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Post by mrsonde on Dec 9, 2018 18:07:26 GMT 1
As many as one in five of the UK's 10,000-plus dairy farms could be forced to close this year, as falling milk prices and rising debt reach crisis levels for farmers across the country.... Well, hoorah, as far as I'm concerned. I can give you the overwhelming arguments, from the health, moral, environmental, or economic perspective, if you want. To me they're too obvious to bother with. From the point of view of this argument, farmers are perhaps the biggest beneficiaries of Brexit - or would have been, if we'd ever been able to manage it. There's hardly any money to be made in dairy, or red meat farming - as a business model, it's a crazy idea - and technological advances are only around a very near corner where there can be no possible future in it at all. Vegetable and fruit growing, on the other hand - if we can apply tariffs on European foodstuffs, every farmer in Britain, including even crofters these days, will be really in the money, for any foreseeable future. Indeed. very instructive to ask how on earth such a catastrophic decline could have happened, or even be allowed to happen, given that in 1960 we were the biggest car exporter in the world. Perhaps such a huge topic requires another thread. Now, what I've just pontificated about cheese applies just as much - even more, probably - to cars. Nissan aren't going to move anywhere - on the contrary. They know that if we can slap tariffs on German and French imports, their competitiveness and market share will rise pari passu. The British consumer isn't going to stop buying cars. This is why the Japanese and the Germans and French have massively invested in new plant here since the vote. In fact, inward investment into the UK since the vote exceeds the rest of the Eurozone put together. I know - you can actually still buy a British car, just. One of my closest and oldest friends works in that industry. Could he ever expand enough to start competing as a major national business again, like all those old marques that I grew up with as a kid? No chance - not while the market is so crowded out by the massively subsidised (not really so secretly) Germans and French, not while our governments follow the state-aid rules while VW, BMW, Peugeot, Renault, Fiat etc almost openly laugh at our absurd rectitude. Well, some of it, to service that market - that's fair enough. Nissan, Panasonic, Ford etc. should be here, if they want to share our market: and we're still the largest foreign investor in the world, I believe (or we were until about a decade ago - it's probably the Chinese now.) Dyson is a huge, phenomenal success story - any Government, or anyone with any pretensions to be interested in economics and what business needs to succeed, should first and foremost be listening to him, and his protege, not smug pen-pushing tossers like Ted Heath, Ken Clarke or, even worse!, John "Garden Gnome" Major.
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Post by aquacultured on Dec 10, 2018 1:50:50 GMT 1
I'm assuming your 'you/you're' below is a rhetorical one and not directed at me personally. Tho it's your usual stereotype of me. If you're employed by the public sector, or your employment depends on its patronage, the chances are extremely high that you're a firm Remainer, and are genuinely frightened at the thought of the democratic will being carried through. You've been trained throughout your working life to value security above all else, to fear change, to fear competition, to welcome the growth in State power and to look to it for your well-being. If you're self-employed or employed in manufacturing or depend on selling your skills in such, the chances are very high you voted Leave. ... You're part of the enormous State machinery, where your presence is paid for by the taxpayer - pretty much whatever you do, once your foot is in the door - or you have to justify your earnings by the quality of your efforts and the results they can produce. It's deeply significant, on your whole worldview, and your whole psychological attitude.
As you know - as I've told you - I've been self-employed or employed in manufacturing or depend[ed] on selling [my] skills in such for longer than I was in the Civil Service, which I haven't been in for over 20 years. The chances were never very high that I'd vote Leave. That was because I voted Leave in 1975 and gradually realised I'd been wrong. Whatever the fat cats were getting mainly thru opportunism, the workers were getting an equivalent thru lasting structural change. Experience is a good teacher. And my experience across public, private, voluntary etc sectors hasn't led me to judge people according to your stereotypes. Because they're just that, and no use to thinking people. And a greater threat to this country's values even than some of the nonsense you talk.
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Post by mrsonde on Dec 10, 2018 11:56:05 GMT 1
I'm assuming your 'you/you're' below is a rhetorical one and not directed at me personally. Tho it's your usual stereotype of me. If you're employed by the public sector, or your employment depends on its patronage, the chances are extremely high that you're a firm Remainer, and are genuinely frightened at the thought of the democratic will being carried through. You've been trained throughout your working life to value security above all else, to fear change, to fear competition, to welcome the growth in State power and to look to it for your well-being. If you're self-employed or employed in manufacturing or depend on selling your skills in such, the chances are very high you voted Leave. ... You're part of the enormous State machinery, where your presence is paid for by the taxpayer - pretty much whatever you do, once your foot is in the door - or you have to justify your earnings by the quality of your efforts and the results they can produce. It's deeply significant, on your whole worldview, and your whole psychological attitude.
