An Englishman is an expat when he lives abroad. Johnny Foreigner is a bloody immigrant and we don’t want any of those.
Totally different thing dear chap.
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This is what true contempt for one’s compatriots looks like.
It’s a mockery of parliament and democracy.
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It’s… sovereignty!
(no, the Tories have been at odds with governance, the judiciary, and parliament since the get go. As I keep on reminding this was baked into the really poor design of the referendum which the House of Lords select committee on the constitutional status of referendums warned would be used by authoritarians as a power grab in the name of “the will of the people” which they had expressed and could enact without opposition)
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the one very odd sounding paragraph was this:
The rise and fall of nations is constant, difficult to predict, sometimes slow or in the case of Japan quick, from a fabled economic bubble in the 80s to a decade-long recession in the 90s from which it never recovered thanks to structural flaws.
?? this probably comes as a surprise to the 126 million people living there.
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The Japanese economy didn’t collapse, but it hasn’t grown much in the last thirty years.
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yeah, but isn’t that more of a problem for the upper class, not the middle and working class?
growth for growths sake doesn’t seem particularly important for everyday people - especially if your population is contracting. certainly not to be categorized as the “fall of a nation” - unless maybe the writer has unspoken nostalgia for the glory days of some particular empire that is not japan
The stagnant economy has affected the working class.
Many Japanese companies replaced a large part of their workforce with temporary workers, who had little job security and fewer benefits. As of 2009, these non-traditional employees made up more than a third of the labor force.[21] For the wider Japanese workforce, wages have stagnated. From their peak in 1997, real wages have since fallen around 13%[8]—an unprecedented number among developed nations.
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yeah, i didn’t mean to say it didn’t - rather only what’s most important for a nation or it’s people?
declining wages can’t last forever - but other measures like access to healthcare and education, the gap between rich and poor, political stability, the strength of democratic institutions, etc. etc. also matter
on those sorts of fronts japan seems like it’s doing okay. whereas - in contrast - in the us a country with fine growth ( if mainly for the already wealthy ) - there was essentially an attempted coup
economic indicators aren’t necessarily the best way to judge a nation
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I think what is meant by “never recovered” is simply that the Japanese economy has not and probably never will return to where it was in the 80s (even before the bubble).
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yeah, it’s just off handed hyperbole i think. author’s license i suppose. it just had stuck out to me
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(Swiped from @vermes82 in the Covid thread, thanks!)
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‘Global Britain’ concept underwhelms
While Britain has concluded new deals with Japan, Australia and New Zealand, “It’s more a question of: ‘Who cares?’”
Seems now it’s not only God that wouldn’t trust an Englishman in the dark…
Although they forgot to mention the 
↔ 
Free Trade Agreement, where we photocopied the one called “CETA” with the 
, crossed out where it said EU, and scribbled in “UK” instead. Came into force April 1st… 
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Finally England’s equivalent of Florida Man has vanquished metric beer. Now that easy math is a thing of the past the Jam based British economy can truly take off.
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Not that metric beer ever existed.
Since 1 January 2010, the remaining non-metric units, allowed by United Kingdom law without supplementary indicators [74] for economic, public health, public safety or administrative use, are limited to:
the mile, yard, foot and inch for road traffic signs, distance and speed measurement,
the imperial pint for the dispensing of draught beer and cider, and for the sale of milk in returnable containers,
the troy ounce for transaction in precious metals.[51][75][76]
Goods and services sold by a description, as opposed to a price per unit quantity, are not covered by weights and measures legislation; thus, a fence panel sold as “6 foot by 6 foot” is legal, as is a 6 x 4 inch photograph frame, but a pole sold as “50 pence per linear foot”, with no accompanying metric price, would be illegal.
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