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UK General Election

The Don said:
It shows a desire to return to the 1950s where Britain ruled over the rump of Empire. The Board of Trade isn't itself a racist move at all, it's just a move showing the lack of understanding of Britain's place in the world.
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In fairness a lot of Scottish Tories don't want to go back to 1950. They have their heart set on 1690.
 
baron said:
Oh no! Surely they weren't using the democratic process to permit parades in their own country! How can we stop this atrocity?
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Courtesy compels me to assume that you are unacquainted with the nature, motivation and history of these activities, or you would not dismiss attempts to regulate them as an atrocity.
 
Craig B said:
Courtesy compels me to assume that you are unacquainted with the nature, motivation and history of these activities, or you would not dismiss attempts to regulate them as an atrocity.
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I didn't, I parodied your outrage that a democratically elected party in Northern Ireland would use the democratic process to overturn a ruling on parades in their own country.
 
baron said:
I didn't, I parodied your outrage that a democratically elected party in Northern Ireland would use the democratic process to overturn a ruling on parades in their own country.
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The regulation of these parades is a highly meritorious enterprise, and outrage is the appropriate response to attempts to subvert it. But if your post was a parody there's nothing to be said, I suppose.
 
The Don said:
Yes, they are very uncomfortable around gay people and visibly recoil from them, and make the same tired old jokes about gay people that I used to see on TV back in the 70's. Yes they are certainly xenophobic, they don't want any more dark people in the country, and some of the lazy stereotyping they employ and old-fashioned racist jokes they tell (again similar to 70's vintage) leads me to believe they may be "soft" racists.

Their view of the Irish are more complicated. They enjoy going to Dublin to watch the rugby but Irish republicans are probably terrorists.



There are a smattering of people who are left right wing but it's quite an old demographic so they do tend towards the old-fashioned racists. Early on, I used to try and engage them in political discourse but Mrs Don was so scared that we'd have no friends that she suggested that I leave political debate to the online arena ;) I have of course complied.
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angrysoba said:
Then you have my sympathies. When you are cordially invited over to an evening of racist banter, casual homophobia, nostalgic sexism and dark whisperings that maybe we fought on the wrong side in the war, it must be uncomfortable in the extreme. My own experience with Tories of a certain age is of the more Ken Clarke style red faced and amiable old fashioned fags and ale type.

ETA: though that is not to say I have not met the type you describe but I find their company insufferable.
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I can believe that, given the mix of age and location given that The Don is in a rural area.

Dad was surprised that he was the only one in his circle to vote Remain.

My kids have ranted about the "I'm not racist but..." brigade of kids in their rural school. Small C conservative, and xenophobic.
 
jimbob said:
I can believe that, given the mix of age and location given that The Don is in a rural area.......
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Don't give any credence to The Don's rabid prejudices and stereotyping. It's just stuff that class warriors are told to believe, and they lap it up. Generally they manage to keep these anti-social traits well disguised, but every now and then their true colours are revealed. Some people just have to have enemies, it seems, and are comforted by categorising people as "us" and "them".
 
The Don said:
Yes, they are very uncomfortable around gay people and visibly recoil from them, and make the same tired old jokes about gay people that I used to see on TV back in the 70's. Yes they are certainly xenophobic, they don't want any more dark people in the country, and some of the lazy stereotyping they employ and old-fashioned racist jokes they tell (again similar to 70's vintage) leads me to believe they may be "soft" racists.

Their view of the Irish are more complicated. They enjoy going to Dublin to watch the rugby but Irish republicans are probably terrorists.



There are a smattering of people who are left right wing but it's quite an old demographic so they do tend towards the old-fashioned racists. Early on, I used to try and engage them in political discourse but Mrs Don was so scared that we'd have no friends that she suggested that I leave political debate to the online arena ;) I have of course complied.
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That is not really to do with politics. It is more to do with class IMV.

In my early working life I soon noticed there were many people openly gay in the West End (later studies claimed as many as 25% of the workforce in that area is), all of them from the upper classes. It is almost fashionable for staff to be 'camp' in department stores such as Selfridges. The toffs have always been allowed to do whatever they fancy.

It's unfair to label conservative voters 'racist, sexist, homophobic, xenphobic', etc, when many traditional trade unions are full of macho men keen to keep women and foreigners out by running 'closed shop' criteria.

Tory ministers have invited workers from the Commonwealth to shore up the NHS and London Transport. Bolshy working class people have come out on demonstration against 'foreign labout taking our homes and jobs'.

TBH I don't think it is really something that is OT for this thread.

You mention your American wife, but people not familiar with the UK class system will often get the wrong end of the stick. They are staggered to see a black QC or doctor for example because of their own stereotyped thinking that 'the British are racist' in the same way that race works in the USA, when people are expected to stick to their own ethnic group.
 
As expected, Gerry Adams, Sinn Fein leader has popped up to stick his oar in:

He spoke as Theresa May's government continues to negotiate terms for a supply-and-confidence deal with Mr Adams' party's chief political opponents to help the Tories command a majority in the House of Commons.

