jaywalker

DulwichFox Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Right another 100,000+ people now on the Banned > from travel to the USA list.. > > Foxy Foxy, I fear you will find that it is rather more than that already.

I guess that is because the issue seems significant. Not to you, but to others.

???? Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > AREN'T I VIRTOUS LOOK AT ME.........back in the > real world nothing achieved. People protesting > when the Chinese President came over 2 years ago? > A mere handful - a torrent of mass knickerwetting I guess the capitalisation speaks volumes. Truly, you have raised a single empty-signifier (ok, I confess, academic language - see Levi-Strauss in the Introduction to the works of Marcel Mauss) to an over-arching slogan of being in the right. The line that any political position against someone is a 'virtuous' posturing would condemn all political discourse. That cannot be right.

It might perhaps be said that the meeting with Trump is looking ever so slightly less successful as the days pass since they held hands. May's refusal yesterday to condemn the treatment of refugees was a huge mistake (hence the backtracking today). I am reading Edward Wilson's wonderful historical spy-novel reconstructions of our relations with the US during the 50s and 60s (currently The Midnight Swimmer). Truly scary.

rendelharris Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > The magic of t'internet! > http://pork.ahdb.org.uk/prices-stats/prices/pig-pr > ices-uk-spec/ Excellent link. So "32p [per kilo] higher than same time last year" (and a nice graph to show it) from a base that looks like about 110p. Price rise looks about right therefore if you do your pricing annually.

keano77 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I realise the vocal part of the EDT bubble is > anti-Trump but I thought Theresa May's meeting > with Donald yesterday was a resounding success for > Great Britain. vocal opposed to those who know without needing to work out what they think by risking saying (their common genius) bubble opposed to those who recognise the whole picture (without having to say what it is) anti-Trump opposed to those who have not read any satires by Bret Easton Ellis Great Britain opposed to declining marginal country with little interest for the USA other than as a pawn in a nuclear chess game (nice to have as a potential gambit). resounding success as opposed to any other clich? going

Found my ED market Hog Roast today was 25% more than last time I bought it. No criticism of the excellent business selling them: with wholesale prices of pork rising sharply, and the pound falling, unavoidable. But I wonder if this kind of live connection to economic reality (unlike the lags involved in the vertical complexities of the big suppliers) is about as clear a warning of the looming economic cliff edge as one could hope to see.

Trap

Dear ????, I am unsure what you mean by "is democracy". Please amplify in the light of the details of the specific case (for example both the current presidents of China and Russia were "elected" and "democracy" in both cases seems a little stretched, so presumably "elected" is not sufficient to establish "democratic". PS the US is not our biggest export market: google it if you don't believe it. Do you think I am stupid?

BrandNewGuy Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > It should be pointed out that 'Great Britain' is > derived from the post-Norman 'Grande Bretagne', to > distinguish the large island of Britain from > 'Bretagne', which referred to modern-day Brittany. > So it's not a claim about how marvellous we are. phew, it has an original meaning so there is no need to worry about what it is taken to mean when used now. So the Last Night at the Proms is in fact a celebration of our size compared to Brittany. I suddenly wonder if 'village' is a very upmarket way of reversing this relative, say, to 'east'.

???? Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Go and google the amount of trade we do with the > US already and think long and hard about > hysterical knickerwetting posts because we don't > like a democratic decision in another country. How > do you and Jaywalker think we are going to run and > fund say the NHS and most other public services > by snubbing what is already our biggest export > market and highest trade surplus trading partner > already. It's impractical useless slightly sad > virtue signalling - you are both being absolutely > clueless to be honest. Dear ????, you are right that any political position can be read as claiming moral high ground. Yet I wonder what the alternative is? Should one simply not express political positions? Or is it that wealth is the most important thing whatever? Certainly Trump would agree with that. But I cannot see your claim that economic wealth should be prioritised whatever the non-economic cost as other than a moral position. That is, you are asserting that waterboarding (for example) is just a regrettable evil given the needs for NHS funding? You are placing the many millions of people who need urgent care (and who are often let down) as the "value position" against those tortured. Of course, and probably most would agree with you - but it is not a neutral position. As it happens, I agree we should continue with trade with the USA. We have done our fair share of iniquity ourselves. Perhaps it will pass over (although I am getting a little alarmed at the pace with which it is accelerating). My argument (in the other thread) was that May would be well advised to treat Trump rather like she treats China or Saudi Arabia: keeping her gloves on and not allowing any embraces. BTW, I fear the USA is not currently our biggest trading partner; and also that it soon will be.

Perhaps he is also "strange" (I do think this is a good descriptor) when it comes to the UK. Might we see an embrace during her trip this week? Rather like those spiders who then eat their mate (although it is usually the female who accomplishes this deception I truly doubt it will be so here). Not at all the same as with Reagan and Thatcher: they had a natural personal affinity and genuinely liked each other (neither he nor she was strange even though one might well have disagreed with their world views).

