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    Speaking of Dodgy Maltese Mifsuds, it appears that Joseph Mifsud, the bloke who met with Papadopolous and claimed to be friendly with Sergei Lavrov, and is therefore a potential key link between Trump and Putin, has just vanished into thin air.

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      The prof Stirling Uni were employing to do fuck all? He’ll be found under London Bridge in a “suicide” like the Vatican/Mob banker no doubt.

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        This is probably the highpoint of Michael Mifsud's career.

        That's Gerard pique that he's ripping to pieces.

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          Something i have come across a lot amongst a particular set of Leavers (and indeed climate change deniers) made of late middle-aged men, comfortably off, well educated and with a certain degree of intelligence is that of cognitive bias to explain away consensus amongst experts/specialists. Essentially their very expertise make them blind to an unseen reality depicted by a small amount of contrarians within a certain field of research whilst the group i mention sees itself as resolutely impartial and able to see beyond what the expert field sees. The amateur researcher is the true holder of truth and knowledge. It is quite fascinating, the more you present them with evidence, the more this validates their opinions.

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            Do these people like to read Detective stories where an amateur outwits the Plod? The Gentleman Amateur, or even the Private investigator to the wealthy is quite the hero of detective fiction. In America they're the heroes often because the Cops are bent, but in the UK it's because the cops are basically just working class and stupid.

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              Aye, for sure not a bent cop to be seen any of the Brexit lands. Or indeed Ireland. Just why are the world’s most stupid master criminals still having their murder feud spraying across Dublin? Does yer man still do stretch hummer/minibuses paid by companies for commuting from the centre to hellish business parks? Fuckin CAB the fucker again, and the other psycho.

              EDIT: fuck sake apols Berba, you were meaning the differing cults of the amateur and class in fiction and I need my bed. And fucking sleep.
              Last edited by Lang Spoon; 08-03-2018, 21:27.

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                There is a book called 'The cult of the amateur' about this, a very Victorian thing it appears.

                There is a guy i came across, who is dead keen on that notion that everyone involved in climate research, economics research is essentially doing so to get the grants and is unable to think, ahem, outside the box... Interestingly he suffered himself from intrusions into his work (he was high up the ladder in state education) by politicians coming up with uninformed crap on how to challenge preconceived notions and bring changes for change sake. I wonder if one day a moment of clarity will occur to him....

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                    Originally posted by Moonlight shadow View Post
                    There is a book called 'The cult of the amateur' about this, a very Victorian thing it appears.

                    There is a guy i came across, who is dead keen on that notion that everyone involved in climate research, economics research is essentially doing so to get the grants and is unable to think, ahem, outside the box... Interestingly he suffered himself from intrusions into his work (he was high up the ladder in state education) by politicians coming up with uninformed crap on how to challenge preconceived notions and bring changes for change sake. I wonder if one day a moment of clarity will occur to him....
                    My dad is the sort of guy who loves to watch sherlock holmes, (big fan of jeremy brett) or Miss marple or Hercules Poirot, and the house is full of genuinely ancient paperbacks,The thing is that for him Miss Marple, is just one of those sharp eyed little old ladies who's a bit sharper than the rest. Holmes has superpowers, and He and poirot are professionals. It's the Gentlemen detectives that he can't stand. and He is prone to pointing out "Here comes the upper working class/lower middle class thicko professional to be outwitted by the gentleman amateur."

                    Weirdly both my parents were big fans of Maigret. I discovered that a couple of old books that I had always assumed were my dad's belonged to the parent I had no idea read fiction at all. Those books are brilliant btw, and the Michael Gambon adaptations shot in prague are utterly fantastic.

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                      Who are the gentleman amateurs in fiction that these characters can be contrasted with? Campion is in the amateur camp but he's very clearly a very clever man who tries to avoid using his aristocratic connections. I guess Wimsey is the big one.

                      Man the Campion books are good.

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                        amd Even the Holmes ones go in for it a bit. The thing is that I don't really pay too much attention. An awful lot of victorian and edwardian books can basically be summed up as remarkably clueless posh cunts who think they're quite clever, pratting about. There's only so much of it I can take.

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                          MR James is great creeping horror, but isn’t much less awful than Lovecraft except his different nasty prejudices (against the working class, leering rustics or the lower middle class spivs on the make) against the Lower Orders and golfing classes messing with things beyond their ken are better hidden and with prose of a less vivid purple hue. Mark Fisher had a really good essay on the uncanny in early The Fall and the likes of James. How Smith is like the voice of the despised threat in such stories become narrator. Rambling again.
                          Last edited by Lang Spoon; 08-03-2018, 23:24.

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                            a rare bad article by Gary Younge. which contains an opening paragraph that shows he Doesn't understand how power is shared out in the EU, and why. How referenda work in general, and the limits of what you can use a referendum for.

                            I didn’t like the fact that the European parliament could not initiate legislation; that turnout for European parliamentary elections had fallen 30% since the first elections in 1979; the way countries that voted “the wrong way” on EU referendums were effectively instructed to vote again (Denmark 1992; Ireland 2001, 2008) and get it right; the fact that Greece’s resounding democratic rejection of the terms of its bailout (2015) was treated with such contempt.

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                              That sort of nonsense is extremely common on the Old Left, I'm afraid. And there'll no shortage of people around Corbyn who think that.

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                                I don't care what your motivations are, or that they're coming from a good place or not, but basing your criticisms of the EU on a fundamental misunderstanding of how it works is never a good place to start. The EU isn't a federal state deriving its democratic mandate directly from the people. It's a collection of sovereign states that gather to pool their sovereignty in certain areas to organize certain things on a Europe wide scale. It derives its democratic mandate from representative democracy within each of the member states. If you rhink that the EU is undemocratic and opaque, the chances are you are actually talking about your own government, and you are confusing the two.

