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Chips wrote:... Or are you making assumptions founded on... what you think is reasonable assumptions?...

I believe it is a reasonable assumption. Note that I frequently mention "generations." That's admittedly a long time, but I also believe this is likely to be felt in as short a time as "decades."

For you, that won't mean very much in terms of personally experienced changes, though you may be around long enough to witness it happening, should this sort of isolationist practice continue, which I feel it will. (I think there will be a feedback mechanism in place that continues, unless fought against, to push the divide even further.)

Generations. Decades. I don't mean "next week."

Chips wrote:As for languages, it is basically most EU countries speak English to a high level (exceptions are France, which nearly all I have met do speak but refuse to, and Italy, where they really don't! ).

I should just correct one point here. Many French people will be willing, if they are able, to speak English to someone visiting their country if the visitor makes a decent effort to try and speak French first. It's hardly an unreasonable attitude; indeed it's arguably far more arrogant to just assume you can go to someone else's country and expect them to speak to you in your own language, as English-speakers tend to.

Another point to make is that it's not just about English. In some European countries, speaking 3 or more languages to at least a functional level is quite normal and not speaking a foreign language would be considered a bit of a failing, whereas in the UK even admitting to having tourist-level ability in another language can result in raised eyebrows. The expectation regarding other languages is simply different.

The Tory car-crash continues it seems: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-42346192

gosh, some of these Brexit people are absolutely crazy:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... -rebellion

BugMeister wrote:gosh, some of these Brexit people are absolutely crazy:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... -rebellion

It exists on both sides

https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics ... esignation

So it's fair to say some people are just crazy, or fanatics.

Sue Perkins got death threats on Twitter when it was rumoured--just rumoured, mind, there was no official confirmation--that she was being lined up to present Top Gear after Jeremy Clarkson was sacked. People will wish death on other people for the most trivial of reasons.

Wouldn't surprise me if Nigel is retiring in a nice dacha at the Black Sea

Cheers Euclid

BugMeister wrote: PS: I see Davies has resigned after swanning around, wining and dining, doing nothing for the last couple of years
- in case it is made to look as though he ever had any sort of responsibility for Brexit, whatsoever..
- he's taken the David Cameron solution of "wandering off, whistling to himself"
- the old "nothing to do with me, guv - the people have spoken" routine..

This was posted in the wrong thread as it has nothing to do with Trump. Seeing as I wanted to follow up on it I quoted you here.

It's not just Davies that has resigned, BoJo has also resigned from his post as Foreign Secretary. Brexit is a total shambles and we are going to be paying for it for years to come. While May is a week PM who does not have a clue what she is doing.

felter wrote:BoJo has also resigned from his post as Foreign Secretary.

And nothing of value was lost. As for Brexit being a shambles, that's kind of what happens when you call a referendum so confident of getting one result that you don't make any sort of plans for what happens if you get the other.

sorry, felt..

you're right - it's just that Russia/Cambridge Analytica/Breitbart thing..
the whole damned mess seems just too well orchestrated..

- I'm disgusted that a matter of such Constitutional gravity was put up for referendum, like it was the prize at a country fair..

- in fact, "disgusted of Devon" ought to be my bye-line..

Next up Liam Fox please, contemptible little numbnut that he is.

What a ****show, Lord Buckethead had the right of it

My own predilections towards remain are well documented but I still can't understand how even the most ardent Brexiteer could look that this absolute calamity and think "Yep, this is what I wanted, full steam ahead to freedom!!"

Latest is rumours from Westminster is that the requisite amount of letters has gone into 1922 committee (due to meet tonight, what a coincidence!) to trigger a Tory leadership vote.
So May might be gone by the morning.

RegisterMe wrote:Next up Liam Fox please, contemptible little numbnut that he is.

Please! Refer to him by his proper title, it's "Disgraced former minister Liam Fox"
No Mr Fox, some of us haven't forgotten about the time you used your position as defence secretary to broker arms deals on behalf of your best friend.

It's just nice to know that Conservative MPs of all stripes have one thing in common--not one of them gives a withered crap for the country they supposedly represent, and would rather see the whole place burn than allow anything remotely differing from their personal agenda to get anywhere. It was this attitude that started the whole thing, when David Cameron thought he'd try and shut up the Euro-sceptics in his party by calling the referendum without considering for a nanosecond the potential consequences for the country.

felter wrote:While May is a week PM ...

I like the misspelling here - it seems to speak a deeper truth (At least, we can hope can't we).

Rug

So, with only months to go to a fixed deadline and an increasingly belligerent negotiation party on the other side, we willingly decide to substitute all the key players in the home team and start over again down some as yet unknown future strategy. The present incumbents may not be the best at what they do, but they are what we have just now. Yes, I can see this upheaval working ever so well for us. [/irony]

Whatever happened to the power of the PM not to accept resignations of convenience but to insist that minions see their duties through to at least some form of conclusion or holding point before falling on their swords and saying 'I told you so' - hopefully then at a time when it becomes far less damaging or relevant to the nation?

Alan Phipps wrote: Whatever happened to the power of the PM not to accept resignations of convenience but to insist that minions see their duties through to at least some form of conclusion or holding point before falling on their swords and saying 'I told you so' - hopefully then at a time when it becomes far less damaging or relevant to the nation?

Even assuming such a power ever existed, which I'm not sure it did, you'd still be faced with two critical issues:

1) Only a strong PM could get away with doing something like this. Theresa May is not that PM.

2) You can't force someone to do a job they don't want to do, and you certainly can't force them to do a *good* job. Keeping these guys in post would be far riskier than swapping them out for someone else.

Well one good thing so far - at least all my medic friends will be celebrating.

pjknibbs wrote:

As for Brexit being a shambles, that's kind of what happens when you call a referendum so confident of getting one result that you don't make any sort of plans for what happens if you get the other.

Well said! Chaos like that was to be expected from a life-changing referendum result 51.89:48.11 (which is just 1.0786).

Cheers Euclid

..and they've exploited that division ever since..

Well it looks like May will live to fight another day.
TBH I think the only reason for her continued survival is the inability / unwillingness of the Tory Brexiteers to get the act together.
They are incredibly quick to shoot down any proposed plan as too soft but have not once proposed an alternative, workable or otherwise. . . . NOTHING just [crickets]

This is because they are just playing politics. They want to be seen as the champions of democracy courageously upholding the "will of the people" whilst avoiding any and all responsibility for what said people actually bloody voted for . . . . because they know full well whoever is eventually left holding the Brexit hot potato is going to be monumentally screwed.
They're banking on that being May and planning to make what they can of the resulting disaster which of course they will characterise as all her fault.

RegisterMe wrote:Well one good thing so far - at least all my medic friends will be celebrating.

They might want to hold their celebrations, I hear the new chap has been heavily involved with various think tanks whose objective were to examine how to facilitate the privatisation of the NHS.