicted civil strife if we'd had a second vote without enacting the first, and I believe he was right
Imagine the anger. The biggest mandate in British democratic history - 17.4 million voters - simply ignored? Overruled? Cancelled?
The stupidity of those that avowed a "people's vote" is quite something. They would also have trashed democracy for generations. Why bother voting for anything if the elite can just ignore it. So we become North Korea. Where elections are charades. With Potemkin referendums. Imagine doing the same in the Scottish indyref. Imagine if that had produced a YES vote (taking it out of the EU at the time), would ANYONE have suggested overruling it?
No. So why was it deemed permissible to overturn Brexit?
The campaign for a 2nd vote was also self-defeating, as you say. If the Remainers had accepted the first vote, then got behind ultra-soft Brexit, we would have got exactly that; they might even have kept Freedom of Movement inside EFTA
How many times do you need to be reminded that hard Brexit was committed to by May in 2016, and indicative votes on a soft Brexit (CU/SM) were voted down as a result of Tory whipping, with Labour overwhelmingly voting for it. It was the Tory obsession with a hard Brexit that prevented a soft Brexit, not Remainer opposition.
I've always admitted this. TMay (a Remainer) is as much to blame as the leftwing Remainers. Her insane red lines boxed her in from the start
However the push for a 2nd vote made Brexiteers worry that the whole thing would be overturned, which persuaded many Leavers to go for a Hard, irreversible Brexit. The two sides conspired to get a Brexit very few originally desired.
It will be a poignant passage in Brexit: the History
No, Brexiteers went for a hard Brexit because that was what they wanted. Was May a Remainer? Barely. She gave Cameron the minimal support necessary in the referendum campaign and immediately adopted these crazy red lines under the influence of Nick Timothy. Most Remainers were pragmatic and pushed for a soft Brexit but were met with inplacable hostility from Leavers, who insisted that they had won and would dictate terms. Personally I would have been OK with a 2nd referendum but a soft Brexit was preferable because it honoured the vote, however imperfect a process that was. By the time the referendum was lost there were no good outcomes.
Yes. The vote sparked a bizarre kulturkamp almost from the beginning, with Remainers and the EU accused of treachery with increasing fervour.
It made me realise I am not British, which I had previously assumed I was.
Yeah I have felt increasingly semi-detached from this country since 2016. I still live here, and probably always will, but I have less and less emotional involvement, like a kind of out of body experience.
Interestingly, lots of Conservatives tell me they felt the same after Blair came to power. The pendulum swings, basically.
May committed to end free movement, the only way to respect the vote of working class Leavers, while keeping the UK close enough aligned to the SM and CU to avoid a border in the Irish Sea
And that takes us back to 2016.
The combinations of promises made then meant that someone was going to have to be thrown under the bus once the vote was won.
The EEA types went first. Sad, because it's probably the solution that would have had the best "not great but it's a tolerable compromise" response. Just outside the superstate. Most remainers could have lived with it, a significant minority of leavers as well. Indeed I get the impression that for some, the double-cross was the plan all along- get a majority to leave the EU, then get a different majority to not leave by much. Too clever by half- you have to dance with the one who brung ya.
So then you get May's plan- stop Free Movement, stop the ECJ, but get as much trade access as possible and treat NI the same as GB. Deal with the presenting causes of Brexit whilst minimising harm. That was plucky, but it wasn't going to work as a unity project- it was too hard a Brexit for remainers to shrug at, and it revealed that TM didn't bellyfeel Brexit. So Leavers couldn't swallow it either. It revealed a belief that it was worth minimising harm, and that would never do. Besides, it omitted the possibility of BJ being PM. So that plan had to die.
So we've ended up where we are. The only way to get all the national independence promised was to take on the consequences that were denied. And put a border down the Irish Sea. But there aren't any Conservative MPs from Ulster, so who gives a stuff eh?
Mr. Walker, she thrice put it to the Commons and a combination of Conservative MPs rebelling and the Labour Party (and other opposition MPs) en masse voted it down.
I said at the time that when you've got MPs who really like the EU and MPs who really dislike the EU voting the same way, someone's screwing it up.
The dumb soft pro-EU MPs of the Commons rejected everything and guaranteed that we'd leave on harder terms. It was epitomised by the lauded Grieve shrieking it was 'too late' when he was given the exact concession he'd asked for, but still didn't vote for it.
I know this is going over old ground, but people generally should try to at least learn something from it. To tie it into the football story, pointing at people and telling them they're wicked for disliking the EU, or a gesture associated with iconoclast barbarians, isn't going to persuade them. The Little Englander nonsense from Cameron was dumb as hell, yet there were plenty of pro-EU types here tittering about it.
Absolutely the "too late" remark was peak hubris.
The pro-EU MPs swallowed their own spin hook, line and sinker and thought they would win and overturn Brexit entirely rather than compromise on a BRINO Backstop that effectively kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union with the EU having a veto on us ever leaving it.
Seeing Grieve kicked out of the party after his behaviour, then comprehensively thrashed at Beaconsfield and an hard rather than soft Brexit follow was really enjoyable.
I actually can’t remember those tumultuous moments.
The key prize for Remainers (rather than pro-EU which probably describes very few) was a second vote.
May refused to concede that.
There was a clear majority for a softish Brexit, but the various parties could not coalesce and let the loons (mostly on the Brexity side) win.
This is Mark Francois’s Brexit: petty, painful, and underpinned by inchoate fantasies about “de Jarmins”.
We'll never know how a second vote would have gone but, if Remain had narrowly won it, the country and our political system would have gone apeshit.
The fall out would have totally dominated our politics for years. With lots of anger and disorder as well.
There was no putting it back into Pandora's Box. The die was cast when we voted Leave, IMHO, and at that point we had to Leave - the best thing Remainers could have done was to influence its form and play the long game.
Cummings predicted civil strife if we'd had a second vote without enacting the first, and I believe he was right
Imagine the anger. The biggest mandate in British democratic history - 17.4 million voters - simply ignored? Overruled? Cancelled?
The stupidity of those that avowed a "people's vote" is quite something. They would also have trashed democracy for generations. Why bother voting for anything if the elite can just ignore it. So we become North Korea. Where elections are charades. With Potemkin referendums. Imagine doing the same in the Scottish indyref. Imagine if that had produced a YES vote (taking it out of the EU at the time), would ANYONE have suggested overruling it?
No. So why was it deemed permissible to overturn Brexit?
The campaign for a 2nd vote was also self-defeating, as you say. If the Remainers had accepted the first vote, then got behind ultra-soft Brexit, we would have got exactly that; they might even have kept Freedom of Movement inside EFTA
How many times do you need to be reminded that hard Brexit was committed to by May in 2016, and indicative votes on a soft Brexit (CU/SM) were voted down as a result of Tory whipping, with Labour overwhelmingly voting for it. It was the Tory obsession with a hard Brexit that prevented a soft Brexit, not Remainer opposition.
I've always admitted this. TMay (a Remainer) is as much to blame as the leftwing Remainers. Her insane red lines boxed her in from the start
However the push for a 2nd vote made Brexiteers worry that the whole thing would be overturned, which persuaded many Leavers to go for a Hard, irreversible Brexit. The two sides conspired to get a Brexit very few originally desired.
It will be a poignant passage in Brexit: the History
No, Brexiteers went for a hard Brexit because that was what they wanted. Was May a Remainer? Barely. She gave Cameron the minimal support necessary in the referendum campaign and immediately adopted these crazy red lines under the influence of Nick Timothy. Most Remainers were pragmatic and pushed for a soft Brexit but were met with inplacable hostility from Leavers, who insisted that they had won and would dictate terms. Personally I would have been OK with a 2nd referendum but a soft Brexit was preferable because it honoured the vote, however imperfect a process that was. By the time the referendum was lost there were no good outcomes.
Yes. The vote sparked a bizarre kulturkamp almost from the beginning, with Remainers and the EU accused of treachery with increasing fervour.
It made me realise I am not British, which I had previously assumed I was.
Mr. Walker, she thrice put it to the Commons and a combination of Conservative MPs rebelling and the Labour Party (and other opposition MPs) en masse voted it down.
I said at the time that when you've got MPs who really like the EU and MPs who really dislike the EU voting the same way, someone's screwing it up.
The dumb soft pro-EU MPs of the Commons rejected everything and guaranteed that we'd leave on harder terms. It was epitomised by the lauded Grieve shrieking it was 'too late' when he was given the exact concession he'd asked for, but still didn't vote for it.
I know this is going over old ground, but people generally should try to at least learn something from it. To tie it into the football story, pointing at people and telling them they're wicked for disliking the EU, or a gesture associated with iconoclast barbarians, isn't going to persuade them. The Little Englander nonsense from Cameron was dumb as hell, yet there were plenty of pro-EU types here tittering about it.
Absolutely the "too late" remark was peak hubris.
The pro-EU MPs swallowed their own spin hook, line and sinker and thought they would win and overturn Brexit entirely rather than compromise on a BRINO Backstop that effectively kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union with the EU having a veto on us ever leaving it.
Seeing Grieve kicked out of the party after his behaviour, then comprehensively thrashed at Beaconsfield and an hard rather than soft Brexit follow was really enjoyable.
I actually can’t remember those tumultuous moments.
The key prize for Remainers (rather than pro-EU which probably describes very few) was a second vote.
May refused to concede that.
There was a clear majority for a softish Brexit, but the various parties could not coalesce and let the loons (mostly on the Brexity side) win.
This is Mark Francois’s Brexit: petty, painful, and underpinned by inchoate fantasies about “de Jarmins”.
We'll never know how a second vote would have gone but, if Remain had narrowly won it, the country and our political system would have gone apeshit.
The fall out would have totally dominated our politics for years. With lots of anger and disorder as well.
There was no putting it back into Pandora's Box. The die was cast when we voted Leave, IMHO, and at that point we had to Leave - the best thing Remainers could have done was to influence its form and play the long game.
Cummings predicted civil strife if we'd had a second vote without enacting the first, and I believe he was right
Imagine the anger. The biggest mandate in British democratic history - 17.4 million voters - simply ignored? Overruled? Cancelled?
The stupidity of those that avowed a "people's vote" is quite something. They would also have trashed democracy for generations. Why bother voting for anything if the elite can just ignore it. So we become North Korea. Where elections are charades. With Potemkin referendums. Imagine doing the same in the Scottish indyref. Imagine if that had produced a YES vote (taking it out of the EU at the time), would ANYONE have suggested overruling it?
No. So why was it deemed permissible to overturn Brexit?
The campaign for a 2nd vote was also self-defeating, as you say. If the Remainers had accepted the first vote, then got behind ultra-soft Brexit, we would have got exactly that; they might even have kept Freedom of Movement inside EFTA
How many times do you need to be reminded that hard Brexit was committed to by May in 2016, and indicative votes on a soft Brexit (CU/SM) were voted down as a result of Tory whipping, with Labour overwhelmingly voting for it. It was the Tory obsession with a hard Brexit that prevented a soft Brexit, not Remainer opposition.
I've always admitted this. TMay (a Remainer) is as much to blame as the leftwing Remainers. Her insane red lines boxed her in from the start
However the push for a 2nd vote made Brexiteers worry that the whole thing would be overturned, which persuaded many Leavers to go for a Hard, irreversible Brexit. The two sides conspired to get a Brexit very few originally desired.
It will be a poignant passage in Brexit: the History
No, Brexiteers went for a hard Brexit because that was what they wanted. Was May a Remainer? Barely. She gave Cameron the minimal support necessary in the referendum campaign and immediately adopted these crazy red lines under the influence of Nick Timothy. Most Remainers were pragmatic and pushed for a soft Brexit but were met with inplacable hostility from Leavers, who insisted that they had won and would dictate terms. Personally I would have been OK with a 2nd referendum but a soft Brexit was preferable because it honoured the vote, however imperfect a process that was. By the time the referendum was lost there were no good outcomes.
Yes. The vote sparked a bizarre kulturkamp almost from the beginning, with Remainers and the EU accused of treachery with increasing fervour.
It made me realise I am not British, which I had previously assumed I was.
The thing is one thing fuels another.
Remainers saying "they're no longer British" and then arguing for the vote to be overturned fuelled charges of treason.
Leavers attacking every institution that put caveats or limits on the interpretation of the vote similarly infuriated Remainers and made them want to disassociate themselves from a decision they couldn't understand or identify with.
Interesting. Not having the tables in front of me are trans people really "one of the most discriminated against" in the UK?
I suppose if the proportion of trans people who are discriminated against is higher that the proportion of other minorities then perhaps. Who has the stats?
I mean of course one trans person discriminated against is one too much but what a strange thing for SKS to say.
Impolitic perhaps, but not strange, since it's quite likely true.
You won't find any 'tables' since for reasons which ought to be obvious, it's not a group easy for statisticians to identify even if it were a priority for them, which it hasn't been.
Even the government's own publications suggest as much. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/721642/GEO-LGBT-factsheet.pdf How many trans people are there? We don’t know. No robust data on the UK trans population exists. We tentatively estimate that there are approximately 200,000-500,000 trans people in the UK. The Office for National Statistics is researching whether and how to develop a population estimate. Facts and Figures 41% of trans men and trans women responding to a Stonewall survey said they had experienced a hate crime or incident because of their gender identity in the last 12 months. They also found that 25% of trans people had experienced homelessness at some point in their lives. Our national LGBT survey found similar results, with 67% of trans respondents saying they had avoided being open about their gender identity for fear of a negative reaction from others...
I'd be wary about believing what Stonewall issues these days on this topic since they give out misleading and incorrect advice on what the law on sex-based rights actually is. This ought to be a bigger scandal than it is, especially given that they are paid by a lot of government departments and other big companies to issue advice. Lying about what the law says in order to suit a particular agenda is utterly disgraceful.
This is a constant GC talking point: that Stonewall gave incorrect & misleading advice on the law on sex based rights.
Can you point to the actual text that you believe overstepped the legal stipulation? I’d like to compare it with the recent judgement in the High Court where the attempt to have a judicial review of the EHRC guidance on the Equality Act & it’s implications was refused by the judge on the grounds that the EHRC’s interpretation of the law was the correct one.
“Schools, colleges and settings should ensure that a trans child or young person is supported to use the toilets and changing rooms they feel most comfortable with, including the facilities matching their gender.
Under the Equality Act a trans child or young person can use the toilets and changing rooms that match their gender.
Under the Act, a school can only prevent a trans child or young person from using the facilities matching their gender if they can demonstrate that doing so is a ‘proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim’, which is a high legal bar to clear. Schools, colleges and settings should also support trans children and young people to use gender-neutral facilities or a private space, if that is what they prefer. The most important thing is to talk to the child or young person rather than making assumptions about the facilities they would like to use.”
Which seems in line with the judgement in AEA vs EHRC - i.e. this is a “should”, not a “must” & exceptions can & do apply - but it’s posible that this is not the original document & that Stonewall has (rightly if so) updated the text since the judgement in that case was published.
There is this. The report for Essex University concluded that Stonewall was misrepresenting the law on free speech/
So the statement that Stonewall had misrepresented the EHRC advice is the opinion of one barrister & not a court judgement?
Obviously, a barrister’s opinion of the law carries more weight than the average numpty, but it’s not exactly definitive.
(NB. “Lesbian and Gay News” appears to be an anti-trans organisation from a quick scan of their Twitter, so I would imagine their reporting carries the same slant.)
Mr. Walker, she thrice put it to the Commons and a combination of Conservative MPs rebelling and the Labour Party (and other opposition MPs) en masse voted it down.
I said at the time that when you've got MPs who really like the EU and MPs who really dislike the EU voting the same way, someone's screwing it up.
The dumb soft pro-EU MPs of the Commons rejected everything and guaranteed that we'd leave on harder terms. It was epitomised by the lauded Grieve shrieking it was 'too late' when he was given the exact concession he'd asked for, but still didn't vote for it.
I know this is going over old ground, but people generally should try to at least learn something from it. To tie it into the football story, pointing at people and telling them they're wicked for disliking the EU, or a gesture associated with iconoclast barbarians, isn't going to persuade them. The Little Englander nonsense from Cameron was dumb as hell, yet there were plenty of pro-EU types here tittering about it.
Absolutely the "too late" remark was peak hubris.
The pro-EU MPs swallowed their own spin hook, line and sinker and thought they would win and overturn Brexit entirely rather than compromise on a BRINO Backstop that effectively kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union with the EU having a veto on us ever leaving it.
Seeing Grieve kicked out of the party after his behaviour, then comprehensively thrashed at Beaconsfield and an hard rather than soft Brexit follow was really enjoyable.
I actually can’t remember those tumultuous moments.
The key prize for Remainers (rather than pro-EU which probably describes very few) was a second vote.
May refused to concede that.
There was a clear majority for a softish Brexit, but the various parties could not coalesce and let the loons (mostly on the Brexity side) win.
This is Mark Francois’s Brexit: petty, painful, and underpinned by inchoate fantasies about “de Jarmins”.
We'll never know how a second vote would have gone but, if Remain had narrowly won it, the country and our political system would have gone apeshit.
The fall out would have totally dominated our politics for years. With lots of anger and disorder as well.
There was no putting it back into Pandora's Box. The die was cast when we voted Leave, IMHO, and at that point we had to Leave - the best thing Remainers could have done was to influence its form and play the long game.
Cummings predicted civil strife if we'd had a second vote without enacting the first, and I believe he was right
Imagine the anger. The biggest mandate in British democratic history - 17.4 million voters - simply ignored? Overruled? Cancelled?
The stupidity of those that avowed a "people's vote" is quite something. They would also have trashed democracy for generations. Why bother voting for anything if the elite can just ignore it. So we become North Korea. Where elections are charades. With Potemkin referendums. Imagine doing the same in the Scottish indyref. Imagine if that had produced a YES vote (taking it out of the EU at the time), would ANYONE have suggested overruling it?
No. So why was it deemed permissible to overturn Brexit?
The campaign for a 2nd vote was also self-defeating, as you say. If the Remainers had accepted the first vote, then got behind ultra-soft Brexit, we would have got exactly that; they might even have kept Freedom of Movement inside EFTA
How many times do you need to be reminded that hard Brexit was committed to by May in 2016, and indicative votes on a soft Brexit (CU/SM) were voted down as a result of Tory whipping, with Labour overwhelmingly voting for it. It was the Tory obsession with a hard Brexit that prevented a soft Brexit, not Remainer opposition.
I've always admitted this. TMay (a Remainer) is as much to blame as the leftwing Remainers. Her insane red lines boxed her in from the start
However the push for a 2nd vote made Brexiteers worry that the whole thing would be overturned, which persuaded many Leavers to go for a Hard, irreversible Brexit. The two sides conspired to get a Brexit very few originally desired.
It will be a poignant passage in Brexit: the History
No, Brexiteers went for a hard Brexit because that was what they wanted. Was May a Remainer? Barely. She gave Cameron the minimal support necessary in the referendum campaign and immediately adopted these crazy red lines under the influence of Nick Timothy. Most Remainers were pragmatic and pushed for a soft Brexit but were met with inplacable hostility from Leavers, who insisted that they had won and would dictate terms. Personally I would have been OK with a 2nd referendum but a soft Brexit was preferable because it honoured the vote, however imperfect a process that was. By the time the referendum was lost there were no good outcomes.
I agree that many, probably most, Brexiteers wanted a "hard" Brexit. I actually don't think a "soft" Brexit would have lasted more than a few years. It was not a stable outcome for us, any more than the NI Protocol is. If a soft Brexit/BINO means anything, it is remaining in the single market, including freedom of movement, without a say in how that market evolves and without preventing the mass immigration from Eastern Europe that did so much to cause the referendum result in the first place. 50-80% of our laws would still have been determined in Brussels but without our input. A soft Brexit would have got the worst of both worlds. Eventually, I guess we'd have done a Switzerland and told the EU where to take its single market.
Mr. Walker, she thrice put it to the Commons and a combination of Conservative MPs rebelling and the Labour Party (and other opposition MPs) en masse voted it down.
I said at the time that when you've got MPs who really like the EU and MPs who really dislike the EU voting the same way, someone's screwing it up.
The dumb soft pro-EU MPs of the Commons rejected everything and guaranteed that we'd leave on harder terms. It was epitomised by the lauded Grieve shrieking it was 'too late' when he was given the exact concession he'd asked for, but still didn't vote for it.
I know this is going over old ground, but people generally should try to at least learn something from it. To tie it into the football story, pointing at people and telling them they're wicked for disliking the EU, or a gesture associated with iconoclast barbarians, isn't going to persuade them. The Little Englander nonsense from Cameron was dumb as hell, yet there were plenty of pro-EU types here tittering about it.
Absolutely the "too late" remark was peak hubris.
The pro-EU MPs swallowed their own spin hook, line and sinker and thought they would win and overturn Brexit entirely rather than compromise on a BRINO Backstop that effectively kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union with the EU having a veto on us ever leaving it.
Seeing Grieve kicked out of the party after his behaviour, then comprehensively thrashed at Beaconsfield and an hard rather than soft Brexit follow was really enjoyable.
I actually can’t remember those tumultuous moments.
The key prize for Remainers (rather than pro-EU which probably describes very few) was a second vote.
May refused to concede that.
There was a clear majority for a softish Brexit, but the various parties could not coalesce and let the loons (mostly on the Brexity side) win.
This is Mark Francois’s Brexit: petty, painful, and underpinned by inchoate fantasies about “de Jarmins”.
We'll never know how a second vote would have gone but, if Remain had narrowly won it, the country and our political system would have gone apeshit.
The fall out would have totally dominated our politics for years. With lots of anger and disorder as well.
There was no putting it back into Pandora's Box. The die was cast when we voted Leave, IMHO, and at that point we had to Leave - the best thing Remainers could have done was to influence its form and play the long game.
Cummings predicted civil strife if we'd had a second vote without enacting the first, and I believe he was right
Imagine the anger. The biggest mandate in British democratic history - 17.4 million voters - simply ignored? Overruled? Cancelled?
The stupidity of those that avowed a "people's vote" is quite something. They would also have trashed democracy for generations. Why bother voting for anything if the elite can just ignore it. So we become North Korea. Where elections are charades. With Potemkin referendums. Imagine doing the same in the Scottish indyref. Imagine if that had produced a YES vote (taking it out of the EU at the time), would ANYONE have suggested overruling it?
No. So why was it deemed permissible to overturn Brexit?
The campaign for a 2nd vote was also self-defeating, as you say. If the Remainers had accepted the first vote, then got behind ultra-soft Brexit, we would have got exactly that; they might even have kept Freedom of Movement inside EFTA
How many times do you need to be reminded that hard Brexit was committed to by May in 2016, and indicative votes on a soft Brexit (CU/SM) were voted down as a result of Tory whipping, with Labour overwhelmingly voting for it. It was the Tory obsession with a hard Brexit that prevented a soft Brexit, not Remainer opposition.
