I dunno how impressed we should be that the terrible people who were mostly concerned with empowering themselves made friends when that became a suitable way to empower themselves.
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I covered that in my “that math isn’t valid” proviso.
I don’t think people age into leavers, but if you poll the 18-25 cohort, and then poll the 48-55 cohort 30 years later, the group becomes more “conservative”.
I do think some people seem to have radical political rebirths when they have children, but that aside, one reason that populations might get more “conservative” as they grow old is that people tend to learn empathy by having hardships, and hardships make you less likely to be among those who actually do grow old, so there’s a selection pressure for older people to have less empathy than younger people. One would hope that would be countered by life experience teaching people empathy, but people might also mostly stop learning things around 30.
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Not so much “impressed” as “that was unexpected”. But you make a good point.
IIRC, in Garth Ennis’ Troubled Souls, the disenchantment of the idealistic IRA member Damien begins when he’s present at a meeting between the IRA and the UVF to discuss co-operation and territorial divisions for the purposes of organised crime.
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Whenever people talk about how people supposedly get more conservative, I wonder why they leave out all the young people terrified of looking too radical, all the baby neo-Nazis, all the conservative sexist tech bros, all the young people that push back on looking weird, or the young Christian couple that follows every rule until they loosen up after their divorces.
I think it’s a narrative. An older boss is more conservative because of fears of losing financial gains. Most other old conservative are usually people who overestimate how wild their youth was, when they were probably more conservative than average.
When it comes to the Brexit statistics, cultural attitudes can clump around age groups. I wouldn’t be surprised if you could also poll an attitude to something like “institutional unions” where it would look like “old people seem more favorable”. You could use that to then argue “young people are more conservative than their hippie parents.”
Anecdotally, some people get more or less conservative as they get older.
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I guess there’s also the fact that yesterday’s progressive is sometimes today’s conservative. Back in the 1980s “political correctness run amok” was about how you weren’t supposed to grab women’s asses in the workplace. But the progressives fighting that might have been against gay marriage.
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Looks like we’re in for a long and boring night.
The Attorney General says the proposed changes are not enough. As do the ERG and the DUP.
AG’s opinion here
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And vice versa. That’s my point. There’s lots of issues that people change their minds on over a whole life, either way.
There was also older women pushing the ERA, and older gay guys who were pushing for the abolishment of marriage all together.
I think it’s a too-easy stereotype that a lot of people use in the same way as, “You’re going to regret that tattoo when you get older.” (They did a study, and most people don’t regret their tattoos when they’re older.)
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ITS COMPLICATED.
We’ll just skip the background. As it stands there’s a rough process in place for what’s called a border poll. Basically any time a sufficient number of people in either Ireland wants a vote on reunification it can happen. It’d typically be triggered by opinion polling, followed by action by the NI parliament and/or Irish legislature. But there are potentially methods to trigger it without. Practically you need both nations to vote. If a majority of the population of NI votes for reunification, and a majority of the population of the Republic does as well. Boom reunited Ireland. The UK’s government doesn’t really get a say in the matter.
So we’ve got at least a half century of voting and polling on the subject (there have been a handful of border polls not including the initial vote that separated the countries).
Generally the North is almost always hot to trot to have a vote. But the vast majority of the population, even Catholics, want to stay in the UK. The South almost never wants to have a vote, but the vast majority of the population support reunification should a vote happen.
I think the DUP has enough influence in the NI parliament to block a vote, as does Sinn Fein. But there’s traditionally been little reason for either to do so. Sinn Fein kinda wants the vote to potentially get out of the UK, the DUP (and most of the population) kinda wants it to reassert their Britishness. Though both have reason to oppose votes, and have in the past. And like I said you can potentially trigger a vote another way they can’t block. In either case blocking the vote means going against large public support for one, so even if you oppose it, blocking it isn’t always wise.
The Brexit situation is a wrench in that, as it makes a successful vote more likely. So they would have cause to try to kill any vote. A border poll has been a serious part of the Brexit discussion in Ireland. But there’s been very, very little acknowledgement from the UK parliament. The DUP’s role in propping up May’s government may be involved in that. But breaking up the UK is really unpopular in the UK anyway.
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If you don’t want Yorkshire Pudding, I’ll have yours!
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Breaking up the UK is unpopular in England. (Probably due to the kind of post-Imperial angst which is one factor behind Brexit being more popular in England.)
