The Conservative Party

[The perfect fumble]

By whom then? You can't have shared cultural values on your own.

You can't.

They emerge.

If you codify cultural values it's always a fuck up, but often, when you meet Brits abroad, when you're on your own, and I'm not talking Benidorm where we take our shit with us, you recognise them immediately, it isn't just familiarity, it's more than that, even if you'd be hard pressed to say what they were.

 

[Vic]

We’re definitely losing our natural self deprecating sense of humour as a side effect of all this bollocks!

I just assume this manufactured nationalism is self-deprecating. It would be too depressing to think it's serious.

 

[Vic]

You can't.

They emerge.

If you codify cultural values it's always a fuck up, but often, when you meet Brits abroad, when you're on your own, and I'm not talking Benidorm where we take our shit with us, you recognise them immediately, it isn't just familiarity, it's more than that, even if you'd be hard pressed to say what they were.

So shared British cultural values except with the sort of Brits who holiday in Benidorm... Glad you don't include the shit British shared cultural values.

 

[BobKowalski]

You can't.

They emerge.

If you codify cultural values it's always a fuck up, but often, when you meet Brits abroad, when you're on your own, and I'm not talking Benidorm where we take our shit with us, you recognise them immediately, it isn't just familiarity, it's more than that, even if you'd be hard pressed to say what they were.

How does this work in a multi-cultural Union state with four separate nationalities and distinctive cultures?

To answer my own question, by cultivating a fifth identity - ’British’, which is how I identify myself rather than ‘English’. Problem is that nationalism in three of the four countries is increasing and NI has its own unique issues and Unionism is under severe pressure through its missteps and blunders over Brexit.

A British identity or values for me are, ‘soft‘ patriotism, none of this bumptious, brash American style, with giant flags and demands we must love Queen and country or else. A sense of fair play and justice. Humour, a dislike of pomposity. People minding their own business.

For me, some of the values seem to have eroded or maybe they were just superficial or maybe they are dated given I’m an old git anyway. None of this is really a response to your post, I’m just musing out loud :)

 

[The perfect fumble]

So shared British cultural values except with the sort of Brits who holiday in Benidorm... Glad you don't include the shit British shared cultural values.

You're deliberately misinterpreting what I posted.

Where Brits collect in numbers, the best and worst of us is on display, in such numbers you might as well be in Blackpool, shared cultural values aplenty, but not in stark contrast, so not so easily distinguishable from familiarity.

But if you're on your own things are different.

Either ways, whatever your problem is sort it out in your own head.

 

[Fred_Quimby]

I see the papers were full of £3bn promised for a bus revolution. In February last year it was £5bn...

I live in a very rural area. Bus services have to be subsidised because otherwise they would be to expensive for the poorly paid people in this area. This government has cut the subsidies so now we have few buses, a quarter of the service we had 10 years ago. Now, because of the rarity of buses, fewer people use them preferring to use their cars. I used to shop on the market on a Wednesday morning and take the bus there and back returning in time for lunch, now the best bus back returns for 2pm and the buses are empty. Cut the money then give it back and say how they listened to people.

Like reducing police numbers by 10 000 and crowing when they say they will increase them by 10 000, same with nurse numbers. I could go on but you get the idea.

 

[The perfect fumble]

How does this work in a multi-cultural Union state with four separate nationalities and distinctive cultures?

If it works you have the UK, if it doesn't you have the former Yugoslavia.

To answer my own question, by cultivating a fifth identity - ’British’, which is how I identify myself rather than ‘English’. Problem is that nationalism in three of the four countries is increasing and NI has its own unique issues and Unionism is under severe pressure through its missteps and blunders over Brexit.

A British identity or values for me are, ‘soft‘ patriotism, none of this bumptious, brash American style, with giant flags and demands we must love Queen and country or else. A sense of fair play and justice. Humour, a dislike of pomposity. People minding their own business.

For me, some of the values seem to have eroded or maybe they were just superficial or maybe they are dated given I’m an old git anyway. None of this is really a response to your post, I’m just musing out loud :)

Muse away, what gets me is the very mention of shared cultural values has some folk in a right tizz, but it seems it's a peculiar hang up of the left.

What the left don't appreciate is that unless they stop pissing about, it leaves the field open for the likes of the Daily Mail and worse to do the devils work and divide us under the umbrella of British shared cultural values, conveniently but not surprisingly, defined exclusively by them.

