Brexit: Because Jake wanted to know....

I'll have to take your word for that. I'm no biologist. I do know that the C3 types will outlive us all and be one of the last forms of plant life left as this planet dies in x billion years.

Fortunately, that's not a time frame I need worry about. Brexit on the other hand... 86 days, 3 hours.

It seems Mrs. May has been double dealing. They've started a campaign of attrition, trying to scare MP's into voting for her vassilation deal while calling anyone who will listen in the EU and begging for concession on the other.

... and to think my country used to have grace, authority and dignity?

It seems that you won't be needing that land for a little while longer https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46750092

Just what we need - more tobacco.

It appears that things are coming to a head today for PM May.

Unlikely. She'll still be here tomorrow. No one in the Conservative Party wants the job and more than Jeremy Corbyn does. Conservative turkeys won't vote for Christmas and if Labour winds up in the driving seat, the internal political arguments will be just as fierce, if not fiercer. The lower chamber is comprised of zombies. The walking dead.

There you go then. Mrs. May lives to fight another day.

We get to suffer weeks,months and quite possibly years more of this *yay*

Sorry man - have a pint (or two) on me.

Thanks my friend. We need it. I was at a computer society lecturing event last night and as the vote was being called all the phones in the audience were going off with news alerts and no one in the audience was paying any attention to the speaker

I do not have enough knowledge to fully grasp everything about the politics but I have a related question.

It seems to me that most of competitive countries are those which sacrifice the power of individuals - they have more influence, more weapons, more economic ties. I want to ask:
- is it property of humans that dumbing down the population causes it to be more competitive at least in short or middle term?
- if it is not inherent property, how can it be overridden? How can a country both preserve the power of individuals and be competitive?

Excuse me if it does not make good sense.

The identity (and rights) of the individual vs. group identity are a large part of it. Individual identity is a minority concept, much of the non-free world operates under collectivism, group identity political and social systems that strive state first and above the rights of the individual.

Group rights are easier for politicians and sinister actors to sell, force and use to highlight the differences between "them and us". A free and educated, individually thinking population is a terrifying thing to the sensibilities of non-democratic power (and even then it keeps democratic powers awake at night).

Repressing education and individual rights has been the norm throughout most of history. Dumbing down doesn't make it competitive, it makes the population more pliable, more willing to accept group identity and more compliant - that allows for competitiveness as everyone is working for the group in the short term. Until that collapses; and it always does.

Preservation of individual rights and the mess that the West is in with identity politics are two different things. The Western mess gives everyone rights while allowing at the same time everyone to falsely believe that they have no responsibilities to anyone other than themselves. This has created a norm of entitlement culture and has allowed group identity politics to start to take hold again. When no one has any responsibility to work together to make it work - it's always someone elses fault and someone elses responsibility to do something about it... and invariably they can't be trusted to fix it - people tribalise along fractures highlighted by our differences.

Here's an interesting side effect. I just got a bunch of registrar emails informing me that after 29th March I'll no longer be able to own .eu domains.

*shrugs*

Surely thought there would be a post in this thread today…

There is now . . .

I think that as a nation all 70m of us have our head in our hands weeping. None of us are getting what we want, all of us are getting what we didn't want. Those who wanted to leave are being held ransom by a legislature who voted remain, those who want to remain are being held ransom by Euro-sceptics and - to put it in US language - the fact that there is no libertarian opposition and its leader is an anti-EU Marxist in the first place.

I think the only way to sort it out cleanly would be for Con/Lab to field one leave and one remain candidate in every constituency and full scale flush out the non-representative remain elements speaking against the view of their electorate from Parliament. That will never happen, the Christmas turkey's won't want that for themselves.

We have to leave with no deal as the clean break will allow discussions over the long-term future to start domestically (with everyone apart from the SNP and the Deolaly Liberal's) being on the same (perhaps reluctant) page.

I find it ironic that the EU propaganda machine is putting out that they couldn't / wouldn't budge because it would throw Ireland under a bus. Seems to me that the 'no deal' risk to Ireland in a situation where the UK has nothing but scathing contempt for the EU's approach to all this is a bigger bus to throw them under than removing their annexation clauses for Northern Ireland from the treaty proposal.

Fortunately, while the upper echelons in Dublin see this as their swansong towards reunification, we aren't actually stupid enough to think harming the Republic of Ireland beneath any bus is in anyone's interest. Least of all ours. I just have to hope that the US stays the hell out of it - which is no sure thing now that the Democrats have your congress.

I think they're rather busy with a few other things right now . . .