I've always admitted this. TMay (a Remainer) is as much to blame as the leftwing Remainers. Her insane red lines boxed her in from the start
However the push for a 2nd vote made Brexiteers worry that the whole thing would be overturned, which persuaded many Leavers to go for a Hard, irreversible Brexit. The two sides conspired to get a Brexit very few originally desired.
It will be a poignant passage in Brexit: the History
No, Brexiteers went for a hard Brexit because that was what they wanted. Was May a Remainer? Barely. She gave Cameron the minimal support necessary in the referendum campaign and immediately adopted these crazy red lines under the influence of Nick Timothy. Most Remainers were pragmatic and pushed for a soft Brexit but were met with inplacable hostility from Leavers, who insisted that they had won and would dictate terms. Personally I would have been OK with a 2nd referendum but a soft Brexit was preferable because it honoured the vote, however imperfect a process that was. By the time the referendum was lost there were no good outcomes.
Yes. The vote sparked a bizarre kulturkamp almost from the beginning, with Remainers and the EU accused of treachery with increasing fervour.
It made me realise I am not British, which I had previously assumed I was.
Yeah I have felt increasingly semi-detached from this country since 2016. I still live here, and probably always will, but I have less and less emotional involvement, like a kind of out of body experience.
Weird, innit.
The practical outcome for me is that the likelihood of my returning to NZ is much higher, and I no longer feel it necessarily “natural” to raise my children as British or within the British system.
Have we learnt nothing about writing off a source just because we don't like it?
No, absolutely not. I will not recognise the Canary, or the Mail, or ZeroHedge as a credible source.
If there's a genuine story then it will be reported from credible sources.
This has nothing to do with what we like. I dislike the politics of the Guardian and the i but I recognise both of them as credible sources on the left, just as the Telegraph is a credible source on the right.
"..the Telegraph is a credible source on the right." LOL! Your gullibility index has just shot off the scale.
I would say that the Telegraph has about equal credibility with the Guardian.
Which is not saying much.
The Telegraph more than equals the Guardian for bias but it's way inferior on quality.
Both publish plenty of discreditable stories.
Guardian published a comment piece after the Mumbai attacks blaming them on Indian economic success - it was classic piece of victim blaming.
For a long time the Guardian was in the habit of publishing a victim-blaming piece after just about every similar attack. It's one of the paper's most vomitous features.
They’ve done a few almost empathetic pieces about the terrorists too, often in the immediate aftermath.
Oh, and the one about the woman who was ‘friendly’ with a dolphin. That was funny.
Have we learnt nothing about writing off a source just because we don't like it?
No, absolutely not. I will not recognise the Canary, or the Mail, or ZeroHedge as a credible source.
If there's a genuine story then it will be reported from credible sources.
This has nothing to do with what we like. I dislike the politics of the Guardian and the i but I recognise both of them as credible sources on the left, just as the Telegraph is a credible source on the right.
The Guardian exploit many of the same tricks as the Mail, where they conveniently miss out something pertinent.
Quite. The idea that the Guardian is reliable on an issue that really engages them - anything to do with race, Trump, gender, Wokeness, Brexit - is laughable. They are just as bad as the Mail. As has often been said, the two papers are eerie mirror images of each other
Here's a good example
"Ignore the conspiracy theories: scientists know Covid-19 wasn't created in a lab
By Peter Daszak
"Instead of following false claims, we should focus our efforts on the regions where the next pandemic is likely to emerge"
A piece that denounces lab leak as a conspiracy theory, when it fact the opposite is true. The real conspirators were trying to SQUASH the lab leak hypothesis, banning it from Facebook etc
And look at the end:
"This article was amended on 11 June 2020 to make clear the writer’s past work with researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology."
The Guardian originally ran this as a think piece by an apparently neutral scientist. They didn't tell their readers the author worked, and is still working, with the Wuhan Lab, so might just have a bit of an agenda
lol. It's presented as a statement of scientific facts, with multiple links to "evidence" - which turn out to be a dubious paper written by K G Andersen, the guy who said to Fauci the virus was potentially engineered, then weirdly changed his mind about 6 hours later, then deleted 4000 tweets, then deleted his Twitter account
Sure, but it's not presented as a news story. The Guardian's comment pages publish a range of stuff, sometimes showing opposing opinions, and so personally I would never treat any of their comment pieces as something to be believed 100%. In any case, I recall reading that US newspapers don't report as fact anything reported in a British paper without independent corroboration (except the FT perhaps).
Mr. Walker, she thrice put it to the Commons and a combination of Conservative MPs rebelling and the Labour Party (and other opposition MPs) en masse voted it down.
I said at the time that when you've got MPs who really like the EU and MPs who really dislike the EU voting the same way, someone's screwing it up.
The dumb soft pro-EU MPs of the Commons rejected everything and guaranteed that we'd leave on harder terms. It was epitomised by the lauded Grieve shrieking it was 'too late' when he was given the exact concession he'd asked for, but still didn't vote for it.
I know this is going over old ground, but people generally should try to at least learn something from it. To tie it into the football story, pointing at people and telling them they're wicked for disliking the EU, or a gesture associated with iconoclast barbarians, isn't going to persuade them. The Little Englander nonsense from Cameron was dumb as hell, yet there were plenty of pro-EU types here tittering about it.
Absolutely the "too late" remark was peak hubris.
The pro-EU MPs swallowed their own spin hook, line and sinker and thought they would win and overturn Brexit entirely rather than compromise on a BRINO Backstop that effectively kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union with the EU having a veto on us ever leaving it.
Seeing Grieve kicked out of the party after his behaviour, then comprehensively thrashed at Beaconsfield and an hard rather than soft Brexit follow was really enjoyable.
I actually can’t remember those tumultuous moments.
The key prize for Remainers (rather than pro-EU which probably describes very few) was a second vote.
May refused to concede that.
There was a clear majority for a softish Brexit, but the various parties could not coalesce and let the loons (mostly on the Brexity side) win.
This is Mark Francois’s Brexit: petty, painful, and underpinned by inchoate fantasies about “de Jarmins”.
We'll never know how a second vote would have gone but, if Remain had narrowly won it, the country and our political system would have gone apeshit.
The fall out would have totally dominated our politics for years. With lots of anger and disorder as well.
There was no putting it back into Pandora's Box. The die was cast when we voted Leave, IMHO, and at that point we had to Leave - the best thing Remainers could have done was to influence its form and play the long game.
Cummings predicted civil strife if we'd had a second vote without enacting the first, and I believe he was right
Imagine the anger. The biggest mandate in British democratic history - 17.4 million voters - simply ignored? Overruled? Cancelled?
The stupidity of those that avowed a "people's vote" is quite something. They would also have trashed democracy for generations. Why bother voting for anything if the elite can just ignore it. So we become North Korea. Where elections are charades. With Potemkin referendums. Imagine doing the same in the Scottish indyref. Imagine if that had produced a YES vote (taking it out of the EU at the time), would ANYONE have suggested overruling it?
No. So why was it deemed permissible to overturn Brexit?
The campaign for a 2nd vote was also self-defeating, as you say. If the Remainers had accepted the first vote, then got behind ultra-soft Brexit, we would have got exactly that; they might even have kept Freedom of Movement inside EFTA
How many times do you need to be reminded that hard Brexit was committed to by May in 2016, and indicative votes on a soft Brexit (CU/SM) were voted down as a result of Tory whipping, with Labour overwhelmingly voting for it. It was the Tory obsession with a hard Brexit that prevented a soft Brexit, not Remainer opposition.
I've always admitted this. TMay (a Remainer) is as much to blame as the leftwing Remainers. Her insane red lines boxed her in from the start
However the push for a 2nd vote made Brexiteers worry that the whole thing would be overturned, which persuaded many Leavers to go for a Hard, irreversible Brexit. The two sides conspired to get a Brexit very few originally desired.
It will be a poignant passage in Brexit: the History
No, Brexiteers went for a hard Brexit because that was what they wanted. Was May a Remainer? Barely. She gave Cameron the minimal support necessary in the referendum campaign and immediately adopted these crazy red lines under the influence of Nick Timothy. Most Remainers were pragmatic and pushed for a soft Brexit but were met with inplacable hostility from Leavers, who insisted that they had won and would dictate terms. Personally I would have been OK with a 2nd referendum but a soft Brexit was preferable because it honoured the vote, however imperfect a process that was. By the time the referendum was lost there were no good outcomes.
We may need to wait for the memoirs, and possibly for the PhDs, to be sure but my impression is that Theresa May was a Leaver posing as a Remainer, as was Jeremy Corbyn, whereas Boris was the opposite. Though it is also possible that May and Corbyn just did not feel very strongly. Not everyone spent the last 30 years worrying about Europe.
Interesting. Not having the tables in front of me are trans people really "one of the most discriminated against" in the UK?
I suppose if the proportion of trans people who are discriminated against is higher that the proportion of other minorities then perhaps. Who has the stats?
I mean of course one trans person discriminated against is one too much but what a strange thing for SKS to say.
Impolitic perhaps, but not strange, since it's quite likely true.
You won't find any 'tables' since for reasons which ought to be obvious, it's not a group easy for statisticians to identify even if it were a priority for them, which it hasn't been.
Even the government's own publications suggest as much. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/721642/GEO-LGBT-factsheet.pdf How many trans people are there? We don’t know. No robust data on the UK trans population exists. We tentatively estimate that there are approximately 200,000-500,000 trans people in the UK. The Office for National Statistics is researching whether and how to develop a population estimate. Facts and Figures 41% of trans men and trans women responding to a Stonewall survey said they had experienced a hate crime or incident because of their gender identity in the last 12 months. They also found that 25% of trans people had experienced homelessness at some point in their lives. Our national LGBT survey found similar results, with 67% of trans respondents saying they had avoided being open about their gender identity for fear of a negative reaction from others...
I'd be wary about believing what Stonewall issues these days on this topic since they give out misleading and incorrect advice on what the law on sex-based rights actually is. This ought to be a bigger scandal than it is, especially given that they are paid by a lot of government departments and other big companies to issue advice. Lying about what the law says in order to suit a particular agenda is utterly disgraceful.
This is a constant GC talking point: that Stonewall gave incorrect & misleading advice on the law on sex based rights.
Can you point to the actual text that you believe overstepped the legal stipulation? I’d like to compare it with the recent judgement in the High Court where the attempt to have a judicial review of the EHRC guidance on the Equality Act & it’s implications was refused by the judge on the grounds that the EHRC’s interpretation of the law was the correct one.
“Schools, colleges and settings should ensure that a trans child or young person is supported to use the toilets and changing rooms they feel most comfortable with, including the facilities matching their gender.
Under the Equality Act a trans child or young person can use the toilets and changing rooms that match their gender.
Under the Act, a school can only prevent a trans child or young person from using the facilities matching their gender if they can demonstrate that doing so is a ‘proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim’, which is a high legal bar to clear. Schools, colleges and settings should also support trans children and young people to use gender-neutral facilities or a private space, if that is what they prefer. The most important thing is to talk to the child or young person rather than making assumptions about the facilities they would like to use.”
Which seems in line with the judgement in AEA vs EHRC - i.e. this is a “should”, not a “must” & exceptions can & do apply - but it’s posible that this is not the original document & that Stonewall has (rightly if so) updated the text since the judgement in that case was published.
There is this. The report for Essex University concluded that Stonewall was misrepresenting the law on free speech/
So the statement that Stonewall had misrepresented the EHRC advice is the opinion of one barrister & not a court judgement?
Obviously, a barrister’s opinion of the law carries more weight than the average numpty, but it’s not exactly definitive.
(NB. “Lesbian and Gay News” appears to be an anti-trans organisation from a quick scan of their Twitter, so I would imagine their reporting carries the same slant.)
(also they link to Graham Lineham’s blog as a source in the article you link to, which is really nailing your colours to this particular mast...)
In America, white women are often believed and protected at all costs, even at the expense of black lives. In 1955, it was a white woman who falsely accused 14-year-old Emmett Till of whistling at her in Mississippi, which led to him being brutally beaten and killed. Fast-forward to recent years and we still learn about black people being arrested or assaulted because a white woman called the police unnecessarily. Becky and Karen memes and jokes should be understood in this context, part of a long tradition to use humor to try to cope with the realities of white privilege and anti-blackness.
Or read 'White Privilege' (a New York Times number 1 bestseller), in which Doctor Robin DiAngelo 'sets aside a whole chapter for the self-indulgent tears of white women, so distraught at the country’s legacy of racist terrorism that they force people of color to drink from the firehose of their feelings about it.' At heart, anybody who is surprised that this kind of material is out there just hasn't been paying attention.
We do seem to have reached a point where no issue can be sufficiently hyperbolised. I was just looking at one article which branded Senator Joe Manchin an upholder of Jim Crow, because he doesn't want to end the filibuster. What is striking is the amount of vitriol directed at people who are largely on the same side, but disagree over specifics.
Entirely justified.
States like Texas are passing Jim Crow style laws to disenfranchise voters and make it harder to vote and the GOP-stuffed SCOTUS gutted the Voting Right Act, the only way to even try to mitigate this is for the Democrats to pass a new voting rights act while they control the Senate.
But they can't, because of the filibuster. Except the GOP were content to get rid of the filibuster when it came to stuffing SCOTUS. If the choice is seeing Jim Crow style disenfranchisement of voting rights, or to end the filibuster, then defending the filibuster is deliberately choosing to let Jim Crow laws be upheld.
Notice Burnham looking quite popular there... Waiting in the wings to return Labour to power in 2029 or thereabouts...
No data to support this, but my feeling is that Burnham would do quite a bit to shore up areas of traditional Labour support (including the former red wall) but would struggle to get further into Tory territory, especially south of the Humber, ditto SNP territory. I think Labour's need is for someone two steps up from Burnham, and (sadly - he's a good and decent man) three steps up from SKS.
On the Ipsos Mori polling only Boris of top Tories could still beat Burnham, Burnham would likely narrowly beat Sunak and would easily beat Gove.
If Burnham reclaimed the red wall we could be back to hung parliament territory, the SNP would support Labour anyway
Yes. being out of national politics one critical thing Burnham hasn't been tested out on is the Brexit matter.
Labour's current position from the point of view of the voter is that accepts Brexit but not from the heart. It has neither arguments not affection for the project but it isn't going back on it.
This is a central difficulty. Most people want a government implementing policies which the voter and the government believe in.
Both remainers and brexiteers generally prefer a government that is not constrained by ludicrous contortions. (Foot and Jezza on the nuclear issue for example).
The next Labour leader, to have much chance needs to square this circle. They have to be someone who simultaneously is:
Better than the Tory offer (which is a centre left one to start with!)
Better at Brexit than the Tories
Good at sounding as if they support the union of the UK
Flag, queen, family, country, anti woke
Good at creating hope and optimism, outshining Boris.
A WOMAN who lost her job after tweeting that “male people are not women” has won a landmark employment case.
The victory for Maya Forstater, who was backed by JK Rowling and SNP MP Joanna Cherry QC, means people with ‘gender critical’ beliefs must not be sacked simply for holding them.
However, they cannot express them in a way that discriminates against trans people.
Ms Cherry said the decision should end discrimination against academics, trade unionists and others like herself who had been bullied and threatened because of their beliefs.
“This judgment does not mean that those with gender-critical beliefs can ‘misgender’ trans persons with impunity.The Claimant, like everyone else, will continue to be subject to the prohibitions on discrimination and harassment that apply to everyone else. Whether or not conduct in a given situation does amount to harassment or discrimination within the meaning of EqA will be for a tribunal to determinein a given case.”
It seems that the judgement is essentially saying that GC beliefs are not grounds for dismissal, as they are philosophical beliefs & thus protected. However, if Forster acts on those beliefs then that action would be grounds for dismissal.
Do I have that right? I think that’s the court’s conclusion.
Since the whole subject of the tweets for which Forster was let go was her insistence on being able to call trans women men to their face, which the court has explictly told her she can’t do, this isn’t quite the victory she thinks it is.
Right decision IMO: uphold the law, but not the idea that mere thoughtcrime is grounds for dismissal.
I expect the GC crowd to crow about this for a few days, until eventually they realise that nothing has actually changed.
That is correct. There is so much misinformation and hyperbole around this topic.
Mr. Walker, she thrice put it to the Commons and a combination of Conservative MPs rebelling and the Labour Party (and other opposition MPs) en masse voted it down.
I said at the time that when you've got MPs who really like the EU and MPs who really dislike the EU voting the same way, someone's screwing it up.
The dumb soft pro-EU MPs of the Commons rejected everything and guaranteed that we'd leave on harder terms. It was epitomised by the lauded Grieve shrieking it was 'too late' when he was given the exact concession he'd asked for, but still didn't vote for it.
I know this is going over old ground, but people generally should try to at least learn something from it. To tie it into the football story, pointing at people and telling them they're wicked for disliking the EU, or a gesture associated with iconoclast barbarians, isn't going to persuade them. The Little Englander nonsense from Cameron was dumb as hell, yet there were plenty of pro-EU types here tittering about it.
Absolutely the "too late" remark was peak hubris.
The pro-EU MPs swallowed their own spin hook, line and sinker and thought they would win and overturn Brexit entirely rather than compromise on a BRINO Backstop that effectively kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union with the EU having a veto on us ever leaving it.
Seeing Grieve kicked out of the party after his behaviour, then comprehensively thrashed at Beaconsfield and an hard rather than soft Brexit follow was really enjoyable.
I actually can’t remember those tumultuous moments.
The key prize for Remainers (rather than pro-EU which probably describes very few) was a second vote.
May refused to concede that.
There was a clear majority for a softish Brexit, but the various parties could not coalesce and let the loons (mostly on the Brexity side) win.
This is Mark Francois’s Brexit: petty, painful, and underpinned by inchoate fantasies about “de Jarmins”.
We'll never know how a second vote would have gone but, if Remain had narrowly won it, the country and our political system would have gone apeshit.
The fall out would have totally dominated our politics for years. With lots of anger and disorder as well.
There was no putting it back into Pandora's Box. The die was cast when we voted Leave, IMHO, and at that point we had to Leave - the best thing Remainers could have done was to influence its form and play the long game.
Cummings predicted civil strife if we'd had a second vote without enacting the first, and I believe he was right
Imagine the anger. The biggest mandate in British democratic history - 17.4 million voters - simply ignored? Overruled? Cancelled?
The stupidity of those that avowed a "people's vote" is quite something. They would also have trashed democracy for generations. Why bother voting for anything if the elite can just ignore it. So we become North Korea. Where elections are charades. With Potemkin referendums. Imagine doing the same in the Scottish indyref. Imagine if that had produced a YES vote (taking it out of the EU at the time), would ANYONE have suggested overruling it?
No. So why was it deemed permissible to overturn Brexit?
The campaign for a 2nd vote was also self-defeating, as you say. If the Remainers had accepted the first vote, then got behind ultra-soft Brexit, we would have got exactly that; they might even have kept Freedom of Movement inside EFTA
How many times do you need to be reminded that hard Brexit was committed to by May in 2016, and indicative votes on a soft Brexit (CU/SM) were voted down as a result of Tory whipping, with Labour overwhelmingly voting for it. It was the Tory obsession with a hard Brexit that prevented a soft Brexit, not Remainer opposition.
I've always admitted this. TMay (a Remainer) is as much to blame as the leftwing Remainers. Her insane red lines boxed her in from the start
However the push for a 2nd vote made Brexiteers worry that the whole thing would be overturned, which persuaded many Leavers to go for a Hard, irreversible Brexit. The two sides conspired to get a Brexit very few originally desired.
It will be a poignant passage in Brexit: the History
No, Brexiteers went for a hard Brexit because that was what they wanted. Was May a Remainer? Barely. She gave Cameron the minimal support necessary in the referendum campaign and immediately adopted these crazy red lines under the influence of Nick Timothy. Most Remainers were pragmatic and pushed for a soft Brexit but were met with inplacable hostility from Leavers, who insisted that they had won and would dictate terms. Personally I would have been OK with a 2nd referendum but a soft Brexit was preferable because it honoured the vote, however imperfect a process that was. By the time the referendum was lost there were no good outcomes.
Yes. The vote sparked a bizarre kulturkamp almost from the beginning, with Remainers and the EU accused of treachery with increasing fervour.
It made me realise I am not British, which I had previously assumed I was.
Mr. Walker, she thrice put it to the Commons and a combination of Conservative MPs rebelling and the Labour Party (and other opposition MPs) en masse voted it down.
I said at the time that when you've got MPs who really like the EU and MPs who really dislike the EU voting the same way, someone's screwing it up.
The dumb soft pro-EU MPs of the Commons rejected everything and guaranteed that we'd leave on harder terms. It was epitomised by the lauded Grieve shrieking it was 'too late' when he was given the exact concession he'd asked for, but still didn't vote for it.
I know this is going over old ground, but people generally should try to at least learn something from it. To tie it into the football story, pointing at people and telling them they're wicked for disliking the EU, or a gesture associated with iconoclast barbarians, isn't going to persuade them. The Little Englander nonsense from Cameron was dumb as hell, yet there were plenty of pro-EU types here tittering about it.
Absolutely the "too late" remark was peak hubris.
The pro-EU MPs swallowed their own spin hook, line and sinker and thought they would win and overturn Brexit entirely rather than compromise on a BRINO Backstop that effectively kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union with the EU having a veto on us ever leaving it.
Seeing Grieve kicked out of the party after his behaviour, then comprehensively thrashed at Beaconsfield and an hard rather than soft Brexit follow was really enjoyable.
I actually can’t remember those tumultuous moments.
The key prize for Remainers (rather than pro-EU which probably describes very few) was a second vote.
May refused to concede that.
There was a clear majority for a softish Brexit, but the various parties could not coalesce and let the loons (mostly on the Brexity side) win.
This is Mark Francois’s Brexit: petty, painful, and underpinned by inchoate fantasies about “de Jarmins”.
We'll never know how a second vote would have gone but, if Remain had narrowly won it, the country and our political system would have gone apeshit.
The fall out would have totally dominated our politics for years. With lots of anger and disorder as well.
There was no putting it back into Pandora's Box. The die was cast when we voted Leave, IMHO, and at that point we had to Leave - the best thing Remainers could have done was to influence its form and play the long game.
Cummings predicted civil strife if we'd had a second vote without enacting the first, and I believe he was right
Imagine the anger. The biggest mandate in British democratic history - 17.4 million voters - simply ignored? Overruled? Cancelled?
The stupidity of those that avowed a "people's vote" is quite something. They would also have trashed democracy for generations. Why bother voting for anything if the elite can just ignore it. So we become North Korea. Where elections are charades. With Potemkin referendums. Imagine doing the same in the Scottish indyref. Imagine if that had produced a YES vote (taking it out of the EU at the time), would ANYONE have suggested overruling it?
No. So why was it deemed permissible to overturn Brexit?
