cock-eyed octopus
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Posts posted by cock-eyed octopus
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48 minutes ago, dugsbody said:
What % of the population had hot water on demand in 1950? Heated houses? What was the life expectancy? What % lived hand to mouth on literal scraps of food? How many people suffered agony through various ailments? How many had their teeth at age 30?
In reality if someone offered to swap you into 1950, you wouldn't do it, because on almost ever objective measure our lives are better.
There are vast problems still to be solved but that is an orthogonal argument.
I think you'll find those improvements are down to technological change.
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22 minutes ago, yelims said:
So how do you explain Tories and Labour, both pursuing Brexit which will lower standards of living
There's always a tension between greed for more & knowing it has to be paid for, otherwise Labour would win every election.
With Brexit there are are many factors involved. Nationally we're feeling subordinated to a bunch of bureaucrats even further removed than Parliament. And many people are getting worse off while we're in the EU, so for them there's no direct financial incentive to remain.
But as I say there are many factors at play.
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45 minutes ago, zugzwang said:
It's not technology that's concentrated the wealth of the UK into fewer and fewer hands but rentierism and financialisation. That's why we're talking about Corbyn right now. In fact, that's the reason we're here at all.
I'd say rentierism & financialisation are symptoms rather than causes. Increasingly the only function of the bulk of the population is to be consumers. They are no longer required for production.
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2 hours ago, Kosmin said:
Has any Labour campaigner ever said that? If not, why did you choose to phrase it that way? It sounds like Labour and you differ on which consequences are acceptable. Or perhaps you disagree on whether certain observed phenomena should be attributed to Labour's policies, or some other cause. These issues are distinct from Labour lying.
The lie that has been promulgated since at least WW2 is that we can have ever increasing living standards while working less & less to obtain them.
This is in fact partially true because of technology. But unfortunately technology concentrates wealth into fewer & fewer hands. So to counteract this, wealth redistribution is attempted via taxation. Unfortunately this doesn't raise enough revenue & the shortfall is made up by ever increasing borrowing.
This happens under governments of any stripe. Any party that doesn't promise the electorate ever increasing living standards is going to have a hard time competing with one that does.
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1 hour ago, Confusion of VIs said:
Only when offered a fantasy have cake and eat it Brexit that cannot be delivered.
Perhaps Remain should have offered them a fantasy option,where we remain and the Germans pay our subs and take all the benefit tourists off our hands.
And I repeat, every GE is based on fantasy.
Labour does it every election, saying we can fund ever increasing state spending with no consequences. All politicians make undeliverable promises; it's one of the main reasons the economy is running unsustainable debt.
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2 hours ago, Confusion of VIs said:
You seem to be happy for the UK to led down a path that could never have gained majority support and care little as to whether Leaving in any form is still the will of the people.
You could say that about every GE ever. No government sticks to its promises.
Every GE, every referendum, is a snapshot of the electorate's opinion of the competing arguments at that moment. That opinion is then acted upon.
Our opinion was to leave the EU.
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12 minutes ago, Confusion of VIs said:
We were talking about referendums on specific issues.
Your earlier posts don't paint you as much of a democrat.
How on earth did you conclude I don't believe in democracy?
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13 minutes ago, Confusion of VIs said:
We have a representative democracy, asking the electorate to solve a problem by answering a question that is too complex for the average person to understand is a failure of that democracy.
That said, our MP's still have depressingly little knowledge of what Leaving entails, perhaps there should be some sort of competency basic before they can vote. Then maybe the 50% that have at least some idea of the issues/implications of Leaving would come up with a workable way forward.
Every GE contains issues too complex for the electorate to understand.
So democracy never works. Therefore we should only allow the people who do understand it to make decisions for us.
Except nobody understands. If they did they could accurately predict the course of future events.
So I'm sticking with democracy.
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9 minutes ago, IMHAL said:
Thank you for making my point.
No it doesn't. You think everything makes your point, especially when it doesn't.
We were asked if we wanted to stay in the present relationship. We didn't.
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14 minutes ago, IMHAL said:
See post above that explains why Leaving the EU is not like leaving your lover...... but I know you guys like to keep things simple...even if they are wrong.
