Democracy is, with the exception of divorce, the clearest embodiment there is of the fundamental human right to change your mind.
Those saying that democracy is threatened by a change of heart clearly do not undertsand what democracy is.
They do, as a result, wish to condemn us to the consequences of a poor decision taken in haste and already regretted.
Perhaps it is no surprise that it is a vicar's daughter, wedded to out of date ideologies, who is the principle proponent today of enforced regret and consequent misery.
Like the vicars of old, she deserves to be ignored.
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Referendum in aspic…. How delicious…..
It doesn’t matter a great deal whether John ‘Milton’ Keynes actually said “When the facts change, I change my mind…” (apparently there is some doubt as to the provenance) it remains a wise position to take so the attribution is irrelevant.
In the case of Brexit the facts haven’t actually changed, they were simply absent from the pre-referendum discussions, or were not factually based predictions of the potential outcomes of either leaving or remaining in the EU. It was principally a battle of propaganda assertions based on emotion with little regard for rationality. (And that’s before we even consider the charges of improper, and maybe illegal, election expenditure which has still not been satisfactorily resolved)
We still don’t know what the precise repercussions of either a hard or soft Brexit will be, but we have a considerably better idea now than we had two and a half years ago. Both look as if they could be unfavourable (to put it mildly) to the future economic and social welfare of Britain.
Sensibly we might have had these negotiations with the EU before committing to Article 50 withdrawal and been able at this stage to have a more enlightened debate without the eleventh hour deadline panic we are seeing at present.
Does anyone seriously imagine that the British public would vote for withdrawal from the EU knowing what we know (or think we know ) now ? And on the terms we are being offered ?
A second referendum though perhaps desirable, would be skewed now by the stubbornness of some elements of the electorate who unlike Keynes (or any thinking person) are simply not prepared to be seen to change their minds, and regard a second referendum as simply being asked to give the ‘right’ answer this time around.
In my view it is time for parliament to halt this embarrassing farrago, rescind or retract (whatever the appropriate phrase is) Article 50 and determine to have a mature negotiation about the future relationship of the possibly disparate nations of the (former?) UK and the EU.
Parliament will be responsible for the failure to resolve this issue. To continue with the fiction of ‘responding to the will of the people’ is a shameful dereliction of the duty of its collective responsibility.
‘Perhaps it is no surprise that it is a vicar’s daughter, wedded to out of date ideologies’
I think you are a wise man, but this is not a wise comment.
I was not to the out of date Christian ideology of marriage for life – created hen life expectancy was short
I am quite happy with the comment
In that regard the comment is fine – but many will interpret it that you think religions or just Christianity is an out of date ideology.
They might
And some of it as practised by many charges is
I say that as a Quaker
Thanks for clarifying. I appreciate it.
All ideology is out of date-it`s out of date as it comes in to being. If your worldview cannot change as knowledge increases then you are in a bad evolutionary state….
May is a disaster.
Not because she is a woman.
But because of who she is and what she believes in.
And no put down is too harsh for her in my view.
Whilst we watch the spectacle of WRECKS-IT, this goes on:
http://blog.spicker.uk/universal-credit-rolls-out-despite-the-problems/
Pilgrim Slight Return says:
“May is a disaster. Not because she is a woman.”
Agreed, but there is a big issue of gender inequality which is insidious and means that in many cases in order to survive and thrive in the fields dominated traditionally by men and where that imbalance persists (nearly everywhere except where it is skewed the other way as in nursing for example) women need to out-man the men in their zeal.
It was said of Thatcher that though she be a woman she was no ‘sister’ to womankind. May fits a similar mould. Until we more closely approach gender equality we will not get the full benefits which women in positions of power and influence could be bringing to balanced decision making.
It is not that women are generally ‘soft’; they do tend to be more consensual and cooperative, but conversely do not play games for fun; they play to win, with an uncompromising savagery that prompted Kipling to observe that the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
May is just not very bright, and she’s a vicar’s daughter, who was presumably brought up to be obedient and faithful, and to feel guilty for ‘straying’ from the path set by authority.
Women were always targeted by the clergy, who ‘taught’ them how to ‘behave’ rather than anything to do with theology, reserved for men. One way of keeping the peace I suppose…
Not being too bright, May wouldn’t have evolved very much in her thinking and behaviour, being unable to adapt and learn to think by herself, and she certainly wouldn’t have rebelled.
So here we are, with an obtuse obedient robotic leader, obeying the ‘will of the people’ as she does the ‘will of God’ as taught by vicar dad.
But as you say, she’s a woman who has to prove herself every step of the way, and knows she will be first in the line of fire if she is seen as weak.
