And people did try, particularly on the pro-euro front from the 1990s, without ever gaining serious traction with the British public.
Blair did win a landslide in 1997 that was based on a policy of ending semi-detachment. Sadly the promised referendum on the Euro never came.
This was from Blair's first manifesto.
There are only three options for Britain in Europe. The first is to come out. The second is to stay in, but on the sidelines. The third is to stay in, but in a leading role.
An increasing number of Conservatives, overtly or covertly, favour the first. But withdrawal would be disastrous for Britain. It would put millions of jobs at risk. It would dry up inward investment. It would destroy our clout in international trade negotiations. It would relegate Britain from the premier division of nations.
The second is exactly where we are today under the Conservatives. The BSE fiasco symbolises their failures in Europe.
The third is the path a new Labour government will take.
And then Blair discovered that there was never going to be 'a leading role' no matter how many concessions we made or money we paid or immigrants we accepted.
And people did try, particularly on the pro-euro front from the 1990s, without ever gaining serious traction with the British public.
Blair did win a landslide in 1997 that was based on a policy of ending semi-detachment. Sadly the promised referendum on the Euro never came.
This was from Blair's first manifesto.
There are only three options for Britain in Europe. The first is to come out. The second is to stay in, but on the sidelines. The third is to stay in, but in a leading role.
An increasing number of Conservatives, overtly or covertly, favour the first. But withdrawal would be disastrous for Britain. It would put millions of jobs at risk. It would dry up inward investment. It would destroy our clout in international trade negotiations. It would relegate Britain from the premier division of nations.
The second is exactly where we are today under the Conservatives. The BSE fiasco symbolises their failures in Europe.
The third is the path a new Labour government will take.
And then Blair discovered that there was never going to be 'a leading role' no matter how many concessions we made or money we paid or immigrants we accepted.
No, Blair ducked out of spending his political capital on the Euro and then threw his lot in with George W. Bush. As for "no matter how many immigrants we accepted", that comment is beneath you.
There is a fundamental problem with the Brexit debate. It is not the Leavers who are stopping 'soft Brexit'. It is the EU.
The Remainers have been whining about 'soft Brexit' like it means something, but none of them can define in any way what it is, other than the subset who openly support EEA membership. Of course, most Remainers can't support EEA because the requirement for FOM means that it is obviously contrary to the referendum result and they don't like being called on that.
So they pretend that there is another 'soft Brexit' option. But the EU is constantly saying that this is not true.
The EU are obsessed with cherry picking. They define that as not having all the 'benefits' of membership without the 'obligations'.
The EU are the ones saying that they DON'T WANT the whole UK to stay in the CU as a backstop. Why? Because unlike the Remainers they are honest enough to say that CU membership requires full alignment with SM regulations. It is SM membership by proxy. And they won't accept it because it is cherry picking - SM membership without the four freedoms.
Can ANY Remainer on here come up with any evidence that the EU would accept a 'soft Brexit' plan that does not involve accepting FOM? I doubt it. They just duck the issue (or, like HYUFD, just aim for a deal which pretends to halt FOM but in fact leaves it in place).
Brexit was always a binary choice. It is not the Leavers that are saying so - ask your beloved EU.
That's not right. What Barnier is saying is effectively that there's no soft Brexit that's *consistent with TMay's current red lines*. This has been obvious since before she drew them. See his graphic here:
Barnier has always said we can have a Canada style FTA but no more if we want to end FOM, that remains consistent with the Phase 1 agreement in December with the EU yes
So, does that mean that you are agreeing with me? There is no 'soft Brexit' on offer that does not leave FOM in place? In that case, why are we even talking about 'soft Brexit'?
I have never said it will be 'soft Brexit' ie staying fully in the single market but nor do I think it will be ultra hard WTO terms Brexit either, most likely it will be a FTA similar to what Canada has with the EU
Solo was fine. Perfect for Saturday afternoon with my 10yr old.
People take Star Wars far too seriously.
Truer words rarely spoken. My friends who are die hard fans get most worked up over things like ships going to lightspeed too close to a planet etc. It's not meaningless in a Sci if story, depending on the type, but a good narrative and characters is a bigger deal.
While I’ve sympathy with that view, it’s still a bad movie. Good writing leaves space for the imagination of the audience. These explicatory prequels which flesh out interesting characters do exactly the opposite.
And people did try, particularly on the pro-euro front from the 1990s, without ever gaining serious traction with the British public.
Blair did win a landslide in 1997 that was based on a policy of ending semi-detachment. Sadly the promised referendum on the Euro never came.
This was from Blair's first manifesto.
There are only three options for Britain in Europe. The first is to come out. The second is to stay in, but on the sidelines. The third is to stay in, but in a leading role.
An increasing number of Conservatives, overtly or covertly, favour the first. But withdrawal would be disastrous for Britain. It would put millions of jobs at risk. It would dry up inward investment. It would destroy our clout in international trade negotiations. It would relegate Britain from the premier division of nations.
The second is exactly where we are today under the Conservatives. The BSE fiasco symbolises their failures in Europe.
The third is the path a new Labour government will take.
Most voters align with the first or second option, only about 25 to 30% of the population at most want the UK to be part of a Federal EU with the Euro and Schengen etc.
We have always been on the outer reaches of Europe, more akin to Poland, Turkey or Switzerland than a member of the inner core like France or Germany and of course we have our Commonwealth links and relationship with the USA too
I really liked Revenge, but it started to break down in season 2
Well, exactly.
The premise could have been a great movie.
It could even have been a great TV show if she got revenge on someone each episode.
But no. It became an ever more outlandish soap opera, in which not very much to advance the plot took place, while all manner of other nonsense happened.
Like Sheldon in TBBT, the audience demands closure from a drama. This didn't deliver.
The latest problematic one for me is The Blacklist. It started with a core dynamic about how much the lead could trust the enigmatic, ruthless and mysterious other main character, but 5 seasons in that just doesn't work very after all they've been through, but they have to keep coming up with more ridiculous twists, and characters lying for no reason, in order to maintain that dynamic rather than shifting to a new one.
While I’ve sympathy with that view, it’s still a bad movie. Good writing leaves space for the imagination of the audience. These explicatory prequels which flesh out interesting characters do exactly the opposite.
And in place of fantastic imagined events, you get explicitly bad depicted events.
The train. Why? In an era of intergalactic space travel at hyperlight speeds, what is the point of a train?
You take the deal and work to gradually unwind our links with the EU over time. Simples.
Or take the deal and gradually drift back in. Even more simples.
Which was what British advocates of joining the single currency emphasised throughout the 1990s.
"The opt-out is purely nominal" "The car factories will shut down and the City will relocate to Frankfurt if we don't join" "Once people see what a great success the Euro is in practice they'll be desperate to join" "Now that people have used Euro notes on their holidays the fear will disappear"
Not me. I was and remain resolutely anti Euro and pro EU membership.
Why do the Brexiters keep harming on about the past?
Solo was fine. Perfect for Saturday afternoon with my 10yr old.
People take Star Wars far too seriously.
Truer words rarely spoken. My friends who are die hard fans get most worked up over things like ships going to lightspeed too close to a planet etc. It's not meaningless in a Sci if story, depending on the type, but a good narrative and characters is a bigger deal.
While I’ve sympathy with that view, it’s still a bad movie. Good writing leaves space for the imagination of the audience. These explicatory prequels which flesh out interesting characters do exactly the opposite.
Oh, things can still be good and bad even if you're not taking certain bits too seriously. But frankly 'Star Wars Tales' movies seem like they should be about doing things that don't fit in the main movies, focusing on bits we didn't see or trying out new tones and plots. Stories about characters we already knew was the laziest route.
You take the deal and work to gradually unwind our links with the EU over time. Simples.
Or take the deal and gradually drift back in. Even more simples.
I think the former is more likely...
Which country bordering the EU is currently feeling its influence less as time goes by?
Switzerland. Or Russia. Turkey is drifting away too and not in a particularly good way. Is this a trick question?
How is Switzerland becoming less influenced by the EU? The EU features more prominently in Russian discourse than it ever did before. Turkey is possibly the only one where it holds true, but is that a good example to seek to emulate?
While I’ve sympathy with that view, it’s still a bad movie. Good writing leaves space for the imagination of the audience. These explicatory prequels which flesh out interesting characters do exactly the opposite.
And in place of fantastic imagined events, you get explicitly bad depicted events.
The train. Why? In an era of intergalactic space travel at hyperlight speeds, what is the point of a train?
It worked in Pandora's Star! (OK, admittedly there they didn't bother to invent hyperlight speeds, since they just created wormholes and had traintracks run through them).
While I’ve sympathy with that view, it’s still a bad movie. Good writing leaves space for the imagination of the audience. These explicatory prequels which flesh out interesting characters do exactly the opposite.
And in place of fantastic imagined events, you get explicitly bad depicted events.
The train. Why? In an era of intergalactic space travel at hyperlight speeds, what is the point of a train?
I was thinking more of the characters than the imagined technology, which has always been silly.
The latest problematic one for me is The Blacklist. It started with a core dynamic about how much the lead could trust the enigmatic, ruthless and mysterious other main character, but 5 seasons in that just doesn't work very after all they've been through, but they have to keep coming up with more ridiculous twists, and characters lying for no reason, in order to maintain that dynamic rather than shifting to a new one.
Billions has the same problem.
SPOILERS AHEAD
Season 1. The Sheriff tries to catch the outlaw. Fails.
Season 2. The Sheriff catches the outlaw, by entrapping him.
Season 3. Facing mutually assured destruction, the sheriff and the outlaw make up and have no further reason to interact.
At this point I thought it was over. They have now come up with new adversaries for both protagonists, but we are back into soap opera territory. Things happen for the sake of filling screen time
Oh, things can still be good and bad even if you're not taking certain bits too seriously. But frankly 'Star Wars Tales' movies seem like they should be about doing things that don't fit in the main movies, focusing on bits we didn't see or trying out new tones and plots. Stories about characters we already knew was the laziest route.
As noted above, the big reveal in Solo is only there to power another movie.
If you have only ever seen the films, it looks like an error. It only makes sense if you have seen the TV spinoffs already (or look it up online afterwards)
One series I've really been enjoying is Timeless. Yes, it's chewing-gum scifi, but well done. Series 2 has really knocked the ball out of the park (IMO, of course).
You take the deal and work to gradually unwind our links with the EU over time. Simples.
Or take the deal and gradually drift back in. Even more simples.
Which was what British advocates of joining the single currency emphasised throughout the 1990s.
"The opt-out is purely nominal" "The car factories will shut down and the City will relocate to Frankfurt if we don't join" "Once people see what a great success the Euro is in practice they'll be desperate to join" "Now that people have used Euro notes on their holidays the fear will disappear"
Not me. I was and remain resolutely anti Euro and pro EU membership.
Why do the Brexiters keep harming on about the past?
You take the deal and work to gradually unwind our links with the EU over time. Simples.
Or take the deal and gradually drift back in. Even more simples.
Which was what British advocates of joining the single currency emphasised throughout the 1990s.
"The opt-out is purely nominal" "The car factories will shut down and the City will relocate to Frankfurt if we don't join" "Once people see what a great success the Euro is in practice they'll be desperate to join" "Now that people have used Euro notes on their holidays the fear will disappear"
Not me. I was and remain resolutely anti Euro and pro EU membership.
Why do the Brexiters keep harming on about the past?
The past is often a guide to the future.
Those who forget the past may be doomed to repeat it.
