Airborne_Again wrote:
The attitude does.
Well you are a tad sensitive then. I happen to live in a country which has seen two vital referendums of late. Frankly the Brexitt vote is lunacy, but I actually do not really care. It has happened……..maybe 
We did not vote for it.
The Scottish Independence vote however was an entirely different kettle of haddock. We had an opportunity, we had a vision, we had a chance, (Marlon Brando, On The Waterfront (contender)), and the term SHEEPLE was used without attitude Airborne. It was used in fact. A Westminster Government lied, and lied, and lied, and wrote Vows, as they always have, which contained even greater lies. And guess what, 52% of a nation..sic, bought it, swallowed it, and rammed it down the Yes voters throats. Nice to see where we are now.
Please do not comment on my attitude, because Airborne, LUKE 23.34, ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.’
I am not even sure what is up with the attitude.
It is in the nature of most people to blindly follow strong leadership, and has been for as long as any kind of history has been recorded. From ancient Egypt and China to modern Russia, USA and Syria, a powerful leadership or leadership class has been able to persuade millions of others to do anything – to kill, torture, die or be tortured – just so that they can remain in power.
Sheeple appear to be a necessary part of society.
The only hope is to inform and educate them better, so that they have enough information and capacity to shape the Common Good.
BeechBaby says that the sheeple of Scotland fell for misinformation from the English government, I say that sheeple of England and Wales fell for misinformation distributed by a small elite of Eurosceptics. The Germans got it pretty badly wrong in 1933. Some might even say that the US voters of 2016 were not as well equipped to choose as they might have been. The list goes on….and it’s certainly not just a British issue, it happens wherever there are people.
To the extent that the press ran an agenda, both sides were running an agenda. The Remain side came up with all kinds of scare tactics, e.g. the govt and the tax rises if the vote went to Leave, but those who wished to leave saw through the lies.
The one difference between the two sides is that the Remain side always dominated the social media, at the time and today, so that anyone expressing a “Leave” view gets beaten up. The EU could not have bought a better PR campaign, but they got it for free (well, without direct PR payments). It’s a very interesting phenomenon which I am sure will be studied for decades to come. It has generated a whole new class of rather distastesful virtue signalling… and many hope that today’s social media will be gone and forgotten long before “decades to come”.
Additionally, obviously, those currently profiting from Remain are much more numerous than those currently profiting from Leave (whose numbers obviously stood at zero pre-referendum) and since the EU has “bought” huge sections of the vote in every member country (EU funding of projects is just one of countless examples; most of academia and research runs off EU-distributed money) it is not surprising that the “educated classes” are mostly for Remain!
I am happy to write that my export sales went up several times within days of the referendum, but few others would say it openly.
Most people do follow charismatic leaders; that’s not a bad thing if it happens in a democracy.
Timothy wrote:
The only hope is to inform and educate them better, so that they have enough information and capacity to shape the Common Good.
100% Timothy. But as Peter states, most now get their information, fake news or true news, from a social media site. Remember WMD? Remember the slides shown on the BBC of the tunnels and underground command centres in the Afghan mountains all linked, all harbouring terrorists, switch nicely to the USAF B52 carpet bombing bloody mountains in order to destroy the network? Remember the dossier? Switch now to paid actors playing out scenes of destruction in Aleppo, switch to Baghdad where miraculously the same bloke in a different headdress is rousing the blood soaked kids? All lies, Trump calls it fake news, and it is, all of it. The Libs don’t like it because it begins to untangle the web of lies, where are our causes if it is all nonsense? What do we believe in?
What Airborne did not realise is that my Mother in Law is Swedish, lives in Gothenburg, I was in Malmo a couple of months ago, brother in law lives for the past 30 years in Oslo. Their utopia is on the verge of anarchy, collapse, all due to going to far in one liberal direction. Classic sheeple mentality. That is why, very rightly or wrongly, I get het up about the Scottish situation because we did have an opportunity to build from the base up. It was not utopia driven, it may well have been a disaster, but it was a chance. It was a chance to re-educate, inform and hopefully take the best from others to build. Lies tore it down, hence the sheeple connotation, but soon another chance will present itself and it remains to be seen if the lies made any difference to peoples opinion. I have a nightmare scenario that in the end the sheeple mentality will endure, and that lies now make the norm.
I am happy to write that my export sales went up several times within days of the referendum, but few others would say it openly.
Well, yes, a currency collapse tends to have that effect.
DavidJ wrote:
Well, yes, a currency collapse tends to have that effect
That is very dependant on the currency one is using for foreign sales and what currency in which the goods are priced!
An exchange rate adjustment which favours domestic businesses that actually make something useful is not a “currency collapse”…
FWIW, I have been in business since 1978 and have seen a range from £1=$1.06 to £1=$2.50.
Neither the UK nor its currency are nowhere even remotely near collapse, I am happy to say, and if I believed otherwise I would put my money where my mouth is and go and live elsewhere, in some nonexistent utopia.
I’ve just got back from another Greek holiday and it never ceases to amaze me how Brussels could have believed that pouring € billions in there (most of which went back to N European contractors anyway ) was going to change anything there. Driving on vast new motorways, with nobody on them because of the tolls…
BeechBaby wrote:
Well you are a tad sensitive then. I happen to live in a country which has seen two vital referendums of late. Frankly the Brexitt vote is lunacy, but I actually do not really care. It has happened……..maybe We did not vote for it.The Scottish Independence vote however was an entirely different kettle of haddock. […] A Westminster Government lied, and lied, and lied, and wrote Vows, as they always have, which contained even greater lies. .
Yes, I know about this and actually I agree with you on both counts.
Please do not comment on my attitude, because Airborne, LUKE 23.34, ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.’
The difference in opinion, I think, is that I actually assume that people DO know what they are doing when they vote. So I don’t put myself on high horses but rather hold them responsible for their actions.
In Sweden, we have a xenophobic extreme right-wing party — the so-called “Sweden Democrats” — who not only have strong historical connections with nazis but where top party members swing iron pipes and openly talk about things like how they are going to eliminate the freedom of the press “when” they get into power. They also have a higher number of convicted criminals among MPs and municipal council members than all other parties together. They talk about safeguarding the economic security of (ethnically Swedish..) workers and pensioners, yet vote in the opposite in parliament, having been bought by big business. All this is well known and still the party has a 15-20% support. I don’t put that down to their supporters being mislead — I think they understand perfectly well and approve.
Ok, instead of ‘collapse’ let’s say ‘massive negative swing’.
The fact remains, this is the direct reason your exports suddenly went up, not because of anything else!
Sure; that is how life and economics go…
BTW “massive” is a dramatic overstatement against a historical “a range from £1=$1.06 to £1=$2.50”.
Oh I nearly forgot, the stock market rose by some 20% immediately. Not exactly a sign of UK going bankrupt – despite the wishes of many, even many today.
Most of the southern Eurozone would have got huge economic benefits from a slight devaluation, but they don’t have that option. Look at what happened to Greece, and now Italy…
In the interest of disclosure, I am invested roughly 1/3 in the UK, 1/3 in Europe non-UK, and 1/3 in the USA.