No, it wasn't Cordelia - it's perfectly standard English, quite clear in its context. I do not exclude you from the generalisation, however - you have shown yourself quite unable to even begin to articulate any reason you so firmly believe in remaining, or respond in the least to any counter-argument. Personally, I don't believe you. I wouldn't normally be so rudely sceptical, but seeing as you've been so often with no justification at all about me I feel free to be, and follow the evidence. I no more believe anyone in manufacturing would employ you as a consultant on anything than I believe you could possibly earn your living as a writer. I don't believe Theresa May could earn a living as a stripper either. As I say, the psychological effects are profound. I know - that's what I've just explained. Try and keep up. That was when we were in the Common Market, and the whole Yes campaign was solemnly promising that we would never lose any of our national sovereignty. It was purely a trading bloc, we were promised. I can see why that wouldn't have appealed to you, but Delors' and Kohl's far more honest prospectus to form a United States of Europe would have had you rolling over like a puppy. Who do you write for? The Guardian for Kids & Dummies Edition? As I said - that's the way things are, however much you don't like it. And anyone who has had even a small degree of experience across those sectors knows it all too well. They're the facts. You are not a thinking person, as you make abundantly clear every time you try to write something. You can't even quote someone else's thoughts without royally fucking them up. What nonsense do I talk? One example, please, and I'll be kind and patient enough to explain to you why you're mistaken, again. Now see - that's how a thinking person converses. Reasons, facts, argumentation - comprehensible writing.
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Post by mrsonde on Dec 10, 2018 12:18:44 GMT 1
But for once, in many a long year, you have struggled to express an opinion that is not merely a limp attempt at insult, and we should patiently tickle any sign of such a bite, however unlikely it will be responded to.
Kindly expand a little on your astonishing claim that since 1975 "the workers" have benefited from the EEC/EU through - sorry, thru - "lasting structural change". I mean - in any way. I won't ask you to justify your assertion that these benefits have equalled what the "fat cats" have accrued: I'm not cruel.
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Post by alancalverd on Dec 10, 2018 14:03:23 GMT 1
Perhaps I can help.
The workers in Germany, Poland, Romania and Hungary have benefitted through lasting structural change that gave them privileged access to a British market for manufactured goods (since we are now a "service" economy, thanks to successive government policies) and higher wages for state-educated tradesmen and professionals, particularly in construction and healthcare. Irish workers, who had always had free access to the UK market for goods and labor, benefitted from the UK's contribution to their public roads and railways. Farmers and fishermen throughout Europe (but not the UK) benefitted from guaranteed market prices, access to UK coastal waters, and government subsidies (which in the UK were paid for sterilising land and scrapping boats, and in the Netherlands, for building bigger boats).
Prior to EU regulations, the Health and Safety Executive consulted the Trades Union Congress and various UK-based industry bodies such as the Safety In Mines Research Establishment to produce workable regulations that saved lives. They now implement EU Directives that aim only to harmonise regulations across the EU, and make a profit. In at least one instance where a national government wanted to tighten safety regulations (Belgium, exposure of trainees to ionising radiation) they were prosecuted in the European Court.
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Post by mrsonde on Dec 10, 2018 16:10:19 GMT 1
Perhaps I can help. The workers in Germany, Poland, Romania and Hungary have benefitted through lasting structural change that gave them privileged access to a British market for manufactured goods (since we are now a "service" economy, thanks to successive government policies) and higher wages for state-educated tradesmen and professionals, particularly in construction and healthcare. Irish workers, who had always had free access to the UK market for goods and labor, benefitted from the UK's contribution to their public roads and railways. Farmers and fishermen throughout Europe (but not the UK) benefitted from guaranteed market prices, access to UK coastal waters, and government subsidies (which in the UK were paid for sterilising land and scrapping boats, and in the Netherlands, for building bigger boats). Well, we pay 15% of the EU's budget, someone somewhere surely must benefit from all that loot. But, let's bend over a bit to help Aqua get his inchoate thoughts out in a way that follows the normal rules of language: I believe he meant that UK workers somehow benefited from this so-called structural change. I may be wrong, who knows. And I see wandering around Bummers 'n' Queers (as we used to call it when I was at school - hard to forget: it was the fagstop on the cross-country run) that the whole opening foyer is stacked high with f#*king Roundup, now proven in court to be cancerogenic in the US - and that's the least of its toxicity. I presume this must be going on throughout Europe - Monsanto dumping the stuff having lost its biggest market, because the legal review in Europe has been gummed up for over five years because the "scientists" employed to compile the report have been told by the mafiosi funded Commission to sit on it. Untold thousands of French, German, Spanish, Italian etc children have in that time been exposed to unnecessary glyphosate poisoning, and thousands of European farm labourers must have contracted unnecessary cancers. This is how much we rely on the EU for our environmental protection, and "workers' rights".