For example the Project Fear used to support EU membership had strong echoes from the project fear used to support ERM membership a generation earlier. And both were exposed as a pack of lies by subsequent reality.
While I’ve sympathy with that view, it’s still a bad movie. Good writing leaves space for the imagination of the audience. These explicatory prequels which flesh out interesting characters do exactly the opposite.
And in place of fantastic imagined events, you get explicitly bad depicted events.
The train. Why? In an era of intergalactic space travel at hyperlight speeds, what is the point of a train?
Was it as bad as the tube scene in that other movie xD ?
Personally I've only seen Black Panther & Infinity War at the cinema this year.
That makes sense. There’s a split trial of a large group of linked defendants, so reporting restrictions are in place until they’ve all concluded. Robinson seems to appear to think that these restrictions don’t apply to him, which is why he’s now in the big house.
While I’ve sympathy with that view, it’s still a bad movie. Good writing leaves space for the imagination of the audience. These explicatory prequels which flesh out interesting characters do exactly the opposite.
And in place of fantastic imagined events, you get explicitly bad depicted events.
The train. Why? In an era of intergalactic space travel at hyperlight speeds, what is the point of a train?
For the same reason presumably that the final scene in any number of sci fi films, during which people have been blasting each other with super sophisticated and unlikely weapons, is a fist fight between the goody and the baddy.
You take the deal and work to gradually unwind our links with the EU over time. Simples.
Or take the deal and gradually drift back in. Even more simples.
I think the former is more likely...
Which country bordering the EU is currently feeling its influence less as time goes by?
Switzerland. Or Russia. Turkey is drifting away too and not in a particularly good way. Is this a trick question?
How is Switzerland becoming less influenced by the EU? The EU features more prominently in Russian discourse than it ever did before. Turkey is possibly the only one where it holds true, but is that a good example to seek to emulate?
Well in 2014 they voted against freedom of movement. In 2015 they gave up their fixed peg against the Euro. In 2016 they withdrew their long term application for membership of the EU. Can you not see a trend there?
For the same reason presumably that the final scene in any number of sci fi films, during which people have been blasting each other with super sophisticated and unlikely weapons, is a fist fight between the goody and the baddy.
Not really.
If your super-sophisticated blaster is out of ammo, you can still punch the guy.
But here they are using a spaceship, to hijack a train. I don't get it.
I wonder if he was arrested for "breach of the peace" to protect the cases?
The slightly odd thing is there is no mention of reporting restrictions in his court document. Or there was, but only on his case. I am not aware of any document on reporting restrictions on Akhtar and others, certainly the one in Yaxley-Lennon's conviction only refers to reporting restrictions on HIS case.
And people did try, particularly on the pro-euro front from the 1990s, without ever gaining serious traction with the British public.
Blair did win a landslide in 1997 that was based on a policy of ending semi-detachment. Sadly the promised referendum on the Euro never came.
This was from Blair's first manifesto.
There are only three options for Britain in Europe. The first is to come out. The second is to stay in, but on the sidelines. The third is to stay in, but in a leading role.
An increasing number of Conservatives, overtly or covertly, favour the first. But withdrawal would be disastrous for Britain. It would put millions of jobs at risk. It would dry up inward investment. It would destroy our clout in international trade negotiations. It would relegate Britain from the premier division of nations.
The second is exactly where we are today under the Conservatives. The BSE fiasco symbolises their failures in Europe.
The third is the path a new Labour government will take.
And then Blair discovered that there was never going to be 'a leading role' no matter how many concessions we made or money we paid or immigrants we accepted.
No, Blair ducked out of spending his political capital on the Euro and then threw his lot in with George W. Bush. As for "no matter how many immigrants we accepted", that comment is beneath you.
You mean you don't want to accept the fact that accepting unlimited immigration from Eastern Europe even when France and Germany refused to still didn't get the UK 'a leading role' in the EU.
I wonder if he was arrested for "breach of the peace" to protect the cases?
Do people who normally turn up and film defendants in a child rape case have six police officers turn up to arrest them? I wasn't aware that alleged child abusers got anonymity in a way that alleged rapists of adult women dont?
Perhaps as the spectator suggests he was just arrested for being Tommy Robinson?
The issue is not really about whether you agree with Robinson or not but what processes have been applied here and why the media wasn't allowed to cover this initially.
For the same reason presumably that the final scene in any number of sci fi films, during which people have been blasting each other with super sophisticated and unlikely weapons, is a fist fight between the goody and the baddy.
Not really.
If your super-sophisticated blaster is out of ammo, you can still punch the guy.
But here they are using a spaceship, to hijack a train. I don't get it.
Out of ammo is an endearingly old fashioned concept.
And people did try, particularly on the pro-euro front from the 1990s, without ever gaining serious traction with the British public.
Blair did win a landslide in 1997 that was based on a policy of ending semi-detachment. Sadly the promised referendum on the Euro never came.
This was from Blair's first manifesto.
There are only three options for Britain in Europe. The first is to come out. The second is to stay in, but on the sidelines. The third is to stay in, but in a leading role.
An increasing number of Conservatives, overtly or covertly, favour the first. But withdrawal would be disastrous for Britain. It would put millions of jobs at risk. It would dry up inward investment. It would destroy our clout in international trade negotiations. It would relegate Britain from the premier division of nations.
The second is exactly where we are today under the Conservatives. The BSE fiasco symbolises their failures in Europe.
The third is the path a new Labour government will take.
And then Blair discovered that there was never going to be 'a leading role' no matter how many concessions we made or money we paid or immigrants we accepted.
No, Blair ducked out of spending his political capital on the Euro and then threw his lot in with George W. Bush. As for "no matter how many immigrants we accepted", that comment is beneath you.
You mean you don't want to accept the fact that accepting unlimited immigration from Eastern Europe even when France and Germany refused to still didn't get the UK 'a leading role' in the EU.
EU expansion was in 2004. The events I've described were already water under the bridge.
In any case, the idea that we waived the transition controls as some kind of self-sacrifice in order to gain influence is absurd. We did it because the government thought we'd gain an economic advantage over countries that didn't, and establish deeper long-term relations with countries like Poland. Arguably in those terms it worked.
You take the deal and work to gradually unwind our links with the EU over time. Simples.
Or take the deal and gradually drift back in. Even more simples.
Which was what British advocates of joining the single currency emphasised throughout the 1990s.
"The opt-out is purely nominal" "The car factories will shut down and the City will relocate to Frankfurt if we don't join" "Once people see what a great success the Euro is in practice they'll be desperate to join" "Now that people have used Euro notes on their holidays the fear will disappear"
Not me. I was and remain resolutely anti Euro and pro EU membership.
Why do the Brexiters keep harming on about the past?
Because Remainers keep using the same dumb arguments in favour of closer integration. Besides in the medium to long term your position - in the EU but outside the Euro - is the most unrealistic of all.
The latest problematic one for me is The Blacklist. It started with a core dynamic about how much the lead could trust the enigmatic, ruthless and mysterious other main character, but 5 seasons in that just doesn't work very after all they've been through, but they have to keep coming up with more ridiculous twists, and characters lying for no reason, in order to maintain that dynamic rather than shifting to a new one.
Billions has the same problem.
SPOILERS AHEAD
Season 1. The Sheriff tries to catch the outlaw. Fails.
Season 2. The Sheriff catches the outlaw, by entrapping him.
Season 3. Facing mutually assured destruction, the sheriff and the outlaw make up and have no further reason to interact.
At this point I thought it was over. They have now come up with new adversaries for both protagonists, but we are back into soap opera territory. Things happen for the sake of filling screen time
One of the reasons I enjoy Korean TV is that they tend only to do a single series. More seasons just increases the tendency of any drama to become Dallas...
Having been in the South of france for the last several weeks it kept occuring to me that if only the 17 million Brexiteers had seen at first hand the practical advantages of being able to move to or through a smorgasbord of cultures and languages without restriction the vote would almost certainly have been different.
Europe is a very special continent. The most cultured and varied in the world. To be an integral part of it is a great privilege and anything that draws us closer and gives us the simplest access the better. Remain should have set its sigts on the common currency and shengen and not allowed the the Little Englanders to frame the debate around a fear of foreigners.
Its a shame you Little Europeans can't see the big wide wonderful world outside of your little 7% of the world's population. And I am sure Asia might have quite a lot to say about your culture and variety. But of course being a parochial Little European all those yellow and brown people look the same to you.
On Topic (and good afternoon) I think this is an excellent piece by Nick who has a far more balanced and informed view of those he disagrees with than most people on here.
There is a fundamental problem with the Brexit debate. It is not the Leavers who are stopping 'soft Brexit'. It is the EU.
The Remainers have been whining about 'soft Brexit' like it means something, but none of them can define in any way what it is, other than the subset who openly support EEA membership. Of course, most Remainers can't support EEA because the requirement for FOM means that it is obviously contrary to the referendum result and they don't like being called on that.
So they pretend that there is another 'soft Brexit' option. But the EU is constantly saying that this is not true.
The EU are obsessed with cherry picking. They define that as not having all the 'benefits' of membership without the 'obligations'.
The EU are the ones saying that they DON'T WANT the whole UK to stay in the CU as a backstop. Why? Because unlike the Remainers they are honest enough to say that CU membership requires full alignment with SM regulations. It is SM membership by proxy. And they won't accept it because it is cherry picking - SM membership without the four freedoms.
Can ANY Remainer on here come up with any evidence that the EU would accept a 'soft Brexit' plan that does not involve accepting FOM? I doubt it. They just duck the issue (or, like HYUFD, just aim for a deal which pretends to halt FOM but in fact leaves it in place).
Brexit was always a binary choice. It is not the Leavers that are saying so - ask your beloved EU.
That's not right. What Barnier is saying is effectively that there's no soft Brexit that's *consistent with TMay's current red lines*. This has been obvious since before she drew them. See his graphic here:
Barnier has always said we can have a Canada style FTA but no more if we want to end FOM, that remains consistent with the Phase 1 agreement in December with the EU yes
So, does that mean that you are agreeing with me? There is no 'soft Brexit' on offer that does not leave FOM in place? In that case, why are we even talking about 'soft Brexit'?
I have never said it will be 'soft Brexit' ie staying fully in the single market but nor do I think it will be ultra hard WTO terms Brexit either, most likely it will be a FTA similar to what Canada has with the EU
Er - A Canada style FTA IS a Hard Brexit (and is not compatible with CU membership). It is also a path that May is desperately trying to avoid. What she and Olly Robbins want is 'soft Brexit' where we maintain almost full alignment with EU regulations in return for 'frictionless' trade. This is a fantasy, as the EU keep telling her.
And people did try, particularly on the pro-euro front from the 1990s, without ever gaining serious traction with the British public.
Blair did win a landslide in 1997 that was based on a policy of ending semi-detachment. Sadly the promised referendum on the Euro never came.
This was from Blair's first manifesto.
There are only three options for Britain in Europe. The first is to come out. The second is to stay in, but on the sidelines. The third is to stay in, but in a leading role.
An increasing number of Conservatives, overtly or covertly, favour the first. But withdrawal would be disastrous for Britain. It would put millions of jobs at risk. It would dry up inward investment. It would destroy our clout in international trade negotiations. It would relegate Britain from the premier division of nations.
The second is exactly where we are today under the Conservatives. The BSE fiasco symbolises their failures in Europe.
The third is the path a new Labour government will take.
And then Blair discovered that there was never going to be 'a leading role' no matter how many concessions we made or money we paid or immigrants we accepted.
No, Blair ducked out of spending his political capital on the Euro and then threw his lot in with George W. Bush. As for "no matter how many immigrants we accepted", that comment is beneath you.