You think leaving your lover is simple? It can make or break people. Lead to suicide or a far better life.
Compared to the accommodations we make with each other to stay in a working relationship I'd say the way the EU views the world is pretty simplistic. So yeah, it's not like leaving your lover ...
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3 minutes ago, IMHAL said:
You don't know that because there was and there is still no deal currently specified. There are various types of 'Leave' that bind us to the EU more or less tightly and trade-offs will have to be made between ALL factors, including economic ones. The electorate was not given a specific deal so could not make an informed choice about the trade-off's.
It's not that hard to understand.
If you're in an unhappy relationship you don't need to know exactly where you'll end up, you just want out.
You know the starting point. You weigh up the risks/rewards of moving somewhere else. Then you stay or go.
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17 minutes ago, IMHAL said:
The current deal we have with the EU, written in law, defines our freedom, economics, our laws...pretty much everything. The factors you consider implicit are not. They are governed by the arrangement we have with the EU. Any new deal will also codify these same factors. The fact is that it was not possible to compare the current deal with the 'new deal' because there was no 'new deal' to compare it with. Therefore no informed choice could be make.
The 'new deal' does not include EU interference in our freedom, our laws ... pretty much everything. That is the point. The 'new deal' is solely an economic one.
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12 minutes ago, IMHAL said:
Incorrect. Remain is a defined deal, in law. It defines everything about our current situation. Leave does not.
You can keep on spinning it how you like... the fact is that the referendum did not allow an informed decision to be make between the current deal (written in law) and another option. And that is why we are where we are.
Incorrect. Remain includes a defined deal but contains many other implied factors as I explained. Economics is only part of it ; that's the problem - the EU has conflated a whole lot of other issues with purely economic ones.
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2 minutes ago, IMHAL said:
Thank you for making my point.....
As I explained before 'remain' or 'leave' are labels for a whole complex set of factors. These factors were debated extensively prior to the referendum; one of them being the question of our economic relation to the EU, i.e. what sort of deal could be done.
As I also explained, there is the problem of incommensurables, i.e. how do you compare factors like freedom, sovereignty, economic prosperity etc.
Remainers seem to place economic prosperity above all else, leavers generally have different priorities.
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1 hour ago, IMHAL said:
Correct - the electorate did nothing wrong...they voted for the vague undefined deal that was leave.
However, there was a miscarriage of democracy. The referendum provided two incomparable choices. An action to find am unspecified deal outside of the EU, compared to the actual deal which is the legal framework we have with the EU. You cannot compare the two. You cannot make an informed decision as to which is better. As a result there is no consensus for a post Brexit deal, there would be no majority for any specific post Brexit deal compared to remain. It is simply a miscarriage of democracy, not by the electorate but by the failure of the electoral commission to provide a like for like alternative in the referendum to allow an informed decision.
It's really not rocket science.....
Where was a deal mentioned on the ballot paper?
Stay or go. We voted to go.
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22 minutes ago, pig said:
Well what can I say - nicely dodged
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So youre complaining about the period where he had left UKIP became a national radio host running errands for Trump/Stone/wikileaks , and protesting the innocence of his fellow schills ?
When the Voice of Brexit was fecking JRM (and the Today programme lol), mangling Mays deal (off you go now petal, waste us some more time) ?
Well, old flower, my original contention was that QT panels (& the BBC interviews generally) contain approx. twice as many remainers as leavers.
Nothing to do with Farage. Just observing the beeb's bias.
Now run along & play with the traffic, there's a dear.
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17 minutes ago, pig said:
Farage has had the most QT appearances in history who knows perhaps the most opportunities a single issue has had to be up for debate but you’re crying victim because you claim everybody else were remainers - well, before the word even existed lol !
Who knows maybe a little less Frottage airtime a little more intelligent debate a little less current clusterfeck ?
