What's on your mind?

[Dead1]

7 hours ago, JonoBlade said:

It seems to have been the disaster it was predicted to be. The Brexiters will blame the "remoaners" for sabotaging everything to make them look bad but, in practice, people just get on with it and hope for the best in the new reality. The new reality being, "let's have no plan whatsoever." It's been a lose/lose for everyone involved. 

All you see on the ground is one extra economic problem to add to the pile, i.e. pandemic, recession, etc. They can say "well, we didn't know there was gonna be a pandemic right after we left the EU," to which you reply "yeah, it was an unforeseen catastrophe, which is why you don't take crazy risks that every economist is declaring is a terrible idea."

 

 

 

Brexit wasn't a bad idea, but the problem is the same one that applies to most English speaking governments in the 21st century - lack of capable planning and implementation skills, class structure, short term focus (electoral cycles), general poor calibre of people entering politic and toxic mainstream media.

 

Britain's decline is assured regardless of Brexit due to above and many other factors.  Remember in 1945 Britain was a large empire and an industrial great power.  It is now a shadow of its former self with a third of the country contemplating secession (Scotland).  Britain has not found any solutions to arrest its decline.*  The EU would never have changed that.

*Russia is in the same place.

Norway and Switzerland are not part of EU and they have done really well (Norway does have oil but so does Britain).

The EU is great if you're a neoliberal capitalist hell bent on wringing every possible Euro out of the world, suffocating worker bargaining power and condemning the poorer members to long demise.

 

The EU actually requires long term impoverishment of Balkans and other countries in order to supply dissatisfied immigrants to Germany's factories.  Countries like Greece would be better off on their own or at least out the Euro to make their economies more competitive.  But they serve a valuable purpose in that their economic instability keeps the value of the Euro down which makes western European and primarily German industrial goods cheaper and thus more competitive.

 

People get a hard on when they see skyscrapers and modern brands in capital cities of once second/third world countries but neglect the rest of the country.  They actually did this for Afghanistan - eg pretending footage of either Kabul's rich areas in 1960s and in 2010s were somehow representative of  the whole country.

The reality is poverty is entrenched in these countries.  The EU required them to deindustrialise in order to join the EU - so instead of manufactured goods their main economic functions are tourism and agriculture and other resource extraction.

 

 

As such most of former Warsaw Pact members of the EU are in demographic decline and in some cases ala Bulgaria or Croatia on their way to demographic oblivion.  Yes birth rates are declining but external emigration to western Europe is the killer as it strips out young people leaving only the old.

Only Czechia and Slovakia have managed to maintain their populations.  Rest have all lost large percentages (eg Bulgaria's overall population decline since 1989 is a whopping 23%). 

It ends up with funny stats -eg Croatia only has an unemployment rate of 6.5% but due to emigration and lower birth-rates the population has fallen near 10% since the country joined the EU in 2013.  If you included those young people who left the unemployment rate would be closer to 15-20%. 

It's a feature not a bug.

 

This is one thing people don't realise with immigration.  Americans, Aussies and EU don't care they're stripping a lot of poorer countries of their most valuable assets in terms of trained and scarce professionals.  

 

 

It's why I think both the EU and globalisation needs to be destroyed.  I was hoping COVID would do it. Now the only remaining instigators are far more brutal - limited world war III or collapse of the USA or the next pandemic or climate change ramping up to the point international supply chains break.  None are desirable.

 

Humans themselves won't change - most of us have been brainwashed into short term pleasure seeking hyper individualistic consumers living in fragmented agglomerations without any real shared sense of self (I wouldn't call a lot of modern cities communities) who sell out their future for the next sugar hit.

 

The glorious era of people fighting for their rights and to better all of humanity (1660-1989) is dead.

[JonoBlade]

10 hours ago, Dead1 said:

Brexit wasn't a bad idea, but the problem is the same one that applies to most English speaking governments in the 21st century - lack of capable planning and implementation skills, class structure, short term focus (electoral cycles), general poor calibre of people entering politic and toxic mainstream media.

