Because some people are just speaking THE TRUTH, didn’t you know that? /s
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There you go, there’s some condescension. You were right.
Just calling them as I see them.
John Peel used to play a Welsh Rap Band called something like, “Phluber Phlithog” (that’s my terrible attempt at phonetic spelling); they always sounded so angry, as only Welsh Rap can,
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This is how comedy and travel writer Bob Harris described Welsh in his book Who Hates Whom:
“Up rose a nationalist party called the Plaid Cymru, which involves nothing plaid. Incomprehensibility has been Wales’s main weapon ever since. (Cymru means “Wales,” and you are about to mispronounce it badly. Really. The Welsh alphabet doesn’t care what you think. Take your best shot.) [. . .] Cymru, finally, is pronounced “Kum-ree.” Told you. The Welsh name for the UK is Teyrnas Unedig Prydain Fawr a Goledd Iwerddon. You can pronounce this correctly by gargling a Styrofoam ball while hitting your neck with a mallet.”
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Nobody expects the tone police!
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This right here, this seemingly innocuous comment is a significant cause of many of the break-downs in communications between people. It is not possible for humans to separate feelings from facts. So deep seated is this condition that the mind will actually trick itself into believing what it wants to believe. While rationality and reason often prevail, they are driven by emotional and spiritual components. Not interested in debating factual basis for spiritual, just letting you know that it is part of my perceptual framework. Feelings, beliefs, whether rational or irrational are an integral part of the human condition, trying to separate from the whole is foolish and will lead to folly. This is not to say that we are to let feelings rule but to relearn what it means to whole, a reconnecting of the body, mind and soul. I enjoy the spoken word and if you will allow me to indulge my ego for a moment I will share what I mean through some lines I have written.
Impossible is not only a word, it can also be a lie. ‘Nothing’ is impossible. How do we know if you never try? Imagine a world without the Wright Brother’s and everyone else, “Who has ever dreamed they could fly?”. Believing in the impossible is how to we touch the sky.
Society is the convergence of all our dreams and in ignorance we become the makers of nightmares which haunt us even when we are not asleep. Keeping us from the rest we all so desperately need.
The secrets of life are not only seen through the observation of science, it is also through belief, opening the door to the mystery of being complete finding hope in the impossible and faith in the eternal unseen.
There is more to life than scientific discovery and achieving. There is a wonder we find in the miracle of being. An expression of the eternal unseen. An omnipotent, omniscient force that breathed life into nothing giving emptiness meaning.
To simply dismiss what you label “ideological arguments” is to essentially throw the whole equation off. Think of it as the difference between a correct and incorrect placement of a negative or positive sign in the problem.
Now to the facts. Bureaucracy is not in and of itself bad any more than a firearm or other useful tool, device or methodolgoy used by people. The principles of bureaucracy were developed by Max Weber to help Germany during its industrial revolution at the turn of the 20th century. A formal organizational system to help businesses in the administration of the work to operate more efficient and effectively. I spent several years of my youth in Germany. I am fairly familiar with the EU. I think the initial idea behind it was great, there is something to be said for unity and the role that interdependence plays in decreasing conflict. However, to say that the EU today has become what was being presented when it was first being implemented is a gross overstatement. Being really efficient and effective at maintaining the status quo has many utilitarian benefits but in the long run leads to a decrease in innovation and creativity. While bureaucratic systems are beneficial on the small to medium scale they become unmanageable when attempted to be implemented on a grand scale. The system becomes much more susceptible to corruption, manipulation and mismanagement and not all for nefarious reasons but simply because the mechanics of how bureaucracies function are not well suited for the various societal structures of civilization. Maybe if we were like ants or bees but even then our size and abilities makes the negative effects of such a system that much more detrimental. Thanks for explaining your point further, I appreciate your insight. 
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(Except women speaking in public)
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Interestingly the constitutional lawyers (of the EU) are already suggesting that since Greenland, the Faroes, Jersey, Guernsey and Man are subject to EU Member States but are not, in fact, effectively in the EU, the reverse could theoretically apply with Scotland and NI staying in the EU and England remaining part of the United Kingdom while being out. It would be a reverse - tail wagging dog - but there’s nothing actually there to prevent it. Represented as a Venn diagram with the EU and the UK intersecting, Scotland and NI (and Gib?) would be in the intersection.
