Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. Sign in or register to get started.

Happy 80th birthday Joe Biden – politicalbetting.com

SystemSystem Posts: 11,002
edited November 2022 in General
imageHappy 80th birthday Joe Biden – politicalbetting.com

Today is the 80th birthday of the US president Joe Biden and this comes at a time when there’s a lot of speculation about whether he’ll seek to run again in 2024. Clear age is a factor here and if the was nominated again and won he would remain at the White House till January 2029 when he would be in his late 80s.

Read the full story here

«13456

Comments

  • swing_voterswing_voter Posts: 1,435
    First, like PH in Malaysia's General Election....
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,727
    “Do you accept Brexit has had a significant adverse impact on trade”, as the OBR says?

    “There are pros and cons” of Brexit says Steve Barclay - twice.

    Essentially an admission that trade has indeed suffered. @SophyRidgeSky


    https://twitter.com/PaulBrandITV/status/1594249172596785152
  • RochdalePioneersRochdalePioneers Posts: 27,005
    edited November 2022
    They're all admitting it now. Because the data is incontrovertible. In essence the Tories are now playing "people voted to make themselves poorer" as Hunt said.

    I've made this point a lot. With the exception of a few mouth-foamers, most Brexit voters believed that Brexit would make them richer. Better jobs with more money, better money for services, better trade to make everyone richer.

    They aren't going to accept getting poorer and "this is what you voted for." It isn't.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,727
    ...
  • RogerRoger Posts: 18,891
    edited November 2022
    Happy Birthday Mr President......

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y74oWon5VTo
  • FishingFishing Posts: 4,555
    Shows the lack of talent and divisions in the Democratic Party that an 80-year-old in Biden's state is even being considered, let alone the favourite.
  • Joe Biden might be the value bet for both nomination and re-election. He is the incumbent, so the rigours of a nomination campaign are nothing if there is no challenger.
  • JonathanJonathan Posts: 20,901

    They're all admitting it now. Because the data is incontrovertible. In essence the Tories are now playing "people voted to make themselves poorer" as Hunt said.

    I've made this point a lot. With the exception of a few mouth-foamers, most Brexit voters believed that Brexit would make them richer. Better jobs with more money, better money for services, better trade to make everyone richer.

    They aren't going to accept getting poorer and "this is what you voted for." It isn't.

    There is a blame game going on. The Tories blame Putin (basically anyone but them). In reality they will deservedly take the lion’s share.

    However, beyond that another debate is firing up. Is Brexit or the Pandemic to blame. Farage and co blame the pandemic pointing to Sweden, but conveniently forgetting that countries that locked down harder are doing better. It will be interesting to see how the mythology develops.
  • Matter cannot be created nor destroyed so, in one sense, we never die.

    We just become something else.
  • ChrisChris Posts: 11,008

    Matter cannot be created nor destroyed so, in one sense, we never die.

    We just become something else.

    We die and become something else.
  • Joe Biden might be the value bet for both nomination and re-election. He is the incumbent, so the rigours of a nomination campaign are nothing if there is no challenger.

    He is the value bet, even if he's bullshitting.

    The question is: who's the reserve?

    It won't be Michelle Obama.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,880
    edited November 2022
    Carnyx said:



    What is there in Lincolnshire? Quite a lot of crab-fat types from the Raff. So .,..

    Dunno where Lincolnshire came from. I'm in Somerset with 99% of the other FAA retirees. Most of the golf clubs round here could scratch together their own air wings.

    No Sunday lunch either. Mrs DA has taken the Ukrainians to Istanbul.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,835

    Joe Biden might be the value bet for both nomination and re-election. He is the incumbent, so the rigours of a nomination campaign are nothing if there is no challenger.

    He is the value bet, even if he's bullshitting.

    The question is: who's the reserve?

    It won't be Michelle Obama.
    Harris
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,259

    Joe Biden might be the value bet for both nomination and re-election. He is the incumbent, so the rigours of a nomination campaign are nothing if there is no challenger.

    He is the value bet, even if he's bullshitting.

    The question is: who's the reserve?

    It won't be Michelle Obama.
    ...which is a shame.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517

    Matter cannot be created nor destroyed so, in one sense, we never die.

    We just become something else.

    Tell that to proton decay. ;)
  • FlatlanderFlatlander Posts: 3,853
    edited November 2022
    Dura_Ace said:

    Carnyx said:



    What is there in Lincolnshire? Quite a lot of crab-fat types from the Raff. So .,..

    Dunno where Lincolnshire came from. I'm in Somerset with 99% of the other FAA retirees. Most of the golf clubs round here could scratch together their own air wings.

    No Sunday lunch either. Mrs DA has taken the Ukrainians to Istanbul.
    Surely Burnham & Berrow can't be as bad as Woodhall Spa in that respect? I mean, they've even got the (slightly tacky) Dambusters memorial opposite the front gate.
  • Pro_RataPro_Rata Posts: 4,784
    Pro_Rata said:

    Off topic, I've just had to check today's Heardle wasn't a wildcard, being literally the last song I'd completed listening to on Spotify an hour before. Quite disconcerting.

    Although, I'd have been far more disconcerted had it happened today.

  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,583
    Fishing said:

    Shows the lack of talent and divisions in the Democratic Party that an 80-year-old in Biden's state is even being considered, let alone the favourite.

    ... now remind me, how old is your friend Mr Trump?

    Personally, I'd prefer a little forgetfulness to insurrection and dictatorship.
  • Sums it all up for me. The full, superb, piece is here: https://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2022/11/the-charge-sheet-against-brexits-guilty.html?m=1 but I think it’s worth quoting at length:

    The long-awaited Budget – in all but name – has now arrived, but the public could be forgiven for not realising the extent to which it is a Brexit budget, given the near taboo in the Conservative and Labour parties on mentioning the economic consequences of Brexit…

    … this Budget is the latest instalment of the so-called ‘punishment budget’, much mocked by Brexiters as ‘hysterical’ and ‘Project Fear’, that George Osborne warned would be necessary if the UK voted to leave the EU.. It didn’t happen in the immediate way Osborne had threatened, but has developed more gradually, and actually we can now see how modest his proposals were compared with the scale of damage Brexit has done…

    Brexit was sold on the basis that it would positive for the country. In that sense, the clearest indictment of its failure is that literally no-one is suggesting that Britain’s fiscal position is better as a result of Brexit. 

    …one of this week’s louder admissions of Brexit failure, the wholesale denunciation of the UK’s trade deals with Australia and New Zealand by George Eustice… the UK’s capacity to make its own free trade agreements is not just any old aspect of Brexit. It is repeatedly and vociferously claimed by Brexiters to be amongst the most crucial of Brexit dividends, and these two trade deals are so far the entirety of that dividend... the critics were right, and that both… deals conceded British interests, especially farming interests, with no compensating return… solely in order to ‘prove’ to the public that Brexit had Benefits…

    It's important to differentiate two aspects of the damage Brexit is doing, albeit that they interact. One, encapsulated by the budget, and shown almost daily by the growing economic evidence, is to do with what has been lost – especially in trade, investment, and labour market flexibility – by virtue of leaving the EU, and particularly the single market and customs union. The other is to do with the abject failure and utter incompetence of what is being created as an alternative to EU membership… In a sense, the issue is that there is simply no post-Brexit economic strategy at all or, to the extent that there is, it is wholly unrealistic… such strategy as there is has been based on boosterism…

    Both the damage done ‘by Brexit’ and the damage created by what is being done ‘with Brexit’ can be traced back to the total ignorance, wilful dishonesty, and reckless irresponsibility of those who proposed and campaigned for Brexit without the tiniest understanding of how to do it… We saw their promises, their falsehoods, their evasions, and their lies, and they are all on record. On record, too, is all the spite and ridicule and bile they threw at those who warned them, who pleaded with them, not to inflict this on our country…
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,772

    Matter cannot be created nor destroyed so, in one sense, we never die.

    We just become something else.

    There was some Maths question I did once about how many atoms of Julius Caesar a person might inhale in a single breath. I forget the answer I came up with.

    In matter terms a large proportion of your body is recreated several times over your lifetime. An interesting variation on the philosophical question of that Greek ship.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,111
    edited November 2022

    Matter cannot be created nor destroyed so, in one sense, we never die.

    We just become something else.

    Tell that to proton decay. ;)
    Not to mention where we get a lot of the electricity to run trains and boil kettles.

    The classic mistake is to found your theological conclusions on obsolete science.
  • kjhkjh Posts: 10,456

    Matter cannot be created nor destroyed so, in one sense, we never die.

    We just become something else.

    There was some Maths question I did once about how many atoms of Julius Caesar a person might inhale in a single breath. I forget the answer I came up with.

    In matter terms a large proportion of your body is recreated several times over your lifetime. An interesting variation on the philosophical question of that Greek ship.
    Or Triggers broom. Of course the conservation of mass is a very limited law. Mass can and is converted to energy and you also have the anti matter issue situation.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,727

    Both the damage done ‘by Brexit’ and the damage created by what is being done ‘with Brexit’ can be traced back to the total ignorance, wilful dishonesty, and reckless irresponsibility of those who proposed and campaigned for Brexit without the tiniest understanding of how to do it… We saw their promises, their falsehoods, their evasions, and their lies, and they are all on record. On record, too, is all the spite and ridicule and bile they threw at those who warned them, who pleaded with them, not to inflict this on our country…

    Matthew Syed has a column in The Times today which I would also quote at length, but the essence is this.

    A democracy can cope with stupid politicians if they accept expert advice. Even better is smart politicians who can critique expert advice.

    Brexit gave us stupid politicians who despise expertise of any form.

    And here we are...

    But why is this happening? Let me suggest that one factor is the contempt for expertise that filtered into the Tory ranks during the 2016 EU referendum. I remember during that campaign someone using the phrase “Ah, but you’re an expert” not as a compliment but as an insult.

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/down-the-tory-rabbit-hole-comment-economic-plan-liz-truss-jk6029l7k
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,111
    edited November 2022
    Scott_xP said:

    Both the damage done ‘by Brexit’ and the damage created by what is being done ‘with Brexit’ can be traced back to the total ignorance, wilful dishonesty, and reckless irresponsibility of those who proposed and campaigned for Brexit without the tiniest understanding of how to do it… We saw their promises, their falsehoods, their evasions, and their lies, and they are all on record. On record, too, is all the spite and ridicule and bile they threw at those who warned them, who pleaded with them, not to inflict this on our country…

    Matthew Syed has a column in The Times today which I would also quote at length, but the essence is this.

