Nick_G
pfm Member
It's 'Brexiters', not 'Brexiteers'. The latter suggests a noble and just cause, like Dumas' The Three Musketeers. What they've helped done to this country, well, there's nothing noble about it.
Brexit: give me a positive effect (2022 remastered edition) II
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It's 'Brexiters', not 'Brexiteers'. The latter suggests a noble and just cause, like Dumas' The Three Musketeers. What they've helped done to this country, well, there's nothing noble about it.
Le Baron
Unbiased advice at reasonable rates
But the EU states get to set their own employment law etc. This was one reason why the Brexit argument for 'our laws' was rather fake. However it's also why France has generous vacation time law and the Netherlands is terrible, with dozens of contraventions and companies robbing workers of holidays. The EU is in no way democratically accountable. Its top jobs are all appointed! This is the problem. Only national elections are 'democratic' in various capacities.
Vile tabloid-driven right-wing populist politics is all over the EU. when I lived in Belgium it was Vlaams Blok (now Vlaams Belang) and here in NL there are dozens; the actual government is neoliberal and not that far away from Toryism. France is well-known far having a right-wing bent in and outside Paris. This can get even worse the further you travel. Plenty of those in the spotlight, like Donald Tusk, are complete neolibs.
The view that the EU is somehow a bastion of human rights and freedoms and against fascism is not just debatable, it's flat-out false. What might be debatable it that some bits are better than say Mississippi or Angola, but that's hardly an achievement is it?
Le Baron
Unbiased advice at reasonable rates
To press this point, there two groups who benefit from EU policy overwhelmingly, both of them smaller sections of society. Firstly the very rich people, who benefit a great deal from all of it. Secondly, the upper middle-class (the 3-day week highly-paid 'consultant' types). Both who benefit from the tax-dodging, cheap workers - usually from Eastern Europe, despite so-called 'equal employment rights'. Very often from Africa like the Italian luxury leather goods market which advertises 'Made In Italy', but doesn't say that it's on an industrial estate full of migrant workers being exploited. The latter was a recent scoop in Courrier international.
The problem among the Remain camp was that it was full of voices of those who had benefited from globalisation and the EU. Those who skipped off to Europe for a bit living the life and working in professional jobs (people like me!). These people belong to a strata of society that doesn't quite feel the pain. So they're full of joy about how marvellous their jaunts are. They don't live in slums or work in the bad jobs with poorer conditions.These people don't know the other side. The difference between living in reality and being an ex-pat dining with international friends in good restaurants.
Ever been to e.g. Porto in Portugal and seen how some people live? It's not well-advertised in the likes of Wikipedia or travel brochures. There are a lot of people in Europe who do not live well and are exploited and bullied by employers, privatisation (especially housing), low pay, bad politicians in hock with big business.
The problem among the Remain camp was that it was full of voices of those who had benefited from globalisation and the EU. Those who skipped off to Europe for a bit living the life and working in professional jobs (people like me!). These people belong to a strata of society that doesn't quite feel the pain. So they're full of joy about how marvellous their jaunts are. They don't live in slums or work in the bad jobs with poorer conditions.These people don't know the other side. The difference between living in reality and being an ex-pat dining with international friends in good restaurants.
Ever been to e.g. Porto in Portugal and seen how some people live? It's not well-advertised in the likes of Wikipedia or travel brochures. There are a lot of people in Europe who do not live well and are exploited and bullied by employers, privatisation (especially housing), low pay, bad politicians in hock with big business.
MikeMA
pfm Member
Well, I've never had any problem being part of the 'metropolitan elite', but my favourite dog walking lady friend hinted the other day that I was also a bit 'metrosexual' . We are still walking our dogs together and she came for lunch on Friday, so I guess all is not lost
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Joe Hutch
Mate of the bloke
I've never been called metropolitan, still less metrosexual, but in my many years online I've been told I'm a Communist, a fascist, a Nazi, 'an obvious product of the comprehensive system', and 'clearly Jewish'. I'm glad to see some new terms of opprobrium emerging, though 'Centrist' actually sounds quite a nice thing to be. Oh, and I was once called 'a snob' because I was wearing a suit and tie, which wasn't that unusual back then.
