Re: Keep On Brexiting

1

As I mentioned elsewhere, I don't see how the Tories can walk this back. And the EU has too make the terms of walking it back, if they negotiate it at all, so onerous that no one else plays this game.


Posted by: CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 11:04 AM
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Forgive my cultural ignorance, that's the second time I've seen that guy in a meme, who is he?


Posted by: SP | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 11:05 AM
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Oh it's MJ. What an old dude.


Posted by: SP | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 11:07 AM
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1

Yeah. I keep seeing people saying things like, should we negotiate a deal like Norway or pull out completely? Not sure it's in the hands of the British anymore. I could be wrong, but IMO the way you get a deal like Norway or Switzerland is to never have entered the EU in the first place (being wealthy as fuck doesn't hurt either). You don't get to flounce out with both middle fingers raised and then ask to keep all the best bits.

Also, I'd be interesting in hearing from people in other parts of Europe as to what the mood on the ground is like. My Italian boyfriend is pretty much like, "fuck the Brits, we don't want them either."


Posted by: Buttercup | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 11:09 AM
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re: 1

I am seeing people I know on Facebook who are staunch Brexiters already walking it back. The ones that is, who are fairly hard-right economically, but not vocally racist. Basically arguing that the referendum result can be used to argue for a version of Norway's model, that keeps the UK in the EEA and even retains some other the additional things that come with EU membership. So, a partial Brexit. One even explicitly suggested that a revised deal could then be put to a new referendum, or ratified via a general election.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 11:11 AM
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Let me be the first in this thread to suggest it's all Bernie Sanders fault.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 11:14 AM
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5

I don't know if you saw 4, but how would that really work? It seems a bit delusional. The main hope for keeping the EU together is punitive treatment for Britain (aka England and Wales, since I read elsewhere Merkel has indicated Scotland and N. Ireland can remain in the EU if they secede.)


Posted by: Buttercup | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 11:15 AM
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Right, that's certainly good for Britain, but if I'm the EU what's the incentive for playing along (serious question). Yes you don't want the world economy to collapse but having tons of states sort of in sort of out Europe is a bigger threat to that than saying to Britain "Here is my offer: Nothing."


Posted by: R Tigre | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 11:18 AM
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8 to 5. Serious question: what is on-its-way-out-England's leverage?


Posted by: RT | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 11:19 AM
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I found this a useful summary of what the process is going to have to look like. One paragraph in particular was something I hadn't considered at all:

Whitehall, meanwhile, will be severely stretched by the mammoth exercise of withdrawal. The civil service has zero spare capacity after the cuts of the last five years: many departments have seen budget cuts of over a quarter since 2010, and total civil service employment has fallen by almost a fifth in the same period. Further spending reductions for the coming years were set out in last year's spending review. The UK has no current capacity at all in trade negotiations, as this is a job that has been outsourced to Brussels. The task of reviewing 40 years of EU and domestic legislation could take five or ten years. It will make it very difficult for the government to embark on any new policy while it reviews all these old policies. Whitehall also risks becoming very clumsy in handling important relationships (such as with Scotland: see below) because it will be so severely distracted.

Posted by: Ume | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 11:21 AM
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And I guess the line is actually "My offer is this: Nothing."


Posted by: R Tigre | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 11:21 AM
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The link in 10 is very very good. What a mess.


Posted by: RT | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 11:37 AM
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Getting sick of media types (like here) implying that the referendum was somehow ascribable to Britain's constitutional structure rather than advisory.


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 11:40 AM
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It looks like the EU leadership is jumping on the "fuck you" boat: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/24/top-eu-leader-we-want-britain-out-as-soon-as-possible


Posted by: Buttercup | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 11:42 AM
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Boaty McFuckYouFace


Posted by: lurid keyaki | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 11:43 AM
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(and thanks for the link in 10. Currently consulting with the family member about to move to Dublin about what she might need to know. Interesting times, that's for sure.)


Posted by: lurid keyaki | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 11:45 AM
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4. Spiegel suggests closer union between France and Germany, anyone who can stand the heat can stay in the kitchen.

A weakened EU is good for Putin, bad for its marginal members. I'd hate to be Lithuanian about now. The Finnish economy is apparently for shit, partly because Nokia was such a big piece of it.


Posted by: lw | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 11:47 AM
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From the other thread:
Since a very clear majority of Brits over 24 reckon British society has got worse since 1945
strikes me as pretty extravagant. True? False? Exaggerrated? Anyone care to elaborate?


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 11:47 AM
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Learn Gaelic or go home.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 11:48 AM
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I bet somebody figures out an excuse for a second referendum. (Based on all the google searching and second thoughts, that would probably the correct thing to do anyway).

Then everyone heaves a sigh of relief and learns a valuable lesson of one sort or another.

It's either that or the beginning of the end. We should start a betting pool for the date of Peak Oil.


Posted by: E. Messily | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 11:49 AM
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So what would a UK of England and Wales flag look like? Dragon over a red cross over a field of white on the top half and green on the bottom?


Posted by: Tom Scudder | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 11:50 AM
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So where can I read about what Brexit means for DeAndre Yedlin's development? As a Latvian citizen, is he going to get kicked out of the Premier League?


Posted by: Unfoggetarian: "Pause endlessly, then go in" (9) | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 11:51 AM
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20.last: March 4, 2046.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 11:52 AM
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Is the EU allowed to kick them out before Article 50 gets invoked?


Posted by: E. Messily | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 11:53 AM
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22 Apparently something like 100 PL players wouldn't qualify for the PL, under current rules. As explained in the excellent summary linked at 10, they'll have had plenty of time to find Italian or Spanish clubs to play for before it becomes an issue.


Posted by: CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 11:55 AM
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20: Fafblog had an idea about how to get out of Iraq, back in 2004, that looks as if it might have potential.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 11:56 AM
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18: I know the figure is from a study by L/inda W/oodhead at L/ancaster University, but can't immediately locate the exact source online. I'm confident it's true, though.


Posted by: Ume | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 12:03 PM
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It seems like where the rubber hits the road - a pro-Remain parliament feeling obliged to ratify a bad withdrawal agreement - politics could get very unpredictable. For example, could the Tories split and a new government without the Leavers form? (Regardless of whether it halts Leave.)


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 12:03 PM
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19: A mo chara, is teanga álainn í*. Ceapaim go ba mhaith leo gur na Sasanaí dul abhaile.

* sin í Gaeilge, ní Gàidhlig. Beagnach.


Posted by: dalriata | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 12:04 PM
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I kept reading all this stuff about how the British pound was crashing in a market panic, etc., until I finally checked the actual exchange rates and I see that the pound only fell 11%. 11%! That's not a "crash" or a "panic". That's barely a noticeable adjustment in the price of a good bottle of scotch. Talk to me when it's off by 35% or more.


Posted by: urple | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 12:12 PM
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31

It's only been a day.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 12:16 PM
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32

Yes, the immediate currency crash seems not there.


Posted by: RT | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 12:16 PM
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30+ year low seems meaningful. Relative to an $80 bottle of scotch (about what Oban costs around here, I think), that's almost $9. I think that's noticeable.


Posted by: dalriata | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 12:17 PM
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And keep in mind that 30 year period includes Episode V: George Soros Strikes Back.


Posted by: dalriata | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 12:17 PM
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31: will it fall further?


Posted by: urple | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 12:19 PM
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36

PREDICTIONS ARE HARD...


Posted by: OPINIONATED NIELS BOHR | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 12:20 PM
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34: The man who broke the Death Star.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 12:20 PM
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Huh, $80 is very pricey for Oban in California. You should load up a truck and drive it back to Pittsburgh. About $60 for the standard 14 yr here.


Posted by: R Tigre | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 12:21 PM
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39

Woah, that's awesome! I may have to make the case that I need to go to a conference in the Bay Area this year. What do you pay for Highland Park? I think it's about ~$55 for the 12 year.


Posted by: dalriata | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 12:23 PM
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40

Right. And stop on the way for cigarettes in West Virginia to sell in California.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 12:23 PM
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41

11% overnight sounds like a big change even if it won't make random luxury goods markedly cheaper, bro.


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 12:24 PM
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re: 19

No bugger actually speaks Gaelic, of course. The percentage of Scots who speak Gaelic is pretty small. Around 1%.

Looking at Wiki just now, I'm surprised how low the percentage of first language Irish speakers is, in Ireland, actually. it's not that different from Scotland. I thought it was quite a bit higher. Although unlike Scotland, Irish has a lot of second language speakers or people who can speak it a bit.

Welsh is spoken by vastly higher numbers.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 12:25 PM
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If I continue to be as unproductive as I have been for the last 24 hours working for an employer with a City of London address, you might start to see effects on the currency. I can keep slacking.


Posted by: "corporate forester" | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 12:26 PM
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44

My company's stock value frequently falls by more than 11% in a day.


Posted by: urple | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 12:26 PM
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$45 for the 12yr at K&L. It can be more expensive in rando liquor stores (up to $65 or more), of course. If you're going to a conference in the Bay Area, order a bunch for pick up at a K&L. Then take it with you on the plane.


Posted by: RT | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 12:26 PM
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And anyway I didn't say it wasn't a "big change". Just that all the breathless reporting about a "meltdown"/"crash"/"panic" in the currency seems maybe overblown.


Posted by: urple | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 12:30 PM
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47

Why are you drinking Highland Park and Oban when you could be drinking Springbank?


Posted by: Parenthetical | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 12:30 PM
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48

42: I was in the Western Isles a couple years ago on vacation and the only Gaelic I heard was on the radio. (I probably could have heard some if I poked around more/was an ass about it.) In Ireland, there's a lot of pernicious politics surrounding the language. The state pushes it--it has a constitutional mandate to do so--but it does it in a half-assed way that makes people actively hate the language. Which is understandable: it's not their native tongue, it's a foreign language that has a very low return on investment. It's effort that would be rather spent on Spanish, French, or German. And that's a little sad. On the other hand, there's an Irish language (gaelscoil) movement that has had some success, both in the Republic and in NI. (Including, amazingly, in parts of the Unionist community.)

Also, I'm not sure I believe the numbers of second language speakers in Ireland. I've seen evidence that people feel pressured into telling the census they speak/understand it when they have almost no comprehension.


Posted by: dalriata | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 12:30 PM
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49

(I'm kidding. I like all the whisky.)


Posted by: Parenthetical | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 12:31 PM
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Springbank is truly my favorite but generally super expensive and hard to find here for some reason. I like my $45 HP bottle!


Posted by: R Tigre | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 12:32 PM
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Though, since you prompted me to look it up, Springbank is now down to $55/bottle on the K&L website. Weekend plan made!


Posted by: R Tigre | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 12:33 PM
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45: Very nice. Will keep that in mind.

47: Because I have no experience with Campbelltown whiskys, and it's annoying to get liquor not sold at state stores here. Next time I'm in one of the bigger, nicer ones I'll look for it, though.


Posted by: dalriata | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 12:34 PM
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The state pushes it--it has a constitutional mandate to do so--but it does it in a half-assed way that makes people actively hate the language.

Maybe that explains why the states with the biggest "English only" movements have the residents with the worst English grammar.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 12:35 PM
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re: 48

Yeah. I used to get annoyed at the level of crap talked about Gaelic in Scotland. There was quite a lot of money pushed into Gaelic and nationalists (pre- the SNP move to the left) would go on about 'our language'. When something like 40 - 50 times as many people spoke some version of Scots, or code-switched between Scottish English and some dialect on the continuum between Scots and Scottish English.

It bothers me less now, tbh.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 12:35 PM
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There are bars in Glasgow where it'd not be that uncommon to hear Gaelic, because they are places where people from the Isles drink, or people who are Gaelic enthusiasts and folk musicians go. But you'd have to seek them out and be lucky to hear much Gaelic spoken.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 12:36 PM
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51: Score! I am hoping and planning to get to Campbeltown this autumn. I used to be a super Islay fan (and still am) but they've totally edged out everyone else for me for pure deliciousness.

52: I'm just being a pain in the ass. I like both of those and have very fond memories of my first Oban tastings. But you totally should check out Springbank; Longrow 18 was my favourite but I've had some others recently and now I can't decide. They're all amazing!


Posted by: Parenthetical | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 12:38 PM
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I think that if you are gong to smuggle liquor into Pennsylvania for profit, maybe you can make the same mark-up with a much shorter journey that getting your supply in California.

(I'm now putting "Marketing Consultant" as a skill on my LinkedIn."


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 12:39 PM
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54: Any reasonable nationalist policy would support both Gaelic and Scots since Scotland has a pluricentric culture. And minority languages are worthwhile things to preserve. But Scots's similarity to English hurts it and makes it easy for prescriptivists and bigots to write it off as broken English. Which is awful.

Ulster Scots probably has similar issues, along with the usual NI issues.


Posted by: dalriata | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 12:48 PM
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57:

Have you put "data cowboy" on there yet? That's one I quite literally saw two days ago.


Posted by: Trivers | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 1:02 PM
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Googling that gets me only scenes involving the holodeck.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 1:04 PM
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There are bars in Glasgow where it'd not be that uncommon to hear Gaelic

I finished a bottle of Scotch with a friend the other night, and I'm pretty sure he was speaking Gaelic by the time we were done.


Posted by: politicalfootball | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 1:13 PM
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which is probably the point.


Posted by: CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 1:14 PM
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Reading 10 makes it sound like there will not be a Brexit. It will be an incredible amount of work by hundreds of negotiators, diplomats, civil servants, regulators, etc. 100% of whom are probably in the camp that thinks Brexit will be a bad idea. Are they really going to devote years of their lives to this?

In purely legal terms, the referendum result has no effect at all: the vote was advisory, so, in principle, the government could have chosen to ignore it. In political terms, however, ministers could never have countenanced that. The Prime Minister has said that voters' will 'must be respected' and indicated the start of a process of withdrawal. We should presume that the vote to leave means that we will indeed leave (see point 16) - though there is scope for various complications along the way.

OK, so what if there is a poll one week from now where 20% of the Brexit voters say they regret their vote. Or 10%. What would it take for the government to decide it would no longer pay a political price for ignoring the referendum?


Posted by: Cryptic ned | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 1:18 PM
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Riots


Posted by: Natilo Paennim | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 1:30 PM
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63 feels right-- I don't really bet on brexit.


Posted by: urple | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 1:30 PM
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But the Brexiters can riot, too.

Is there any recent precedent of a national (or Californian?) referendum being ignored?


Posted by: dalriata | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 1:32 PM
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Well, ours are legally binding (and mostly initiatives, not referendums) so it's a bit different.

Separately, on the "this is the fault of NEOLIBERALISM" topic in the other thread, this is basically my take. NEOLIBERALISM may or may not exist but it's not particularly what this kind of right-wing populism is about, caused by, or against.


Posted by: R Tigre | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 1:38 PM
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If one of the main drivers for the thing is 'elites aren't listening to us' you can bet that ignoring the vote will have pretty serious political consequences. For both major parties.

Bigger loss on the Dow than the FTSE. Brits selling their dollar denominated assets to buy stuff in pounds? What?


Posted by: CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 1:41 PM
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66.2 In the 80s California passed a proposition that made the state "English-only," but no one ever bothered to implement it, and you can still get official literature in Chinese, Armenian, Spanish, Korean, etc.

I don't think the UK could get away with just not implementing Brexit, though -- the EU would demand certainty right away.


Posted by: jms | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 1:43 PM
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If the term "neoliberalism" gets your panties in a twist, then call it "late-stage capitalism," "flexible accumulation," or "the post-Fordist economy." Whatever you call it or however you define it, it involves the dismantling of the post-war welfare state, a related-roll back of labor-rights gains for the proletariat and increasingly, the petty bourgeoisie, and the massive concentration of the wealth of increased productivity into the hands of a cosmopolitan technocratic elite.