    A democracy can cope with stupid politicians if they accept expert advice. Even better is smart politicians who can critique expert advice.

    Brexit gave us stupid politicians who despise expertise of any form.

    And here we are...

    But why is this happening? Let me suggest that one factor is the contempt for expertise that filtered into the Tory ranks during the 2016 EU referendum. I remember during that campaign someone using the phrase “Ah, but you’re an expert” not as a compliment but as an insult.

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/down-the-tory-rabbit-hole-comment-economic-plan-liz-truss-jk6029l7k
    Not, I hope, a sign of the End Days. But one wonders if it was prophesied by Walter Miller.

    “Simpletons! Yes, yes! I'm a simpleton! Are you a simpleton? We'll build a town and we'll name it Simple Town, because by then all the smart bastards that caused all this, they'll be dead! Simpletons! Let's go! This ought to show 'em! Anybody here not a simpleton? Get the bastard, if there is!”

    ― Walter M. Miller Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz

    http://www.booktryst.com/2010/07/isaac-e-leibowitz-monastery-of-rare.html
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,747
    According to Fox at least, we are still waiting for 6 results in the House. At the moment the GOP has 218, the absolute minimum required to take control. It would require exceptional and unusual discipline to control the House with anything like that number. I think it is expected that some of these oh so slow results will result in GOP wins with most expecting them to end up at 222 but it might even be less.

    One of Biden's skills in his former careers was being able to reach across the aisle, albeit in less partisan and hostile times. I see this potentially going two different ways. If he succeeds in getting some of his legislation through, even with compromises, and if he gets a SC nominee then he may feel that his job is done. If he doesn't then he may want to have another go.

    A lot, of course, depends on his health. He is at an age now where even minor setbacks can be hard to get over.

  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,042
    DavidL said:

    Sums it all up for me. The full, superb, piece is here: https://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2022/11/the-charge-sheet-against-brexits-guilty.html?m=1 but I think it’s worth quoting at length:

    The long-awaited Budget – in all but name – has now arrived, but the public could be forgiven for not realising the extent to which it is a Brexit budget, given the near taboo in the Conservative and Labour parties on mentioning the economic consequences of Brexit…

    … this Budget is the latest instalment of the so-called ‘punishment budget’, much mocked by Brexiters as ‘hysterical’ and ‘Project Fear’, that George Osborne warned would be necessary if the UK voted to leave the EU.. It didn’t happen in the immediate way Osborne had threatened, but has developed more gradually, and actually we can now see how modest his proposals were compared with the scale of damage Brexit has done…

    Brexit was sold on the basis that it would positive for the country. In that sense, the clearest indictment of its failure is that literally no-one is suggesting that Britain’s fiscal position is better as a result of Brexit. 

    …one of this week’s louder admissions of Brexit failure, the wholesale denunciation of the UK’s trade deals with Australia and New Zealand by George Eustice… the UK’s capacity to make its own free trade agreements is not just any old aspect of Brexit. It is repeatedly and vociferously claimed by Brexiters to be amongst the most crucial of Brexit dividends, and these two trade deals are so far the entirety of that dividend... the critics were right, and that both… deals conceded British interests, especially farming interests, with no compensating return… solely in order to ‘prove’ to the public that Brexit had Benefits…

    It's important to differentiate two aspects of the damage Brexit is doing, albeit that they interact. One, encapsulated by the budget, and shown almost daily by the growing economic evidence, is to do with what has been lost – especially in trade, investment, and labour market flexibility – by virtue of leaving the EU, and particularly the single market and customs union. The other is to do with the abject failure and utter incompetence of what is being created as an alternative to EU membership… In a sense, the issue is that there is simply no post-Brexit economic strategy at all or, to the extent that there is, it is wholly unrealistic… such strategy as there is has been based on boosterism…

    Both the damage done ‘by Brexit’ and the damage created by what is being done ‘with Brexit’ can be traced back to the total ignorance, wilful dishonesty, and reckless irresponsibility of those who proposed and campaigned for Brexit without the tiniest understanding of how to do it… We saw their promises, their falsehoods, their evasions, and their lies, and they are all on record. On record, too, is all the spite and ridicule and bile they threw at those who warned them, who pleaded with them, not to inflict this on our country…

    And still the delusion that Brexit plays any material part in our serious problems persists. It's extraordinary but it is also a good excuse not to address those problems which are deep rooted, complicated and not amendable to simplistic ideological solutions.
    The author quite explicitly blames UK economic policy decisions on Brexit too. Nutter.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392
    edited November 2022

    No it's not. Dying sucks big time, and you can advance a good case that our lives (especially the healthy, active portion of them) are too short, but ultimately we are finite beings. It would be worse to live forever.
    As a wise man once said, I plan to live forever, of course, but barring that I'd settle for a couple thousand years. Even 500 years would be pretty nice.
  • FPT and off topic, sorry I'm just catching up:

    I’ll be participating in two Christian services tomorrow, and helping with online Sunday school.

    @MoonRabbit you may be too busy to answer this at the moment :) , but I'm curious to know why your church's Sunday school is still online? (I assume it went online during lockdown, and has stayed that way?)

    Also, it seems you have an interest in the relationship between particle physics and theology - have you read or listened to anything by John Polkinghorne? If not I recommend him - Google will find articles or talks he has done.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392

    There’s been a Peterson. Proof were it needed that anyone using the honorific ‘sir’ is always a twat.

    Hard to argue with that, sir, strong case well made.
    Nigelb said:

    Criminal investigations are something you’re subject to, rather than partake of.

    Trump explodes at special counsel appointment: ‘I am not going to partake in it’
    https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/3742413-trump-explodes-at-special-counsel-appointment-i-am-not-going-to-partake-in-it/

    For the rich justice is something they send out for when they wish it, not something they face.

    Usually.

  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,727
    kle4 said:


    No it's not. Dying sucks big time, and you can advance a good case that our lives (especially the healthy, active portion of them) are too short, but ultimately we are finite beings. It would be worse to live forever.
    As a wise man once said, I plan to live forever, of course, but barring that I'd settle for a couple thousand years. Even 500 years would be pretty nice.


    At least 2 recent TV shows have touched on this.

    The Good Place decided in the end that eternity is no fun

    And the Sandman featured an immortal human who was not entirely happy with his lot
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 7,457
    DavidL said:

    Sums it all up for me. The full, superb, piece is here: https://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2022/11/the-charge-sheet-against-brexits-guilty.html?m=1 but I think it’s worth quoting at length:

    The long-awaited Budget – in all but name – has now arrived, but the public could be forgiven for not realising the extent to which it is a Brexit budget, given the near taboo in the Conservative and Labour parties on mentioning the economic consequences of Brexit…

    … this Budget is the latest instalment of the so-called ‘punishment budget’, much mocked by Brexiters as ‘hysterical’ and ‘Project Fear’, that George Osborne warned would be necessary if the UK voted to leave the EU.. It didn’t happen in the immediate way Osborne had threatened, but has developed more gradually, and actually we can now see how modest his proposals were compared with the scale of damage Brexit has done…

    Brexit was sold on the basis that it would positive for the country. In that sense, the clearest indictment of its failure is that literally no-one is suggesting that Britain’s fiscal position is better as a result of Brexit. 

    …one of this week’s louder admissions of Brexit failure, the wholesale denunciation of the UK’s trade deals with Australia and New Zealand by George Eustice… the UK’s capacity to make its own free trade agreements is not just any old aspect of Brexit. It is repeatedly and vociferously claimed by Brexiters to be amongst the most crucial of Brexit dividends, and these two trade deals are so far the entirety of that dividend... the critics were right, and that both… deals conceded British interests, especially farming interests, with no compensating return… solely in order to ‘prove’ to the public that Brexit had Benefits…

    It's important to differentiate two aspects of the damage Brexit is doing, albeit that they interact. One, encapsulated by the budget, and shown almost daily by the growing economic evidence, is to do with what has been lost – especially in trade, investment, and labour market flexibility – by virtue of leaving the EU, and particularly the single market and customs union. The other is to do with the abject failure and utter incompetence of what is being created as an alternative to EU membership… In a sense, the issue is that there is simply no post-Brexit economic strategy at all or, to the extent that there is, it is wholly unrealistic… such strategy as there is has been based on boosterism…

    Both the damage done ‘by Brexit’ and the damage created by what is being done ‘with Brexit’ can be traced back to the total ignorance, wilful dishonesty, and reckless irresponsibility of those who proposed and campaigned for Brexit without the tiniest understanding of how to do it… We saw their promises, their falsehoods, their evasions, and their lies, and they are all on record. On record, too, is all the spite and ridicule and bile they threw at those who warned them, who pleaded with them, not to inflict this on our country…

    And still the delusion that Brexit plays any material part in our serious problems persists. It's extraordinary but it is also a good excuse not to address those problems which are deep rooted, complicated and not amendable to simplistic ideological solutions.
    Regardless of the merits, or otherwise, of Brexit, would you accept that it has taken up so much government bandwidth over the last six years that politicians have been totally distracted from tackling the deep-seated problems to which you refer?

    Other than Covid, which was unavoidable, nothing has distracted the government from analysing and resolving our problems more than Brexit.
  • mwadamsmwadams Posts: 3,077
    edited November 2022
    Scott_xP said:



    And the Sandman featured an immortal human who was not entirely happy with his lot

    Doctor Who dealt with it in the 20th Anniversary special in 1983.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,727
    It takes some chutzpah to talk about Swiss-style deals when the government can't agree a deal on the Northern Ireland protocol. Meanwhile hopes of a Swiss-style deal seem to rest on the familiar delusion of "they need us more than we need them".
    https://twitter.com/Simon_Nixon/status/1594265157290565634
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392
    edited November 2022
    DavidL said:

    According to Fox at least, we are still waiting for 6 results in the House. At the moment the GOP has 218, the absolute minimum required to take control. It would require exceptional and unusual discipline to control the House with anything like that number. I think it is expected that some of these oh so slow results will result in GOP wins with most expecting them to end up at 222 but it might even be less.

    One of Biden's skills in his former careers was being able to reach across the aisle, albeit in less partisan and hostile times. I see this potentially going two different ways. If he succeeds in getting some of his legislation through, even with compromises, and if he gets a SC nominee then he may feel that his job is done. If he doesn't then he may want to have another go.

    A lot, of course, depends on his health. He is at an age now where even minor setbacks can be hard to get over.

