Are we sleep-walking out of Europe ?

and when you've done that tell us

1. When you "allowed" blacks to vote ( clue: 1964.)

2. How the KKK is doing

3. About Rosa Parks

4. How many First Nation tribes still rule their own lands ( Clue; none. Nil. Nitch.)

5. Who is fifth in the world for executing their own citizens ( ahead of North Korea...)

6. How many tons of explosives the US dropped on Viet Nam

7. How come My Lai burned down

8. The difference between "Boer War Concentration Camps" and "Nazi Concentration Camps" - some simpletons don't understand that the latter set out to kill; the former set out to "concentrate" a population in one place, not kill them. 

Mau Mau? Oh now the US would have loved to have been able to suppress a single murderous militant uprising. Just once. 

The Chinese resettlement in Malaya? Another successful means by which the UK defeated Communist insurgents. Oh how the US would have loved to have done that. The Chieu Hoi program was nowhere near as successful.

The 1943 famine can't be laid at the door of the Empire - the statistics are just not reliable. Sorry. Plus the Japanese had invaded Burma, and we'd been fighting a war of survival for four years. Unlike some...

Partition of India? Allowing Muslims to have their own country separate from Sikhs, Hindus etc? Any chance Uncle Sam could allow, say, the Navajo or Cheyenne to self determine? Didn't think so.

I love the US. Uncle Same even gave me a medal for the time I spent working with 1/182 Inf. 

But you're one of those small minded Trumpers who think that just because other Nations did wrong many years ago, Uncle Sam can behave despicably.

Like you say,  it wouldn't hurt to know what you're talking about.

Like I do. Which will annoy you, no doubt.

Meh.

I've been re-thinking this Brexit thing.

How about we go one better than Gove's idea of a "Hard" Brexit ?

Say,

• _{We close the Channel Tunnel at 23:59 tonight.}
• _{We telephone the EU Parliament (sod Junkers) at 08:00 GMT (forget UTC) tomorrow morning stating that we are invoking Article 50 with immediate effect and have left the EU and ALL it's subsidiary organisations eg the Single Market, Courts, Euro-Codes, EASA you name it, we left. There will be no more EU citizens allowed into the UK.}
• _{Make it clear in the phone call that if they want to send someone over to discuss trade, they are welcome. They can catch a ferry or an aeroplane}

Might save a lot of time and reduce the uncertainty that seems to feed the media and starve the ££

I kinda know what the Bemoaners will think (heck, it seems I’m one of them). But .............

......................I wonder what the Leavers think of this bright idea ?

Seems to be what some would prefer, Don. Personally I'm just trying to look at silver linings - I live in the UK but often get paid in Euros. Not enough that I'm now rich all of a sudden (I hardly make anything full stop), but the £ problems lately do work at least a little bit in my favour. For the time being. So there's a personal silvery fleck.

The thing that made me think of this thread, though, is a bit different. I read some of a report just published by Warwick University, about the real reasons for the Brexit vote. It's based on actual research by people who actually understand what they're talking about - feels like something of a novelty lately. And the headline conclusion was that immigration wasn't the primary reason why the majority of leave voters voted the way they did. Rather, it was austerity (and the effects of austerity policies). This may in part explain why it's received little coverage as far as I can tell.

Which makes it seem even more mad that the govt are taking the result as a mandate to go for a quite hard Brexit and close down EU immigration regardless of the knock on effects on the economy etc.

Dave***t posted:

The thing that made me think of this thread, though, is a bit different. I read some of a report just published by Warwick University, about the real reasons for the Brexit vote. It's based on actual research by people who actually understand what they're talking about - feels like something of a novelty lately. And the headline conclusion was that immigration wasn't the primary reason why the majority of leave voters voted the way they did. Rather, it was austerity (and the effects of austerity policies). This may in part explain why it's received little coverage as far as I can tell.

Not sure if I had commented it in the thread, but I had identified similar in the last days of the run up / early aftermath of the referendum.