"I would hardly call that sort of arrangement ... stable," Mr Adams told reporters at a news conference as he used the much-repeated Tory campaign slogans against them.

"We don't believe that any deal with the DUP here and English Tories will be good for the people here," he added as he warned landmark peace talk agreements were under threat.

"Any deal which undercuts in any way the process here or the Good Friday and the other agreements is one which has to be opposed by progressives," he said as he stood in front of the party's seven new MPs.
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Another difficulty for May's minority government is that the Democratic Unionists Party (DUP) have a very different view of Brexit. They want to keep the borders open (free movement), which directly clashes with the xenophobes desperate to 'close the borders' and paranoia that hundreds of thousand refuges from Syria might be on their way (cf Merkel's Germany).
 
Vixen said:
.......Another difficulty for May's minority government is that the Democratic Unionists Party (DUP) have a very different view of Brexit. They want to keep the borders open (free movement).........
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There isn't a single national politician, party or pressure group advocating anything else. Get your facts straight.

ETA.........apologies if you were talking about free movement within the single market. I read it as you talking about the border between Eire and Northern Ireland.
 
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Vixen said:
As expected, Gerry Adams, Sinn Fein leader has popped up to stick his oar in:



Another difficulty for May's minority government is that the Democratic Unionists Party (DUP) have a very different view of Brexit. They want to keep the borders open (free movement), which directly clashes with the xenophobes desperate to 'close the borders' and paranoia that hundreds of thousand refuges from Syria might be on their way (cf Merkel's Germany).
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There is one obvious way that Britain can have a hard Brexit, whilst there is free trade between Dublin and Belfast... But I don't think that the DUP would be that keen on the UK having a hard Brexit, whilst the Island of Ireland is united.
 
Vixen said:
In my early working life I soon noticed there were many people openly gay in the West End (later studies claimed as many as 25% of the workforce in that area is), all of them from the upper classes. It is almost fashionable for staff to be 'camp' in department stores such as Selfridges. The toffs have always been allowed to do whatever they fancy.
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Wait, sales assistants in Selfridges are toffs?
 
Giz said:
Wait, sales assistants in Selfridges are toffs?
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You'd be surprised. Lots of public school types work there in vacation.

I worked at Selfridges myself as a waitress, table clearer at John Lewis during school hols and on Saturdays for the extra dosh & for fun, when I was 15. (They changed the age limit to 18 later.)


IIRC they used to demand five O-levels to serve as a shop assistant with them, especially Harrods.
 
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MikeG said:
There isn't a single national politician, party or pressure group advocating anything else. Get your facts straight.

ETA.........apologies if you were talking about free movement within the single market. I read it as you talking about the border between Eire and Northern Ireland.
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Are you sure about that?

It is likely that a "soft Brexit" deal would insist on Britain observing the "four freedoms", meaning continued free access for European nationals to work and settle in the UK.
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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...et-freedom-movement-theresa-may-a7342591.html
 
MikeG said:
Please see my ETA. I may have been responding to something you weren't claiming.
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Would DUP be able to keep the border and the customs open if Norn is no longer in the EU, unless it is a unilateral agreement for all 26/27 EU states?

Or rather, wouldn't Eire need to put up the blocks should there be a restriction on free movement?

As The Don says, one of the key reasons people voted Brexit was to stem the free movement of foreigners, but I can't imagine DUP will make a concession on one of their key manifesto points, either.

This could be the sticking point on the DUP-Conservative alliance.
 
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Vixen said:
Would DUP be able to keep the border and the customs open if Norn is no longer in the EU, unless it is a unilateral agreement for all 26/27 EU states?

Or rather, wouldn't Eire need to put up the blocks should there be a restriction on free movement?

As The Don says, one of the key reasons people voted Brexit was to stem the free movement of foreigners, but I can't imagine DUP will make a concession on one of their key manifesto points, either.

This could be the sticking point on the DUP-Conservative alliance.
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Why do you think it would have anything to do with the DUP? This is for negotiation between the UK government and the EU. And, as I said, every single public person and body has said explicitly that they don't want a hard border between north and south. Nobody, but nobody, is proposing imposing customs & passport checks at that border, so a way will be found.
 
MikeG said:
There isn't a single national politician, party or pressure group advocating anything else. Get your facts straight.

ETA.........apologies if you were talking about free movement within the single market. I read it as you talking about the border between Eire and Northern Ireland.
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Where is EireWP?
In 1938 the British government provided in the Eire (Confirmation of Agreements) Act 1938 that British legislation could henceforth refer to the Irish Free State as "Eire" (but not as "Ireland"). The 1938 Act was repealed in 1981, and in 1996 a British journalist described Eire as "now an oddity rarely used, an out-of-date reference".​
It is an oddity, and I do not believe that your use of it is entirely the consequence of ignorance of changes in political nomenclature since the 1930s.
 
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