    He seems in decent nick for 80, but it puts a lot on him to get through a bitter campaign again.

    I'm sure someone will challenge, the question is if anyone serious will. His fate seems tied to Trump's progress with his own nomination, as OGH suggests.

    The thing about Trump is everything is about him and his own legal battles. So far he's successfully persuaded people his problems are America's, but if I were them I'd want a candidate who will do more than whinge about how mean people are to them all time.
  • Brexiters be like


    Going to be interesting to see, as the evidence mounts and mounts and becomes ever more incontrovertible, how the response evolves. Though I paraphrase, we’ve already had instances on here from the more enthusiastic Brexiters of what is rapidly becoming a classic - ‘Not the Brexit I voted for’.
  • Pulpstar said:

    Joe Biden might be the value bet for both nomination and re-election. He is the incumbent, so the rigours of a nomination campaign are nothing if there is no challenger.

    He is the value bet, even if he's bullshitting.

    The question is: who's the reserve?

    It won't be Michelle Obama.
    Harris
    Really? Isn't she another Hillary Clinton?
  • glwglw Posts: 9,535

    Regardless of the merits, or otherwise, of Brexit, would you accept that it has taken up so much government bandwidth over the last six years that politicians have been totally distracted from tackling the deep-seated problems to which you refer?

    Other than Covid, which was unavoidable, nothing has distracted the government from analysing and resolving our problems more than Brexit.

    I agree with that. The whole indicative votes process was a total disaster. All that did was eliminate virtual every sensible option leaving us with a threadbare deal and a screwed-up Nortern Ireland settlement. It's fairly obvious to me that people want a better deal, but it must exclude EU membership of any form and freedom of movement, almost anything else is up for debate and would be acceptable by the UK public. Fat chance of Parliament of any of our political parites actually delivering that though. If anything we are more likely to see another In/Out Brexit war.
  • geoffwgeoffw Posts: 8,092
    Biden should ditch Harris as his running mate. With a VP who can credibly take the reins if he falters, Trump's team would be nowhere to be seen.
  • pm215pm215 Posts: 926
    Scott_xP said:


    At least 2 recent TV shows have touched on this.

    The Good Place decided in the end that eternity is no fun

    And the Sandman featured an immortal human who was not entirely happy with his lot

    It's a popular literary theme (Swift famously covered it in part of Gulliver's Travels), but I do wonder how much of the attraction of the "living forever would be terrible" idea is just sour grapes on humanity's part...
  • DavidL said:

    According to Fox at least, we are still waiting for 6 results in the House. At the moment the GOP has 218, the absolute minimum required to take control. It would require exceptional and unusual discipline to control the House with anything like that number. I think it is expected that some of these oh so slow results will result in GOP wins with most expecting them to end up at 222 but it might even be less.

    One of Biden's skills in his former careers was being able to reach across the aisle, albeit in less partisan and hostile times. I see this potentially going two different ways. If he succeeds in getting some of his legislation through, even with compromises, and if he gets a SC nominee then he may feel that his job is done. If he doesn't then he may want to have another go.

    A lot, of course, depends on his health. He is at an age now where even minor setbacks can be hard to get over.

    And I might die of old age waiting for Betfair to pay out.
  • glwglw Posts: 9,535
    kinabalu said:

    Many happy returns Joe. You saved us from a Trump 2nd term. I love you man.

    He saved us from A Trump 2nd term, I'm not sure that he will save us from a future 2nd term, and if anything I think he enables it as he's nowhere near a good enough candidate to make a Trump defeat all but certain.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,880
    glw said:

    Regardless of the merits, or otherwise, of Brexit, would you accept that it has taken up so much government bandwidth over the last six years that politicians have been totally distracted from tackling the deep-seated problems to which you refer?

    Other than Covid, which was unavoidable, nothing has distracted the government from analysing and resolving our problems more than Brexit.

    I agree with that. The whole indicative votes process was a total disaster. All that did was eliminate virtual every sensible option leaving us with a threadbare deal and a screwed-up Nortern Ireland settlement. It's fairly obvious to me that people want a better deal, but it must exclude EU membership of any form and freedom of movement, almost anything else is up for debate and would be acceptable by the UK public. Fat chance of Parliament of any of our political parites actually delivering that though. If anything we are more likely to see another In/Out Brexit war.
    Why does it have to preclude FoM? There was nothing on the referendum ballot about that.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392
    edited November 2022
    geoffw said:

    Biden should ditch Harris as his running mate. With a VP who can credibly take the reins if he falters, Trump's team would be nowhere to be seen.

    When was the last time a VP was dropped though?
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 41,670

    DavidL said:

    Sums it all up for me. The full, superb, piece is here: https://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2022/11/the-charge-sheet-against-brexits-guilty.html?m=1 but I think it’s worth quoting at length:

    The long-awaited Budget – in all but name – has now arrived, but the public could be forgiven for not realising the extent to which it is a Brexit budget, given the near taboo in the Conservative and Labour parties on mentioning the economic consequences of Brexit…

    … this Budget is the latest instalment of the so-called ‘punishment budget’, much mocked by Brexiters as ‘hysterical’ and ‘Project Fear’, that George Osborne warned would be necessary if the UK voted to leave the EU.. It didn’t happen in the immediate way Osborne had threatened, but has developed more gradually, and actually we can now see how modest his proposals were compared with the scale of damage Brexit has done…

    Brexit was sold on the basis that it would positive for the country. In that sense, the clearest indictment of its failure is that literally no-one is suggesting that Britain’s fiscal position is better as a result of Brexit. 

    …one of this week’s louder admissions of Brexit failure, the wholesale denunciation of the UK’s trade deals with Australia and New Zealand by George Eustice… the UK’s capacity to make its own free trade agreements is not just any old aspect of Brexit. It is repeatedly and vociferously claimed by Brexiters to be amongst the most crucial of Brexit dividends, and these two trade deals are so far the entirety of that dividend... the critics were right, and that both… deals conceded British interests, especially farming interests, with no compensating return… solely in order to ‘prove’ to the public that Brexit had Benefits…

    It's important to differentiate two aspects of the damage Brexit is doing, albeit that they interact. One, encapsulated by the budget, and shown almost daily by the growing economic evidence, is to do with what has been lost – especially in trade, investment, and labour market flexibility – by virtue of leaving the EU, and particularly the single market and customs union. The other is to do with the abject failure and utter incompetence of what is being created as an alternative to EU membership… In a sense, the issue is that there is simply no post-Brexit economic strategy at all or, to the extent that there is, it is wholly unrealistic… such strategy as there is has been based on boosterism…

    Both the damage done ‘by Brexit’ and the damage created by what is being done ‘with Brexit’ can be traced back to the total ignorance, wilful dishonesty, and reckless irresponsibility of those who proposed and campaigned for Brexit without the tiniest understanding of how to do it… We saw their promises, their falsehoods, their evasions, and their lies, and they are all on record. On record, too, is all the spite and ridicule and bile they threw at those who warned them, who pleaded with them, not to inflict this on our country…

    And still the delusion that Brexit plays any material part in our serious problems persists. It's extraordinary but it is also a good excuse not to address those problems which are deep rooted, complicated and not amendable to simplistic ideological solutions.
    The author quite explicitly blames UK economic policy decisions on Brexit too. Nutter.
    It is the crap running the country that are the nutters, not fit to run a bath.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,578
    Fishing said:

    Shows the lack of talent and divisions in the Democratic Party that an 80-year-old in Biden's state is even being considered, let alone the favourite.

    I rather like the comment Biden made to (I think) Senate Republicans - “I won’t embarrass you abroad”.

    I think he has been a steady, sensible president in the main.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,727

    Though I paraphrase, we’ve already had instances on here from the more enthusiastic Brexiters of what is rapidly becoming a classic - ‘Not the Brexit I voted for’.

    I don't remember who said it, but already noted that this could be the slogan for both sides in a future campaign
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,742
    edited November 2022

    Brexiters be like


    Going to be interesting to see, as the evidence mounts and mounts and becomes ever more incontrovertible, how the response evolves. Though I paraphrase, we’ve already had instances on here from the more enthusiastic Brexiters of what is rapidly becoming a classic - ‘Not the Brexit I voted for’.

    The 5 stages of Brexiteeritis:

    It'll be really good
    It is good
    It would be good if it weren't for all those Remoaner ****s
    It's neutral
    IT'S TERRIBLE, WHO VOTED FOR THIS CRAP?!
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 41,670
    Scott_xP said:

    It takes some chutzpah to talk about Swiss-style deals when the government can't agree a deal on the Northern Ireland protocol. Meanwhile hopes of a Swiss-style deal seem to rest on the familiar delusion of "they need us more than we need them".
    https://twitter.com/Simon_Nixon/status/1594265157290565634

    Years down the line and teh dummies still have not got the message
  • TresTres Posts: 2,159
    Fishing said:

    Shows the lack of talent and divisions in the Democratic Party that an 80-year-old in Biden's state is even being considered, let alone the favourite.

    He's just had the best mid-term performance of a Democratic President in my living memory.
  • DavidL said:

    Sums it all up for me. The full, superb, piece is here: https://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2022/11/the-charge-sheet-against-brexits-guilty.html?m=1 but I think it’s worth quoting at length:

    The long-awaited Budget – in all but name – has now arrived, but the public could be forgiven for not realising the extent to which it is a Brexit budget, given the near taboo in the Conservative and Labour parties on mentioning the economic consequences of Brexit…

    … this Budget is the latest instalment of the so-called ‘punishment budget’, much mocked by Brexiters as ‘hysterical’ and ‘Project Fear’, that George Osborne warned would be necessary if the UK voted to leave the EU.. It didn’t happen in the immediate way Osborne had threatened, but has developed more gradually, and actually we can now see how modest his proposals were compared with the scale of damage Brexit has done…

    Brexit was sold on the basis that it would positive for the country. In that sense, the clearest indictment of its failure is that literally no-one is suggesting that Britain’s fiscal position is better as a result of Brexit. 