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Post by nickrr on Dec 10, 2018 22:10:10 GMT 1
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Post by aquacultured on Dec 11, 2018 1:48:21 GMT 1
But for once, in many a long year, you have struggled to express an opinion that is not merely a limp attempt at insult, and we should patiently tickle any sign of such a bite, however unlikely it will be responded to. Kindly expand a little on your astonishing claim that since 1975 "the workers" have benefited from the EEC/EU through - sorry, thru - "lasting structural change". I mean - in any way. I won't ask you to justify your assertion that these benefits have equalled what the "fat cats" have accrued: I'm not cruel. Everything I know about gratuitous insult, I owe to you. As for the workers, alan has queered my pitch. ie, I submit everything he left out.
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Post by aquacultured on Dec 11, 2018 2:18:20 GMT 1
Anyway, when Trump is trumping, and Putin is putining, why would anyone in the EU want to go it alone?
(I know, mrsonde, you think I'm naive or childish, but I do believe these questions matter. Being clever-clever isn't everything. I learn a lot from my grandchildren.)
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Post by mrsonde on Dec 11, 2018 17:02:30 GMT 1
Yes, really. The meta-analysis (Sky Data) of the largest ten polls in November shows that if the same vote was taken today it would be 52 to stay, 48 to leave. This is well within any poll's margin of error, and less than the winning margin than all the polls predicted immediately before the last vote. As with tories in a general election, or Trump woters, Leavers prefer to stay schtum, given for just one obvious reason the general Establishment and media prejudice against them. John Curtice knows this full well: he often makes the same point himself. This factor has been operative since the early 60s - it's grown to be as reliable as factor as any there is (since the 92 election) of now more than a 6% swing. I'm also fairly astonished myself that Sky's poll today has 42% of people judging May as more reliable to take the country through Brexit, against a paltry 22% for Corbyn! That's amazing, and very seriously bad news - fatal, I would say - for Labour. It's amazing enough that at this stage of the parliamentary election cycle, after eight years of incompetent Tory administrations, in the depths of evident governmental collapse, the Tories are 1% ahead in the general election polls! At the very least, I'm confident in analysing these findings as very strongly indicative that a sizeable majority of the electorate totally reject Labour's transparently betraying proposals to stay in the Customs Union, closest possible ties with the Single Market, blah blah blah.
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Post by mrsonde on Dec 11, 2018 17:08:01 GMT 1
But for once, in many a long year, you have struggled to express an opinion that is not merely a limp attempt at insult, and we should patiently tickle any sign of such a bite, however unlikely it will be responded to. Kindly expand a little on your astonishing claim that since 1975 "the workers" have benefited from the EEC/EU through - sorry, thru - "lasting structural change". I mean - in any way. I won't ask you to justify your assertion that these benefits have equalled what the "fat cats" have accrued: I'm not cruel. Everything I know about gratuitous insult, I owe to you. Oh no - as with Jean and Facinating, you're quite mistaken. You started the insults, and also like them you're still just as inept at them as when you began, despite all the opportunities I've given you in response to improve. In fact, since you've been on this board, I don't believe you've done anything else except insult - you never engage in conversation, never respond to questions put to you, or rational points made in argument. You are the very definition of a troll. I rest my case.
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Post by mrsonde on Dec 11, 2018 17:17:58 GMT 1
Anyway, when Trump is trumping, and Putin is putining, why would anyone in the EU want to go it alone? What? Is this supposed to be a serious point? I do, very much so. But it's much worse than that. You're also either woefully historically ignorant, or your general beliefs on international politics are wholly unprincipled and destructive of every genuine advance in what constitutes Western civilisation, fought for over centuries. This wouldn't matter a jot of course, except a large section of the population, especially amongst what passes as its intelligentsia these days, shares the same ignorance, lack of principle, and utter sedition against the values that many many millions of people have fought and died and sacrificed for. This is perhaps the one truly valuable achievement of this whole Brexit process - it has bought screaming into full light for everyone to clearly see how deep and extensive this trahison des clercs has now become, and how unless we quickly find ourselves another Churchill to save us from this disgraceful, shameful, treacherous folly, this time we're really going down. What questions? What the American President and Russian Premier do makes it arguable that we stay in the EU? On what basis? Defence? Because the EU is such a powerful and reliable military ally, is it? Trump's tariffs? He's told us - he has no wish to involve us in that (wholly justifiable) spat with the EU, and if we were out we wouldn't be. I have no idea what you might mean be "putining", or what on earth you might believe the EU has done about it. On the contrary, the UK has more power to restrain whatever it is you think Putin is doing against our interests than the EU - it's largely EU legislation that's preventing us! I sincerely hope the traffic isn't two-way.