The campaign for a 2nd vote was also self-defeating, as you say. If the Remainers had accepted the first vote, then got behind ultra-soft Brexit, we would have got exactly that; they might even have kept Freedom of Movement inside EFTA
How many times do you need to be reminded that hard Brexit was committed to by May in 2016, and indicative votes on a soft Brexit (CU/SM) were voted down as a result of Tory whipping, with Labour overwhelmingly voting for it. It was the Tory obsession with a hard Brexit that prevented a soft Brexit, not Remainer opposition.
I've always admitted this. TMay (a Remainer) is as much to blame as the leftwing Remainers. Her insane red lines boxed her in from the start
However the push for a 2nd vote made Brexiteers worry that the whole thing would be overturned, which persuaded many Leavers to go for a Hard, irreversible Brexit. The two sides conspired to get a Brexit very few originally desired.
It will be a poignant passage in Brexit: the History
No, Brexiteers went for a hard Brexit because that was what they wanted. Was May a Remainer? Barely. She gave Cameron the minimal support necessary in the referendum campaign and immediately adopted these crazy red lines under the influence of Nick Timothy. Most Remainers were pragmatic and pushed for a soft Brexit but were met with inplacable hostility from Leavers, who insisted that they had won and would dictate terms. Personally I would have been OK with a 2nd referendum but a soft Brexit was preferable because it honoured the vote, however imperfect a process that was. By the time the referendum was lost there were no good outcomes.
Yes. The vote sparked a bizarre kulturkamp almost from the beginning, with Remainers and the EU accused of treachery with increasing fervour.
It made me realise I am not British, which I had previously assumed I was.
The thing is one thing fuels another.
Remainers saying "they're no longer British" and then arguing for the vote to be overturned fuelled charges of treason.
Leavers attacking every institution that put caveats or limits on the interpretation of the vote similarly infuriated Remainers and made them want to disassociate themselves from a decision they couldn't understand or identify with.
Well that’s me on this Board in 2021 saying as such.
I don’t remember a mass disavowal of citizenship in the wake of the vote, so your post just reads like a rewrite of history, if not victim blaming.
The Mail’s editorial (not wholly separable from govt comms policy) during this period was truly sickening. And even May was not immune, with disastrous criticisms of “citizens of nowhere” and grotesque suggestions that the EU was interfering in the 2017 election.
In a defence of Starmer, despite his invisibility as LOTO, he is up against Johnson who the voters have perceived has had an inch-perfect, error-free pandemic.
Johnson's genius has been his non-stop campaigning throughout the pandemic (something I was critical of, considering it tasteless during the height of a pandemic where thousands of people were dying each week). The campaigning has paid dividends and has given the impression that vaccine, procurement, programming and delivery were all entirely his gift to the nation, and now we a reaping the benefits- a nation unlocked and Covid vanquished. (Remember, perception, not reality, although the link between Covid and deaths seems over).
I still cannot see past the early stages of a chaotic economy this time next year, which is why I feel Johnson should go very, very, early Spring/ early Autumn 2022. I believe the economic strife will take a year or so to fully make its mark on Johnson, which is why 2024 is too late.
What strife?
Companies are reporting difficulties in filling vacancies. The economy is rebounding strongly. Confidence is pretty much at a record level. That forwards momentum will take us through the end of furlough and allow those whose companies don't reopen post-lockdown to find companies desperate for staff.
At that point the economic strife as well as the health strife will have been dealt with.
Since you're so convinced the economic strife is coming, if I'm right and the economy gets through this fine with the government support laid out then a post-pandemic rebound . . . would that confounding of your expectations make you consider voting for a Boris led Tory Party in 2023/24 or would that never happen?
I have been very specific when economic strife will take effect. You are in cloud cuckoo land if you believe there will be no economic consequences from the last 14 months. Try getting out more, the signs are already here, quality businesses not reopening, and not just retail that has gone online.
Boom first, then bust!
Formerly quality businesses closing down for good happens all the time, especially every recession.
Any formerly quality business not reopening is not that bad macroeconomically if there is a staffing shortage in other businesses at the same time as the employees formerly working it the former business can find alternative jobs to go too.
What would be far worse is businesses reopening but then closing down again due to failure one after another leading to mass unemployment, a downturn, no businesses hiring and a vicious feedback loop. That looked possible a year ago, it doesn't look at all probable now.
I am looking for a new job and have been approached by recruiters three times in the past week (not sure I want any of them).
There is no doubt there is a boom and it would be depressing if there wasn’t one given the scale of last year’s collapse.
It’s not possible to make prediction much beyond the next six months except that it looks like resource shortages and loss of market access (ie Brexit) will bear down on economic growth potential.
Ugh, there are so many things I detest about the recruitment process. It revolves around contrived metrics and process - with lots of effort on the part of the applicant - and little thinking on the part of the Employer. You can fall or peter out at any time having put hours and hours in. It often results in failed recruitments where the employer can't find the talent they want, or hires someone who turns out to be not what they want.
All the work and client jobs I've got over the last 15 years have been through my network. I focus on maintaining that now as cold application is a waste of time, as are most recruiters.
Mr. Walker, she thrice put it to the Commons and a combination of Conservative MPs rebelling and the Labour Party (and other opposition MPs) en masse voted it down.
I said at the time that when you've got MPs who really like the EU and MPs who really dislike the EU voting the same way, someone's screwing it up.
The dumb soft pro-EU MPs of the Commons rejected everything and guaranteed that we'd leave on harder terms. It was epitomised by the lauded Grieve shrieking it was 'too late' when he was given the exact concession he'd asked for, but still didn't vote for it.
I know this is going over old ground, but people generally should try to at least learn something from it. To tie it into the football story, pointing at people and telling them they're wicked for disliking the EU, or a gesture associated with iconoclast barbarians, isn't going to persuade them. The Little Englander nonsense from Cameron was dumb as hell, yet there were plenty of pro-EU types here tittering about it.
Absolutely the "too late" remark was peak hubris.
The pro-EU MPs swallowed their own spin hook, line and sinker and thought they would win and overturn Brexit entirely rather than compromise on a BRINO Backstop that effectively kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union with the EU having a veto on us ever leaving it.
Seeing Grieve kicked out of the party after his behaviour, then comprehensively thrashed at Beaconsfield and an hard rather than soft Brexit follow was really enjoyable.
I actually can’t remember those tumultuous moments.
The key prize for Remainers (rather than pro-EU which probably describes very few) was a second vote.
May refused to concede that.
There was a clear majority for a softish Brexit, but the various parties could not coalesce and let the loons (mostly on the Brexity side) win.
This is Mark Francois’s Brexit: petty, painful, and underpinned by inchoate fantasies about “de Jarmins”.
We'll never know how a second vote would have gone but, if Remain had narrowly won it, the country and our political system would have gone apeshit.
The fall out would have totally dominated our politics for years. With lots of anger and disorder as well.
There was no putting it back into Pandora's Box. The die was cast when we voted Leave, IMHO, and at that point we had to Leave - the best thing Remainers could have done was to influence its form and play the long game.
Cummings predicted civil strife if we'd had a second vote without enacting the first, and I believe he was right
Imagine the anger. The biggest mandate in British democratic history - 17.4 million voters - simply ignored? Overruled? Cancelled?
The stupidity of those that avowed a "people's vote" is quite something. They would also have trashed democracy for generations. Why bother voting for anything if the elite can just ignore it. So we become North Korea. Where elections are charades. With Potemkin referendums. Imagine doing the same in the Scottish indyref. Imagine if that had produced a YES vote (taking it out of the EU at the time), would ANYONE have suggested overruling it?
No. So why was it deemed permissible to overturn Brexit?
The campaign for a 2nd vote was also self-defeating, as you say. If the Remainers had accepted the first vote, then got behind ultra-soft Brexit, we would have got exactly that; they might even have kept Freedom of Movement inside EFTA
How many times do you need to be reminded that hard Brexit was committed to by May in 2016, and indicative votes on a soft Brexit (CU/SM) were voted down as a result of Tory whipping, with Labour overwhelmingly voting for it. It was the Tory obsession with a hard Brexit that prevented a soft Brexit, not Remainer opposition.
I've always admitted this. TMay (a Remainer) is as much to blame as the leftwing Remainers. Her insane red lines boxed her in from the start
However the push for a 2nd vote made Brexiteers worry that the whole thing would be overturned, which persuaded many Leavers to go for a Hard, irreversible Brexit. The two sides conspired to get a Brexit very few originally desired.
It will be a poignant passage in Brexit: the History
No, Brexiteers went for a hard Brexit because that was what they wanted. Was May a Remainer? Barely. She gave Cameron the minimal support necessary in the referendum campaign and immediately adopted these crazy red lines under the influence of Nick Timothy. Most Remainers were pragmatic and pushed for a soft Brexit but were met with inplacable hostility from Leavers, who insisted that they had won and would dictate terms. Personally I would have been OK with a 2nd referendum but a soft Brexit was preferable because it honoured the vote, however imperfect a process that was. By the time the referendum was lost there were no good outcomes.
Yes. The vote sparked a bizarre kulturkamp almost from the beginning, with Remainers and the EU accused of treachery with increasing fervour.
It made me realise I am not British, which I had previously assumed I was.
Yeah I have felt increasingly semi-detached from this country since 2016. I still live here, and probably always will, but I have less and less emotional involvement, like a kind of out of body experience.
Weird, innit.
The practical outcome for me is that the likelihood of my returning to NZ is much higher, and I no longer feel it necessarily “natural” to raise my children as British or within the British system.
Views like this though make others question your loyalty or belief in Britain in the first place.
You can't just disown your own nationality just because a national referendum goes against you.
You argue instead for why an alternative solution better suits the national interest.
Labour are absolubtely seen as a party that tried to prevent Brexit. The next General Election will still be about that, in particular the far more favourably distributed leave vote (It was 410 constituencies that voted to leave) will give SKS his marching orders as they did Corbyn after the moderates had got his ear on the matter in 2019. I can't believe Labour didn't realise the long term damage they did with the electorate by their game playing in the 2017 - 19 parliament. It was clear as day to me and I voted to stay in.
Mr. Walker, she thrice put it to the Commons and a combination of Conservative MPs rebelling and the Labour Party (and other opposition MPs) en masse voted it down.
I said at the time that when you've got MPs who really like the EU and MPs who really dislike the EU voting the same way, someone's screwing it up.
The dumb soft pro-EU MPs of the Commons rejected everything and guaranteed that we'd leave on harder terms. It was epitomised by the lauded Grieve shrieking it was 'too late' when he was given the exact concession he'd asked for, but still didn't vote for it.
I know this is going over old ground, but people generally should try to at least learn something from it. To tie it into the football story, pointing at people and telling them they're wicked for disliking the EU, or a gesture associated with iconoclast barbarians, isn't going to persuade them. The Little Englander nonsense from Cameron was dumb as hell, yet there were plenty of pro-EU types here tittering about it.
Absolutely the "too late" remark was peak hubris.
The pro-EU MPs swallowed their own spin hook, line and sinker and thought they would win and overturn Brexit entirely rather than compromise on a BRINO Backstop that effectively kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union with the EU having a veto on us ever leaving it.
Seeing Grieve kicked out of the party after his behaviour, then comprehensively thrashed at Beaconsfield and an hard rather than soft Brexit follow was really enjoyable.
I actually can’t remember those tumultuous moments.
The key prize for Remainers (rather than pro-EU which probably describes very few) was a second vote.
May refused to concede that.
There was a clear majority for a softish Brexit, but the various parties could not coalesce and let the loons (mostly on the Brexity side) win.
This is Mark Francois’s Brexit: petty, painful, and underpinned by inchoate fantasies about “de Jarmins”.
We'll never know how a second vote would have gone but, if Remain had narrowly won it, the country and our political system would have gone apeshit.
The fall out would have totally dominated our politics for years. With lots of anger and disorder as well.
There was no putting it back into Pandora's Box. The die was cast when we voted Leave, IMHO, and at that point we had to Leave - the best thing Remainers could have done was to influence its form and play the long game.
Cummings predicted civil strife if we'd had a second vote without enacting the first, and I believe he was right
Imagine the anger. The biggest mandate in British democratic history - 17.4 million voters - simply ignored? Overruled? Cancelled?
The stupidity of those that avowed a "people's vote" is quite something. They would also have trashed democracy for generations. Why bother voting for anything if the elite can just ignore it. So we become North Korea. Where elections are charades. With Potemkin referendums. Imagine doing the same in the Scottish indyref. Imagine if that had produced a YES vote (taking it out of the EU at the time), would ANYONE have suggested overruling it?
No. So why was it deemed permissible to overturn Brexit?
The campaign for a 2nd vote was also self-defeating, as you say. If the Remainers had accepted the first vote, then got behind ultra-soft Brexit, we would have got exactly that; they might even have kept Freedom of Movement inside EFTA
How many times do you need to be reminded that hard Brexit was committed to by May in 2016, and indicative votes on a soft Brexit (CU/SM) were voted down as a result of Tory whipping, with Labour overwhelmingly voting for it. It was the Tory obsession with a hard Brexit that prevented a soft Brexit, not Remainer opposition.
I've always admitted this. TMay (a Remainer) is as much to blame as the leftwing Remainers. Her insane red lines boxed her in from the start
However the push for a 2nd vote made Brexiteers worry that the whole thing would be overturned, which persuaded many Leavers to go for a Hard, irreversible Brexit. The two sides conspired to get a Brexit very few originally desired.
It will be a poignant passage in Brexit: the History
No, Brexiteers went for a hard Brexit because that was what they wanted. Was May a Remainer? Barely. She gave Cameron the minimal support necessary in the referendum campaign and immediately adopted these crazy red lines under the influence of Nick Timothy. Most Remainers were pragmatic and pushed for a soft Brexit but were met with inplacable hostility from Leavers, who insisted that they had won and would dictate terms. Personally I would have been OK with a 2nd referendum but a soft Brexit was preferable because it honoured the vote, however imperfect a process that was. By the time the referendum was lost there were no good outcomes.
I agree that many, probably most, Brexiteers wanted a "hard" Brexit. I actually don't think a "soft" Brexit would have lasted more than a few years. It was not a stable outcome for us, any more than the NI Protocol is. If a soft Brexit/BINO means anything, it is remaining in the single market, including freedom of movement, without a say in how that market evolves and without preventing the mass immigration from Eastern Europe that did so much to cause the referendum result in the first place. 50-80% of our laws would still have been determined in Brussels but without our input. A soft Brexit would have got the worst of both worlds. Eventually, I guess we'd have done a Switzerland and told the EU where to take its single market.
Interesting. Not having the tables in front of me are trans people really "one of the most discriminated against" in the UK?
I suppose if the proportion of trans people who are discriminated against is higher that the proportion of other minorities then perhaps. Who has the stats?
I mean of course one trans person discriminated against is one too much but what a strange thing for SKS to say.
Impolitic perhaps, but not strange, since it's quite likely true.
You won't find any 'tables' since for reasons which ought to be obvious, it's not a group easy for statisticians to identify even if it were a priority for them, which it hasn't been.
Even the government's own publications suggest as much. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/721642/GEO-LGBT-factsheet.pdf How many trans people are there? We don’t know. No robust data on the UK trans population exists. We tentatively estimate that there are approximately 200,000-500,000 trans people in the UK. The Office for National Statistics is researching whether and how to develop a population estimate. Facts and Figures 41% of trans men and trans women responding to a Stonewall survey said they had experienced a hate crime or incident because of their gender identity in the last 12 months. They also found that 25% of trans people had experienced homelessness at some point in their lives. Our national LGBT survey found similar results, with 67% of trans respondents saying they had avoided being open about their gender identity for fear of a negative reaction from others...
I'd be wary about believing what Stonewall issues these days on this topic since they give out misleading and incorrect advice on what the law on sex-based rights actually is. This ought to be a bigger scandal than it is, especially given that they are paid by a lot of government departments and other big companies to issue advice. Lying about what the law says in order to suit a particular agenda is utterly disgraceful.
This is a constant GC talking point: that Stonewall gave incorrect & misleading advice on the law on sex based rights.
Can you point to the actual text that you believe overstepped the legal stipulation? I’d like to compare it with the recent judgement in the High Court where the attempt to have a judicial review of the EHRC guidance on the Equality Act & it’s implications was refused by the judge on the grounds that the EHRC’s interpretation of the law was the correct one.
“Schools, colleges and settings should ensure that a trans child or young person is supported to use the toilets and changing rooms they feel most comfortable with, including the facilities matching their gender.
Under the Equality Act a trans child or young person can use the toilets and changing rooms that match their gender.
Under the Act, a school can only prevent a trans child or young person from using the facilities matching their gender if they can demonstrate that doing so is a ‘proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim’, which is a high legal bar to clear. Schools, colleges and settings should also support trans children and young people to use gender-neutral facilities or a private space, if that is what they prefer. The most important thing is to talk to the child or young person rather than making assumptions about the facilities they would like to use.”
Which seems in line with the judgement in AEA vs EHRC - i.e. this is a “should”, not a “must” & exceptions can & do apply - but it’s posible that this is not the original document & that Stonewall has (rightly if so) updated the text since the judgement in that case was published.
There is this. The report for Essex University concluded that Stonewall was misrepresenting the law on free speech/
So the statement that Stonewall had misrepresented the EHRC advice is the opinion of one barrister & not a court judgement?
Obviously, a barrister’s opinion of the law carries more weight than the average numpty, but it’s not exactly definitive.
(NB. “Lesbian and Gay News” appears to be an anti-trans organisation from a quick scan of their Twitter, so I would imagine their reporting carries the same slant.)
(also they link to Graham Lineham’s blog as a source in the article you link to, which is really nailing your colours to this particular mast...)
One can assume that Akua Reindorf knows her stuff. She is very much a leader in her field, employment and discriminatiion law.
Mr. Walker, she thrice put it to the Commons and a combination of Conservative MPs rebelling and the Labour Party (and other opposition MPs) en masse voted it down.
I said at the time that when you've got MPs who really like the EU and MPs who really dislike the EU voting the same way, someone's screwing it up.
The dumb soft pro-EU MPs of the Commons rejected everything and guaranteed that we'd leave on harder terms. It was epitomised by the lauded Grieve shrieking it was 'too late' when he was given the exact concession he'd asked for, but still didn't vote for it.
I know this is going over old ground, but people generally should try to at least learn something from it. To tie it into the football story, pointing at people and telling them they're wicked for disliking the EU, or a gesture associated with iconoclast barbarians, isn't going to persuade them. The Little Englander nonsense from Cameron was dumb as hell, yet there were plenty of pro-EU types here tittering about it.
Absolutely the "too late" remark was peak hubris.
The pro-EU MPs swallowed their own spin hook, line and sinker and thought they would win and overturn Brexit entirely rather than compromise on a BRINO Backstop that effectively kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union with the EU having a veto on us ever leaving it.
Seeing Grieve kicked out of the party after his behaviour, then comprehensively thrashed at Beaconsfield and an hard rather than soft Brexit follow was really enjoyable.
I actually can’t remember those tumultuous moments.
The key prize for Remainers (rather than pro-EU which probably describes very few) was a second vote.
May refused to concede that.
There was a clear majority for a softish Brexit, but the various parties could not coalesce and let the loons (mostly on the Brexity side) win.
This is Mark Francois’s Brexit: petty, painful, and underpinned by inchoate fantasies about “de Jarmins”.
We'll never know how a second vote would have gone but, if Remain had narrowly won it, the country and our political system would have gone apeshit.
The fall out would have totally dominated our politics for years. With lots of anger and disorder as well.
There was no putting it back into Pandora's Box. The die was cast when we voted Leave, IMHO, and at that point we had to Leave - the best thing Remainers could have done was to influence its form and play the long game.
Cummings predicted civil strife if we'd had a second vote without enacting the first, and I believe he was right
Imagine the anger. The biggest mandate in British democratic history - 17.4 million voters - simply ignored? Overruled? Cancelled?
The stupidity of those that avowed a "people's vote" is quite something. They would also have trashed democracy for generations. Why bother voting for anything if the elite can just ignore it. So we become North Korea. Where elections are charades. With Potemkin referendums. Imagine doing the same in the Scottish indyref. Imagine if that had produced a YES vote (taking it out of the EU at the time), would ANYONE have suggested overruling it?
No. So why was it deemed permissible to overturn Brexit?
The campaign for a 2nd vote was also self-defeating, as you say. If the Remainers had accepted the first vote, then got behind ultra-soft Brexit, we would have got exactly that; they might even have kept Freedom of Movement inside EFTA
How many times do you need to be reminded that hard Brexit was committed to by May in 2016, and indicative votes on a soft Brexit (CU/SM) were voted down as a result of Tory whipping, with Labour overwhelmingly voting for it. It was the Tory obsession with a hard Brexit that prevented a soft Brexit, not Remainer opposition.
I've always admitted this. TMay (a Remainer) is as much to blame as the leftwing Remainers. Her insane red lines boxed her in from the start
However the push for a 2nd vote made Brexiteers worry that the whole thing would be overturned, which persuaded many Leavers to go for a Hard, irreversible Brexit. The two sides conspired to get a Brexit very few originally desired.
It will be a poignant passage in Brexit: the History
No, Brexiteers went for a hard Brexit because that was what they wanted. Was May a Remainer? Barely. She gave Cameron the minimal support necessary in the referendum campaign and immediately adopted these crazy red lines under the influence of Nick Timothy. Most Remainers were pragmatic and pushed for a soft Brexit but were met with inplacable hostility from Leavers, who insisted that they had won and would dictate terms. Personally I would have been OK with a 2nd referendum but a soft Brexit was preferable because it honoured the vote, however imperfect a process that was. By the time the referendum was lost there were no good outcomes.
Yes. The vote sparked a bizarre kulturkamp almost from the beginning, with Remainers and the EU accused of treachery with increasing fervour.
It made me realise I am not British, which I had previously assumed I was.
Mr. Walker, she thrice put it to the Commons and a combination of Conservative MPs rebelling and the Labour Party (and other opposition MPs) en masse voted it down.
I said at the time that when you've got MPs who really like the EU and MPs who really dislike the EU voting the same way, someone's screwing it up.
The dumb soft pro-EU MPs of the Commons rejected everything and guaranteed that we'd leave on harder terms. It was epitomised by the lauded Grieve shrieking it was 'too late' when he was given the exact concession he'd asked for, but still didn't vote for it.
I know this is going over old ground, but people generally should try to at least learn something from it. To tie it into the football story, pointing at people and telling them they're wicked for disliking the EU, or a gesture associated with iconoclast barbarians, isn't going to persuade them. The Little Englander nonsense from Cameron was dumb as hell, yet there were plenty of pro-EU types here tittering about it.
Absolutely the "too late" remark was peak hubris.
The pro-EU MPs swallowed their own spin hook, line and sinker and thought they would win and overturn Brexit entirely rather than compromise on a BRINO Backstop that effectively kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union with the EU having a veto on us ever leaving it.
Seeing Grieve kicked out of the party after his behaviour, then comprehensively thrashed at Beaconsfield and an hard rather than soft Brexit follow was really enjoyable.