    …one of this week’s louder admissions of Brexit failure, the wholesale denunciation of the UK’s trade deals with Australia and New Zealand by George Eustice… the UK’s capacity to make its own free trade agreements is not just any old aspect of Brexit. It is repeatedly and vociferously claimed by Brexiters to be amongst the most crucial of Brexit dividends, and these two trade deals are so far the entirety of that dividend... the critics were right, and that both… deals conceded British interests, especially farming interests, with no compensating return… solely in order to ‘prove’ to the public that Brexit had Benefits…

    It's important to differentiate two aspects of the damage Brexit is doing, albeit that they interact. One, encapsulated by the budget, and shown almost daily by the growing economic evidence, is to do with what has been lost – especially in trade, investment, and labour market flexibility – by virtue of leaving the EU, and particularly the single market and customs union. The other is to do with the abject failure and utter incompetence of what is being created as an alternative to EU membership… In a sense, the issue is that there is simply no post-Brexit economic strategy at all or, to the extent that there is, it is wholly unrealistic… such strategy as there is has been based on boosterism…

    Both the damage done ‘by Brexit’ and the damage created by what is being done ‘with Brexit’ can be traced back to the total ignorance, wilful dishonesty, and reckless irresponsibility of those who proposed and campaigned for Brexit without the tiniest understanding of how to do it… We saw their promises, their falsehoods, their evasions, and their lies, and they are all on record. On record, too, is all the spite and ridicule and bile they threw at those who warned them, who pleaded with them, not to inflict this on our country…

    And still the delusion that Brexit plays any material part in our serious problems persists. It's extraordinary but it is also a good excuse not to address those problems which are deep rooted, complicated and not amendable to simplistic ideological solutions.
    What was Brexit if it wasn't a simplistic ideological solution to our problems?

    What was the replacement of May by Johnson if it wasn't the triumph of a simplistic ideological solution to the question of "How to Brexit?" over a painful nervous balance of mandate, risks and benefits?

    One of the problems the UK has had in recent years is being run by the second team (under May), then the third (under Johnson) then the fourth (under Truss). Belief and purity have been the selection criteria. That wasn't inevitable after 2016, but it's blooming hard to see how it could have been avoided.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,578
    glw said:

    Regardless of the merits, or otherwise, of Brexit, would you accept that it has taken up so much government bandwidth over the last six years that politicians have been totally distracted from tackling the deep-seated problems to which you refer?

    Other than Covid, which was unavoidable, nothing has distracted the government from analysing and resolving our problems more than Brexit.

    I agree with that. The whole indicative votes process was a total disaster. All that did was eliminate virtual every sensible option leaving us with a threadbare deal and a screwed-up Nortern Ireland settlement. It's fairly obvious to me that people want a better deal, but it must exclude EU membership of any form and freedom of movement, almost anything else is up for debate and would be acceptable by the UK public. Fat chance of Parliament of any of our political parites actually delivering that though. If anything we are more likely to see another In/Out Brexit war.
    The problem, I think is that you have Rejoiners and Fixers. The Fixers want to fix the problems of Brexit - they are actually rejoiners by instinct but know that isn’t an immediate prospect.

    The Rejoiners want rejoin. Now.

    If the two groups come together have more votes than Leave. But they won’t.

    The other thing they haven’t done, is start a positive campaign *for* Europe.
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 8,480
    edited November 2022
    DavidL said:

    Sums it all up for me. The full, superb, piece is here: https://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2022/11/the-charge-sheet-against-brexits-guilty.html?m=1 but I think it’s worth quoting at length:

    The long-awaited Budget – in all but name – has now arrived, but the public could be forgiven for not realising the extent to which it is a Brexit budget, given the near taboo in the Conservative and Labour parties on mentioning the economic consequences of Brexit…

    … this Budget is the latest instalment of the so-called ‘punishment budget’, much mocked by Brexiters as ‘hysterical’ and ‘Project Fear’, that George Osborne warned would be necessary if the UK voted to leave the EU.. It didn’t happen in the immediate way Osborne had threatened, but has developed more gradually, and actually we can now see how modest his proposals were compared with the scale of damage Brexit has done…

    Brexit was sold on the basis that it would positive for the country. In that sense, the clearest indictment of its failure is that literally no-one is suggesting that Britain’s fiscal position is better as a result of Brexit. 

    …one of this week’s louder admissions of Brexit failure, the wholesale denunciation of the UK’s trade deals with Australia and New Zealand by George Eustice… the UK’s capacity to make its own free trade agreements is not just any old aspect of Brexit. It is repeatedly and vociferously claimed by Brexiters to be amongst the most crucial of Brexit dividends, and these two trade deals are so far the entirety of that dividend... the critics were right, and that both… deals conceded British interests, especially farming interests, with no compensating return… solely in order to ‘prove’ to the public that Brexit had Benefits…

    It's important to differentiate two aspects of the damage Brexit is doing, albeit that they interact. One, encapsulated by the budget, and shown almost daily by the growing economic evidence, is to do with what has been lost – especially in trade, investment, and labour market flexibility – by virtue of leaving the EU, and particularly the single market and customs union. The other is to do with the abject failure and utter incompetence of what is being created as an alternative to EU membership… In a sense, the issue is that there is simply no post-Brexit economic strategy at all or, to the extent that there is, it is wholly unrealistic… such strategy as there is has been based on boosterism…

    Both the damage done ‘by Brexit’ and the damage created by what is being done ‘with Brexit’ can be traced back to the total ignorance, wilful dishonesty, and reckless irresponsibility of those who proposed and campaigned for Brexit without the tiniest understanding of how to do it… We saw their promises, their falsehoods, their evasions, and their lies, and they are all on record. On record, too, is all the spite and ridicule and bile they threw at those who warned them, who pleaded with them, not to inflict this on our country…

    And still the delusion that Brexit plays any material part in our serious problems persists. It's extraordinary but it is also a good excuse not to address those problems which are deep rooted, complicated and not amendable to simplistic ideological solutions.
    But why isn't it rational to connect the intentions and attitude of mind of Brexit with those structural problems ?

    The reason, in fact, that it's entirely rational, is that the same people who have been advocating for Brexit for 32 years are exactly the same people who've favoured a low-skill, footloose, low-regulation, and heavily financialised economy, and not only that, but have publicly railed against the EU because it was seen as preventing these things.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,080
    edited November 2022

    Sums it all up for me. The full, superb, piece is here: https://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2022/11/the-charge-sheet-against-brexits-guilty.html?m=1 but I think it’s worth quoting at length:

    Morning all.

    A strange extended rant (from my view). He's trying to pretend that Covid, the Ukraine War and all the rest don't exist.

    Endorsed by Annette Dittert, who has written some bizarre pieces, for Brexit commentary. Ardent praise of Caroline Lucas. Ouch.
  • glwglw Posts: 9,535
    Dura_Ace said:

    glw said:

    Regardless of the merits, or otherwise, of Brexit, would you accept that it has taken up so much government bandwidth over the last six years that politicians have been totally distracted from tackling the deep-seated problems to which you refer?

    Other than Covid, which was unavoidable, nothing has distracted the government from analysing and resolving our problems more than Brexit.

    I agree with that. The whole indicative votes process was a total disaster. All that did was eliminate virtual every sensible option leaving us with a threadbare deal and a screwed-up Nortern Ireland settlement. It's fairly obvious to me that people want a better deal, but it must exclude EU membership of any form and freedom of movement, almost anything else is up for debate and would be acceptable by the UK public. Fat chance of Parliament of any of our political parites actually delivering that though. If anything we are more likely to see another In/Out Brexit war.
    Why does it have to preclude FoM? There was nothing on the referendum ballot about that.
    Because polling shows that most people, even most Remainers, want all migrants to be treated equally, so if you added FoM for EU citizens to a deal all that would likely do is to ensure the deal is defeated.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,578
    pm215 said:

    Scott_xP said:


    At least 2 recent TV shows have touched on this.

    The Good Place decided in the end that eternity is no fun

    And the Sandman featured an immortal human who was not entirely happy with his lot

    It's a popular literary theme (Swift famously covered it in part of Gulliver's Travels), but I do wonder how much of the attraction of the "living forever would be terrible" idea is just sour grapes on humanity's part...
    More, I think, a reflex against the aching void of aging if eternal youth would actually be ok.

    I am fine with both. But talking with many people, they cling to the idea of the “natural cycle” etc. The idea that a few decades from now we are.likely to be rolling back the effects of aging is not seen as positive, by them. Perhaps because they won’t be there for it.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,836
    Interesting discussion on PT on eternal life - v apt for a Sunday. My sense fwiw is many good solid ordinary decent people don't assess the merits of the idea in rational fashion. They instinctively think "great, means I live forever, rocking good news, bring it on" - but what it actually means is everyone lives forever, so you're still nothing special. You're as utterly insignificant as you were before eternal life came in. That kills the idea stone dead philosophically. And then even forgetting about the flawed philosophy there's a massive problem in practice in that "everyone" includes people you can't bear, they live forever too. Imagine Jacob Rees Mogg superciliating away on your tv screen day after day after day with not only no end in sight but no end even theoretically possible. No. Not for me.
  • glwglw Posts: 9,535
    Tres said:

    Fishing said:

    Shows the lack of talent and divisions in the Democratic Party that an 80-year-old in Biden's state is even being considered, let alone the favourite.

    He's just had the best mid-term performance of a Democratic President in my living memory.
    Yeah but he was up against a deranged GOP trying to ban abortion, and a raft of Trump endorsed moonbats. Any half-reasonable party should be able to beat that pile of crap.
  • glw said:

    Tres said:

    Fishing said:

    Shows the lack of talent and divisions in the Democratic Party that an 80-year-old in Biden's state is even being considered, let alone the favourite.

    He's just had the best mid-term performance of a Democratic President in my living memory.
    Yeah but he was up against a deranged GOP trying to ban abortion, and a raft of Trump endorsed moonbats. Any half-reasonable party should be able to beat that pile of crap.
    ... and what will have changed in two years time?
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 41,670
    kinabalu said:

    Interesting discussion on PT on eternal life - v apt for a Sunday. My sense fwiw is many good solid ordinary decent people don't assess the merits of the idea in rational fashion. They instinctively think "great, means I live forever, rocking good news, bring it on" - but what it actually means is everyone lives forever, so you're still nothing special. You're as utterly insignificant as you were before eternal life came in. That kills the idea stone dead philosophically. And then even forgetting about the flawed philosophy there's a massive problem in practice in that "everyone" includes people you can't bear, they live forever too. Imagine Jacob Rees Mogg superciliating away on your tv screen day after day after day with not only no end in sight but no end even theoretically possible. No. Not for me.

