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Jesus I despise Brexit.
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grufty jim
grufty jim
1978 posts

Re: Jesus I despise Brexit.
Oct 21, 2018, 19:51
It is a grim, sad irony that Jeremy Corbyn should be leader of the Labour Party right now.

If it wasn't for brexit, he has the potential to be a very good thing for the UK. I'm actually not a big fan of the man personally, but British politics has shifted rightwards en masse to a terrifying degree during my lifetime. If you guys don't elect someone like Corbyn very soon, you won't have an NHS in a decade. That's just a fact from where I'm sitting. The NHS desperately needs five or ten years of heavy investment just to survive. And only someone "like" Corbyn will do that.

Trouble is... Brexit is such a hugely important thing right now. This two year "Article 50" period will potentially be remembered as being a pivotal time in British politics for the next hundred years. And Corbyn's clear ambivalence on Europe makes him the worst person to have been leader of the opposition during it.

It's such a terrible shame. It's a stretch to lay any of the actual blame for brexit at his feet (as some are wont to do), but in my view Corbyn has unambiguously made a terrible situation even more terrible -- when he had it in his power to do otherwise.
nigelswift
8112 posts

Re: Jesus I despise Brexit.
Oct 21, 2018, 20:51
Agreed, and what about the Beeb's role in the tragedy?:


Alex Andreou
?Verified account @sturdyAlex

Have now heard it called the “so-called People’s Vote” from four different journos on @BBCNews. This points to an editorial decision to comment on the #PeoplesVote. Pretty extraordinary considering the only other such editorial interference is the “so-called Islamic State”. WTF
grufty jim
grufty jim
1978 posts

Re: Jesus I despise Brexit.
Oct 21, 2018, 21:29
I've been quite appalled by BBC News lately. I'd long been a champion of the beeb as an institution (for all its many and varied faults) but it has shifted quite dramatically over the past few years.

I lived in the UK for quite a long time and would often find myself defending the BBC and NHS when British people would complain about them... "They're far from perfect", I'd acknowledge, "but you've no idea how much better they are than almost everywhere else on the planet".

Something has gone terribly wrong.

I'm not for a moment suggesting the BBC was ever some radical organisation telling truth to power no matter the cost. It was far from that. The BBC has always basically been a reflection of the Old British establishment. Which means it was conservative (small 'c'), prudish, mildly repressed and repressive... all of that stuff.

But at the same time it was utterly resistant to the influence of commercial pressure. The licence fee gave it an independence from the encroachment of capital that no other major news organisation had. And because the values it reflected were rooted in a faded memory of the late 50s / early 60s they were dated and problematic, sure, but they were also a known quantity. And they were not subject to the fickle politics of the day. That's completely changed. The BBC editorial slant has taken some very odd twists and turns recently.

As an outsider looking in (but an outsider with a *lot* of British friends and one who knows the UK very well), the past 4 years have been a bit like watching the UK go mad. And instead of remaining that steadfast conservative bedrock it had always been, the BBC went mad right along with the rest of the establishment (and half the people).

It's very sad. Once you lose something like the BBC (or the NHS) in this modern world... the chances of getting it back are probably on the low side.
nigelswift
8112 posts

Re: Jesus I despise Brexit.
Oct 22, 2018, 07:11
Gone mad is how it feels. But "the BBC went mad right along with the rest of the establishment (and half the people)" is beyond explanation because it's stuffed full of educated metropolitan near-millenials, typical Remain types - so what is happening?
nigelswift
8112 posts

Re: Jesus I despise Brexit.
Oct 22, 2018, 12:26
https://news.sky.com/video/lets-get-back-to-being-a-british-empire-11530606
grufty jim
grufty jim
1978 posts

Re: Jesus I despise Brexit.
Oct 22, 2018, 12:41
I've been saying since Day 1 (of the brexit debacle) that a big part of this whole fiasco is the collective psychological consequences of Britain finally coming to terms with its loss of exceptionalism.

The Empire has been dead a long time, but it managed to survive as a myth right into this generation. But now that too is vanishing and it's causing a crisis of confidence within the UK.

And in tandem with increased Scottish separatism, it's resulting in the rise of "Englishness" as a political identity for the first time in a long while.

This position is perfectly elucidated by Fintan O'Toole in a recent talk he gave on Brexit and "The English Question".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvDAW5SjdaE

It's an hour long (so about 57 minutes longer than the modern attention span) but even if you don't watch it all; the first 6 minutes or so (on "English nationalism") pretty much sums up my feelings on why this is all going on. It's not the whole story of course; but it's hard to argue against it being a big part of it.
nigelswift
8112 posts

Re: Jesus I despise Brexit.
Oct 22, 2018, 14:38
I think your explanation/criticism is valid for some of the British, like that lunk head who, I swear, would start going on about Brexit being a way to get rid of the Pakis the moment the camera was switched off.

But I think a lot of the British are two generations away from those who had delusions of Empire - and are liberal, outward looking and internationalist to a degree that exceeds a lot of other nations. I was quite proud of us till this once in a hundred years fucking disaster happened as so many Americans were of themselves until they had theirs.
nigelswift
8112 posts

Re: Jesus I despise Brexit.
Oct 22, 2018, 14:52
And isn't it the case that delusions echo down lots of generations with bad results? Won't the lunkhead's grandchildren be talking the same imperialist talk and isn't the love of guns for some in the States a race memory that the British are coming? ;)
grufty jim
grufty jim
1978 posts

Edited Oct 22, 2018, 15:13
Re: Jesus I despise Brexit.
Oct 22, 2018, 15:09
I'm not talking about individuals. I'm talking about what's happening in British culture right now on a collective level.

If enough people think there's "Reds Under The Beds" you get a witch-hunt, you get a nation going mad. And it doesn't even need to be a majority. The British media has been filled with lies and nonsense and criminal disinformation about the EU for so long that collectively the nation is acting as though it is being somehow oppressed by a totalitarian Europe even though (a) nothing of the kind is going on, and (b) many individual British people are aware of the absurdity.

EDIT: 52% of British people voted for brexit. But even if that's changed, it's not really the point. It only takes 20% of the people in a crowd to panic and you have a stampede on your hands. When I say "Britain is going mad", that's not a comment about any single individual. It's not even a comment about most British people. It's about how collectively the nation is acting. And that takes us back to the "stampede" analogy.
nigelswift
8112 posts

Re: Jesus I despise Brexit.
Oct 22, 2018, 15:29
Yes I understand your points, I just don't want you to think the 48% and maybe far more are or ever have been believing they are being opressed by Europe. Only eedjits think that and only the noisy ones at closing time at that and I don't think they should be seen as representative of anyone except themselves.

I much prefer this view of "us" ...
https://twitter.com/peoplesvote_uk/status/1054368854942588929
Me, I love it.
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