You mean you don't want to accept the fact that accepting unlimited immigration from Eastern Europe even when France and Germany refused to still didn't get the UK 'a leading role' in the EU.
EU expansion was in 2004. The events I've described were already water under the bridge.
In any case, the idea that we waived the transition controls as some kind of self-sacrifice in order to gain influence is absurd. We did it because the government thought we'd gain an economic advantage over countries that didn't, and establish deeper long-term relations with countries like Poland. Arguably in those terms it worked.
LOL
The whole ' if we're more European the EU will move our way ' line disintegrates on this issue.
Blair spent his political capital on immigration instead of on the Euro and got nothing from the EU in return. Just as he would have got nothing from the EU in return if he had somehow achieved joining the Euro.
And just as he got nothing in return when he gave away billions of Rebate money.
We’re *leaving* the single market, with which our economy is highly integrated, whereas the Euro was about a new project which we had the opportunity to join.
Comparisons between the two are quite facile.
There were/are of course benefits of Euro membership, but not worth the loss of monetary (and now fiscal) autonomy in my view.
While I’ve sympathy with that view, it’s still a bad movie. Good writing leaves space for the imagination of the audience. These explicatory prequels which flesh out interesting characters do exactly the opposite.
And in place of fantastic imagined events, you get explicitly bad depicted events.
The train. Why? In an era of intergalactic space travel at hyperlight speeds, what is the point of a train?
I was thinking more of the characters than the imagined technology, which has always been silly.
One of the things that annoys the shit out of me in "action" films is the ability of the hero to get up and continue to fight after having just suffered a slam into something hard that would smash up his spine.
"Hang on fella, mind if we pick this up again in, say a couple of years - when I've learned to walk again?"
And people did try, particularly on the pro-euro front from the 1990s, without ever gaining serious traction with the British public.
Blair did win a landslide in 1997 that was based on a policy of ending semi-detachment. Sadly the promised referendum on the Euro never came.
I'd be very careful about (1) to what extent Blair's victory was based on enthusiasm for his policy platform, rather than Blair's New Labour project being well-presented, personable and less threatening to middle classes, while the public had run out of patience with the Tories, (2) to whatever extent Blair's victory can be attributed to his policies, to what extent was it his pro-EU thrust rather than e.g. education and the NHS.
If the promised referendum on the Euro had come, I suspect that a concerted effort could have converted some proportion of the public to the europhile cause - but I'm pretty sure it would have lost decisively even so. That's even without considering Britain as a uniquely eurosceptic country - in the 1990s and 2000s there were rejections of the Euro in Sweden and Denmark, and of the EU Constitution in France and the Netherlands. I can't see that Blair fighting a Euro referendum would have done anything other than notch up one more failed referendum. Similarly had the Constitution referendum gone ahead (rather than been cancelled as pointless after the other rejections).
Having been in the South of france for the last several weeks it kept occuring to me that if only the 17 million Brexiteers had seen at first hand the practical advantages of being able to move to or through a smorgasbord of cultures and languages without restriction the vote would almost certainly have been different.
Europe is a very special continent. The most cultured and varied in the world. To be an integral part of it is a great privilege and anything that draws us closer and gives us the simplest access the better. Remain should have set its sigts on the common currency and shengen and not allowed the the Little Englanders to frame the debate around a fear of foreigners.
Its a shame you Little Europeans can't see the big wide wonderful world outside of your little 7% of the world's population. And I am sure Asia might have quite a lot to say about your culture and variety. But of course being a parochial Little European all those yellow and brown people look the same to you.
This criticism of Roger is pathetic. It’s totally disingenuous to accuse those who love European culture of racism.
There is a fundamental problem with the Brexit debate. It is not the Leavers who are stopping 'soft Brexit'. It is the EU.
The Remainers have been whining about 'soft Brexit' like it means something, but none of them can define in any way what it is, other than the subset who openly support EEA membership. Of course, most Remainers can't support EEA because the requirement for FOM means that it is obviously contrary to the referendum result and they don't like being called on that.
So they pretend that there is another 'soft Brexit' option. But the EU is constantly saying that this is not true.
The EU are obsessed with cherry picking. They define that as not having all the 'benefits' of membership without the 'obligations'.
The EU are the ones saying that they DON'T WANT the whole UK to stay in the CU as a backstop. Why? Because unlike the Remainers they are honest enough to say that CU membership requires full alignment with SM regulations. It is SM membership by proxy. And they won't accept it because it is cherry picking - SM membership without the four freedoms.
Can ANY Remainer on here come up with any evidence that the EU would accept a 'soft Brexit' plan that does not involve accepting FOM? I doubt it. They just duck the issue (or, like HYUFD, just aim for a deal which pretends to halt FOM but in fact leaves it in place).
Brexit was always a binary choice. It is not the Leavers that are saying so - ask your beloved EU.
That's not right. What Barnier is saying is effectively that there's no soft Brexit that's *consistent with TMay's current red lines*. This has been obvious since before she drew them. See his graphic here:
We’re *leaving* the single market, with which our economy is highly integrated, whereas the Euro was about a new project which we had the opportunity to join.
Comparisons between the two are quite facile.
There were/are of course benefits of Euro membership, but not worth the loss of monetary (and now fiscal) autonomy in my view.
But aren't you a supporter of leaving the Customs Union ?
So we'll see what happens when we leave the single market.
So far the doom and disaster pedallers have a record of 0/3 - id din't happen after Britain left the ERM, it didn't happen when Britain didn't join the Euro, it didn't happen after Britain voted Leave.
On Topic (and good afternoon) I think this is an excellent piece by Nick who has a far more balanced and informed view of those he disagrees with than most people on here.
The whole ' if we're more European the EU will move our way ' line disintegrates on this issue.
Blair spent his political capital on immigration instead of on the Euro and got nothing from the EU in return. Just as he would have got nothing from the EU in return if he had somehow achieved joining the Euro.
And just as he got nothing in return when he gave away billions of Rebate money.
This is nuts. If Blair spent any political capital on migration it was on non-EU migration post 97 when they wanted to "rub the right's face in diversity". By the time EU expansion came around he was already on the way out. Absolutely nobody thought the intention of waiving transition controls was to win brownie points in Brussels.
I wonder if he was arrested for "breach of the peace" to protect the cases?
Do people who normally turn up and film defendants in a child rape case have six police officers turn up to arrest them? I wasn't aware that alleged child abusers got anonymity in a way that alleged rapists of adult women dont?
Perhaps as the spectator suggests he was just arrested for being Tommy Robinson?
The issue is not really about whether you agree with Robinson or not but what processes have been applied here and why the media wasn't allowed to cover this initially.
He was arrested at the time for breach of the peace and then it turned into contempt of court.
Why didn't the police give him a warning before hand on filming outside the court before arresting him and then given 13 months in prison with restrictions on reporting.
We’re *leaving* the single market, with which our economy is highly integrated, whereas the Euro was about a new project which we had the opportunity to join.
Comparisons between the two are quite facile.
There were/are of course benefits of Euro membership, but not worth the loss of monetary (and now fiscal) autonomy in my view.
But aren't you a supporter of leaving the Customs Union ?
So we'll see what happens when we leave the single market.
So far the doom and disaster pedallers have a record of 0/3 - id din't happen after Britain left the ERM, it didn't happen when Britain didn't join the Euro, it didn't happen after Britain voted Leave.
For that matter none of the 'doom and disater' pedallers have been right no matter what their issue was:
There wasn't a nuclear armageddon There wasn't a new ice age There wasn't uncontrolled global warming The oil didn't run out There wasn't mass starvation and global rationing The birds / rain forests / oceans weren't all poisoned We didn't all die of AIDS / BSE / Ebola / bird flu. IT systems didn't stop working in 2000 The financial systems didn't all shut down in 2008
While I’ve sympathy with that view, it’s still a bad movie. Good writing leaves space for the imagination of the audience. These explicatory prequels which flesh out interesting characters do exactly the opposite.
And in place of fantastic imagined events, you get explicitly bad depicted events.
The train. Why? In an era of intergalactic space travel at hyperlight speeds, what is the point of a train?
I was thinking more of the characters than the imagined technology, which has always been silly.
One of the things that annoys the shit out of me in "action" films is the ability of the hero to get up and continue to fight after having just suffered a slam into something hard that would smash up his spine.
"Hang on fella, mind if we pick this up again in, say a couple of years - when I've learned to walk again?"
A colleague of mine on the rigs was shot twice in Northern Ireland back in the early 80s. Neither of the shots was to his torso (one in the shoulder and one in his upper le)g. But he said the reaction of his body to being shot was something so extraordinary and so unlike anything he had imagined or seen from films or TV that he has never been able to take anything seriously since. Basically his whole body went into shock and refused to do anything at all. The idea that anyone can get anyone can get shot and then, of their own volition and without help, get up and carry on was, to him, simply unbelievable
Having been in the South of france for the last several weeks it kept occuring to me that if only the 17 million Brexiteers had seen at first hand the practical advantages of being able to move to or through a smorgasbord of cultures and languages without restriction the vote would almost certainly have been different.
Europe is a very special continent. The most cultured and varied in the world. To be an integral part of it is a great privilege and anything that draws us closer and gives us the simplest access the better. Remain should have set its sigts on the common currency and shengen and not allowed the the Little Englanders to frame the debate around a fear of foreigners.
Its a shame you Little Europeans can't see the big wide wonderful world outside of your little 7% of the world's population. And I am sure Asia might have quite a lot to say about your culture and variety. But of course being a parochial Little European all those yellow and brown people look the same to you.
This criticism of Roger is pathetic. It’s totally disingenuous to accuse those who love European culture of racism.
Not at all. It is the exceptionalism that Roger regularly displays that is offensive. The idea that there is such a thing as a 'European' culture and that it is somehow superior to those of the other 93% of the world's population is obnoxious. I am not surprised you rush to his defence.
The whole ' if we're more European the EU will move our way ' line disintegrates on this issue.
Blair spent his political capital on immigration instead of on the Euro and got nothing from the EU in return. Just as he would have got nothing from the EU in return if he had somehow achieved joining the Euro.
And just as he got nothing in return when he gave away billions of Rebate money.
This is nuts. If Blair spent any political capital on migration it was on non-EU migration post 97 when they wanted to "rub the right's face in diversity". By the time EU expansion came around he was already on the way out. Absolutely nobody thought the intention of waiving transition controls was to win brownie points in Brussels.
Yet it was the Eastern European migration that led to Gordon Brown calling for "British Jobs For British Workers" only three months after Blair's departure.
You'll be telling us next that giving billions of Rebate money away also wasn't to win brownie points in Brussels.
We’re *leaving* the single market, with which our economy is highly integrated, whereas the Euro was about a new project which we had the opportunity to join.
Comparisons between the two are quite facile.
There were/are of course benefits of Euro membership, but not worth the loss of monetary (and now fiscal) autonomy in my view.
But aren't you a supporter of leaving the Customs Union ?
So we'll see what happens when we leave the single market.
So far the doom and disaster pedallers have a record of 0/3 - id din't happen after Britain left the ERM, it didn't happen when Britain didn't join the Euro, it didn't happen after Britain voted Leave.
For that matter none of the 'doom and disater' pedallers have been right no matter what their issue was:
There wasn't a nuclear armageddon There wasn't a new ice age There wasn't uncontrolled global warming The oil didn't run out There wasn't mass starvation and global rationing The birds / rain forests / oceans weren't all poisoned We didn't all die of AIDS / BSE / Ebola / bird flu. IT systems didn't stop working in 2000 The financial systems didn't all shut down in 2008
I'm sure I've forgotten a few more.
