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Out of the EU


Phil Rhodes

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What do you call a North American without a gun and health care.. A Canadian ..

 

EU problem is they don't have one central bank .. so its harder for them to just print money like all the other G20 countries.. death sentence for the Euro... they cant devalue it fast enough..

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Well Tyler - you seem to be generalizing the east and west coast as cool, and everywhere else to be a bunch of red neck, gun-toting, bible-thumpers.... I can tell you right now, that is just not true. This is often the opinion of those who don't regularly hang out in areas other than the coasts - much like how we all condemn the southern states as being full of red-necks.

 

Yes, the Midwest and other areas do have more than their fair share of those types, but I can assure you - we have a lot of liberal city-slicker Bernie supporters - me being one.

 

Just don't be so quick to suggest that the east coast and west coast should form their own country - because they are obviously where the smart and cool people live, and everyone else should stay in their gun-toting areas...

 

As for the suggestion of breaking up the union, I'm all for it, though I'd say each state should remain independent, and the US government should become an EU-like organization.

 

But that is just me, and this is not a political forum.

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What did the Romans ever do for us..

As a European living in the UK for over 16 years and being enormously annoyed and personally and professionally quite screwed by the lamentably moronic public discourse that lead to a (English-)-nationalistically induced and xenophobically uttered Brexit vote - and denying this is akin to climate change denying - let me rather ask what Enlightenment did for us.

 

I can see that some people whose entire business life occur only in Britain and never abroad might be better off. But the economic costs that will trickle down across a post-Brexit England will nullify any of those benefits. Sure, in theory, more filmwork might occur in England and no longer in Transylvania standing in for Wiltshire, if it will be economic to bear the cost for a production. Sure, my English plumber can rejoyce from getting rid of the superior yet cheaper Polish competition, and can now allow himself to not reply to phine calls for a week again because no Pollak is snatching his business away. But this won't transform Britain into a country away from a country with the worst plumbing in an Industrialised country. It will just cost everyone more, personally and economically.

 

Robin, the ECB is the Eurozone's central bank, copying the regional/state/federal structure of the Fed. it's not harder for them to "print money" or implement quantitative easing policies, and certainly not more difficult to other G20 states. In fact quite the contrary. To deduct an inevitable death sentence to the currency from this is piling an ignorant conclusion on ignorant knowledge. The economic discrepancies within the Eurozone are similar to the one in the "Dollarzone" of the US. Just ask a ex-miner in rural Pennsylvania and a banker in NYC. Yet because of the historical normalcy, no one is suggesting for PA to temporarily drop out of the Dollarzone to revitalise its fortunes. It's a hermeneutic problem based on perceptions of nation as much as a fiscal-economic problem. Sorry to be so blunt, but if political debates happen here on Ciny.com, they better be informed, or they become simple hogwash.

 

[edit: some of the typos]

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I can see that some people whose entire business life occur only in Britain and never abroad might be better off.
There are two problems with this.
First, quite a lot of my business does come from other countries - just not European ones. I get a lot of business out of the USA at the moment (and I'm not even allowed to live there). The likelihood of my being able to do any business with the EU, considering I speak none of the languages of the other member states, is effectively zero. It's a sad reality, but freedom of movement and free trade does not assist most British people other than very, very indirectly.
In general I try to avoid making arguments about job poaching as it lends favour to dislikable xenophobes, but there is a legitimate argument about the downward pressure on wages brought by immigrant labour. Whatever you or I think about it, this was always doomed to create bad feeling. Attempts to overlook and downplay legitimate concerns because they were associated with other, rather less legitimate ones are a large part of what lost the vote for the remain lobby.
I couldn't agree more that it depends largely on what people's perceptions are and whether, for instance, the UK citizenry is OK with supporting, say, Poland financially. I mean, London is OK with supporting Yorkshire financially. It was clear for some time that we were happy to do that as a net contributor to the EU. The problem is that the US model is not entirely encouraging - the bureaucracy is staggering, with much infighting and duplication of effort. That's not something the EU should have been aiming for as a target, that's completely inappropriate.
My out vote was motivated almost entirely by the need to reduce the number of professional politicians who have power over me. It is becoming increasingly clear that most professional politicians do not act in good faith, are motivated almost entirely by self-interest, self-importance and greed, and should not be trusted. Fewer of them is better, on the straightforward basis of reducing the numbers of the enemy, and that's before we even hit the subject of how staggeringly undemocratic the EU is.
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As a European living in the UK for over 16 years and being enormously annoyed and personally and professionally quite screwed by the lamentably moronic public discourse that lead to a (English-)-nationalistically induced and xenophobically uttered Brexit vote - and denying this is akin to climate change denying - let me rather ask what Enlightenment did for us.