Posted by: Buttercup | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 1:47 PM
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There was the Greek "oxi" referendum where the government basically reversed the decision in two weeks.


Posted by: Tom Scudder | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 1:50 PM
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70 - OK, but there's so much elision there between the state of the real economy, politics driven by intentional policy decisions by politicians, and sociological factors driven by God knows what that you might as well call it "kinda the way the economy and society look now, I think?" The broad definition makes it useless as an analytical category. And, obviously, even more ridiculous as a political insult (which is now the primary use of the term).


Posted by: R Tigre | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 1:58 PM
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18: it comes from a survey that Linda Woodhead and I did of British adults in 2013. We were trying to map religious attitudes against those of the general public over a very wide range of questions. Yougov polled rather more than 2,000 people, so, a large sample by a reputable polling company. Most of the survey was LW, but I actually suggested that question. I'm not sure about the status of the results in terms of public accessibility, but I do have a copy of the complete spreadsheet.


Posted by: NW | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 1:59 PM
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That reminds me. I wonder what the effect will be in the British polling industry? If I understand correctly, a bunch of financial types polled on the referendum, got a Remain result, invested on that basis, and fucked themselves.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 2:02 PM
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In general, the result seems to have been in line with the polls (given the margin of error), but the the financial markets were supposed to have better polls, I thought.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 2:04 PM
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The gist of "neoliberalism" is very simple. Median wages have been stagnant for decades as prices have gone up, the financial industry has expanded, social safety nets and pensions have been gutted, and "markets" have been entrusted more and more with ensuring that the basic needs of human are met. That means that half of people have lived through a thirty year recession that has coincided with a very obvious ideological shift in our major institutions.

It should be completely unsurprising that when economic populist leaders are hobbled by existing political institutions through means such as the marginalization of anyone who is supportive them within their professional communities and therefore usually rendered unviable, some of them eventually reach a point where they have little to lose and vote for actively destructive candidates out of protest or anger. Racist nationalists alone do not have the numbers that they need to force a Brexit or a Trump Presidency, but when combined with people who are essentially protest voters breaking the system because it's the only voice left to them, they can.


Posted by: Trivers | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 2:05 PM
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A graph of governmental welfare spending as a percent of GDP doesn't reveal a drastic rollback, much as the Republicans might have tried. If you want to see one, there was a modest decrease from the 1975-1985 period, but that was a period of high economic stress.


Posted by: F | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 2:09 PM
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Again, wage stagnation is a fact of real economic life, in a lot of places. But it's been a feature that's existed for more than 30 years. Drawing the connection between that and any particular vote takes more than just wanking off to terminology. In particular because in this particular case large segments of the population most hit by wage stagnation (particularly, the young) voted exactly the opposite of the "protest" vote you posit. And those living on relative fixed incomes, with the most to benefit from, e.g., low inflation (e.g., pensioners) seem to have largely voted "for." Occam's razor suggests that people were mad about precisely what they actually said they were mad about -- losing power that they once had to immigrants, foreigners, and social change. Obviously, that's against a backdrop of a larger economy that hasn't produced the spectacular growth that it did from 1945-1975, but the quick NEOLIBERALISM=THIS VOTE AND ITS OBVIOUS is just pure dumbshit sociology.


Posted by: R Tigre | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 2:11 PM
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Personally I think "neoliberal" shouldn't be lobbed as an insult. Trade agreements do help to ensure we don't have Cold War-style stand-offs, but the working classes in most of the West really did get shafted by a lot of our policies and the scale of our actions to correct this by equitably distribute the gains was incredibly meager and we aren't looking like we're open to doing much more. If I'm attributing a blog post I have in my correctly I think that even Delong admits this.


Posted by: Trivers | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 2:12 PM
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I mean, what if we gave people universal single-payer health care? Or relatively generous old-age pensions (you could even call them "OAPs")? Then people who are beyond their wage-earning years would never vote for something like this, ever, right?


Posted by: R Tigre | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 2:14 PM
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If the term "neoliberalism" gets your panties in a twist, then call it "late-stage capitalism," "flexible accumulation," or "the post-Fordist economy."

I've heard the first term, but have only a vague sense of the latter two. The wikipedia essay on Post-Fordism is interesting. Including the following summary (which is footnoted to a 1995 source, and feels like a mid-90s description; though I'm not sure how I would revise it) [emphasis mine].

The changes in production with the shift from Fordism to post-Fordism were accompanied by changes in the economy, politics, and prominent ideologies. In the economic realm, post-Fordism brought the decline of regulation and production by the nation-state and the rise of global markets and corporations. Mass marketing was replaced by flexible specialization, and organizations began to emphasize communication more than command. The workforce changed with an increase in internal marketing, franchising, and subcontracting and a rise in part-time, temp, self-employed, and home workers. Politically, class-based political parties declined and social movements based on region, gender, or race increased. Mass unions began to vanish and were instead replaced by localized plant-based bargaining. Cultural and ideological changes included the rise in individualist modes of thought and behavior and a culture of entrepreneurialism. Following the shift in production and acknowledging the need for more knowledge-based workers, education became less standardized and more specialized. Prominent ideologies that arose included fragmentation and pluralism in values, post-modern eclecticism, and populist approaches to culture.

The bolded sections seem correct to me, but I'm not sure what it means to say (as you did in the previous thread) that Clinton and Reagan were both in the same category as "post-fordist" politicians, other than that they were both responding to broad changes. What would a contemporary politician who wasn't "post-fordist" look like?


Posted by: NickS | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 2:15 PM
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Occam's razor suggests that people were mad about precisely what they actually said they were mad about -- losing power that they once had to immigrants, foreigners, and social change. Obviously, that's against a backdrop of a larger economy that hasn't produced the spectacular growth that it did from 1945-1975, but the quick NEOLIBERALISM=THIS VOTE AND ITS OBVIOUS is just pure dumbshit sociology.

I don't mean to give the impression that I think neoliberalism was the cause of Brexit. In fact, I agree with you that the bulwark of Brexit (and Trump) support basically being xenophobia. But democracies are frighteningly often just a few percentage points away from doing something dumb, reckless, and destructive and I don't think it's preposterous to suggest that a relatively small number of people who (stupidly) vote for chaos when economic conditions are bad for the working class can tip the scales.


Posted by: Trivers | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 2:19 PM
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Again, wage stagnation is a fact of real economic life, in a lot of places. But it's been a feature that's existed for more than 30 years.

Let me take this opportunity to plug a book. I just read Timothy Noah's The Great Divergence, and was glad that I did. I didn't read it when it first came out because I felt like I'd read enough about growing inequality, in the news and on blogs, I wasn't sure how much it would add. The book does hit familiar themes, and none of the basic conceptual elements were new, but I felt like it fleshed out the ideas nicely and that I learned things in every chapter.

In fact, it could be an interesting book for an unfogged book club -- light and quick compared to the previous books; we could get through it in a week or two -- but material for a number of interesting conversations.


Posted by: NickS | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 2:21 PM
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78/82: not to mention, xenophobia tends to get a lot nastier when people are pushed into economic stress. I don't think there are many people intentionally voting for chaos, but I think there are quite a significant number of people voting to keep the immigrants out precisely because they are worried about their own economic fortunes and have been persuaded the immigrants are to blame (which persuasion doesn't work nearly as well if people aren't worried about their own economics in the first place).


Posted by: urple | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 2:24 PM
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Again, wage stagnation is a fact of real economic life, in a lot of places. But it's been a feature that's existed for more than 30 years.

People keep pointing this out. As if people voting in a populist way after 10 years of wage stagnation would make sense, but by now they should be used to it, so the only excuse is that they are now also racists. No, you never get used to being worse off than you used to be. And giving up all hope, as you do after 30 years when you probably didn't after 10 years, does not exactly mean you aren't worried anymore.


Posted by: Cryptic ned | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 2:24 PM
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Well, but what you're talking about is doing something to allow these people -- by which I mean older folks attracted to right-populism -- to feel like they're in charge again. There's no plausible left-populist solution to that problem. It's not redistribution of wealth, which is not what most of these people want (because they're not generally the poor). It's not government subsidies (these are the folks that generally benefit from them). Redistributing more gains from productivity is great, but it doesn't do much for these folks. Even dealing woth wage stagnation won't, because they won't be receiving much more in wages. Aside from literally turning society and the economy back 50 years, which is both impossible and would gave horrible consequences for everyone else, you're not going to give these people what they want. They're victims on some sense of losing social position that they've lost, but societies change. No social democratic program (certainly not anything on order in the USA, which at the far left extreme would give you policies that ... look like Britain's yesterday) is going to bring angry lower middle class white 50-70 year olds who hate foreigners back into the fold or address their actual resentments.


Posted by: R Tigre | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 2:41 PM
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I fucking hate the term "late-stage capitalism" or "late capitalism". History isn't over. Maybe it's "High Middle Capitalism"? It's probably basically an irrational reaction to the fact that the first twenty times I heard it was used by the kind of chin-strokers who say nothing substantive.

I'm coming around to the view that "neoliberalism" has been completely emptied of its original meaning. It didn't mean the same thing as "late capitalism" up until recently.


Posted by: Walt Someguy | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 2:41 PM
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So why don't they vote for the parties that run against wage stagnation? If they wanted Labour policies, they would vote for Labour.

People in Scotland don't make this mistake. They voted for Labour, and then when Labour moved right and the SNP emerged as a credible party to Labour's left, they voted for them. Are Scottish people just smarter than English people?

Why is it so hard to accept people just fucking hate foreigners?


Posted by: Walt Someguy | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 2:46 PM
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Tigre, in coming to the view that you give then something symbolic. I'm on the phone, it's late, and ume is shortly coming to bed but I will try to expand tomorrow if you prod me. The key is Scott Atran's notion of sacred values


Posted by: Nw | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 2:48 PM
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88: the SNP is not credibly to the left of old Scottish labour, as will emerge in time.


Posted by: Nw | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 2:49 PM
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Globalized post-industrial capitalism? There really are new social issues coming out of having many fewer factory jobs. Those jobs vanishing coincides with more volatile, global capital. Agreed that late capitalism is a shitty label, but I think thta there's an object in need of a shorthand label.


Posted by: lw | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 2:52 PM
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"The service economy"?


Posted by: Walt Someguy | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 2:57 PM
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Why is it so hard to accept people just fucking hate foreigners?

Of course they just fucking hate foreigners. But why do they hate foreigners? Are they just an especially hateful people? Or are there social conditions creating that hate?


Posted by: urple | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 3:03 PM
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People in Scotland don't make this mistake. They voted for Labour, and then when Labour moved right and the SNP emerged as a credible party to Labour's left, they voted for them. Are Scottish people just smarter than English people?

Or, the SNP emerged as a credible nationalist party, and they voted for them. Are Scottish people just more nationalist than English people?

Why is it so hard to accept people just fucking hate foreigners?

OK, so why do they hate foreigners now more than they did 20 years ago when it was not the issue they voted on?


Posted by: Cryptic ned | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 3:05 PM
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I'm sympathetic to the critique of the term "neoliberalism," but I do think we need a word for the ideology that underlies liberal support for things like the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, the repeal of Glass-Steagall, "free trade," indifference to unionism and the appointment of Alan Greenspan to the Fed.


Posted by: politicalfootball | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 3:07 PM
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93.2, 94.4: Because a lot of foreigners moved in?


Posted by: Walt Someguy | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 3:08 PM
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93- IMO, it's mostly the socal condition of feeling like you've lost control over/familiarity with your community. It's pretty orthogonal to strictly economic concerns (though, obviously, people who are doing really and increasingly well are less concerned about change generally).

Just as an example, note that the "English Only" initiative referenced above was passed in California during an economic boom in the 80s. If they'd had the ability to do so, I'm sure California voters of the boom-time 80s would have voted to build a huge wall and God help any trade agreement with Mexico. In 1994, with an economy that had just suffered a major dio but was improving, people voted by initiative to prohibit illegal immigrants from obtaining any set of public benefits. The reason we don't have those kinds of initiatives now isn't that we figured out how to reverse wage stagnation for old white people, but that enough of them died or moved, and enough immigrants moved in, to change the political balance.

94 last - because a lot more foreigners are in England now, especially in smaller towns?


Posted by: R Tigre | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 3:17 PM
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not to mention, xenophobia tends to get a lot nastier when people are pushed into economic stress.

I'm sympathetic to the critique of the term "neoliberalism," but I do think we need a word for the ideology that underlies liberal support for things like the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, the repeal of Glass-Steagall, "free trade," indifference to unionism and the appointment of Alan Greenspan to the Fed.

Just to point out, I think the first observation (that economic stress makes people nastier) is absolutely something that neoliberals would agree with and that, ostensibly, that's the reason to support things like the Commodity Futures Modernization Act -- if you genuinely believe that doing so will improve the economy (I say, "ostensibly" because, of course, some the support is just responding to deep-pocketed lobbies).


Posted by: NickS | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 3:34 PM
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I mean, what if we gave people universal single-payer health care? Or relatively generous old-age pensions (you could even call them "OAPs")? Then people who are beyond their wage-earning years would never vote for something like this, ever, right?

It's broader than that. They look around and see a country where in their lifetimes certain opportunities and ways of life have evaporated before their eyes. They think their world is a shittier place now and they're not wrong. They're pissed off that their offspring and grandchildren will go out and work hard and it won't be enough.


Posted by: gswift | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 3:42 PM
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95: Libertarianism.


Posted by: rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 3:46 PM
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86 is insightful.

I dont want to write about the vote because Im full of rage and acohol, but on the Gaelic thing - I went to uni with one of Scotlands few Gaelic speakers, and radio phone-ins would call her and invite her to compete, as otherwise they would get zero calls. Despite the lessons and the TV programmes, its mostly dead as a language.

Also, I was born in Scotland and very much hope that "we" vote to leave the UK and remain in the EU.


Posted by: Seeds | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 3:48 PM
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The Onion continues to be a treasure.


Posted by: MHPH | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 3:50 PM
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Where do I go to bet money on Brexit not actually happening? It might be a little hard to define conditions for that, but surely someone has.


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 3:55 PM
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It won't be enough for Joe Schmoe to earn a wage that is three times the global average. Whereas that same hard work for the same 3x global average salary is more than enough for an immigrant because he isn't comparing himself to the tech worker down the street making 10x the global average but rather the farmer in his home country making 0.5x the global average.

When the global average income is still ~$10k, and globalization means that global imbalances resulting from either accidental or exploitative differences between countries are disappearing, what possible policy can mitigate these feelings?


Posted by: F | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 3:57 PM
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They look around and see a country where in their lifetimes certain opportunities and ways of life have evaporated before their eyes.

I am curious: does England have the same disproportionate rise in suicides and drug addiction among white folks that the US has seen recently?


Posted by: Criminally Bulgur | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 4:03 PM
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Median Household income in the city of Cleveland looks to be about $25,000. So actually it is pretty hard for Joe Schmoe to earn three times the average global income.

Also, if you expand your range to look at the entire Cleveland Metro area (including my leafy suburb) the average household income goes up to ~$50,000.


Posted by: rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 4:09 PM
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I'm not a Scottish nationalist (small or big N) -- I've never voted for them, and until late Blairism, I was a tribal Labour voter -- so I can't pretend expert knowledge, but ...

NW is right that the SNP aren't really a party that's to the left of the old Scottish Labour party. They are a basically centrist, basically neoliberal, pro-business party that isn't massively different from the Labour party of the past 10 - 15 years, minus some of the authoritarianism and minus the enthusiasm for foreign wars.* They were, once, seen as the Tartan Tories and for much of my life time were a joke, supported by the kind of Scottish equivalent of the rural and or middle-class golf club nationalist bores that support UKIP or the Tories.

