The Brexit Thread

[Sporting]

The right wing nutters are not just nutters: they are seriously dangerous and warped:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics...red-rifles-ban

[Gerontophile]

Anyone linked to this, yet?

The mixed-race population will be trailing this transformation by a half-century.

Fairly sure that they are almost a millenia out, with that one.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

It's not that the centre ground has disappeared in the UK. it's that a huge chunk of the UK media (Insert country name here) has gone full blown fascist and is churning out insane right wing propaganda. Take a look at the Telegraph website, and marvel at the lunacy.

Not sure what you were linking to there (it went to their homepage), but in looking I did spot this delightful headline:

No-deal Brexit: why it could create the perfect buying opportunity for property

It's 'premium' so haven't investigated further, and don't really want to.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I still don't know what the requested vote will be on, and I'm terrified that the possibility of 'no deal', which is almost certainly going to be stopped in parliament, will be opened up again in any such vote. So I'm not going.

That's fine too- I'm not going either.

[Tubby Isaacs]

It's not that the centre ground has disappeared in the UK. it's that a huge chunk of the UK media (Insert country name here) has gone full blown fascist and is churning out insane right wing propaganda. Take a look at the Telegraph website, and marvel at the lunacy. Try and be a remotely centre ground politician in a country where this sort of thing is the norm.

meanwhile this article by James Forsyth in the spectator is a tour de force of utter delusional nonsense.

What does it say about our strategic genius that we failed to foresee Ireland's position, and that the EU would back them? It's literally on our own borders. Why do we think we've got any sort of global expertise?

[Eggchaser]

Her points about the ignorance of the English are important here. Our education system has created this legacy combined with the political refusal to confront the reality of our imperial past. Unless people take enough of an interest to find out for themselves, it's perfectly simple to live an entire lifetime in England assuming that our history consists of 1066, Henry VIII getting a bit broody/horny, Francis Drake sinking Spanish ships in his casual wear, Agincourt, Trafalgar and Waterloo and beating up the Germans in two world wars. In between we showed people all over the world how pretty our flag is.

Literally nothing else has happened here, ever, yet there are all these people who keep being mean to us and looking at us funny. Some of them are even people who we were really, really kind to by showing them how to behave properly and not be savages. It really is mystifying.

I read a lot of history , did it at A-level and have read at least four different Histories of Great Britain and I still can't remember anything about the reign of Queen Anne beyond her being a sturdy lass, something about Churchill and his wife and a square coffin. Even Horrible Histories hasn't helped.

[Tubby Isaacs]

This is about all I know about Anne.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne

Came up on my London guide course.

[Diable Rouge]

I read a lot of history , did it at A-level and have read at least four different Histories of Great Britain and I still can't remember anything about the reign of Queen Anne beyond her being a sturdy lass, something about Churchill and his wife and a square coffin. Even Horrible Histories hasn't helped.

Her maid, Sarah Churchill, may have been her "favourite" in more ways than one.

[johnr]

What we are witnessing may be a nation, not just going into economic recession but a regression into political or cultural infantilism. The centre ground of politics has completely disappeared; the mad, the bad and the fools are now in charge.

I'm not sure that I completely buy that analysis. The 'centre' - which, as we've discussed before, is a movable concept - has its fair share of the mad and the bad, and maybe the fools too. Moving back to whatever the writer thinks the 'centre' is is no panacea.

[N est à?]

There's a film out in the new year about Queen Anne and Sarah Churchill starring Olivia Coleman as the last Stuart monarch in question.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Not sure what you were linking to there (it went to their homepage), but in looking I did spot this delightful headline:

No-deal Brexit: why it could create the perfect buying opportunity for property

It's 'premium' so haven't investigated further, and don't really want to.

I was talking about their front page of links. There were simply too many to quote at the time.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I'm not sure that I completely buy that analysis. The 'centre' - which, as we've discussed before, is a movable concept - has its fair share of the mad and the bad, and maybe the fools too. Moving back to whatever the writer thinks the 'centre' is is no panacea.