 

Are you annoyed by Angela Merkel?

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Which one?

 

Seriously. Which one?

 

In order for the entire world to have the opportunity to work here, they had to learn one relatively simple language - English.

 

For me to have the same opportunity in Europe, I'd have to have preemptively learned at least all 24 official languages, some of which are horrendously complicated, and that's before we've even considered just how intolerant for instance the French are of foreigners trying to speak their language.

 

Errr.

 

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Are you annoyed by Angela Merkel?

To be perfectly honest, not as much as I am by your content and your self as a user here in this forum, after following your posts and - frankly - crude and personal insults against David. But me and others have said so in those other threads that I won't hyperlink through here. Over the past 10 years I am a user here, I have seen people being banned for less. So count yourself content of the goodwill you receive. Maybe there's a takeaway for you there just as much as there is a takeaway from the Greek fiscal/financial/monetary crisis - a complex crisis certainly not solely centred around the €, and totally unworthy of Greek/German self-pity and anger-bashing, on both sides, in equal measure, against each other. In the end, reason has prevailed, although you might not see that. :-)

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Which one?

 

Seriously. Which one?

 

In order for the entire world to have the opportunity to work here, they had to learn one relatively simple language - English.

 

For me to have the same opportunity in Europe, I'd have to have preemptively learned at least all 24 official languages, some of which are horrendously complicated, and that's before we've even considered just how intolerant for instance the French are of foreigners trying to speak their language.

 

Errr.

 

P

I speak 5 European languages, including English, and learned them at secondary school, a totally ordinary school of no merit with no special curriculum.

 

I wonder how often you work on projects in Europe, because English is the standard professional language in firms, coops, businesses where international talent comes together. Finding your way through Europe with English-only has NEVER been simpler since the turn of the millennium. How do all those Brits in Berlin working in the Creative Industries survive with English only?

 

As for French: I just returned from Avignon on arts-related business, not having spoken French (my third language) for at least 5 years. I had the best conversations on cinematography and film I had in years, wya beyond anything I had with British pros or BFI curators over the years, on the most obscure aspects of filmmaking and film history. When my French ran out to express myself, we simply switched into English, and so did my French conversationalists, without offence or anger. Then we returned to French, or indeed to German. Welcome to the 21st century, Phil.

 

I might return to some other points of your earlier post after the weekend, but let me tell you that me as a "bloody foreigner" in this country making a career most Brits would't be able to do, despite pretty obvious discrimination I faced (but so what, quality prevails), I sometimes think that most deficiencies Brits rail against are more of their own making than caused by their perceived evil EUSSR overlords. To describe the EU as undemocratic coming from the British state system which has no elected head of state, an unaccoutabke civil service recruited from a tiny section if society, one hereditary parliamentary chamber, another chamber that is representationally rather unrepresentative and constitutes itself and appoints (not elects!) its government based on the discarding of the majority of the demos' cast votes in a general election, and where the process of submission of legislature is less accountable and transparent than it is in the European Commission and Parliament, or through the European Council (the latter two directly elected by the EU voter, the first indirectly through the Spitzenkadidaten-System), I must say I truky wonder where such a statement could come from...

 

I am also certain that your attempt to get rid of a layer of professional politicians (EU) and replacing them with WTO bureacrats or EFTA admins or GATS appartchiks was absolutely a bloody nose given to the establishment *sarcasm*. In the end, I am certain the new May government will have nothing but the personal interest of freelancing creatives in mind. When I look at my students and business partners, they agree, and go to Berlin, Dublin, Amsterdam and Paris with no knowledge of the local language (and Gaelic is beautiful, yet all the Irish are happy to speak English to those they gained their independence from). :-)

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To be perfectly honest, not as much as I am by your content and you tourself as a user here in this forum, after following your posts and - frankly - crude and personal insults against David.

 

Oh, look. Who is offensive now? :) I was just actually waiting for this to happen. I asked a simple question (which I knew would be interpreted as “Don’t you just hate that awful Merkel woman?”, but said nothing to stop it, intentionally) and there you go not being able to restrain yourself and answer politely to what was a polite, non-ironic question – it was just a request for more information from simple curiosity. If you are already criticizing one side, you might as well, to at least appear to be fair, do so to the other.