It’s more popular in Scotland and NI (though not vastly so) but the prospect of Brexit is putting extra strain on the strength of the Union because those two countries voted much more in favour of Remain, and now find themselves dragged behind England to Leave.
However, to talk about cohorts correctly we need to understand that the cohort of 18-24 year-olds (for example) comprises people born between 1995 and 2001. In 10 years time, these people will be the cohort of 28-34 year olds, and people born between 2000 and 2011 will be the cohort of 18-24 year olds.
This is important because there are two groups of factors which affect people in age groups. One is their age in terms of health and life stage, the other is the social environment in which they were born and grew up.
For example, in the UK it’s people under 45 who are clearly lean more to Remain. They have all been born and brought up with the UK inside the EU and therefore do not remember the glorious age of freedom and sovereignty which preceded accession. So they do not miss that or hark back to it.
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This is sarcasm right?
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Fortunately England and the UK government don’t get much say in the matter. And none at all for Reunification.
The demographic concerns with Brexit are well understood. Both on age, and the regional ones you’re ignoring. In terms of Scotland and Nothern Ireland that age breakdown is not as firm, as both areas had a heavy majority in favor of remain.
I highly, highly doubt that the Northern Irish view the past, particularly the pre EU past as “a glorious age of freedom and sovereignty”. And given that the troubles, and the worst of the situation there ran pretty deep into the 90’s nearly every NI voter remembers past circumstance pretty deeply. I’ll say it again, this isn’t history.
For Scotland the situation was never so dire. But the period where they’ve had significant voice, and a home government with any influence. Is similarly recent. So I can guarantee that older Scots aren’t wistfully dreaming about all that sovereignty and enfranchisement they were effectively denied.
And that’s what’s driving the potential breakup of the UK, older voters in the more populous (and prosperous) England have essentially dictated “leave” to the other Nations of the UK. And 2 of those have pre-existing pathways out of the UK and back into the EU. So while the potential damage to these areas from Brexit is probably the biggest thing on whether they take that path now. I wouldn’t discount the long term implications of the way Brexit demonstrates to the Irish and Scots that they’re still being ruled from afar.
And again England, and the UK. Don’t get a say if and when these places go. There’s little they can do to prevent it if those countries pull the trigger.
More recent polling has Wales shifting further and further for remain. If Brexit comes off, long term I expect you’ll see them pushing to get on the whole home rule train too.
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I was hoping so… Most people who harken back to some “good old days” era are remembering them through a weird, nostalgic haze, not remembering problems, but only their own youth, more often than not. This is why we need a good study of history, to remember that no era is free from problems.
Right? It’s nostalgia! They’re remembering the past through their own hazy, personal lens, instead of through a historical lens, which tells a much more complicated picture.
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but, but, BLUE PASSPORTS!!!
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Well that too.
But I’m more saying that the for NI the troubles and division aren’t some distant history, but very current real circumstance. And same for Scotland the people debating independence aren’t glancing back on something already settled. It’s an even more recent, ongoing and evolving fight over what level of control they’ll have in their own governance. It seems the other side of that issue isn’t “status quo” but a variety of other approaches to the Scottish getting more say in their own governance.
And that’s sort of how Brexit has managed to move that specific issue so much already. It’s made it abundantly clear that England and the central UK government aren’t really interested in dealing with or allowing that.
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I agree here… and I’d bet for the most people, except for a few fringe examples of people who glorified that period of conflict, most NI citizens (however the view these issues) aren’t the ones with a nostalgic lens for the past. I was speaking more of older, middle class people in Britain, longing for an imagined past. One’s own imperfect remembrance of a rosy past is not history, but nostalgia.
And I’d say that English people more generally have a rosier view of the era before people in Scotland or NI were pushing for more autonomy, and they don’t understand WHY they’d be doing that, because wasn’t that time so much better (from their mind set). They probably partial blame the current woes on people pushing for greater local autonomy in the first place (I mean, after they blame immigrants from the Common Wealth or the EU of course).
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Absolutely.
And I wouldn’t discount the extent to which privilege is being well enough off to not even notice iniquity.
Since the UK government rolled out of the English Crown it’s always been structured to centralize power among the English (and the upper classes). The overarching government there is the English government, and each other country in the UK’s government is by design secondary. It’s almost like the US Federal Government being the Texas State Legislature, and Texas’ governor was our chief executive instead of the president.
So if you’re English, you never really needed to notice that before. So part of the good times you’re looking back on is a time period where you didn’t hear about those problems. And the assumption that because you didn’t see it, it wasn’t a problem for anyone.
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