I don't think they were saying the centre was a panacea, but that the government would have previously had to take account of it in a way that hasn't been true with Brexit. I don't know what the author's view of Corbyn is- he's not mentioned. He'd probably approve of Labour policy on Brexit much more than the Government and see an appeal to the "centre" in it.

[Snake Plissken]

Dear God she’s rubbish.

https://twitter.com/timloughton/status/1052930252152934400

[Etienne]

Queen Anne had staggering ill-fortune in having children, with 18 pregnancies producing 8 miscarriages, 5 stillbirths, 4 children that died in infancy, and one who died aged 11. It must have been horrendous.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Dear God she’s rubbish.

https://twitter.com/timloughton/status/1052930252152934400

He's joking. Not exactly Kasparov level thinking required to attach an amendment to the budget.

[Snake Plissken]

These are Leavers we’re talking about.

[Tubby Isaacs]

They can arse about in Parliament with the best of them.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Queen Anne had staggering ill-fortune in having children, with 18 pregnancies producing 8 miscarriages, 5 stillbirths, 4 children that died in infancy, and one who died aged 11. It must have been horrendous.

Jesus that's some going. My Grandfather was the only one of eighteen to survive, but the process killed his mother, and my Great Grandfather married twice. I'm not sure but I think that my Great Grandfather might have taken it as a sign that he was being punished for all the super shady stuff he had done during his life.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Dear God she’s rubbish.

https://twitter.com/timloughton/status/1052930252152934400

I hope Laura has a well stocked garden, and is prepared to go vegan.

[Amor de Cosmos]

I'm not sure that I completely buy that analysis. The 'centre' - which, as we've discussed before, is a movable concept - has its fair share of the mad and the bad, and maybe the fools too. Moving back to whatever the writer thinks the 'centre' is is no panacea.

Bear in mind it was written for a Canadian publication. Shifts away from the political centre — wherever it happens to be located — make us very nervous. It's our home.

I liked the article because, from here, it's hard to get a clear sense of what's current with Brexit by reading British media (or even comments on here.) They tend to deal with day to day details, and commentary by people I have no clue about. Most Canadian writing on the subject OTOH is anodyne drivel gleaned from half-an-hour on-line. I could usually do better myself. Mortished is an ex-Brit like me (he wrote for The Times for ages.) He's clearly angry, because he cares. He also communicates what he considers to be important right now in a concise and meaningful way. At least I think he does.

[johnr]

That's all fair enough AdC, I get where you're coming from.

Fwiw, I'm probably as angry as him, but I don't think that centrism, as he might define it, is something to be missed. I've no idea what he wrote for the Times, but most of their journalists have been the mad and bad ones for years now in my eyes, and the fella that pays them is the maddest and baddest of them all. What he sees as 'sensible' probably isn't my cup of tea, but there we are.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The problem with "Centrism" in the UK is that it is defined by trying to split the difference between right and left, and is unmoored from any actual beliefs of its own and is entirely at the mercy of how the extremes define themselves. If the Right decide to go back to the 1840's, then instead of fighting the erosion of rights etc, centrists are bound to split the difference and say "Lets go back to the 1910's."

[Nefertiti2]

Toyota speaks

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

The problem with "Centrism" in the UK is that it is defined by trying to split the difference between right and left, and is unmoored from any actual beliefs of its own

Defined by whom? I'd like to see your working on this. Not that the term "centrist" is used as a badge of self-identification much anyway, mind. The people I think of as "centrist" are defined by a belief in the usefulness of the market as the main generator of most goods and services (outside of key public goods like health and edcuation as well as core state functions), combined with a commitment to a strong welfare state in terms of basic income, health and social care etc. The idea that those people would shift to the 1910s if lots of right wingers adopted the 1840s as the model is just a ludicrous slur.

[Nefertiti2]

Also: Going to war with Iraq.Supporting austerity. Going to any lengths to preventing a Corbyn Labour government coming to power.