There are vast issues at play in your analysis, but on the question of whether Brexit was conceived of and executed in a way that benefited the UK it has been a total failure. My original point was that if you just looked at the parade of twats which supported and promoted Brexit in the media here, you just knew without any analysis at all it was a bad idea. They wanted it so they could deregulate and drive down standards to put more cash in the pockets of their cronies. A more open market. All these things you passionately oppose. So, yeah if Brexit were intended to be an antidote to all the evils of the EU then it may have been a righteous cause but it was always intended to amplify evil and benefit the rich, and getting poor stupid people to vote for it democratically by suggesting there will be fewer eastern europeans or brown people in their town (a plague of muslims if Turkey is ever let into the EU!). The common man sees the decay surrounding him and is told that the EU was responsible for it because it was bleeding all the public money away. They painted slogans on the side of buses saying how much extra money there would be for the NHS. This was all a lie designed to manipulate things people care about, their NHS - which is run by immigrants - and the darkies that might abduct their children.

The NHS remains in perpetual decline due to over a decade of austerity that has nothing to do with the EU. Intentionally eroded so conservatives can declare that public services don't work and only private business can run things efficiently enough. This is the endgame.

[GoatmasterGeneral]

6 hours ago, JonoBlade said:

There are vast issues at play in your analysis, but on the question of whether Brexit was conceived of and executed in a way that benefited the UK it has been a total failure. My original point was that if you just looked at the parade of twats which supported and promoted Brexit in the media here, you just knew without any analysis at all it was a bad idea. They wanted it so they could deregulate and drive down standards to put more cash in the pockets of their cronies. A more open market. All these things you passionately oppose. So, yeah if Brexit were intended to be an antidote to all the evils of the EU then it may have been a righteous cause but it was always intended to amplify evil and benefit the rich, and getting poor stupid people to vote for it democratically by suggesting there will be fewer eastern europeans or brown people in their town (a plague of muslims if Turkey is ever let into the EU!). The common man sees the decay surrounding him and is told that the EU was responsible for it because it was bleeding all the public money away. They painted slogans on the side of buses saying how much extra money there would be for the NHS. This was all a lie designed to manipulate things people care about, their NHS - which is run by immigrants - and the darkies that might abduct their children.

The NHS remains in perpetual decline due to over a decade of austerity that has nothing to do with the EU. Intentionally eroded so conservatives can declare that public services don't work and only private business can run things efficiently enough. This is the endgame.

Seems the evil oligarchy have worked out that demagoguery is the easiest and most dependable way to get what they want in the digital age. Seems there's no shortage of poor, stupid, desperate, ignorant people who are more than willing to believe pretty much anything if given the right sales pitch.

[markm]

Which just shows no matter how high tech our world gets, the Lord of the Flies analogy for human behavior applies. 

[AlSymerz]

Thank fuck I've never read Lord Of The flies then.

 

[Dead1]

13 hours ago, JonoBlade said:

There are vast issues at play in your analysis, but on the question of whether Brexit was conceived of and executed in a way that benefited the UK it has been a total failure. My original point was that if you just looked at the parade of twats which supported and promoted Brexit in the media here, you just knew without any analysis at all it was a bad idea. They wanted it so they could deregulate and drive down standards to put more cash in the pockets of their cronies. A more open market. All these things you passionately oppose. So, yeah if Brexit were intended to be an antidote to all the evils of the EU then it may have been a righteous cause but it was always intended to amplify evil and benefit the rich, and getting poor stupid people to vote for it democratically by suggesting there will be fewer eastern europeans or brown people in their town (a plague of muslims if Turkey is ever let into the EU!). The common man sees the decay surrounding him and is told that the EU was responsible for it because it was bleeding all the public money away. They painted slogans on the side of buses saying how much extra money there would be for the NHS. This was all a lie designed to manipulate things people care about, their NHS - which is run by immigrants - and the darkies that might abduct their children.