 

I wasn’t offensive to David. Whoever got it that way (and, yet again, I knew it would happen, together with the morality, ethics, and politeness policing, but intentionally didn’t say anything to stop the misinterpretation) – got it wrong. I was rubbed the wrong way because I thought that he sometimes intentionally, out of that same irritation you feel, answers me in the most condescending way. That happens in probably about 0.5 % of his answers to be, but I tend to interpret it as if it’s 99.5 %. Which is my mistake.

 

Though, now, I am intrigued by this “I am irritated by your content”. That’s an interesting one.

Edited by Alexandros Angelopoulos Apostolos
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I speak 5 European languages, including English, and learned them at secondary school, a totally ordinary school of no merit with no special curriculum.

 

More to the point, you learned them growing up in a country with four national languages. I could bore you to death with a list of things that are wrong with language tuition in the UK. We start too late. We teach the wrong languages (Spanish? Seriously?). Expectations are pathetically low. I regularly got A and B grades at French and Spanish. I can't speak a word of either language. It's laughable.

 

It doesn't matter, though. The crushing problem is that most British schoolkids, when they walk into a French, German or Spanish lesson at the age of eleven, have never once had a need to speak, read or understand French, German or Spanish, they probably never will, and they know that. They know it's a waste of time. The only time they'll have any need to actively think about any language other than English is during those lessons.You go to these lessons knowing they will not get you anything like a working proficiency in a language, and even if they do, the French, German or Spanish person you're speaking to will immediately scowl at your terrible accent and switch to English - in which they generally have a terrible accent.

 

But I digress.

 

Again, which language would you have me learn? Bear in mind I need to make this decision when I'm about five years old. English is the most widely-known second language in the world. If English is your native language, which second language is the obvious choice? If you're Chinese or French or German or Swiss, it's blindingly obvious that English is very useful. If you already speak English, which language would you propose as the most useful? Serious question.

 

Also, please don't try to paint me as a xenophobe. Despite your use of quote marks, I have never used the phrase "bloody foreigner" other than in terms intended to highlight how inappropriate it is, and I have never had any objection to immigration which does not create wage depression. I support fundamental reform of British government, including proportional representation, fully-elected houses and ideally the outlawing of party politics in its entirety, and I share your suspicions regarding supranational entities such as the WTO. My dissatisfaction with the EU stems from similar concerns.

 

All I can do, like most people in most elections, is to vote for the least bad option. The EU is a bad option, so I voted against it. That says nothing about British government. It may be a good idea, but what's actually being done is a disaster, and that's a crucial differentiation to make.

 

I suppose really I should learn Chinese, but that's a nightmare.

 

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But me and others have said so in those other threads that I won't hyperlink through here.

 

Indeed? Where? I have never seen anything of such sort anywhere around here. Except for that Mark Dunn post.

 

Over the past 10 years I am a user here, I have seen people being banned for less.

 

Really? What exactly should I be banned for? I’m intrigued. You know it very well that it is just because I annoy you and not because of anything I’ve said or done.

 

So count yourself content of the goodwill you receive

 

What a vile, condescending attitude condensed in this evil sentence. As if I haven’t done it and keep doing it, always thanked everyone who kindly replied to me in the most sincerest of terms, yet not nearly as much as I wanted, and partly because I didn’t want to flood the forum with innumerable Thank you! posts. Instead, I always thought that a click on the green arrow would be interpred as such.

 

 

Maybe there's a takeaway for you there just as much as there is a takeaway from the Greek fiscal/financial/monetary crisis - a complex crisis certainly not solely centred around the €, and totally unworthy of Greek/German self-pity and anger-bashing, on both sides, in equal measure, against each other. In the end, reason has prevailed, although you might not see that. :-)

 

Oh, dear, what vileness... It is just disgusting. This is another thing I knew would happen: you thinking my question was a jab at the “evil Germans” and the relationship between Greece and Germany. When in fact it was no such thing. But I let you fall into your own pit with pleasure.

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Oh, look. Who is offensive now? :) I was just actually waiting for this to happen.

 

I was waiting for you to say something like this, because based on your responses from the other threads, your character would make you default to this "trap" of yours you have actually been ninja'd into; proving that you are in essence akin to a troll. Good-bye, and "Evanesco!"