 

[mat]

One thing the Tories have taken from their former alliance with the DUP. A love of flegs.

 

[metalblue]

I see the papers were full of £3bn promised for a bus revolution. In February last year it was £5bn...

Because a lot fewer people are using buses now compared to Feb last year ;)

 

[BobKowalski]

If it works you have the UK, if it doesn't you have the former Yugoslavia.



Muse away, what gets me is the very mention of shared cultural values has some folk in a right tizz, but it seems it's a peculiar hang up of the left.

What the left don't appreciate is that unless they stop pissing about, it leaves the field open for the likes of the Daily Mail and worse to do the devils work and divide us under the umbrella of British shared cultural values, conveniently but not surprisingly, defined exclusively by them.

No, its a hang up of the right too...even more so if you consider their reason for being is wrapped up in national or cultural identity. The obsession with being seen with Union flags is all about English cultural identity which has morphed into copying the US and to be the US because the US is not European and we cannot be European at any price.

But flying the Union flag and before you know it, having kids pledge allegiance to it, isn’t going to sit well in Scotland and NI, and its all about England’s restless search for meaning. After the war we spurned Europe, then ended up begging to be let in, then got the hump because they wouldn‘t recognise our natural leadership and then they had the gall to form a monetary union so now we are back out again and prattling on about being a force in the Asia Pacific region and ‘leading the world‘, and everything we do is ‘world beating’ and all that other guff as if we are toddler desperately seeking attention.

I guess my issue is that I have nothing but disdain for the reality denying bubble we are building for ourselves and the worry that it’s an English manufactured world for the English to live in, which isn’t going to leave any space for the other three nations that formed this nation for the last few centuries.

I don‘t identify as English, I’m not even sure what it is to be English. British I get and identify with, but English? The only thing that springs to mind when you say English is the people who hang the English flag from bedroom windows, join the EDL and insist on going to English pubs for meals when holidaying in Benidorm.

Perhaps that is what being English is and why I don’t identify with them. Maybe I’m in a British category with no fixed abode.

End of musing for now.

 

[somapop]

No, its a hang up of the right too...even more so if you consider their reason for being is wrapped up in national or cultural identity. The obsession with being seen with Union flags is all about English cultural identity which has morphed into copying the US and to be the US because the US is not European and we cannot be European at any price.

But flying the Union flag and before you know it, having kids pledge allegiance to it, isn’t going to sit well in Scotland and NI, and its all about England’s restless search for meaning. After the war we spurned Europe, then ended up begging to be let in, then got the hump because they wouldn‘t recognise our natural leadership and then they had the gall to form a monetary union so now we are back out again and prattling on about being a force in the Asia Pacific region and ‘leading the world‘, and everything we do is ‘world beating’ and all that other guff as if we are toddler desperately seeking attention.

I guess my issue is that I have nothing but disdain for the reality denying bubble we are building for ourselves and the worry that it’s an English manufactured world for the English to live in, which isn’t going to leave any space for the other three nations that formed this nation for the last few centuries.

I don‘t identify as English, I’m not even sure what it is to be English. British I get and identify with, but English? The only thing that springs to mind when you say English is the people who hang the English flag from bedroom windows, join the EDL and insist on going to English pubs for meals when holidaying in Benidorm.

Perhaps that is what being English is and why I don’t identify with them. Maybe I’m in a British category with no fixed abode.

End of musing for now.

Kind of with you on that and good post.

Never knew this Union flag thing was a thing (unlike the Saint George's Cross English flag) until yesterday and the can of worms that BBC piece uncovered.

I forwarded it onto a friend...and the response and further exchanges were really surprising to me.
The same guy who was life long labour until...Brexit, not considering it an almost offence for a 'state' broadcaster (must've been a slip of hands) to mock a govt minister. And again, it was a light hearted quip that's been taken way out of proportion....and yes...into 'you can't diss the flag' territory.

He's a really, genuinely good friend (I have other friends who have different politics and more aligned to my own but they're not half as close) but this Brexit issue (and all said above) is a bit strange to me.

An odd time....if it's not Tom Hanks eating children, mask wearing as a global control experiment or nefarious world vaccination programs it's this new British Empire porn inspired by the goings on in the 'YOUU ESSS A'.

The EU AZ fight seemed like a rare win to him, but I have tried to explain that wasn't really the case.

