BF2S Forums Where are all the whiny peaceful "Enlightened" European now?

When the city of London dies, and it likely will, thats 20-30% of the economy gone. Good luck funding anything then.

If they don't have jobs then yes, they'll stop paying taxes.

And only 32 million out of 70 million actually work.
Of that I'd guess fewer than half are net tax contributors, a quarter barely contribute anything, that leaves 8 million people in the UK paying any significant level of tax - and the country is barely afloat as it it.

So really 8 million people are working to keep the other 62 million going. Not too hard to see how that can go wrong.

Crimp the city and credit fast becomes deficit.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2019-10-01 18:16:00)

I'll dig up the figures but I bet of the top 40% many are barely contributing.

Few people are retiring on final salary schemes though these days, their pension just won't deliver what they expected and a lot of people have been sold really shitty pensions.

9% Over ten years, call it ten years of recession, and the last ten years haven't exactly been stellar.

If a 9% contraction were spread across the rest of the country, and I reckon it easily could be, there would be trouble.

It would be very useful for Putin to have the EU break up, and for one of two nuclear powers separated off - so much for an EU defence force.
Putin has his fingers in many pies and I'd be very surprised if he weren't somewhere in Brexit.

and all this economic self-harm for a lie wrapped within a lie, no?

only a tiny hardline fraction ever wanted a no-deal brexit before 2015 -- real fringe group stuff.

boris johnson was in support of the single market and was pro-european, saying as much to meetings with business and industry.
rees-mogg wanted a second confirmatory referendum once a deal had been negotiated.
michael gove said time and time again that negotiations and deals would be made after the result, as a matter of course.

here are excerpts from an april 2016 speech by gove on behalf of the leave campaign.






talk about project fear – project fantasy or project mendacity, more like.

nigel farage, for his part and in the cause of agitating, said on record that a marginal result such as '51:49' would have to go to a second referendum, he wouldn't lie down and accept it.

now we're being told that we must just GET ON WITH IT, etc.

it's all a sick joke perpetrated by fools, signifying nothing.

Larssen wrote:

So the new backstop proposal has been published.

Unlikely the Irish government will approve it.
Very unlikely parliament will approve it.

Will Boris torpedo into no deal on the 31st? Are we banking on the law which tells him to seek an extension?

Ironically if no deal does happen a hard border will have to be made between NI and Ireland and talks have to start over again after the 31st. This is such a headache.

hilary benn: a thread.
https://twitter.com/hilarybennmp/status … 63072?s=21

i can’t.

if a man by 50 gets the face he deserves, then a stupid and bankrupt nation gets the stupid and obvious art it deserves. banksy’s ‘commentary’ is on the level of a pisswad. it’s art for dumbos who like to be clapped heavily on the back every time they look at something with a hint of meaning for ‘getting it’. well done!

I never cared for his graffiti. Graffiti is vandalism in most cases.

Larssen wrote:

I do like his aesthetic tho

And he's just really good at marketing his art in the digital age.

and jeff koons is good at networking and getting his art ‘out there’. doesn’t mean it’s anything other than smug trash for millionaires to collect and boast about.

that's a really bad and lazy generalisation about modern art. it reads like you literally took an art history 101 class as an elective to make up a few credits.

not all modern art is extreme minimalism or abstract expressionism. these were relatively tiny movements, but of course because they happened in new york city you take it as a global characterisation of all art after 1945 (bizarre periodisation for an art historian tbh; the art of 1930 is clearly in a continuum with late '40s work in many ways).

but yes, of course, art has always been about material objects in very real social circles and markets, and not some ethereal visitation. i don't think banksy is really getting that deep about it, into the aesthetics of art and notions like 'value', which a lot of art professors will spend a lot of effort untangling. it's more just the fact that his works are fucking dumb, one-note, surface level wise cracks.

banksy isn't an artist, he's a wit. what he does is about on a level with a political cartoonist or a caricaturist. you see the work and get it in 5 seconds, it makes you chuckle, and you move on. it doesn't express a worldview, it doesn't present you with beauty or revelation, it doesn't give you occasion to pause and ponder; it doesn't challenge you in any way, which is pretty fundamental to the 'encounter' with art. he makes witty cartoon stencils. great. i don't know why everyone holds him up to be some sage representative who has one up on the stuffy 'art world' or some mouthpiece of the zeitgeist. anyone can make 'lol capitalism' or 'lol politicians are dumb' jokes.

Last edited by uziq (2019-10-04 08:27:08)

uziq wrote:

if a man by 50 gets the face he deserves, then a stupid and bankrupt nation gets the stupid and obvious art it deserves. banksy’s ‘commentary’ is on the level of a pisswad. it’s art for dumbos who like to be clapped heavily on the back every time they look at something with a hint of meaning for ‘getting it’. well done!

Oh wow, I just noticed, all the MPs are chimpanzees!

Its pop-art commentary, I like his graffiti, its not as if he's claiming to be the next Leonardo Di Caprio.

Capitalism gives us feudalism, I think we should go back to it.