Comments

  • Brexit
    Labour has some problems, but it isn't a catastrophe. It could win. Then there'd be a second referendum next year (Labour's deal or remain). If it's Remain, we revoke Article 50 and... like in Dallas, it was all a bad dream...
  • Brexit
    very few voters on either side of the argument have changed their minds about whether the UK should leave the EU. The country appears to be just as divided as it was three years ago.

    On average, during the last month, polls that ask people how they would vote in another referendum suggest that 88% of those who backed Remain would do so again. Among those who voted Leave, 86% have not changed their minds.

    These figures have changed very little during the last two years.

    True, most polls suggest - and have done so for some time - that the balance of opinion might be tilted narrowly in favour of remaining a member of the EU. On average, this is by 53% to 47%.

    However, this lead for Remain rests primarily on the views expressed by those who did not vote three years ago - and perhaps might not do so again.

    In truth, nobody can be sure what would happen if there were to be another referendum.

    BBC News
  • Brexit
    Tory voters won't switch to Labour. Whatever the current state of Labour, why would they?

    Because more voters identify with their vote to Leave or Remain than with a political party — and because no single party captures all of the Leave or Remain vote — they are likely to vote “tactically,” and look for the party that stands the best chance of winning in their area.

    Politico
  • Brexit
    Why do you describe Labour as a catastrophe?
  • Brexit
    Yes, the Tories have a deal in hand - but Labour’s offering a second referendum. If voters go for ref2, the nation, now veering to Remain, might be reunited (if ref1 Leave voters' concerns can be allayed). And with Labour, stay or go, we avoid Trump's corporate chlorinated chicken.
  • Brexit
    Yes, he got a kicking from most of the press. The ("on balance") pro-EU Guardian tried to be positive, saying the deal “achieves things that can make a difference.” Not exactly entbusiastic, though.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/19/the-guardian-view-on-the-eu-summit-last-tangle-in-brussels

    https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2016/feb/20/david-camerons-eu-deal-what-the-national-newspapers-said
  • Brexit
    The UK has no power to influence the EU to change, and its 4 freedoms are sacrosanct. — Tim3003

    Regarding the "sacrosant" four freedoms, if the free movement of people (FMP) (AKA the unrestricted mobility of cheap labour) is considered essential to the EU's single market, then that market's in serious need of reform.

    As seen in Lode Desmet's brilliant two-part fly-on-the-wall TV documentary, "Brexit: Behind Closed Doors" (Storyville, BBC Four, May 2019), liberal MEP Guy Verhofstadt, Brexit coordinator for the European Parliament, federalist and, apparently, self-appointed High Priest of the Four Freedoms, pompously and melodramatically - if unconvingly - lectured a 2018 UK parliamentary committee on the supposed sanctity of FMP. Verhofstadt (who, unlike EU senior Brexit panjandrums Tusk, Juncker and Barnier, is at least elected) duly preached the 4F credo to the committee:

    You cannot pick and choose one element out of this concept and say, 'We like everything, services, goods, capital, but not people. We don’t like people. They cannot come. Our goods can go out, our capital can go out, services can go out, but not people'. That is not the single market. Everybody on the continent understands that when you’re talking about the single market, it can not only be the freedom of movement of goods or services or capital, but that it also needs to be the freedom of movement of people. Because there are some countries in the single market who are specialised in goods. So they have an advantage on the single market with their goods. Some countries are specialised in services. I think we are here in the centre, in the capital of a country that is specialised, that has a huge advantage in services. Like other countries have an advange in that single market, because of their work force. And if you want to take out one of these elements, you destroy the concept itself of the single market.

    (Transcript kindly provided to me by Lode Desmet)

    So, how noble are the mighty four freedoms! We rich west Europeans can export our goods, services and capital. Poor east Europeans can export their cheap labour. Neo-liberalism at its grubby worst, I'd say.
  • Brexit
    Cameron sought concessions from the EU. He got some on EU immigration and benefits. (see, eg, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-35622105)

    This minor victory may have been drowned out by the noise of the referendum campaigning. The UK has never unilaterally used permitted restrictions as France and Germany have. For instance:

    "In Germany, EU nationals have to apply for a residence card if they wish to work. This card can be withdrawn for various reasons, after which the holder is required to leave Germany or be forcibly expelled, and is automatically denied re-entry."