 

[Vic]

You're deliberately misinterpreting what I posted.

Where Brits collect in numbers, the best and worst of us is on display, in such numbers you might as well be in Blackpool, shared cultural values aplenty, but not in stark contrast, so not so easily distinguishable from familiarity.

But if you're on your own things are different.

Either ways, whatever your problem is sort it out in your own head.

What problem? I just think this "shared cultural values" thing is historical and present nonsense. The nearest we ever came to it as a nation was the postwar consensus and Thatcher wrecked that, not immigration.

 

[Vic]

If it works you have the UK, if it doesn't you have the former Yugoslavia.



Muse away, what gets me is the very mention of shared cultural values has some folk in a right tizz, but it seems it's a peculiar hang up of the left.

What the left don't appreciate is that unless they stop pissing about, it leaves the field open for the likes of the Daily Mail and worse to do the devils work and divide us under the umbrella of British shared cultural values, conveniently but not surprisingly, defined exclusively by them.

I think you've sussed the "problem" there.

"Right wing press have divided us by talking about shared values." Whereas we should be united by celebrating diversity.

 

[Vic]

Because a lot fewer people are using buses now compared to Feb last year ;)

No, just Tory deceit.

With lower bus use, it would need more money to have more services with fewer passengers.

 

[Didsbury Dave]

The clown king: how Boris Johnson made it by playing the fool

The long read: Boris Johnson is the archetypal clown, with his antic posturing and his refusal to take anything seriously. So how did he end up in charge?

www.theguardian.com

Thought this was a very good and well written article

That is an absolutely brilliantly perceptive article.

 

[meltonblue]

That is an absolutely brilliantly perceptive article.

Yep, my thoughts too. A really good read.

 

[Saddleworth2]

That is an absolutely brilliantly perceptive article.

This makes me want to weep because it is so true:

A country “ready to take off its Clark Kent spectacles” and act “as the supercharged champion” of X, Y, Z. A country on stilts – pretending that we had a test and trace system that was head and shoulders above the rest of the world. A country performing U-turns on the teetering unicycle of Johnsonian buffoonery – A-levels, school meals, foreign health workers and more. A country of tumbling catastrophes. Trampolining absurdities. Go to work. Don’t go to work. A country proroguing parliament illegally here, trying to break international law there. Paying its citizens to “eat out to help out” in the midst of a lethal pandemic. A country testing its eyesight in lockdown by driving to distant castles with infant and spouse during a travel ban. A country whose leadership stitched up the NHS in the morning and then clapped for them at night. A country opening schools for a single day, threatening to sue schools, shutting schools. A country on holiday during its own emergency meetings. A country locking down too late; opening up too early. A country sending its elderly to die in care homes. A country unwilling to feed its own children. A country spaffing £37bn up the wall one moment and refusing to pay its own nurses a decent salary the next. A country doing pretend magic tricks with the existence of its own borders – no, there won’t be a border in the sea; oh yes there will; oh no there won’t; it’s behind you …. A country of gimmicks and slapstick and hollow, honking horns.

We used to be one of the most admired countries in the world, now we are so diminished, I'm not sure others even laugh at us anymore....just shake their heads in disbelief.

 

[Didsbury Dave]

This makes me want to weep because it is so true:

A country “ready to take off its Clark Kent spectacles” and act “as the supercharged champion” of X, Y, Z. A country on stilts – pretending that we had a test and trace system that was head and shoulders above the rest of the world. A country performing U-turns on the teetering unicycle of Johnsonian buffoonery – A-levels, school meals, foreign health workers and more. A country of tumbling catastrophes. Trampolining absurdities. Go to work. Don’t go to work. A country proroguing parliament illegally here, trying to break international law there. Paying its citizens to “eat out to help out” in the midst of a lethal pandemic. A country testing its eyesight in lockdown by driving to distant castles with infant and spouse during a travel ban. A country whose leadership stitched up the NHS in the morning and then clapped for them at night. A country opening schools for a single day, threatening to sue schools, shutting schools. A country on holiday during its own emergency meetings. A country locking down too late; opening up too early. A country sending its elderly to die in care homes. A country unwilling to feed its own children. A country spaffing £37bn up the wall one moment and refusing to pay its own nurses a decent salary the next. A country doing pretend magic tricks with the existence of its own borders – no, there won’t be a border in the sea; oh yes there will; oh no there won’t; it’s behind you …. A country of gimmicks and slapstick and hollow, honking horns.

