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

uziq wrote:

or to mention the fact that the test-and-trace system, a huge debacle with a bloated budget nearing £40 billion, ... and meanwhile have to accept years of tax increases to the tune of a …£32 billion funding shortfall?

LMAO J01n Th3 D0t5 People

uziq wrote:

prepare to see france manoeuvre to become the eminent power in europe now that merkel is stepping down.

They can prepare all they want but that's very unlikely at this point.

There could actually be a revolution.

Maybe before, I think, it would certainly happen after.

Actually the average Brit is probably too lazy and unhealthy to mount a revolution.

the gammon brexiteers and small-to-medium-sized business owners who shot themselves in the foot over brexit deserve all the mockery they can get.

but actually, the shortage in truck drivers is due to several large-scale, systemic issues that go way beyond brexit. it's slightly too neat and convenient to blame it on 'lol the brits wanted to leave the single market and free movement of labour, and this is the result'.

for one thing, there is a major shortage of truck drivers in europe itself at the moment. europe has a much better connected logistics network, for obvious reasons, and the career path for truck drivers there is actually better appointed. yes, there's the obvious income gradient difference between romania and the UK, etc, which attracts their driver to our beautiful little green isle, but in the main, belgian and german and polish truck drivers aren't lining up to work in the UK. apparently they're not going to work in europe, either.

truck driving has been one of those industries whose profit margins have been whittled away by the cost-cutting efforts of the giant multinationals. UK haulage companies cannot offer a good or competitive rate. drivers can work, via agencies, for giant international firms and make £50-60k. that's great for the limited number who get those jobs, but it makes the jobs driving regular haulage (or petrol) for the UK's normal network look a whole lot less appealing.

apparently lots of truck drivers were furloughed or temporarily put-off during the pandemic and just decided to ... not go back. life on their arse seemed better than the job itself. that says a lot about the working conditions and/or pay, methinks. and good for them. one small upshot of this shite pandemic has been workers realizing that they're sick to death of wasting their lives on shitty jobs with shitty reward.

uziq wrote:

one small upshot of this shite pandemic has been workers realizing that they're sick to death of wasting their lives on shitty jobs with shitty reward.

People are always surprised to discover their company wouldn't blink if they dropped dead in the middle of the office or shop floor.
Its an unpleasant realisation, also the possibility that people could be dead in two weeks does focus people's minds.

The industrial and farming mechanisation dividends still haven't worked through the system either, a lot of people probably shouldn't work.

Retire with what exactly? How many old people are sitting on a giant nest egg? Choose between: rent, food, medicine. Same boat as younger people, except for the creakier joints.

You are 0-1 with calling the motives of European terrorist this week. Might want to hold off on blaming the right today.

An "us vs. them" state of mind is a useful tool for politicians (esp. authoritarian/-leaning) to exploit, but is a mental poison much talked about. Without it, I don't think otherwise ordinary people would have been recently stalking the halls, zip ties in hand, looking for politicians to abduct.

I see Trumpism and the Brexit stuff packed into the same nutshell a lot.

longish pdf: https://issforum.org/ISSF/PDF/PS2021-55.pdf

The two electoral shocks of 2016 – the United Kingdom’s vote to leave the European Union (‘Brexit’) and Donald Trump’s election as President of the United States – left observers aghast or elated. For those who found themselves in the former category, the outcome of the Brexit referendum represented a crisis that dwarfed any other challenge the European Union had faced in recent years, while Trump’s victory was seen as a “profound shock to the west, one that calls into question the future of its democratic model and the liberal international order.”1 For the latter group, Brexit was an enormous victory over an “arrogant, out-of-touch political class.”2 Similar feelings could be found across the Atlantic, as Fox News claimed that the result of the 2016 presidential election was a “national rejection of both the traditional media and the Hollywood elite.”3 The one shared sentiment among the majority of observers was surprise. Before polls closed on 23 June 2016, even Nigel Farage, former leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party and a key figure in the campaign to vote Leave, said he thought Remain would win the EU Referendum. 4 Only a small minority had the prescience to know that the conditions for both outcomes had been building for some time. Jonathan Haslam was among the few who thought that Trump’s election was “likely” due to “burgeoning blue-collar resentment and dissentient opinion among longstanding Democrats.”5

uziq wrote:

domestic terrorism incidents in the U.K. are extremely rare. up until very recently, with brexit, we didn’t have the equivalent of a timothy mcveigh faction. terror attacks have mostly been islamist.

Most terror attacks in the UK have been Irish christians.

Dilbert_X wrote:

uziq wrote:

domestic terrorism incidents in the U.K. are extremely rare. up until very recently, with brexit, we didn’t have the equivalent of a timothy mcveigh faction. terror attacks have mostly been islamist.

Most terror attacks in the UK have been Irish christians.

i'm talking post-9/11. the good friday agreement might be in jeopardy because of brexit but i don't think we need to involve the IRA in this discussion. i have mentioned that at length in other macbeth-sponsored discussions of 'islam is the only violent religion' and yadda yadda.

and yes, i don't see any sense or motive in murdering sir david amess as part of islamist terrorism. it seems almost random to me – as i said.

'0-2' haha. i make one flippant remark about a neo-folk black metal-style murder spree and you twit about me being a 'fake academic'.

tell me again  how leprosy, a contact-based disease, is dangerous within 1.5 metres!

Last edited by uziq (2021-10-17 01:27:57)

https://lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n22/nea … l-narcotic

interesting write-up on the british empire and decolonization in this fortnight's LRB.

eeeeerm.

britain engaged in actual mass slavery.

even in relatively recent history, through malice or, very charitably, negligence, we presided over a famine that killed 2.3–3 million bengalis in 1943 – the only famine in the area in its modern history that wasn't caused by a major drought. churchill dithered and delayed for over a year on the developing situation and didn't pay it any heed. if israel effectively ignored a famine in its occupied territories, you'd have a point.

israel is bad, no question. i have nothing good to say about it. but you abuse history when you claim israel is far worse than the british empire.

Last edited by uziq (2021-11-13 17:19:07)