However, the Salmond and Sturgeon wing of the party ran a long and fairly hard and bitter campaign to drive them left. A campaign that goes back decades, btw. With the result that when austerity bit they were able to successfully position themselves as an anti-austerity party. That isn't even entirely true. Quite a bit of that is marketing. It's more that they are anti some kinds of austerity party, but the kinds of things they've positioned against: university tuition fees, prescription charges, the creeping privatisation of the NHS, are things that matter a fair bit to the Scottish electorate.

And they are and have been sincerely committed to the European project for a long time. That meant that during the independence referendum they were a bit fucked, as the things they'd hoped to campaign on -- the Euro, etc -- looked shaky as shit post financial crisis, so they came up with a lot of bollocks on the hoof, or had to basically bullshit about their vision for a post-independence party.

A lot of that now looks quite different, post-Brexit, though. And they really aren't nationalists in the sense that English nationalists are nationalists. It's a pretty internationalist, inclusive kind of nationalism. They want to be Denmark, or Sweden, not pre-WW2 Britain.

* those aren't trivial things to be 'minus' ...


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 4:12 PM
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Has anyone read that recent econometric paper that finds a relationship between jobs lost to globalization and voting against the establishment candidates in the primaries? Is it any good?


Posted by: Eggplant | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 4:17 PM
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They look around and see a country where in their lifetimes certain opportunities and ways of life have evaporated before their eyes.

That's true, of course. In absolute terms I earn a good bit more than anyone in my family has ever earned, I think. I'm the only one who ever went to university, for a start.

But ... I have basically no chance of buying a house, and the possibility of being able to afford to pay for university tuition and maintenance for xelA looks like zero, and being able to retire with any kind of financial security or dignity looks very remote. And that change has happened in the past decade for someone in my kind of job, and maybe a decade before for someone in other slightly less skilled/slightly less well paid jobs.

That's not necessarily a permanent situation, and things may improve, and relatively speaking, we aren't poor, so this isn't meant to be 'oh poor me'. But I can see why someone a bit down the income ladder from me, but still in the kind of job where they have ever-receding historic expectations around what the kind of life they can lead, would be properly pissed off.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 4:17 PM
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Whereas that same hard work for the same 3x global average salary is more than enough for an immigrant because he isn't comparing himself to the tech worker down the street making 10x the global average

Gah, NO. Fuck a bunch of navel gazing tech workers. What he's comparing himself to is his father who could get a job in a factory and buy a modest house and support a family without being in dire straights. He's asking where the fuck all that went and it's a damn good question.


Posted by: gswift | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 4:19 PM
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103:

Pick any mutual fund, really. Especially emerging markets. Or pounds, which are at something like a 30 year low and likely to go back up if Brexit doesn't happen.


Posted by: Trivers | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 4:27 PM
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Pointing out that Americans are earning a 2-3x the global average income is unproductive. A critical thing missed by this is that much of that gets eaten up by rents and higher prices. The median American has global 1% income but nothing close to that in global net worth.


Posted by: Trivers | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 4:29 PM
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109 is exactly what I'm talking about.

But whatever, I'm going outside to drink with my wife as the front yard is shaded at this time of day and there's a great little breeze going. Downside is that I'm going to get pestered by her stupid cheerful godamn puppy to throw toys around or something.


Posted by: gswift | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 4:57 PM
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110: very much this, and it doesnt just apply to blue collar workers. By 30, my parents had a house, a car and me. Of those three things, I could afford a car. And I was paid stupidly well in my last job. (For the EU...)

Those of my generation or younger have the disposable income to buy iphones, or pills at the weekend, but few of us have the job security and salary to put down a deposit on a house. It was only recently that I understood the concept of a lost generation - I feel like I should re-read The Sun Also Rises at some point, except that I'm pretty sure it's full of virulent racism.


Posted by: Seeds | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 5:04 PM
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just wanking off to terminology

New mouseover text?


Posted by: Kreskin | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 5:22 PM
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Bruce Springsteen once wrote a song called, "Seeds". It's lyrics are on topic, although it's a quarter century old.


Posted by: Robert | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 5:36 PM
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109, 110 and 114 is certainly very much true. I have a (much milder) version of the same stuff -- I will absolutely not do as well as my parents, though my work is ridiculous enough that I do have a house and car and can spend money on $55 bottles of Springbank. But what I am much more skeptical of is that those kinds of annoyances and fears are what is driving the Brexit voters (or, here Trump voters, and yes I'm wildly using assumptions about the US and applying them to Britain).

Obviously, it's stupid to personalize, but AFAICT Ttam's inability to buy a house/retire easily even on a relatively large salary is mostly driven by insane London real estate prices and cost of living. Things like concerns about schooling are because he's a highly educated guy who would like his kid to also be well educated. Those are obviously super-real concerns. But it's precisely the people facing these kinds of issues-- younger people, Londoners, well educated people -- who are not the Brexit/Trump vote. Rather, the core vote for Brexit (or Trump) are precisely the people who did get some (fairly crappy) version of what was supposed to be coming to them -- older people with a little bit of property and some income, in a more rural or suburban area or smaller city with relatively cheap housing, folks with a pension. Or (some) younger people who want to stick around in their small towns with cheaper housing or whatever. Which is exactly why it's the loss of relative status that they're most worked up about, not the basic economic pocketbook issues of how to have an ordinary middle class life.


Posted by: R Tigre | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 5:40 PM
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After all, if conservatives were really worried about their finances they would vote overwhelmingly for Clinton, just like unemployed young liberals.


Posted by: Eggplant | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 5:47 PM
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And here's the picture of the younger Brexit enthusiast. How are people like this even possible?


Posted by: R Tigre | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 5:53 PM
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119:

That's my exact thought whenever I see one of these young "alt-right" people.


Posted by: Trivers | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 6:02 PM
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I'm able to support three people and a low grade drinking problem on a university staff job, but apparently it took special pleading to get the drinking problem part of the salary.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 6:32 PM
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Anyway, peripheral cities aren't half bad.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 6:39 PM
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Not enough for a second, secret family in the suburbs or a cob cabin to summer in, but I've heard that desiring things is bad so I try to be content.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 6:54 PM
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Sorry. Probably too deep for a Friday.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 7:06 PM
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I want so badly to be content.


Posted by: Eggplant | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 7:17 PM
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I pretty much agree with ttaM and gswift. I look at my special's grandmother and I think our lucky stars that her husband had a municipal job and she has a widow's pension to go with her Social Security. Her (small) house in a (small) town is paid off. She has Medicare. I honestly have no idea how we would cope if she didn't.* I can't imagine what the generation behind her -- gutsy working-class people who worked all their lives -- are going to do. God knows there aren't any pensions.

*It's the subject of constant arguments with my father that he refuses to make arrangements for his own future healthcare now. He's fine financially and health-wise, but he's 72. None of us can afford to take care of him (or pay for a nurse) when he inevitably at some point has a health crisis. Arrrrggghhhhhh. Just thinking about it makes my blood pressure go up.

Sorry. Definitely a downer for a Friday.


Posted by: Witt | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 7:18 PM
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You just need a content provider.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 7:19 PM
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126.2: Medicare Part D helps a whole bunch. Also, making friends with a pharmacist.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 7:40 PM
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One's provider's contentment is not necessarily contagious.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 7:43 PM
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127: I recommend tronc.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 7:57 PM
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I look at my special's grandmother and I think our lucky stars that her husband had a municipal job and she has a widow's pension to go with her Social Security. Her (small) house in a (small) town is paid off. She has Medicare. I honestly have no idea how we would cope if she didn't.

Who is she voting for?


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 7:58 PM
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Anyway, I agree 100% with Tigre in this thread. The political and economic conditions that people who talk about "neoliberalism" a lot are (rightly) concerned about are among the background conditions for the rise of Trumpism/Brexit, but they're not what's primarily driving it.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 8:01 PM
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131: She hates Trump with an abiding passion. But she doesn't trust Hillary. I think the best we can hope for is that she skips the presidential part of the ticket.


Posted by: Witt | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 8:07 PM
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133: If she's anti-Trump that's good enough for me. Demographically she seems disconcertingly compatible with his base of support.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 8:13 PM
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134: Oh, there is no doubt in my mind that if she wasn't from ground-zero for Trump-caused economic mayhem, she would be very susceptible to his arguments.


Posted by: Witt | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 8:16 PM
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Atlantic City?


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 8:17 PM
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I just got out of New Jersey.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 8:25 PM
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126.2: I never pressed my parents about that kind of thing. It seems to be working fine, unless there's some reason to worry about a situation where everything depends on somebody born during the Hoover administration who was hospitalized three times in the past seven months.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 8:29 PM
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And who probably drinks more than I do. But less than I'd drink if I didn't have to work.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 8:39 PM
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So, death stalks us all, but can be delayed by ethanol.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 9:07 PM
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That's not peer reviewed.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 9:09 PM
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I'll review it.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 9:11 PM
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Yep, checks out.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 9:11 PM
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In that I'm currently drunk but not yet dead.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 9:11 PM
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I'm neither drunk nor dead, but the first part at least seems plausible.


Posted by: Thorn | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 9:14 PM
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Extensive research has shown that drunkenness and death are mutually exclusive. So keep that buzz going, for your health!


Posted by: dalriata | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 9:36 PM
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Correlation is not causation!


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 9:41 PM
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When the voting is done and it's Leave by a mile
Because of the vote of your gran,
When your stiff upper lip can no longer smile,
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 10:12 PM
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Turning and turning in the widening round
The barman cannot hear the barmaid;
Things fall apart; the tab cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the pub,
The drink-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of going Dutch is drowned;
The best lack all sobriety, while the worst
Are full of lagers.


Posted by: W. B. Yeats | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 10:49 PM
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I recommend tronc

Every time I hear "tronc" I think it's something that Jean-Ralphio is promoting. I just imagine him going off on some crazy pitch that ends with him chanting "tronc tronc tronc". The forty-eight hour news cycle is what Entertainment 720 was made for.


Posted by: fake accent | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 10:53 PM
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109 wasn't intended to be in opposition to what Tigre has been saying, btw. The people most affected by the change in expectations and lifestyle are not the ones primarily voting for Brexit.

Changing life expectations might be part of the explanation around the margins, but it is mostly resentful old racists who are the core Brexit group, and demographically speaking (boomers, after all) there are a lot of them.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 06-24-16 11:45 PM
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But in the context of the referendum, the core brexit vote is, what, 13-15%, which is what Ukip polled when Cameron panicked and decided on a referendum. Say 30% if we add in half the Tory party. They on their own would have lost. What blew the vote were the old labour crowd, who are on the whole the ones who have suffered. Also AIMHMB, the British tabloid press pays the role of Fox News but is in some ways more influential, because less ghettoised, and has been running a kind of Brexit fantasy for decades now.

The really huge, American-style distortion of the housing market must also play a role in the sense the provinces have of being completely left behind. I have a freind on the Mail who is, admittedly, probably paid about 90-100k now but comes from a working class family and lives in what I understand to be an unspectacular part of Reading. He told me that when he was considering retirement to Lincolnshire every single house there that cost what his could now fetch came with a swimming pool.

There is economically as free a movement of labour from Lithuania to somewhere like Boston or Wisbech than from those small towns to London.

I do think this matters, when you remember that the great slogan of the Thatcher years was "get on your bike" -- ie, move to where the jobs are.


Posted by: NW | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 12:36 AM
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Thanks 27, 73.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 3:48 AM
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148, 149: ...Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
Or why was Burton built on Trent?
Oh many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to man.
Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think:
Look into the pewter pot
To see the world as the world's not.
And faith, 'tis pleasant till 'tis past:
The mischief is that 'twill not last.
Oh I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my necktie God knows where,
And carried half way home, or near,
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:
Then the world seemed none so bad,
And I myself a sterling lad;
And down in lovely muck I've lain,
Happy till I woke again.
Then I saw the morning sky:
Heigho, the tale was all a lie;
The world, it was the old world yet,
I was I, my things were wet,
And nothing now remained to do
But begin the game anew.


Posted by: A.E. Housman | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 4:02 AM
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Not entirely off-topic, this is about the long half-life of memes, esp. those about undeserving takers (which seems to be one of the themes succesfully used by the Leave crew). I am reading Cowie's Stayin' Alive (2010)* and came across this passage last night (my BOLD):

For Nixon, media testing had shown that advertisements coming from a group called "Democrats for Nixon: were more powerful than from the Committee to Re-elect the President (which gained the notorious acronym CREEP). Nixon regarded the set of ads made under that banner as the best political commercials he had ever seen. The most popular of them featured a construction worker -- complete with hard hat -- looking down from scaffolding high above the city. He is the New Deal's working class hero, sitting down to survey the city with his brown-bag lunch. The voiceover then explains to him that George McGovern had recently submitted a welfare bill to Congress that "would make 47% of the people in the United States eligible for welfare. Forty-seven percent. Almost every other person in the country would be on welfare." The worker, sandwich in mouth, is quietly flabbergasted. The voiceover continues, "And who's going to pay for this? Well, if you're not the one out of two people on welfare, you do. (p. 118)

The 47% kinda struck me (I haven't seen this anyone else make this connection: apologies if I am late to this) . From back in 1972. Nixon's long, dead, long dead hand is still reaching out from the grave, directing the forms and shapes of resentment and anxiety in our country from a time before the beginning of the current wage stagnation in the US.

*I thought that I heard about the book from a mention by McManus on this blog, but some googling suggests not and that I heard about it from Loomis at LGM. It was also mentioned at CT 5 years ago (here and here) but I clearly missed those.


Posted by: marcel proust | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 6:27 AM
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Nevermind. I should have googled a bit more. I see that the Romney-Nixon connection was made pretty much immediately.


Posted by: marcel proust | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 6:37 AM
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Exaggerated? Anyone care to elaborate?

People under 24 have no conception what life was like in, say, 1950. Things have indeed go progressively worse since about 1975, but before that is another country. The old farts' cohort of Brexiters grew up in a world where their fathers held steady jobs that paid enough for their mothers to stay at home and raise the kids, and unemployment was below 2%. Of course they're sentimental about it. They probably don't actually want the "No Dogs, Blacks or Irish" signs back on the pub doors, but they'd see it as a price worth paying.

The enormous advances that have been made on social issues- racism, women's rights , LGBTQ liberation and so on are completely beside the point, as far as they're concerned, and the decline has coincided with British membership of the EU and its predecessors.


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 6:52 AM
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Someday we'll find it. The Romney connection. The dreamers, the Nixons, and me.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 8:17 AM
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Now they're suggesting Holyrood consent might be needed, constitutionally, for a full exit. Leverage?


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 9:39 AM
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I don't see how you walk it back without a riot breaking out.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 10:05 AM
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"Brussels is worth a riot"


Posted by: fake accent | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 10:18 AM
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+" sprout"


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 10:19 AM
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160 -- I would have thought that but it seems it's the Leave people who want to slow everything down and avoid actually facing the fact they won, so I dunno.


Posted by: Keir | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 10:21 AM
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I mean, kicking the can down the road is literally what the UK exists to do. And I am told the EU is capable of doing something similar if need be.


Posted by: Keir | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 10:23 AM
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Kicking the can down the road and shooting/aiding the Irish, respectively.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 10:28 AM
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There's quite a bit of buyer's remorse around. I'm sure if another vote were held today Remain would win. And Boris only jumped for the Leave side out of political ambition - he's not a natural anti-European. So he's quite possibly trying to think of a way of walking it back somehow.


