UK Politics: A Farcical Aquatic Ceremony

[Maltaran]

Gove isn't running, he's Boris's campaign manager. The suggestion I've seen most often as a viable third candidate is Stephen Crabb, but he doesn't really pass the public familiarity test.

[Maltaran]

Also, I missed this yesterday, but the FT has the best Brexit headline pun

Brexit, pursued by despair

[Chaircat Meow]

39 minutes ago, Werthead said:

That's what I mean. I think the Tory Party themselves - unless they've completely lost the plot - know that Hunt is unelectable to the point of utter toxicality. He is loathed and despised in the country on a monumental scale and he's often been described as a deliberately unlikable person who can force through unpopular, loathsome reforms and then be fired as a sacrificial lamb.

 

Not that I support Hunt but I think this is extremely exaggerated. Lots of people won't even know who is. The same goes for Gove. Teacher hated him, but otherwise not that well known.

[Maltaran]

3 minutes ago, Chaircat Meow said:

Not that I support Hunt but I think this is extremely exaggerated. Lots of people won't even know who is. The same goes for Gove. Teacher hated him, but otherwise not that well known.

I think after the doctors' strikes, quite a lot of people know who Hunt is - plus any anti-Hunt campaign can just play the clip of John Humphries introducing him as the Hulture Secretary on repeat.

Gove has also been one of the main faces of the Leave campaign, and it's not just teachers who hate him - there's a lot of lawyers who aren't happy with what he's done as Justice Secretary.

[Chaircat Meow]

Just now, Maltrouane Fellaini said:

I think after the doctors' strikes, quite a lot of people know who Hunt is - plus any anti-Hunt campaign can just play the clip of John Humphries introducing him as the Hulture Secretary on repeat.

Gove has also been one of the main faces of the Leave campaign, and it's not just teachers who hate him - there's a lot of lawyers who aren't happy with what he's done as Justice Secretary.

Gove is well known now, but before I don't think so.

[Maltaran]

Just now, Chaircat Meow said:

Gove is well known now, but before I don't think so.

Anyone who's friends with a teacher knew who he was.

[Hereward]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

The United Kingdom consists of the countries of England, Wales and Scotland, located on the island of Great Britain, and the country of Northern Ireland, located on the island of Ireland. Citizens (or more technically subjects) of the United Kingdom are known collectively as "British".

Pedantry alert: It's citizens, not subjects, ever since the 1981 Nationality Act came into force. The only people technically still subjects are those who were born in Ireland before 1949, reside in Great Britain, but have not taken up British or Irish citizenship.

[Andrés Garcia]

The way both sides have been using statistics before and after the vote makes my blood boil. Anyway, here's the latest thing I've been reading about:

Quote

"t’s likely just a few people searching for something in a way that they always search for something [i.e. by googling questions]. It makes “The British are frantically Googling what the EU is, hours after voting to leave it” absurdly disingenuous without better numbers. Update: Remy Smith points out this out: The peak was merely ~1000 people! It’s ludicrous that so few people get turned into a massive story, but it underscores the need for context."

https://medium.com/@dannypage/stop-using-google-trends-a5014dd32588#.6y47nadnt

The entire entry is worth the read. I expect it to be ignored and buried in the discussions to follow, of course, because it ruins people's fun.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

4 hours ago, Hereward said:

Nor do we, or at least we didn't. I think you are assuming that the problems places like France and Belgium have with immigrants are the same everywhere. Britain's Muslim community, like its Hindu and Chinese communities, have higher educational attainment levels and higher rates of employment than the native population, and are disproportionately well represented in the professions, and well represented in the higher echelons of business and, to a somewhat lesser extent, in politics. 

I think it's the perception of some in the U.K. that they have the same problem as places like France and Belgium. That's why you see metropolitan areas with higher immigration rates vote to stay while rural areas with next to no immigrants vote to leave. 

And for what it's worth, it works the same way here in the states. 

[Which Tyler]

On 6/27/2016 at 0:59 PM, Which Tyler said:

My previous post on abuse suffered by my wife...

I'm sure you'll all be amazed that this has been eating at me a bit.
I have reported the abuse to my MP, and asked him to publicly condemn such behaviour; I have also reported it to the police who are logging it for statistical purposes, but otherwise there's not a lot they can do - which is important in and of itself. My MP has so far condemned the behaviour... in a private email to myself, but nothing seems to have appeared in the press, twitter or facebook. The cops are sending a community officer around to talk about CCTV type options.

This stuff is happening, and far worse than Ali and I have suffered, and twitter / facebook seems to be full of people witnessing abuse, sitting there quietly and tweeting about how awful it was.

IMO it is incumbent upon all of us to actively object to abuse; to (intellectually) confront and challenge the abuser, to publicly offer our support to the victim we have just witnessed; and to do so in a way that leaves no doubt in the abuser's mind that their behaviour was unacceptable.
Currently the racists and biggots seem to think that the leave vote is a mandate to spout their hatred. It is no such thing; and we all need to make this point to them.

