Brexit

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

...totally misrepresented the story..

Yes, if you belong to those who trust every word coming from politicians, and especially the official spin they try to put on it.

Besides, such a "misrepresentation" appeared in the British press immediately after the official spin, thus is hardly my invention.

[Jeremy Roussak]

We seem to be drifting off-topic (which may not be a Bad Thing), but the ad, with a Grauniad-spin article underneath, can be found here.

It was maintained, and I think not shown to be false, not only that the girl's body in the image had not been retouched but also that she used the stuff being advertised. Who knows?

Some healthy doses of "body-shaming" is exactly what huge swathes of the population need!

Damn right.

Jeremy

[myotis]

Yes, if you belong to those who trust every word coming from politicians, and especially the official spin they try to put on it.

Besides, such a "misrepresentation" appeared in the British press immediately after the official spin, thus is hardly my invention.

I doubt if anyone trusts every word (or even most words) that come from a politician,  but you are now bordering on suggesting that "it was in the newspaper so it must be true" as your counter argument :-)  And I am aware of the "muslimisation of London" stories that it sparked off.

Anyway, I think this off topic discussion has run its course.

Cheers,

Graham

[Rob C]

Hi Rob,

If that were the case, then the US Pentagon seems to agree.

Cheers,
Bart

Thank you for the link, Bart. I don't think it's sci-fi at all; these slums exist and so do no-go areas in many cities where the fuzz won't enter becuse of danger, and the realisation that their form of peace-keeping solution isn't wanted either. France 24 showed an example of this recently in Paris, I think it was, where two police cars doing surveillance work were fire-bombed by a group of youths, and several policemen badly injured. In fact, the French police have been holding unofficial marches to demonstrate for realistic arms and equipment adequate to meeting the risks they face. Already there have been calls for sharia law to replace indigenous law with the latter within certain communities. So yeah, it's coming faster than anyone thought, and because the general consensus doesn't want to acknowledge there is a risk. Ignore it and, like disease, it'll go away. Anyone who does have open eyes is stigmatised with being racist or just far right; there's a word, a slogan and attitude to blunt every opposition.

I fear for my young generations.

Rob

[Rob C]

Slobodan,

Londoners did not see the removal of this ad as a religious or a political act. The general concentus was that it was a good idea to ban the ad from the tube as it promoted pills as the way to a perfect body - not a good thing to put in front of our kids on their way to and from school everyday.

And now that those breasts have gone the mayor can concentrate on building the additional 25,000 affordable homes that the capital needs each year.

Paul

Paul, your sense of humour has come to the rescue!

Rob

[eronald]

The UK is the 28th kid in the Europe class, and Teach has no time for its tantrums.

Brexit won't be a controlled landing, it will be a crash landing, the UK has run out of runway.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/10/uk-choice-hard-soft-brexit-161026065853568.html

[eronald]

Thank you for the link, Bart. I don't think it's sci-fi at all; these slums exist and so do no-go areas in many cities where the fuzz won't enter becuse of danger, and the realisation that their form of peace-keeping solution isn't wanted either. France 24 showed an example of this recently in Paris, I think it was, where two police cars doing surveillance work were fire-bombed by a group of youths, and several policemen badly injured. In fact, the French police have been holding unofficial marches to demonstrate for realistic arms and equipment adequate to meeting the risks they face. Already there have been calls for sharia law to replace indigenous law with the latter within certain communities. So yeah, it's coming faster than anyone thought, and because the general consensus doesn't want to acknowledge there is a risk. Ignore it and, like disease, it'll go away. Anyone who does have open eyes is stigmatised with being racist or just far right; there's a word, a slogan and attitude to blunt every opposition.

I fear for my young generations.

Rob

If the population truly resists, large cities can not be conquered, they can only be destroyed. This is military reality, and has little to do with everyday policing issues.

Edmund

[Alan Klein]

If the population truly resists, large cities can not be conquered, they can only be destroyed. This is military reality, and has little to do with everyday policing issues.

Edmund

This is happening today in Mosul, Aleppo,  and other cities in Iraq and Syria.   Despite all the hand wringing about collateral damage, it's hard to make scrambled eggs without breaking them. 

[Rob C]

And the worlds fifth largest economy.

Paul

Perhaps, but if so, that's whilst still a member. Afterwards?

Rob

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

And the worlds fifth largest economy.

A good overview in Financial Times of "What has the EU done for the UK?"

https://www.ft.com/content/202a60c0-cfd8-11e5-831d-09f7778e7377

From the article:

Britain joined what was then the European Economic Community in 1973 as the sick man of Europe. By the late 1960s, France, West Germany and Italy — the three founder members closest in size to the UK — produced more per person than it did and the gap grew larger every year. Between 1958, when the EEC was set up, and Britain’s entry in 1973, gross domestic product per head rose 95 per cent in these three countries compared with only 50 per cent in Britain.

After becoming an EEC member, Britain slowly began to catch up. Gross domestic product per person has grown faster than Italy, Germany and France in the 42 years since. By 2013, Britain became more prosperous than the average of the three other large European economies for the first time since 1965.