    Given lots and lots of people lead shitty lives , the last thing they would want is to live forever.
  • kyf_100kyf_100 Posts: 3,911

    DavidL said:

    Sums it all up for me. The full, superb, piece is here: https://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2022/11/the-charge-sheet-against-brexits-guilty.html?m=1 but I think it’s worth quoting at length:

    The long-awaited Budget – in all but name – has now arrived, but the public could be forgiven for not realising the extent to which it is a Brexit budget, given the near taboo in the Conservative and Labour parties on mentioning the economic consequences of Brexit…

    … this Budget is the latest instalment of the so-called ‘punishment budget’, much mocked by Brexiters as ‘hysterical’ and ‘Project Fear’, that George Osborne warned would be necessary if the UK voted to leave the EU.. It didn’t happen in the immediate way Osborne had threatened, but has developed more gradually, and actually we can now see how modest his proposals were compared with the scale of damage Brexit has done…

    Brexit was sold on the basis that it would positive for the country. In that sense, the clearest indictment of its failure is that literally no-one is suggesting that Britain’s fiscal position is better as a result of Brexit. 

    …one of this week’s louder admissions of Brexit failure, the wholesale denunciation of the UK’s trade deals with Australia and New Zealand by George Eustice… the UK’s capacity to make its own free trade agreements is not just any old aspect of Brexit. It is repeatedly and vociferously claimed by Brexiters to be amongst the most crucial of Brexit dividends, and these two trade deals are so far the entirety of that dividend... the critics were right, and that both… deals conceded British interests, especially farming interests, with no compensating return… solely in order to ‘prove’ to the public that Brexit had Benefits…

    It's important to differentiate two aspects of the damage Brexit is doing, albeit that they interact. One, encapsulated by the budget, and shown almost daily by the growing economic evidence, is to do with what has been lost – especially in trade, investment, and labour market flexibility – by virtue of leaving the EU, and particularly the single market and customs union. The other is to do with the abject failure and utter incompetence of what is being created as an alternative to EU membership… In a sense, the issue is that there is simply no post-Brexit economic strategy at all or, to the extent that there is, it is wholly unrealistic… such strategy as there is has been based on boosterism…

    Both the damage done ‘by Brexit’ and the damage created by what is being done ‘with Brexit’ can be traced back to the total ignorance, wilful dishonesty, and reckless irresponsibility of those who proposed and campaigned for Brexit without the tiniest understanding of how to do it… We saw their promises, their falsehoods, their evasions, and their lies, and they are all on record. On record, too, is all the spite and ridicule and bile they threw at those who warned them, who pleaded with them, not to inflict this on our country…

    And still the delusion that Brexit plays any material part in our serious problems persists. It's extraordinary but it is also a good excuse not to address those problems which are deep rooted, complicated and not amendable to simplistic ideological solutions.
    Regardless of the merits, or otherwise, of Brexit, would you accept that it has taken up so much government bandwidth over the last six years that politicians have been totally distracted from tackling the deep-seated problems to which you refer?

    Other than Covid, which was unavoidable, nothing has distracted the government from analysing and resolving our problems more than Brexit.
    I wonder what has had a greater impact on the economy. Brexit, or shutting down the economy for the best part of two years, a global supply chain inflationary price shock, energy crisis, and war?

    And the rejoiners only answer is to return to freedom of movement, a sleight of hand perpetrated by the rich to create the illusion of prosperity via a system that keeps wages depressed for the lowest paid through an essentially infinitely elastic supply curve, creating an ever increasing gap between rich and poor. There were many good things about EU membership - freedom of movement was not one of them.

    Rising labour costs are hardly ideal in an inflationary crisis. However artificially suppressing wages for the poorest paid is hardly an ideal solution, either.

    The UK has a structural problem with its economy that FoM was used to paper over the cracks. Returning to papering over the cracks seems easier than doing anything about the problem, but it's worth remembering why so many people voted to leave in the first place - the situation pre-Brexit was far from ideal.

    FoM is, and will always be, the sticking point for any rejoin campaign. Sensible parties might look at what a closer relationship with the EU looks like without FoM. However - we are well beyond the point of being sensible.
  • kinabalu said:

    Interesting discussion on PT on eternal life - v apt for a Sunday. My sense fwiw is many good solid ordinary decent people don't assess the merits of the idea in rational fashion. They instinctively think "great, means I live forever, rocking good news, bring it on" - but what it actually means is everyone lives forever, so you're still nothing special. You're as utterly insignificant as you were before eternal life came in. That kills the idea stone dead philosophically. And then even forgetting about the flawed philosophy there's a massive problem in practice in that "everyone" includes people you can't bear, they live forever too. Imagine Jacob Rees Mogg superciliating away on your tv screen day after day after day with not only no end in sight but no end even theoretically possible. No. Not for me.

    Depends if eternity is being in time, but it never ending (which is rather meh), or somehow being outside time, experiencing it all at once in a joined up way. Which is hard to get your head round, like all the best ideas.

    Right, off to church.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,747

    DavidL said:

    Sums it all up for me. The full, superb, piece is here: https://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2022/11/the-charge-sheet-against-brexits-guilty.html?m=1 but I think it’s worth quoting at length:

    The long-awaited Budget – in all but name – has now arrived, but the public could be forgiven for not realising the extent to which it is a Brexit budget, given the near taboo in the Conservative and Labour parties on mentioning the economic consequences of Brexit…

    … this Budget is the latest instalment of the so-called ‘punishment budget’, much mocked by Brexiters as ‘hysterical’ and ‘Project Fear’, that George Osborne warned would be necessary if the UK voted to leave the EU.. It didn’t happen in the immediate way Osborne had threatened, but has developed more gradually, and actually we can now see how modest his proposals were compared with the scale of damage Brexit has done…

    Brexit was sold on the basis that it would positive for the country. In that sense, the clearest indictment of its failure is that literally no-one is suggesting that Britain’s fiscal position is better as a result of Brexit. 

    …one of this week’s louder admissions of Brexit failure, the wholesale denunciation of the UK’s trade deals with Australia and New Zealand by George Eustice… the UK’s capacity to make its own free trade agreements is not just any old aspect of Brexit. It is repeatedly and vociferously claimed by Brexiters to be amongst the most crucial of Brexit dividends, and these two trade deals are so far the entirety of that dividend... the critics were right, and that both… deals conceded British interests, especially farming interests, with no compensating return… solely in order to ‘prove’ to the public that Brexit had Benefits…

    It's important to differentiate two aspects of the damage Brexit is doing, albeit that they interact. One, encapsulated by the budget, and shown almost daily by the growing economic evidence, is to do with what has been lost – especially in trade, investment, and labour market flexibility – by virtue of leaving the EU, and particularly the single market and customs union. The other is to do with the abject failure and utter incompetence of what is being created as an alternative to EU membership… In a sense, the issue is that there is simply no post-Brexit economic strategy at all or, to the extent that there is, it is wholly unrealistic… such strategy as there is has been based on boosterism…

    Both the damage done ‘by Brexit’ and the damage created by what is being done ‘with Brexit’ can be traced back to the total ignorance, wilful dishonesty, and reckless irresponsibility of those who proposed and campaigned for Brexit without the tiniest understanding of how to do it… We saw their promises, their falsehoods, their evasions, and their lies, and they are all on record. On record, too, is all the spite and ridicule and bile they threw at those who warned them, who pleaded with them, not to inflict this on our country…

    And still the delusion that Brexit plays any material part in our serious problems persists. It's extraordinary but it is also a good excuse not to address those problems which are deep rooted, complicated and not amendable to simplistic ideological solutions.
    What was Brexit if it wasn't a simplistic ideological solution to our problems?

    What was the replacement of May by Johnson if it wasn't the triumph of a simplistic ideological solution to the question of "How to Brexit?" over a painful nervous balance of mandate, risks and benefits?

    One of the problems the UK has had in recent years is being run by the second team (under May), then the third (under Johnson) then the fourth (under Truss). Belief and purity have been the selection criteria. That wasn't inevitable after 2016, but it's blooming hard to see how it could have been avoided.
    Brexit was an opportunity to act, it was not an end in itself. We still have promises that the government will act with the policy changes promised by Hunt in the Autumn Statement but it remains vague and amorphous. I agree that this is pathetic 6 years after 2016 and it is again indicative of the simplistic nonsense of those who argued for it.
  • FrankBoothFrankBooth Posts: 9,005

    DavidL said:

    Sums it all up for me. The full, superb, piece is here: https://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2022/11/the-charge-sheet-against-brexits-guilty.html?m=1 but I think it’s worth quoting at length:

    The long-awaited Budget – in all but name – has now arrived, but the public could be forgiven for not realising the extent to which it is a Brexit budget, given the near taboo in the Conservative and Labour parties on mentioning the economic consequences of Brexit…

    … this Budget is the latest instalment of the so-called ‘punishment budget’, much mocked by Brexiters as ‘hysterical’ and ‘Project Fear’, that George Osborne warned would be necessary if the UK voted to leave the EU.. It didn’t happen in the immediate way Osborne had threatened, but has developed more gradually, and actually we can now see how modest his proposals were compared with the scale of damage Brexit has done…

    Brexit was sold on the basis that it would positive for the country. In that sense, the clearest indictment of its failure is that literally no-one is suggesting that Britain’s fiscal position is better as a result of Brexit. 

    …one of this week’s louder admissions of Brexit failure, the wholesale denunciation of the UK’s trade deals with Australia and New Zealand by George Eustice… the UK’s capacity to make its own free trade agreements is not just any old aspect of Brexit. It is repeatedly and vociferously claimed by Brexiters to be amongst the most crucial of Brexit dividends, and these two trade deals are so far the entirety of that dividend... the critics were right, and that both… deals conceded British interests, especially farming interests, with no compensating return… solely in order to ‘prove’ to the public that Brexit had Benefits…

    It's important to differentiate two aspects of the damage Brexit is doing, albeit that they interact. One, encapsulated by the budget, and shown almost daily by the growing economic evidence, is to do with what has been lost – especially in trade, investment, and labour market flexibility – by virtue of leaving the EU, and particularly the single market and customs union. The other is to do with the abject failure and utter incompetence of what is being created as an alternative to EU membership… In a sense, the issue is that there is simply no post-Brexit economic strategy at all or, to the extent that there is, it is wholly unrealistic… such strategy as there is has been based on boosterism…

    Both the damage done ‘by Brexit’ and the damage created by what is being done ‘with Brexit’ can be traced back to the total ignorance, wilful dishonesty, and reckless irresponsibility of those who proposed and campaigned for Brexit without the tiniest understanding of how to do it… We saw their promises, their falsehoods, their evasions, and their lies, and they are all on record. On record, too, is all the spite and ridicule and bile they threw at those who warned them, who pleaded with them, not to inflict this on our country…

    And still the delusion that Brexit plays any material part in our serious problems persists. It's extraordinary but it is also a good excuse not to address those problems which are deep rooted, complicated and not amendable to simplistic ideological solutions.
    But why isn't it rational to connect the intentions and attitude of mind of Brexit with those structural problems ?

