Brexit Consequences

[Aitch]

We had a fancy kitchenaid toaster (dont ask me, gf wanted it), which developed some unfortunate will of its own and refused to toast evenly, go "bing" when it's finished (told you its fancy) and just generally looked at me funny. It was barely 6 months old.

So we send it back to the manufacturer for repair (and at that price, a damn apology as well), to be fair they repaired it quickly, mailed it back and now it's stuck in a lorry park in Belgium, until the paperwork is clear, which we were told may take till March.


Meanwhile, no toast for me

My previous toaster (£10 job from Argos) actually exploded - big red flash, loud bang, stopped working.

Fortunately it had just finished toasting the bread that was in it, so I coulld have breakfast before sloping down to where ever I got my new one...

[warumich]

Yikes! Prefer stuck in Belgium then

[headshot]

Meanwhile, no toast for me

Got a grill, or an open fire?

So then gf and man from kitchenaid had a brief bonding moment about how stupid British people are

Point of order: 27% of British people.

[shpalman]

Meanwhile, no toast for me

Got a grill, or an open fire?

So then gf and man from kitchenaid had a brief bonding moment about how stupid British people are

Point of order: 27% of British people.

You don't get to assume that those who didn't turn out were all less stupid than that.

[headshot]

Meanwhile, no toast for me

Got a grill, or an open fire?

So then gf and man from kitchenaid had a brief bonding moment about how stupid British people are

Point of order: 27% of British people.

You don't get to assume that those who didn't turn out were all less stupid than that.

It’s all I have. Don’t take it away from me.

[warumich]

Meanwhile, no toast for me

Got a grill, or an open fire?

So then gf and man from kitchenaid had a brief bonding moment about how stupid British people are

Point of order: 27% of British people.

Yea, point taken, unfortunately that's the narrative that has now ossified on the continent, particularly since the Boris landslide last year has demonstrated that this wasn't an isolated moment of collective madness. You should see some of the comments on German / French / Polish twitter

It'll take a long while before the damage is repaired. Powerful thing, a narrative.

[Trinucleus]

I doubt I've eaten 19 kg of seafood in my entire life. Can't abide it.

I could probably get through 19kg a week if I put my mind to it #scallops #filetsdeperche #bacalhau

We have scallop week where all the restaurants feature them. The good chippy does battered scallops and chips and they are utterly sublime.

As a young man I ordered a scallop in a chip shop, which turned out to be a battered slice of potato

[plodder]

Ah yeah, that’s a regional thing.

[jdc]

Back on topic, this ‘we can just eat spider crabs and megrim’ is exactly like all the other ‘we can just’s, from ‘grow our own vegetables’ through ‘revive our own car makers’ to ‘have an empire again’. If people wanted any of them they would already have been happening, so if they weren’t happening then they’re not going to start happening without some sort of adjustment, which is going to involve either the price of what used to happen going up, or some sort of legislative intervention or coercion to stop people doing what they previously chose to do. In other words, someone is not going to like it.

Yeah, if my attack ads don't work, the government are going to have to find another way to put people off buying Eurofish. There'll need to be tariffs on Pink Stinkfish and Shitflake or something.

[JQH]

Meanwhile, no toast for me

Got a grill, or an open fire?

So then gf and man from kitchenaid had a brief bonding moment about how stupid British people are

Point of order: 27% of British people.

Yea, point taken, unfortunately that's the narrative that has now ossified on the continent, particularly since the Boris landslide last year has demonstrated that this wasn't an isolated moment of collective madness. You should see some of the comments on German / French / Polish twitter

It'll take a long while before the damage is repaired. Powerful thing, a narrative.

I don't think the mainland Twitterers are entirely wrong. As Schpalman points out above, the people who couldn't be arsed voting in the referendum contributed to Leave's victory. Annd again, though FPTP allowed Johnson a huge majority on 45% of the votes cast, the non-voters take the stupidity factor over 50%

[Herainestold]

Back on topic, this ‘we can just eat spider crabs and megrim’ is exactly like all the other ‘we can just’s, from ‘grow our own vegetables’ through ‘revive our own car makers’ to ‘have an empire again’. If people wanted any of them they would already have been happening, so if they weren’t happening then they’re not going to start happening without some sort of adjustment, which is going to involve either the price of what used to happen going up, or some sort of legislative intervention or coercion to stop people doing what they previously chose to do. In other words, someone is not going to like it.

Yeah, if my attack ads don't work, the government are going to have to find another way to put people off buying Eurofish. There'll need to be tariffs on Pink Stinkfish and Shitflake or something.

We can do that now that we are out of the EU. Should we do it? I don't know.

[shpalman]

The idea that only 27% of British people voted for Brexit, well it's still more than voted Remain.

It was something like 37% vs. 35% of those eligible to vote.

The British people really are that stupid. They've been voting further and further right. We all like the idea of PR but UKIP would have won loads of seats.

[plodder]

You’re forgetting who was campaigning for remain. The Cameron Corbyn dream team.

[shpalman]

Well, people voted for both of those two, either of leaders of their parties or in Cameron's case, prime minister also.

[Blackcountryboy]

Does anyone know whether we have concluded a fishing agreement with Norway?
We fished in Norwegian waters, prior to end 2020, under the agreement between Norway and the EU. The last I saw was in The Times on 17 January 2021, an article about a trawler, which caught 8% to 12% of the fish sold in British fish and chip shops is in port because no agreement has yet been concluded.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ther ... -mxsmzlxxw
Bit of background here:
https://www.kluge.no/fagforum/brexit-an ... 0UK%20EEZs

[plodder]

Well, people voted for both of those two, either of leaders of their parties or in Cameron's case, prime minister also.