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As a European living in the UK for over 16 years and being enormously annoyed and personally and professionally quite screwed by the lamentably moronic public discourse that lead to a (English-)-nationalistically induced and xenophobically uttered Brexit vote - and denying this is akin to climate change denying - let me rather ask what Enlightenment did for us.

 

I can see that some people whose entire business life occur only in Britain and never abroad might be better off. But the economic costs that will trickle down across a post-Brexit England will nullify any of those benefits. Sure, in theory, more filmwork might occur in England and no longer in Transylvania standing in for Wiltshire, if it will be economic to bear the cost for a production. Sure, my English plumber can rejoyce from getting rid of the superior yet cheaper Polish competition, and can now allow himself to not reply to phine calls for a week again because no Pollak is snatching his business away. But this won't transform Britain into a country away from a country with the worst plumbing in an Industrialised country. It will just cost everyone more, personally and economically.

 

Robin, the ECB is the Eurozone's central bank, copying the regional/state/federal structure of the Fed. it's not harder for them to "print money" or implement quantitative easing policies, and certainly not more difficult to other G20 states. In fact quite the contrary. To deduct an inevitable death sentence to the currency from this is piling an ignorant conclusion on ignorant knowledge. The economic discrepancies within the Eurozone are similar to the one in the "Dollarzone" of the US. Just ask a ex-miner in rural Pennsylvania and a banker in NYC. Yet because of the historical normalcy, no one is suggesting for PA to temporarily drop out of the Dollarzone to revitalise its fortunes. It's a hermeneutic problem based on perceptions of nation as much as a fiscal-economic problem. Sorry to be so blunt, but if political debates happen here on Ciny.com, they better be informed, or they become simple hogwash.

 

[edit: some of the typos]

 

 

Michael..

 

Relax man.. its a line from Monty Python.. please google its very funny.. it ia actually the opposite of what you think.. it then lists all the great things that the Romans did actually do in England ..

 

But it is true that the Euro has no central bank.. in the way the UK ,Australia,Japan or USA has.. which has prevented them from printing money.. this is good thing not bad ..

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:D I know that it's from "The Life of Brian". It's also the reason for the title of the eminently watchable BBC series by Adam Hart-Davies. I will let my colleagues at LSE know of your re-definition of 'central bank'. The next Stieglitz award is therewith decided on ;)

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Yes they should know that.. its pretty straight forward.. one currency between alot of countries.. from Germany to Greece .. very different goals and needs.. will never work.. Im by no means the first person to know that.. but please use my name if you want.. you will always get a table at the best restaurants in London .. :).. So far Mick Jagger is the best thing to come out LSE..

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More to the point, you learned them growing up in a country with four national languages. I could bore you to death with a list of things that are wrong with language tuition in the UK. We start too late. We teach the wrong languages (Spanish? Seriously?). Expectations are pathetically low. I regularly got A and B grades at French and Spanish. I can't speak a word of either language. It's laughable.

 

 

No, I grew up in Germany, there's just one official language spoken there. I learned what I learned in school. I shaped my English and French with colloquialism and street language and mimiks from watching English and French television and movies in the original, but that happened more because of my interest in cinematography than because of the languages. People I know who grew up in German-speaking Switzerland have little to no knowledge of French or Italian or Romantsch. Likewise, people I know who grew up in deep rural Poland or France speak the same levels and numbers of languages. It's not that simple.

 

I don't speak Spanish. A big gap. It's a very important language. It's more important globally than German, French or Chinese. In the US, I deem Spanish skills indispensable now.

 

You got far better marks in languages than I did in German school. What went wrong?

 

 

 

It doesn't matter, though. The crushing problem is that most British schoolkids, when they walk into a French, German or Spanish lesson at the age of eleven, have never once had a need to speak, read or understand French, German or Spanish, they probably never will, and they know that. They know it's a waste of time. The only time they'll have any need to actively think about any language other than English is during those lessons.You go to these lessons knowing they will not get you anything like a working proficiency in a language, and even if they do, the French, German or Spanish person you're speaking to will immediately scowl at your terrible accent and switch to English - in which they generally have a terrible accent.