Political doom and disaster is another matter entirely. Look at Venezuela or the post-USSR states.
We’re *leaving* the single market, with which our economy is highly integrated, whereas the Euro was about a new project which we had the opportunity to join.
Comparisons between the two are quite facile.
There were/are of course benefits of Euro membership, but not worth the loss of monetary (and now fiscal) autonomy in my view.
But aren't you a supporter of leaving the Customs Union ?
So we'll see what happens when we leave the single market.
So far the doom and disaster pedallers have a record of 0/3 - id din't happen after Britain left the ERM, it didn't happen when Britain didn't join the Euro, it didn't happen after Britain voted Leave.
For that matter none of the 'doom and disater' pedallers have been right no matter what their issue was:
There wasn't a nuclear armageddon There wasn't a new ice age There wasn't uncontrolled global warming The oil didn't run out There wasn't mass starvation and global rationing The birds / rain forests / oceans weren't all poisoned We didn't all die of AIDS / BSE / Ebola / bird flu. IT systems didn't stop working in 2000 The financial systems didn't all shut down in 2008
I'm sure I've forgotten a few more.
Just on the single issue of "IT systems didn't stop working in 2000"
1. We put in a lot of effort to avoid it and mitigate it.
2. Some did. There's fairly comprehensive lists of what did go wrong.
There is a fundamental problem with the Brexit debate. It is not the Leavers who are stopping 'soft Brexit'. It is the EU.
The Remainers have been whining about 'soft Brexit' like it means something, but none of them can define in any way what it is, other than the subset who openly support EEA membership. Of course, most Remainers can't support EEA because the requirement for FOM means that it is obviously contrary to the referendum result and they don't like being called on that.
So they pretend that there is another 'soft Brexit' option. But the EU is constantly saying that this is not true.
The EU are obsessed with cherry picking. They define that as not having all the 'benefits' of membership without the 'obligations'.
The EU are the ones saying that they DON'T WANT the whole UK to stay in the CU as a backstop. Why? Because unlike the Remainers they are honest enough to say that CU membership requires full alignment with SM regulations. It is SM membership by proxy. And they won't accept it because it is cherry picking - SM membership without the four freedoms.
Can ANY Remainer on here come up with any evidence that the EU would accept a 'soft Brexit' plan that does not involve accepting FOM? I doubt it. They just duck the issue (or, like HYUFD, just aim for a deal which pretends to halt FOM but in fact leaves it in place).
Brexit was always a binary choice. It is not the Leavers that are saying so - ask your beloved EU.
That's not right. What Barnier is saying is effectively that there's no soft Brexit that's *consistent with TMay's current red lines*. This has been obvious since before she drew them. See his graphic here:
I wonder if he was arrested for "breach of the peace" to protect the cases?
Do people who normally turn up and film defendants in a child rape case have six police officers turn up to arrest them? I wasn't aware that alleged child abusers got anonymity in a way that alleged rapists of adult women dont?
Perhaps as the spectator suggests he was just arrested for being Tommy Robinson?
The issue is not really about whether you agree with Robinson or not but what processes have been applied here and why the media wasn't allowed to cover this initially.
He was arrested at the time for breach of the peace and then it turned into contempt of court.
Why didn't the police give him a warning before hand on filming outside the court before arresting him and then given 13 months in prison with restrictions on reporting.
A cynic might say it is because the authorities want to shut him up and if he is in jail for a year he will be. Still as long as we protect the rights and privacy of the alleged child grooming gangs while out on bail so any possible young victims don't know to keep well away from them until the trial is over.
While I’ve sympathy with that view, it’s still a bad movie. Good writing leaves space for the imagination of the audience. These explicatory prequels which flesh out interesting characters do exactly the opposite.
And in place of fantastic imagined events, you get explicitly bad depicted events.
The train. Why? In an era of intergalactic space travel at hyperlight speeds, what is the point of a train?
I was thinking more of the characters than the imagined technology, which has always been silly.
One of the things that annoys the shit out of me in "action" films is the ability of the hero to get up and continue to fight after having just suffered a slam into something hard that would smash up his spine.
"Hang on fella, mind if we pick this up again in, say a couple of years - when I've learned to walk again?"
A colleague of mine on the rigs was shot twice in Northern Ireland back in the early 80s. Neither of the shots was to his torso (one in the shoulder and one in his upper le)g. But he said the reaction of his body to being shot was something so extraordinary and so unlike anything he had imagined or seen from films or TV that he has never been able to take anything seriously since. Basically his whole body went into shock and refused to do anything at all. The idea that anyone can get anyone can get shot and then, of their own volition and without help, get up and carry on was, to him, simply unbelievable
I've heard a similar story in the past.
I do wonder if the type of injury matters: when I was a kid, a local farmer (and the father of a girl in my year) had his arm ripped off in a bailing machine. (*) This was in the days before mobile phones: he retrieved his arm and walked about a mile to the farmhouse to get help.
We’re *leaving* the single market, with which our economy is highly integrated, whereas the Euro was about a new project which we had the opportunity to join.
Comparisons between the two are quite facile.
There were/are of course benefits of Euro membership, but not worth the loss of monetary (and now fiscal) autonomy in my view.
But aren't you a supporter of leaving the Customs Union ?
So we'll see what happens when we leave the single market.
So far the doom and disaster pedallers have a record of 0/3 - id din't happen after Britain left the ERM, it didn't happen when Britain didn't join the Euro, it didn't happen after Britain voted Leave.
For that matter none of the 'doom and disater' pedallers have been right no matter what their issue was:
There wasn't a nuclear armageddon There wasn't a new ice age There wasn't uncontrolled global warming The oil didn't run out There wasn't mass starvation and global rationing The birds / rain forests / oceans weren't all poisoned We didn't all die of AIDS / BSE / Ebola / bird flu. IT systems didn't stop working in 2000 The financial systems didn't all shut down in 2008
I'm sure I've forgotten a few more.
Political doom and disaster is another matter entirely. Look at Venezuela or the post-USSR states.
That may well be.
But clearly it hasn't happened to the UK despite the predictions of the ERM / Euro / EU supporters since 1992.
For the same reason presumably that the final scene in any number of sci fi films, during which people have been blasting each other with super sophisticated and unlikely weapons, is a fist fight between the goody and the baddy.
Not really.
If your super-sophisticated blaster is out of ammo, you can still punch the guy.
But here they are using a spaceship, to hijack a train. I don't get it.
Out of ammo is an endearingly old fashioned concept.
I was playing Mass Effect: Andromeda with my friend's son and I estimated the lethality and accuracy of the 25th century sniper rifle to be inferior to a Civil War Springfield Model 1861.
It is not out of the question that Blair could have won a referendum on the Euro. Although one voter one vote would undoubtedly have lost, it was widely rumoured he wanted a vote based on the four countries of the UK having equal weighting plus a CBI and TUC block vote on the grounds that as an economic decision their expert(!) views should be given more weight.
The reason he didn't hold one is not because he would have lost, but because Brown refused to consider ceding control of macroeconomic policy to an outside agency. That's why they came up with the famous five tests, none of which in practice were deliverable.
For the same reason presumably that the final scene in any number of sci fi films, during which people have been blasting each other with super sophisticated and unlikely weapons, is a fist fight between the goody and the baddy.
Not really.
If your super-sophisticated blaster is out of ammo, you can still punch the guy.
But here they are using a spaceship, to hijack a train. I don't get it.
Out of ammo is an endearingly old fashioned concept.
I was playing Mass Effect: Andromeda with my friend's son and I estimated the lethality and accuracy of the 25th century sniper rifle to be inferior to a Civil War Springfield Model 1861.
I liked the weapon cool down mechanic that Halo used to use with the Covenant weapons.
On Topic (and good afternoon) I think this is an excellent piece by Nick who has a far more balanced and informed view of those he disagrees with than most people on here.
We’re *leaving* the single market, with which our economy is highly integrated, whereas the Euro was about a new project which we had the opportunity to join.
Comparisons between the two are quite facile.
There were/are of course benefits of Euro membership, but not worth the loss of monetary (and now fiscal) autonomy in my view.
But aren't you a supporter of leaving the Customs Union ?
So we'll see what happens when we leave the single market.
So far the doom and disaster pedallers have a record of 0/3 - id din't happen after Britain left the ERM, it didn't happen when Britain didn't join the Euro, it didn't happen after Britain voted Leave.
For that matter none of the 'doom and disater' pedallers have been right no matter what their issue was:
There wasn't a nuclear armageddon There wasn't a new ice age There wasn't uncontrolled global warming The oil didn't run out There wasn't mass starvation and global rationing The birds / rain forests / oceans weren't all poisoned We didn't all die of AIDS / BSE / Ebola / bird flu. IT systems didn't stop working in 2000 The financial systems didn't all shut down in 2008
I'm sure I've forgotten a few more.
Just on the single issue of "IT systems didn't stop working in 2000"
1. We put in a lot of effort to avoid it and mitigate it.
2. Some did. There's fairly comprehensive lists of what did go wrong.
Some countries / organisations / people put a lot of effort to avoid and mitigate it.
But it was still expected to be a cause of massive disruption.
I might be imagining this but didn't Peter Snow appear on Millenium Night programs expecting to give updates of the consequences of IT systems collapsing only to discover there was nothing to report.
On Topic (and good afternoon) I think this is an excellent piece by Nick who has a far more balanced and informed view of those he disagrees with than most people on here.
Indeed.
We're lucky to have Nick P.
Thank you both!
Are there any other politicians or former politicians who are regulars on other websites ?
There is a fundamental problem with the Brexit debate. It is not the Leavers who are stopping 'soft Brexit'. It is the EU.
The Remainers have been whining about 'soft Brexit' like it means something, but none of them can define in any way what it is, other than the subset who openly support EEA membership. Of course, most Remainers can't support EEA because the requirement for FOM means that it is obviously contrary to the referendum result and they don't like being called on that.
So they pretend that there is another 'soft Brexit' option. But the EU is constantly saying that this is not true.
The EU are obsessed with cherry picking. They define that as not having all the 'benefits' of membership without the 'obligations'.
The EU are the ones saying that they DON'T WANT the whole UK to stay in the CU as a backstop. Why? Because unlike the Remainers they are honest enough to say that CU membership requires full alignment with SM regulations. It is SM membership by proxy. And they won't accept it because it is cherry picking - SM membership without the four freedoms.
Can ANY Remainer on here come up with any evidence that the EU would accept a 'soft Brexit' plan that does not involve accepting FOM? I doubt it. They just duck the issue (or, like HYUFD, just aim for a deal which pretends to halt FOM but in fact leaves it in place).
Brexit was always a binary choice. It is not the Leavers that are saying so - ask your beloved EU.
That's not right. What Barnier is saying is effectively that there's no soft Brexit that's *consistent with TMay's current red lines*. This has been obvious since before she drew them. See his graphic here:
They began in 1994 after the Swiss voted No by 51/49% and continue to this day. The Swiss population too seem to have trouble wanting SM access but not so much FOM. The other 'large' non-EU countries have accepted FOM.
24 years. Imagine still negotiating Brexit in 2040 ...
We’re *leaving* the single market, with which our economy is highly integrated, whereas the Euro was about a new project which we had the opportunity to join.
Comparisons between the two are quite facile.
There were/are of course benefits of Euro membership, but not worth the loss of monetary (and now fiscal) autonomy in my view.
But aren't you a supporter of leaving the Customs Union ?