The NHS remains in perpetual decline due to over a decade of austerity that has nothing to do with the EU. Intentionally eroded so conservatives can declare that public services don't work and only private business can run things efficiently enough. This is the endgame.

 

I agree Brexit was mishandled and done for wrong reasons.  But I agree with the dissolution of the EU and I think it was the right thing to do. 

 

Britain is fucked any which way you look at it even if they stayed in EU. 

By the way the EU is fucked too in medium/long term - demographics (eg median age 44.4 years), institutional/bureaucratic inertia, national opposition to further reform, growing inequality, growing national differences, strength of vested interests (multinationals and the rich) and growing authoritarianism (Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Slovenia but also the EU itself) mean that its future is relatively dark if things don't change course.

As for NHS from what I understand it commenced its decline in 1980s when Thatcher started restructuring it but the decline really took off when they introduced market principles in 1990s under both Conservatives and Labour (Blair smashed the NHS as much as Thatcher did).

We employ a few British nurses, doctors etc and occasionally refer to them as NHS refugees.  They have some horrible stories about how things work there eg a company gets contract to provide a service to an area but they close all the local providers and force patients to travel out of area to get the service or in some cases hospitals/healthcare providers not offering certain services because it's not worth their while.

 

It's Noam Chomsky's privatisation technique in action:

1. Don't invest in public services but increase expectations

2. Ensure people get angry at "inefficient government."

3. Sell it/donate it to private enterprise .

And the dead1 addition to it:

4. Continue to provide huge government subsidies

5. Make sure responsibility and accountability are completely unknown due to legislative and contractual complexity.

People might think the 6th of January types were traitors but the real insidious traitors are politicians and high level public servants who are brought by private interests.

 

[AlSymerz]

Everyone can relax now Queen Cammie has rode in on her silver horse and saved the day. Once again everyone will be able to rush out and buy their kids and grand kids copies of Roald Dahl's books, unedited, well unedited from the last time they were edited in 2001.

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/roald-dahl-puffin-censored-original-camilla-b2288880.html?amp

The cynic in me says this was their plan all along, just to boost sales of books that were probably dwindling and needed a kick. But if they have been working on these edits for three years only to get to this point where two editions are available, that's a terrible long game they played.

 

[Thatguy]

2 hours ago, AlSymerz said:

The cynic in me says this was their plan all along, just to boost sales of books that were probably dwindling and needed a kick.

As one who never got the RD appeal, I'd go for this explanation.

[AlSymerz]

Imagine spending three years doing editing only to have your edits play second fiddle to some publicity campaign.

Alternatively imagine someone paying you for three years just to turn up to work and scribble out a few words and replace them with others.

[Thatguy]

It's a paying gig.

[AlSymerz]

I'd take it, providing the lecture from Queen Cammie isn't part of the deal.

 

[Dead1]

Interestingly, my 18 year old niece who is very woke (to the point of being irritating at times) was totally opposed to the edits to the Roald Dahl books.

 

 

[Thatguy]

Yep.

But fuck me I am sick and tired of the endless publicity this is giving RD's dreary books. Hated them then (when my kids were little); hate them now.

[RelentlessOblivion]

It was mainly Enid Brighton’s books I was read as a child so I truly don’t care about the edits. Also on my mind: I do so enjoy religious propaganda masquerading as charitable advertising, and no YouTube I certainly wouldn’t like the choice to skip said “ad”.

[AlSymerz]

Youtube has ads?

I haven't see an ad on YT for years, in fact other than every week or so when FB change their algorithm, I haven't seen an internet ad I don't approve of for over a decade.

[RelentlessOblivion]

Yes YT has ads, and for whatever reason Adblock turned itself off. Regardless I’m not sure I like religious organisations quoting scripture in efforts to coerce donations from people.