In diplomacy countries often seek alliances with others with whom they profoundly disagree. For example, currently the UK with Saudi Arabia, and we are imbricated in Russia to a considerable degree (e.g. gas supply, not to mention BP on whose dividends many UK pension funds depend). Our foreign policy has been pragmatist in this sense: if the country is not a direct threat then alliance may be deemed to be in our interest even if we have doubts about human rights or even if the other country has only localised imperialist intentions (the case for deals with Russia here looking particularly weak). Of course this policy often gets us into trouble: most spectacularly the Munich agreement. But there has also been a longer term shift in policy that is now, however, being reversed. The great credit of the Heath government (and the opposite is true of the appalling Blair government) was its distrust of the USA. The alliance with a stable Europe, integrated economically and to some limited extent politically, was seen rightly as a counter-weight to the realisation that the 'special' relationship placed the UK in a dominated (one might say hegemonised) position. The merit of the Heath approach (for which the Tories never really forgave him, and against which the policies of the unspeakable Thatcher personified) was to recognise that the UK was no longer a world power and should rather embed itself in the modest and enlightened European social and cultural norms which are opposed to those now becoming dominant in the United States. But now we have a government that will rip up our relations with Europe and seek special treatment from an isolationist USA. An isolationism that will (having of course failed at home) feel the absolute imperative of purifying beyond its borders. As tweet follows tweet - today a 2000 mile wall - could we register our opposition to May having anything to do with Trump? Or do we think that the USA is truly our friend?

danger

TheArtfulDogger Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Why was Corybn panting on about bargain bucket > Britain in PMQ ... Where did that expression come > from ? He has at least picked up on what he thinks is the only line of opposition that won't sink his party finally, and for good. He has (he thinks) to support Brexit (democracy and all that). But he has read that the Europhobe Tories (although NOT a majority of her party - those people are shamefully silent apart from the excellent Ken Clarke) are themselves hopelessly split: between reactionary nationalists (with whom she sympathises) and free-market 'Singapore' Europhobes - who seem to be winning the internal debate about where her white paper will dream of taking her. The split is between capital and labour (well what a surprise with this crew). Capital will only come to the UK (what is left of it) if corporation tax is near zero, the stupid "bargain basement" metaphor that will connect with no one. Workers will be needed but cannot be allowed in (they would have to be foreign because those born here are ageing so fast). So foreign capital (privileges for the Indian-car-industry-in-the-uk etc) will just have to do. The Europhile tories are digging their own grave: the lib-dems will annihilate them. The Labour party will shrink but not as much as it would if they stated the principles they hold. May will not get a negotiated settlement before the election: the election will remove any possibility of a settlement.

milky

Reversing a dualism does not disperse the dualism: it just leads to war (whatever the injustices, which here are certainly appalling).

DulwichFox Wrote: > As for companies moving out of the UK. Well > Donald Trump has the right idea.. > He has told U.S. Car manufactorers if they want > to sell cars in the U.S. they have to make them in > the U.S. > > If Banks want to operate in the U.K. Then they > should stay in the U.K. and employ U.K. > residents. > > DulwichFox IF this is meant to be an economic argument THEN it begs a question about optimal trade zones. A trade zone can be too small - if confined to my back garden, or to East Dulwich for that matter. It MIGHT be that there are arguments for containing trade zones to less than the maximum possible: but if so we need to hear the criteria. An arbitrary judgement that this is best achieved on the basis of the nation state is aporetic: some nations (e.g. the UK) are very much smaller than others (the USA). But perhaps the anchor of 'nation' here is the only value that is meant (so, as with May, the economics really don't matter at all). IF it is an economic argument then it is based on mercantilist metaphors of containment (Lakoff and Johnson is the obvious reference). We must defend what we have and recognise: to allow flows out to other countries is obviously a loss: like having a leak in one's water cistern. Unfortunately, the poverty of this metaphor was established convincingly by Keynes in the 1930s (when its pernicious effects were all too real). Cheese makers, if they want to sell cheese in East Dulwich then they have to make it in East Dulwich and only employ people born in East Dulwich (that way we will get better off and know who we really are).

TheArtfulDogger Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Additional thoughts, the British version of > "soixante-neuf" is obviously less of a mouthful ! heh Artful, that should always only have been an amuse-bouche before the a la carte

took 9 goes and a sleepless night to get that shorter than yours fox :-).

jaywalker got fox moved to zoo quarters: a holoalphabetic sentence

teacher

There are some credible scenarios in which we will not Brexit. A great deal will depend on the willingness of the Lib Dems to make a manifesto pledge that they will vote against it. I hope and believe they will: May (delayed by the Supreme Court) will be unable to call her vote on the final settlement before the next General Election. She will not be in power after that: the new coalition government will consist of moderate labour, centre-right Tories and Lib Dems. Nick Clegg has the experience to become PM in national unity. The EU will be understanding (thank goodness for the European Courts - they will rule that the calling of Article 50 by the previous government is revocable).

The real reason the ridiculously pretentious "courgettes" have disappeared from our shelves this January is now revealed: we can at last have our marrows back (at least when they have had time to demonstrate their British worth and grown to a proper size this coming October). Recipes on request ...

"I am not sure that the Tories and neoliberals across the world have thought this through" They have a model of the human that is centred on rational self-interest. This is scalable: so the UK (considered as an individual) can, to their certainty, show its energy and competitiveness in a free-trade world. Thus the EU is only a constraint on trade, its social and justice policies merely disincentivise that energy so should be abandoned. The aporia (in May-type conservatives) is that this must then canalise a reactionary nostalgia for the 'greatness' of our past; before we were led astray - not least by liberal cosmopolitanism with its 'corrosive' effect on traditional values; but a cosmopolitanism on which, in fact, the wealth of free trade is predicated not to mention the enlightenment itself. So only those born here should benefit from the competitiveness (but unfortunately if we can prohibit the free movement of people we certainly cannot prohibit the free movement of capital - so the subsidies have already started). She will pay a heavy political price for this - the economic damage will be enormous and precisely the people of her atavistic dream of order (how many times did she mention terrorism in her recent speech on EU negotiations when that had absolutely nothing to do with it?) will be most affected.