So we'll see what happens when we leave the single market.
So far the doom and disaster pedallers have a record of 0/3 - id din't happen after Britain left the ERM, it didn't happen when Britain didn't join the Euro, it didn't happen after Britain voted Leave.
Not quite. If we must Brexit - and I think it an act of extreme folly, right up there with Suez - then we should EFTA.
I do see the point of customs union transition, though.
Having been in the South of france for the last several weeks it kept occuring to me that if only the 17 million Brexiteers had seen at first hand the practical advantages of being able to move to or through a smorgasbord of cultures and languages without restriction the vote would almost certainly have been different.
Europe is a very special continent. The most cultured and varied in the world. To be an integral part of it is a great privilege and anything that draws us closer and gives us the simplest access the better. Remain should have set its sigts on the common currency and shengen and not allowed the the Little Englanders to frame the debate around a fear of foreigners.
Its a shame you Little Europeans can't see the big wide wonderful world outside of your little 7% of the world's population. And I am sure Asia might have quite a lot to say about your culture and variety. But of course being a parochial Little European all those yellow and brown people look the same to you.
This criticism of Roger is pathetic. It’s totally disingenuous to accuse those who love European culture of racism.
Not at all. It is the exceptionalism that Roger regularly displays that is offensive. The idea that there is such a thing as a 'European' culture and that it is somehow superior to those of the other 93% of the world's population is obnoxious. I am not surprised you rush to his defence.
Of course there is a “European” culture.
I’m not surprised to see you start with a faulty premise and end up with a deranged and obnoxious conclusion, however.
While I’ve sympathy with that view, it’s still a bad movie. Good writing leaves space for the imagination of the audience. These explicatory prequels which flesh out interesting characters do exactly the opposite.
And in place of fantastic imagined events, you get explicitly bad depicted events.
The train. Why? In an era of intergalactic space travel at hyperlight speeds, what is the point of a train?
I was thinking more of the characters than the imagined technology, which has always been silly.
One of the things that annoys the shit out of me in "action" films is the ability of the hero to get up and continue to fight after having just suffered a slam into something hard that would smash up his spine.
"Hang on fella, mind if we pick this up again in, say a couple of years - when I've learned to walk again?"
The Dark Knight Rises has an interesting spin on that when that's basically what happens, making the rehabilitation a key part of the plot and not simply brushing yourself down and moving on.
Not at all. It is the exceptionalism that Roger regularly displays that is offensive. The idea that there is such a thing as a 'European' culture and that it is somehow superior to those of the other 93% of the world's population is obnoxious. I am not surprised you rush to his defence.
I do think there is such a thing as "European culture" - and I think there is a case for a united Europe based on common culture and values (perhaps oddly its most eloquent case-putter on PB is SeanT!). I also don't think it's wrong to state that European culture is unique, or even especially controversial to claim it has been, historically, uniquely influential globally. (Though the reasons why it attained such deep global influence does say some very bad things about the dark side of that European culture.)
I do think it's myopic to claim that Europe has a unique level of culture, or a unique diversity, and that youngsters in particular would be fast to conflate such eurocentrism (or any deviation from cultural relativism) with racism. Unfairly in my opinion - but I would say that Roger's views are in line with a kind of "pan-European nationalism" whose flavour I find unpalatable. Though like SeanT waxing lyrical, I'm not blind to its attractions, and I do understand it more clearly (and I also think is far less disingenuous, and perhaps less dangerously idealistic) than that alternative pro-EU strand of "universalism" which sees predominantly European/Western values as somehow fundamental or global, and views Eurofederalism as the logical first step towards the abolition of countries and nationalism.
We’re *leaving* the single market, with which our economy is highly integrated, whereas the Euro was about a new project which we had the opportunity to join.
Comparisons between the two are quite facile.
There were/are of course benefits of Euro membership, but not worth the loss of monetary (and now fiscal) autonomy in my view.
But aren't you a supporter of leaving the Customs Union ?
So we'll see what happens when we leave the single market.
So far the doom and disaster pedallers have a record of 0/3 - id din't happen after Britain left the ERM, it didn't happen when Britain didn't join the Euro, it didn't happen after Britain voted Leave.
For that matter none of the 'doom and disater' pedallers have been right no matter what their issue was:
There wasn't a nuclear armageddon There wasn't a new ice age There wasn't uncontrolled global warming The oil didn't run out There wasn't mass starvation and global rationing The birds / rain forests / oceans weren't all poisoned We didn't all die of AIDS / BSE / Ebola / bird flu. IT systems didn't stop working in 2000 The financial systems didn't all shut down in 2008
I'm sure I've forgotten a few more.
Just on the single issue of "IT systems didn't stop working in 2000"
1. We put in a lot of effort to avoid it and mitigate it.
2. Some did. There's fairly comprehensive lists of what did go wrong.
Some countries / organisations / people put a lot of effort to avoid and mitigate it.
But it was still expected to be a cause of massive disruption.
I might be imagining this but didn't Peter Snow appear on Millenium Night programs expecting to give updates of the consequences of IT systems collapsing only to discover there was nothing to report.
OK, let's try this again, sunbeam
Just on the single issue of "IT systems didn't stop working in 2000"
1. We put in a lot of effort to avoid it and mitigate it.
2. Some did. There's fairly comprehensive lists of what did go wrong.
A normal human being would type "Oh. OK. I didn't know that. Thank you".
Not at all. It is the exceptionalism that Roger regularly displays that is offensive. The idea that there is such a thing as a 'European' culture and that it is somehow superior to those of the other 93% of the world's population is obnoxious. I am not surprised you rush to his defence.
I do think there is such a thing as "European culture" - and I think there is a case for a united Europe based on common culture and values (perhaps oddly its most eloquent case-putter on PB is SeanT!). I also don't think it's wrong to state that European culture is unique, or even especially controversial to claim it has been, historically, uniquely influential globally. (Though the reasons why it attained such deep global influence does say some very bad things about the dark side of that European culture.)
I do think it's myopic to claim that Europe has a unique level of culture, or a unique diversity, and that youngsters in particular would be fast to conflate such eurocentrism (or any deviation from cultural relativism) with racism. Unfairly in my opinion - but I would say that Roger's views are in line with a kind of "pan-European nationalism" whose flavour I find unpalatable. Though like SeanT waxing lyrical, I'm not blind to its attractions, and I do understand it more clearly (and I also think is far less disingenuous, and perhaps less dangerously idealistic) than that alternative pro-EU strand of "universalism" which sees predominantly European/Western values as somehow fundamental or global, and views Eurofederalism as the logical first step towards the abolition of countries and nationalism.
Having been in the South of france for the last several weeks it kept occuring to me that if only the 17 million Brexiteers had seen at first hand the practical advantages of being able to move to or through a smorgasbord of cultures and languages without restriction the vote would almost certainly have been different.
Europe is a very special continent. The most cultured and varied in the world. To be an integral part of it is a great privilege and anything that draws us closer and gives us the simplest access the better. Remain should have set its sigts on the common currency and shengen and not allowed the the Little Englanders to frame the debate around a fear of foreigners.
Its a shame you Little Europeans can't see the big wide wonderful world outside of your little 7% of the world's population. And I am sure Asia might have quite a lot to say about your culture and variety. But of course being a parochial Little European all those yellow and brown people look the same to you.
This criticism of Roger is pathetic. It’s totally disingenuous to accuse those who love European culture of racism.
Not at all. It is the exceptionalism that Roger regularly displays that is offensive. The idea that there is such a thing as a 'European' culture and that it is somehow superior to those of the other 93% of the world's population is obnoxious. I am not surprised you rush to his defence.
Of course there is a “European” culture.
I’m not surprised to see you start with a faulty premise and end up with a deranged and obnoxious conclusion, however.
Really. Care to define it? Something that encompasses all the countries of Europe or even all the countries of the EU? We don't even all share the same language roots. What there are are lots of different cultures with some mingling around the edges. But the idea there is a shared 'European' culture is as dumb as the idea there is a shared 'Asian' culture or a shared 'African' culture.
Of course you Little Europeans with your 7% of the world's population like to think you are something special but given most of you have never even travelled outside of Europe I am not surprised you have these delusions.
It is not out of the question that Blair could have won a referendum on the Euro. Although one voter one vote would undoubtedly have lost, it was widely rumoured he wanted a vote based on the four countries of the UK having equal weighting plus a CBI and TUC block vote on the grounds that as an economic decision their expert(!) views should be given more weight.
The reason he didn't hold one is not because he would have lost, but because Brown refused to consider ceding control of macroeconomic policy to an outside agency. That's why they came up with the famous five tests, none of which in practice were deliverable.
The Five Tests were all eminently fudgeable - I have long wondered if Blair ever expected Brown to budge on them somewhere down the line, whether Blair simply made a mistake in allowing Brown to formulate them, or whether Blair was hoping that at some point Brown could be replaced and a more compliant successor would sign off the Tests in the affirmative. There was something very odd about allowing such a roadblock to be established, if Blair was really serious (as he seemed to be) about getting to the heart of Europe.
Any source on that peculiar weighting thing? (I seem to recall Blair promising that NI would get the right to join the Euro on its own if NI voters approved it and GB ones didn't, though do not know how the mechanics of that were supposed to work - unilateral adoption à la Kosovo/Montenegro?)
We’re *leaving* the single market, with which our economy is highly integrated, whereas the Euro was about a new project which we had the opportunity to join.
Comparisons between the two are quite facile.
There were/are of course benefits of Euro membership, but not worth the loss of monetary (and now fiscal) autonomy in my view.
But aren't you a supporter of leaving the Customs Union ?
So we'll see what happens when we leave the single market.
So far the doom and disaster pedallers have a record of 0/3 - id din't happen after Britain left the ERM, it didn't happen when Britain didn't join the Euro, it didn't happen after Britain voted Leave.
For that matter none of the 'doom and disater' pedallers have been right no matter what their issue was:
There wasn't a nuclear armageddon There wasn't a new ice age There wasn't uncontrolled global warming The oil didn't run out There wasn't mass starvation and global rationing The birds / rain forests / oceans weren't all poisoned We didn't all die of AIDS / BSE / Ebola / bird flu. IT systems didn't stop working in 2000 The financial systems didn't all shut down in 2008
I'm sure I've forgotten a few more.
Just on the single issue of "IT systems didn't stop working in 2000"
1. We put in a lot of effort to avoid it and mitigate it.
2. Some did. There's fairly comprehensive lists of what did go wrong.
Some countries / organisations / people put a lot of effort to avoid and mitigate it.
But it was still expected to be a cause of massive disruption.
I might be imagining this but didn't Peter Snow appear on Millenium Night programs expecting to give updates of the consequences of IT systems collapsing only to discover there was nothing to report.
OK, let's try this again, sunbeam
Just on the single issue of "IT systems didn't stop working in 2000"
1. We put in a lot of effort to avoid it and mitigate it.
2. Some did. There's fairly comprehensive lists of what did go wrong.
A normal human being would type "Oh. OK. I didn't know that. Thank you".
I do know that, partly because where I worked we did put effort and money into making sure that we were prepared.
But the multiple IT experts we used at the time all assured us that there was going to be major disruption and that this couldn't be avoided and that some organisations had made no preparations whatsoever. Yet this disruption didn't subsequently happen at least on the scale we had been told it would and not at all in my personal experience.
It is not out of the question that Blair could have won a referendum on the Euro. Although one voter one vote would undoubtedly have lost, it was widely rumoured he wanted a vote based on the four countries of the UK having equal weighting plus a CBI and TUC block vote on the grounds that as an economic decision their expert(!) views should be given more weight.