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Post by alancalverd on Dec 11, 2018 20:57:55 GMT 1
When EUrope falls apart, it has historically been Britain "going it alone" that puts it back together.
I think Sky's poll reflects an awful truth: May has produced exactly the sort of BRINO that as a committed Remainer, she set out to achieve: her parting words will be "I told you so". Corbyn is a windsock (a windbag with no bottom), incapable of actually doing anything except blowing in the wind of a parliamentary party that sees its future in arsekissing the EU, because it's easier to accept rule from Brussels than to accept liability for running the country.
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Post by aquacultured on Dec 12, 2018 1:34:36 GMT 1
mrsonde
As to insults, it's all available on the record - for jean, fascinating and me, and anyone else. And you, of course.
Anyway, I'm glad you've acknowledged you're the best insulter around.
Nay, I always enjoyed your satirical pieces, and I wish you well. Whippersnappers needn't apply to replace you.
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Post by mrsonde on Dec 12, 2018 6:18:17 GMT 1
When EUrope falls apart, it has historically been Britain "going it alone" that puts it back together. Indeed. Not so "historically" either. It's merely the case that a shocking number of people - young people especially - are completely ignorant of these matters or, like Aqua, have completely forgotten or wilfully misinterpreted their significance. There was an investigative poll about ten years ago, on the anniversary of WWII's outbreak, which showed that one in ten teenagers believed we fought France in the war and thought "We shall fight on the beaches" was in a speech given by Hitler. A quarter of them believe Nazi Germany's allies were the USA and Switzerland. www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/6034749/Teens-ignorant-of-WWII-poll-finds.htmlKathleen Burk, professor of modern history at University College London, said she was not surprised by the results: "Even when I get extremely intelligent students I find I more or less have to tell them their history.
"It is astonishing that there isn't more emphasis on the Second World War in schools. It is part of the British identity.
"It has created the political culture of Britain since then. If you don't know where you come from then you can't know what is going on now.
"It is a subset of a wider problem. It is the lack of a continuous or overall understanding of British history that I find astonishing.
"There is not as much emphasis on British history in Britain as there is US history in the US and French history in France, partly because Britain has always been more open to foreign influences.
"It is very much a shame. You don't have to be right wing to think it is important for people to understand this period.This collective amnesia - the result I believe of a deliberate liberal-left policy to "internationalise" the population and to long-term deconstruct any vestige of the nation state - is staggeringly dangerous. I've spent far too much of the past two years wearily travelling back and forth to Germany and in that short time I've seen how volatile the mood of the German people really is - the central value of the State is still stability, no doubt, but in fact the national psyche is still surprisingly reactive - and this is probably why stability is so relentlessly drummed from the political pulpit. The engineers and designers I mainly interact with over there are very aware of this, and express their alarm. They also express, with great emphasis, their embarrassment at the dominance Germany has come to wield over Europe - they do not want it, they did not seek it, they find the thought genuinely frightening, but they can't see how to undo it: as a nation, as a people, they simply are more powerful and capable than everyone else, so it's really in the natural order of things that Germany will, and perhaps should, you can see them thinking, come to lead. I've wondered whether that's true. I do believe now that she set out from the start to deceive and manipulate - it's impossible not to conclude as much. But whether she thought she'd end up at this point? I doubt it - I think she merely over-reached. I think she meant her Lancaster and Florence speeches, and probably believed she was "resilient and determined" enough to actualise them. She'd seriously underestimated the ultimately more grounded and powerful determination of Merkel & co. Hmmm, yes. Strange to think how such a weird situation came about. For most of my life Labour - the Leftwingers in it, anyway, and after the first referendum they're the ones who took over the levers of policy - would have been firmly and very loudly on the Leave side, and they could be really making hay now. Then Thatcher made her Bruges speech, and Delors took over the Commission, and almost overnight the whole Left in this country completely changed its tune. Personally, I think they were thoroughly duped (I think Delors was, too), and most of them still are. Behind it all, pulling the strings, were the German bankers, and building a New Jerusalem was the last thing they intended. Dress it up as such, keep the lefties dancing to the mirage, that was clearly the plan.
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