Brexit Day

[hmg]

Brexit is mostly signalling at this point.

Remainers love to show how very educated they are (as if that really counts for much - you've credentials attesting to your tendency to conform and obey, well done), how very absurd it all is that anyone should have a different view.
Brexiteers love to demonstrate how manly and independent and bulldog-spirited they are, and not at all like the effete Ruperts who wanted to stay.

 

[Mr. Tea]

The funniest thing about Brexit will be the #FBPE midwits claiming they were all for it when it turns out nowhere near as bad as anticipated.

Weren't we supposed to be under martial law and offering up our first born for a loaf of bread by now?

You do realise that it hasn't actually happened yet? We've left de-jure but our de-facto exit occurs at the end of the year.

It's a great strategy because when 1 Feb rolled around and there wasn't chaos at the airports, medicine shortages and so on, loads of people will have assumed that that was all "project fear" after all. Now if anything bad does happen when the barriers actually go up, "Brexit" as such will be a distant memory and the Tories will just blame it on the EU being spiteful.

 

[hmg]

You do realise that it hasn't actually happened yet? We've left de-jure but our de-facto exit occurs at the end of the year.

It's a great strategy because when 1 Feb rolled around and there wasn't chaos at the airports, medicine shortages and so on, loads of people will have assumed that that was all "project fear" after all. Now if anything bad does happen when the barriers actually go up, "Brexit" as such will be a distant memory and the Tories will just blame it on the EU being spiteful.

Can't believe you hyphenated but did not italicise de jure and de facto.
Call yourself educated?
If you're wrong about this, what else are you wrong about :crylarf:

 

[Mr. Tea]

Can't believe you hyphenated but did not italicise de jure and de facto.
Call yourself educated?
If you're wrong about this, what else are you wrong about :crylarf:

Lol, I was typing away while being glared at and expected to mop up a pukey baby. Give a man a chance!

On the other point though: it's one of those situations where I'll be pleasantly surprised to be proved wrong. OK, so nothing bad happened and I made a bit of a fool of myself on the internet. I can live with that.

(Having said that, given the immense disruption and amount of bad feeling the whole thing has caused, I would sincerely hope there would be some positive payoff, not just life carrying on as normal.)

 

[john eden]

Oh really, John. It was definitely all the fault of vile snobbish middle-class liberals like me, with our education and our cappuccinos, wasn't it. And definitely not two campaigns bankrolled by xenophobic aristocrats and tax-dodging multimillionaire bankers, backed by a hostile foreign power and amplified by a wildly reactionary and dishonest print media, that both broke UK electoral law and relied on a relentless barrage of lies, many of them nakedly racist? Definitely not that?

You might just as well be reading from a UKIP leaflet at this point. Frankly it's quite painful to watch.

Anyway, what fucking humour? You've shoved this thing under my nose in an attempt to convict me of class hatred, I've asked you what you think of it and you've gone "Aha!" as if I'd just called them a pair of subhuman morons.

The absolute state of you, mate. Seriously.

I think that once again you're assuming this is all about you rather than a signifier of wider forces at play.

It's completely ahistorical to assume that everything was completely fine until the referendum campaign and then suddenly a whole bunch of stupid people became outrageously hateful and racist because of the Russians, or whatever.

You see this also with the #FBPE people who hark back to the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony as the last time this country was all lovely and happy. Conveniently forgetting the national riot olympics the year before.

If

• your town was deindustrialised in the 1980s
• and you were told "things can only get better" in the 1990s and they didn't
• and then the spent the noughties with a further decline in your standard of living AND being slagged off for being a stupid chav
• and then austerity happened

Maybe when Cameron and the chairman of Tesco and Bob Geldof and The Guardian and Angela Merkel came along and said "Yay EU!" you might have taken the opportunity to lash out.

And when you get called stupid racists for it, well that's water off a ducks back really - and you think it's pretty funny seeing the other side getting wound up for a change.

 

[john eden]

Interesting choice of language, too - "punching down". These people have got what they wanted - to take back control. So they're the country's new ruling class, aren't they?

Not yet, but they have, for better or worse, given one faction of the ruling class a proper kicking.

 

[john eden]

Anyway, what fucking humour?

If you've actually watched it and think it's real, we have a bigger problem than I thought.

 

[Mr. Tea]

And when I say "nothing bad", I mean "nothing bad in addition to what's happened already", such as harm to the economy that has already totalled almost as much as we've paid into the EEC/EU since 1973, and the big spike in racist hate crimes since 2016.

 

[Mr. Tea]

If you've actually watched it and think it's real, we have a bigger problem than I thought.

I didn't watch it, I just looked at the title. It's hardly unthinkable and you gave no indication that it was a joke.

There's someone in New Zealand called Number 16 Bus Shelter.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Not yet, but they have, for better or worse, given one faction of the ruling class a proper kicking.

Yes, and it just happens to serve the purposes of another, even nastier faction of the ruling class right down to the ground.