The reason he didn't hold one is not because he would have lost, but because Brown refused to consider ceding control of macroeconomic policy to an outside agency. That's why they came up with the famous five tests, none of which in practice were deliverable.
The Five Tests were all eminently fudgeable - I have long wondered if Blair ever expected Brown to budge on them somewhere down the line, whether Blair simply made a mistake in allowing Brown to formulate them, or whether Blair was hoping that at some point Brown could be replaced and a more compliant successor would sign off the Tests in the affirmative. There was something very odd about allowing such a roadblock to be established, if Blair was really serious (as he seemed to be) about getting to the heart of Europe.
Any source on that peculiar weighting thing? (I seem to recall Blair promising that NI would get the right to join the Euro on its own if NI voters approved it and GB ones didn't, though do not know how the mechanics of that were supposed to work - unilateral adoption à la Kosovo/Montenegro?)
Sorry, haven't got a source to hand. It was fairly widespread in the Eurosceptic press at the time and I remember the comments because I was doing A-level economics and that included currency trading and international exchange rates.
The whole 'five tests' were as you say fudgeable. The reason I said they couldn't be met is because they had no meaningful criteria for being 'met' (what did/does 'economic convergence' look like)? They were there simply to provide political cover for whichever decision was ultimately made. Which was again very typical of New Labour.
Having been in the South of france for the last several weeks it kept occuring to me that if only the 17 million Brexiteers had seen at first hand the practical advantages of being able to move to or through a smorgasbord of cultures and languages without restriction the vote would almost certainly have been different.
Europe is a very special continent. The most cultured and varied in the world. To be an integral part of it is a great privilege and anything that draws us closer and gives us the simplest access the better. Remain should have set its sigts on the common currency and shengen and not allowed the the Little Englanders to frame the debate around a fear of foreigners.
Its a shame you Little Europeans can't see the big wide wonderful world outside of your little 7% of the world's population. And I am sure Asia might have quite a lot to say about your culture and variety. But of course being a parochial Little European all those yellow and brown people look the same to you.
This criticism of Roger is pathetic. It’s totally disingenuous to accuse those who love European culture of racism.
Not at all. It is the exceptionalism that Roger regularly displays that is offensive. The idea that there is such a thing as a 'European' culture and that it is somehow superior to those of the other 93% of the world's population is obnoxious. I am not surprised you rush to his defence.
Of course there is a “European” culture.
I’m not surprised to see you start with a faulty premise and end up with a deranged and obnoxious conclusion, however.
Really. Care to define it? Something that encompasses all the countries of Europe or even all the countries of the EU? We don't even all share the same language roots. What there are are lots of different cultures with some mingling around the edges. But the idea there is a shared 'European' culture is as dumb as the idea there is a shared 'Asian' culture or a shared 'African' culture.
Of course you Little Europeans with your 7% of the world's population like to think you are something special but given most of you have never even travelled outside of Europe I am not surprised you have these delusions.
There are different types of 'European Culture' depending on different people in different locations.
For example there's a 'beer and football' variety but I doubt that's what Roger had in mind.
Having been in the South of france for the last several weeks it kept occuring to me that if only the 17 million Brexiteers had seen at first hand the practical advantages of being able to move to or through a smorgasbord of cultures and languages without restriction the vote would almost certainly have been different.
Europe is a very special continent. The most cultured and varied in the world. To be an integral part of it is a great privilege and anything that draws us closer and gives us the simplest access the better. Remain should have set its sigts on the common currency and shengen and not allowed the the Little Englanders to frame the debate around a fear of foreigners.
Its a shame you Little Europeans can't see the big wide wonderful world outside of your little 7% of the world's population. And I am sure Asia might have quite a lot to say about your culture and variety. But of course being a parochial Little European all those yellow and brown people look the same to you.
This criticism of Roger is pathetic. It’s totally disingenuous to accuse those who love European culture of racism.
Not at all. It is the exceptionalism that Roger regularly displays that is offensive. The idea that there is such a thing as a 'European' culture and that it is somehow superior to those of the other 93% of the world's population is obnoxious. I am not surprised you rush to his defence.
Of course there is a “European” culture.
I’m not surprised to see you start with a faulty premise and end up with a deranged and obnoxious conclusion, however.
Really. Care to define it? Something that encompasses all the countries of Europe or even all the countries of the EU? We don't even all share the same language roots. What there are are lots of different cultures with some mingling around the edges. But the idea there is a shared 'European' culture is as dumb as the idea there is a shared 'Asian' culture or a shared 'African' culture.
Of course you Little Europeans with your 7% of the world's population like to think you are something special but given most of you have never even travelled outside of Europe I am not surprised you have these delusions.
Peak Tyndall rant.
As a NZer who lives in inner London and works with clients around the world, I’m perhaps a poor candidate to be a “little European”, a term you made up in order to mount another offensive attack on the stupid people you have to inhabit an island with.
Suggest you bone up on a few wiki entries on Christianity, western art, the renaissance, enlightenment and post war social democracy for starters.
Having been in the South of france for the last several weeks it kept occuring to me that if only the 17 million Brexiteers had seen at first hand the practical advantages of being able to move to or through a smorgasbord of cultures and languages without restriction the vote would almost certainly have been different.
Europe is a very special continent. The most cultured and varied in the world. To be an integral part of it is a great privilege and anything that draws us closer and gives us the simplest access the better. Remain should have set its sigts on the common currency and shengen and not allowed the the Little Englanders to frame the debate around a fear of foreigners.
Its a shame you Little Europeans can't see the big wide wonderful world outside of your little 7% of the world's population. And I am sure Asia might have quite a lot to say about your culture and variety. But of course being a parochial Little European all those yellow and brown people look the same to you.
This criticism of Roger is pathetic. It’s totally disingenuous to accuse those who love European culture of racism.
Not at all. It is the exceptionalism that Roger regularly displays that is offensive. The idea that there is such a thing as a 'European' culture and that it is somehow superior to those of the other 93% of the world's population is obnoxious. I am not surprised you rush to his defence.
Of course there is a “European” culture.
I’m not surprised to see you start with a faulty premise and end up with a deranged and obnoxious conclusion, however.
Really. Care to define it? Something that encompasses all the countries of Europe or even all the countries of the EU? We don't even all share the same language roots. What there are are lots of different cultures with some mingling around the edges. But the idea there is a shared 'European' culture is as dumb as the idea there is a shared 'Asian' culture or a shared 'African' culture.
Of course you Little Europeans with your 7% of the world's population like to think you are something special but given most of you have never even travelled outside of Europe I am not surprised you have these delusions.
Having travelled a bit, I would disagree. There is a shared "African culture" and a shared Asian culture too, not to mention a Latin American one.
Cultures are not islands and have large areas of overlap and common features with neighbours in particular, for much the same reasons that our culture overlaps with our European neighbours. We share common ancesters, language roots, history, art, foods, music, political and social systems.
Its a shame you Little Europeans can't see the big wide wonderful world outside of your little 7% of the world's population. And I am sure Asia might have quite a lot to say about your culture and variety. But of course being a parochial Little European all those yellow and brown people look the same to you.
This criticism of Roger is pathetic. It’s totally disingenuous to accuse those who love European culture of racism.
Not at all. It is the exceptionalism that Roger regularly displays that is offensive. The idea that there is such a thing as a 'European' culture and that it is somehow superior to those of the other 93% of the world's population is obnoxious. I am not surprised you rush to his defence.
Of course there is a “European” culture.
I’m not surprised to see you start with a faulty premise and end up with a deranged and obnoxious conclusion, however.
Really. Care to define it? Something that encompasses all the countries of Europe or even all the countries of the EU? We don't even all share the same language roots. What there are are lots of different cultures with some mingling around the edges. But the idea there is a shared 'European' culture is as dumb as the idea there is a shared 'Asian' culture or a shared 'African' culture.
Of course you Little Europeans with your 7% of the world's population like to think you are something special but given most of you have never even travelled outside of Europe I am not surprised you have these delusions.
Having travelled a bit, I would disagree. There is a shared "African culture" and a shared Asian culture too, not to mention a Latin American one.
Cultures are not islands and have large areas of overlap and common features with neighbours in particular, for much the same reasons that our culture overlaps with our European neighbours. We share common ancesters, language roots, history, art, foods, music, political and social systems.
Or you could say there is a shared 'Human culture' with different varieties around the world.
Having travelled a bit, I would disagree. There is a shared "African culture" and a shared Asian culture too, not to mention a Latin American one.
Cultures are not islands and have large areas of overlap and common features with neighbours in particular, for much the same reasons that our culture overlaps with our European neighbours. We share common ancesters, language roots, history, art, foods, music, political and social systems.
We certainly don't share common language roots with Hungarians or Finns. Nor with the Basques for that matter. Nor do we share common ancestors beyond the most basic 'out of Africa' variety. In fact none of the things you mention are shared across all EU states.
As for Africa and Asia I am not sure a Moroccan would agree they have anything much in common with a Zambian. Nor and Iranian with a Laotian.
It is a facile argument based upon ignorance of other peoples. It is also why places like Yugoslavia and the USSR fall apart.
Even one of the most easily recognisable Common Cultures - the Anglosphere with shared language, political and social systems - is no longer really that 'common' after several hundred years of diversification. And it is still a hundred times more aligned than European culture.
As a NZer who lives in inner London and works with clients around the world, I’m perhaps a poor candidate to be a “little European”, a term you made up in order to mount another offensive attack on the stupid people you have to inhabit an island with.
Suggest you bone up on a few wiki entries on Christianity, western art, the renaissance, enlightenment and post war social democracy for starters.
I have probably forgotten more about European history than you ever knew and it wasn't based on anything written in wikipedia either. Back under your rock Gardencrawler. Your stupidity is reaching new bounds today.
Its a shame you Little Europeans can't see the big wide wonderful world outside of your little 7% of the world's population. And I am sure Asia might have quite a lot to say about your culture and variety. But of course being a parochial Little European all those yellow and brown people look the same to you.
This criticism of Roger is pathetic. It’s totally disingenuous to accuse those who love European culture of racism.
Not at all. It is the exceptionalism that Roger regularly displays that is offensive. The idea that there is such a thing as a 'European' culture and that it is somehow superior to those of the other 93% of the world's population is obnoxious. I am not surprised you rush to his defence.
Of course there is a “European” culture.
I’m not surprised to see you start with a faulty premise and end up with a deranged and obnoxious conclusion, however.
Really. Care to define it? Something that encompasses all the countries of Europe or even all the countries of the EU? We don't even all share the same language roots. What there are are lots of different cultures with some mingling around the edges. But the idea there is a shared 'European' culture is as dumb as the idea there is a shared 'Asian' culture or a shared 'African' culture.
Of course you Little Europeans with your 7% of the world's population like to think you are something special but given most of you have never even travelled outside of Europe I am not surprised you have these delusions.
Having travelled a bit, I would disagree. There is a shared "African culture" and a shared Asian culture too, not to mention a Latin American one.
Cultures are not islands and have large areas of overlap and common features with neighbours in particular, for much the same reasons that our culture overlaps with our European neighbours. We share common ancesters, language roots, history, art, foods, music, political and social systems.
Or you could say there is a shared 'Human culture' with different varieties around the world.
Well, obviously that is the ultimate. There certainly are large subsets of cultures within that, often overlapping and with multiple identities.
Clearly Irish and Scottish cultures have common elements, as do British and European cultures, and these are more close than our cultural links with Somalian culture or Vietnamese.