I fail to understand that. I grew up fully aware of the European integration process of the 1980s - because it was pretty explicit and obvious, going on since the 1950s - and thereafter. Speaking another language was always understood by us pupils as a gateway to another culture, their artwork, travelling confidently, making new friends, and once you get a bit older, becoming aware that you can go abroad to study, to live and work there, find a partner from another country... Transgressing frontiers.
I find Europeans scowl more at English people who feel self-entitled enough to walk into a French charcuterie, Spanish bodega, German Geschäft, Swedish sauna, and start talking to them in English, without even making that tiny effort of saying a most basic salutory greeting in the local language. That kind of disrespectful "Sprach-Herrenmensch" attitude is what some people dislike. But even now, you will find that people younger than 50 will just shrug their shoulders, think "ah, ze Englisch, zay don't speak another languädsch" and reply in English without further ado.
Don't get the accent aggro there. When I first moved to the UK 16 years ago, I went to Newcastle. I survived with my school English sans problème, and the Geordies cuddled me to death. My Indian work colleague was verbally attacked 3 weeks ago with the words "We voted Leave, get out, Paki!"

Again, which language would you have me learn? Bear in mind I need to make this decision when I'm about five years old. English is the most widely-known second language in the world. If English is your native language, which second language is the obvious choice? If you're Chinese or French or German or Swiss, it's blindingly obvious that English is very useful. If you already speak English, which language would you propose as the most useful? Serious question.

I started learning English at school the age of 13. It was my fourth language. I think Spanish and French are widely spoken across the world, including North America, Asia, and Africa. Right now, the amount of people learning German is shocking me, and I think I will actively vote for an ultra right-wing party in German to make sure the borders of Germany are controlled or closed, so that all the German-speaking younger, fitter, dynamic, low-pay English exilees won't take my hypothetical job in Germany away from me. After all, nativism rules *sarcasm*.
I am not sure on what pedagogic foundation ("decision at the age of 5") you are building your Weltbild, but I think the problem seems to be firmly based in the English education system and the horizon of thought instilled in pupils therein. But to vote out of the EU because there's no future for this generation to be found across La Manche, thereby screwing up the chances of the generation currently studying (and I know first hand the anger pupils and students now have for those that voted Leave, because they know the complications they will face in a Hard Brexit scenario) seems rather odd, selfish at best. At least that's what the young generation thinks, and they are bloody angry.

Also, please don't try to paint me as a xenophobe. Despite your use of quote marks, I have never used the phrase "bloody foreigner" other than in terms intended to highlight how inappropriate it is, and I have never had any objection to immigration which does not create wage depression. I support fundamental reform of British government, including proportional representation, fully-elected houses and ideally the outlawing of party politics in its entirety, and I share your suspicions regarding supranational entities such as the WTO. My dissatisfaction with the EU stems from similar concerns.

I am not thinking you are a xenophobe. That would be a misunderstanding of the highest order. I hold you in high esteem since I joined this forum a decade ago, and while you might not remeber me, I appreciate your posts highly. The quoted "bloody foreigner" referred to the general reference in British culture. When I quote other users, I use the QUOTE html for this.
Voting is always about chosing options and their future scenarios. You chose to vote out of the EU. But the resulting scenario ahead for the UK will be even more restrictive, voiding all the points that were put forward by the Leave campaign. That's the irony of it all, but it will take a decade for this to be comprehended by the "52%". Unless of course you totally vote out of the world political-economic system on this planet, and generally demand a break from reality. But if you want that, then voting isn't the way forward. Armed resistance would be. Cue Ireland. Or 134 other nation states that were displeased over the past 150 years of being governed by unelected, unaccountable foreigners from Britain settling in their lands... including all the countries highest on the list the UK now wants to trade with instead of the EU. As someone who worked in India and China, I can tell you resentment against Britain as a country is the one thing very much prevailing. Tread carefully...

 

 

I suppose really I should learn Chinese, but that's a nightmare.

 

 

 

 

 

A member of my family learned Asian languages, not at school, but at uni. It's like rocket science. All can be achieved. But I doubt a career in the Chinese film industry is a realistic prospect to make this worthwhile. Well, maybe a TTIP-like free-trade deal with the US covering the hitherto four freedom of movements with the EU would be best for you, so that you could maybe settle in the US – Americans love the English, I hear, it must be the accent *lastsentence=humour*

 

With no hard feelings whatsoever, Phil, just so that this remains clear between the two of us, yours, /-Michael ^_^

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No, I grew up in Germany, there's just one official language spoken there.

 

Then you are very clever.

 

 

 

I learned what I learned in school.