Until in final revenge for Culloden Scotland invades impoverished Northern England, its armies unite with those of London, Bristol, Cambridge and Leicester, and defeat the rump of the British Army that is loyal to dictator-for-life Farage. The ultimate Civil War re-enactment with a twist. Or a new Glorious Revolution, with a nearly bloodless coup from the Netherlands.
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Hey, we gave you your whole own thread!
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This referendum has really shown up how lightweight the men are compared to Nicola Sturgeon, and Ruth Davidson is doing a better job of being the face of modern conservatism than Cameron ever did. But Sayeeda Warsi came in for terrible abuse when she announced that she had ceased to support an exit because of the sheer awfulness of the Leave campaign. And much of it wasn’t from male Muslims. @pixleshifter may disagree, but I am convinced that sheer old fashioned racism was a core tenet of the Leave campaign.
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Like that Yorkshire pub where the women complained that they were expected to sit outside while the men were inside. So the landlord added a garden shed for the women.
(It is conceivable that this story is apocryphal, to which I reply, Geoff Boycott.)
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Well, I was mostly talking about here, not the Brexit! 
But yes, I agree that racism drove much of the campaign, or was used to get a particular vote out of an angry part of the population that feels ignored and put upon in a number of ways. I dont’ want to say that racism was just a red herring, because I don’t think it was, rather that some used racism as a red herring (Boris Johnson, maybe, who in one of these many Brexit threads who all look alike to me, who now seems a bit put out, and was possibly working out a power struggle within the conservative party via a public referendum). The question remains (HA!) who materially benefits the most and who supported the leave campaign (another thread) and what are the possible unintended consequences for the people of Britain.
I fully believe that this could be totally true.
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And no one will say anything about you using it, just like the last time, this came up (but thanks for the act of solidarity).
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Are you sure this is the right place for this conversation? It sounds an awful lot like “chat”.
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I don’t think Johnson is a racist. I think he’s an opportunist. I think he expected Remain to narrowly win, which would be enough to trigger Cameron’s resignation without utterly buggering the country, and then, as the figurehead for the Leave campaign, strongly backed by Tory party members, he’d get to be PM. Gove and Farage are true believers, Johnson is not. Just an ambitious unprincipled hack.
Plan B was for Cameron to have to stick around and do all the difficult negotiation crap after Leave won, and take all the blame, letting Johnson waltz in after. The referendum is entirely Cameron’s fault but I don’t blame him for telling them all to eff off and quitting immediately. Let Johnson deal with his own shitty mess.
Personally, I feel that my UK citizenship is worth pretty much fuck all to me now. I might look at getting rid of it after I sort out my US one.
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Fine. No more from me on this… sorry I derailed everyone.
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Honestly I think you’ll see a lot of the EU weighing its options so something like that happening wouldn’t surprise me. I just find it somewhat unlikely that Scotland sticks around. Their last vote was very close, and support for remain was large there, and a new vote seems likely. If a vote happens it seems like the EU issue is divisive enough to make up the gap in the Independence vote. That’s going to drive something on the NI side, and I think the UK will have to allow a vote simply to avoid something much uglier. I couldn’t be sure how that would turn out though.
NI and Scotland remaining EU and England Wales leaving would be a compromise position, a half measure. The UK attempting to avoid its own breakup. And it could work. But its still a reduction in UK control and involvement of its two member nations. And I don’t know how well that flies. I think the answer lies in whether Ireland tacks toward the UK or the EU in trying to keep itself stable, and whether both Ireland and the EU will back NI and Scotland remaining in the EU despite whatever the UK does. Last time Scotland was threatened with going to the back of the line with membership, but the EU has an interest in finding a way around that now. And since NI path out of the UK is directly codified as re-unification at this point they side step the issue. Depending on how far the UK goes, and how much the EU wants to prevent other countries from following this path a deliberate Republic of Ireland supported effort to break up the UK might be in the offing.
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