Every now and again an opinion poll has to be broadly right. I strongly suspect that this one, from The Times this morning, is:
It's hardly contentious, after all, is it? What's really hard to understand is what the 13% are thinking.
What are the 13% thinking?
Richard Murphy
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Makes you wonder about the missing 12% as well?
“What’s really hard to understand is what the 13% are thinking.”
I suspect they aren’t. Unless they have a taste for destruction.
Straighforward. They know, or believe they know, that they shall be Phoenix rising from the ashes
Phil McGlass says:
“Straighforward. They know, or believe they know, that they shall be Phoenix rising from the ashes..”
I think ashes are overrated. 🙂
Mostly for the 87%.
Richard I don’t honestly know, but the 13% probably get all their news from the Daily Mail and Express.
Fintan O’Toole puts it rather differently: https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-britain-has-gone-to-huge-trouble-to-humiliate-itself-1.3558995
The Brexit the British are now officially seeking is indeed miserable. Instead of the Star Trek vision of boldly going where no imperial-nostalgic society had gone before, it would not have enough thrust to get the UK out of the gravitational pull of the European Union. And instead of freeing British businesses from Brussels red tape, it proposes to wrap them up like mummies in layers of staggeringly complex bureaucracy, with two completely different tariff regimes operating side by side. And this, remember, is what the UK is asking for, not what it will get.
Lovely article from Fintan O’Toole, Sean. Thanks for the link.
On different tack entirely; did you see this ? Might not do the business, but it will certainly stir the waters. And the intention is laudable.
https://www.commonspace.scot/articles/13012/irish-parliament-upper-house-becomes-first-eu-pass-motion-banning-israeli-settlement
Andy
thanks for the link, I hope others follow Ireland’s example.
What I don’t get is why EU politicians rigidly link free movement of people with the EU Customs Union and Single Market. After all these years the EU still doesn’t have an official single language. In other words if human beings are happy about free movement of people why does the world have so many languages!
Schofield says:
“What I don’t get is why EU politicians rigidly link free movement of people with the EU Customs Union and Single Market. ”
Because if borders are transparent to the passage of money people need to be free to follow it.
Languages are to do with culture and they don’t disappear because British people are too (fucking) idle to learn to speak them.
We get away very lightly and have played that advantage on the back of two successive anglophone global empires. It may be payback time …how’s your Mandarin coming along? I’ve got as far as House Special Chow Mein. It’s pronounced ‘twenty seven’. Dead easy. 🙂
我會說一點 Andy. Only been trying for 30 years 🙁
我會說一點 Andy. Only been trying for 30 years.
That’ll do for me. Could I have prawn crackers with that ? 🙂
@Andy Crow
“Languages are to do with culture and they don’t disappear because British people are too (fucking) idle to learn to speak them.”
Well exchanging good and and services for the purpose of mutual caregiving are a huge part of “culture” ( all that time at your 9 til 5) so you’d think like nations evolving a single currency for transactional efficiency human beings would have done the same with language. Well no not according to the anthropologists the territory defending and predatory instinct for resources is still deeply embedded in us and not letting your enemy know your attack or defence plans helped enormously by speaking differently to them. It obviously helps bonding too with your group or nation if you can identify your culture with speaking a unique tongue!
As to the idle British not learning a foreign language well check this web site’s data out:-
http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=File:Distribution_of_people_aged_25%E2%80%9364_by_knowledge_of_foreign_languages,_2007_and_2011_(%25)_edu15.png
“if human beings are happy about free movement of people why does the world have so many languages.”
From the perspective of someone like me, living in Canada, this may be the most stupid
question ever asked, at least on this web site.
Even the UK has more than one commonly spoken languages and hundreds of dialects. Welsh, Gaelic, and many dialects, some of which speakers of two dialects cannot be understood by the other. Yet England has free movement.
Here in Canada we have two official languages, French and English, and hundreds of languages still spoken by the people Europeans moved in on and tried to replace or exterminate. Yet we have freedom of movement and a customs union and a single currency and of course a single Federal government.
Judging from this silly comment it would seem that the “13%” are dumb as a stick.
@ Ed Seedhouse
On reflection you’ve had your little rant about by question being stupid but if I put my question in different form “Why hasn’t the world developed a single language by now?” you haven’t answered it!
“what the 13% are thinking.” This is not about thought it is about belief systems – by definition you cannot disprove a “belief” (which is held regardless of how relaity impinges on it) & thus we enter the realm of religion, organised or disorganised. For a cinematic example: the sinking of Atlantis in “Eric the Viking” is quite good (it’s sinking you will drown…. not it’s not – were fine etc).
Tell me – are they thinking?
The 75 % are presumably made up of remainers who recognise May’s plan is unworkable, and Brexiteers who also believe that it is unworkable AND is a refusal to recognise the wondrous benefits of following the Yellow Brick Road to find the Wizard of Oz (who turns out to be a little man behind a giant terrifying screen image).
The 13 % are clearly deluded May loyalists or are believers that something will turn up or has turned up or denialists who truly believe that really there is no problem and that everyone else is delusional.
Or maybe they mistook the question for “In your opinion is the May government doing a good job of navigating the good ship Britannia onto the formidable rocks?”
Possibly this is the 13% who want to crash out with no deal, as that looks ever more likely and one could construe that May either intentionally or unintentionally is set to achieve that.
@ Ed Seedhouse
“From the perspective of someone like me, living in Canada, this may be the most stupid
question ever asked, at least on this web site.”
You should know full well that the British and the French knocked seven bells out of each other to dominate North America. Even where there was a common language the American colonists fought with the British to control part of North America. Obviously predation was a strong factor underlying both outbreaks of war. The desire to control resources. As my other comment to Andy Crow anthropologists believe having a different language helped disguise your attack and defence strategies, keep your inventions secret (anyone for internationally registered patents?) as well as helping bond your group or nation.
https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=248193368
They’re the people who think a “no deal” exit is the most preferrable option of all. As long as negotiations are going badly from a “remoany” perspective, they’re happy. No deal is better than a bad deal, etc..
Alan says:
“They’re the people who think a “no deal” exit is the most preferable option …”
Fine in theory, but in practice ‘No Deal’ is not an option.
There has to be a relationship and that is a ‘deal’ (whatever we call it).
Schofield said: “As to the idle British not learning a foreign language well check this web site’s data out:-”
Ha, a beautiful thing! The European Commission tells us that a greater proportion of Brits speak a foreign language than the French, Italians, Greeks, Spanish, Portuguese and others, and we’re not too shabby compared to the Germans. I’ve spent my life apologising for the poor language skills of Brits. I may have to reconsider!
And as to “why EU politicians rigidly link free movement of people with the EU Customs Union and Single Market”, perhaps it is a principled stance about the brotherhood of man? Nah, only joking. It’s because the EU is an institution run largely by and for the interests of Big Business, and nothing interests them more than cutting the wages of the poor.