We used to be one of the most admired countries in the world, now we are so diminished, I'm not sure others even laugh at us anymore....just shake their heads in disbelief.

I found it profoundly depressing too.

This line hit home:

“Meanwhile the realm really is still falling apart. Johnson’s predicament could not be more starkly illuminated than by the next existential challenge he faces: to do with the very nature of the union of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.”

All directly attributable to his lies in the referendum.

 

[Saddleworth2]

I found it profoundly depressing too.

This line hit home:

“Meanwhile the realm really is still falling apart. Johnson’s predicament could not be more starkly illuminated than by the next existential challenge he faces: to do with the very nature of the union of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.”

All directly attributable to his lies in the referendum.

Only slightly less depressing than this. Can you even believe that is being written without anarchy on the streets, protests to ensure a public enquiry and political ratings through the floor. But no. We accept it without murmur.

And so, at the last, we come to death. Which even the clown cannot toy with or mock. The figures are stark – 126,000 dead at the time of writing. In terms of total numbers, the four countries above us have much greater populations – the US, Brazil, Mexico and India. We have by far the highest death toll in Europe and the fourth highest death rate per million of the population in the world. There is no serious discussion that does not arrive at the conclusion that the UK has lost tens of thousands of men and women whose death was not inevitable. Not all of the losses are Johnson’s fault, but many of them are the direct result of his calls and his character. Research by Imperial College shows that up to 26,800 deaths could have been prevented had the first lockdown come just one week earlier. Then came the care homes disaster, the premature lifting of the first lockdown, the ignoring of Sage throughout September. And only a clown would begin the October announcement of a second lockdown with the phrase “good evening and apologies for disturbing your Saturday evening with more news of Covid” when the nation was already stiff with the legions of dead and had been waiting all day to hear from its leader. The run-up to Christmas was a catastrophe of mismanagement that all-too-inevitably became the January of 30,000 more people dead. Are we supposed to forget this legacy and “move on”? That is what Johnson is now tacitly suggesting. Like all storytellers, he knows the public remember endings, less so beginnings and seldom the middle. He did all he can, he says. He knows it’s not true, but that is what he is selling.

 

[Didsbury Dave]

Only slightly less depressing than this. Can you even believe that is being written without anarchy on the streets, protests to ensure a public enquiry and political ratings through the floor. But no. We accept it without murmur.

And so, at the last, we come to death. Which even the clown cannot toy with or mock. The figures are stark – 126,000 dead at the time of writing. In terms of total numbers, the four countries above us have much greater populations – the US, Brazil, Mexico and India. We have by far the highest death toll in Europe and the fourth highest death rate per million of the population in the world. There is no serious discussion that does not arrive at the conclusion that the UK has lost tens of thousands of men and women whose death was not inevitable. Not all of the losses are Johnson’s fault, but many of them are the direct result of his calls and his character. Research by Imperial College shows that up to 26,800 deaths could have been prevented had the first lockdown come just one week earlier. Then came the care homes disaster, the premature lifting of the first lockdown, the ignoring of Sage throughout September. And only a clown would begin the October announcement of a second lockdown with the phrase “good evening and apologies for disturbing your Saturday evening with more news of Covid” when the nation was already stiff with the legions of dead and had been waiting all day to hear from its leader. The run-up to Christmas was a catastrophe of mismanagement that all-too-inevitably became the January of 30,000 more people dead. Are we supposed to forget this legacy and “move on”? That is what Johnson is now tacitly suggesting. Like all storytellers, he knows the public remember endings, less so beginnings and seldom the middle. He did all he can, he says. He knows it’s not true, but that is what he is selling.

I actually believe that people accept the deaths and the diasasters because to acknowledge that Johnson is what he is- a liar, a fool, a manipulator, a grossly irresponsible and incompetent moron - is to acknowledge that they were duped into voting for Brexit.

He was and is Brexit. As the article says,it could never have happened without him and his support. His wry smiles and chuckles reassured people who didn’t understand Brexit that it would actually be ok. So to turn on him now and recognise the charlatan and con artist that he is is to admit that you got fooled and correspondingly to admit your own stupidity in the referendum and after.

Human nature will not allow that. So he gets a free pass for anything he does and the country crumbles around his erect Union Jack.