Posted by: Ume | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 10:33 AM
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I'm not sure he's a natural blond either.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 10:39 AM
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In all seriousness, I think a lot depends on the next month or so. If the markets don't recover, and the pound stays crashed, going to be a lot of people with an interest in making the problem go away - like Boris, obviously, but also all the rich people who are bleeding money right now, and then all the Tories who don't want to fight an election in a recession they caused.

So maybe there's some weird deal reached. Or something. But I think lots of people are gong to want a solution that isn't as self-mutiliatory.


Posted by: Keir | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 10:45 AM
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I keep hearing variations on 168, and could happen but all scenarios in that vein fail to account for the domestic political calculus in e.g. France or the expectations of at least a few million racist leavers who just had their odious opinions solicited, catered to and massively validated and now want results.

I found a lot of sense in this: http://www.perc.org.uk/project_posts/thoughts-on-the-sociology-of-brexit/


Posted by: dairy queen | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 11:24 AM
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Of course I agree the leave figureheads are now shitting themselves in utter panic but whether they can pull off backing out seems very doubtful to me and if they think the mainstream parties on the continent-all facing similar nationalist challenges-are going to risk anything to help out Boris Fucking Johnson, um wouldn't bet on it.


Posted by: dairy queen | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 11:31 AM
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The link in 169.2 is really good. It also has a negative answer to the question I asked in 105:

The discovery of the 'Case Deaton effect' in the US (unexpected rising mortality rates amongst white working classes) is linked to rising alcohol and opiate abuse and to rising suicide rates. It has also been shown to correlate closely to geographic areas with the greatest support for Trump. I don't know of any direct equivalent to this in the UK, but it seems clear that - beyond the rhetoric of 'Great Britain' and 'democracy' - Brexit was never really articulated as a viable policy, and only ever as a destructive urge, which some no doubt now feel guilty for giving way to.


Posted by: Criminally Bulgur | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 11:36 AM
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I think backing off is the easiest thing in the world. Just do nothing. It's not a good way of proceeded, but it sure is easy.

What difference does the domestic political calculus in France make?


Posted by: Walt Someguy | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 11:50 AM
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The one thing I find the least plausible is a "for real this time" immediate second referendum, which apparently has a huge petition going. Of course you could get a different result doing the election again; that's true of anything close and unless you accept it you'll never have finality on anything. Maybe in a couple of years when the situation has evolved and the question is significantly different.


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 12:04 PM
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It strikes me that what the EU has to say about a do-over is quite important.


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 12:28 PM
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On a more optimistic note, what are the chances that this will lead to reforms in the structure of the EU? I had some sympathy for pro-Brexit concerns about the anti-democratic structure of the organization as a whole. I admit I'm not clear on the details of that structure, but there was some kerfuffle about one Kinnock person being defeated in UK elections repeatedly, but later appointed to some EU council, which pissed a lot of people off.


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 12:43 PM
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The referendum was non-binding, so until the UK officially invokes Article 50, the EU doesn't really have much of a say about the UK changing their mind. That's partly why the EU is pushing for invoking Article 50 quickly, so that they can at least be sure about what's happening.


Posted by: Unfoggetarian: "Pause endlessly, then go in" (9) | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 12:45 PM
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I see.


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 12:53 PM
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Doesn't the UKIP kill both major parties in the next election if the elites simply disregard the very clear mandate of English voters? Is the betting that the fever has broken by then -- because that doesn't seem like that good a bet.


Posted by: CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 1:29 PM
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Art. 50 can say what it says all the live long day, and will be interpreted to a fare thee well by all sides but the reality is that the UK and all of the nations of Europe are enmeshed in a host of complicated bi- and multi-lateral diplomatic and trade relations. The UK has up til now benefited from an exceptionally sweet deal within the EU. But the historical contingencies that led to that favored position look to have run out of steam, vis Cameron's empty hat following his pathetic "renegotiation" tour pre-referendum. Macron , e.g., has a new center right party to build, in the face of socialist collapse and LePen flying the union jack. The mayor of Calais is supposed to continue taking it in the neck to save Johnson's ass? Merkel likely has in mind a period of uncertainty just long enough to poach as much of the City as possible. The Spanish taxpayer is supposed to continue indefinitely subsidizing the healthcare of British retirees? Etc.

The idea that all of Europe waits around patiently for the Conservative Party conference is naive to put it with British understatement mais franchement c'est ridicule.


Posted by: dairy queen | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 1:31 PM
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It's not that I expect them to wait patiently. It's that they can do dick about it. The only thing they can do is act so disgracefully that Leave looks better (which may be the direction Macron is heading).


Posted by: Walt Someguy | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 1:36 PM
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I hear complaints about accountability in the EU, but I'm never sure exactly what it is that people want.* A change in the relation between Council and Parliament? Parliamentary ratification of individual members of the Commission? Of directors general?

* Other than no European government at all, which in my state of ignorance seems likely to account for a huge share of such complaints.


Posted by: CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 1:41 PM
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"disgracefully" is doing some interesting work there.


Posted by: dairy queen | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 1:47 PM
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182: ?


Posted by: Walt Someguy | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 1:52 PM
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That's her nickname for her paralegal.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 2:21 PM
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159: this is what you were thinking of or something like it, I take it? There's a wrinkle. Maybe think things through next time, guys.


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 2:23 PM
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181

It's hard to see how the EU can square the circle of the individual states retaining an enormous amount of power, which they do, with a "more democratic" EU governance structure. The EU has major structural problems which the UK leaving will not cure, but rather exacerbate.

My fantasy is that the government officially votes to ignore the "advisory" referendum, on the grounds that it turned out to be bad advice. Then, if they actually have any courage at all, they call an election.


Posted by: DaveLMA | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 2:32 PM
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British Conservative Party commits own goal of literally epochal scale, can only be saved from disastrous consequences via suicidal political sacrifices of major continental political players and you describe the latter as acting "disgracefully" - okey dokey petit artichokey.


Posted by: dairy queen | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 2:36 PM
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This was interesting https://mobile.twitter.com/GlennF/status/746808327321968640


Posted by: Barry Freed | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 2:42 PM
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187: Are you fucking high? Nothing you say has anything to do with anything I've said. Go punch a fucking Tory if it'll make you feel better.

And what political sacrifice? If the UK goes out, this accelerates the centripedal forces breaking up the EU. The UK pulling out tomorrow is the best present Marine Le Pen could receive. The least bad outcome now is for the UK to say "never mind." They've started down that road, but if grandstanding by European politicians triggers a wave of nationalist sentiment, then it's over. I read some quotes by Macron today, and it made me (a mildly Francophile American) want to quit the EU. I can't imagine the effect it would have on an actual British person. The only European politician who didn't immediately act like a doofus is Merkel.


Posted by: Walt Someguy | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 2:55 PM
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A link to a tweet that links to a tweet that links to a Facebook comment? I'd like Twitter to secede from the Internet.


Posted by: SP | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 3:08 PM
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Even better, a screen shot of a Facebook comment.


Posted by: SP | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 3:10 PM
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Sorry. But it's a pretty insightful Facebook comment.


Posted by: Barry Freed | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 3:15 PM
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link to a tweet that links to a tweet that links to a Facebook comment that cut and pastes from the Guardian comment section.


Posted by: rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 3:31 PM
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This is why plagiarism is underrated. If everyone who saw that and thought it was clever just repeated it as if they'd thought of it themselves, it'd save a whole lot of trouble.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 3:35 PM
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This is the original, but you have to scroll down a little, or at least I did.


Posted by: rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 3:35 PM
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So the question is "which option would make Le Pen happiest: (1) letting the UK pull out, but punishing them with bad trade deals, the succession of Scotland and NI, sending all British expats home, etc. or (2) letting the UK stay in the union, but leaving the crappy vote unpunished."

I think (1) would make her happier, because she doesn't she the negatives of secession as negatives, and wishes the same for France. But I really am happy just doing the opposite of whatever she wants.


Posted by: rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 3:46 PM
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I'd assumed that it's in the rest if the EU's interests to boot England quickly and harshly. A limgering exit period followed by a sweet deal for the UK on the Norweigian model just encourages AfD and the Front National etc etc and leads to a breakup and instability for a decade; saying "my offer is this: nothing" goes over as harsh in England but saves the rest of the union and stabilizes the rest of the world. So, whatever massaging of Article whatever that's needed to make that happen will happen. Is that wrong? (Obviously, it totally could be 100% wrong, but I'd like to know why it is).


Posted by: R Tigre | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 4:06 PM
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Why not a union of England and Norway?


Posted by: Opinionated Harald Hardrada | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 4:10 PM
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a limgering period
Fuckin' common law.


Posted by: Turgid Jacobian | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 4:19 PM
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Going forward the best thing would be if the UK said "never mind". If they go, then I'm sure no sweet deal is forthcoming. (Though Norway's deal is probably worse than the UK's current deal, so it would be funny if that's what they ended up with.)

I think if they are harsh with England, they need to make it appear like it's just the natural outcome. If you're a French voter or a Dutch voter and you already don't trust the EU, and if the EU visibly screws England, then it's 50-50 whether they think better of it, or decide that the EU is the crazy monster of unelected bureaucrats they already fear so they better kill it. One thing the Brexit referendum proves is that economic self-interest isn't everything.


Posted by: Walt Someguy | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 4:35 PM
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I'm not sure people, especially French ones, work like that.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 4:52 PM
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I'm not allowed to run them through mazes any more, so I can't be sure.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 4:55 PM
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I guess I could try to run vivisection by the IRB again.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 5:00 PM
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ZUT ALORS!


Posted by: BRI OPINIONATED | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 5:25 PM
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ZUT ALORS


Posted by: BIR OPINIONATED | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 5:25 PM
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Must have put the electrodes in too far.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 6:03 PM
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If Scotland becomes independent and joins the EU, would England restore Hadrian's wall to keep out the barbarians?

It would be huge.


Posted by: Anonymous Troll | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 6:14 PM
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Go punch a fucking Tory if it'll make you feel better.

Oh god, that would make me feel *so* much better.


Posted by: Swope FM | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 6:24 PM
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Five tokens please. Four for a lib-dem and eight for a UKIP member.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 6:55 PM
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Or fuck a punching Tory.


Posted by: Turgid Jacobian | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 6:59 PM
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Charlie Stross posted something interesting about Brexit:

It is becoming apparent that The Scottish Parliament and Northern Ireland Assembly may have veto power over BRexit per the House of Lords European Union Committee (11th Report of Session 2015-16, "The process of withdrawing from the European Union"). See paras 70-71, "The role of the devolved legislatures in implementing the withdrawal agreement" -- section 29 of the Scotland Act 1998 binds the Scottish Parliament to act in a manner compatible with EU law, and Scottish parliamentary consent would be required to amend this. (A similar provision underpins the devolution settlements of Wales--which voted for Brexit--and Northern Ireland--which voted against it.)

I'm glad to see that his conclusions match mine:

I now confess to having run out of clues. I have got no idea where this is all going to end up.

Posted by: NickS | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 7:47 PM
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It would really be something if the end result was Brexit being blocked by the Scottish parliament.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 7:54 PM
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OT: Barry, are you still interested in a meet-up next week? I could probably still meet for lunch Tuesday or Wednesday, or a more traditional weekday evening meet-up Monday.


Posted by: fake accent | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 7:58 PM
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The only way to fight devolution is devolution.


Posted by: fake accent | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 8:16 PM
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213 I am but it looks like I'm coming in on Monday and will be around by the afternoon, Tuesday will likely be full with meetings and Wednesday I fly back to NY. So Monday night looks best and Tuesday I'd have to play by ear.

Of course I still haven't lined up a place to stay yet so which fact is filling me with anxiety about the trip. I'll probably book something tomorrow afternoon.


Posted by: Barry Freed | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 8:44 PM
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Monday is best for me too. Unexpectedly, my parents are going to be in town starting Tuesday.


Posted by: fake accent | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 8:52 PM
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Ok I'll let you know when it looks like I'll be around. I can meet up with others on Tuesday but I'm not sure when.


Posted by: Barry Freed | Link to this comment | 06-25-16 9:06 PM
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The discussion seems to have moved on, but I want to ask, 'Why were people supposed to turn out to vote stay?' I get why people who were pissed off would vote to burn shit down, but what was motivating most of the people who were supposed to vote for the status quo? Were the young people supposed to turn out for "fear?" It doesn't seem like a good plan to me.


Posted by: roger the cabin boy | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 12:20 AM
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And yet, the young people who did turn out voted overwhelmingly to stay.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 1:07 AM
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It's striking how much everyone has to say after the leave vote and how little they had to say before. Like I basically forgot about the referendum until the night before, went to bed assuming they'd vote stay and was horrified* when I woke up. The Union seems to be part of the natural order, the way things are done, and it keeps on keeping on because it is the right thing to do even if no-one affirmatively likes it.
*Truly horrified. I had no idea I cared as much as I apparently do.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 1:21 AM
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219- They did. The overwhelming majority voted 'I don't give a shite.' by not showing up though.


Posted by: roger the cabin boy | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 2:08 AM
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211. Interesting. If Sturgeon is as canny as she thinks she is, she'll take a line of "It would be irresponsible of Scotland to prevent England leaving the EU if that's what they want to do, but we will delay any such eventuality until Scotland (and NI?) have sorted out their own position satisfactorily."

I notice that the shadow cabinet is imploding. By, bye Jeremy. Also, the LibDems have come out and said that they'll work to reverse the result. Too many variables...


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 3:59 AM
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220: Really? Not for me. I have been obsessed with worry and anxiety for the last month. I don't think I was the only one. It was in the headlines constantly. (I can't remember where you are in the world, Mossy, so perhaps we just had completely different reactions!)


Posted by: Parenthetical | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 4:19 AM
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222: Looks like she's come out threatening such a veto, if not definitively. And the power is still in dispute.


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 5:48 AM
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"Doesn't the UKIP kill both major parties in the next election if the elites simply disregard the very clear mandate of English voters?"

It's not a clear mandate: it's 52%. UKIP currently have exactly one MP, Douglas Carswell, who won his seat as a Tory and has publicly repudiated UKIP since the referendum (causing huge anger among kippers). UKIP are not the SNP. They will probably win some seats in a snap GE (although I'd say none in any of the major cities, which make up something like half of the total of seats?) but they will win nowhere near enough to get power, and none of the other parties will touch them in terms of a coalition: Johnson, Gove, and other leaders of the Leave campaign are already trying to walk things back to a 'Norway' option. The EU itself will stop them from doing that, not the kippers.

I think the fact that the UK is urbanised, and that the cities are not nationalist and are in fact pro-EU (very strongly in the case of London) continues to be underplayed. A party which can mobilise the urban vote will probably have the final say in what happens next. I think the UK would be very unlucky to have its future determined by the nativists and not the 48%.


Posted by: Charlie W | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 5:51 AM
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223: I'm not in Britain, which I think you are, so. 220 seems true of American unfoggeders, anyway.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 5:52 AM
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And just to add: the 'metropolitan liberal' trope beloved of shitty newspapers hasn't helped the UK see this clearly. There may be such people, but there are millions and millions of them, and they're not confined to Islington. To a first approximation, they're the people with jobs. The UK is post-industrial, but that doesn't mean the workers disappear into thin air. The Remain vote map shows you roughly where they live, and how many there are.


Posted by: Charlie W | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 5:56 AM
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Amazing scenes in Labour though - textbook coup and weirdly weak response from Corbyn. Afaict only Thornberry and McDonnell doing broadcast for him.


Posted by: Keir | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 6:32 AM
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226: Oh, totally re: the American reaction. For some reason I thought you were British but living abroad. And yeah, I'm in England, so it makes a bigger difference to me.