 

Where your teachers could truthfully tell you that if you learned English, you'd be able to communicate with people from all over the world. Whereas if you already know English, they'll tell you to learn - say - German. In which case you're betting, at the age of 11, that you'll need German one day.

 

This is a very legitimate problem. If you don't speak English, it's obvious that English is very useful. If you do, what do you learn next?

 

 

 

I shaped my English and French with colloquialism and street language and mimiks from watching English and French television and movies in the original, but that happened more because of my interest in cinematography than because of the languages.

 

English-speaking people often claim that they don't need to learn languages. This is true, but it's often taken the wrong way, to imply that we don't learn languages because we expect everyone else to learn ours. To a degree that's also true - lots of people do - but the phrase "we don't need to" is also a reference to the sheer lack of any foreign language use in the UK. We're not the Netherlands, where there are whole TV channels in a foreign language. You can call it cultural imperialism if you like, but the reality for kids growing up in the UK at the moment is that they simply will not encounter foreign languages. Even on the internet, YouTube auteurs tend to work in English because it allows them access to a wider audience. You don't know anyone who speaks a foreign language. You don't see foreign languages in the media.

 

You can't learn languages in school to the point of it actually being useful. You need a reason to use it, to practice and improve. English-speaking people generally don't have that.

 

 

 

In the US, I deem Spanish skills indispensable now.

 

Unfortunately, if I took my schoolboy Castilian Spanish to the Spanish-speakers of the USA, I'd probably get beaten up.

 

 

 

You got far better marks in languages than I did in German school. What went wrong?

 

The exams were a sinecure. The marks are meaningless. It's done that way so we can pretend we're solving the problem. We aren't. I've never had any language ability at all.

 

 

 

But to vote out of the EU because there's no future for this generation to be found across La Manche, thereby screwing up the chances of the generation currently studying (and I know first hand the anger pupils and students now have for those that voted Leave, because they know the complications they will face in a Hard Brexit scenario)

 

They were never going to leave the UK anyway. They don't speak any foreign languages, and most of the EU represents poorer employment prospects than home. Their anger is utterly misdirected - and I suspect they won't lose those abilities in any case.

 

 

 

the resulting scenario ahead for the UK will be even more restrictive, voiding all the points that were put forward by the Leave campaign

 

That's OK, I didn't vote to leave because of any (or at least many) of the reasons put forward by the leave campaign.

 

 

 

As someone who worked in India and China, I can tell you resentment against Britain as a country is the one thing very much prevailing.

 

Happily, that's absolutely nothing to do with me. Also, I would point out, that absolutely is xenophobia, and it would also (somewhat inaccurately) be called racism if the reverse were true. Few if any of the people responsible for, or affected by, British colonialism are still alive. I am not responsible for the sins of my ancestors.

 

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I think your malaise in outlook is not that different to the more general malaise England (unlike Scotland or, to some extent, Northern Ireland) finds itself in. Leaving the EU could be a dramatic shake-up, a big change for a post-Union England, a helpful shock so fundamental that even my English proud-ex-army plumber talking constantly about discipline and order and the university of life and school of hard knocks but can't do his own job properly, is late, or a no show, and overcharges for the privilege, will finally get his act together and get the job done. I doubt it though.

 

Yesterday, I drove through Bletchley. Giant English flags on flag poles in derelict front gardens surrounded by faded crumbling fences. Pavements a puzzling patchwork of dozens of layers of tarmac. Broken windows in depressing terrassed houses that clearly had no one look after for years. External pipes where human waste was dripping out. A narrow-axle mobility scooter, with an old man wearing clothes that clearly had not been washed for weeks, bumbling over the pavement, looking terribly unstable and on the verge of falling over. This looked like a take from a Ken Loach movie that Loach had taken out because it was "too depressing and bleak for the audience." Frankly, I was shocked, because this wasn't the Garden City my local friends told be about without irony, it was a freaking slum. I havn't been in Yorkshire or Wales for a decade now, I fear what I would find there. I can understand why a large number of English people voted Leave, I truly do. As I can see - having lived in Scotland for a few years - why they want their independence and join the EU. Thing is: Brexit's not going to solve any of England's fundamental and substantial problems. An ultra-conservative government that was bound to gain power post-ref, with a joint-chief-of-staff and chief ideologue who wants to go back to Chamberlainian ideals... yeah, Victorian times ahead...