Having been in the South of france for the last several weeks it kept occuring to me that if only the 17 million Brexiteers had seen at first hand the practical advantages of being able to move to or through a smorgasbord of cultures and languages without restriction the vote would almost certainly have been different.
Europe is a very special continent. The most cultured and varied in the world. To be an integral part of it is a great privilege and anything that draws us closer and gives us the simplest access the better. Remain should have set its sigts on the common currency and shengen and not allowed the the Little Englanders to frame the debate around a fear of foreigners.
Its a shame you Little Europeans can't see the big wide wonderful world outside of your little 7% of the world's population. And I am sure Asia might have quite a lot to say about your culture and variety. But of course being a parochial Little European all those yellow and brown people look the same to you.
This criticism of Roger is pathetic. It’s totally disingenuous to accuse those who love European culture of racism.
Not at all. It is the exceptionalism that Roger regularly displays that is offensive. The idea that there is such a thing as a 'European' culture and that it is somehow superior to those of the other 93% of the world's population is obnoxious. I am not surprised you rush to his defence.
Of course there is a “European” culture.
I’m not surprised to see you start with a faulty premise and end up with a deranged and obnoxious conclusion, however.
Really. Care to define it? Something that encompasses all the countries of Europe or even all the countries of the EU? We don't even all share the same language roots. What there are are lots of different cultures with some mingling around the edges. But the idea there is a shared 'European' culture is as dumb as the idea there is a shared 'Asian' culture or a shared 'African' culture.
Of course you Little Europeans with your 7% of the world's population like to think you are something special but given most of you have never even travelled outside of Europe I am not surprised you have these delusions.
There are different types of 'European Culture' depending on different people in different locations.
For example there's a 'beer and football' variety but I doubt that's what Roger had in mind.
Having travelled a bit, I would disagree. There is a shared "African culture" and a shared Asian culture too, not to mention a Latin American one.
Cultures are not islands and have large areas of overlap and common features with neighbours in particular, for much the same reasons that our culture overlaps with our European neighbours. We share common ancesters, language roots, history, art, foods, music, political and social systems.
We certainly don't share common language roots with Hungarians or Finns. Nor with the Basques for that matter. Nor do we share common ancestors beyond the most basic 'out of Africa' variety. In fact none of the things you mention are shared across all EU states.
As for Africa and Asia I am not sure a Moroccan would agree they have anything much in common with a Zambian. Nor and Iranian with a Laotian.
It is a facile argument based upon ignorance of other peoples. It is also why places like Yugoslavia and the USSR fall apart.
Even one of the most easily recognisable Common Cultures - the Anglosphere with shared language, political and social systems - is no longer really that 'common' after several hundred years of diversification. And it is still a hundred times more aligned than European culture.
Do the Welsh figure in your world view, or are they as JS Mill said, an "inferior and more backward portion of the human race" who had the good fortune to be absorbed into the British nation?
Having travelled a bit, I would disagree. There is a shared "African culture" and a shared Asian culture too, not to mention a Latin American one.
Cultures are not islands and have large areas of overlap and common features with neighbours in particular, for much the same reasons that our culture overlaps with our European neighbours. We share common ancesters, language roots, history, art, foods, music, political and social systems.
We certainly don't share common language roots with Hungarians or Finns. Nor with the Basques for that matter. Nor do we share common ancestors beyond the most basic 'out of Africa' variety. In fact none of the things you mention are shared across all EU states.
As for Africa and Asia I am not sure a Moroccan would agree they have anything much in common with a Zambian. Nor and Iranian with a Laotian.
It is a facile argument based upon ignorance of other peoples. It is also why places like Yugoslavia and the USSR fall apart.
Even one of the most easily recognisable Common Cultures - the Anglosphere with shared language, political and social systems - is no longer really that 'common' after several hundred years of diversification. And it is still a hundred times more aligned than European culture.
Do the Welsh figure in your world view, or are they as JS Mill said, an "inferior and more backward portion of the human race" who had the good fortune to be absorbed into the British nation?
They are another culture of equal importance to our own and who, through a long relationship (forced or otherwise) share a lot of elements with us. There is far more overlap between the English and the Welsh than there is, for example, between the English and the Scots.
It is not out of the question that Blair could have won a referendum on the Euro. Although one voter one vote would undoubtedly have lost, it was widely rumoured he wanted a vote based on the four countries of the UK having equal weighting plus a CBI and TUC block vote on the grounds that as an economic decision their expert(!) views should be given more weight.
The reason he didn't hold one is not because he would have lost, but because Brown refused to consider ceding control of macroeconomic policy to an outside agency. That's why they came up with the famous five tests, none of which in practice were deliverable.
The Five Tests were all eminently fudgeable - I have long wondered if Blair ever expected Brown to budge on them somewhere down the line, whether Blair simply made a mistake in allowing Brown to formulate them, or whether Blair was hoping that at some point Brown could be replaced and a more compliant successor would sign off the Tests in the affirmative. There was something very odd about allowing such a roadblock to be established, if Blair was really serious (as he seemed to be) about getting to the heart of Europe.
Any source on that peculiar weighting thing? (I seem to recall Blair promising that NI would get the right to join the Euro on its own if NI voters approved it and GB ones didn't, though do not know how the mechanics of that were supposed to work - unilateral adoption à la Kosovo/Montenegro?)
Sorry, haven't got a source to hand. It was fairly widespread in the Eurosceptic press at the time and I remember the comments because I was doing A-level economics and that included currency trading and international exchange rates.
The whole 'five tests' were as you say fudgeable. The reason I said they couldn't be met is because they had no meaningful criteria for being 'met' (what did/does 'economic convergence' look like)? They were there simply to provide political cover for whichever decision was ultimately made. Which was again very typical of New Labour.
Cheers for the reply. Like I said, I wonder quite who it is that Blair thought would ultimately make the decision... and likewise who Brown thought would ...
There are different types of 'European Culture' depending on different people in different locations.
For example there's a 'beer and football' variety but I doubt that's what Roger had in mind.
Excellent post. Less highfalutin' and more grounded in the common man than the more oft trotted-out examples of Graeco/Roman-Judeo-Christian heritage, related linguistic groups (often rather distantly so, with the Basques and Magyars and Finns and Estonians not quite fitting at all) and joint historical origins of high-brow arts and classical music. I'd add some rather dull and quotidian bits and bobs to that - broadly similar expectations of family structure, for example, or of work-life balance. Weekends falling on Saturday and Sunday. Lots of dairy-based food/drink. General taboo against facial tattoos. Lots of commonalities we don't tend to recognise until we find ourselves in another place that doesn't share them!
Am off to work now. Hope y'all enjoy the rest of the weekend.
Having travelled a bit, I would disagree. There is a shared "African culture" and a shared Asian culture too, not to mention a Latin American one.
Cultures are not islands and have large areas of overlap and common features with neighbours in particular, for much the same reasons that our culture overlaps with our European neighbours. We share common ancesters, language roots, history, art, foods, music, political and social systems.
We certainly don't share common language roots with Hungarians or Finns. Nor with the Basques for that matter. Nor do we share common ancestors beyond the most basic 'out of Africa' variety. In fact none of the things you mention are shared across all EU states.
As for Africa and Asia I am not sure a Moroccan would agree they have anything much in common with a Zambian. Nor and Iranian with a Laotian.
It is a facile argument based upon ignorance of other peoples. It is also why places like Yugoslavia and the USSR fall apart.
Even one of the most easily recognisable Common Cultures - the Anglosphere with shared language, political and social systems - is no longer really that 'common' after several hundred years of diversification. And it is still a hundred times more aligned than European culture.
To take issue with just one of your examples, while Hungarian language is distinct, it is a heavily Catholic country culturally, and shares this with its neighbours. Culture doesnot have to be uniform to be recognizeable.
Having been in the South of france for the last several weeks it kept occuring to me that if only the 17 million Brexiteers had seen at first hand the practical advantages of being able to move to or through a smorgasbord of cultures and languages without restriction the vote would almost certainly have been different.
Europe is a very special continent. The most cultured and varied in the world. To be an integral part of it is a great privilege and anything that draws us closer and gives us the simplest access the better. Remain should have set its sigts on the common currency and shengen and not allowed the the Little Englanders to frame the debate around a fear of foreigners.
Its a shame you Little Europeans can't see the big wide wonderful world outside of your little 7% of the world's population. And I am sure Asia might have quite a lot to say about your culture and variety. But of course being a parochial Little European all those yellow and brown people look the same to you.
This criticism of Roger is pathetic. It’s totally disingenuous to accuse those who love European culture of racism.
Not at all. It is the exceptionalism that Roger regularly displays that is offensive. The idea that there is such a thing as a 'European' culture and that it is somehow superior to those of the other 93% of the world's population is obnoxious. I am not surprised you rush to his defence.
Of course there is a “European” culture.
I’m not surprised to see you start with a faulty premise and end up with a deranged and obnoxious conclusion, however.
Really. Care to define it? Something that encompasses all the countries of Europe or even all the countries of the EU? We don't even all share the same language roots. What there are are lots of different cultures with some mingling around the edges. But the idea there is a shared 'European' culture is as dumb as the idea there is a shared 'Asian' culture or a shared 'African' culture.
Of course you Little Europeans with your 7% of the world's population like to think you are something special but given most of you have never even travelled outside of Europe I am not surprised you have these delusions.
Of course there's a European culture you peasant everyone from and before Shakespeare and a hundred others.
Solo was fine. Perfect for Saturday afternoon with my 10yr old.
People take Star Wars far too seriously. They're kids films. If you accept that , relax and enjoy it
Quite. The original Star Wars was a classic “B” movie - nothing wrong with that - but pretending it is more than it is is silly. The Droid walked off with the film...pity ***SPOILERS***
Having travelled a bit, I would disagree. There is a shared "African culture" and a shared Asian culture too, not to mention a Latin American one.
Cultures are not islands and have large areas of overlap and common features with neighbours in particular, for much the same reasons that our culture overlaps with our European neighbours. We share common ancesters, language roots, history, art, foods, music, political and social systems.
We certainly don't share common language roots with Hungarians or Finns. Nor with the Basques for that matter. Nor do we share common ancestors beyond the most basic 'out of Africa' variety. In fact none of the things you mention are shared across all EU states.
As for Africa and Asia I am not sure a Moroccan would agree they have anything much in common with a Zambian. Nor and Iranian with a Laotian.
It is a facile argument based upon ignorance of other peoples. It is also why places like Yugoslavia and the USSR fall apart.
Even one of the most easily recognisable Common Cultures - the Anglosphere with shared language, political and social systems - is no longer really that 'common' after several hundred years of diversification. And it is still a hundred times more aligned than European culture.
Do the Welsh figure in your world view, or are they as JS Mill said, an "inferior and more backward portion of the human race" who had the good fortune to be absorbed into the British nation?
This illusory concept of some shared European culture is a myth of elites and the Tuscany second home owning class. Europe is a continent of multiple cultures and languages and traditions - not some amorphous single culture or set of values.
The majority of Brits want to live and work in the own country where their multi generational families and friends are. Yes they enjoy the odd two week break to Spain or Greece or wherever but Citizens of Nicaragua also have 3 months visa free travel rights to the EU for tourism so that won't end.
In the end if you are skilled enough or have the right qualifications and are minded so you can move anywhere.
As for values and culture I believe sharing a common language, history and traditions are are pre requisite. We have that with Ireland, Canada, NZ, Australia, Malta and yes even nations where English is a common language like Singapore or Jamaica or India.