Posted by: Parenthetical | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 6:39 AM
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225 last: Birmingham, Bradford, Sheffield and Nottingham all voted narrowly to leave. London, Bristol, Manchester and Liverpool were the only major cities with a big Remain majority, most of the rest were more or less tied. I don't think you can assume that urbanisation makes people pro-EU on its own.


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 6:40 AM
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230 - and Glasgow/Edinburgh/Aberdeen.

SNP will be looking at that strong middle class Remain vote hungrily - if you could turn the 80% Remain vote in demographics like middle-class Edinburgh into even slight lean towards a Yes vote, big chance to dent the unionist majority.


Posted by: Keir | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 6:47 AM
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Yeah, Scotland and NI are their own thing. I wonder if you could sell NI a constitutional solution where the presidents of the RoI and Scotland were joint heads of state?


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 6:53 AM
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230: Not on its own, but this is basically how the nation divides.

If the genie can't be put back in the bottle pronto, we are heading for an economic disaster. Scotland could well be a beneficiary, though, and people are going to be looking to move.


Posted by: Charlie W | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 6:54 AM
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Or taking the other side of the Andorra route, and it could be the Archbishop of Armagh (Catholic) and the Archbishop of Armagh (Anglican).


Posted by: Keir | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 6:58 AM
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234: except most of the staunchest Unionists are Presbyterians.
I don't see a workable way for NI to separate from England-and-Wales, even though they really economically need to be in the EU. A Scottish link might help but Scotland would be crazy to accept any such role.


Posted by: emir | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 7:04 AM
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235 -- yes, but you couldn't run the risk of having one of the Paisleys as HoS and First Minister at the same time!


Posted by: Keir | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 7:07 AM
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235. And my friends in your neck of the woods are adamant that you couldn't afford to take them on, even if there were no other issues. What I had in mind was, in Bagehot's terms, efficiently an EU protectorate, with some sort of face saving formula in the dignified parts of the settlement.


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 7:20 AM
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it wasn't 52% in non-London England.


Posted by: CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 7:43 AM
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If UKIP takes 15-25 seats, obviously it doesn't get power, except that it's scrambled the results. And makes safe seats unsafe by acting as a spoiler. Neither major party can afford to turn their backs on a majority of their district [riding?] who voted to reject back-turning elites.


Posted by: CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 7:49 AM
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t is becoming apparent that The Scottish Parliament and Northern Ireland Assembly may have veto power over BRexit per the House of Lords

I won't pretend to know anything substantive about British politics, but how on earth can this be something that people DON'T KNOW? Didn't government leaders do reams of due diligence before the referendum?

At the very least, didn't Cameron get an analysis from whatever the equivalent of the Solicitor General is over there, letting him know the legal repercussions of decisions in either direction? I'm asking because genuinely astonished by the number of articles I've read that boil down to "It's not quite clear if X has the legal right to do Y...."


Posted by: Witt | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 7:52 AM
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You know how American constitutional law is a prophecy about the way the Supreme Court will rule? British constitutional law is a prophecy about whether or not the British public will see an action as being cricket or not.


Posted by: Keir | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 7:54 AM
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But difficulty predicting what the Supreme Court will do (or the British people don't riot about) is one thing. The "Hey, nobody mentioned shit about this before the vote at all but now it might force the opposite result" is a whole different thing.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 8:02 AM
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240: Cameron has just been deposed in a game-of-chicken coup by Gove and Johnson; he's personally anti-Brexit and it's going to be economically disastrous for the UK (and potentially politically disastrous for the Tories). Even if he knew the magic words that would make Brexit happen with no muss or fuss, what's his motivation to share them, help Prime Minister Boris, and make disaster for his political party and his personal legacy more likely? (Also, you mean the Office of Legal Counsel; the Solicitor General's office is in charge of arguing the government's case in court, while the OLC's job is writing briefs to advise about the legality of the president's actions.)


Posted by: | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 8:08 AM
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I don't think anyone thought that Holyrood could use the need for a legislative consent motion to veto Brexit; I still don't think they can, in actuality, although it will be interesting to see how it goes.

(A LCM would be needed to amend the Scottish legislation, including the Scotland Act 1996 (UK) which embeds EU membership and law in Scottish law; but could Holyrood use a refusal to pass that LCM to prevent Brexit? What would that actually look like? Next PM doesn't issue the Article 50 notice? The Article 50 notice is ignored by the EU? Scotland keeps acting like it's in the EU when rUK isn't, even after the two year period? Would the EU accept that? Who'd enforce this veto? The UK Supreme Court?)

I also think the people who would have thought about this were all Remainers who didn't really think it was very likely. The Outers tend not to have much of a grip on devolution as a thing.


Posted by: Keir | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 8:09 AM
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243 was me. The other thing, as Keir said, is that bad polling apparently convinced the majority of people (including both 70% of Leave voters and the City types who lost billions of dollars on Friday) that Remain was going to win in a squeaker.


Posted by: snarkout | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 8:16 AM
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Moby, this is completely uncharted territory. People are desperately searching through reams of legislation to see what is and is not possible in this situation, because nobody has ever been in this situation before. Detailed sub-clauses in EU treaties weren't drafted with an eye to weird situations in bits of member states whose internal situations have changed since those treaties were made; likewise the constitutional provisions for Scotland and NI were designed on the assumption that the UK was a member of the EU.

This is not straightforward.


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 8:16 AM
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I mean, it actually makes sense that major constitutional changes should need the consent of each constituent nation. (The Australians have a majority in a majority of states rule, for instance.) So it's not insane to argue that Scotland should have a veto power here. But it would be a huge shift in the British constitution, on par with, I dunno, the Act of Union itself --- it would mean the final death of Parliamentary sovereignty, and probably an explicit recognition of federalism.


Posted by: Keir | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 8:21 AM
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Right, I did mean OLC. I never remember that. Thanks.


Posted by: Witt | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 8:21 AM
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247 seems right, but Westminster will not surrender sovereignty willingly. But if push comes to shove Scotland would push back, and it's hard to see how England can impose itself without using tanks, which I don't think will happen.


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 8:27 AM
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238: the referendum wasn't put to the people of non-London England. And just as the Scots do, the people of London England and other cities have concerns. Nationhood not to be taken for granted, given the economic threats. Everybody talks about the Leave constituency: the Remain constituency also exists, and has electoral weight.


Posted by: Charlie W | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 8:38 AM
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249 - but in many ways that's Sturgeon's game: there's a vacuum, and a lack of clarity, and she's trying to rapidly fill it with Scottish sovereignty. Everything Sturgeon's done since about two in the morning on Friday has been carefully calculated to project an image of Scotland as a sovereign player engaged in a game with other sovereign players. And she's getting away with it, even if it is a political not legal ploy.


Posted by: Keir | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 8:44 AM
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And, of course, herself as First Minister exercising that sovereign power wisely and responsibly -- that initial statement at Bute House, with the two flags? Even if she doesn't get indy, I think she's nailed on the next Holyrood elections, and possibly the ones after.


Posted by: Keir | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 8:46 AM
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251. Yes, but at some point Westminster will try to bite back. Westminster has exercised sovereignty since the 17th century and they like it that way. That's an all party thing.


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 8:50 AM
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I've been thinking voting needs to be amended to be more like driver's licenses--past a certain age, you have to take a yearly test to renew your voting rights. Questions will include: are you an angry fuck who wants to burn down the planet before you die? Do you hate young people and want them to suffer in a way you never did?

But seriously, it's insane we let people with senile dementia vote but not, say, 17 year olds.


Posted by: Buttercup | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 9:57 AM
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254: the logical consequence of this is IQ tests before voting. After all, if it is unacceptable for a senile 80 year old to vote, it must be equally unacceptable for a prematurely senile 50 year old to vote (yes, Alzheimer's and other similar diseases can set in quite early). I think the U.S. has experimented along these lines before? How did that go?


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 10:04 AM
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Neither 17 year olds nor dementia-laden racists are that disastrous, so long as you let them vote for parties instead of directly on major questions via referenda and initiatives.

ISTM that Scotland would be crazy not to leave England now, as quickly as possible. Edinburgh or Glasgow are both well suited to pick up a lot of what will move out of the UK.


Posted by: R Tigre | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 10:04 AM
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On the other hand, do you want a customs line along the Tweed?


Posted by: Keir | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 10:16 AM
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That's between you and your tailor, Keir.


Posted by: Eggplant | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 10:46 AM
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I won't pretend to know anything substantive about British politics, but how on earth can this be something that people DON'T KNOW? Didn't government leaders do reams of due diligence before the referendum?

I saw a line today from Yes, Minister, "Diplomacy is about surviving until the next century--politics is about surviving until Friday afternoon."

But, also, reading this article, linked at 10, it sounds like there was never a single, specific plan for Leaving, but a statement of intent which was always going to require a lot of work to turn into policy. For example:

Both sides in the campaign have agreed that this whole process will take several years, during which the UK will remain in the EU. The Remain side always argued that the negotiations would be lengthy; the Leave side indicated late in the campaign that it would like to complete the process by 2020 . . .

The process of withdrawal will involve three sets of negotiations:
These negotiations could run in parallel, or the UK could negotiate withdrawal first and future arrangements later. As Professor Adam Lazowski has pointed out, there are difficulties in both approaches.

Along with this, quoted above.

Whitehall, meanwhile, will be severely stretched by the mammoth exercise of withdrawal. The civil service has zero spare capacity after the cuts of the last five years: many departments have seen budget cuts of over a quarter since 2010, and total civil service employment has fallen by almost a fifth in the same period. Further spending reductions for the coming years were set out in last year's spending review. The UK has no current capacity at all in trade negotiations, as this is a job that has been outsourced to Brussels. The task of reviewing 40 years of EU and domestic legislation could take five or ten years. It will make it very difficult for the government to embark on any new policy while it reviews all these old policies. Whitehall also risks becoming very clumsy in handling important relationships (such as with Scotland: see below) because it will be so severely distracted.

Posted by: NickS | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 10:51 AM
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Point to ponder. In the Scottish Independence referendum, 16-17year olds were given a vote and, against the general trend seem to have voted something like 70% Yes. Polls suggest that if 16-17 year olds nationally had voted last Thursday they might well have tipped the result.

We need the teenage vote if there's a rerun!


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 10:55 AM
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255

This is slippery slope nonsense. We've managed to do it with driver's licenses without resulting in IQ tests for driving. Also, we already prohibit children from voting based on their mental faculties, and that hasn't led to totalitarian dystopia.


Posted by: Buttercup | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 11:56 AM
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The other option is a bright line. No one over 70 gets to vote. Boom.


Posted by: Buttercup | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 11:58 AM
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hasn't led to totalitarian dystopia.
... have you ever been to a school?


Posted by: Keir | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 11:59 AM
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261: because you actually have to pass a driving test in order to start driving. It's not just something that happens when you turn 18. Re-testing people to ensure they can still meet the criteria makes sense. (Also, analogy ban.)

Disenfranchising large sections of the population because you think they're biologically and intellectually inferior is not a liberal thing to want to do. It's a Quisling thing to want to do.


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 12:21 PM
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He didn't do very well at getting Norway a special deal with Europe. At least not for long.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 12:25 PM
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265

The UK seems on track to get a similar deal. Maybe when they meant "the Norway deal," they weren't referring Norway's special relationship with the EU.

264

Hey, it's your country that's imploded because of angry racist old people voting, TBH it's no skin off of my back.


Posted by: Buttercup | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 12:29 PM
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Yep, certainly there's nothing happening in the U.S. that implies the presence of a large mob of angry racist old people voting.


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 12:35 PM
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267

And when we elect President Trump, you'll have the right to gloat.


Posted by: Buttercup | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 12:38 PM
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True, but I won't, because gloating over other people's misfortunes is something that vindictive prigs do and I'm not one.


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 12:42 PM
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Re-testing people to ensure they can still meet the criteria makes sense.

Is this about the driving still? Because I spend way more time thinking about that than I ever did about all of the things in Europe that aren't toplessness.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 12:43 PM
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266.2: Jesus, Buttercup, this is annoying. You know, it's just as much the younger folks failing to show up to vote Remain as the older folks voting Out. Kevin Drum put some figures together.

I've been having a conversation with a friend of mine in the UK aged just over 70 who was putting all his time into the cause for remaining in the EU. He reports that he and his friends and neighbors were so despondent after vote results came in that some of them cried. You really think they shouldn't be able to vote? I assume you're trolling, but don't be an ass.


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 12:50 PM
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TBH, I don't really give a shit who votes, in general, but I'd be strongly opposed to excluding people on intellectual grounds. I'm fine with extending the franchise down to 16, though.

I think the media, and the epic level of mendaciousness that doesn't get held to account -- the whole post-truth/post-factual thing -- is more of an issue.

It's not just that there are low information voters, it's that there's a massive campaign built around ensuring that they have little information, and the information they do have is wrong. That's been going on for a long time, of course, but I think those who claim it has gotten much much worse in the last 15 years are right.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 12:53 PM
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So, serious question. Cameron is now in place to unequivocally beat out Neville Chamberlain as the worst PM ever. Is there any reason beyond personal cowardice/stupidity/etc. why he wouldn't fall on his sword to annul/ignore/cancel the vote? He no longer has a political career, it's not legally binding, and then he could be remembered in history as the guy who almost destroyed the UK, not the guy who actually did destroy the UK.


Posted by: Buttercup | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 12:54 PM
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re: 273

That's not really how parliamentary democracy works, tbh. Although some are claiming that delaying the Article 50 call is his way of doing that.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 12:59 PM
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At least no one will remember the pig-fucking now.


Posted by: David Cameron | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 1:02 PM
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The not-corkscrew penis stands out for me.


Posted by: Opinonated Pig | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 1:04 PM
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I'm mostly slate pitching, but I do think we need to seriously rethink voting ages. I would probably agree with ttaM, but I would put the age lower, maybe at 14 or even 12. Everyone's getting an aneurysm by the idea of a bright line age cut off for old people, but seem to be more than happy to accept it for young people, who by far have the most at stake in the outcomes of a vote.


Posted by: Buttercup | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 1:04 PM
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And now FWICT anonymous EU officials are saying declaring Article 50 is a precondition to negotiations - meaning UK will be in a much worse position for negotiations. If this reflects their true plans, it's the hardball route, right?


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 1:06 PM
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1) They're not going to vote 2) They just vote like their parents 3) Insofar as it makes a difference, you give more power to fecund religious weirdoes.


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 1:06 PM
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Buttercup should totally pitch an article to Slate arguing for giving 12-year-olds the vote.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 1:07 PM
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271

You do realize "but I know an old person who is cool, therefore all old people should vote" applies equally to teenagers and possibly children?


Posted by: Buttercup | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 1:09 PM
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279

1) If they're not going to vote, what does it matter, 2) Alzheimer's patients are clearly filling out their own ballots? Families are already voting for old people, 3) This is an argument for restricting voting based on ideological affiliation.

Again, all of these arguments apply to old people, except for the religious one.

Again. If bright line age cut offs or competency requirements is OMGNAZISM!#%), then on what basis do you restrict voting for young people, who are actually going to have to live with the consequences?


Posted by: Buttercup | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 1:15 PM
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True, true. People should be able to vote when they're 3.


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 1:16 PM
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As long as they can walk and talk, and read, you see.


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 1:17 PM
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I think we're all looking forward to seeing Buttercup and parsimon fight this one out.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 1:28 PM
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I supposed the real lower cut off would have to be the motor skills to grasp a pencil and color in the lines.


Posted by: Buttercup | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 1:32 PM
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Googling around, one interesting argument I saw against lowering the voting age is that it'll be used as justification for charging more kids as adults.

Anyway, you can play this game with any bright-line rule. We eyeball kids and decide what they can handle at certain stages, and that's a much easier, more fair exclusion than taking rights away from adults case by case based on some test some experts come up with.