As Richard says, she’s wedded to an out-of-date set of values, she thinks that being flexible and humane is being weak, and would open the door to the wolves. But she’s right in this, and you are right to point out that “Until we more closely approach gender equality we will not get the full benefits which women in positions of power and influence could be bringing to balanced decision making.”
Where she goes wrong is in remaining in a job well above her capabilities, because her values and upbringing taught her not to quit. If she’d learnt anything, she wouldn’t have taken the job in the first place.
It would take a certain kind of woman to be able to impose a new style, free from all threats and fears, all things being equal.
So in the meantime, in this country at least, we’re stuck with the nasty winner takes all kind of woman being the only ones getting to the top job.
And it doesn’t do the rest of us, women and men, any good.
I’m not convinced May’s vicar father was a very good theologian. If a central role for a creator is to optimise know-how for life’s or Nature’s survival purposes then caring is an important component part of that role. Namely that caring helps conserve any innovation in know-how as well as providing the stability and encouragement necessary for further innovations. This means it’s important to constantly work at balancing caring between self and others. This understanding for reason of selfish obsession with getting and hanging onto power May (and Corbyn) doesn’t seem to get. Getting rid of a first past the post system is justified if only to help moderate the unhinged mentality displayed by many of British politicians!
I think the fact she is a vicar’s daughter is not relevant. Jesus Christ did not advocate idiotic behaviour, zenophobia, thinly disguised racism, narrow mindedness, dogma, etc. In fact I am fairly sure that if He was around at the moment he would be very much in favour of organisations like the EU and UN, plus absolutely opposed to greed, the worship of money, the cult of individualism and all the general sins of neo-liberalism. I am Christian but I think you need to make a distinction between what the New Testament teaches and ‘organised religion’. As soon a you introduce a hierarchy and bureaucracy then you soon end up with all the human failings. The prime directive of any bureaucracy is the preservation of the bureaucracy. The church has long been obsessed with sex and yet Christ had almost nothing to say on the subject other than he befriended and rescued a prostitute and an adulterer. He was very much opposed to tax avoidance … He had a great deal to say about money, power, the poor, etc all of which organised religion has largely chosen to ignore because it is ‘difficult’, while sex is much more interesting and ‘safe’.
I am aware of all that
It is in large part explanation for why I am a Quaker
I’ve got Michael Hudson’s new book about Christianity and debt for Christmas so I’m looking forward to reading that.
@ Timothy Rideout
“I think the fact she is a vicar’s daughter is not relevant.”
Your comment doesn’t make sense! Balancing caring for self and others is predominantly taught at home by primary care-givers! A central purpose of religion is to understand the role of caring. Ipso facto in theory you would expect a vicar to make a better than normal care-giver to his child or children.
If Jesus of Nazareth were here today examining the Brexit situation he would probably regard the European Commission, the Ecofin Council, and the IMF as dreadful institutions that pervert their ostensible missions. He would see them as akin to the priests of the Temple of Jerusalem, more interested in securing their own privileges and performing bizarre sacrifices (of others, not themselves) than serving the public.
Jesus of Nazareth wasn’t so obsessed with institutions that he would defend them despite their egregious failures. In fact, he was a zealot (in the non-pejorative sense of the word) who wanted to break up institutions and reinvigorate the original principles that the institutions were established to enact.
So Jesus of Nazareth would have voted to Leave and my guess is he would have been a strong advocate of Lexit.
Jesus Christ, on the other hand, would not engage on this temporal issue – it would be way below his pay grade.
I think any such claim pretty absurd
So that’s enough of them
Nicholas says:
“Jesus of Nazareth ..[…]….was a zealot (in the non-pejorative sense of the word)….”
A Nazarene then. Not a native of Nazareth.
Blessed are the Cheesemakers…..
She was only a vicar’s daughter, but she knew how to upset the masses.
And perhaps her father’s long-windedness in the pulpit is why she is so strongly in favour of reduced services….. and has learned to be so selectively deaf. (?)
Thank you for this particular blog. It points out something I’m always banging on about, especially in regards to Brexit and Scottish Independence. People who ‘won’ on those occasions say ‘Brexit means Brexit’ and/or ‘Scotland voted to stay in the UK in 2014.’ They treat these statements as if they are carved in stone and ‘must be respected’ …meaning those questions can’t be asked again, even after a material change of circumstances, or new information comes to light.
If that’s the case–if the people’s will cannot change–then we might as well elect a political party that serves for life. And then just promote people from that party into office as others pop the clogs. We don’t do that. Why? Because people do change their minds. The will of the people does change. THAT is what any believer in democracy must respect. Somebody who truly believes in democracy should never be afraid of taking a vote.
Agreed
Perhaps ignore her at our peril. A hard-hitting analysis from a former customs official: https://www.commonspace.scot/articles/13681/bill-austin-why-theresa-may-really-wants-hard-brexit
Worth reading