    (Financial Times, UK, June 2018, "Tantalising glimpse of an EU compromise on freedom of movement'
    https://www.ft.com/content/db49c91e-70ac-11e8-8863-a9bb262c5f53)
  • Brexit
    As a UK citizen, I suggest a compromise solution to Brexit: be in AND out. Ie, stay in (promise reform of EU free movement of people to the UK, then hold a second referendum) but be the outsider.

    The 2004 neo-liberal experiment of allowing virtually unrestricted access to the UK of people from poor east European countries (pushed by UK Labour premier Tony Blair) upset many locals. Boosted Euroscepticism led to the 2016 referendum, which was, in effect, the first public consultation on mass immigration. Result: split nation: loquatious liberals versus taciturn precariat.

    Offered a binary choice, I voted to remain but was actually undecided. As a left-liberal who welcomes immigration, I nevertheless sympathised with the overlooked precariat - who were wrongly dismissed by the metrocentric liberal establishment as ignorant provincial racists.

    But it's madness to abandon a good trading deal with our near neighbours in exchange for environment-destroying air and sea miles, and a sweetheart deal with corporate USA involving chlorinated chicken and a garage sale of the UK's National Health System.

    So, let's stay in and, firstly, use the same EU rules as Germany and France have to restrict the "free movement" of people. (Mobility of cheap labour is no freedom.) Then vote for reforming the sh*t out of the corrupt, bloated, neo-lib EU gravy train. Then we can resume our previous blissful sense of indifference.
  • The significance of meaning
    The inexplicable manifestation of DNA, I’d say, poses the possibility of it being meaningful. Would such meaningfulness be the same as in Shakespeare"s writings? If so, is meaning an indivisible aspect of consciousness? And, further, is the universe/multiverse made of consciousness? Such an enquiry might be seen as metaphysical. I'd prefer it to be scientific.
  • The significance of meaning
    My point, however, is that randomness cannot have spawned DNA - or the works of Shakespeare.
  • The significance of meaning
    Woh, don't be so quick to dis the random. It also plays its part, evolution being the love child of Chance and Necessity.
  • The significance of meaning
    They're all phenomena largely beyond mechanistic explanation, that's true. (Although, notions of good and bad can perhaps be attributed to the evolution of communal altruism.)
  • The significance of meaning
    Yes, stochastic means "random". However, it derives from an Ancient Greek word meaning not only "guess" but also "aim at a target"!
  • The significance of meaning
    Perhaps that supports the idea of a conscious universe, pregnant with meaning.
  • The significance of meaning
    Like the 'strange attractor' towards which a dynamic system tends to evolve? Yes, I hadn't thought of that.
  • The significance of meaning
    So meaning can't be reduced to the mechanics of language.
  • The significance of meaning
    Yes - language, being the means of expresssion, is inseparable from meaning. However, it's arguably secondary to thought. We think, therefore we speak.
  • The significance of meaning
    Re altering the boundaries of consciousness, that raises the question: what boundaries?
  • The significance of meaning
    Re abiogenesis, there are interesting and (inevitably) speculative theories but no agreed explanation.
  • The significance of meaning
    Theory always tries to change boundaries!
  • The significance of meaning
    No doubt non-linear dynanics tries to understand the tension beteeen chaos and order, nothing and something, etc. How far does it succeed, though? Do its equations explain consciousness?
  • The significance of meaning
    OK - but it doesn't mean importance either. The meaning of Shakespeare’s writing is in his mind. Mind/consciousness produces meaning. There's no agreement on how this happens.
  • The significance of meaning
    And your account of the development of DNA only makes sense if it explains how you get from the component chemicals to self-replication - but it doesn't.
  • The significance of meaning
    It doesn't mean significance. Its not signing for something. It's more fundamental than that.
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