[AlSymerz]

Adblock should turn itself off, it's shit and has been for years.

If you don't see a religious ad, or any ad for that matter, does it matter if you like it or not?

 

[Thatguy]

10 minutes ago, AlSymerz said:

Youtube has ads?

I haven't see an ad on YT for years, in fact other than every week or so when FB change their algorithm, I haven't seen an internet ad I don't approve of for over a decade.

The algorithms get you. I get all sorts of irrelevant or offensive (to me) ads on my feeds. I am an enigma.

 

[AlSymerz]

I hate the 24 hours it takes between when FB updates their algorithms and when the ad blocker is updated. I don't know how people put up with the amount of ads FB dishes out. It's the same with all the status updates and shit that people you follow do. I've turned all that shit off so I only get the updates I want, no ads, no useless links and no fucking cat videos.

 

[RelentlessOblivion]

Since I don’t use Facebook I wouldn’t know.

[Dead1]

1 hour ago, RelentlessOblivion said:

It was mainly Enid Brighton’s books I was read as a child so I truly don’t care about the edits. Also on my mind: I do so enjoy religious propaganda masquerading as charitable advertising, and no YouTube I certainly wouldn’t like the choice to skip said “ad”.

I too loved Enid Blyton but note the wokerati have accused her of racism too eg goblins representing Jews and Gypsies.

 

1 hour ago, AlSymerz said:

Youtube has ads?

I haven't see an ad on YT for years, in fact other than every week or so when FB change their algorithm, I haven't seen an internet ad I don't approve of for over a decade.

Do you use an ad blocker?

[AlSymerz]

3 minutes ago, Dead1 said:

Do you use an ad blocker?

For web ads, yes a browser add on. For FB ads I use a dedicated FB App

[RelentlessOblivion]

Playing devil’s advocate again though because it isn’t unheard of for negative qualities to be shared between fantasy creatures and racial stereotypes. I.e goblins depicted as wickedly devious, treasure obsessed creatures is in line with harmful Jewish stereotypes.

[Dead1]

14 minutes ago, RelentlessOblivion said:

Playing devil’s advocate again though because it isn’t unheard of for negative qualities to be shared between fantasy creatures and racial stereotypes. I.e goblins depicted as wickedly devious, treasure obsessed creatures is in line with harmful Jewish stereotypes.

Fair enough though you then have to discontinue pretty much every single high fantasy thing because orcs, goblins and all other evil creatures are also ugly, tend to have big noses,  are occasionally fat (eg trolls).  Also the heroes tend to be beautiful, handsome and shock horror, white (they are white people tales after all). 

If you want to appease every single group with an agenda to grind, you're pretty much banning everything - essentially the Taliban/ISIS/Saudis etc have got it right because they ban just about everything.

[SurgicalBrute]

59 minutes ago, RelentlessOblivion said:

Playing devil’s advocate again though because it isn’t unheard of for negative qualities to be shared between fantasy creatures and racial stereotypes. I.e goblins depicted as wickedly devious, treasure obsessed creatures is in line with harmful Jewish stereotypes.

It's not uncommon for dragons and generally heroic races like dwarves to be portrayed like this either. The things that everyone seems to overlook with these arguments about "x stereotype must mean they're really talking about y" is that:

1) While there are stereotypes about certain negative attributes being applied to certain real life groups, it doesn't change the fact that these attributes are almost universally seen as bad within society. Occam's razor would say it makes far more  sense that these instances are authors drawing upon the negative attributes of humanity when creating monsters simply because these are things we understand as a society, and see as bad, rather than some way to secretly demonize a specific segment of society under everyone's nose.

2) Almost no one is making these connections between evil monsters and messed up stereotypes until some goof comes along and points it out. How does it actually benefit anyone to tie these things together? You've not only reaffirmed the stereotype, but now you're essentially saying this group of people are the same as horrid monsters.