I actually feel more at home in Singapore than many parts of Europe - because of that. You can even go to M&S and Virgin active - my UK gym chain - and everyone pretty much can converse in English. Because if you can't communicate how can you share a culture?
Having travelled a bit, I would disagree. There is a shared "African culture" and a shared Asian culture too, not to mention a Latin American one.
Cultures are not islands and have large areas of overlap and common features with neighbours in particular, for much the same reasons that our culture overlaps with our European neighbours. We share common ancesters, language roots, history, art, foods, music, political and social systems.
We certainly don't share common language roots with Hungarians or Finns. Nor with the Basques for that matter. Nor do we share common ancestors beyond the most basic 'out of Africa' variety. In fact none of the things you mention are shared across all EU states.
As for Africa and Asia I am not sure a Moroccan would agree they have anything much in common with a Zambian. Nor and Iranian with a Laotian.
It is a facile argument based upon ignorance of other peoples. It is also why places like Yugoslavia and the USSR fall apart.
Even one of the most easily recognisable Common Cultures - the Anglosphere with shared language, political and social systems - is no longer really that 'common' after several hundred years of diversification. And it is still a hundred times more aligned than European culture.
To take issue with just one of your examples, while Hungarian language is distinct, it is a heavily Catholic country culturally, and shares this with its neighbours. Culture doesnot have to be uniform to be recognizeable.
Mexico is a heavily Catholic country culturally as well. I would certainly not argue that Catholicism is a defining characteristic of Europe. At least I am sure the Scandinavian countries as well as Greece might have something to say about that.
Comments
Good writing leaves space for the imagination of the audience. These explicatory prequels which flesh out interesting characters do exactly the opposite.
We have always been on the outer reaches of Europe, more akin to Poland, Turkey or Switzerland than a member of the inner core like France or Germany and of course we have our Commonwealth links and relationship with the USA too
http://zelo-street.blogspot.co.uk/2018/05/tommy-robinson-and-reporting.html
IANAL, but the way I see it he's an effing idiot.
The train. Why? In an era of intergalactic space travel at hyperlight speeds, what is the point of a train?
Why do the Brexiters keep harming on about the past?
The EU features more prominently in Russian discourse than it ever did before.
Turkey is possibly the only one where it holds true, but is that a good example to seek to emulate?
SPOILERS AHEAD
Season 1. The Sheriff tries to catch the outlaw. Fails.
Season 2. The Sheriff catches the outlaw, by entrapping him.
Season 3. Facing mutually assured destruction, the sheriff and the outlaw make up and have no further reason to interact.
At this point I thought it was over. They have now come up with new adversaries for both protagonists, but we are back into soap opera territory. Things happen for the sake of filling screen time
If you have only ever seen the films, it looks like an error. It only makes sense if you have seen the TV spinoffs already (or look it up online afterwards)
It has made me want to watch Empire Strikes Back again just to see Lando
Those who forget the past may be doomed to repeat it.
For example the Project Fear used to support EU membership had strong echoes from the project fear used to support ERM membership a generation earlier. And both were exposed as a pack of lies by subsequent reality.
Personally I've only seen Black Panther & Infinity War at the cinema this year.
If your super-sophisticated blaster is out of ammo, you can still punch the guy.
But here they are using a spaceship, to hijack a train. I don't get it.
Perhaps as the spectator suggests he was just arrested for being Tommy Robinson?
The issue is not really about whether you agree with Robinson or not but what processes have been applied here and why the media wasn't allowed to cover this initially.
https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/05/was-tommy-robinson-arrested-for-being-tommy-robinson/
Remember, these movies are set a long time ago...
In any case, the idea that we waived the transition controls as some kind of self-sacrifice in order to gain influence is absurd. We did it because the government thought we'd gain an economic advantage over countries that didn't, and establish deeper long-term relations with countries like Poland. Arguably in those terms it worked.
More seasons just increases the tendency of any drama to become Dallas...
The whole ' if we're more European the EU will move our way ' line disintegrates on this issue.
Blair spent his political capital on immigration instead of on the Euro and got nothing from the EU in return. Just as he would have got nothing from the EU in return if he had somehow achieved joining the Euro.
And just as he got nothing in return when he gave away billions of Rebate money.
Wake up, grandad.
We’re *leaving* the single market, with which our economy is highly integrated, whereas the Euro was about a new project which we had the opportunity to join.
Comparisons between the two are quite facile.
There were/are of course benefits of Euro membership, but not worth the loss of monetary (and now fiscal) autonomy in my view.
"Hang on fella, mind if we pick this up again in, say a couple of years - when I've learned to walk again?"
(1) to what extent Blair's victory was based on enthusiasm for his policy platform, rather than Blair's New Labour project being well-presented, personable and less threatening to middle classes, while the public had run out of patience with the Tories,
(2) to whatever extent Blair's victory can be attributed to his policies, to what extent was it his pro-EU thrust rather than e.g. education and the NHS.
If the promised referendum on the Euro had come, I suspect that a concerted effort could have converted some proportion of the public to the europhile cause - but I'm pretty sure it would have lost decisively even so. That's even without considering Britain as a uniquely eurosceptic country - in the 1990s and 2000s there were rejections of the Euro in Sweden and Denmark, and of the EU Constitution in France and the Netherlands. I can't see that Blair fighting a Euro referendum would have done anything other than notch up one more failed referendum. Similarly had the Constitution referendum gone ahead (rather than been cancelled as pointless after the other rejections).
It’s totally disingenuous to accuse those who love European culture of racism.
So we'll see what happens when we leave the single market.
So far the doom and disaster pedallers have a record of 0/3 - id din't happen after Britain left the ERM, it didn't happen when Britain didn't join the Euro, it didn't happen after Britain voted Leave.
We're lucky to have Nick P.
Why didn't the police give him a warning before hand on filming outside the court before arresting him and then given 13 months in prison with restrictions on reporting.
There wasn't a nuclear armageddon
There wasn't a new ice age
There wasn't uncontrolled global warming
The oil didn't run out
There wasn't mass starvation and global rationing
The birds / rain forests / oceans weren't all poisoned
We didn't all die of AIDS / BSE / Ebola / bird flu.
IT systems didn't stop working in 2000
The financial systems didn't all shut down in 2008
I'm sure I've forgotten a few more.
You'll be telling us next that giving billions of Rebate money away also wasn't to win brownie points in Brussels.
1. We put in a lot of effort to avoid it and mitigate it.
2. Some did. There's fairly comprehensive lists of what did go wrong.
I do wonder if the type of injury matters: when I was a kid, a local farmer (and the father of a girl in my year) had his arm ripped off in a bailing machine. (*) This was in the days before mobile phones: he retrieved his arm and walked about a mile to the farmhouse to get help.
(*) Sadly hardly an unheard of injury.
But clearly it hasn't happened to the UK despite the predictions of the ERM / Euro / EU supporters since 1992.
The reason he didn't hold one is not because he would have lost, but because Brown refused to consider ceding control of macroeconomic policy to an outside agency. That's why they came up with the famous five tests, none of which in practice were deliverable.
But it was still expected to be a cause of massive disruption.
I might be imagining this but didn't Peter Snow appear on Millenium Night programs expecting to give updates of the consequences of IT systems collapsing only to discover there was nothing to report.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland–European_Union_relations
They began in 1994 after the Swiss voted No by 51/49% and continue to this day. The Swiss population too seem to have trouble wanting SM access but not so much FOM. The other 'large' non-EU countries have accepted FOM.
24 years. Imagine still negotiating Brexit in 2040 ...
I do see the point of customs union transition, though.
I’m not surprised to see you start with a faulty premise and end up with a deranged and obnoxious conclusion, however.
I do think it's myopic to claim that Europe has a unique level of culture, or a unique diversity, and that youngsters in particular would be fast to conflate such eurocentrism (or any deviation from cultural relativism) with racism. Unfairly in my opinion - but I would say that Roger's views are in line with a kind of "pan-European nationalism" whose flavour I find unpalatable. Though like SeanT waxing lyrical, I'm not blind to its attractions, and I do understand it more clearly (and I also think is far less disingenuous, and perhaps less dangerously idealistic) than that alternative pro-EU strand of "universalism" which sees predominantly European/Western values as somehow fundamental or global, and views Eurofederalism as the logical first step towards the abolition of countries and nationalism.
Just on the single issue of "IT systems didn't stop working in 2000"
1. We put in a lot of effort to avoid it and mitigate it.
2. Some did. There's fairly comprehensive lists of what did go wrong.
A normal human being would type "Oh. OK. I didn't know that. Thank you".
Your 'scholarly' approach is always appreciated.
Of course you Little Europeans with your 7% of the world's population like to think you are something special but given most of you have never even travelled outside of Europe I am not surprised you have these delusions.
Any source on that peculiar weighting thing? (I seem to recall Blair promising that NI would get the right to join the Euro on its own if NI voters approved it and GB ones didn't, though do not know how the mechanics of that were supposed to work - unilateral adoption à la Kosovo/Montenegro?)
I am not a fan of Action films though. I find the emphasis on special effects distracting, and the subtext a bit too proto-fascist in most plots.
But the multiple IT experts we used at the time all assured us that there was going to be major disruption and that this couldn't be avoided and that some organisations had made no preparations whatsoever. Yet this disruption didn't subsequently happen at least on the scale we had been told it would and not at all in my personal experience.
The whole 'five tests' were as you say fudgeable. The reason I said they couldn't be met is because they had no meaningful criteria for being 'met' (what did/does 'economic convergence' look like)? They were there simply to provide political cover for whichever decision was ultimately made. Which was again very typical of New Labour.
For example there's a 'beer and football' variety but I doubt that's what Roger had in mind.
As a NZer who lives in inner London and works with clients around the world, I’m perhaps a poor candidate to be a “little European”, a term you made up in order to mount another offensive attack on the stupid people you have to inhabit an island with.
Suggest you bone up on a few wiki entries on Christianity, western art, the renaissance, enlightenment and post war social democracy for starters.
Cultures are not islands and have large areas of overlap and common features with neighbours in particular, for much the same reasons that our culture overlaps with our European neighbours. We share common ancesters, language roots, history, art, foods, music, political and social systems.
Max Verstappen has overtaken someone without causing a massive pileup.
As for Africa and Asia I am not sure a Moroccan would agree they have anything much in common with a Zambian. Nor and Iranian with a Laotian.
It is a facile argument based upon ignorance of other peoples. It is also why places like Yugoslavia and the USSR fall apart.
Even one of the most easily recognisable Common Cultures - the Anglosphere with shared language, political and social systems - is no longer really that 'common' after several hundred years of diversification. And it is still a hundred times more aligned than European culture.
Clearly Irish and Scottish cultures have common elements, as do British and European cultures, and these are more close than our cultural links with Somalian culture or Vietnamese.
Am off to work now. Hope y'all enjoy the rest of the weekend.
The majority of Brits want to live and work in the own country where their multi generational families and friends are. Yes they enjoy the odd two week break to Spain or Greece or wherever but Citizens of Nicaragua also have 3 months visa free travel rights to the EU for tourism so that won't end.
In the end if you are skilled enough or have the right qualifications and are minded so you can move anywhere.
As for values and culture I believe sharing a common language, history and traditions are are pre requisite. We have that with Ireland, Canada, NZ, Australia, Malta and yes even nations where English is a common language like Singapore or Jamaica or India.
I actually feel more at home in Singapore than many parts of Europe - because of that. You can even go to M&S and Virgin active - my UK gym chain - and everyone pretty much can converse in English. Because if you can't communicate how can you share a culture?