    The reason, in fact, that it's entirely rational, is that the same people who have been advocating for Brexit for 32 years are exactly the same people who've favoured a low-skill, footloose, low-regulation, and heavily financialised economy, and not only that, but have publicly railed against the EU because it was seen as preventing these things.
    That is true. But a great deal of the commercial establishment that has also advocated for those things was against Brexit.

    Whether or not we allow free movement the solution to our economic problems is not going to be lots of low skilled migration which is just a palliative.
  • glwglw Posts: 9,535

    The problem, I think is that you have Rejoiners and Fixers. The Fixers want to fix the problems of Brexit - they are actually rejoiners by instinct but know that isn’t an immediate prospect.

    The Rejoiners want rejoin. Now.

    If the two groups come together have more votes than Leave. But they won’t.

    The other thing they haven’t done, is start a positive campaign *for* Europe.

    There isn't a viable positive campaign for the EU, as people in the UK do not want to be in the EU as it is. In their own way arch-Remainers are every bit as nuts as the ERG wing of the Brexiteers. Both sides are ignoring that there isn't a clear preference for all-in or all-out on the EU issue, but there is a fair amount of wiggle room for a closer relationship with the EU. This is not some insurmountable problem, but it will take the coming of a generation of politicians who will actually listen to what people want.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,873
    kjh said:

    Matter cannot be created nor destroyed so, in one sense, we never die.

    We just become something else.

    There was some Maths question I did once about how many atoms of Julius Caesar a person might inhale in a single breath. I forget the answer I came up with.

    In matter terms a large proportion of your body is recreated several times over your lifetime. An interesting variation on the philosophical question of that Greek ship.
    Or Triggers broom. Of course the conservation of mass is a very limited law. Mass can and is converted to energy and you also have the anti matter issue situation.
    One of my instruments at work (NMR - like MRI but for chemistry) is exactly like Triggers broom. Main component is a superconducting magnet, plus a console (the electronics). In the time I’ve been using it we replaced the console, the automated sample changer and recently the magnet. Is it still the same equipment?
    Clearly not… Still ‘my’ 400 MHz NMR spectrometer though!
  • glw said:

    Regardless of the merits, or otherwise, of Brexit, would you accept that it has taken up so much government bandwidth over the last six years that politicians have been totally distracted from tackling the deep-seated problems to which you refer?

    Other than Covid, which was unavoidable, nothing has distracted the government from analysing and resolving our problems more than Brexit.

    I agree with that. The whole indicative votes process was a total disaster. All that did was eliminate virtual every sensible option leaving us with a threadbare deal and a screwed-up Nortern Ireland settlement. It's fairly obvious to me that people want a better deal, but it must exclude EU membership of any form and freedom of movement, almost anything else is up for debate and would be acceptable by the UK public. Fat chance of Parliament of any of our political parites actually delivering that though. If anything we are more likely to see another In/Out Brexit war.
    Why must it "exclude EU membership" and who are you to determine what is "acceptable by the UK public".
    Brexit was a mistake and now more and more people are recognising that. Surely it must be possible for the country to change its mind.
  • glwglw Posts: 9,535

    glw said:

    Tres said:

    Fishing said:

    Shows the lack of talent and divisions in the Democratic Party that an 80-year-old in Biden's state is even being considered, let alone the favourite.

    He's just had the best mid-term performance of a Democratic President in my living memory.
    Yeah but he was up against a deranged GOP trying to ban abortion, and a raft of Trump endorsed moonbats. Any half-reasonable party should be able to beat that pile of crap.
    ... and what will have changed in two years time?
    I don't know, but the Democrats need to be extremely wary, and pick the strongest possible candidates to defeat the GOP.
  • pm215 said:

    Scott_xP said:


    At least 2 recent TV shows have touched on this.

    The Good Place decided in the end that eternity is no fun

    And the Sandman featured an immortal human who was not entirely happy with his lot

    It's a popular literary theme (Swift famously covered it in part of Gulliver's Travels), but I do wonder how much of the attraction of the "living forever would be terrible" idea is just sour grapes on humanity's part...
    More, I think, a reflex against the aching void of aging if eternal youth would actually be ok.

    I am fine with both. But talking with many people, they cling to the idea of the “natural cycle” etc. The idea that a few decades from now we are.likely to be rolling back the effects of aging is not seen as positive, by them. Perhaps because they won’t be there for it.
    Dystopic nightmare. Where are going to put everybody? How are going to avoid a top-heavy gerontocracy like what we have now, but x 100, with too little housing and too much work for the young, and the triple lock at the centre of the world constitution?
  • glwglw Posts: 9,535

    glw said:

    Regardless of the merits, or otherwise, of Brexit, would you accept that it has taken up so much government bandwidth over the last six years that politicians have been totally distracted from tackling the deep-seated problems to which you refer?

    Other than Covid, which was unavoidable, nothing has distracted the government from analysing and resolving our problems more than Brexit.

    I agree with that. The whole indicative votes process was a total disaster. All that did was eliminate virtual every sensible option leaving us with a threadbare deal and a screwed-up Nortern Ireland settlement. It's fairly obvious to me that people want a better deal, but it must exclude EU membership of any form and freedom of movement, almost anything else is up for debate and would be acceptable by the UK public. Fat chance of Parliament of any of our political parites actually delivering that though. If anything we are more likely to see another In/Out Brexit war.
    Why must it "exclude EU membership" and who are you to determine what is "acceptable by the UK public".
    Brexit was a mistake and now more and more people are recognising that. Surely it must be possible for the country to change its mind.
    Here's what people actually think when asked in detail. Only one third of people want to be in the Single Market. All I'm doing is taking their views into account.

    https://institute.global/policy/moving-how-british-public-views-brexit-and-what-it-wants-future-relationship-european-union

    I don't see how anyone rational can read the results of that survey and think "people really want to rejoin the EU".
  • glwglw Posts: 9,535
    kinabalu said:

    Interesting discussion on PT on eternal life - v apt for a Sunday. My sense fwiw is many good solid ordinary decent people don't assess the merits of the idea in rational fashion. They instinctively think "great, means I live forever, rocking good news, bring it on" - but what it actually means is everyone lives forever, so you're still nothing special. You're as utterly insignificant as you were before eternal life came in. That kills the idea stone dead philosophically. And then even forgetting about the flawed philosophy there's a massive problem in practice in that "everyone" includes people you can't bear, they live forever too. Imagine Jacob Rees Mogg superciliating away on your tv screen day after day after day with not only no end in sight but no end even theoretically possible. No. Not for me.

    I seem to recall that even if illness and aging was defeated the median lifespan would be something like 800 years due to accidental deaths. So most people wouldn't not live forever.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,873
    Scott_xP said:

    Both the damage done ‘by Brexit’ and the damage created by what is being done ‘with Brexit’ can be traced back to the total ignorance, wilful dishonesty, and reckless irresponsibility of those who proposed and campaigned for Brexit without the tiniest understanding of how to do it… We saw their promises, their falsehoods, their evasions, and their lies, and they are all on record. On record, too, is all the spite and ridicule and bile they threw at those who warned them, who pleaded with them, not to inflict this on our country…

    Matthew Syed has a column in The Times today which I would also quote at length, but the essence is this.

    A democracy can cope with stupid politicians if they accept expert advice. Even better is smart politicians who can critique expert advice.

    Brexit gave us stupid politicians who despise expertise of any form.

    And here we are...

    But why is this happening? Let me suggest that one factor is the contempt for expertise that filtered into the Tory ranks during the 2016 EU referendum. I remember during that campaign someone using the phrase “Ah, but you’re an expert” not as a compliment but as an insult.

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/down-the-tory-rabbit-hole-comment-economic-plan-liz-truss-jk6029l7k
    Being sceptical of experts is sometimes right, depending on the expert. Usually it’s the ones on the fringes who you should be most sceptical of, for instance I don’t doubt David Irving knows a lot about the Nazi party and the Second World War, yet his conclusions are rather at odds with most other experts.
    In medical terms, most of the time, experts get things right. But not always. The story of H. pylori and stomach ulcers is a classic case. Few believed that ulcers were caused by bacteria, until a rogue expert caused them in himself.

    I think Conservatives see more issues with experts because expertise and ideas change. The comfortable world view you form coming into adulthood gets challenged. See woke for example.

    Experts are not always right, but when there is a lot of evidence supporting their view, they probably are.
  • malcolmg said:

    kinabalu said:

    Interesting discussion on PT on eternal life - v apt for a Sunday. My sense fwiw is many good solid ordinary decent people don't assess the merits of the idea in rational fashion. They instinctively think "great, means I live forever, rocking good news, bring it on" - but what it actually means is everyone lives forever, so you're still nothing special. You're as utterly insignificant as you were before eternal life came in. That kills the idea stone dead philosophically. And then even forgetting about the flawed philosophy there's a massive problem in practice in that "everyone" includes people you can't bear, they live forever too. Imagine Jacob Rees Mogg superciliating away on your tv screen day after day after day with not only no end in sight but no end even theoretically possible. No. Not for me.

    Given lots and lots of people lead shitty lives , the last thing they would want is to live forever.
    Haven't you seen Highlander?
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392
    kinabalu said:

    Many happy returns Joe. You saved us from a Trump 2nd term. I love you man.

    His watch may not yet be done to save us from it again.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,727
    edited November 2022

    Being sceptical of experts is sometimes right, depending on the expert. Usually it’s the ones on the fringes who you should be most sceptical of, for instance I don’t doubt David Irving knows a lot about the Nazi party and the Second World War, yet his conclusions are rather at odds with most other experts.
    In medical terms, most of the time, experts get things right. But not always. The story of H. pylori and stomach ulcers is a classic case. Few believed that ulcers were caused by bacteria, until a rogue expert caused them in himself.

    I think Conservatives see more issues with experts because expertise and ideas change. The comfortable world view you form coming into adulthood gets challenged. See woke for example.

    Experts are not always right, but when there is a lot of evidence supporting their view, they probably are.

    Umm, that's the point of the article.

    Being able to challenge experts, probe their opinions, challenge their assertions, debate their conclusions, is the ideal.

    What the Tories did is deny expertise, debase it, decry it.