I actually can’t remember those tumultuous moments.
The key prize for Remainers (rather than pro-EU which probably describes very few) was a second vote.
May refused to concede that.
There was a clear majority for a softish Brexit, but the various parties could not coalesce and let the loons (mostly on the Brexity side) win.
This is Mark Francois’s Brexit: petty, painful, and underpinned by inchoate fantasies about “de Jarmins”.
We'll never know how a second vote would have gone but, if Remain had narrowly won it, the country and our political system would have gone apeshit.
The fall out would have totally dominated our politics for years. With lots of anger and disorder as well.
There was no putting it back into Pandora's Box. The die was cast when we voted Leave, IMHO, and at that point we had to Leave - the best thing Remainers could have done was to influence its form and play the long game.
Cummings predicted civil strife if we'd had a second vote without enacting the first, and I believe he was right
Imagine the anger. The biggest mandate in British democratic history - 17.4 million voters - simply ignored? Overruled? Cancelled?
The stupidity of those that avowed a "people's vote" is quite something. They would also have trashed democracy for generations. Why bother voting for anything if the elite can just ignore it. So we become North Korea. Where elections are charades. With Potemkin referendums. Imagine doing the same in the Scottish indyref. Imagine if that had produced a YES vote (taking it out of the EU at the time), would ANYONE have suggested overruling it?
No. So why was it deemed permissible to overturn Brexit?
The campaign for a 2nd vote was also self-defeating, as you say. If the Remainers had accepted the first vote, then got behind ultra-soft Brexit, we would have got exactly that; they might even have kept Freedom of Movement inside EFTA
How many times do you need to be reminded that hard Brexit was committed to by May in 2016, and indicative votes on a soft Brexit (CU/SM) were voted down as a result of Tory whipping, with Labour overwhelmingly voting for it. It was the Tory obsession with a hard Brexit that prevented a soft Brexit, not Remainer opposition.
I've always admitted this. TMay (a Remainer) is as much to blame as the leftwing Remainers. Her insane red lines boxed her in from the start
However the push for a 2nd vote made Brexiteers worry that the whole thing would be overturned, which persuaded many Leavers to go for a Hard, irreversible Brexit. The two sides conspired to get a Brexit very few originally desired.
It will be a poignant passage in Brexit: the History
No, Brexiteers went for a hard Brexit because that was what they wanted. Was May a Remainer? Barely. She gave Cameron the minimal support necessary in the referendum campaign and immediately adopted these crazy red lines under the influence of Nick Timothy. Most Remainers were pragmatic and pushed for a soft Brexit but were met with inplacable hostility from Leavers, who insisted that they had won and would dictate terms. Personally I would have been OK with a 2nd referendum but a soft Brexit was preferable because it honoured the vote, however imperfect a process that was. By the time the referendum was lost there were no good outcomes.
Yes. The vote sparked a bizarre kulturkamp almost from the beginning, with Remainers and the EU accused of treachery with increasing fervour.
It made me realise I am not British, which I had previously assumed I was.
The thing is one thing fuels another.
Remainers saying "they're no longer British" and then arguing for the vote to be overturned fuelled charges of treason.
Leavers attacking every institution that put caveats or limits on the interpretation of the vote similarly infuriated Remainers and made them want to disassociate themselves from a decision they couldn't understand or identify with.
Well that’s me on this Board in 2021 saying as such.
I don’t remember a mass disavowal of citizenship in the wake of the vote, so your post just reads like a rewrite of history, if not victim blaming.
The Mail’s editorial (not wholly separable from govt comms policy) during this period was truly sickening. And even May was not immune, with disastrous criticisms of “citizens of nowhere” and grotesque suggestions that the EU was interfering in the 2017 election.
I recall many Remainers reidentifying as European or another EU country in the aftermath of the referendum. Clearly, their sense of identity as British was bound up in progressive international liberalism and once that was thrown into question so was their nationality.
I think "victim-blaming" is absurd self-pity. You lost the vote, sure, but you aren't victims.
Keir Starmer on any reasonable assessment can be said to be:
Normally trustworthy. His actions match his words and his words match the reality.
Serious. Takes responsibility.
Not corrupt
Has a trackrecord of competently managing an organisation
No interest in divisive politics
All unlike his opponent. Yet people prefer the charlatan on every metric. There is a problem if people think there's a problem, so Starmer needs to go. Don't think this is a net gain for humanity however.
Mr. Walker, she thrice put it to the Commons and a combination of Conservative MPs rebelling and the Labour Party (and other opposition MPs) en masse voted it down.
I said at the time that when you've got MPs who really like the EU and MPs who really dislike the EU voting the same way, someone's screwing it up.
The dumb soft pro-EU MPs of the Commons rejected everything and guaranteed that we'd leave on harder terms. It was epitomised by the lauded Grieve shrieking it was 'too late' when he was given the exact concession he'd asked for, but still didn't vote for it.
I know this is going over old ground, but people generally should try to at least learn something from it. To tie it into the football story, pointing at people and telling them they're wicked for disliking the EU, or a gesture associated with iconoclast barbarians, isn't going to persuade them. The Little Englander nonsense from Cameron was dumb as hell, yet there were plenty of pro-EU types here tittering about it.
Absolutely the "too late" remark was peak hubris.
The pro-EU MPs swallowed their own spin hook, line and sinker and thought they would win and overturn Brexit entirely rather than compromise on a BRINO Backstop that effectively kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union with the EU having a veto on us ever leaving it.
Seeing Grieve kicked out of the party after his behaviour, then comprehensively thrashed at Beaconsfield and an hard rather than soft Brexit follow was really enjoyable.
I actually can’t remember those tumultuous moments.
The key prize for Remainers (rather than pro-EU which probably describes very few) was a second vote.
May refused to concede that.
There was a clear majority for a softish Brexit, but the various parties could not coalesce and let the loons (mostly on the Brexity side) win.
This is Mark Francois’s Brexit: petty, painful, and underpinned by inchoate fantasies about “de Jarmins”.
We'll never know how a second vote would have gone but, if Remain had narrowly won it, the country and our political system would have gone apeshit.
The fall out would have totally dominated our politics for years. With lots of anger and disorder as well.
There was no putting it back into Pandora's Box. The die was cast when we voted Leave, IMHO, and at that point we had to Leave - the best thing Remainers could have done was to influence its form and play the long game.
Cummings predicted civil strife if we'd had a second vote without enacting the first, and I believe he was right
Imagine the anger. The biggest mandate in British democratic history - 17.4 million voters - simply ignored? Overruled? Cancelled?
The stupidity of those that avowed a "people's vote" is quite something. They would also have trashed democracy for generations. Why bother voting for anything if the elite can just ignore it. So we become North Korea. Where elections are charades. With Potemkin referendums. Imagine doing the same in the Scottish indyref. Imagine if that had produced a YES vote (taking it out of the EU at the time), would ANYONE have suggested overruling it?
No. So why was it deemed permissible to overturn Brexit?
The campaign for a 2nd vote was also self-defeating, as you say. If the Remainers had accepted the first vote, then got behind ultra-soft Brexit, we would have got exactly that; they might even have kept Freedom of Movement inside EFTA
How many times do you need to be reminded that hard Brexit was committed to by May in 2016, and indicative votes on a soft Brexit (CU/SM) were voted down as a result of Tory whipping, with Labour overwhelmingly voting for it. It was the Tory obsession with a hard Brexit that prevented a soft Brexit, not Remainer opposition.
I've always admitted this. TMay (a Remainer) is as much to blame as the leftwing Remainers. Her insane red lines boxed her in from the start
However the push for a 2nd vote made Brexiteers worry that the whole thing would be overturned, which persuaded many Leavers to go for a Hard, irreversible Brexit. The two sides conspired to get a Brexit very few originally desired.
It will be a poignant passage in Brexit: the History
No, Brexiteers went for a hard Brexit because that was what they wanted. Was May a Remainer? Barely. She gave Cameron the minimal support necessary in the referendum campaign and immediately adopted these crazy red lines under the influence of Nick Timothy. Most Remainers were pragmatic and pushed for a soft Brexit but were met with inplacable hostility from Leavers, who insisted that they had won and would dictate terms. Personally I would have been OK with a 2nd referendum but a soft Brexit was preferable because it honoured the vote, however imperfect a process that was. By the time the referendum was lost there were no good outcomes.
I agree that many, probably most, Brexiteers wanted a "hard" Brexit. I actually don't think a "soft" Brexit would have lasted more than a few years. It was not a stable outcome for us, any more than the NI Protocol is. If a soft Brexit/BINO means anything, it is remaining in the single market, including freedom of movement, without a say in how that market evolves and without preventing the mass immigration from Eastern Europe that did so much to cause the referendum result in the first place. 50-80% of our laws would still have been determined in Brussels but without our input. A soft Brexit would have got the worst of both worlds. Eventually, I guess we'd have done a Switzerland and told the EU where to take its single market.
Switzerland is in the single market.
No its not.
Its as close as you can get to it, without actually being in it, but its not in it.
Mr. Walker, she thrice put it to the Commons and a combination of Conservative MPs rebelling and the Labour Party (and other opposition MPs) en masse voted it down.
I said at the time that when you've got MPs who really like the EU and MPs who really dislike the EU voting the same way, someone's screwing it up.
The dumb soft pro-EU MPs of the Commons rejected everything and guaranteed that we'd leave on harder terms. It was epitomised by the lauded Grieve shrieking it was 'too late' when he was given the exact concession he'd asked for, but still didn't vote for it.
I know this is going over old ground, but people generally should try to at least learn something from it. To tie it into the football story, pointing at people and telling them they're wicked for disliking the EU, or a gesture associated with iconoclast barbarians, isn't going to persuade them. The Little Englander nonsense from Cameron was dumb as hell, yet there were plenty of pro-EU types here tittering about it.
Absolutely the "too late" remark was peak hubris.
The pro-EU MPs swallowed their own spin hook, line and sinker and thought they would win and overturn Brexit entirely rather than compromise on a BRINO Backstop that effectively kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union with the EU having a veto on us ever leaving it.
Seeing Grieve kicked out of the party after his behaviour, then comprehensively thrashed at Beaconsfield and an hard rather than soft Brexit follow was really enjoyable.
I actually can’t remember those tumultuous moments.
The key prize for Remainers (rather than pro-EU which probably describes very few) was a second vote.
May refused to concede that.
There was a clear majority for a softish Brexit, but the various parties could not coalesce and let the loons (mostly on the Brexity side) win.
This is Mark Francois’s Brexit: petty, painful, and underpinned by inchoate fantasies about “de Jarmins”.
We'll never know how a second vote would have gone but, if Remain had narrowly won it, the country and our political system would have gone apeshit.
The fall out would have totally dominated our politics for years. With lots of anger and disorder as well.
There was no putting it back into Pandora's Box. The die was cast when we voted Leave, IMHO, and at that point we had to Leave - the best thing Remainers could have done was to influence its form and play the long game.
Cummings predicted civil strife if we'd had a second vote without enacting the first, and I believe he was right
Imagine the anger. The biggest mandate in British democratic history - 17.4 million voters - simply ignored? Overruled? Cancelled?
The stupidity of those that avowed a "people's vote" is quite something. They would also have trashed democracy for generations. Why bother voting for anything if the elite can just ignore it. So we become North Korea. Where elections are charades. With Potemkin referendums. Imagine doing the same in the Scottish indyref. Imagine if that had produced a YES vote (taking it out of the EU at the time), would ANYONE have suggested overruling it?
No. So why was it deemed permissible to overturn Brexit?
The campaign for a 2nd vote was also self-defeating, as you say. If the Remainers had accepted the first vote, then got behind ultra-soft Brexit, we would have got exactly that; they might even have kept Freedom of Movement inside EFTA
I broadly agree with this. (And it is easier to do so with hindsight).
I actually think the critical moment was the six months after the vote when it was up to May to determine the rules of the game.
Remember, “Brexit means Brexit”?
She ruled out FOM etc and defined red lines which entailed a hard Brexit which she then attempted to soften via negotiation.
No opposition - formally designated as such or otherwise - existed in a coherent enough fashion to shape the terms of the debate in any other direction.
May made a historic and fatal error.
The desire to cancel brexit amongst remain activists - who became an extreme fringe after the referendum - was just overwhelming and blinded them to any compromise.
Secondly, there was an acceptance amongst the labour party membership that Brexit was a fair price to pay for the forthcoming socialist revolution that would take place when Corbyn rose to power on the chaos that he was helping to forment by his stance on Brexit.
These two factors were like a magic mix that actually helped deliver the Brexit we got.
As I suggested yesterday, it is quite possible that the remain fanatics and corbynites - who have now metamorphised in to the woke - will eventually find a way to rejoin the EU.
Keir Starmer on any reasonable assessment can be said to be:
Normally trustworthy. His actions match his words and his words match the reality.
Serious. Takes responsibility.
Not corrupt
Has a trackrecord of competently managing an organisation
No interest in divisive politics
All unlike his opponent. Yet people prefer the charlatan on every metric. There is a problem if people think there's a problem, so Starmer needs to go. Don't think this is a net gain for humanity however.
I 100% completely disagree with 1, 2 and 5 - and would challenge 4. No evidence against number 3.
Keir Starmer on any reasonable assessment can be said to be:
Normally trustworthy. His actions match his words and his words match the reality.
Serious. Takes responsibility.
Not corrupt
Has a trackrecord of competently managing an organisation
No interest in divisive politics
All unlike his opponent. Yet people prefer the charlatan on every metric. There is a problem if people think there's a problem, so Starmer needs to go. Don't think this is a net gain for humanity however.
Can't disagree with that lot - These are all qualities that help governance but not getting elected.
In a defence of Starmer, despite his invisibility as LOTO, he is up against Johnson who the voters have perceived has had an inch-perfect, error-free pandemic.
Johnson's genius has been his non-stop campaigning throughout the pandemic (something I was critical of, considering it tasteless during the height of a pandemic where thousands of people were dying each week). The campaigning has paid dividends and has given the impression that vaccine, procurement, programming and delivery were all entirely his gift to the nation, and now we a reaping the benefits- a nation unlocked and Covid vanquished. (Remember, perception, not reality, although the link between Covid and deaths seems over).
I still cannot see past the early stages of a chaotic economy this time next year, which is why I feel Johnson should go very, very, early Spring/ early Autumn 2022. I believe the economic strife will take a year or so to fully make its mark on Johnson, which is why 2024 is too late.
What strife?
Companies are reporting difficulties in filling vacancies. The economy is rebounding strongly. Confidence is pretty much at a record level. That forwards momentum will take us through the end of furlough and allow those whose companies don't reopen post-lockdown to find companies desperate for staff.
At that point the economic strife as well as the health strife will have been dealt with.
Since you're so convinced the economic strife is coming, if I'm right and the economy gets through this fine with the government support laid out then a post-pandemic rebound . . . would that confounding of your expectations make you consider voting for a Boris led Tory Party in 2023/24 or would that never happen?
I have been very specific when economic strife will take effect. You are in cloud cuckoo land if you believe there will be no economic consequences from the last 14 months. Try getting out more, the signs are already here, quality businesses not reopening, and not just retail that has gone online.
Boom first, then bust!
Formerly quality businesses closing down for good happens all the time, especially every recession.
Any formerly quality business not reopening is not that bad macroeconomically if there is a staffing shortage in other businesses at the same time as the employees formerly working it the former business can find alternative jobs to go too.
What would be far worse is businesses reopening but then closing down again due to failure one after another leading to mass unemployment, a downturn, no businesses hiring and a vicious feedback loop. That looked possible a year ago, it doesn't look at all probable now.
I am looking for a new job and have been approached by recruiters three times in the past week (not sure I want any of them).
There is no doubt there is a boom and it would be depressing if there wasn’t one given the scale of last year’s collapse.
It’s not possible to make prediction much beyond the next six months except that it looks like resource shortages and loss of market access (ie Brexit) will bear down on economic growth potential.
Ugh, there are so many things I detest about the recruitment process. It revolves around contrived metrics and process - with lots of effort on the part of the applicant - and little thinking on the part of the Employer. You can fall or peter out at any time having put hours and hours in. It often results in failed recruitments where the employer can't find the talent they want, or hires someone who turns out to be not what they want.
All the work and client jobs I've got over the last 15 years have been through my network. I focus on maintaining that now as cold application is a waste of time, as are most recruiters.
My “issue” is that I’m on a third career change. First management consulting, then digital marketing, and now running digital product businesses.
I get lots of offers to run digital marketing agencies which is...annoying. I don’t mind recruiters, though. They’re just doing their bit.
If anyone has an a opportunity around digital product leadership - hit me up in via a private mail! Equally interested in contract v perm opps.
Mr. Walker, she thrice put it to the Commons and a combination of Conservative MPs rebelling and the Labour Party (and other opposition MPs) en masse voted it down.
I said at the time that when you've got MPs who really like the EU and MPs who really dislike the EU voting the same way, someone's screwing it up.
The dumb soft pro-EU MPs of the Commons rejected everything and guaranteed that we'd leave on harder terms. It was epitomised by the lauded Grieve shrieking it was 'too late' when he was given the exact concession he'd asked for, but still didn't vote for it.
I know this is going over old ground, but people generally should try to at least learn something from it. To tie it into the football story, pointing at people and telling them they're wicked for disliking the EU, or a gesture associated with iconoclast barbarians, isn't going to persuade them. The Little Englander nonsense from Cameron was dumb as hell, yet there were plenty of pro-EU types here tittering about it.
Absolutely the "too late" remark was peak hubris.
The pro-EU MPs swallowed their own spin hook, line and sinker and thought they would win and overturn Brexit entirely rather than compromise on a BRINO Backstop that effectively kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union with the EU having a veto on us ever leaving it.
Seeing Grieve kicked out of the party after his behaviour, then comprehensively thrashed at Beaconsfield and an hard rather than soft Brexit follow was really enjoyable.
I actually can’t remember those tumultuous moments.
The key prize for Remainers (rather than pro-EU which probably describes very few) was a second vote.
May refused to concede that.
There was a clear majority for a softish Brexit, but the various parties could not coalesce and let the loons (mostly on the Brexity side) win.
This is Mark Francois’s Brexit: petty, painful, and underpinned by inchoate fantasies about “de Jarmins”.
We'll never know how a second vote would have gone but, if Remain had narrowly won it, the country and our political system would have gone apeshit.
The fall out would have totally dominated our politics for years. With lots of anger and disorder as well.
There was no putting it back into Pandora's Box. The die was cast when we voted Leave, IMHO, and at that point we had to Leave - the best thing Remainers could have done was to influence its form and play the long game.
Cummings predicted civil strife if we'd had a second vote without enacting the first, and I believe he was right
Imagine the anger. The biggest mandate in British democratic history - 17.4 million voters - simply ignored? Overruled? Cancelled?
The stupidity of those that avowed a "people's vote" is quite something. They would also have trashed democracy for generations. Why bother voting for anything if the elite can just ignore it. So we become North Korea. Where elections are charades. With Potemkin referendums. Imagine doing the same in the Scottish indyref. Imagine if that had produced a YES vote (taking it out of the EU at the time), would ANYONE have suggested overruling it?
No. So why was it deemed permissible to overturn Brexit?
The campaign for a 2nd vote was also self-defeating, as you say. If the Remainers had accepted the first vote, then got behind ultra-soft Brexit, we would have got exactly that; they might even have kept Freedom of Movement inside EFTA
How many times do you need to be reminded that hard Brexit was committed to by May in 2016, and indicative votes on a soft Brexit (CU/SM) were voted down as a result of Tory whipping, with Labour overwhelmingly voting for it. It was the Tory obsession with a hard Brexit that prevented a soft Brexit, not Remainer opposition.
I've always admitted this. TMay (a Remainer) is as much to blame as the leftwing Remainers. Her insane red lines boxed her in from the start
However the push for a 2nd vote made Brexiteers worry that the whole thing would be overturned, which persuaded many Leavers to go for a Hard, irreversible Brexit. The two sides conspired to get a Brexit very few originally desired.
It will be a poignant passage in Brexit: the History
No, Brexiteers went for a hard Brexit because that was what they wanted. Was May a Remainer? Barely. She gave Cameron the minimal support necessary in the referendum campaign and immediately adopted these crazy red lines under the influence of Nick Timothy. Most Remainers were pragmatic and pushed for a soft Brexit but were met with inplacable hostility from Leavers, who insisted that they had won and would dictate terms. Personally I would have been OK with a 2nd referendum but a soft Brexit was preferable because it honoured the vote, however imperfect a process that was. By the time the referendum was lost there were no good outcomes.
Yes. The vote sparked a bizarre kulturkamp almost from the beginning, with Remainers and the EU accused of treachery with increasing fervour.
It made me realise I am not British, which I had previously assumed I was.
Yeah I have felt increasingly semi-detached from this country since 2016. I still live here, and probably always will, but I have less and less emotional involvement, like a kind of out of body experience.
Weird, innit.
The practical outcome for me is that the likelihood of my returning to NZ is much higher, and I no longer feel it necessarily “natural” to raise my children as British or within the British system.
Views like this though make others question your loyalty or belief in Britain in the first place.
You can't just disown your own nationality just because a national referendum goes against you.
You argue instead for why an alternative solution better suits the national interest.
Why do you think you get to tell other people how they can or can't feel about part of their identity? Sickening.
Have we learnt nothing about writing off a source just because we don't like it?
No, absolutely not. I will not recognise the Canary, or the Mail, or ZeroHedge as a credible source.
If there's a genuine story then it will be reported from credible sources.
This has nothing to do with what we like. I dislike the politics of the Guardian and the i but I recognise both of them as credible sources on the left, just as the Telegraph is a credible source on the right.
The Guardian exploit many of the same tricks as the Mail, where they conveniently miss out something pertinent.
Quite. The idea that the Guardian is reliable on an issue that really engages them - anything to do with race, Trump, gender, Wokeness, Brexit - is laughable. They are just as bad as the Mail. As has often been said, the two papers are eerie mirror images of each other
Here's a good example
"Ignore the conspiracy theories: scientists know Covid-19 wasn't created in a lab
By Peter Daszak
"Instead of following false claims, we should focus our efforts on the regions where the next pandemic is likely to emerge"
A piece that denounces lab leak as a conspiracy theory, when it fact the opposite is true. The real conspirators were trying to SQUASH the lab leak hypothesis, banning it from Facebook etc
And look at the end:
"This article was amended on 11 June 2020 to make clear the writer’s past work with researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology."
The Guardian originally ran this as a think piece by an apparently neutral scientist. They didn't tell their readers the author worked, and is still working, with the Wuhan Lab, so might just have a bit of an agenda
Couple of points - first, it's comment, not reporting, which ought to be pretty clear from its appearing under "commentisfree". Secondly, the 'conspiracy theory' he denounced (and I'd agree that such language is unscientific) were around the claims (including the Nature article) that the virus was 'almost certainly' genetically engineered. Such claims remain completely untrue. Its not possible completely to disprove such a thesis, but it is exceedingly unlikely.