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                                  I like the way he wants the Parliament to be more powerful but moans about turnout in European Elections.

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                                    I don't see the inconsistency there. Surely turnout is low because the parliament isn't very powerful.

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                                      yeah there's nothing internally wrong with that. I'd even agree with that, but that's a description of the Federal Europe that I would like to see, rather than anything that you should expect from the European union as it is currently constituted. That's not a criticism of the European union, that's wishing that it was something else entirely.

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                                        Well there's an argument to be had that a fully federated, democratic and accountable European state would be a much better thing than the currently-constituted EU. The contention that the EU isn't currently massively popular across the continent seems undeniable.

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                                          Highest percentage of people wanting to leave the EU when polled last Summer were Greece and Italy, with only 35%.

                                          https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-s...endum-support/

                                          Lots of support for a referendum on membership though- bizarrely, highest in Spain, where only 13% want to leave because EU membership was seen as clinching Spain's status as a modern democracy.

                                          So fairly popular, but there's enough of a rump in some countries to tempt struggling leaders to "do a Cameron".

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                                            Again, I don't see the inconsistency. The idea that the difference between what 'we' can 'exopect' and what 'we' 'want' is the space of politics, unless you're a technocratic anti-democrat.

                                            I don't buy this verison of the EU you're positing Berba. It was true, just about, until Masstricht,but sincethe European Parliament has had co-determination powers, it's created a site of popular sovereignty. The EU's problem remains a mismatch between it's grandiose visions for a federal state, and the accompanying rhetorical positions, and the singular failure to move in that direction on the level of a pan-European polity by the member states. The EU is too much of a federal state for them, and not enough of one for the EU's citizens. This push-me, pull-me dynamic has passed for progress and remains the one club in the bag for the EU institutions.

                                            Essentially, the problem Wynne Godley outlined in 1992, and the institutional federalist party within the EU felt, laughably, would be solved by time.

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                                              Highest percentage of people wanting to leave the EU when polled last Summer were Greece and Italy, with only 35%.
                                              That wasn't my contention. I said the EU isn't massively popular, not that most people want to leave the EU. They're different and not mutually exclusive positions

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                                                Well there's an argument to be had that a fully federated, democratic and accountable European state would be a much better thing than the currently-constituted EU. The contention that the EU isn't currently massively popular across the continent seems undeniable.

                                                yes, there is definitely an argument for that. But that's making a case that the EU should become an entirely different type of organization. He's criticizing the EU for not having many of the characteristics of a federal state, when it's no such thing, before going on to list a bunch of ways in which europeans don't seem keen on aspects of a european federal state. Complaining that the EU parliament can't initiate legislation is a bit like complaining that Jucnker doesn't have the antlers you'd expect him to have if he were a reindeer.

                                                the whole point of Gary Younge articles is that they're not riven with basic misunderstandings and logical inconsistencies. This one is so rare, and so bad it merits highlighting.

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                                                  I think it's the most meaningful stat really.

                                                  But the same survey (by Pew) found positive views of the EU.

                                                  https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-s...endum-support/

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                                                    Again, I don't see the inconsistency. The idea that the difference between what 'we' can 'exopect' and what 'we' 'want' is the space of politics, unless you're a technocratic anti-democrat.

                                                    The issue is that you have to specify clearly what you want, and it has to be consistent and coherent. You can't simultaneously criticize something from opposite sides. You run the risk of contradicting yourself.

                                                    The thing is that power in the EU resides primarily with the Member govts. Not with the Commission. or the parliament. Countries are the ones that can shoot down a proposal in flames with no comeback. The Commission is there to come up with proposals on behalf of the council of Ministers, which is where the individual countries can decide what they want and don't want and the parliament can rubber stamp it. An EU where the Parliament can initiate legislation would represent a monumental shift of power from national govts, to the centre. And literally no-one anywhere has agreed to or signed up for that. The Democratic legitimacy of the EU comes from the use of representative democracy within the member states, rather than direct democracy on the basis of a federal constitution.

                                                    If Gary Younge knew where the power lies, he would have written an article saying "The problems that people have with the Democratic nature of the EU have to do with the operation of representative democracy in the country in which they live." (Because people's interactions with the EU differ so hugely from country to country, and generally speaking the EU forces govts to be far more open and honest that they otherwise would be. This is certainly how we experience the EU in Ireland.

                                                    and the accompanying rhetorical positions, and the singular failure to move in that direction on the level of a pan-European polity by the member states. The EU is too much of a federal state for them, and not enough of one for the EU's citizens. This push-me, pull-me dynamic has passed for progress and remains the one club in the bag for the EU institutions.

                                                    That's not a bad way of looking at it. From my perspective it seems to come down to this. Individual Govts want the benefit of EU cooperation but each of them wants to retain the ability to do the dirt in their own country, so they agree all the fancy bits that everyone can agree are deadly, but refuse to implement proper oversight, or regulation that would limit their ability to do the dirt on behalf of their clients. This works out well and good until inevitably the lack of supervision means that eventually it blows, up and in the moment of Crisis all the countries agree that hanging onto the ability to do the dirt has lead to their ruin, so they change the rules. But then there comes a period of time where they wish they could carry on doing the dirt, that their voters expect them to do, but they're not allowed any more, and that's when people start to complain about an over reaching eu, and quite frankly that's when I reach for my water gun.

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