    They went from "not all experts should be implicitly trusted" to "all experts must be explicitly discounted"

    Gove said it, but the entire party embraced it, embodied it.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,578

    Scott_xP said:

    Both the damage done ‘by Brexit’ and the damage created by what is being done ‘with Brexit’ can be traced back to the total ignorance, wilful dishonesty, and reckless irresponsibility of those who proposed and campaigned for Brexit without the tiniest understanding of how to do it… We saw their promises, their falsehoods, their evasions, and their lies, and they are all on record. On record, too, is all the spite and ridicule and bile they threw at those who warned them, who pleaded with them, not to inflict this on our country…

    Matthew Syed has a column in The Times today which I would also quote at length, but the essence is this.

    A democracy can cope with stupid politicians if they accept expert advice. Even better is smart politicians who can critique expert advice.

    Brexit gave us stupid politicians who despise expertise of any form.

    And here we are...

    But why is this happening? Let me suggest that one factor is the contempt for expertise that filtered into the Tory ranks during the 2016 EU referendum. I remember during that campaign someone using the phrase “Ah, but you’re an expert” not as a compliment but as an insult.

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/down-the-tory-rabbit-hole-comment-economic-plan-liz-truss-jk6029l7k
    Being sceptical of experts is sometimes right, depending on the expert. Usually it’s the ones on the fringes who you should be most sceptical of, for instance I don’t doubt David Irving knows a lot about the Nazi party and the Second World War, yet his conclusions are rather at odds with most other experts.
    In medical terms, most of the time, experts get things right. But not always. The story of H. pylori and stomach ulcers is a classic case. Few believed that ulcers were caused by bacteria, until a rogue expert caused them in himself.

    I think Conservatives see more issues with experts because expertise and ideas change. The comfortable world view you form coming into adulthood gets challenged. See woke for example.

    Experts are not always right, but when there is a lot of evidence supporting their view, they probably are.
    The experts comment was from Gove, IIRC.

    It came about just after a meeting at DfE where an education expert demanded a massive increase in budget. For schools I think. On being asked, the expert couldn’t say where the billions he wanted would be spent. He couldn’t give any idea of what would improve, potentially. On further enquiry, the expert had no actual education experience - purely academic.

    It says a lot about the experts that are being wheeled in to brief ministers. There are many other examples.

    I discovered that one of the government experts on tidal ponds, was briefing that they would be built as concrete gravity dams - zillions of tons of concrete. When no-one has proposed that. Strangely, it makes all such schemes unaffordable and have a huge CO2 footprint.

    The comedy of ammunition for the British Army was another. The experts were replaced by experts who simply bought the cheapest shit in the market. Which caused even M2 machine guns to jam.
  • geoffwgeoffw Posts: 8,092
    No-one here apart from me probably listens to R4, but this morning David Goodhart, who coined the "somewheres" and "anywheres" dichotomy, had the Point of View slot after the Sunday service. He points out that there's really hardly anything between the main parties in terms of policies. Brexit has made us more democratic and we have achieved a better balance between anywheres and somewheres. The dominant anywhere establishment on the right and the left had built an economy around their interests. He reckons that the anywhere agenda remains the default but has been diluted since Brexit.
    Despite all he thinks that our politics is now better balanced, even though it is stuck in the morass and we need more vision from our politicians.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001f5kt


  • glw said:

    kinabalu said:

    Interesting discussion on PT on eternal life - v apt for a Sunday. My sense fwiw is many good solid ordinary decent people don't assess the merits of the idea in rational fashion. They instinctively think "great, means I live forever, rocking good news, bring it on" - but what it actually means is everyone lives forever, so you're still nothing special. You're as utterly insignificant as you were before eternal life came in. That kills the idea stone dead philosophically. And then even forgetting about the flawed philosophy there's a massive problem in practice in that "everyone" includes people you can't bear, they live forever too. Imagine Jacob Rees Mogg superciliating away on your tv screen day after day after day with not only no end in sight but no end even theoretically possible. No. Not for me.

    I seem to recall that even if illness and aging was defeated the median lifespan would be something like 800 years due to accidental deaths. So most people wouldn't not live forever.
    Doubt it. If things go well think of the amount of R&D that's going to go into all aspects of accident prevention. In the more likely dystopian hell, the war of the young vs the struldbrugs will go nuclear quite early on.

    Virtual is the way forward, think Ready Player One.
  • swing_voterswing_voter Posts: 1,435
    geoffw said:

    No-one here apart from me probably listens to R4, but this morning David Goodhart, who coined the "somewheres" and "anywheres" dichotomy, had the Point of View slot after the Sunday service. He points out that there's really hardly anything between the main parties in terms of policies. Brexit has made us more democratic and we have achieved a better balance between anywheres and somewheres. The dominant anywhere establishment on the right and the left had built an economy around their interests. He reckons that the anywhere agenda remains the default but has been diluted since Brexit.
    Despite all he thinks that our politics is now better balanced, even though it is stuck in the morass and we need more vision from our politicians.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001f5kt


    how does he feel BREXIT has made us more democratic? I havent listened but it sounds like hyperbole..
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 8,480
    edited November 2022
    On eternal life, I do wonder if the billionaire-cryogenic phenomenon isn't just an expression of the modern extreme fear of the - I would say incorrect - idea that eternal life isn't possible.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392
    FF43 said:

    Joe Biden has turned out a surprisingly effective president. His job in 2019 was to keep Trump, but he's done a lot more than that. He has been step perfect on Ukraine, ensuring the country gets the support it needs working with allies. On the domestic front he got the megalithic Inflation Reduction Act through - relying on his dealmaking rather than clever associates. The economy is doing reasonably well and he has good election results.

    He's a dealmaker. I think that's what a divided America needs.

    It's a real shame he is so old, as the pressures of the job mean people can have legitimate concerns with how well he'd manage a second term in particular, as he seems to have good instincts and be reasonably effective.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392
    kyf_100 said:

    DavidL said:

    Sums it all up for me. The full, superb, piece is here: https://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2022/11/the-charge-sheet-against-brexits-guilty.html?m=1 but I think it’s worth quoting at length:

    The long-awaited Budget – in all but name – has now arrived, but the public could be forgiven for not realising the extent to which it is a Brexit budget, given the near taboo in the Conservative and Labour parties on mentioning the economic consequences of Brexit…

    … this Budget is the latest instalment of the so-called ‘punishment budget’, much mocked by Brexiters as ‘hysterical’ and ‘Project Fear’, that George Osborne warned would be necessary if the UK voted to leave the EU.. It didn’t happen in the immediate way Osborne had threatened, but has developed more gradually, and actually we can now see how modest his proposals were compared with the scale of damage Brexit has done…

    Brexit was sold on the basis that it would positive for the country. In that sense, the clearest indictment of its failure is that literally no-one is suggesting that Britain’s fiscal position is better as a result of Brexit. 

    …one of this week’s louder admissions of Brexit failure, the wholesale denunciation of the UK’s trade deals with Australia and New Zealand by George Eustice… the UK’s capacity to make its own free trade agreements is not just any old aspect of Brexit. It is repeatedly and vociferously claimed by Brexiters to be amongst the most crucial of Brexit dividends, and these two trade deals are so far the entirety of that dividend... the critics were right, and that both… deals conceded British interests, especially farming interests, with no compensating return… solely in order to ‘prove’ to the public that Brexit had Benefits…

    It's important to differentiate two aspects of the damage Brexit is doing, albeit that they interact. One, encapsulated by the budget, and shown almost daily by the growing economic evidence, is to do with what has been lost – especially in trade, investment, and labour market flexibility – by virtue of leaving the EU, and particularly the single market and customs union. The other is to do with the abject failure and utter incompetence of what is being created as an alternative to EU membership… In a sense, the issue is that there is simply no post-Brexit economic strategy at all or, to the extent that there is, it is wholly unrealistic… such strategy as there is has been based on boosterism…

    Both the damage done ‘by Brexit’ and the damage created by what is being done ‘with Brexit’ can be traced back to the total ignorance, wilful dishonesty, and reckless irresponsibility of those who proposed and campaigned for Brexit without the tiniest understanding of how to do it… We saw their promises, their falsehoods, their evasions, and their lies, and they are all on record. On record, too, is all the spite and ridicule and bile they threw at those who warned them, who pleaded with them, not to inflict this on our country…

    And still the delusion that Brexit plays any material part in our serious problems persists. It's extraordinary but it is also a good excuse not to address those problems which are deep rooted, complicated and not amendable to simplistic ideological solutions.
    Regardless of the merits, or otherwise, of Brexit, would you accept that it has taken up so much government bandwidth over the last six years that politicians have been totally distracted from tackling the deep-seated problems to which you refer?

    Other than Covid, which was unavoidable, nothing has distracted the government from analysing and resolving our problems more than Brexit.
    However - we are well beyond the point of being sensible.
    There's a comment for all occasions and no mistake.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,042
    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Sums it all up for me. The full, superb, piece is here: https://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2022/11/the-charge-sheet-against-brexits-guilty.html?m=1 but I think it’s worth quoting at length:

    The long-awaited Budget – in all but name – has now arrived, but the public could be forgiven for not realising the extent to which it is a Brexit budget, given the near taboo in the Conservative and Labour parties on mentioning the economic consequences of Brexit…

    … this Budget is the latest instalment of the so-called ‘punishment budget’, much mocked by Brexiters as ‘hysterical’ and ‘Project Fear’, that George Osborne warned would be necessary if the UK voted to leave the EU.. It didn’t happen in the immediate way Osborne had threatened, but has developed more gradually, and actually we can now see how modest his proposals were compared with the scale of damage Brexit has done…

    Brexit was sold on the basis that it would positive for the country. In that sense, the clearest indictment of its failure is that literally no-one is suggesting that Britain’s fiscal position is better as a result of Brexit. 