And remarkable for your being quite so exercised about an amendment a whole year ago.
I am furnishing my argument - the Guardian can be just as wanky as the Mail, if not worse - with evidence. That is clear evidence - the late, quiet amendment, after 900 comments saying how fantastic the article is (with nearly all the negative ones deleted)
Incidentally, that Nature article - Proximal Origins of Covid - is fascinating, the more you dig
As I say, the author is K G Andersen
On 31st January he told Fauci in a private email that the virus was potentially engineered
Four days later, anyone who believes in an engineered virus is a "crackpot" - according to K G Andersen, despite him saying exactly that to Fauci, in private, the same week
Coupla weeks later he gets a fat grant from Fauci. A year later, when everyone starts asking about this, he suddenly deletes 4000 tweets and then vanishes from Twitter.
One of my courses is cancer, and particularly prostate cancer. I received some student feedback this week -
"- It would be great if lecturers could use language which is trans-inclusive when referring to sex hormones etc. (e.g. male and female, rather than men/women)."
Now this really annoys me. The words men and male are interchangeable, and only someone with a prostate can get prostate cancer. Its so basic its untrue. I have no desire to upset someone, but talking about male sex hormones and not being able to say men because someone who now lives as a man and regards themselves as a man is just ridiculous. I'm sure others on here will disagree.
So yes, woke nonsense is reaching even into science departments.
Mr. Walker, she thrice put it to the Commons and a combination of Conservative MPs rebelling and the Labour Party (and other opposition MPs) en masse voted it down.
I said at the time that when you've got MPs who really like the EU and MPs who really dislike the EU voting the same way, someone's screwing it up.
The dumb soft pro-EU MPs of the Commons rejected everything and guaranteed that we'd leave on harder terms. It was epitomised by the lauded Grieve shrieking it was 'too late' when he was given the exact concession he'd asked for, but still didn't vote for it.
I know this is going over old ground, but people generally should try to at least learn something from it. To tie it into the football story, pointing at people and telling them they're wicked for disliking the EU, or a gesture associated with iconoclast barbarians, isn't going to persuade them. The Little Englander nonsense from Cameron was dumb as hell, yet there were plenty of pro-EU types here tittering about it.
Absolutely the "too late" remark was peak hubris.
The pro-EU MPs swallowed their own spin hook, line and sinker and thought they would win and overturn Brexit entirely rather than compromise on a BRINO Backstop that effectively kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union with the EU having a veto on us ever leaving it.
Seeing Grieve kicked out of the party after his behaviour, then comprehensively thrashed at Beaconsfield and an hard rather than soft Brexit follow was really enjoyable.
I actually can’t remember those tumultuous moments.
The key prize for Remainers (rather than pro-EU which probably describes very few) was a second vote.
May refused to concede that.
There was a clear majority for a softish Brexit, but the various parties could not coalesce and let the loons (mostly on the Brexity side) win.
This is Mark Francois’s Brexit: petty, painful, and underpinned by inchoate fantasies about “de Jarmins”.
We'll never know how a second vote would have gone but, if Remain had narrowly won it, the country and our political system would have gone apeshit.
The fall out would have totally dominated our politics for years. With lots of anger and disorder as well.
There was no putting it back into Pandora's Box. The die was cast when we voted Leave, IMHO, and at that point we had to Leave - the best thing Remainers could have done was to influence its form and play the long game.
Cummings predicted civil strife if we'd had a second vote without enacting the first, and I believe he was right
Imagine the anger. The biggest mandate in British democratic history - 17.4 million voters - simply ignored? Overruled? Cancelled?
The stupidity of those that avowed a "people's vote" is quite something. They would also have trashed democracy for generations. Why bother voting for anything if the elite can just ignore it. So we become North Korea. Where elections are charades. With Potemkin referendums. Imagine doing the same in the Scottish indyref. Imagine if that had produced a YES vote (taking it out of the EU at the time), would ANYONE have suggested overruling it?
No. So why was it deemed permissible to overturn Brexit?
The campaign for a 2nd vote was also self-defeating, as you say. If the Remainers had accepted the first vote, then got behind ultra-soft Brexit, we would have got exactly that; they might even have kept Freedom of Movement inside EFTA
How many times do you need to be reminded that hard Brexit was committed to by May in 2016, and indicative votes on a soft Brexit (CU/SM) were voted down as a result of Tory whipping, with Labour overwhelmingly voting for it. It was the Tory obsession with a hard Brexit that prevented a soft Brexit, not Remainer opposition.
I've always admitted this. TMay (a Remainer) is as much to blame as the leftwing Remainers. Her insane red lines boxed her in from the start
However the push for a 2nd vote made Brexiteers worry that the whole thing would be overturned, which persuaded many Leavers to go for a Hard, irreversible Brexit. The two sides conspired to get a Brexit very few originally desired.
It will be a poignant passage in Brexit: the History
No, Brexiteers went for a hard Brexit because that was what they wanted. Was May a Remainer? Barely. She gave Cameron the minimal support necessary in the referendum campaign and immediately adopted these crazy red lines under the influence of Nick Timothy. Most Remainers were pragmatic and pushed for a soft Brexit but were met with inplacable hostility from Leavers, who insisted that they had won and would dictate terms. Personally I would have been OK with a 2nd referendum but a soft Brexit was preferable because it honoured the vote, however imperfect a process that was. By the time the referendum was lost there were no good outcomes.
I agree that many, probably most, Brexiteers wanted a "hard" Brexit. I actually don't think a "soft" Brexit would have lasted more than a few years. It was not a stable outcome for us, any more than the NI Protocol is. If a soft Brexit/BINO means anything, it is remaining in the single market, including freedom of movement, without a say in how that market evolves and without preventing the mass immigration from Eastern Europe that did so much to cause the referendum result in the first place. 50-80% of our laws would still have been determined in Brussels but without our input. A soft Brexit would have got the worst of both worlds. Eventually, I guess we'd have done a Switzerland and told the EU where to take its single market.
Switzerland is in the single market.
No its not.
Its as close as you can get to it, without actually being in it, but its not in it.
It has access but is not a full member. The EU wants to make them a full member, but the Swiss have recently told them to shove it.
Mr. Walker, she thrice put it to the Commons and a combination of Conservative MPs rebelling and the Labour Party (and other opposition MPs) en masse voted it down.
I said at the time that when you've got MPs who really like the EU and MPs who really dislike the EU voting the same way, someone's screwing it up.
The dumb soft pro-EU MPs of the Commons rejected everything and guaranteed that we'd leave on harder terms. It was epitomised by the lauded Grieve shrieking it was 'too late' when he was given the exact concession he'd asked for, but still didn't vote for it.
I know this is going over old ground, but people generally should try to at least learn something from it. To tie it into the football story, pointing at people and telling them they're wicked for disliking the EU, or a gesture associated with iconoclast barbarians, isn't going to persuade them. The Little Englander nonsense from Cameron was dumb as hell, yet there were plenty of pro-EU types here tittering about it.
Absolutely the "too late" remark was peak hubris.
The pro-EU MPs swallowed their own spin hook, line and sinker and thought they would win and overturn Brexit entirely rather than compromise on a BRINO Backstop that effectively kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union with the EU having a veto on us ever leaving it.
Seeing Grieve kicked out of the party after his behaviour, then comprehensively thrashed at Beaconsfield and an hard rather than soft Brexit follow was really enjoyable.
I actually can’t remember those tumultuous moments.
The key prize for Remainers (rather than pro-EU which probably describes very few) was a second vote.
May refused to concede that.
There was a clear majority for a softish Brexit, but the various parties could not coalesce and let the loons (mostly on the Brexity side) win.
This is Mark Francois’s Brexit: petty, painful, and underpinned by inchoate fantasies about “de Jarmins”.
We'll never know how a second vote would have gone but, if Remain had narrowly won it, the country and our political system would have gone apeshit.
The fall out would have totally dominated our politics for years. With lots of anger and disorder as well.
There was no putting it back into Pandora's Box. The die was cast when we voted Leave, IMHO, and at that point we had to Leave - the best thing Remainers could have done was to influence its form and play the long game.
Cummings predicted civil strife if we'd had a second vote without enacting the first, and I believe he was right
Imagine the anger. The biggest mandate in British democratic history - 17.4 million voters - simply ignored? Overruled? Cancelled?
The stupidity of those that avowed a "people's vote" is quite something. They would also have trashed democracy for generations. Why bother voting for anything if the elite can just ignore it. So we become North Korea. Where elections are charades. With Potemkin referendums. Imagine doing the same in the Scottish indyref. Imagine if that had produced a YES vote (taking it out of the EU at the time), would ANYONE have suggested overruling it?
No. So why was it deemed permissible to overturn Brexit?
The campaign for a 2nd vote was also self-defeating, as you say. If the Remainers had accepted the first vote, then got behind ultra-soft Brexit, we would have got exactly that; they might even have kept Freedom of Movement inside EFTA
How many times do you need to be reminded that hard Brexit was committed to by May in 2016, and indicative votes on a soft Brexit (CU/SM) were voted down as a result of Tory whipping, with Labour overwhelmingly voting for it. It was the Tory obsession with a hard Brexit that prevented a soft Brexit, not Remainer opposition.
I've always admitted this. TMay (a Remainer) is as much to blame as the leftwing Remainers. Her insane red lines boxed her in from the start
However the push for a 2nd vote made Brexiteers worry that the whole thing would be overturned, which persuaded many Leavers to go for a Hard, irreversible Brexit. The two sides conspired to get a Brexit very few originally desired.
It will be a poignant passage in Brexit: the History
No, Brexiteers went for a hard Brexit because that was what they wanted. Was May a Remainer? Barely. She gave Cameron the minimal support necessary in the referendum campaign and immediately adopted these crazy red lines under the influence of Nick Timothy. Most Remainers were pragmatic and pushed for a soft Brexit but were met with inplacable hostility from Leavers, who insisted that they had won and would dictate terms. Personally I would have been OK with a 2nd referendum but a soft Brexit was preferable because it honoured the vote, however imperfect a process that was. By the time the referendum was lost there were no good outcomes.
Yes. The vote sparked a bizarre kulturkamp almost from the beginning, with Remainers and the EU accused of treachery with increasing fervour.
It made me realise I am not British, which I had previously assumed I was.
Mr. Walker, she thrice put it to the Commons and a combination of Conservative MPs rebelling and the Labour Party (and other opposition MPs) en masse voted it down.
I said at the time that when you've got MPs who really like the EU and MPs who really dislike the EU voting the same way, someone's screwing it up.
The dumb soft pro-EU MPs of the Commons rejected everything and guaranteed that we'd leave on harder terms. It was epitomised by the lauded Grieve shrieking it was 'too late' when he was given the exact concession he'd asked for, but still didn't vote for it.
I know this is going over old ground, but people generally should try to at least learn something from it. To tie it into the football story, pointing at people and telling them they're wicked for disliking the EU, or a gesture associated with iconoclast barbarians, isn't going to persuade them. The Little Englander nonsense from Cameron was dumb as hell, yet there were plenty of pro-EU types here tittering about it.
Absolutely the "too late" remark was peak hubris.
The pro-EU MPs swallowed their own spin hook, line and sinker and thought they would win and overturn Brexit entirely rather than compromise on a BRINO Backstop that effectively kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union with the EU having a veto on us ever leaving it.
Seeing Grieve kicked out of the party after his behaviour, then comprehensively thrashed at Beaconsfield and an hard rather than soft Brexit follow was really enjoyable.
I actually can’t remember those tumultuous moments.
The key prize for Remainers (rather than pro-EU which probably describes very few) was a second vote.
May refused to concede that.
There was a clear majority for a softish Brexit, but the various parties could not coalesce and let the loons (mostly on the Brexity side) win.
This is Mark Francois’s Brexit: petty, painful, and underpinned by inchoate fantasies about “de Jarmins”.
We'll never know how a second vote would have gone but, if Remain had narrowly won it, the country and our political system would have gone apeshit.
The fall out would have totally dominated our politics for years. With lots of anger and disorder as well.
There was no putting it back into Pandora's Box. The die was cast when we voted Leave, IMHO, and at that point we had to Leave - the best thing Remainers could have done was to influence its form and play the long game.
Cummings predicted civil strife if we'd had a second vote without enacting the first, and I believe he was right
Imagine the anger. The biggest mandate in British democratic history - 17.4 million voters - simply ignored? Overruled? Cancelled?
The stupidity of those that avowed a "people's vote" is quite something. They would also have trashed democracy for generations. Why bother voting for anything if the elite can just ignore it. So we become North Korea. Where elections are charades. With Potemkin referendums. Imagine doing the same in the Scottish indyref. Imagine if that had produced a YES vote (taking it out of the EU at the time), would ANYONE have suggested overruling it?
No. So why was it deemed permissible to overturn Brexit?
The campaign for a 2nd vote was also self-defeating, as you say. If the Remainers had accepted the first vote, then got behind ultra-soft Brexit, we would have got exactly that; they might even have kept Freedom of Movement inside EFTA
How many times do you need to be reminded that hard Brexit was committed to by May in 2016, and indicative votes on a soft Brexit (CU/SM) were voted down as a result of Tory whipping, with Labour overwhelmingly voting for it. It was the Tory obsession with a hard Brexit that prevented a soft Brexit, not Remainer opposition.
I've always admitted this. TMay (a Remainer) is as much to blame as the leftwing Remainers. Her insane red lines boxed her in from the start
However the push for a 2nd vote made Brexiteers worry that the whole thing would be overturned, which persuaded many Leavers to go for a Hard, irreversible Brexit. The two sides conspired to get a Brexit very few originally desired.
It will be a poignant passage in Brexit: the History
No, Brexiteers went for a hard Brexit because that was what they wanted. Was May a Remainer? Barely. She gave Cameron the minimal support necessary in the referendum campaign and immediately adopted these crazy red lines under the influence of Nick Timothy. Most Remainers were pragmatic and pushed for a soft Brexit but were met with inplacable hostility from Leavers, who insisted that they had won and would dictate terms. Personally I would have been OK with a 2nd referendum but a soft Brexit was preferable because it honoured the vote, however imperfect a process that was. By the time the referendum was lost there were no good outcomes.
Yes. The vote sparked a bizarre kulturkamp almost from the beginning, with Remainers and the EU accused of treachery with increasing fervour.
It made me realise I am not British, which I had previously assumed I was.
The thing is one thing fuels another.
Remainers saying "they're no longer British" and then arguing for the vote to be overturned fuelled charges of treason.
Leavers attacking every institution that put caveats or limits on the interpretation of the vote similarly infuriated Remainers and made them want to disassociate themselves from a decision they couldn't understand or identify with.
Well that’s me on this Board in 2021 saying as such.
I don’t remember a mass disavowal of citizenship in the wake of the vote, so your post just reads like a rewrite of history, if not victim blaming.
The Mail’s editorial (not wholly separable from govt comms policy) during this period was truly sickening. And even May was not immune, with disastrous criticisms of “citizens of nowhere” and grotesque suggestions that the EU was interfering in the 2017 election.
As was stated above, you feel like some Tories did under Blair (“not my country any more”). The wheel turns. It’ll turn again.
In my view it’s healthier not to be quite so engaged. My feelings for my county are about the countryside, the little villages, the place names, the sport, the feel of a good pub, the food, the literature, and the sense of “place” and belonging. For others it’s the hum of the city, the vibrant diversity of the people, the dynamic business. Nothing political and no geopolitical change can alter really deep feelings for one’s country. Don’t even let them try - it’s all just fluff in the context of our thousand years of history.
Mr. Walker, she thrice put it to the Commons and a combination of Conservative MPs rebelling and the Labour Party (and other opposition MPs) en masse voted it down.
I said at the time that when you've got MPs who really like the EU and MPs who really dislike the EU voting the same way, someone's screwing it up.
The dumb soft pro-EU MPs of the Commons rejected everything and guaranteed that we'd leave on harder terms. It was epitomised by the lauded Grieve shrieking it was 'too late' when he was given the exact concession he'd asked for, but still didn't vote for it.
I know this is going over old ground, but people generally should try to at least learn something from it. To tie it into the football story, pointing at people and telling them they're wicked for disliking the EU, or a gesture associated with iconoclast barbarians, isn't going to persuade them. The Little Englander nonsense from Cameron was dumb as hell, yet there were plenty of pro-EU types here tittering about it.
Absolutely the "too late" remark was peak hubris.
The pro-EU MPs swallowed their own spin hook, line and sinker and thought they would win and overturn Brexit entirely rather than compromise on a BRINO Backstop that effectively kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union with the EU having a veto on us ever leaving it.
Seeing Grieve kicked out of the party after his behaviour, then comprehensively thrashed at Beaconsfield and an hard rather than soft Brexit follow was really enjoyable.
I actually can’t remember those tumultuous moments.
The key prize for Remainers (rather than pro-EU which probably describes very few) was a second vote.
May refused to concede that.
There was a clear majority for a softish Brexit, but the various parties could not coalesce and let the loons (mostly on the Brexity side) win.
This is Mark Francois’s Brexit: petty, painful, and underpinned by inchoate fantasies about “de Jarmins”.
We'll never know how a second vote would have gone but, if Remain had narrowly won it, the country and our political system would have gone apeshit.
The fall out would have totally dominated our politics for years. With lots of anger and disorder as well.
There was no putting it back into Pandora's Box. The die was cast when we voted Leave, IMHO, and at that point we had to Leave - the best thing Remainers could have done was to influence its form and play the long game.
Cummings predicted civil strife if we'd had a second vote without enacting the first, and I believe he was right
Imagine the anger. The biggest mandate in British democratic history - 17.4 million voters - simply ignored? Overruled? Cancelled?
The stupidity of those that avowed a "people's vote" is quite something. They would also have trashed democracy for generations. Why bother voting for anything if the elite can just ignore it. So we become North Korea. Where elections are charades. With Potemkin referendums. Imagine doing the same in the Scottish indyref. Imagine if that had produced a YES vote (taking it out of the EU at the time), would ANYONE have suggested overruling it?
No. So why was it deemed permissible to overturn Brexit?
The campaign for a 2nd vote was also self-defeating, as you say. If the Remainers had accepted the first vote, then got behind ultra-soft Brexit, we would have got exactly that; they might even have kept Freedom of Movement inside EFTA
How many times do you need to be reminded that hard Brexit was committed to by May in 2016, and indicative votes on a soft Brexit (CU/SM) were voted down as a result of Tory whipping, with Labour overwhelmingly voting for it. It was the Tory obsession with a hard Brexit that prevented a soft Brexit, not Remainer opposition.
I've always admitted this. TMay (a Remainer) is as much to blame as the leftwing Remainers. Her insane red lines boxed her in from the start
However the push for a 2nd vote made Brexiteers worry that the whole thing would be overturned, which persuaded many Leavers to go for a Hard, irreversible Brexit. The two sides conspired to get a Brexit very few originally desired.
It will be a poignant passage in Brexit: the History
No, Brexiteers went for a hard Brexit because that was what they wanted. Was May a Remainer? Barely. She gave Cameron the minimal support necessary in the referendum campaign and immediately adopted these crazy red lines under the influence of Nick Timothy. Most Remainers were pragmatic and pushed for a soft Brexit but were met with inplacable hostility from Leavers, who insisted that they had won and would dictate terms. Personally I would have been OK with a 2nd referendum but a soft Brexit was preferable because it honoured the vote, however imperfect a process that was. By the time the referendum was lost there were no good outcomes.
Yes. The vote sparked a bizarre kulturkamp almost from the beginning, with Remainers and the EU accused of treachery with increasing fervour.
It made me realise I am not British, which I had previously assumed I was.
Yeah I have felt increasingly semi-detached from this country since 2016. I still live here, and probably always will, but I have less and less emotional involvement, like a kind of out of body experience.
Weird, innit.
The practical outcome for me is that the likelihood of my returning to NZ is much higher, and I no longer feel it necessarily “natural” to raise my children as British or within the British system.
Views like this though make others question your loyalty or belief in Britain in the first place.
You can't just disown your own nationality just because a national referendum goes against you.
You argue instead for why an alternative solution better suits the national interest.
It's not the referendum vote itself. It's everything that's gone with it and followed. The citizens of nowhere speech. The denunciation of traitors. The "suck it up you lost" rhetoric. The increased xenophobia and racism. The culture wars. The flags. Proroguing Parliament. Attacking the judiciary. Attacking the BBC. The open corruption. The lying. It's not the Britain I expected to be living in. It doesn't feel like the kind of place I want to raise my kids.
A WOMAN who lost her job after tweeting that “male people are not women” has won a landmark employment case.
The victory for Maya Forstater, who was backed by JK Rowling and SNP MP Joanna Cherry QC, means people with ‘gender critical’ beliefs must not be sacked simply for holding them.
However, they cannot express them in a way that discriminates against trans people.
Ms Cherry said the decision should end discrimination against academics, trade unionists and others like herself who had been bullied and threatened because of their beliefs.
This was an notable bit. In a poll of 1,000 employers across a variety of industries in June 2018, one in three employers admitted they were less likely to hire a transgender person and 43% were unsure if they would...
Of how many other groups would this be true ? Other than convicted criminals, perhaps.
To what extent does that reflect an (understandable) fear that they may turn out to be trouble makers who will sue you for misgendering them by looking at them funny. It's deeply unfair to the ones who just want to get on with their lives, but there are enough high profile really militant ones that as an employer I probably would file them in the "too risky" basket.
It doesn't help that they are also known to suffer from mental health issues at a rate several times that of the general population - again, as an employer, not necessarily a risk you'd be keen to take.
This is particularly true of smaller businesses, where one difficult, litigatious or long term sick employee can be very difficult and expensive to deal with.
Commenting on the last but one of @CycleFree's excellent headers. Rishi Sunak wants to carve out an exception for UK financial services companies on the global taxation requirement that he facilitated as part of his G7 remit.
This is an American exercise that aims to benefit the US. The question for the UK is whether not going along with the scheme has costs that outweigh those of joining in. The US, and EU FWIW, won't agree the exemption as part of the scheme.
Keir Starmer on any reasonable assessment can be said to be:
Normally trustworthy. His actions match his words and his words match the reality.
Serious. Takes responsibility.
Not corrupt
Has a trackrecord of competently managing an organisation
No interest in divisive politics
All unlike his opponent. Yet people prefer the charlatan on every metric. There is a problem if people think there's a problem, so Starmer needs to go. Don't think this is a net gain for humanity however.
That's the corner we have collectively painted ourselves into. Once you decide that the Johnson approach to life is a bad way to run a country, Starmer becomes an attractive alternative. He's an anti-Boris.
Unfortunately, any anti-Boris is going to be rubbish at campaigning against a Boris. Because words that fly free from reality, cheerful cynicism, a dip in the pork barrel and setting up dividing lines are a damn good way of winning votes, for all they are a bad way of using power once you have won.