Supports the Britain is thick argument rather than Britain is increasingly right wing.

[Millennie Al]

We all like the idea of PR but UKIP would have won loads of seats.

PR covers many systems. With a party list system, UKIP would indeed have done quite well, but a party list system is terrible. With STV and multi-member constituencies, they may well have not got many seats (this system removes the problem of wasted votes, so people vote more sincerely). But in any case, democracy means you represent the people fairly. If you try to bias the result to avoid results you don't like, you end up making things worse - such as in the UK where a minority of votes cast routinely results in a group of people with a majority in the Commons.

[Martin Y]

The idea that only 27% of British people voted for Brexit, well it's still more than voted Remain.

It was something like 37% vs. 35% of those eligible to vote.

The British people really are that stupid. They've been voting further and further right. We all like the idea of PR but UKIP would have won loads of seats.

I don't want to try to gainsay the idea that people are remarkably stupid and gullible but I think it's worth noting the asymmetry of the campaign.

On one side there were people who hated the EU for their various reasons, and they had gathered an orc army of Mail and Express readers raised on a decades-long drip of poisonous anti-EU propaganda, while on the other hand there were a tiny number of people who really loved and cared about the EU project and a great mass of others who honestly didn't really give a sh.t about it but could perhaps see that breaking away from an enormous, rich trading bloc was probably stupid. The Remain problem was trying to engage people who didn't have any gut feeling of loyalty to being "Europeans" and likely were turned off by "ever closer union" bluster to at least summon enough enthusiasm to vote against the wreckers. In the end it was a perfect storm of stupid, topped off by fears of Syrian refugees, Polish plumbers and 75 million Turks all turning out to be ISIS coming to murder us in our beds.

[dyqik]

You’re forgetting who was campaigning for remain. The Cameron Corbyn dream team.

[Citation needed] that Corbyn was campaigning for Remain.

/s

[Martin Y]

You’re forgetting who was campaigning for remain. The Cameron Corbyn dream team.

[Citation needed] that Corbyn was campaigning for Remain.

/s

The Invisible Man was one element of the perfect storm.

[Herainestold]

I don't want to try to gainsay the idea that people are remarkably stupid and gullible but I think it's worth noting the asymmetry of the campaign.

On one side there were people who hated the EU for their various reasons, and they had gathered an orc army of Mail and Express readers raised on a decades-long drip of poisonous anti-EU propaganda, while on the other hand there were a tiny number of people who really loved and cared about the EU project and a great mass of others who honestly didn't really give a sh.t about it but could perhaps see that breaking away from an enormous, rich trading bloc was probably stupid. The Remain problem was trying to engage people who didn't have any gut feeling of loyalty to being "Europeans" and likely were turned off by "ever closer union" bluster to at least summon enough enthusiasm to vote against the wreckers. In the end it was a perfect storm of stupid, topped off by fears of Syrian refugees, Polish plumbers and 75 million Turks all turning out to be ISIS coming to murder us in our beds.

This is why I am a democracy skeptic.

[Martin Y]

I don't want to try to gainsay the idea that people are remarkably stupid and gullible but I think it's worth noting the asymmetry of the campaign.

On one side there were people who hated the EU for their various reasons, and they had gathered an orc army of Mail and Express readers raised on a decades-long drip of poisonous anti-EU propaganda, while on the other hand there were a tiny number of people who really loved and cared about the EU project and a great mass of others who honestly didn't really give a sh.t about it but could perhaps see that breaking away from an enormous, rich trading bloc was probably stupid. The Remain problem was trying to engage people who didn't have any gut feeling of loyalty to being "Europeans" and likely were turned off by "ever closer union" bluster to at least summon enough enthusiasm to vote against the wreckers. In the end it was a perfect storm of stupid, topped off by fears of Syrian refugees, Polish plumbers and 75 million Turks all turning out to be ISIS coming to murder us in our beds.

This is why I am a democracy skeptic.

Someone once claimed there's never been a famine in a functioning democracy. Contentious, but it at least makes you appreciate that stupid is relative.

[Little waster]

Someone once claimed there's never been a famine in a functioning democracy. Contentious, but it at least makes you appreciate that stupid is relative.

Give Brexit a few more weeks ...



Though perhaps "functioning" is the key here.

[Martin Y]

Someone once claimed there's never been a famine in a functioning democracy. Contentious, but it at least makes you appreciate that stupid is relative.

Give Brexit a few more weeks ...



Though perhaps "functioning" is the key here.

"Functioning" is the "no true Scotsman" of famines. If you see any sign that our government isn't functioning then it's time to panic.

Oh. f.ck.

[Rich Scopie]

We had a fancy kitchenaid toaster (dont ask me, gf wanted it), which developed some unfortunate will of its own and refused to toast evenly, go "bing" when it's finished (told you its fancy) and just generally looked at me funny. It was barely 6 months old.

So we send it back to the manufacturer for repair (and at that price, a damn apology as well), to be fair they repaired it quickly, mailed it back and now it's stuck in a lorry park in Belgium, until the paperwork is clear, which we were told may take till March.


Meanwhile, no toast for me

My previous toaster (£10 job from Argos) actually exploded - big red flash, loud bang, stopped working.

Fortunately it had just finished toasting the bread that was in it, so I could have breakfast before sloping down to where ever I got my new one...

To go with my George Foreman Grill, I bought a Frank Bruno Toaster. Useless. Two rounds and it was f.cked.