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 1:32 PM
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282: Aren't I infamous here as an advocate for Children's rights? If they can reach the lever or x the square, let them vote. 5 yr olds. Also, crazy people and incarcerated felons, and sorry, senile olds.

Lots and lots of post-mortems out there. I'm reading too many of them.

Glenn Greenwald

Because of how generally satisfied they are with their lot, they regard with affection and respect the internationalist institutions that safeguard the West's prevailing order: the World Bank and IMF, NATO and the West's military forces, the Federal Reserve, Wall Street, the EU. While they express some piecemeal criticisms of each, they literally cannot comprehend how anyone would be fundamentally disillusioned by and angry with these institutions, let alone want to break from them. They are far removed from the suffering that causes those anti-establishment sentiments. So they search and search in vain for some rationale that could explain something like Brexit, or the establishment-condemning movements on the right and left, and can find only one way to process it: These people are not motivated by any legitimate grievances or economic suffering, but instead they are just broken, ungrateful, immoral, hateful, racist, and ignorant.

Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 1:37 PM
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287

Yeah, that's a problem, but it seems like a separate problem with the justice system.

But what about a bright line? Say, 80? How is that different from a bright line at 18? Most 16-18 year olds are as competent as anyone else to vote. Plenty of younger kids would be too depending on individual development, but we've agreed to let all the qualified young kids not vote on the off-chance there are some immature adolescents who would just fuck around. Why is that totally unacceptable for old people, but acceptable for young people?


Posted by: Buttercup | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 1:40 PM
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These people are not motivated by any legitimate grievances or economic suffering, but instead they are just broken, ungrateful, immoral, hateful, racist, and ignorant.
As always, these are are not mutually exclusive.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 1:40 PM
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274

When you say that's not how parliamentary democracy works, do you mean legally or politically?


Posted by: Buttercup | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 1:50 PM
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In some ways it's like Britain did give 2 year olds the vote, and they thought that the Sir-Topham-Hat-dominated autarky of the island of Sodor was the way to go. Everyone can be very useful and English puffing around on an island pointlessly for the benefit of some overdressed rich dude and a aristocrat who does nothing.


Posted by: R Tigre | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 2:05 PM
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Knowledge tests for voting strike me as entirely reasonable. Preventing gaming of the exam system would be a total bastard, but I don't see that it's intrinsically impossible. Tests would be a barrier to voting, though, so would have to be coupled with compulsory voting. Which, why isn't that the norm, anyway?


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 2:14 PM
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In church, I sit near a guy who just turned 95, who takes the bus there, and who lights a smoke as he leaves before he even gets down the steps to the sidewalk. Probably has nothing to do with Europe except I think he was born in Italy.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 2:15 PM
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"The franchise shall be restricted to those citizens capable of lighting a cigarette while walking down the steps of the polling place."


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 2:18 PM
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The system in 293 sounds like an absolute nightmare to administer. Which is presumably why no one does it.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 2:18 PM
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293: Preventing gaming would be impossible. It would only be used for racism here.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 2:18 PM
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Admittedly the gap between 'possible' and 'feasible' is probably unbridgeable.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 2:22 PM
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My grandmother lived to 95 solely so she could reelect Obama. After she voted for him the first time she decided she was ready to die, but then she hung on long enough that it made sense to hang on another year for his reelection.

Brexit is awful, Trump is awful, but global warming is the real reason why


Posted by: Buttercup | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 2:23 PM
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My grandmother lived to 95 solely so she could reelect Obama. After she voted for him the first time she decided she was ready to die, but then she hung on long enough that it made sense to hang on another year for his reelection.

Brexit is awful, Trump is awful, but global warming is the real reason why under 18 year olds should be allowed to vote. We are actually going to have an actual environmental apocalypse on our hands in 30-50 years, and no one in power currently gives a shit, because they'll all be dead. Sea levels are going to rise by feet, and millions and millions of people will die horrible needless deaths that we could have in part prevented had we been willing to think more than 2 years in advance. We're probably past the turning point now, but we might be able to bend the curve a bit if we tried our hardest.


Posted by: Buttercup | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 2:24 PM
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I don't think teenagers are actually known for being willing to think more than 2 years in advance.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 2:25 PM
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300 is all true, but realistically most of those kids will vote the same as their parents.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 2:26 PM
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292 inspired me to song:

They're two the're four they're six they're eight
Voting leave and spouting hate
Old and bitter angry shrews
They're the really racist crew
All with stupid things to say
From Lexit tools to hate the gays
No jobs for Romanians
Boris and his friends


Posted by: Tigre the Tank Engine | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 2:29 PM
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293

Yeah, and it's so stark with Brexit because it's clear a meaningful number of people actually had no idea what they were voting for. I know I was the one who brought up voting, but I think the bigger problem is that there's absolutely no check on the media or politicians any more (and maybe there never was) to not disseminate blatant lies. I have no idea how to fix this, but it seems like there's always at least one party acts solely to keep itself in power, and they have the ability to destroy countries.

Another big problem is the arrogant immoral shits on the right (US & UK) thought they could play with fascism to get the plebs to support their agenda of pure greed. Now they've radicalized an angry mob of fascists, and the monster is turning on his master.


Posted by: Buttercup | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 2:29 PM
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I have no idea how to fix this, but it seems like there's always at least one party acts solely to keep itself in power, and they have the ability to destroy countries.

In theory, the desire to keep themselves in power should prevent them from destroying at least their own country. That dynamic seems to be breaking down in recent years, though.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 2:33 PM
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LET ME KEEP MY ZIMBABWE.


Posted by: OPINIONATED ROBERT MUGABE | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 2:47 PM
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Of course. As I've said before, better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.


Posted by: Satan | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 2:51 PM
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Good Lord.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 2:51 PM
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Many of the reports of incidents seem to show the mistaken belief that EU citizens living in the UK will be forced to leave the country as a result of the referendum result

Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 2:51 PM
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309: Suffice to say I'm concerned for my Polish relatives living in England, especially the kids.


Posted by: J, Robot | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 2:55 PM
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310: No kidding. Yikes.

(Also, thanks for posting that article at the other place, which is where I found it.)


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 2:58 PM
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303 is pretty great.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 4:00 PM
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The problem with children is they sooner or later discover "Bob's Burgers" and when they do, they persist in singing, "She gets her B.M. in the p.m." for ten minutes.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 4:49 PM
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303:

Accidents happen, now and again
Just when you least expect
Just when you think that life is okay
Fate brings you brexit


Posted by: British electorate | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 4:52 PM
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The worst part is he keep screwing it up even as he keeps repeating it.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 5:05 PM
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Right, the genius of that is that it teaches kids that there is nothing they can do or not do to avoid horrific trainwrecks.


Posted by: R Tigre | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 5:09 PM
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It's only 9 syllables. He could do it if he tried.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 5:19 PM
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The guy with the "send them back" shirt is interesting in that he's actually showing everyone that he shaves his head because of how obvious it would be that he's balding if he didn't.


Posted by: SP | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 5:25 PM
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Brain development is not complete until you are around 25. That is, 16-year-olds are immature, 18-year-olds are immature, and 21-year-olds are immature. The last parts to finish growing are the ones associated with impulse control and planning toward goals.

Here's an NPR take on it.

Raise the voting age to 25.


Posted by: DaveLMA | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 7:42 PM
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Hell, if we're looking for sufficiently mature brains, perhaps Manhood Suffrage has had its day!


Posted by: Thorn | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 7:51 PM
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Again with the anti-circumcision stuff.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 7:56 PM
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AFAI understand it, the modern theory of suffrage in liberal democracies has been based mostly on the idea that voting requires independence, in the sense of being able to vote without someone controlling your vote. Changes in what was considered "independence" have gone hand in hand with changes in suffrage qualifications.

You can now be independent without owning property? No more property qualifications (for men), except freedom (defined as "self-ownership" in the U.S.). Woman suffrage was linked with the decline of coverture. When there were "intelligence" tests, they were about local attempts to override the principle of one (free) person one vote, and driven by racism, not by fundamental beliefs about what qualified a person to vote.

You want kids to vote, emancipate them.


Posted by: fake accent | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 9:17 PM
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Hmm:

But despite the acrimony of the Democratic primary, 81 percent of Sanders backers now support Clinton against Trump. Only 8 percent of Sanders voters now support Trump, compared with 10 percent of all Republicans who support Clinton. (Clinton die-hards should think twice before complaining about Sanders backers' supposed foot-dragging. At this point in 2008, 22 percent of Clinton primary supporters said they would vote for John McCain in the fall, and 16 percent did so.)

Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 9:18 PM
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Any bird who wants to chain herself to my railing and suffer a jet movement gets my vote.


Posted by: Lord Flashheart | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 9:19 PM
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324 not particularly relevant to the preceding comments about suffrage, but it's just such a great line.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 06-26-16 9:20 PM
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The rather disturbing thought occurs that, yes, most MPs are in favour of Remain, but rather fewer of them are probably willing to risk voting for Remain in Parliament and run the risk of being shot.


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 1:24 AM
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That's not really how parliamentary democracy works, tbh.

Once you're making major decisions by referendum, how parliamentary democracy is supposed to work is a bit moot.


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 4:32 AM
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Cameron is now in place to unequivocally beat out Neville Chamberlain as the worst PM ever.

Hey, what am I, chopped liver?


Posted by: Opinionated Anthony Eden | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 4:33 AM
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Can anybody think of a way to discount the votes of people who think that by leaving the EU immigration from South Asia will be stopped? Because there were plenty of the,


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 4:39 AM
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Actually breaking up the UK I think qualifies you as the worst. I don't know how Chamberlain compares with Eden.


Posted by: Buttercup | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 7:27 AM
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Depending if / how soon it happens, breaking up the UK could also be remembered as Queen Bess's legacy in a hundred years. (Bam.)


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 9:10 AM
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Which would be pleasingly elegant, seeing as the other Queen Bess arranged the unification in the first place. So elegant, indeed that historians 1000 years hence will dismiss the detail as an obvious interpolation in the oral tradition.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 9:19 AM
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I don't think she intended it; she just brought it about by not having any legitimate children. (And, really, didn't unification happen under Queen Anne rather than with James VI? Before that Scotland and England were still two countries, they just happened to have the same monarch.)


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 9:24 AM
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She didn't have any illegitimate children either, did she? If so, she was very good at hiding them.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 9:29 AM
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333: True, but she knew who was going to inherit, and that's generally a monarch's responsibility to care about.


Posted by: dalriata | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 9:36 AM
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334: I have no idea. Not that I know of.

335: fair point. I suppose she decided by just not doing anything about it.


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 9:37 AM
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Right, the Act of Union was 1707, under Anne.

I was literally explaining this (two kingdoms with the same monarch from James I through Anne (leaving aside the Interregnum), and only after the Act of Union one country) to the kids last night in the context of Brexit. It was so much easier being an authority on everything when they didn't know enough to ask hard questions yet.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 9:38 AM
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I had the impression from a podcast the court worked specifically to make sure the young James was in the "right" hands for political tutelage and did not turn out like his mother Mary. Or something.


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 9:44 AM
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I've always been a little puzzled by the legal status of Wales at different times, but haven't ever gotten interested enough to figure it out properly.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 9:50 AM
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338 is right. Bess certainly did plan it.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 9:50 AM
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So is it possible for foreigners to arbitrage the pound for air travel, or do the airlines have the ability to ensure a USian pays in dollars?


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 9:53 AM
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Air travel to the UK, obviously.


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 9:53 AM
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I have a schmultural-literacy question: is there a US equivalent of "Islington"?


Posted by: lurid keyaki | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 10:15 AM
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I don't know the answer, but I'm also not sure I get the question. Are you saying "Islington is a named London neighborhood with some set of associated socio-economic/cultural connotations, is there a neighborhood in a US city with similar connotations?" I couldn't answer that, because Islington doesn't mean anything specific to me, but is that what you're asking?


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 10:35 AM
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Looking at Wikipedia pages about this stuff, as one does, I'm amused to learn that the British sovereigns kept "France" as part of their title (i.e. "By the Grace of God, King of Great Britain, France and Ireland..." for longer than the actual French kings kept their office.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 10:39 AM
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345: There was a Final Jeopardy question related this to this not long ago.


Posted by: peep | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 10:48 AM
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Yes, I saw some reference in passing to a cultural divide with "Oxbridge and Islington" on one side, as a metonym for the world of elites (I take it), and I was curious whether the U.S. analogy would be the Upper West Side or what. Wikipedia says:

From the 1960s, the remaining Georgian terraces were rediscovered by middle-class families. Many of the houses were rehabilitated, and the area became newly fashionable. . . . Among the new residents were a number of figures who became central in the New Labour movement, including Tony Blair before his victory in the 1997 general election. According to The Guardian, "Islington is widely regarded as the spiritual home of Britain's left-wing intelligentsia."[10] The Granita Pact between Gordon Brown and Tony Blair is said to have been made at a now defunct restaurant on Upper Street.

Is "Ivy League/Manhattan" the equivalent U.S. bubble? (I admit it's a completely frivolous question, although I do find the subtle distinctions interesting.)


Posted by: lurid keyaki | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 10:50 AM
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I would think that maybe it used to piss off the French, but after a couple hundred years it just looked so pathetic and needy that the French started laughing at it.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 10:51 AM
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347: I thought the Upper East Side was associated with left-wing intellectual types and the West Side was old money.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 10:52 AM
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Or maybe that's Central Park West vs. East. I'm forgetting my Fran Leibowitz.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 10:55 AM
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347: I think Islington also had associations going much further back, 1930s at least, of wealth, elegance, fashion, without any political affiliation. But going off dim second-hand cultural memory.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 10:58 AM
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You're flipped East for West -- Upper East Side near the park is incredibly wealthy old-money types, while the Upper West Side is sort of doctors, lawyers, shrinks and academics: Woody Allen characters. But you're also a little obsolete -- everything down there is so expensive now that the left intelligentsia isn't on the West Side either any more, largely. There's not really a particular neighborhood that's replaced it with the same feel.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 11:00 AM
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My apologies to lurid for the incorrect correction.

I'm fine being a little out of date. That's bound to happen when you rely on a thirty year old book.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 11:06 AM
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351. Yes-ish. It was down on its luck in the post-war period and was one of the first neighbourhoods to be colonised by the new rich in the last quarter od the 20th century (Blair, for example had a huge house in Islington.) Now entirely given over to the Brit equivalent of Woody Allen characters,


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 11:08 AM
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Now entirely given over to the Brit equivalent of Woody Allen characters

I couldn't get through all of Match Point even on a plane.


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 11:17 AM
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I liked that movie! Woody Allen didn't act in it.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 11:26 AM
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There's a wonderful bit in the 1987 film Prick Up Your Ears, set in the 1950s, when Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell have just been caught "improving" the covers of books in the Islington Public Library.

Assistant: You didn't tell me one of them was a nancy.
Librarian: I'm sorry, Mr. Cunliffe?
Assistant: The bald one, Miss Batersby. A homosexual. A shirtlifter.
Librarian (horrified): In ISLINGTON?

[I saw it in a cinema in Islington soon after it was released, and at that point the entire audience just collapsed in hysterics.]



Posted by: Ume | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 11:50 AM
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Shirtlifter?


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 11:53 AM
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From the days when shirts still had long tails, and had to be lifted to enable, um, access.


Posted by: Ume | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 11:59 AM
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358. British term of mild abuse for gay men.


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 12:00 PM
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It reminded me of something I saw in The Toast.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 12:02 PM
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Holy crap! I'm watching Iceland vs. England, and we may be looking at another totally unexpected Brexit (well, Exit I guess, because the Welsh are still in). Although I'm cheering for Iceland, I kind of expected them to get spanked by England, and lose 3-0, or 5-1, or something.