We've broken the link between good electoral politics and good government.
Mr. Walker, she thrice put it to the Commons and a combination of Conservative MPs rebelling and the Labour Party (and other opposition MPs) en masse voted it down.
I said at the time that when you've got MPs who really like the EU and MPs who really dislike the EU voting the same way, someone's screwing it up.
The dumb soft pro-EU MPs of the Commons rejected everything and guaranteed that we'd leave on harder terms. It was epitomised by the lauded Grieve shrieking it was 'too late' when he was given the exact concession he'd asked for, but still didn't vote for it.
I know this is going over old ground, but people generally should try to at least learn something from it. To tie it into the football story, pointing at people and telling them they're wicked for disliking the EU, or a gesture associated with iconoclast barbarians, isn't going to persuade them. The Little Englander nonsense from Cameron was dumb as hell, yet there were plenty of pro-EU types here tittering about it.
Absolutely the "too late" remark was peak hubris.
The pro-EU MPs swallowed their own spin hook, line and sinker and thought they would win and overturn Brexit entirely rather than compromise on a BRINO Backstop that effectively kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union with the EU having a veto on us ever leaving it.
Seeing Grieve kicked out of the party after his behaviour, then comprehensively thrashed at Beaconsfield and an hard rather than soft Brexit follow was really enjoyable.
I actually can’t remember those tumultuous moments.
The key prize for Remainers (rather than pro-EU which probably describes very few) was a second vote.
May refused to concede that.
There was a clear majority for a softish Brexit, but the various parties could not coalesce and let the loons (mostly on the Brexity side) win.
This is Mark Francois’s Brexit: petty, painful, and underpinned by inchoate fantasies about “de Jarmins”.
We'll never know how a second vote would have gone but, if Remain had narrowly won it, the country and our political system would have gone apeshit.
The fall out would have totally dominated our politics for years. With lots of anger and disorder as well.
There was no putting it back into Pandora's Box. The die was cast when we voted Leave, IMHO, and at that point we had to Leave - the best thing Remainers could have done was to influence its form and play the long game.
Cummings predicted civil strife if we'd had a second vote without enacting the first, and I believe he was right
Imagine the anger. The biggest mandate in British democratic history - 17.4 million voters - simply ignored? Overruled? Cancelled?
The stupidity of those that avowed a "people's vote" is quite something. They would also have trashed democracy for generations. Why bother voting for anything if the elite can just ignore it. So we become North Korea. Where elections are charades. With Potemkin referendums. Imagine doing the same in the Scottish indyref. Imagine if that had produced a YES vote (taking it out of the EU at the time), would ANYONE have suggested overruling it?
No. So why was it deemed permissible to overturn Brexit?
The campaign for a 2nd vote was also self-defeating, as you say. If the Remainers had accepted the first vote, then got behind ultra-soft Brexit, we would have got exactly that; they might even have kept Freedom of Movement inside EFTA
How many times do you need to be reminded that hard Brexit was committed to by May in 2016, and indicative votes on a soft Brexit (CU/SM) were voted down as a result of Tory whipping, with Labour overwhelmingly voting for it. It was the Tory obsession with a hard Brexit that prevented a soft Brexit, not Remainer opposition.
I've always admitted this. TMay (a Remainer) is as much to blame as the leftwing Remainers. Her insane red lines boxed her in from the start
However the push for a 2nd vote made Brexiteers worry that the whole thing would be overturned, which persuaded many Leavers to go for a Hard, irreversible Brexit. The two sides conspired to get a Brexit very few originally desired.
It will be a poignant passage in Brexit: the History
No, Brexiteers went for a hard Brexit because that was what they wanted. Was May a Remainer? Barely. She gave Cameron the minimal support necessary in the referendum campaign and immediately adopted these crazy red lines under the influence of Nick Timothy. Most Remainers were pragmatic and pushed for a soft Brexit but were met with inplacable hostility from Leavers, who insisted that they had won and would dictate terms. Personally I would have been OK with a 2nd referendum but a soft Brexit was preferable because it honoured the vote, however imperfect a process that was. By the time the referendum was lost there were no good outcomes.
Yes. The vote sparked a bizarre kulturkamp almost from the beginning, with Remainers and the EU accused of treachery with increasing fervour.
It made me realise I am not British, which I had previously assumed I was.
Yeah I have felt increasingly semi-detached from this country since 2016. I still live here, and probably always will, but I have less and less emotional involvement, like a kind of out of body experience.
Weird, innit.
The practical outcome for me is that the likelihood of my returning to NZ is much higher, and I no longer feel it necessarily “natural” to raise my children as British or within the British system.
Views like this though make others question your loyalty or belief in Britain in the first place.
You can't just disown your own nationality just because a national referendum goes against you.
You argue instead for why an alternative solution better suits the national interest.
I find it bizarre you should question others’ loyalty.
I doubt you could have found many more patriotic to a certain idea of Britain than I was. Unlike most on this Board I made a conscious decision to settle here.
The referendum, or at least the response to the referendum, revealed profound truths about the U.K. which I found/find unsavoury and ultimately alienating.
Have we learnt nothing about writing off a source just because we don't like it?
No, absolutely not. I will not recognise the Canary, or the Mail, or ZeroHedge as a credible source.
If there's a genuine story then it will be reported from credible sources.
This has nothing to do with what we like. I dislike the politics of the Guardian and the i but I recognise both of them as credible sources on the left, just as the Telegraph is a credible source on the right.
"..the Telegraph is a credible source on the right." LOL! Your gullibility index has just shot off the scale.
I would say that the Telegraph has about equal credibility with the Guardian.
Which is not saying much.
The Telegraph more than equals the Guardian for bias but it's way inferior on quality.
Both publish plenty of discreditable stories.
Guardian published a comment piece after the Mumbai attacks blaming them on Indian economic success - it was classic piece of victim blaming.
For a long time the Guardian was in the habit of publishing a victim-blaming piece after just about every similar attack. It's one of the paper's most vomitous features.
They’ve done a few almost empathetic pieces about the terrorists too, often in the immediate aftermath.
Oh, and the one about the woman who was ‘friendly’ with a dolphin. That was funny.
The Mumbai one was interesting - there is a vein of thought in more er... interesting circles in Pakistan that India's relative economic success is the devils work and needs to be destroyed In The Name Of God.
The article was written as if someone had crayoned out all the references to religion but otherwise supported that thesis.
COVID: Are mix-and-match vaccines the way forward? A new German study reports that a combination of the AstraZeneca and BioNTech vaccines triggers a remarkably stronger immune response than sticking with one kind of shot.
Mr. Walker, she thrice put it to the Commons and a combination of Conservative MPs rebelling and the Labour Party (and other opposition MPs) en masse voted it down.
I said at the time that when you've got MPs who really like the EU and MPs who really dislike the EU voting the same way, someone's screwing it up.
The dumb soft pro-EU MPs of the Commons rejected everything and guaranteed that we'd leave on harder terms. It was epitomised by the lauded Grieve shrieking it was 'too late' when he was given the exact concession he'd asked for, but still didn't vote for it.
I know this is going over old ground, but people generally should try to at least learn something from it. To tie it into the football story, pointing at people and telling them they're wicked for disliking the EU, or a gesture associated with iconoclast barbarians, isn't going to persuade them. The Little Englander nonsense from Cameron was dumb as hell, yet there were plenty of pro-EU types here tittering about it.
Absolutely the "too late" remark was peak hubris.
The pro-EU MPs swallowed their own spin hook, line and sinker and thought they would win and overturn Brexit entirely rather than compromise on a BRINO Backstop that effectively kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union with the EU having a veto on us ever leaving it.
Seeing Grieve kicked out of the party after his behaviour, then comprehensively thrashed at Beaconsfield and an hard rather than soft Brexit follow was really enjoyable.
I actually can’t remember those tumultuous moments.
The key prize for Remainers (rather than pro-EU which probably describes very few) was a second vote.
May refused to concede that.
There was a clear majority for a softish Brexit, but the various parties could not coalesce and let the loons (mostly on the Brexity side) win.
This is Mark Francois’s Brexit: petty, painful, and underpinned by inchoate fantasies about “de Jarmins”.
We'll never know how a second vote would have gone but, if Remain had narrowly won it, the country and our political system would have gone apeshit.
The fall out would have totally dominated our politics for years. With lots of anger and disorder as well.
There was no putting it back into Pandora's Box. The die was cast when we voted Leave, IMHO, and at that point we had to Leave - the best thing Remainers could have done was to influence its form and play the long game.
Cummings predicted civil strife if we'd had a second vote without enacting the first, and I believe he was right
Imagine the anger. The biggest mandate in British democratic history - 17.4 million voters - simply ignored? Overruled? Cancelled?
The stupidity of those that avowed a "people's vote" is quite something. They would also have trashed democracy for generations. Why bother voting for anything if the elite can just ignore it. So we become North Korea. Where elections are charades. With Potemkin referendums. Imagine doing the same in the Scottish indyref. Imagine if that had produced a YES vote (taking it out of the EU at the time), would ANYONE have suggested overruling it?
No. So why was it deemed permissible to overturn Brexit?
The campaign for a 2nd vote was also self-defeating, as you say. If the Remainers had accepted the first vote, then got behind ultra-soft Brexit, we would have got exactly that; they might even have kept Freedom of Movement inside EFTA
How many times do you need to be reminded that hard Brexit was committed to by May in 2016, and indicative votes on a soft Brexit (CU/SM) were voted down as a result of Tory whipping, with Labour overwhelmingly voting for it. It was the Tory obsession with a hard Brexit that prevented a soft Brexit, not Remainer opposition.
I've always admitted this. TMay (a Remainer) is as much to blame as the leftwing Remainers. Her insane red lines boxed her in from the start
However the push for a 2nd vote made Brexiteers worry that the whole thing would be overturned, which persuaded many Leavers to go for a Hard, irreversible Brexit. The two sides conspired to get a Brexit very few originally desired.
It will be a poignant passage in Brexit: the History
No, Brexiteers went for a hard Brexit because that was what they wanted. Was May a Remainer? Barely. She gave Cameron the minimal support necessary in the referendum campaign and immediately adopted these crazy red lines under the influence of Nick Timothy. Most Remainers were pragmatic and pushed for a soft Brexit but were met with inplacable hostility from Leavers, who insisted that they had won and would dictate terms. Personally I would have been OK with a 2nd referendum but a soft Brexit was preferable because it honoured the vote, however imperfect a process that was. By the time the referendum was lost there were no good outcomes.
Yes. The vote sparked a bizarre kulturkamp almost from the beginning, with Remainers and the EU accused of treachery with increasing fervour.
It made me realise I am not British, which I had previously assumed I was.
Yeah I have felt increasingly semi-detached from this country since 2016. I still live here, and probably always will, but I have less and less emotional involvement, like a kind of out of body experience.
Weird, innit.
The practical outcome for me is that the likelihood of my returning to NZ is much higher, and I no longer feel it necessarily “natural” to raise my children as British or within the British system.
Views like this though make others question your loyalty or belief in Britain in the first place.
You can't just disown your own nationality just because a national referendum goes against you.
You argue instead for why an alternative solution better suits the national interest.
It's not the referendum vote itself. It's everything that's gone with it and followed. The citizens of nowhere speech. The denunciation of traitors. The "suck it up you lost" rhetoric. The increased xenophobia and racism. The culture wars. The flags. Proroguing Parliament. Attacking the judiciary. Attacking the BBC. The open corruption. The lying. It's not the Britain I expected to be living in. It doesn't feel like the kind of place I want to raise my kids.
COVID: Are mix-and-match vaccines the way forward? A new German study reports that a combination of the AstraZeneca and BioNTech vaccines triggers a remarkably stronger immune response than sticking with one kind of shot.
Keir Starmer on any reasonable assessment can be said to be:
Normally trustworthy. His actions match his words and his words match the reality.
Serious. Takes responsibility.
Not corrupt
Has a trackrecord of competently managing an organisation
No interest in divisive politics
All unlike his opponent. Yet people prefer the charlatan on every metric. There is a problem if people think there's a problem, so Starmer needs to go. Don't think this is a net gain for humanity however.
That's the corner we have collectively painted ourselves into. Once you decide that the Johnson approach to life is a bad way to run a country, Starmer becomes an attractive alternative. He's an anti-Boris.
Unfortunately, any anti-Boris is going to be rubbish at campaigning against a Boris. Because words that fly free from reality, cheerful cynicism, a dip in the pork barrel and setting up dividing lines are a damn good way of winning votes, for all they are a bad way of using power once you have won.
We've broken the link between good electoral politics and good government.
Why exactly are you so convinced that a limp biscuit like Starmer would actually deliver 'good government'? And good for whom? For bloodless, jaded technocrats perhaps, but I don't see why their preferences should be the measure of all things.
COVID: Are mix-and-match vaccines the way forward? A new German study reports that a combination of the AstraZeneca and BioNTech vaccines triggers a remarkably stronger immune response than sticking with one kind of shot.
Mr. Walker, she thrice put it to the Commons and a combination of Conservative MPs rebelling and the Labour Party (and other opposition MPs) en masse voted it down.
I said at the time that when you've got MPs who really like the EU and MPs who really dislike the EU voting the same way, someone's screwing it up.
The dumb soft pro-EU MPs of the Commons rejected everything and guaranteed that we'd leave on harder terms. It was epitomised by the lauded Grieve shrieking it was 'too late' when he was given the exact concession he'd asked for, but still didn't vote for it.
I know this is going over old ground, but people generally should try to at least learn something from it. To tie it into the football story, pointing at people and telling them they're wicked for disliking the EU, or a gesture associated with iconoclast barbarians, isn't going to persuade them. The Little Englander nonsense from Cameron was dumb as hell, yet there were plenty of pro-EU types here tittering about it.
Absolutely the "too late" remark was peak hubris.
The pro-EU MPs swallowed their own spin hook, line and sinker and thought they would win and overturn Brexit entirely rather than compromise on a BRINO Backstop that effectively kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union with the EU having a veto on us ever leaving it.
Seeing Grieve kicked out of the party after his behaviour, then comprehensively thrashed at Beaconsfield and an hard rather than soft Brexit follow was really enjoyable.
I actually can’t remember those tumultuous moments.
The key prize for Remainers (rather than pro-EU which probably describes very few) was a second vote.
May refused to concede that.
There was a clear majority for a softish Brexit, but the various parties could not coalesce and let the loons (mostly on the Brexity side) win.
This is Mark Francois’s Brexit: petty, painful, and underpinned by inchoate fantasies about “de Jarmins”.
We'll never know how a second vote would have gone but, if Remain had narrowly won it, the country and our political system would have gone apeshit.
The fall out would have totally dominated our politics for years. With lots of anger and disorder as well.
There was no putting it back into Pandora's Box. The die was cast when we voted Leave, IMHO, and at that point we had to Leave - the best thing Remainers could have done was to influence its form and play the long game.
Cummings predicted civil strife if we'd had a second vote without enacting the first, and I believe he was right
Imagine the anger. The biggest mandate in British democratic history - 17.4 million voters - simply ignored? Overruled? Cancelled?
The stupidity of those that avowed a "people's vote" is quite something. They would also have trashed democracy for generations. Why bother voting for anything if the elite can just ignore it. So we become North Korea. Where elections are charades. With Potemkin referendums. Imagine doing the same in the Scottish indyref. Imagine if that had produced a YES vote (taking it out of the EU at the time), would ANYONE have suggested overruling it?
No. So why was it deemed permissible to overturn Brexit?
The campaign for a 2nd vote was also self-defeating, as you say. If the Remainers had accepted the first vote, then got behind ultra-soft Brexit, we would have got exactly that; they might even have kept Freedom of Movement inside EFTA
How many times do you need to be reminded that hard Brexit was committed to by May in 2016, and indicative votes on a soft Brexit (CU/SM) were voted down as a result of Tory whipping, with Labour overwhelmingly voting for it. It was the Tory obsession with a hard Brexit that prevented a soft Brexit, not Remainer opposition.
I've always admitted this. TMay (a Remainer) is as much to blame as the leftwing Remainers. Her insane red lines boxed her in from the start
However the push for a 2nd vote made Brexiteers worry that the whole thing would be overturned, which persuaded many Leavers to go for a Hard, irreversible Brexit. The two sides conspired to get a Brexit very few originally desired.
It will be a poignant passage in Brexit: the History
No, Brexiteers went for a hard Brexit because that was what they wanted. Was May a Remainer? Barely. She gave Cameron the minimal support necessary in the referendum campaign and immediately adopted these crazy red lines under the influence of Nick Timothy. Most Remainers were pragmatic and pushed for a soft Brexit but were met with inplacable hostility from Leavers, who insisted that they had won and would dictate terms. Personally I would have been OK with a 2nd referendum but a soft Brexit was preferable because it honoured the vote, however imperfect a process that was. By the time the referendum was lost there were no good outcomes.
Yes. The vote sparked a bizarre kulturkamp almost from the beginning, with Remainers and the EU accused of treachery with increasing fervour.
It made me realise I am not British, which I had previously assumed I was.
Yeah I have felt increasingly semi-detached from this country since 2016. I still live here, and probably always will, but I have less and less emotional involvement, like a kind of out of body experience.
Weird, innit.
The practical outcome for me is that the likelihood of my returning to NZ is much higher, and I no longer feel it necessarily “natural” to raise my children as British or within the British system.
Views like this though make others question your loyalty or belief in Britain in the first place.
You can't just disown your own nationality just because a national referendum goes against you.
You argue instead for why an alternative solution better suits the national interest.
It's not the referendum vote itself. It's everything that's gone with it and followed. The citizens of nowhere speech. The denunciation of traitors. The "suck it up you lost" rhetoric. The increased xenophobia and racism. The culture wars. The flags. Proroguing Parliament. Attacking the judiciary. Attacking the BBC. The open corruption. The lying. It's not the Britain I expected to be living in. It doesn't feel like the kind of place I want to raise my kids.
Pish posh.
All of that was part of Britain before the referendum too.
The "suck it up you lost" rhetoric was exceedingly common through Tony Blair's era, wanting to rub the right's nose in it. The denunciation of fruitcakes, nuts and loons was something I confess I was amused by when Cameron was doing it. By all sane measurable (not voodoo) metrics xenophobia and racism has gone down since 2016. Culture wars have been going on since the dawn of time probably, at least consistently since the 60s but probably before then. EU flags were plastered on roundabout and all sorts without you objecting to it previously. Parliamentary shenanigans is stuff all parties engage in. Nothing original about the judiciary being attacked. I've been attacking the BBC since I was at university and I know many others always have been. Open corruption marked Tony "straight kind of guy" Blair's government as did lying.
If its not the Britain you expected to be living in then you slept through Blair's Britain at the very least. Maybe you found all these things you object to now jolly good japes when it was your own side engaged in it.
Keir Starmer on any reasonable assessment can be said to be:
Normally trustworthy. His actions match his words and his words match the reality.
Serious. Takes responsibility.
Not corrupt
Has a trackrecord of competently managing an organisation
No interest in divisive politics
All unlike his opponent. Yet people prefer the charlatan on every metric. There is a problem if people think there's a problem, so Starmer needs to go. Don't think this is a net gain for humanity however.
Tried to overturn the result of a democratic vote.
Now, you might say that democracy carries on, and I would agree. But I think what it shows is his inability to compromise. That is an important characteristic.
Mr. Walker, she thrice put it to the Commons and a combination of Conservative MPs rebelling and the Labour Party (and other opposition MPs) en masse voted it down.
I said at the time that when you've got MPs who really like the EU and MPs who really dislike the EU voting the same way, someone's screwing it up.
The dumb soft pro-EU MPs of the Commons rejected everything and guaranteed that we'd leave on harder terms. It was epitomised by the lauded Grieve shrieking it was 'too late' when he was given the exact concession he'd asked for, but still didn't vote for it.
I know this is going over old ground, but people generally should try to at least learn something from it. To tie it into the football story, pointing at people and telling them they're wicked for disliking the EU, or a gesture associated with iconoclast barbarians, isn't going to persuade them. The Little Englander nonsense from Cameron was dumb as hell, yet there were plenty of pro-EU types here tittering about it.
Absolutely the "too late" remark was peak hubris.
The pro-EU MPs swallowed their own spin hook, line and sinker and thought they would win and overturn Brexit entirely rather than compromise on a BRINO Backstop that effectively kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union with the EU having a veto on us ever leaving it.
Seeing Grieve kicked out of the party after his behaviour, then comprehensively thrashed at Beaconsfield and an hard rather than soft Brexit follow was really enjoyable.
I actually can’t remember those tumultuous moments.
The key prize for Remainers (rather than pro-EU which probably describes very few) was a second vote.
May refused to concede that.
There was a clear majority for a softish Brexit, but the various parties could not coalesce and let the loons (mostly on the Brexity side) win.
This is Mark Francois’s Brexit: petty, painful, and underpinned by inchoate fantasies about “de Jarmins”.
We'll never know how a second vote would have gone but, if Remain had narrowly won it, the country and our political system would have gone apeshit.
The fall out would have totally dominated our politics for years. With lots of anger and disorder as well.
There was no putting it back into Pandora's Box. The die was cast when we voted Leave, IMHO, and at that point we had to Leave - the best thing Remainers could have done was to influence its form and play the long game.
Cummings predicted civil strife if we'd had a second vote without enacting the first, and I believe he was right
Imagine the anger. The biggest mandate in British democratic history - 17.4 million voters - simply ignored? Overruled? Cancelled?
The stupidity of those that avowed a "people's vote" is quite something. They would also have trashed democracy for generations. Why bother voting for anything if the elite can just ignore it. So we become North Korea. Where elections are charades. With Potemkin referendums. Imagine doing the same in the Scottish indyref. Imagine if that had produced a YES vote (taking it out of the EU at the time), would ANYONE have suggested overruling it?
No. So why was it deemed permissible to overturn Brexit?
The campaign for a 2nd vote was also self-defeating, as you say. If the Remainers had accepted the first vote, then got behind ultra-soft Brexit, we would have got exactly that; they might even have kept Freedom of Movement inside EFTA
How many times do you need to be reminded that hard Brexit was committed to by May in 2016, and indicative votes on a soft Brexit (CU/SM) were voted down as a result of Tory whipping, with Labour overwhelmingly voting for it. It was the Tory obsession with a hard Brexit that prevented a soft Brexit, not Remainer opposition.
I've always admitted this. TMay (a Remainer) is as much to blame as the leftwing Remainers. Her insane red lines boxed her in from the start
However the push for a 2nd vote made Brexiteers worry that the whole thing would be overturned, which persuaded many Leavers to go for a Hard, irreversible Brexit. The two sides conspired to get a Brexit very few originally desired.