There is a petition at change.org asking the home office to condemn the behaviour; pity it's not on petition.parliament.uk, but there we go.
I urge anyone on here to sign that petition; to email their MP to publicly oppose biggotry; and I would urge anyone who actually witnesses abuse to step up and confront it. I urge victims to report it, to their MP and to the police.
As Edmund Burke said "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing".

[JoannaL]

As an European I was always wondering why the British cannot see the more idealistic reasons for Europe which the rest of us endorse.

Foremost of those are to live peacefully together as good neighbours. I think this is an immensly important value and the destruction of it is EVIL.

UKIP Leader Farage continued on this way today by directly threatening German workers who never did any wrong to him or the UK.: He said today in the European Parlament:

"That trade is mutually beneficial to both of us, that trade matters. If you were to cut off your noses to spite your faces and reject any idea of a sensible trade deal the consequences would be far worse for you than it would be for us.

[Laughter from MEPs]

Even no deal is better for the United Kingdom is better than the current rotten deal that we’ve got.  But if we were to move to a position where tariffs were reintroduced on products like motorcars then hundreds of thousands of German works would risk losing their jobs."

 

 

[Altherion]

I think he was deliberately trying to be offensive. CNN has a few choice quotes:

Quote

"Isn't it funny? When I came here 17 years ago and I said that I wanted to lead a campaign to get Britain out of the European Union, you all laughed at me. Well, I have to say, you're not laughing now, are you?" said Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP).

Quote

"I know that virtually none of you have ever done a proper job in your lives or worked in business or worked in trade or indeed ever created a job. But listen, just listen," said Farage, to boos.

 

[Hereward]

Massive cockweasel though he is, and needlessly rude as well, he's not threatening German carworkers, as such. He's saying that if the EU decides to deny Britain a free trade deal of some kind, as punishment for leaving, tariffs would be introduced on both sides, and German industry would suffer greatly because Germany has a huge trade surplus with Britain.

As for why so many, particularly older, Britons don't see the more idealistic reasons for the EU, I would have thought that was obvious. The founding members wanted to put awful recent history behind them, through shame in some cases, or never again to be at the mercy of larger neighbours, in others. Britain felt neither impulse. It was, and remains, proud of the period the Germans, Italians and French wanted to forget. Add to that, that they may also recall that when Britain did decide it wanted to, needed to, join in the 60s, France told it to fuck off. Twice. Britain had to beg. That is not a memory designed to cause idealism and enthusiasm in a proud population.

[ElizabethB.]

There seems to be an awful lot of sentiment for something that's supposed to be a trade union. 

[Hereward]

Perhaps because it isn't, and never has been, primarily a "trade union".

[Andrés Garcia]

Labeling everyone who is skeptical of big supranational states as evil seems a bit excessive and childish to me.

[mormont]

1 hour ago, Hereward said:

Add to that, that they may also recall that when Britain did decide it wanted to, needed to, join in the 60s, France told it to fuck off. Twice. Britain had to beg. That is not a memory designed to cause idealism and enthusiasm in a proud population.

To be fair, to actually remember those incidents you'd realistically need to be in the 65+ age bracket. Voters in that category supported Brexit by 60%-40%. Voters aged 55-64 voted 57%-43% for Brexit and voters aged 45-54 voted 56%-44%. Few of the first group and none of the second would remember de Gaulle's 'non', though they may have absorbed their parents' attitudes about that bit of history.

[Hereward]

6 minutes ago, Emre Mor-mont said:

though they may have absorbed their parents' attitudes about that bit of history.

You're telling me!  I remember the frothing as if it was yesterday.

[HobbsTuna]

20 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

You should consider rethinking your stance on this. One of the main reasons we don't have the same problems here in the states that Europe is having is specifically because we don't isolate Muslims communities. 

The reason that the US does not have the "same problems" is selective immigration. You people sort for economic usefulness and tell the rest to go get bend. This has the happy side-effect of a.) only letting people in, who are to busy to making money to isolate themselves, b.) have the financial resources to prevent ghetto effects and c.) do not cause resentments in the locals as they don't use up more resources than they consume. Admittedly the third point is kinda mute with the US, as pissing on low-income people and calling it rain, seems to be somewhat of a national sport, so there wasn't all that much danger of them running into a social program to begin with. 

[JoannaL]

If someone tells me ...to do what he want or ELSE... he does not act in a good neighbouringly way. This is what Farage did.

It is already starting, everyone is thinking us (27) and them (the idiotic Brits). I assume in the UK its the other way around. And to NOT think this, was the reason for the construction of the EU: It has never been about a trade union, this is just a very minor part. The EU has many faults and there is a lot to critize and to reform but the idea was to build an new us -us Europeans - . It is absolutly important to not detroy this us.