Also, another question. If Brexit manages to not happen and Scotland and N. Ireland don't secede, is Cameron still the worst PM? How would he compare to Chamberlain or Eden then? I don't know much about Eden, but I would still say he's worse than Chamberlain, because this was a totally unforced error. It's not like the Germans were just sitting around and Chamberlain provoked Hitler into invaded Poland or something.


Posted by: Buttercup | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 1:43 PM
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Goddamn! Iceland are through to the quarterfinals. That was totally unexpected. Now I really hope they win it, but they're probably up against France or something in the quarterfinals.


Posted by: Buttercup | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 1:52 PM
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I wish I wasn't on record as not caring about soccer, because rarely has there been a more fun occasion to say HA HA LOSERS


Posted by: R Tigre | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 1:58 PM
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!! good work Iceland!


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 1:58 PM
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364: It's okay if you're only into it for the national humiliation.


Posted by: dalriata | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 1:59 PM
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Some of the comments on it are pretty hardcore.


Posted by: MHPH | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 2:11 PM
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Also a couple of my friends are already making Æthelred the Unready jokes which makes me feel good about (at least some of) my life choices.


Posted by: MHPH | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 2:12 PM
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Wow, that Weinstein guy is embarrassingly ignorant. Confusing Denmark with Iceland and France with England is the kind of thing George Bush used to do.


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 2:18 PM
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Wow, that Weinstein guy is embarrassingly ignorant.

I take it the reputation of Philadelphia sports fans hasn't spread across the Atlantic.


Posted by: dalriata | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 2:27 PM
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Nobody can throw a battery that far.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 2:35 PM
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Most people on this side of the Atlantic probably think Philadelphia is what their girlfriend puts on crackers when she's trying to lose weight.


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 2:36 PM
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Cream cheese is diet food there?


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 2:38 PM
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Right? What are the worse-for-you options? Do we even want to know?


Posted by: R Tigre | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 2:42 PM
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Confusing cream cheese with cottage cheese? Although cottage cheese on crackers sounds horrible.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 2:44 PM
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The cheesecake diet could be a thing.


Posted by: md 20/400 | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 2:45 PM
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There is a "light" version apparently. It is marketed as lower fat.


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 2:49 PM
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The cheesecake diet sounds like something that would be suggested by Parallel Universe Female Halford.


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 2:50 PM
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They have that here. It's not very good.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 2:50 PM
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To both.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 2:50 PM
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374. Thinly sliced salo on rye bread rubbed with garlic is a traditional snack


Posted by: lw | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 3:04 PM
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That's not bad for you if you avoid the rye bread


Posted by: R Tigre | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 3:08 PM
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I'm not sure I could eat salo without thinking of Salò, so it's probably a good diet food on account of the appetite suppression.


Posted by: Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 3:37 PM
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They can suppress our freedom, but never our appetites.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 3:44 PM
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Have none of you any loyalty to the mother country? That was the first England team since Sven Goran Erikson with any kind of shot in a major tournament, and idiot Hodgson managed to coax out out of them what must be the worst defeat in English history. Italy-Spain was pretty sweet, however.


Posted by: foolishmortal | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 4:55 PM
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Right now I'm cheering hard core for iceland to win the whole thing. My realistic team choice is Italy, because of affinal obligations, but if the Welsh win it would be cool too, even though they also voted for brexit. For some reason I hope the French don't, even though I quite actually like France. I actively hope the Portuguese get knocked out soon in a humiliating or disappointing manner


Posted by: Bu | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 5:18 PM
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Um that was me


Posted by: Buttercup | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 5:19 PM
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Too late, you're Bu now.


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 5:24 PM
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If you want a reason to to root against France, you only need remember that the draw and tournament structure is somewhat rigged in their favor.


Posted by: foolishmortal | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 5:32 PM
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Oswald Mosely, Michael Gove, Boris Johnson, Nigel Lafarge .... your boys took a hell of a beating!


Posted by: Opinionated Bjørge Lillelien | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 5:41 PM
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386

Somehow Iceland winning meshes with the "King of the North" thing from GoT, except there is now no one Icelandic involved in GoT. (The leader of the Wildlings is Norwegian; check him out in "Force Majeure" for a role as a somewhat confused older guy, younger girlfriend character -- very Woody Allen except with red hair and general Wildling characteristics.)


Posted by: DaveLMA | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 6:13 PM
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A lot of people saying that Iceland's win is a shock, but England almost never do well in major tournaments, and Iceland beat the Netherlands (a better team than England) twice in qualifying. It's a shock given their population, sure, but not given their recent record.


Posted by: Ponder Stibbons | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 6:18 PM
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383: I bought the Criterion Collection version a couple of months ago. Basically on the "in case they bring back Prohibition" premise. I have a hard time imagining conditions that would compel me to watch it again. I had to cover my eyes through the worst parts even on a first viewing.


Posted by: Natilo Paennim | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 6:35 PM
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Wikipedia: When salo has been aged too long or exposed to light, the fat may oxidize on the surface and become yellow and bitter-tasting. Though no longer fit for culinary use, the spoiled fat can be used as a water-repellent treatment for leather boots or bait for mouse traps, or it can simply be turned into homemade soap.

SNL: New Shimmer is both a floor wax and a dessert topping! ... Made from an exclusive non-yellowing formula.

Explains a lot.


Posted by: One of Many | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 10:35 PM
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Salo sounds like the white-people version of muktuk, which is pretty gross raw but not too bad fried. I've heard good things about the pickled version but I've never had it myself.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 10:40 PM
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It would make me happy if muktuk were somehow both a snack and a form of footwear.


Posted by: One of Many | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 11:11 PM
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Only if you get stranded in the high arctic. Which, to be fair, does happen sometimes.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 11:17 PM
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Under those circumstances pretty much everything becomes a potential snack, including you.


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 11:48 PM
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Luckily, whales are a lot more calorically rich than humans. Unlikely, they're a lot harder to kill.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 11:51 PM
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Unlikely s/b unluckily, but I guess that's obvious from context.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 11:52 PM
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In any case, I don't recommend getting lost and stranded in the arctic.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 06-27-16 11:54 PM
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372 is right. Please God, Europeans, stop saying "Like the cream cheese."

One weird consequence is that if you in a restaurant and they have "Philadelphia X", it means X inexplicably topped with cream cheese, while the US it would mean X is inexplicably made out of strips of fried beef.


Posted by: Walt Someguy | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 12:10 AM
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OMG so arrogant. As if we thought everything with strips of fried beef was about Philadelphia.


Posted by: R Tigre | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 12:24 AM
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Philly cream cheese steak cake.


Posted by: fake accent | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 1:07 AM
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404 sounds like a good idea.


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 1:24 AM
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Hilarious story on the BBC this morning about African-origin Brits who voted Leave because they thought that a post-Brexit Britain would be far more welcoming to African immigration.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-36643891


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 1:35 AM
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Christ! But see also Diane Abbot complaining a couple of years ago that Hackney was hiring "blonde blue-eyed Finnish nurses" instead of Caribbean immigrants who spoke English. What utter vileness we have unleashed. Of course a shrinking economy will make all racial tensions worse and it is something incredibly difficult to ratchet down.


Posted by: NW | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 2:59 AM
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A colleague of mine who was campaigning for Remain says he visited a mosque - most of the folk there were Remain, but one was emphatically Leave, because he reckoned if Britain cut back on immigration from eastern Europe it would become more welcoming to immigration from Pakistan.


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 3:02 AM
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You know, because there were all those Britain First rallies with people shouting "Poles out now! Make room for more Pakistanis!"


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 3:04 AM
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People trying to get visas for non-EU spouses, which became much more difficult in 2012, do seriously believe that restricting EU migration will make it easier. The fact that EU citizens can bring in non-EU spouses to the UK with no restrictions at all doesn't help.


Posted by: Ume | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 3:10 AM
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408: That dynamic was certainly operating in Bradford, where there are Kashmiri/polish-lithuanian tensions and competition. The biraderi wardheelers started to deal in bulk eastern european proxy votes as well as their own people


Posted by: NW | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 3:15 AM
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I wonder how big the postal vote uptake was this time?


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 3:34 AM
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People trying to get visas for non-EU spouses, which became much more difficult in 2012, do seriously believe that restricting EU migration will make it easier

I don't really see how it would make it easier. The main barrier is documenting your relationship and your financial stability, and then continuing to maintain that documentation and stability while not getting into any substantial trouble or taking government benefits. A general recession is not really going to help with the financial issues.


Posted by: Parenthetical | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 3:38 AM
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I immigrated in 2011, and thus benefitted from the lower income requirement (we wouldn't have then qualified under the current rules) and the reduced waiting time to permanent resident. (Well, 'indefinite leave to remain.') Our original plan - which was quashed by the US state department - would have had me immigrating in 2012. I suppose there are silver linings in everything.


Posted by: Parenthetical | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 3:42 AM
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I don't imagine it will actually become any easier: I can't see the minimum income or English-language requirements being relaxed again even if there were a return to a points-based system. But there is a perception that the £18,600 minimum cutoff for the British spouse was imposed because family migration is one of the only areas in which Home Office regulations can actually have any effect on numbers, and that it might be lowered again if EU migration declines.


Posted by: Ume | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 3:45 AM
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413: it is always possible that these people were completely wrong.


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 3:50 AM
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IT'S SURPRISINGLY DIFFICULT TO GET PEOPLE TO CONSIDER THAT POSSIBILITY.


Posted by: OLIVER CROMWELL | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 3:52 AM
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Inside the bowels of Christ, it's too dark to beseech.


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 3:59 AM
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411: damned interesting, NW. any sources? Bradford politics has been pretty weird lately.


Posted by: Alex | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 4:02 AM
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415: Well, I obviously haven't been following closely enough because I thought they had raised the minimum to £24,500 or something!* (Perhaps that was just being proposed.) I feel like Brexit just gives the government license to be harder on immigration of any kind, since they know obviously have a mandate, the people have spoken. (Sarcasm intended.)

*Upon looking, I think I must have based that on a newspaper article describing a family with two kids.


Posted by: Parenthetical | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 4:32 AM
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re: 409

Various Leave bigwigs made exactly that claim -- Johnson, I think, and possibly also Farage -- repeatedly in their campaigning, and addressed it specifically to the sub-continental community.

"If we had our way, we'd let in lots more people from the Commonwealth. Common heritage. The Queen. Hard working. Natural allies. Blah Blah. Nasty Europe."


It was clearly disingenuous bullshit, like everything else, but they definitely said it.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 4:37 AM
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419: conversations with disillusioned Galloway voters and workers before the election last year.


Posted by: NW | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 4:44 AM
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420: Even £18,600 prevents nearly half the UK population overall from sponsoring a non-EU spouse, and much higher proportions of women, young people, non-whites, and people outside London and the southeast. You can't manage it by working full-time on the London living wage, let alone the minimum wage.


Posted by: Ume | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 4:47 AM
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re: the football

Hard-working organised team beats disorganised team of prima donnas is one of the all time classic football tropes. So it wasn't really that much of a surprise. Iceland were good in all of their previous games.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 4:57 AM
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In America, your first spouse is free but I bet the second one costs much more and it all comes to about the same on the average.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 5:15 AM
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I didn't follow the Brexit debate leading up to the vote very closely, but as I'm watching the fallout I've come to understand why the evidence of my facebook feed suggests Nigel Farage's middle name is "fucking."


Posted by: togolosh | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 5:18 AM
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423: I am well aware. Like I said, we wouldn't have qualified. I just was surprised that I had misremembered it that badly. I was horrified when the new legislation came out.


Posted by: Parenthetical | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 5:48 AM
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But it is true that I haven't thought about it much recently, which is why I'd forgotten the exact limits. I would like to see a revision of it, I just sincerely doubt the government would even consider it.


Posted by: Parenthetical | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 5:59 AM
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In America, your first spouse is free but I bet the second one costs much more

Ah, you see, that's how they get you hooked.


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 6:01 AM
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428: I'm sure you're right, and that if anything it'll get stricter.


Posted by: Ume | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 6:13 AM
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I've heard 421 before, not in terms of the Brexit vote specifically, but in the past from Brits saying thing like, "We could let more Americans in if we didn't have to allow so many Eastern Europeans in."

423

I remember reading about that on CT and being shocked. IIRC, in 2008 when I sponsored my Australian husband, the requirements were somewhere around $20,00-$25,000/year income or $30,000 in assets. If your income and assets were below the level, you could have a co-sponsor.

424

Since I'm a big Iceland fan (they're the closest thing Norway has in the tournament, and Sweden was so dismal the less said the better), it pays to be pessimistic. Don't want to get hopes up only to have them shattered. After watching the games on Sunday, I figured they'd collapse in the knock-out rounds the way Hungary and Croatia did, both teams which were arguably better than Iceland in the group stages.

429

In the US, first spouses are loss-leaders, especially around major holidays.


Posted by: Buttercup | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 6:32 AM
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If your income and assets were below the level, you could have a co-sponsor.

I didn't know that. Polyandry is so very rarely legally recognized.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 6:33 AM
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See also the insanely high fees to take British citizenship, which are well over £1000 per person.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 6:56 AM
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If my wife just wants to have her permanent residency stamp put in her new passport, that's over £300. Bastards.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 6:57 AM
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It will be interesting to watch that collapse as the market reaches equilibrium


Posted by: NW | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 6:57 AM
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It will be interesting to watch that collapse as the market reaches equilibrium


Posted by: NW | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 6:57 AM
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Are you implying that ttaM might simply switch to a less adminstratively demanding wife?


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 7:02 AM
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I'm pretty sure the fees are much higher here. Maybe not if you have a spouse, but otherwise you basically have to hire a lawyer.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 7:02 AM
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Even the fucking requirements on the form to get the stamp are onerous. She already has permanent leave to remain, it's trivial for them to check that. But if she wants the stamp in the new passport, she has to provide documentary evidence of continuous residence since 2002. Who the fuck keeps their bills going back 13 years?

Cunts.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 7:02 AM
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Google tells me in the US it's $680 to become a naturalized citizen, including the $85 fee for a biometric exam.


Posted by: Buttercup | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 7:03 AM
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440: Right, but what about the lawyer.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 7:05 AM
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OT: If anybody local is reading, what's a good Asian restaurant of the sort you bring people too if you want them to think you aren't the sort of person who spends nearly all of his dining out money in place where burgers and wings are the most common dish ordered.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 7:09 AM
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438

If you don't mind time and paperwork, you can get an immigration visa just based on online information, including some very well organized support groups (visa journey). The process is complicated and tedious but fairly straightforward in terms of paper work. A complicated case would probably warrant a lawyer, but I did everything myself for my ex-husband's fiance visa, and it went very smoothly. The fees all up for the entire process were about $1800ish dollars, I think.

According to google, sponsoring an immigrant requires earning 125% of the FPL, so about $20,000 for a family with no dependents. (For a fiance visa it's 100% of FPL, about $16,000, but you'd need it to be 125% for the green card.) It's funny, I thought it was a bit higher.


Posted by: Buttercup | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 7:10 AM
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Honestly, the divorce process is far more complicated than the immigrant visa process.


Posted by: Bu | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 7:12 AM
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Probably the people I hear complaining are counting all costs from H1B through the end. I mean, if you already have permission (or whatever) to get an immigration visa, you've either gotten lucky, gotten a spouse, or been working the system for a long time.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 7:15 AM
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445

Yeah, H1B1 is probably a different story. Family immigration is at least based on the premise the US is required to let you in. There's also a green card lottery system, where every year 50,000 people are chosen just to get a green card. I wonder if the UK has the same system.