It will be a poignant passage in Brexit: the History
No, Brexiteers went for a hard Brexit because that was what they wanted. Was May a Remainer? Barely. She gave Cameron the minimal support necessary in the referendum campaign and immediately adopted these crazy red lines under the influence of Nick Timothy. Most Remainers were pragmatic and pushed for a soft Brexit but were met with inplacable hostility from Leavers, who insisted that they had won and would dictate terms. Personally I would have been OK with a 2nd referendum but a soft Brexit was preferable because it honoured the vote, however imperfect a process that was. By the time the referendum was lost there were no good outcomes.
Yes. The vote sparked a bizarre kulturkamp almost from the beginning, with Remainers and the EU accused of treachery with increasing fervour.
It made me realise I am not British, which I had previously assumed I was.
Yeah I have felt increasingly semi-detached from this country since 2016. I still live here, and probably always will, but I have less and less emotional involvement, like a kind of out of body experience.
Weird, innit.
The practical outcome for me is that the likelihood of my returning to NZ is much higher, and I no longer feel it necessarily “natural” to raise my children as British or within the British system.
Views like this though make others question your loyalty or belief in Britain in the first place.
You can't just disown your own nationality just because a national referendum goes against you.
You argue instead for why an alternative solution better suits the national interest.
To my mind, the biggest problem with Britain is the tendency amongst governments to remove citizenship from its subjects. They present this as being an issue about deporting foreign criminals and terrorists, but this is deeply misleading. It was once about this, but has moved in to an astonishingly racist project involving the banishment of people who are citizens, in some cases people who were born here and have British passports, but who have some form of foreign heritage and have gone on to fall foul of the law in some way. They have created an inhumane bureaucracy that seeks to remove these people using blair era anti terror legislation that simply allows the government to strip people of citizenship at will, which they can use unless someone is going to become stateless. The judges detest this legislation, but they have to enact it. Whenever it is discussed, extreme cases like Begum are raised, they overlook the more mundane families caught up in this kafkaesque nightmare.
I am afraid that this practice on the part of the government encourages a rather cynical and transactional view of British Citizenship, when you come to think about it.
It's a good question for the EU and one that I thought at the time these treaties were negotiated. Should they have gone for arrangements that might stick for longer but were less favourable?
The assumption behind the question reflects very badly on the UK government, which should give Allister Health and his ilk pause for thought, but clearly doesn't. The assumption is that the UK are incompetent negotiators acting in bad faith, who never had any intention of honouring its treaty commitments. And should never have been believed.
"The EU should have enough self-awareness to understand that the deal it obtained was too good to be true" -- really do recommend this tub-thumper from @AllisterHeath in @Telegraph. It'll drive some mad, but I'd bet majority in UK feel this way.
One of my courses is cancer, and particularly prostate cancer. I received some student feedback this week -
"- It would be great if lecturers could use language which is trans-inclusive when referring to sex hormones etc. (e.g. male and female, rather than men/women)."
Now this really annoys me. The words men and male are interchangeable, and only someone with a prostate can get prostate cancer. Its so basic its untrue. I have no desire to upset someone, but talking about male sex hormones and not being able to say men because someone who now lives as a man and regards themselves as a man is just ridiculous. I'm sure others on here will disagree.
So yes, woke nonsense is reaching even into science departments.
It's a fungus that will get everywhere before the moderates wake up to the dangers of Wokeness
I saw this problem identified on Twitter earlier. So many people in academe, publishing, the arts, journalism, the charity sector even the law, are "centre left". Remainery types.
They see no real problem with Wokeness because at the moment it does not endanger them. Yes, sure, haha, it has some extremes which are mad, but it seems well-meaning. Do we really need that statue of Rhodes? He was a horrible old Tory. What about poor trans people, they do need protecting.
And yet the war between feminists (very often on the left) and the Trans activists shows the future. The Woke will turn on the moderate lefties and destroy their causes and careers as well. See also the Oxfam nonsense about white women being "contemptible" for making rape accusations
Mr. Walker, she thrice put it to the Commons and a combination of Conservative MPs rebelling and the Labour Party (and other opposition MPs) en masse voted it down.
I said at the time that when you've got MPs who really like the EU and MPs who really dislike the EU voting the same way, someone's screwing it up.
The dumb soft pro-EU MPs of the Commons rejected everything and guaranteed that we'd leave on harder terms. It was epitomised by the lauded Grieve shrieking it was 'too late' when he was given the exact concession he'd asked for, but still didn't vote for it.
I know this is going over old ground, but people generally should try to at least learn something from it. To tie it into the football story, pointing at people and telling them they're wicked for disliking the EU, or a gesture associated with iconoclast barbarians, isn't going to persuade them. The Little Englander nonsense from Cameron was dumb as hell, yet there were plenty of pro-EU types here tittering about it.
Absolutely the "too late" remark was peak hubris.
The pro-EU MPs swallowed their own spin hook, line and sinker and thought they would win and overturn Brexit entirely rather than compromise on a BRINO Backstop that effectively kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union with the EU having a veto on us ever leaving it.
Seeing Grieve kicked out of the party after his behaviour, then comprehensively thrashed at Beaconsfield and an hard rather than soft Brexit follow was really enjoyable.
I actually can’t remember those tumultuous moments.
The key prize for Remainers (rather than pro-EU which probably describes very few) was a second vote.
May refused to concede that.
There was a clear majority for a softish Brexit, but the various parties could not coalesce and let the loons (mostly on the Brexity side) win.
This is Mark Francois’s Brexit: petty, painful, and underpinned by inchoate fantasies about “de Jarmins”.
We'll never know how a second vote would have gone but, if Remain had narrowly won it, the country and our political system would have gone apeshit.
The fall out would have totally dominated our politics for years. With lots of anger and disorder as well.
There was no putting it back into Pandora's Box. The die was cast when we voted Leave, IMHO, and at that point we had to Leave - the best thing Remainers could have done was to influence its form and play the long game.
Cummings predicted civil strife if we'd had a second vote without enacting the first, and I believe he was right
Imagine the anger. The biggest mandate in British democratic history - 17.4 million voters - simply ignored? Overruled? Cancelled?
The stupidity of those that avowed a "people's vote" is quite something. They would also have trashed democracy for generations. Why bother voting for anything if the elite can just ignore it. So we become North Korea. Where elections are charades. With Potemkin referendums. Imagine doing the same in the Scottish indyref. Imagine if that had produced a YES vote (taking it out of the EU at the time), would ANYONE have suggested overruling it?
No. So why was it deemed permissible to overturn Brexit?
The campaign for a 2nd vote was also self-defeating, as you say. If the Remainers had accepted the first vote, then got behind ultra-soft Brexit, we would have got exactly that; they might even have kept Freedom of Movement inside EFTA
How many times do you need to be reminded that hard Brexit was committed to by May in 2016, and indicative votes on a soft Brexit (CU/SM) were voted down as a result of Tory whipping, with Labour overwhelmingly voting for it. It was the Tory obsession with a hard Brexit that prevented a soft Brexit, not Remainer opposition.
I've always admitted this. TMay (a Remainer) is as much to blame as the leftwing Remainers. Her insane red lines boxed her in from the start
However the push for a 2nd vote made Brexiteers worry that the whole thing would be overturned, which persuaded many Leavers to go for a Hard, irreversible Brexit. The two sides conspired to get a Brexit very few originally desired.
It will be a poignant passage in Brexit: the History
No, Brexiteers went for a hard Brexit because that was what they wanted. Was May a Remainer? Barely. She gave Cameron the minimal support necessary in the referendum campaign and immediately adopted these crazy red lines under the influence of Nick Timothy. Most Remainers were pragmatic and pushed for a soft Brexit but were met with inplacable hostility from Leavers, who insisted that they had won and would dictate terms. Personally I would have been OK with a 2nd referendum but a soft Brexit was preferable because it honoured the vote, however imperfect a process that was. By the time the referendum was lost there were no good outcomes.
Yes. The vote sparked a bizarre kulturkamp almost from the beginning, with Remainers and the EU accused of treachery with increasing fervour.
It made me realise I am not British, which I had previously assumed I was.
Yeah I have felt increasingly semi-detached from this country since 2016. I still live here, and probably always will, but I have less and less emotional involvement, like a kind of out of body experience.
Weird, innit.
The practical outcome for me is that the likelihood of my returning to NZ is much higher, and I no longer feel it necessarily “natural” to raise my children as British or within the British system.
Views like this though make others question your loyalty or belief in Britain in the first place.
You can't just disown your own nationality just because a national referendum goes against you.
You argue instead for why an alternative solution better suits the national interest.
I find it bizarre you should question others’ loyalty.
I doubt you could have found many more patriotic to a certain idea of Britain than I was. Unlike most on this Board I made a conscious decision to settle here.
The referendum, or at least the response to the referendum, revealed profound truths about the U.K. which I found/find unsavoury and ultimately alienating.
It's possible that when the emotions of the event subside, and the political context moves on, Brexit will look like an expression of the certain idea of Britain to which you were loyal rather than a repudiation of it.
COVID: Are mix-and-match vaccines the way forward? A new German study reports that a combination of the AstraZeneca and BioNTech vaccines triggers a remarkably stronger immune response than sticking with one kind of shot.
If that’s validated, then imagine the implications for a country with some constraints on Pfizer/Moderna but a metric fuck tonne of AZ…..
The indian variant prevalence changes the risk comparator they were using now too. We should probably head to Astra followed by Pfizer for all remaining over 18s tbh.
Indeed, 60% potentially gives us a non-trivial hospitalization wave even with only Step 3 retained & Step 4 not enacted.
The idea of another lockdown.... is terrifying
I think I would flee the country beforehand
Indeed it is. I don't know what the answer is. In some ways I would rather have a big wave in the Summer, now, than in the winter, which ironically would be an argument for full unlocking now. I think a lockdown now would just kick the can into the winter.
Donald who? As Boris Johnson meets Joe Biden in Cornwall this week, the British prime minister will hope that the President doesn’t dwell on his efforts to woo the last occupant of the Oval Office. Boris’s dalliance with Donald Trump is a bit like his affair with Jennifer Arcuri — an embarrassing fling with a rotund, brash American conspiracy theorist, something he’d rather the world forgot. He’s moved on and so should we.
Indeed, 60% potentially gives us a non-trivial hospitalization wave even with only Step 3 retained & Step 4 not enacted.
The idea of another lockdown.... is terrifying
I think I would flee the country beforehand
Indeed it is. I don't know what the answer is. In some ways I would rather have a big wave in the Summer, now, than in the winter, which ironically would be an argument for full unlocking now. I think a lockdown now would just kick the can into the winter.
Yep. This time we just have to "take it on the chin"
It's a good question for the EU and one that I thought at the time these treaties were negotiated. Should they have gone for arrangements that might stick for longer but were less favourable?
The assumption behind the question reflects very badly on the UK government, which should give Allister Health and his ilk pause for thought, but clearly doesn't. The assumption is that the UK are incompetent negotiators acting in bad faith, who never had any intention of honouring its treaty commitments. And should never have been believed.
"The EU should have enough self-awareness to understand that the deal it obtained was too good to be true" -- really do recommend this tub-thumper from @AllisterHeath in @Telegraph. It'll drive some mad, but I'd bet majority in UK feel this way.
Strikes me that the UK were competent negotiators acting in bad faith, who never had any intention of honouring its treaty commitments.
If you can get what you want via committing to a "price" that you don't intend to pay and have plans to wrangle your way out of, it may be disreputable, it may not be pleasant, but its not incompetent. Its actually very competent realpolitik.
PS all nations and organisations including the EU have form in this so drop the mock horror at the UK doing it. Remember the EU negotiating for Blair to give away half our rebate in exchange for CAP being reformed? Then saying CAP wouldn't be reformed? What's sauce for the goose is good for the gander.
Mr. Walker, she thrice put it to the Commons and a combination of Conservative MPs rebelling and the Labour Party (and other opposition MPs) en masse voted it down.
I said at the time that when you've got MPs who really like the EU and MPs who really dislike the EU voting the same way, someone's screwing it up.
The dumb soft pro-EU MPs of the Commons rejected everything and guaranteed that we'd leave on harder terms. It was epitomised by the lauded Grieve shrieking it was 'too late' when he was given the exact concession he'd asked for, but still didn't vote for it.
I know this is going over old ground, but people generally should try to at least learn something from it. To tie it into the football story, pointing at people and telling them they're wicked for disliking the EU, or a gesture associated with iconoclast barbarians, isn't going to persuade them. The Little Englander nonsense from Cameron was dumb as hell, yet there were plenty of pro-EU types here tittering about it.
Absolutely the "too late" remark was peak hubris.
The pro-EU MPs swallowed their own spin hook, line and sinker and thought they would win and overturn Brexit entirely rather than compromise on a BRINO Backstop that effectively kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union with the EU having a veto on us ever leaving it.
Seeing Grieve kicked out of the party after his behaviour, then comprehensively thrashed at Beaconsfield and an hard rather than soft Brexit follow was really enjoyable.
I actually can’t remember those tumultuous moments.
The key prize for Remainers (rather than pro-EU which probably describes very few) was a second vote.
May refused to concede that.
There was a clear majority for a softish Brexit, but the various parties could not coalesce and let the loons (mostly on the Brexity side) win.
This is Mark Francois’s Brexit: petty, painful, and underpinned by inchoate fantasies about “de Jarmins”.
We'll never know how a second vote would have gone but, if Remain had narrowly won it, the country and our political system would have gone apeshit.
The fall out would have totally dominated our politics for years. With lots of anger and disorder as well.
There was no putting it back into Pandora's Box. The die was cast when we voted Leave, IMHO, and at that point we had to Leave - the best thing Remainers could have done was to influence its form and play the long game.
Cummings predicted civil strife if we'd had a second vote without enacting the first, and I believe he was right
Imagine the anger. The biggest mandate in British democratic history - 17.4 million voters - simply ignored? Overruled? Cancelled?
The stupidity of those that avowed a "people's vote" is quite something. They would also have trashed democracy for generations. Why bother voting for anything if the elite can just ignore it. So we become North Korea. Where elections are charades. With Potemkin referendums. Imagine doing the same in the Scottish indyref. Imagine if that had produced a YES vote (taking it out of the EU at the time), would ANYONE have suggested overruling it?
No. So why was it deemed permissible to overturn Brexit?
The campaign for a 2nd vote was also self-defeating, as you say. If the Remainers had accepted the first vote, then got behind ultra-soft Brexit, we would have got exactly that; they might even have kept Freedom of Movement inside EFTA
How many times do you need to be reminded that hard Brexit was committed to by May in 2016, and indicative votes on a soft Brexit (CU/SM) were voted down as a result of Tory whipping, with Labour overwhelmingly voting for it. It was the Tory obsession with a hard Brexit that prevented a soft Brexit, not Remainer opposition.
I've always admitted this. TMay (a Remainer) is as much to blame as the leftwing Remainers. Her insane red lines boxed her in from the start
However the push for a 2nd vote made Brexiteers worry that the whole thing would be overturned, which persuaded many Leavers to go for a Hard, irreversible Brexit. The two sides conspired to get a Brexit very few originally desired.
It will be a poignant passage in Brexit: the History
No, Brexiteers went for a hard Brexit because that was what they wanted. Was May a Remainer? Barely. She gave Cameron the minimal support necessary in the referendum campaign and immediately adopted these crazy red lines under the influence of Nick Timothy. Most Remainers were pragmatic and pushed for a soft Brexit but were met with inplacable hostility from Leavers, who insisted that they had won and would dictate terms. Personally I would have been OK with a 2nd referendum but a soft Brexit was preferable because it honoured the vote, however imperfect a process that was. By the time the referendum was lost there were no good outcomes.
Yes. The vote sparked a bizarre kulturkamp almost from the beginning, with Remainers and the EU accused of treachery with increasing fervour.
It made me realise I am not British, which I had previously assumed I was.
Yeah I have felt increasingly semi-detached from this country since 2016. I still live here, and probably always will, but I have less and less emotional involvement, like a kind of out of body experience.
Weird, innit.
The practical outcome for me is that the likelihood of my returning to NZ is much higher, and I no longer feel it necessarily “natural” to raise my children as British or within the British system.
Views like this though make others question your loyalty or belief in Britain in the first place.
You can't just disown your own nationality just because a national referendum goes against you.
You argue instead for why an alternative solution better suits the national interest.
I find it bizarre you should question others’ loyalty.
I doubt you could have found many more patriotic to a certain idea of Britain than I was. Unlike most on this Board I made a conscious decision to settle here.
The referendum, or at least the response to the referendum, revealed profound truths about the U.K. which I found/find unsavoury and ultimately alienating.
It's possible that when the emotions of the event subside, and the political context moves on, Brexit will look like an expression of the certain idea of Britain to which you were loyal rather than a repudiation of it.
The issue is not Brexit itself.
As much as I think Brexit is a slow-motion car crash, it is at core largely a matter of diplomatic and trade policy.
The issue was rather the seething contempt Brexiters evinced for “Remoaners” right up to and including accusations of treachery (which @Casino_Royale is still making, sotto voce), the bellicose and philistinic rhetoric, and the wanton lust to subvert and destroy each and every pillar of liberal society.
COVID: Are mix-and-match vaccines the way forward? A new German study reports that a combination of the AstraZeneca and BioNTech vaccines triggers a remarkably stronger immune response than sticking with one kind of shot.
If that’s validated, then imagine the implications for a country with some constraints on Pfizer/Moderna but a metric fuck tonne of AZ…..
The indian variant prevalence changes the risk comparator they were using now too. We should probably head to Astra followed by Pfizer for all remaining over 18s tbh.
When they made the change to the guidance I thought that the one problem will be if they want to change it back. We understand the calculations being made, but the media won't...
In a defence of Starmer, despite his invisibility as LOTO, he is up against Johnson who the voters have perceived has had an inch-perfect, error-free pandemic.
Johnson's genius has been his non-stop campaigning throughout the pandemic (something I was critical of, considering it tasteless during the height of a pandemic where thousands of people were dying each week). The campaigning has paid dividends and has given the impression that vaccine, procurement, programming and delivery were all entirely his gift to the nation, and now we a reaping the benefits- a nation unlocked and Covid vanquished. (Remember, perception, not reality, although the link between Covid and deaths seems over).
I still cannot see past the early stages of a chaotic economy this time next year, which is why I feel Johnson should go very, very, early Spring/ early Autumn 2022. I believe the economic strife will take a year or so to fully make its mark on Johnson, which is why 2024 is too late.
What strife?
Companies are reporting difficulties in filling vacancies. The economy is rebounding strongly. Confidence is pretty much at a record level. That forwards momentum will take us through the end of furlough and allow those whose companies don't reopen post-lockdown to find companies desperate for staff.
At that point the economic strife as well as the health strife will have been dealt with.
Since you're so convinced the economic strife is coming, if I'm right and the economy gets through this fine with the government support laid out then a post-pandemic rebound . . . would that confounding of your expectations make you consider voting for a Boris led Tory Party in 2023/24 or would that never happen?
I have been very specific when economic strife will take effect. You are in cloud cuckoo land if you believe there will be no economic consequences from the last 14 months. Try getting out more, the signs are already here, quality businesses not reopening, and not just retail that has gone online.
Boom first, then bust!
Formerly quality businesses closing down for good happens all the time, especially every recession.
Any formerly quality business not reopening is not that bad macroeconomically if there is a staffing shortage in other businesses at the same time as the employees formerly working it the former business can find alternative jobs to go too.
What would be far worse is businesses reopening but then closing down again due to failure one after another leading to mass unemployment, a downturn, no businesses hiring and a vicious feedback loop. That looked possible a year ago, it doesn't look at all probable now.
Yeah, we can all replace our well paid engineering jobs with careers as Baristas.
Mr. Walker, she thrice put it to the Commons and a combination of Conservative MPs rebelling and the Labour Party (and other opposition MPs) en masse voted it down.
I said at the time that when you've got MPs who really like the EU and MPs who really dislike the EU voting the same way, someone's screwing it up.
The dumb soft pro-EU MPs of the Commons rejected everything and guaranteed that we'd leave on harder terms. It was epitomised by the lauded Grieve shrieking it was 'too late' when he was given the exact concession he'd asked for, but still didn't vote for it.
I know this is going over old ground, but people generally should try to at least learn something from it. To tie it into the football story, pointing at people and telling them they're wicked for disliking the EU, or a gesture associated with iconoclast barbarians, isn't going to persuade them. The Little Englander nonsense from Cameron was dumb as hell, yet there were plenty of pro-EU types here tittering about it.
Absolutely the "too late" remark was peak hubris.
The pro-EU MPs swallowed their own spin hook, line and sinker and thought they would win and overturn Brexit entirely rather than compromise on a BRINO Backstop that effectively kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union with the EU having a veto on us ever leaving it.
Seeing Grieve kicked out of the party after his behaviour, then comprehensively thrashed at Beaconsfield and an hard rather than soft Brexit follow was really enjoyable.
I actually can’t remember those tumultuous moments.
The key prize for Remainers (rather than pro-EU which probably describes very few) was a second vote.
May refused to concede that.
There was a clear majority for a softish Brexit, but the various parties could not coalesce and let the loons (mostly on the Brexity side) win.
This is Mark Francois’s Brexit: petty, painful, and underpinned by inchoate fantasies about “de Jarmins”.
We'll never know how a second vote would have gone but, if Remain had narrowly won it, the country and our political system would have gone apeshit.
The fall out would have totally dominated our politics for years. With lots of anger and disorder as well.
There was no putting it back into Pandora's Box. The die was cast when we voted Leave, IMHO, and at that point we had to Leave - the best thing Remainers could have done was to influence its form and play the long game.
Cummings predicted civil strife if we'd had a second vote without enacting the first, and I believe he was right
Imagine the anger. The biggest mandate in British democratic history - 17.4 million voters - simply ignored? Overruled? Cancelled?
The stupidity of those that avowed a "people's vote" is quite something. They would also have trashed democracy for generations. Why bother voting for anything if the elite can just ignore it. So we become North Korea. Where elections are charades. With Potemkin referendums. Imagine doing the same in the Scottish indyref. Imagine if that had produced a YES vote (taking it out of the EU at the time), would ANYONE have suggested overruling it?
No. So why was it deemed permissible to overturn Brexit?
The campaign for a 2nd vote was also self-defeating, as you say. If the Remainers had accepted the first vote, then got behind ultra-soft Brexit, we would have got exactly that; they might even have kept Freedom of Movement inside EFTA
How many times do you need to be reminded that hard Brexit was committed to by May in 2016, and indicative votes on a soft Brexit (CU/SM) were voted down as a result of Tory whipping, with Labour overwhelmingly voting for it. It was the Tory obsession with a hard Brexit that prevented a soft Brexit, not Remainer opposition.
I've always admitted this. TMay (a Remainer) is as much to blame as the leftwing Remainers. Her insane red lines boxed her in from the start
However the push for a 2nd vote made Brexiteers worry that the whole thing would be overturned, which persuaded many Leavers to go for a Hard, irreversible Brexit. The two sides conspired to get a Brexit very few originally desired.