 

I think my replies and commentary have reached the end of being useful to you to plot a way forward, as some questions you re-iterate I think I have already answered, including a list of languages to learn if I would speak only English. Heck, I am currently learning Portugese, partly for the fun of it because I love Lusitanian culture, but also because I have a job option there, and thanks to Brexit, simply have to entertain it because it will become economically unviable and politically difficult for me to remain in Britain. It will become too expensive and too abject to live in post-Brexit England, even within the M25.

 

...the phrase "we don't need to" is also a reference to the sheer lack of any foreign language use in the UK...

 

...which is ironic, because if I receive a form from the local Council, it is in English, and I can order it in two dozen other languages, including obscure Indian languages, Bangladeshi dialects, even in French and Spanish... – although maybe the "sheer lack of any foreign language use in the UK" was the reason why the kind English working class hero who I encountered my on the train ride through the Home Counties a week after the referendum, while I was on the phone speaking French to a French client, told me in no uncertain ways that "this is England, we speak English here, take it somewhere else." Now I understand! :P

 

 

 

They were never going to leave the UK anyway. They don't speak any foreign languages, and most of the EU represents poorer employment prospects than home. Their anger is utterly misdirected - and I suspect they won't lose those abilities in any case.

 

 

Hmm... I lost three English colleagues who left since #EUref-Day for Europe, taking job offers there. They don't speak any languages other than English. Clearly some must be desperate to leave. "Traitors, we don't want them" the Daily Mail columnists would shout.

 

 

Happily, that's absolutely nothing to do with me. Also, I would point out, that absolutely is xenophobia, and it would also (somewhat inaccurately) be called racism if the reverse were true. Few if any of the people responsible for, or affected by, British colonialism are still alive. I am not responsible for the sins of my ancestors.

 

Oh, I know. I agree. And I say to this that over the past 2 years more than at any time than before in my 16 years in the UK, I get that kind of association with Nazis and Forth EU Reich all the time, simply because I have a German background – never mind my ancestors suffered at Nazi hands. But hey, when Brits do this, like a barber shop guy giving me the Nazi salute, it's just "having a laugh", "rubbin' ya a bit, we know it's not you", it's just "Good Old British Humour", "celebrating our finest moment". As the German language humourously says: Mitgefangen, mitgehangen. (caught with 'em, hung with 'em)

 

There's wonderful light now here, I think I'll shoot a S8-cartridge of 7203. B)

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I think your malaise in outlook is not that different to the more general malaise England (unlike Scotland or, to some extent, Northern Ireland) finds itself in. Leaving the EU could be a dramatic shake-up, a big change for a post-Union England, a helpful shock so fundamental that even my English proud-ex-army plumber talking constantly about discipline and order and the university of life and school of hard knocks but can't do his own job properly, is late, or a no show, and overcharges for the privilege, will finally get his act together and get the job done. I doubt it though.

 

I couldn't agree more. The UK has been in a decline for decades and without good leadership it's likely to be terminal. Good leadership is unavailable in any circumstance and I suspect that in fifty years or so the standard of living in the UK will be more or less that of a post-communist soviet client state.

 

I don't know if it could be fixed. I'm sure it won't be. The only upside is that I think many people deserve it and so long as I can maintain a reasonable standard of living for myself I have long since given up caring about most of my countrymen. They get the leaders they deserve, and as you have discovered they often deserve nothing good.

 

As to your colleagues, I too am desperate to leave, but there's nowhere that will have me.

 

P

 

PS - Hilariously, I just received an email from ltt-versand.de entitled "Ihr Auftrag [RG2016349924] wurde versendet." Even with the help of Google Translate, I have only a scant idea what it's about.

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PS - Hilariously, I just received an email from ltt-versand.de entitled "Ihr Auftrag [RG2016349924] wurde versendet." Even with the help of Google Translate, I have only a scant idea what it's about.

Google translate says "your order has been sent".

It's not very difficult to work out the link between "versendet" and "sent" and "wurde" and "were", or "wa"s, is it?

I taught myself some Italian at 15, German at 32, Spanish at 42 and various other bits in between- Hungarian, Czech, Latvian, Turkish, Greek, enough Mandarin to get a drink or a cheap taxi fare, scandalously little Dutch but they don't expect it. School did a decent job of French. Latin comes in handy for sightseeing. Quite bad German, but I get by there.

 

Sorry to have to say so but the idea of using a referendum as a protest vote against "I dunno, waddya got?" is daft. You obviously can fool 48% of the people- once.

Edited by Mark Dunn
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