But (there always is):

But, because it is so difficult to distinguish a causal link from a mere correlation, the UK’s post-1973 rebound does not itself definitively establish that EU membership has made the country more productive — the fundamental issue at stake. Ruth Lea, economic adviser to Arbuthnot Securities, a private bank, says the leading cause of its reversal in fortunes was in fact “a certain lady from Finchley” — the late Margaret Thatcher, who privatised state-owned companies, took on the unions and deregulated the City of London.

[Rob C]

Slobodan, I have long understood the positive impact of Madam T; she was ruthless, of course, and that was her point: you have to operate if you want to remove the lump. Nobody loves the surgeon's knife, but if it saves your life, you respect it for what it did.

But, things don't always stay positive, even after a successful operation. The old seeds may still linger awhile and reflourish when you least expect them. That's how I view the current state of play of UK politics: Mr Corbyn may well rise up and bring back the curse of what had been all but eradicated; we shall see. Whatever, the flux into which Brexit has flung the country could not be more conducive to bad news rising even if he had choreographed events all by himself. I don't entirely blame Cameron; after all, it does show he had faith in the common sense of the vast majority of the population; how misplaced that faith turned out to be! There, I feel, I was ahead of him: I would never have put my money on that horse.

Europe may suck in many ways, but turning one's back on good clients has never been the clever thing to do. The UK already enjoyed special conditions that much of the membership did not; it would have made sense to keep playing with eyes wide open, enjoying the while the benefits to UK citizens both at home and abroad. But hey, holidays in Blackpool are guaranteed to be fun; there's a tower there, you know, just like there is one in Paris! And even in Las Vegas! So that's okay, then.

;-)

Rob

[Alan Klein]

Often the long-term advantage as not apparent in the short term.  The British voters may be smarter than many politicians and corporate chiefs.

[scyth]

France, West Germany and Italy

the proper will be to compare with the average of just France & Italy, sans Germany

[Rob C]

Often the long-term advantage as not apparent in the short term.  The British voters may be smarter than many politicians and corporate chiefs.

Depends on the length of your long-term conception: in the end, everything has both a rise and a fall and even a possible rerun of the circle. Sensible would have been to maintain the current good for as long as possible.

Were the "British voter", taken as a whole, smarter, we'd have long been a nation of wealthy individuals aloof from assited housing, the dole queue etc., not the wave of alcoholic street fighters that invades the Med every summer, though that will probably decline somewhat now, unless another miracle takes place and the quid rises as in phoenix. Maybe we should adopt the Trump slogan, too. But hey, perhaps help is at hand: we are already paying millions towards a wall in Calais... are we copying Trump or just doing it before him, following him from in front, as Peter Sellers remarked in What's New, Pussy Cat? The problem with the French one is this: perhaps it keeps some from getting back into France.

I sit back stunned, almost every day, watching politicians and tv pundits knocking those who predicted the fall of the pound, wishing to deny the reality of that by excuse after excuse and reasoning more insane at every turn. These are the people who, on being hit by a political truck only a blind person living in a remote cave could not see coming, will still say no, you don't understand: the truck's bearing humanitarian aid for us; rejoice comrades, for our hour is nigh!

It's gone so crazy, the popular political thinking, that one can hardly follow it anymore.

Rob C

[Alan Klein]

The same revolt happened in America with Trump and Sanders.  The regular folks are just disgusted with the self serving BS you get from politicians in general and the insider politicians and crony capitalists in particular.  They promise a lot, lie often,  but are only interested in power and money for themselves.  The people are gullible but not always and not forever.  Eventually they figure it out. 

[scyth]

The same revolt happened

it didn't... no guts

[eronald]

I sit back stunned, almost every day, watching politicians and tv pundits knocking those who predicted the fall of the pound, wishing to deny the reality of that by excuse after excuse and reasoning more insane at every turn. These are the people who, on being hit by a political truck only a blind person living in a remote cave could not see coming, will still say no, you don't understand: the truck's bearing humanitarian aid for us; rejoice comrades, for our hour is nigh!

Rob C

Speaking of trucks, the well known American poet John Dunce who penned the notorious line "I ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for me" also wrote with clairvoyance: "every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a land of clods be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less ". And so it is, the less — diminished, but not by much.

[Alan Klein]

We'll find out Tuesday.

[Jeremy Roussak]

Speaking of trucks, the well known American poet John Dunce who penned the notorious line "I ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for me" also wrote with clairvoyance: "every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a land of clods be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less ". And so it is, the less — diminished, but not by much.

John Donne, who lived in England between 1573 and 1631, was not, technically, American.

He wrote "Every man's death diminish me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls: it tolls for thee".

Your presumably deliberate "land of clods" msiquotation might indicate that the rest of your post is not to be taken remotely seriously, in which case I apologise for the correction.

Jeremy

[Jeremy Roussak]

The UK is the 28th kid in the Europe class, and Teach has no time for its tantrums.

Brexit won't be a controlled landing, it will be a crash landing, the UK has run out of runway.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/10/uk-choice-hard-soft-brexit-161026065853568.html

I think it will be a chilly day in Hades before I really on Al Jazeera for political analysis.

Jeremy