I just don't understand how this isn't screamingly obvious.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Presumably you, of all people, are familiar with the concept of false consciousness?

 

[Mr. Tea]

I think that once again you're assuming this is all about you rather than a signifier of wider forces at play.

It's completely ahistorical to assume that everything was completely fine until the referendum campaign and then suddenly a whole bunch of stupid people became outrageously hateful and racist because of the Russians, or whatever.

You see this also with the #FBPE people who hark back to the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony as the last time this country was all lovely and happy. Conveniently forgetting the national riot olympics the year before.

If

• your town was deindustrialised in the 1980s
• and you were told "things can only get better" in the 1990s and they didn't
• and then the spent the noughties with a further decline in your standard of living AND being slagged off for being a stupid chav
• and then austerity happened

Maybe when Cameron and the chairman of Tesco and Bob Geldof and The Guardian and Angela Merkel came along and said "Yay EU!" you might have taken the opportunity to lash out.

And when you get called stupid racists for it, well that's water off a ducks back really - and you think it's pretty funny seeing the other side getting wound up for a change.

Yeah and people in Germany in 1919 had good reason to be pissed off and to start casting around for a scapegoat. Right?

 

[john eden]

Presumably you, of all people, are familiar with the concept of false consciousness?

If we look at that bullet pointed list above, and we then look at the way that everyone is suddenly interested in these former industrial communities up north, there is a logic that reveals itself.

Communities that were completely ignored are now at the centre of political debate. Boris now feels he has to at least go through the motions of investing in infrastructure up there. Pubs in these places have been infested with journalists wanting the inside scoop.

The Labour Party who also took them for granted has now shat the bed. The Momentum types and acid-corybynists are now doing podcasts on the importance of community organising in these areas.

So is that false consciousness? It might not generate anything like the kind of regeneration we saw after, for example, the London riots of the 1980s (which was a mixed bag in itself). But is this actually, in this regard, an example of a class acting against its own interests - given the background of utter economic degradation?

And you will quite rightly say that the economic degradation may now get considerably worse. And it certainly might, in the short term. But some people reckon that might be worth it just to see the look of horror on the faces of people who have done very well thank you out of the current arrangements.

 

[IdleRich]

Remainers love to show how very educated they are (as if that really counts for much - you've credentials attesting to your tendency to conform and obey, well done), how very absurd it all is that anyone should have a different view.
Brexiteers love to demonstrate how manly and independent and bulldog-spirited they are, and not at all like the effete Ruperts who wanted to stay.

So basically everyone is a cunt and no-one holds a genuine opinion on Brexit. Really helpful contribution to the debate, thank you.
Apart from the neutral potentially... I've never met one but maybe that's you, sitting buddha-like above the fray permitting yourself a wry smile at human stupidity every now and again.

 

[john eden]

Yeah and people in Germany in 1919 had good reason to be pissed off and to start casting around for a scapegoat. Right?

Well there was more going on than that.

The German Revolution was one of the major factors in ending World War I. Which was nice.

 

[john eden]

So basically everyone is a cunt and no-one holds a genuine opinion on Brexit. Really helpful contribution to the debate, thank you.
Apart from the neutral potentially... I've never met one but maybe that's you, sitting buddha-like above the fray permitting yourself a wry smile at human stupidity every now and again.

"Everyone is a cunt" is actually much much better than the binaries we are seeing play out in the culture war.

 

[IdleRich]

But Breixt is/was a kind of binary decision no? I mean even if we accept that everyone is a cunt it doesn't get us anywhere, the question is which cunts were right on this particular issue? Or more right at least. Saying they're both wrong and lying about their reasons is unhelpful.

 

[john eden]

But Breixt is/was a kind of binary decision no? I mean even if we accept that everyone is a cunt it doesn't get us anywhere, the question is which cunts were right on this particular issue? Or more right at least. Saying they're both wrong and lying about their reasons is unhelpful.

See this is where I completely disagree with you Rich.

It only matters who was right if you think there is any chance of overturning Brexit any time soon. Which there isn't.

If enough people continue to centre their politics on Brexit then we will never move beyond it and that will be the dividing line across the country, across communities and across families.

Which will make it much much harder for people to come together and resist the economic and political attacks on the horizon.

Uniting around our common cuntery is better than that.

 

[droid]

Uniting around our common cuntery is better than that.

Finally, a decent slogan for Britain.

 

[IdleRich]

I think I prefer if it people get angry with being cheated and that provides an energy for change... didn't you just say the same thing? Which is why I find it so weird that you advocate general anger and resistance but when there is a huge right-wing takeover involving Russian money, dodgy elections, loss of rights and so on you're completely blase and happy to sweep it under the carpet. I don't understand the contradiction in your position. Produce well-thought out and valid criticism of almost every that happens - and then when something absolutely massive and inarguably wrong comes along you just go "oh well". I really truly find your thinking on this... bizarre, disingenuous to the point of dis-honesty I'm afraid. I mean, I know you, I know you're not dishonest but that's what I'm getting from this debate.