It will be a poignant passage in Brexit: the History
No, Brexiteers went for a hard Brexit because that was what they wanted. Was May a Remainer? Barely. She gave Cameron the minimal support necessary in the referendum campaign and immediately adopted these crazy red lines under the influence of Nick Timothy. Most Remainers were pragmatic and pushed for a soft Brexit but were met with inplacable hostility from Leavers, who insisted that they had won and would dictate terms. Personally I would have been OK with a 2nd referendum but a soft Brexit was preferable because it honoured the vote, however imperfect a process that was. By the time the referendum was lost there were no good outcomes.
Yes. The vote sparked a bizarre kulturkamp almost from the beginning, with Remainers and the EU accused of treachery with increasing fervour.
It made me realise I am not British, which I had previously assumed I was.
Yeah I have felt increasingly semi-detached from this country since 2016. I still live here, and probably always will, but I have less and less emotional involvement, like a kind of out of body experience.
Weird, innit.
The practical outcome for me is that the likelihood of my returning to NZ is much higher, and I no longer feel it necessarily “natural” to raise my children as British or within the British system.
Views like this though make others question your loyalty or belief in Britain in the first place.
You can't just disown your own nationality just because a national referendum goes against you.
You argue instead for why an alternative solution better suits the national interest.
It's not the referendum vote itself. It's everything that's gone with it and followed. The citizens of nowhere speech. The denunciation of traitors. The "suck it up you lost" rhetoric. The increased xenophobia and racism. The culture wars. The flags. Proroguing Parliament. Attacking the judiciary. Attacking the BBC. The open corruption. The lying. It's not the Britain I expected to be living in. It doesn't feel like the kind of place I want to raise my kids.
We aren't more corrupt now than we were in 2015, at least relative to other countries. We were 11th= in the Transparency Rankings in 2015 and were 11th= in 2020.
Have we learnt nothing about writing off a source just because we don't like it?
No, absolutely not. I will not recognise the Canary, or the Mail, or ZeroHedge as a credible source.
If there's a genuine story then it will be reported from credible sources.
This has nothing to do with what we like. I dislike the politics of the Guardian and the i but I recognise both of them as credible sources on the left, just as the Telegraph is a credible source on the right.
"..the Telegraph is a credible source on the right." LOL! Your gullibility index has just shot off the scale.
I would say that the Telegraph has about equal credibility with the Guardian.
Which is not saying much.
The Telegraph more than equals the Guardian for bias but it's way inferior on quality.
Both publish plenty of discreditable stories.
Guardian published a comment piece after the Mumbai attacks blaming them on Indian economic success - it was classic piece of victim blaming.
For a long time the Guardian was in the habit of publishing a victim-blaming piece after just about every similar attack. It's one of the paper's most vomitous features.
You can actually pinpoint the precise moment the Guardian cracked.
Mr. Walker, she thrice put it to the Commons and a combination of Conservative MPs rebelling and the Labour Party (and other opposition MPs) en masse voted it down.
I said at the time that when you've got MPs who really like the EU and MPs who really dislike the EU voting the same way, someone's screwing it up.
The dumb soft pro-EU MPs of the Commons rejected everything and guaranteed that we'd leave on harder terms. It was epitomised by the lauded Grieve shrieking it was 'too late' when he was given the exact concession he'd asked for, but still didn't vote for it.
I know this is going over old ground, but people generally should try to at least learn something from it. To tie it into the football story, pointing at people and telling them they're wicked for disliking the EU, or a gesture associated with iconoclast barbarians, isn't going to persuade them. The Little Englander nonsense from Cameron was dumb as hell, yet there were plenty of pro-EU types here tittering about it.
Absolutely the "too late" remark was peak hubris.
The pro-EU MPs swallowed their own spin hook, line and sinker and thought they would win and overturn Brexit entirely rather than compromise on a BRINO Backstop that effectively kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union with the EU having a veto on us ever leaving it.
Seeing Grieve kicked out of the party after his behaviour, then comprehensively thrashed at Beaconsfield and an hard rather than soft Brexit follow was really enjoyable.
I actually can’t remember those tumultuous moments.
The key prize for Remainers (rather than pro-EU which probably describes very few) was a second vote.
May refused to concede that.
There was a clear majority for a softish Brexit, but the various parties could not coalesce and let the loons (mostly on the Brexity side) win.
This is Mark Francois’s Brexit: petty, painful, and underpinned by inchoate fantasies about “de Jarmins”.
We'll never know how a second vote would have gone but, if Remain had narrowly won it, the country and our political system would have gone apeshit.
The fall out would have totally dominated our politics for years. With lots of anger and disorder as well.
There was no putting it back into Pandora's Box. The die was cast when we voted Leave, IMHO, and at that point we had to Leave - the best thing Remainers could have done was to influence its form and play the long game.
Cummings predicted civil strife if we'd had a second vote without enacting the first, and I believe he was right
Imagine the anger. The biggest mandate in British democratic history - 17.4 million voters - simply ignored? Overruled? Cancelled?
The stupidity of those that avowed a "people's vote" is quite something. They would also have trashed democracy for generations. Why bother voting for anything if the elite can just ignore it. So we become North Korea. Where elections are charades. With Potemkin referendums. Imagine doing the same in the Scottish indyref. Imagine if that had produced a YES vote (taking it out of the EU at the time), would ANYONE have suggested overruling it?
No. So why was it deemed permissible to overturn Brexit?
The campaign for a 2nd vote was also self-defeating, as you say. If the Remainers had accepted the first vote, then got behind ultra-soft Brexit, we would have got exactly that; they might even have kept Freedom of Movement inside EFTA
How many times do you need to be reminded that hard Brexit was committed to by May in 2016, and indicative votes on a soft Brexit (CU/SM) were voted down as a result of Tory whipping, with Labour overwhelmingly voting for it. It was the Tory obsession with a hard Brexit that prevented a soft Brexit, not Remainer opposition.
I've always admitted this. TMay (a Remainer) is as much to blame as the leftwing Remainers. Her insane red lines boxed her in from the start
However the push for a 2nd vote made Brexiteers worry that the whole thing would be overturned, which persuaded many Leavers to go for a Hard, irreversible Brexit. The two sides conspired to get a Brexit very few originally desired.
It will be a poignant passage in Brexit: the History
No, Brexiteers went for a hard Brexit because that was what they wanted. Was May a Remainer? Barely. She gave Cameron the minimal support necessary in the referendum campaign and immediately adopted these crazy red lines under the influence of Nick Timothy. Most Remainers were pragmatic and pushed for a soft Brexit but were met with inplacable hostility from Leavers, who insisted that they had won and would dictate terms. Personally I would have been OK with a 2nd referendum but a soft Brexit was preferable because it honoured the vote, however imperfect a process that was. By the time the referendum was lost there were no good outcomes.
Yes. The vote sparked a bizarre kulturkamp almost from the beginning, with Remainers and the EU accused of treachery with increasing fervour.
It made me realise I am not British, which I had previously assumed I was.
Yeah I have felt increasingly semi-detached from this country since 2016. I still live here, and probably always will, but I have less and less emotional involvement, like a kind of out of body experience.
Weird, innit.
The practical outcome for me is that the likelihood of my returning to NZ is much higher, and I no longer feel it necessarily “natural” to raise my children as British or within the British system.
Views like this though make others question your loyalty or belief in Britain in the first place.
You can't just disown your own nationality just because a national referendum goes against you.
You argue instead for why an alternative solution better suits the national interest.
I find it bizarre you should question others’ loyalty.
I doubt you could have found many more patriotic to a certain idea of Britain than I was. Unlike most on this Board I made a conscious decision to settle here.
The referendum, or at least the response to the referendum, revealed profound truths about the U.K. which I found/find unsavoury and ultimately alienating.
I try and take a slightly different view to this. I think the referendum was a very unpleasant period in Britain's history, but it is behind us and we have to move on. Yes there are those who want to keep reliving it over and over because they "won" (by a small percentage margin of those who voted), but they are just saddos.
Britain is still a great place to be in spite of the extremist elements of both left and right. The internet and forums like his gives them a megaphone so they can continue their divisiveness. Keep the faith. There are still plenty of reasons for your type of patriotism.
Comments
And for blame you need to blame those who share that perspective and lost.
After Brazil lost the World Cup final 1-7 to Germany would anyone in Brazil have said that "blame" for the defeat was Tony Kroos' fault - or say that blame belonged to Brazil's Manager, Captain and Goalkeeper etc?
Say we achieve 90% of adults vaxed at 90% efficacy and the threshold is 95% of adults (I'm being simplistic here, and ignoring the kids - they make the maths more complex, ), then one would expect that about 14% of adults (skewed heavily towards the unvaxed) would eventually catch it, then immunity should be reached. So long as that vax gap isn't too big and ideally skews young, this doesn't sound like too big a crisis to me - and as other commenters have noted, better to get it over with in the summer than let it go in the autumn.
https://lesbianandgaynews.com/2021/05/equality-and-human-rights-commission-quits-stonewalls-diversity-champions-scheme/
Official estimates expected to conclude today that the Indian variant is 60% more transmissible than Kent strain
At higher end of estimates and bad news for hopes of ending restrictions on June 21
https://thetimes.co.uk/article/indian-coronavirus-strain-more-contagious-kent-variant-ssx876q5j
https://twitter.com/JGForsyth/status/1402944847632285699?s=20
Any formerly quality business not reopening is not that bad macroeconomically if there is a staffing shortage in other businesses at the same time as the employees formerly working it the former business can find alternative jobs to go too.
What would be far worse is businesses reopening but then closing down again due to failure one after another leading to mass unemployment, a downturn, no businesses hiring and a vicious feedback loop. That looked possible a year ago, it doesn't look at all probable now.
Otherwise it seems to me it wasn't guff and he's achieved what he said he would. That you dislike what he said he'd achieve and has done is neither here nor there.
Guardian published a comment piece after the Mumbai attacks blaming them on Indian economic success - it was classic piece of victim blaming.
https://twitter.com/AtheistMayhem/status/1402936686749831171?s=20
There is no doubt there is a boom and it would be depressing if there wasn’t one given the scale of last year’s collapse.
It’s not possible to make prediction much beyond the next six months except that it looks like resource shortages and loss of market access (ie Brexit) will bear down on economic growth potential.
Secondly, the 'conspiracy theory' he denounced (and I'd agree that such language is unscientific) were around the claims (including the Nature article) that the virus was 'almost certainly' genetically engineered.
Such claims remain completely untrue. Its not possible completely to disprove such a thesis, but it is exceedingly unlikely.
And remarkable for your being quite so exercised about an amendment a whole year ago.
The combinations of promises made then meant that someone was going to have to be thrown under the bus once the vote was won.
The EEA types went first. Sad, because it's probably the solution that would have had the best "not great but it's a tolerable compromise" response. Just outside the superstate. Most remainers could have lived with it, a significant minority of leavers as well. Indeed I get the impression that for some, the double-cross was the plan all along- get a majority to leave the EU, then get a different majority to not leave by much. Too clever by half- you have to dance with the one who brung ya.
So then you get May's plan- stop Free Movement, stop the ECJ, but get as much trade access as possible and treat NI the same as GB. Deal with the presenting causes of Brexit whilst minimising harm. That was plucky, but it wasn't going to work as a unity project- it was too hard a Brexit for remainers to shrug at, and it revealed that TM didn't bellyfeel Brexit. So Leavers couldn't swallow it either. It revealed a belief that it was worth minimising harm, and that would never do. Besides, it omitted the possibility of BJ being PM. So that plan had to die.
So we've ended up where we are. The only way to get all the national independence promised was to take on the consequences that were denied. And put a border down the Irish Sea. But there aren't any Conservative MPs from Ulster, so who gives a stuff eh?
Remainers saying "they're no longer British" and then arguing for the vote to be overturned fuelled charges of treason.
Leavers attacking every institution that put caveats or limits on the interpretation of the vote similarly infuriated Remainers and made them want to disassociate themselves from a decision they couldn't understand or identify with.
Official estimates expected to conclude today that the Indian variant is 60% more transmissible than Kent strain
At higher end of estimates and bad news for hopes of ending restrictions on June 21
Obviously, a barrister’s opinion of the law carries more weight than the average numpty, but it’s not exactly definitive.
(NB. “Lesbian and Gay News” appears to be an anti-trans organisation from a quick scan of their Twitter, so I would imagine their reporting carries the same slant.)
The practical outcome for me is that the likelihood of my returning to NZ is much higher, and I no longer feel it necessarily “natural” to raise my children as British or within the British system.
Oh, and the one about the woman who was ‘friendly’ with a dolphin. That was funny.
Indeed, 60% potentially gives us a non-trivial hospitalization wave even with only Step 3 retained & Step 4 not enacted.
In any case, I recall reading that US newspapers don't report as fact anything reported in a British paper without independent corroboration (except the FT perhaps).
But what instead? Who knows.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-57421886
States like Texas are passing Jim Crow style laws to disenfranchise voters and make it harder to vote and the GOP-stuffed SCOTUS gutted the Voting Right Act, the only way to even try to mitigate this is for the Democrats to pass a new voting rights act while they control the Senate.
But they can't, because of the filibuster. Except the GOP were content to get rid of the filibuster when it came to stuffing SCOTUS. If the choice is seeing Jim Crow style disenfranchisement of voting rights, or to end the filibuster, then defending the filibuster is deliberately choosing to let Jim Crow laws be upheld.
Labour's current position from the point of view of the voter is that accepts Brexit but not from the heart. It has neither arguments not affection for the project but it isn't going back on it.
This is a central difficulty. Most people want a government implementing policies which the voter and the government believe in.
Both remainers and brexiteers generally prefer a government that is not constrained by ludicrous contortions. (Foot and Jezza on the nuclear issue for example).
The next Labour leader, to have much chance needs to square this circle. They have to be someone who simultaneously is:
Better than the Tory offer (which is a centre left one to start with!)
Better at Brexit than the Tories
Good at sounding as if they support the union of the UK
Flag, queen, family, country, anti woke
Good at creating hope and optimism, outshining Boris.
Burnham is good, but he is not it.
I don’t remember a mass disavowal of citizenship in the wake of the vote, so your post just reads like a rewrite of history, if not victim blaming.
The Mail’s editorial (not wholly separable from govt comms policy) during this period was truly sickening. And even May was not immune, with disastrous criticisms of “citizens of nowhere” and grotesque suggestions that the EU was interfering in the 2017 election.
All the work and client jobs I've got over the last 15 years have been through my network. I focus on maintaining that now as cold application is a waste of time, as are most recruiters.
You can't just disown your own nationality just because a national referendum goes against you.
You argue instead for why an alternative solution better suits the national interest.
I can't believe Labour didn't realise the long term damage they did with the electorate by their game playing in the 2017 - 19 parliament. It was clear as day to me and I voted to stay in.
I want to see Parliament debating this not just Hancock and Gove's little subcommittee of two.
https://www.cloisters.com/barristers/akua-reindorf/
I think "victim-blaming" is absurd self-pity. You lost the vote, sure, but you aren't victims.
Still, most people have now moved on.
https://twitter.com/BethRigby/status/1402949657978884098?s=20
- Normally trustworthy. His actions match his words and his words match the reality.
- Serious. Takes responsibility.
- Not corrupt
- Has a trackrecord of competently managing an organisation
- No interest in divisive politics
All unlike his opponent. Yet people prefer the charlatan on every metric. There is a problem if people think there's a problem, so Starmer needs to go. Don't think this is a net gain for humanity however.Its as close as you can get to it, without actually being in it, but its not in it.
Secondly, there was an acceptance amongst the labour party membership that Brexit was a fair price to pay for the forthcoming socialist revolution that would take place when Corbyn rose to power on the chaos that he was helping to forment by his stance on Brexit.
These two factors were like a magic mix that actually helped deliver the Brexit we got.
As I suggested yesterday, it is quite possible that the remain fanatics and corbynites - who have now metamorphised in to the woke - will eventually find a way to rejoin the EU.
First management consulting, then digital marketing, and now running digital product businesses.
I get lots of offers to run digital marketing agencies which is...annoying. I don’t mind recruiters, though. They’re just doing their bit.
If anyone has an a opportunity around digital product leadership - hit me up in via a private mail!
Equally interested in contract v perm opps.
Incidentally, that Nature article - Proximal Origins of Covid - is fascinating, the more you dig
As I say, the author is K G Andersen
On 31st January he told Fauci in a private email that the virus was potentially engineered
https://twitter.com/BretWeinstein/status/1400107600889319424?s=20
The very same day, he went on Twitter to publicly say the "engineering theories" were nonsense. See here:
https://twitter.com/lab_leak/status/1402630150622040077?s=20
A day later - a day later! - he apparently did the first draft of his Nature article dismissing engineering
https://twitter.com/MonaRahalkar/status/1400082196422070276?s=20
Four days later, anyone who believes in an engineered virus is a "crackpot" - according to K G Andersen, despite him saying exactly that to Fauci, in private, the same week
https://twitter.com/alexandrosM/status/1400868297797636104?s=20
Coupla weeks later he gets a fat grant from Fauci. A year later, when everyone starts asking about this, he suddenly deletes 4000 tweets and then vanishes from Twitter.
"- It would be great if lecturers could use language which is trans-inclusive when referring to sex hormones etc.
(e.g. male and female, rather than men/women)."
Now this really annoys me. The words men and male are interchangeable, and only someone with a prostate can get prostate cancer. Its so basic its untrue. I have no desire to upset someone, but talking about male sex hormones and not being able to say men because someone who now lives as a man and regards themselves as a man is just ridiculous. I'm sure others on here will disagree.
So yes, woke nonsense is reaching even into science departments.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/27/switzerland-walks-out-of-seven-year-treaty-talks-with-eu
In my view it’s healthier not to be quite so engaged. My feelings for my county are about the countryside, the little villages, the place names, the sport, the feel of a good pub, the food, the literature, and the sense of “place” and belonging. For others it’s the hum of the city, the vibrant diversity of the people, the dynamic business. Nothing political and no geopolitical change can alter really deep feelings for one’s country. Don’t even let them try - it’s all just fluff in the context of our thousand years of history.
It's not the Britain I expected to be living in. It doesn't feel like the kind of place I want to raise my kids.
It doesn't help that they are also known to suffer from mental health issues at a rate several times that of the general population - again, as an employer, not necessarily a risk you'd be keen to take.
This is particularly true of smaller businesses, where one difficult, litigatious or long term sick employee can be very difficult and expensive to deal with.
This is an American exercise that aims to benefit the US. The question for the UK is whether not going along with the scheme has costs that outweigh those of joining in. The US, and EU FWIW, won't agree the exemption as part of the scheme.
I think I would flee the country beforehand
Unfortunately, any anti-Boris is going to be rubbish at campaigning against a Boris. Because words that fly free from reality, cheerful cynicism, a dip in the pork barrel and setting up dividing lines are a damn good way of winning votes, for all they are a bad way of using power once you have won.
We've broken the link between good electoral politics and good government.
German Health Minister @jensspahn today unveiled the digital vaccination passport.
Plans are that it can be used for EU cross-border travel from July.
https://twitter.com/dw_politics/status/1402949273675837450?s=20
I doubt you could have found many more patriotic to a certain idea of Britain than I was. Unlike most on this Board I made a conscious decision to settle here.
The referendum, or at least the response to the referendum, revealed profound truths about the U.K. which I found/find unsavoury and ultimately alienating.
The article was written as if someone had crayoned out all the references to religion but otherwise supported that thesis.
A new German study reports that a combination of the AstraZeneca and BioNTech vaccines triggers a remarkably stronger immune response than sticking with one kind of shot.
https://www.dw.com/en/mix-and-match-vaccines-biontech-astrazeneca-better-than-one-shot/a-57819127
All of that was part of Britain before the referendum too.
The "suck it up you lost" rhetoric was exceedingly common through Tony Blair's era, wanting to rub the right's nose in it. The denunciation of fruitcakes, nuts and loons was something I confess I was amused by when Cameron was doing it. By all sane measurable (not voodoo) metrics xenophobia and racism has gone down since 2016. Culture wars have been going on since the dawn of time probably, at least consistently since the 60s but probably before then. EU flags were plastered on roundabout and all sorts without you objecting to it previously. Parliamentary shenanigans is stuff all parties engage in. Nothing original about the judiciary being attacked. I've been attacking the BBC since I was at university and I know many others always have been. Open corruption marked Tony "straight kind of guy" Blair's government as did lying.
If its not the Britain you expected to be living in then you slept through Blair's Britain at the very least. Maybe you found all these things you object to now jolly good japes when it was your own side engaged in it.
Now, you might say that democracy carries on, and I would agree. But I think what it shows is his inability to compromise. That is an important characteristic.
I am afraid that this practice on the part of the government encourages a rather cynical and transactional view of British Citizenship, when you come to think about it.
The assumption behind the question reflects very badly on the UK government, which should give Allister Health and his ilk pause for thought, but clearly doesn't. The assumption is that the UK are incompetent negotiators acting in bad faith, who never had any intention of honouring its treaty commitments. And should never have been believed.
I saw this problem identified on Twitter earlier. So many people in academe, publishing, the arts, journalism, the charity sector even the law, are "centre left". Remainery types.
They see no real problem with Wokeness because at the moment it does not endanger them. Yes, sure, haha, it has some extremes which are mad, but it seems well-meaning. Do we really need that statue of Rhodes? He was a horrible old Tory. What about poor trans people, they do need protecting.
And yet the war between feminists (very often on the left) and the Trans activists shows the future. The Woke will turn on the moderate lefties and destroy their causes and careers as well. See also the Oxfam nonsense about white women being "contemptible" for making rape accusations
https://spectatorworld.com/topic/biden-boris-orange-elephant-g7-united-kingdom/
Strikes me that the UK were competent negotiators acting in bad faith, who never had any intention of honouring its treaty commitments.
If you can get what you want via committing to a "price" that you don't intend to pay and have plans to wrangle your way out of, it may be disreputable, it may not be pleasant, but its not incompetent. Its actually very competent realpolitik.
PS all nations and organisations including the EU have form in this so drop the mock horror at the UK doing it. Remember the EU negotiating for Blair to give away half our rebate in exchange for CAP being reformed? Then saying CAP wouldn't be reformed? What's sauce for the goose is good for the gander.
As much as I think Brexit is a slow-motion car crash, it is at core largely a matter of diplomatic and trade policy.
The issue was rather the seething contempt Brexiters evinced for “Remoaners” right up to and including accusations of treachery (which @Casino_Royale is still making, sotto voce), the bellicose and philistinic rhetoric, and the wanton lust to subvert and destroy each and every pillar of liberal society.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/the-lay-scientist/2015/may/06/how-can-our-future-mars-colonies-be-free-of-sexism-and-racism
"The first woman to be raped in space has probably already been born"
Britain is still a great place to be in spite of the extremist elements of both left and right. The internet and forums like his gives them a megaphone so they can continue their divisiveness. Keep the faith. There are still plenty of reasons for your type of patriotism.