    …one of this week’s louder admissions of Brexit failure, the wholesale denunciation of the UK’s trade deals with Australia and New Zealand by George Eustice… the UK’s capacity to make its own free trade agreements is not just any old aspect of Brexit. It is repeatedly and vociferously claimed by Brexiters to be amongst the most crucial of Brexit dividends, and these two trade deals are so far the entirety of that dividend... the critics were right, and that both… deals conceded British interests, especially farming interests, with no compensating return… solely in order to ‘prove’ to the public that Brexit had Benefits…

    It's important to differentiate two aspects of the damage Brexit is doing, albeit that they interact. One, encapsulated by the budget, and shown almost daily by the growing economic evidence, is to do with what has been lost – especially in trade, investment, and labour market flexibility – by virtue of leaving the EU, and particularly the single market and customs union. The other is to do with the abject failure and utter incompetence of what is being created as an alternative to EU membership… In a sense, the issue is that there is simply no post-Brexit economic strategy at all or, to the extent that there is, it is wholly unrealistic… such strategy as there is has been based on boosterism…

    Both the damage done ‘by Brexit’ and the damage created by what is being done ‘with Brexit’ can be traced back to the total ignorance, wilful dishonesty, and reckless irresponsibility of those who proposed and campaigned for Brexit without the tiniest understanding of how to do it… We saw their promises, their falsehoods, their evasions, and their lies, and they are all on record. On record, too, is all the spite and ridicule and bile they threw at those who warned them, who pleaded with them, not to inflict this on our country…

    And still the delusion that Brexit plays any material part in our serious problems persists. It's extraordinary but it is also a good excuse not to address those problems which are deep rooted, complicated and not amendable to simplistic ideological solutions.
    What was Brexit if it wasn't a simplistic ideological solution to our problems?

    What was the replacement of May by Johnson if it wasn't the triumph of a simplistic ideological solution to the question of "How to Brexit?" over a painful nervous balance of mandate, risks and benefits?

    One of the problems the UK has had in recent years is being run by the second team (under May), then the third (under Johnson) then the fourth (under Truss). Belief and purity have been the selection criteria. That wasn't inevitable after 2016, but it's blooming hard to see how it could have been avoided.
    Brexit was an opportunity to act, it was not an end in itself. We still have promises that the government will act with the policy changes promised by Hunt in the Autumn Statement but it remains vague and amorphous. I agree that this is pathetic 6 years after 2016 and it is again indicative of the simplistic nonsense of those who argued for it.
    I think it's more indicative of the fact that the political class is totally against leaving, and wants Britain to have merely 'left' into some sort of EU holding pen where nothing will actually change, but people will be browbeaten and demoralised into rejoining.

    I don't blame the EU for this. It's their prerogative to say if they want every whelk to have its own barcode - that should just make us really shit hot at exporting. Skills that also come in handy for the rest of the world. It's the deliberate foot dragging incompetence on our part that needs to go.
  • On eternal life, I do wonder if the billionaire-cryogenic phenomenon isn't just a expression of the modern extreme fear of the - I would say incorrect - idea that eternal life isn't possible.

    Quite the opposite, I believe. Mainstream cryogenic theory says you are just freezing to bridge the awkward gap between now, and proper immortality treatment becoming available. When it does, you thaw and get the treatment. It's like the early Christians not being sure whether the second coming would be in their lifetimes or whether they would have to do the whole death and resurrection thing.
  • geoffwgeoffw Posts: 8,092

    geoffw said:

    No-one here apart from me probably listens to R4, but this morning David Goodhart, who coined the "somewheres" and "anywheres" dichotomy, had the Point of View slot after the Sunday service. He points out that there's really hardly anything between the main parties in terms of policies. Brexit has made us more democratic and we have achieved a better balance between anywheres and somewheres. The dominant anywhere establishment on the right and the left had built an economy around their interests. He reckons that the anywhere agenda remains the default but has been diluted since Brexit.
    Despite all he thinks that our politics is now better balanced, even though it is stuck in the morass and we need more vision from our politicians.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001f5kt


    how does he feel BREXIT has made us more democratic? I havent listened but it sounds like hyperbole..
    Give it a listen. But aiui it's because both parties, who are run by anywheres, now take the concerns and hopes of somewheres explicitly into account in their policy deliberations (i.e. Conservatives vis a vis the Red Wall and Labour vis a vis their "educated" constituency).

  • novanova Posts: 525

    glw said:

    Regardless of the merits, or otherwise, of Brexit, would you accept that it has taken up so much government bandwidth over the last six years that politicians have been totally distracted from tackling the deep-seated problems to which you refer?

    Other than Covid, which was unavoidable, nothing has distracted the government from analysing and resolving our problems more than Brexit.

    I agree with that. The whole indicative votes process was a total disaster. All that did was eliminate virtual every sensible option leaving us with a threadbare deal and a screwed-up Nortern Ireland settlement. It's fairly obvious to me that people want a better deal, but it must exclude EU membership of any form and freedom of movement, almost anything else is up for debate and would be acceptable by the UK public. Fat chance of Parliament of any of our political parites actually delivering that though. If anything we are more likely to see another In/Out Brexit war.
    The problem, I think is that you have Rejoiners and Fixers. The Fixers want to fix the problems of Brexit - they are actually rejoiners by instinct but know that isn’t an immediate prospect.

    The Rejoiners want rejoin. Now.

    If the two groups come together have more votes than Leave. But they won’t.

    The other thing they haven’t done, is start a positive campaign *for* Europe.
    But come together to do what? We've seen with Brexit and Indy Ref that winning doesn't bring people back together.

    I suspect a lot of the Fixers think rejoining will open up too many wounds. If a third of the population spend the next twenty years thinking they've been screwed over, then that could mess up our democracy.

    Surely the best solution has to be closer ties with Europe that allow the leavers to consider they still 'won', while mitigating as many of the issues as possible. So, coming together with the less strident leavers/remainers makes more sense to me, than choosing a side and trying to "beat" the other side.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 41,670

    glw said:

    Regardless of the merits, or otherwise, of Brexit, would you accept that it has taken up so much government bandwidth over the last six years that politicians have been totally distracted from tackling the deep-seated problems to which you refer?

    Other than Covid, which was unavoidable, nothing has distracted the government from analysing and resolving our problems more than Brexit.

    I agree with that. The whole indicative votes process was a total disaster. All that did was eliminate virtual every sensible option leaving us with a threadbare deal and a screwed-up Nortern Ireland settlement. It's fairly obvious to me that people want a better deal, but it must exclude EU membership of any form and freedom of movement, almost anything else is up for debate and would be acceptable by the UK public. Fat chance of Parliament of any of our political parites actually delivering that though. If anything we are more likely to see another In/Out Brexit war.
    Why must it "exclude EU membership" and who are you to determine what is "acceptable by the UK public".
    Brexit was a mistake and now more and more people are recognising that. Surely it must be possible for the country to change its mind.
    Tories are against democracy.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    glw said:

    The problem, I think is that you have Rejoiners and Fixers. The Fixers want to fix the problems of Brexit - they are actually rejoiners by instinct but know that isn’t an immediate prospect.

    The Rejoiners want rejoin. Now.

    If the two groups come together have more votes than Leave. But they won’t.

    The other thing they haven’t done, is start a positive campaign *for* Europe.

    There isn't a viable positive campaign for the EU, as people in the UK do not want to be in the EU as it is. In their own way arch-Remainers are every bit as nuts as the ERG wing of the Brexiteers. Both sides are ignoring that there isn't a clear preference for all-in or all-out on the EU issue, but there is a fair amount of wiggle room for a closer relationship with the EU. This is not some insurmountable problem, but it will take the coming of a generation of politicians who will actually listen to what people want.

    If only a previous PM had been able to negotiate some kind of deal with the EU which would have allowed us to opt out of the political project if we wanted and had other protections against ever closer union that people seemed to think we needed.
  • On eternal life, I do wonder if the billionaire-cryogenic phenomenon isn't just a expression of the modern extreme fear of the - I would say incorrect - idea that eternal life isn't possible.

    Is it really all that different to mummification and various similar beliefs?

    Clearly, cryogenic freezing just wasn't an option in ancient Egypt for technological reasons. But the fear that failure to keep the body intact would bar the deceased from life eternal was essentially the same.

    The same is true of death rites and practices in a wide range of religions and cultures - there is a driving fear of the finality of death.

    It is true that these things relied on some form of faith in a higher power. But is reliance on a belief that science will become able to revive dead but frozen cells at some point really any different? And wouldn't these cultures have adopted cryogenic freezing if it had been a technology that existed?
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,578

    On eternal life, I do wonder if the billionaire-cryogenic phenomenon isn't just an expression of the modern extreme fear of the - I would say incorrect - idea that eternal life isn't possible.

    I’ve actually met a few advocates. They believe, quite sincerely, that they will be time shifting themselves to a point where medicine will be able to revive them.

    A funny moment in the Star Trek episode where they revive people from such a cryonics system. The doctor doesn’t even realise these people are dead and fixes them as part of defrosting them. The comedy comes when the Captain of the ship tells them that cryonics was a fraud…

    As far as I can tell, all current cryonics stuff does far too much damage to make resurrection possible without magic level tech.

    As to eternal life. There won’t be one pill for that. It will creep up on us. Vast sums are being expended on research into controlling muscle growth, bone density etc. Much is for the fitness industry - get a six pack with little or no effort etc. But applied to the problems of aging.. Cancer will be squeezed into a smaller and smaller percentage of deaths. Brain degeneration is another big one - again fixes may be found.

    We are not going to wake up one morning, living for ever with no aging. But if we progressively remove the causes of degeneration and death…
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 8,480
    edited November 2022
    pillsbury said:

    On eternal life, I do wonder if the billionaire-cryogenic phenomenon isn't just a expression of the modern extreme fear of the - I would say incorrect - idea that eternal life isn't possible.

    Quite the opposite, I believe. Mainstream cryogenic theory says you are just freezing to bridge the awkward gap between now, and proper immortality treatment becoming available. When it does, you thaw and get the treatment. It's like the early Christians not being sure whether the second coming would be in their lifetimes or whether they would have to do the whole death and resurrection thing.
    If we have any biologists in, what are the precedents for any biological organism living forever ? For me the issue would be loss of faith in our cultural inheritance, in modern scientific terms yet to be proven that we have another essence ( possibly a quantum field ) that moves from one place to another. This is well outside current orthodoxy ofcourse, but a number of physicists around the edges are increasingly interested in the possibility. As mentioned earlier, one often finds the greatest openness to these ideas among physicists, at the moment, in line with Einstein's openness.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,727
    nova said:

    Surely the best solution has to be closer ties with Europe that allow the leavers to consider they still 'won', while mitigating as many of the issues as possible. So, coming together with the less strident leavers/remainers makes more sense to me, than choosing a side and trying to "beat" the other side.

    This is the ultimate expression of "prizes for everyone"

    The reason Brexiteers need to "lose" and be seen to lose is to avoid the situation in the future where voting for unicorns is seen as a reasonable thing instead of outright lunacy.

    Brexit can't make us richer just cos we voted for it.

    To deny that is to deny reality.
This discussion has been closed.