Posted by: Buttercup | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 7:23 AM
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I don't understand it all, but I do know that H1B1 (or whatever) administrative costs to the employer are high enough that I can earn more than somebody with one while still costing my employer much less.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 7:30 AM
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440: The campaigning group BritCits reckons it costs £5015.29 in fees overall to become a naturalized spouse of a UK citizen, and that's if the process goes smoothly. Even the telephone helpline costs £1.37 per minute, or £4.00 per minute via webchat.

For non-EU spouses of citizens of other EU/EEA countries, though, the total cost for a permanent residence card after five years is £130, and there's no minimum income requirements. You can see where the resentment is coming from.


Posted by: Ume | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 7:32 AM
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449

Of course a shrinking economy will make all racial tensions worse and it is something incredibly difficult to ratchet down.

Someone tell Yglesias and the rest of the smarmy liberal pundits who tweet 10 times a day mocking the concept that any Republican voters experience economic anxiety instead of being wealthy committed white supremacists.

Guys, you sound exactly like my conservative relatives who think it's a surefire laugh line to mock the idea that climate change leads to wars and ethnic tensions.


Posted by: Cryptic ned | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 7:35 AM
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I don't like Yglesias and smarmy liberal pundits are denying that Republican voters are experiencing economic anxiety. The mockery is for deciding that poor, not-white people are the cause of their economic problems.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 7:42 AM
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"like" s/b "think"


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 7:44 AM
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Or just mockery for not being an asshole about it. "Immigrants take our jobs" is just as easy to say as "Mexicans are rapists," but one of them was said by the guy who won the primary and the others by guys who lost.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 7:54 AM
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*Link to local news story about racism* LOL, more "economic anxiety" amirite! [repeat 500x]


Posted by: Cryptic ned | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 7:57 AM
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It's pretty clear both are in play.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 7:59 AM
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I don't see how you can explain Trump in particular or current politics in general without noting so much of it is driven by racism.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 8:00 AM
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Without economic anxiety, Trump voters would've settled for whatever suit the party chose. Without racism, they would be Democrats.


Posted by: Eggplant | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 8:07 AM
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Anyway, Vox is full of smarm. I'm not going to argue against that. But I don't read it or follow Yggles on Twitter. Or even, lately, read Twitter.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 8:17 AM
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456: Maybe some would be Democrats but certainly not a all. Maybe not even most. For example, views on abortion and social conservatism would play a role.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 8:22 AM
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"Without racism" is so all-encompassing a counterfactual as to hardly be useful. Without racism, the world would be unrecognizable.


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 8:29 AM
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Without fairly committed, conscious racism. You can have a lot of racist stuff going on in your head and still be a Democrat; if it's driven you out of the party, you're pretty serious about it.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 8:36 AM
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439: I can confirm that the process is expensive, but perhaps not as bureaucratically intrusive as you might think. That said, having a GMail folder for travel arrangements turned out to be savingly useful.


Posted by: Alex | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 8:40 AM
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Outside of racism, there is also abortion and social conservatism.

Inside of racism, it's too dark to see.


Posted by: peep | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 8:40 AM
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Without fairly committed, conscious racism.

You must be at least this racist (picture of George Will) to enter the party.


Posted by: Opinionated Sign on door of RNC Headquarters | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 8:58 AM
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Inside of racism, it's too dark to see.

Too swarthy to see.


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 9:03 AM
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See also the insanely high fees to take British citizenship, which are well over £1000 per person.

Yes. That is the sole reason I haven't applied yet, though I am eligible. Also - haven't changed my name (which, yes, I know, retrograde but I wanted to do) legally, and am dreading needing to renew my passport.

But if she wants the stamp in the new passport, she has to provide documentary evidence of continuous residence since 2002. Who the fuck keeps their bills going back 13 years?

Yep. I don't need that type of documentation anymore, but have become paranoid since immigrating. I still have my dossiers full of my evidence from every step of the way and I continue to keep bits and bobs that could serve, just in case. My applications were over five pounds (in weight) because of all the paper required.

The campaigning group BritCits reckons it costs £5015.29 in fees overall to become a naturalized spouse of a UK citizen, and that's if the process goes smoothly. Even the telephone helpline costs £1.37 per minute, or £4.00 per minute via webchat.

Yes. Big fees every step of the way (fiance visa, spousal visa, indefinite leave to remain). I will say that every Border Patrol official I dealt with was extremely helpful, and while I was an anxious basket case the process was clear and professional, unlike my experiences with the US. However, we did hire a lawyer for the original fiance visa (the cost of whom was actually less than the fee) who provided extraordinarily generous with his time and continued to give me advice even after I was no longer his client, as I did all the other steps on my own. The only reason we could afford this on a retail worker's salary was parental support, which obviously most people don't have.

For non-EU spouses of citizens of other EU/EEA countries, though, the total cost for a permanent residence card after five years is £130, and there's no minimum income requirements. You can see where the resentment is coming from.

Heh, never occurred to me to resent them for this; instead, I'm still insanely grumpy that they don't have to take the driver's licensing exams all over again, unlike moi.


Posted by: Parenthetical | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 9:29 AM
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Oh and of course had a huge huge leg up because we're both university educated native English speakers.

I really need to see if I could volunteer in some way to help people put their applications together.


Posted by: Parenthetical | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 9:31 AM
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But if she wants the stamp in the new passport, she has to provide documentary evidence of continuous residence since 2002. Who the fuck keeps their bills going back 13 years?

It does make you wonder what the point of having border checks is if they can't even work out if you've been living in the country for 13 years by themselves.


Posted by: Ginger Yellow | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 9:32 AM
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466.1: That reminds me of my former roommate's incredible ire at having to prove he could speak English before he was allowed to teach the Ohioans about European politics. I imaging it was not a very hard test for him to pass, but he was offended that somebody English had to prove he could speak English.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 9:37 AM
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467: So far the girls don't have passports because we only cross to Canada by land and the US border guard last year gave me a long lecture about how they need passports so that if they're ever kidnapped there will be a picture Interpol can use to find them. Because that's totally a better place to start than, like, my phone or latest facebook post. (I guess maybe it also would have saved him from having to type their names off their birth certificates, which is what annoyed him in the first place. Sorry, dude.)


Posted by: Thorn | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 9:41 AM
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Oh man, they actually made them take a test? I believe my US passport was the only evidence I needed.

I did take my Life in Britain exam. The entire room passed, which was apparently rare. We were all pleased with ourselves.


Posted by: Parenthetical | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 9:42 AM
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We were all pleased with ourselves.

And then you were immediately failed because of that.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 9:45 AM
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But, yes, they made every T.A. who wasn't a U.S. citizen take a test of spoken English to be certain that none of them had an accent that would be impossible for the locals to parse. My former roommate was from someplace middle-classy and near London and did fine.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 9:49 AM
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To be fair, a Scouser would probably have failed. (Or a Glaswegian.)


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 9:51 AM
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Or a Geordie or Makem.


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 9:57 AM
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Oh, that actually makes more sense. I had several chemistry TAs with near incomprehensible accents , and that really did make learning the material more difficult. But, you know. We muddled through.


Posted by: Parenthetical | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 10:02 AM
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I sort of doubt it. While plenty of people in various parts of the U.K. would have failed, the number who could have failed and who were qualified to be a graduate teaching assistant must be very small. In practice, nobody who wasn't Asian (usually East Asian) ever had trouble with it. On the one hand, it was a little racist in its implementation. On the other hand, plenty of graduate students, especially in the sciences and math, had very poor spoken English skills.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 10:03 AM
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476 to 474, 473.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 10:03 AM
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Thanks to her Life in Britain course Parenthetical can tell us which of the words in 473-4 are made up.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 10:07 AM
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None of them are. A Scouser is from Liverpool; a Glaswegian (obvs) from Glasgow; a Geordie is from Newcastle upon Tyne and surrounding area; a Makem is from Sunderland. Outsiders have trouble telling the difference between Geordie and Makem dialects, but trust me the speakers of each have no such worries.


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 10:32 AM
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Neville Chamberlain's original goal was to give the Sunderland to Hitler.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 10:34 AM
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479.2: As evidenced in Geordie Star Wars


Posted by: Ginger Yellow | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 10:39 AM
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480. They clearly think so, since they voted 60-40 to leave the EU. There was a depressing article in the NYT, full of people saying they'd never got anything out of the EU, despite the fact that the North East had £400 million of European regeneration money since 2006. They won't get any more now.


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 10:48 AM
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So where are Liverpudlians from?


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 10:50 AM
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The whole North East? That's 40 million a year for 3 million people. I hope they got something else out of it.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 10:53 AM
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My American accent was apparently hard for a French employee of Air France at the Dublin airport to parse when I asked about a gate change. I ended up speaking French poorly to a different employee a little later to get an answer. I was given the impression that Irish-accented English would have been fine.


Posted by: fake accent | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 10:54 AM
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Very, very early in grad school I had to give a paper at an academic conference of almost entirely German speakers, and they seemed unhappy about my U.S. accent. I joked that I could read the whole thing in an English accent and they looked very hopeful, but I decided the whole situation was farcical enough without my having to read a graduate seminar paper with lots of Heidegger content in English, in a Monty Python voice, to an audience of four bored Germans.


Posted by: lurid keyaki | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 11:01 AM
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At my college, it would have helped A LOT to bar people from being TAs if they spoke English incomprehensibly.


Posted by: Cryptic ned | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 11:01 AM
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Yes. There is (or was) a real problem. But mostly I was amused at how it pissed off my roommate.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 11:03 AM
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I added "or was" because I don't currently know any graduate students who teach, not because I think it is likely to have gotten better.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 11:11 AM
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483 - The Liver Puddle.


Posted by: Tom Scudder | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 11:21 AM
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483: I believe Liverpuddlian is the official demonym, but Scouser is the accent. None of this was on the test, mind you.


Posted by: Parenthetical | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 11:30 AM
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Ah, I was sort of right. Scouse is the accent/dialect; Scouser is the person who speaks it.


Posted by: Parenthetical | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 11:31 AM
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I should really look this shit up BEFORE hitting enter.


Posted by: Parenthetical | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 11:31 AM
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"He who hesitates is lost."


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 11:32 AM
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But also you should "look before you leap." So hard, being British.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 11:33 AM
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Indeed. I must apologise all the time, and yet, I am told that the upper class (who I must model myself after) refuse to apologise. What do I do??


Posted by: Parenthetical | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 11:36 AM
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Apologize insincerely.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 11:37 AM
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Know your place, and apologize. Or become upper class, and release your hounds.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 11:40 AM
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Mr Burns is English, right?


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 11:41 AM
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I mean he has a gay butler named Smithers and a big creepy mansion. If that doesn't qualify what does?


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 11:43 AM
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Never apologise. Never explain. Never repeat the mistake.


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 11:52 AM
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The Wars of the Roses obviously happened before the third part.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 11:55 AM
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An educated, resourceful person will make new mistakes.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 11:55 AM
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496. In theory, consider a false accent for expressing contempt to idiot interlocutor. Can you do southern? "Bless your heart, I'm sorry" kind of thing.

This is pretty juvenile, and potentially unkind to anyone who actually has the target accent as well as the idiot listening. Probably there are other distancing idioms-- I understand that many women are sensitive to and adept in the use of eyerolling while speaking.


Posted by: lw | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 11:57 AM
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++good to 417 and 418


Posted by: md 20/400 | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 1:13 PM
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The visa discussion is making me feel better about the hassle of making my green card (by marriage) permanent. Initial temporary green card cost ~$2000 without a lawyer, and making it permanent is gonna cost $600. I haven't checked citizenship fees yet. My application for the permanent green card is >100 pages at this point. Luckily I can print for free at work.


Posted by: Ponder Stibbons | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 1:46 PM
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506: This should make you feel better, too. I don't know if it's changed, but for me they refused to take online print outs of anything. So, say, you had lost a paper bank statement but could print one out? Nope. (They did accept one printed out, stamped, and signed by the bank. You can imagine the fun of getting those.) Everything had to be the original, mailed to you, document.


Posted by: Parenthetical | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 2:04 PM
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So all British banks still give out paper statements? Most people I know get only e-statements these days.


Posted by: Ponder Stibbons | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 2:13 PM
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Charles Montgomery Burns is Scottish.


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 2:14 PM
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You can probably opt out, and they all offer online versions, but it's definitely still the norm to send paper statements by default.


Posted by: Ginger Yellow | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 2:20 PM
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They also wanted it from me, while living in the US. Huge pain in the ass - my institution hadn't given us paper pay slips in years, for instance.

But yes, paper is still the norm. I'd opt out, but ... paranoid.


Posted by: Parenthetical | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 2:46 PM
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I saw some good reality show, I forget where, about a eoman from Liverpool whose goal was to become the "Scouse Pam Anderson." She spent tens of thousands of pounds for plastic surgery to look exactly like Pam Anderson, but didn't get accent surgery to change the Scouse accent. I hope every celebrity has a plastic-surgery Scouse equivalent.


Posted by: R Tigre | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 3:10 PM
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A woman, not a yeoman.


Posted by: RT | Link to this comment | 06-28-16 3:11 PM
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I have online statements and billing for pretty much everything, which has been a bit of a pain in the arse when providing paper proof of identity for all the getting-a-job paperwork. As a student, I'm exempt from paying Council Tax, so that paper bill only has C's name on it. The *only* eligible piece of paper I currently have is our mortgage statement.


Posted by: asilon | Link to this comment | 06-29-16 12:24 AM
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Proof of address, rather than identity.


Posted by: asilon | Link to this comment | 06-29-16 12:30 AM
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Brexit seems like an earthquake that has triggered nearly every fault line in UK politics. The SNP is now saying that it should be recognized as the opposition in Westminster. Aftershock.


Posted by: md 20/400 | Link to this comment | 06-29-16 2:39 AM
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So all British banks still give out paper statements?

Opt-in only. But you can order a statement from an ATM and that comes on paper, unless it's changed since last time I did it.


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 06-29-16 3:41 AM
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Re: accents and teaching, I have a friend who is British, moderately hard to understand, and teaches at the University of Southern Mississippi. I always wonder whether his teaching evaluations complain about his accent.

In addition to testing conversational English, our department's exam made incoming grad students read technical terms off a list. I'm told that Korean labs frequently use a pidgin type English that maintains a Korean accent but English nouns. It makes for a tough exam. ("Acid" comes out sounding like "ashy," for example. Easy to get the gist of you already know what they mean in general terms, hard for a student.)


Posted by: ydnew | Link to this comment | 06-29-16 4:01 AM
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re: 514

Yes, most of our bills are in my name. That was just how we managed it, as it was easier to put the direct debits from one account. So we have a similar situation. J' will have employment records, and P60s and things, but very few paper bills.

And even the paper bills, we usually shred after a couple of years, so I don't have anything going back to 2002 (when we married).


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 06-29-16 4:09 AM
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Brexit seems like an earthquake that has triggered nearly every fault line in UK politics

Yeah. there are some issues that eat prime ministers:

Ireland
Europe
Sterling
Class

and this one hits all of them.


Posted by: Alex | Link to this comment | 06-29-16 4:34 AM
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Is that Raheem Sterling or pounds sterling?


Posted by: Buttercup | Link to this comment | 06-29-16 6:57 AM
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Brexit seems like an earthquake

I am honestly surprised at how angry I still am at day 5. Usually with this kind of thing, I'll be all ranty and bitter right after the fact, but my ire fades as the sense of surprise does. But so far, every time I refresh the Guardian front page, I still have to surpress the urge to swear out loud at whichever useless fuckwit is pictured there.


Posted by: Swope FM | Link to this comment | 06-29-16 7:11 AM
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