I can't vote in national elections any more. I do vote in things I have the right to vote in.
Brexit, for once some facts.
- Thread starter flecc
- Start date
The point is that even if Holland is not the biggest country in the EU, it was a pretty major even as far as Europe is concerned, and it has significant ramifications and implications, but I didn't get the amount of the media coverage and discussion that you'd expect. For Christ's sake, there was much more coverage of the Venezuela elections that have much less significance for us. It just doesn't seem to add up unless you can invent a conspiracy theory.
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Very much so, and particularly in Britain where it had its origins hundreds of years ago when we invented the Building Society. That uniquely started to give purchasing power far beyond normal borrowing, which until then had been limited by the extent of bank borrowing, typically ten years maximum at that time.
From then on the British market house values outpaced those elsewhere in the world where purchasing was done through short bank loans, ending with huge discrepancies. Such as in the 1970s my small suburban flat equal to buying a huge suburban house in the USA or Australia, though they've been rapidly catching up recently.
Prior to 1961 in Britain we had rent acts restraining rental prices, and low cost housing provided by Councils and charitable bodies like Peabody, Nuffield and others.
The gradual lifting of rent restraints from 1961 on, combined with the buying power of building society mortgages and later the selling off of council housing stock at huge discounts enabling profiteering, led directly to the financialisation mess we have today, where houses are seen more as assets and less as homes.
And beyond affordability in consequence.
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Democracy (FvD) party of Thierry Baudet, a flamboyant former academic and columnist, is on course to win 12 seats in an upper house containing a record 12 parties, none with more than 12 seats.
Analysts have said the populists’ improved performance will not easily be translated into increased clout in the upper house, since the other parties have pledged not to work with them.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/21/anti-immigration-fvd-party-wins-most-votes-netherlands-election
That sounds more like someone trying to put a spin on it than I did. I only reported facts. You misreported what I wrote, which is how reporters put spin on things. I didn't say "never reported before". Where did you get that from?
It might not be newsworthy enough for you because it doesn't fit with your agenda, but there are probably 80 million people in this country that might be interested to know the truth.
My only agenda is to discover and spread the truth so that regular people can make informed decisions. I guess that that's diametrically opposed to what you're trying to do.
BTW do you work for/with the BBC?
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How come you reported this as my quote?
flecc said:
BTW do you work for/with the BBC?
It was vfr400 who posted it, nothing to do with me.
Fake news!!
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What happens in the future, or even more, what the Guardian thinks might happen, is not really relevant. What's more important is that what's basically an anti EU party came from nowhere and got more votes than any other party. I wouldn't be surprised to see the same happen in Spain and UK.
I just can't understand why the EU parliament doesn't recognise that it's going/gone in an unpopular direction. All this mess could have been avoided if they'd only listened and acted on what people are telling them. We'd never have needed a referendum if they'd thought more about these things when David Cameron went there to ask for a few changes. I can see the whole EU project coming crashing down in a big mess within the next few years due to what's basically arrogance. It seems so unnecessary.
Of course there are some conspiracy theories as to why they're behaving like they do. When things don't seem to make sense, it's often because you're missing pieces of the jigsaw.
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The pedelecs site is going into the fake news business it seems.
This is going to need watching.
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it cannot do much to stop the populists grabbing the agenda because it's not in its mandate or constitution.
The EU, from that point of view, is a sitting duck.
The populists can criticise it as much as they like, rightly or wrongly, and EU's officials can't legislate against the media that spread fake news.
Even if it can do some of that in the future (ie by fining Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat etc), it cannot stop the populists.
Only a war would put a stop to the spread of populism because the root of the problem is our respect for values like freedom of speech, association and freedom of the press and the EU is setup specifically to avoid such an event. The press are fee to spread lies, they don't even try to hide it and the public is just too willing to be in those echo chambers, including this thread.
The silverlining is, apparently, our appetite for fake news should hit an equilibrium at around 30% of the population. That's why I don't expect the demise of the EU anytime soon.
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Actually I've hardly been watching it for some while, just a lightning dip in and post, then departing.
I'm in the process of redecorating my property right through so little time for small talk.
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i almost agree with you (theres a cynical part of me that thinks theres much truth in your post). But, at risk of becoming optimistic, the truth does seem in a flawed tortured way to be triumphing in the brexit debate. we are staggering collectively to a place where the spell of farage and jrm and erm are being broken and it becomes ever more apparent what psychopathic clowns they and their fake news were
Because right wind extremists unhappy with their lot blame things on EU and migrants/others doesn't make it so - it seems to crop up every other generation or so after laying stagnant as important lessons seem to get forgotten and the unhealthy Nationalism is fueled by the likes of Trumps, ERGs Farages and European neo Nazis giving them rise.
Umberto Eco Makes a List of the 14 Common Features of Fascism
Eco reduces the qualities of what he calls “Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism” down to 14 “typical” features. “These features," writes the novelist and semiotician, "cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.”
- The cult of tradition. “One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.”
- The rejection of modernism. “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.”
- The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.”
- Disagreement is treason. “The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.”
- Fear of difference. “The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.”
- Appeal to social frustration. “One of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.”
- The obsession with a plot. “The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia.”
- The enemy is both strong and weak. “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”
- Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. “For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.”
- Contempt for the weak. “Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.”
- Everybody is educated to become a hero. “In Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.”
- Machismo and weaponry. “Machismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.”
- Selective populism. “There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.”
- Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. “All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.”
The lot of them have right wind.
Your critique of Fascism fails to recognize the faults, all listed previously, of the EU.
Its as though its some perfect example of caring, equal opportunity for all, diverse institution. It is not, in so many ways, all previously listed, its worse than the governance it plans on replacing.
All your arguments against fascism, extreme right, are obviously correct but again you fail to accept or even realise, its rise throughout Europe(actually to a much less degree in UK) is no doubt linked to the policies brought in by EU.
Us leaving or staying will have little effect either way on the overall picture of right wing in Europe.
Look at its rise in Italy and France, how in earth have we got anything to do with that.
Said it before but UK is least racist, least extreme, most socially diverse and most enlightened, with regards all the stuff I, ve gone on about, country in Europe.
EU is not some shining light over any socially enlightened stance. Far from it. Quite the reverse.
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