Le Baron
Unbiased advice at reasonable rates
That's all shocking stuff, but it's good to remember that none of these are like when someone is referred to as 'a neoliberal', This is clear distinction despite lots of nonsense floating around about it being 'slippery' or undefined. When a person is a neoliberal they firmly accept the monetarist paradigm that took hold from about 1978, telling us all the things you've seen on here. They think that is how you run an economy and that everything else is crazed 'radicalism' and either 'right-wing' or 'left-wing' madness that bankrupts the world.
More especially they are committed to globalisation, but choose to call it things like: 'breaking down barriers to trade' and 'unity'. They also let this slip over into their strictly political policy. So because such a person believes nonsense like 'national bankruptcy' and 'govt borrowing at record levels' and 'how do you pay for it', this spills over into their views on health spending, and housing and the funding of schools, all of it. With right-wingers believing it is somehow run by 'private enterprise' and the left-wing neolibs thinking you 'tax' people (usually "the rich") to 'find the money'. That you spend more. but mustn't borrow too much or get silly and probably go halves with privatisation a bit.
Notably, some people are deliberately neoliberal because it fills their pockets and quite a lot are stupidly and unwittingly neoliberal because they know no better.
Does this help?
MikeMA
pfm Member
I'm a Centrist of course - as a metrosexual member of the metropolitan elite I couldn't be anything else. I tried hard when i was a student in the 1960s - Anarchist, Communist, Trotskyist and all that sort of thing, plus throwing stones at the American Embassy in 1968 but never really felt comfortable with any of that stuff.
If we accept all that would dissolution of the EU entirely make the rest (other than your two groups) better off ?
Le Baron
Unbiased advice at reasonable rates
Dissolution of some aspects yes. The centralised and rigid economic policy which can't possibly serve so many disparate economies and punishes them for moving beyond the arbitrary lines.
The concept of cooperation is good, some things in the cooperative union are beneficial, but are badly overshadowed by what isn't. At the bottom the observation is simple: you can't run that type of economic ideology and expect a different outcome. So instead they rely on obfuscation and corruption and heavy PR. Many have only been born or come of age under the EU so they know nothing else and as such are true believers.
Now, that single currency model in practise is but 20 years old. In that time it has had one (two really) very big crisis and numerous smaller and localised ones. The principle doesn't work and its policy is identical to that in the UK which everyone claims to despise. The EU is larger so its biggest crumbs are bigger and these only fall to the better-off countries anyway. The rest is a charade of 'loans' then threatened bankruptcies and temporarily funding places to make a PR point, then dropping them again.
Politically there are things I like about the EU, but it is soiled by the economics. The return of sovereign national floating currencies should be paramount as a first concern, never mind exchange rate worries. The creation of the ECB and Euro had a single aim: to be able to control macroeconomic policy across the union. It was a mistake.
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Le Baron
Unbiased advice at reasonable rates
And what does it mean to you? To be 'centrist'. What are its compositional elements, not including obvious stuff like: not being a racist or cracking down on minority people for whatever reason..which all decent people think is not right?
Le Baron
Unbiased advice at reasonable rates
In principle, but you can't be a member of the EU and have a free-floating monetary sovereignty. That's the issue. The core of the EU is monetary and economic union. So my answer is that I am in favour of a union.
eternumviti
Insufficient privileges to reply.
Do you ever wake up scratching your head and asking yourself how it came to pass that your side lost the referendum?
eternumviti
Insufficient privileges to reply.
Metropolitan, incidentally, refers to the part of the left vote that is educated, wealthy and largely works in the arts and the professions They own their own homes, and often enjoy second homes in France and Italy. Their interests are quite distinct from those of the old Labour blue-collar heartlands.
They are Labour's great dilemma.
They are Labour's great dilemma.
eternumviti
Insufficient privileges to reply.
Then I would suggest it's possible that you might lack something in the way of insight.
Le Baron
Unbiased advice at reasonable rates
You should, because a lot were also super-rich. And many of the 'yokels' were just giving out a cry of despair.
Joe Hutch
Mate of the bloke
It's more than possible, it's entirely certain. But then so does everyone.
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