Lovely to think while he was being QT’s darling, the government was dutifully obeying his nationalist wingnuts and chucking out politically incorrect skin toned British citizens - while not a peep about putting in place the recommended EU immigration controls
No I was only talking over the last couple of years. Actually that means his appearances were less than 32. A lot less in fact. From jonB2's link:
We’re no Beeb bashers and clearly they’ve picked up the public sentiment on this by easing off on the Farage appearances since 2016.
also
- Prime Minister Theresa May (26), Brexit Secretary David Davis (26) and International Trade Secretary Liam Fox (20) and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson (13).
- Major figures in the last Labour government, such as Harriet Harman (26), Peter Hain (28), and Douglas Alexander (23).
- Former Lib Dem leaders Menzies Campbell (30) and Charles Kennedy (26).
- Former First Minister of Scotland Alex Salmond (22).
So it's not as if he's had multiple appearances c.f everyone else.
Are you denying that since the referendum remainers have significantly (about 2:1) outnumbered leavers?
(I suspect that's because of the balance in Parliament BTW).
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3 minutes ago, pig said:
You’re not seriously suggesting all of those panellists kept on banging on about remaining in the EU ?
Two or three out of the four, yes - or saying we shouldn't have voted to leave.
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4 minutes ago, jonb2 said:
Well they must being doing their job of balance then as I feel the mirror opposite. Farage is not occasional, he's one of the highest number of appearances.
32 appearances
32
How many panels have there been on QT? 100?, 200? Multiply by 5.
That's 500 minimum. 32/500 = ..... not a lot.
So how does that affect the fact that 60-80% of panelists each week are remainers??
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22 minutes ago, jonb2 said:
The occasional Farage appearance hardly tips the balance.
I've never seen more than 2 leavers out of 5 on any Question Night panel, usually you're lucky to get one.
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1 hour ago, Confusion of VIs said:
The BBC's bias is always obvious to the extremists on both sides of any argument.
That in itself is reason to believe they are not too far from the centre, more objective, ground.
On any given day the remain camp will outnumber the leavers by 2:1. Sky's even worse.
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https://unherd.com/2019/01/brexits-unheard-voices/
"The cynic in me wonders if this is the conceivably intentional no-platforming of non-white Brexit voters whose attitudes are at odds with the media’s dominant narrative. Could it be an orchestrated effort that seeks to portray the Leave result as precipitated by nostalgic, left-behind, lesser-educated, misinformed white working-class folk – low-resourced “simpletons” driven by their irrational jingoistic impulses? In short, is it a Remain plot?
I would like to think not, but either way, the use of vox pops in ‘Brexit Britain’ shows that the media cannot be fully trusted to delve into why important political and social events, such as the Leave vote in June 2016, take place. The appetite for thorough investigation and reporting realities has increasingly given way to the peddling of simplistic narratives.
In the case of Brexit, the dominant media narratives fail spectacularly in capturing the complex nature of British euro-scepticism. Brexit has exposed an unfortunate reality – that the media’s commitment to reporting the facts, pure and simple, leaves a lot to be desired. And while this could be the product of bad journalism and poor research, there is also the possibility that that its ‘research and inform’ function has been usurped by a role as ‘narrative manufacturers’. And that’s a big worry."
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57 minutes ago, Bruce Banner said:
Ah, the standard fallback response of a cornered Brexiteer.
A third and fourth referendum won't be necessary if the 2nd referendum is done properly, unlike the 1st.
Whereas a second referendum is the response of a cornered remainer.
And I'm afraid I don't believe you've been anything else.
Who decides the 2nd referendum is done properly? Ah yes.
You.
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28 minutes ago, rollover said:
What does exactly "leave" in connection to Brexit means to you?
Leaving the political & judicial institutions of the EU, including the Single Market & the Customs Union.
Brexit What Happens Next Thread ---multiple merged threads.
in House prices and the economy
Posted
You seem to live in a very strange world, one I don't recognise. Everyone I've ever met has a lot of empathy & compassion built into them.
I grew up in a very working class environment, with the emphasis on working. People who improved their lot didn't do so by clambering over the bodies of the poor, they did it by being enterprising, hard working & sometimes having a bit of luck (or not having bad luck).
I think perhaps that's why the working class tend to despise those with views such as yours; they are portrayed as evil face-grinders when all they're trying to do is make a better life for themselves & those they love - & are prepared to help those who are genuinely down on their luck.