People aren't generally anti-immigration... there are many things people blame immigration for, but the real cause is the lack of investment in the UK.  The NHS is stretched, but the solution to that isn't ban immigration it's invest properly.  There is a lack of affordable housing, but the solution isn't ban immigration its invest in decent affordable housing (social housing / council housing if you prefer). There is a problem with zero hours contracts and depressed wages, but the solution isn't to ban immigration it's to tackle business.

None of these problems will be solved by Brexit and many of the people who were targeted by Leave campaigns will find their problems are the same or worse as a result of leaving the EU (IMO based on what has happened so far and the concerns of businesses and yes, experts).

Eloise, You certainly did comment about austerity making people use a "Leave Vote" as a protest vote.

I think these voters are going to be very disappointed by future events.

Eloise posted:

Dave***t posted:

The thing that made me think of this thread, though, is a bit different. I read some of a report just published by Warwick University, about the real reasons for the Brexit vote. It's based on actual research by people who actually understand what they're talking about - feels like something of a novelty lately. And the headline conclusion was that immigration wasn't the primary reason why the majority of leave voters voted the way they did. Rather, it was austerity (and the effects of austerity policies). This may in part explain why it's received little coverage as far as I can tell.

Not sure if I had commented it in the thread, but I had identified similar in the last days of the run up / early aftermath of the referendum.

People aren't generally anti-immigration... there are many things people blame immigration for, but the real cause is the lack of investment in the UK.  The NHS is stretched, but the solution to that isn't ban immigration it's invest properly.  There is a lack of affordable housing, but the solution isn't ban immigration its invest in decent affordable housing (social housing / council housing if you prefer). There is a problem with zero hours contracts and depressed wages, but the solution isn't to ban immigration it's to tackle business.

None of these problems will be solved by Brexit and many of the people who were targeted by Leave campaigns will find their problems are the same or worse as a result of leaving the EU (IMO based on what has happened so far and the concerns of businesses and yes, experts).

And a lot of people who voted for Brexit got mixed up between independence, sovereignty vs economic co-operation.

Don Atkinson posted:

Eloise, You certainly did comment about austerity making people use a "Leave Vote" as a protest vote.

I think these voters are going to be very disappointed by future events.

Similarly to the 2010 GE, a result that nobody at all voted for, because it was necessarily an unknown quantity. I struggle to see how more than a tiny minority might be pleased by the mid-long term outcome this time.

One facet of why the NHS doesn't work properly was brought clearly into focus for us when Helen needed to see a Neurologist. Two year wait or go private. She couldn't wait so we paid up. He worked 2.5 days a week for the NHS and 2.5 days a week private. In the same venue, using the same infrastructure, for which he paid the hospital when he was working privately.

To us the solution seemed simple. Compel him to work full time for the NHS or compensate the NHS for the skills and resources the private sector was depriving the taxpayer of for half the working week. If the private sector had to pay, say, a million a year to the trust for every consultant it knobbled, it would be a start. This might sound over simplistic, but you have to start thinking somewhere, and simple is the best place to start.

The Neurologist subsequently offered Helen an MRI for £800, stating that she wouldn't get one on the NHS. I wrote to the chief exec of the PCT and copied in Helen's GP. She got her MRI within a month, miraculously on the NHS too. 

You can dress it up all sorts of ways and bury it in legal and technical static. But we are essentially being conned. Cowboys abound and they are paid vast sums of money to play fast and loose with the nation's healthcare.

I want to know what happened to the consultant neurologist.

C.

re MRI scan.

a few things spring to mind

did part of the £800 fee go towards funding the purchase or running of the scanner.

perhaps the gp didn't think a consultation was an urgent matter.

consultants tend to offer private patients tests they probably would offer to nhs patients.

When people mix-up Government and Private work there is always an opportunity (or a risk) to mix-up the money...............

Christopher_M posted:

I want to know what happened to the consultant neurologist.

C.

Nothing. 

A couple of years later I was told he had taken up a post at another hospital but I wouldn't read anything into that.

Of course, it's not just about the private/public balance, but we are fed so much rubbish from all directions. 

Queuing up for something in a supermarket, I was approached by a very nice young lady who wanted me to buy some sort of private health policy.  The opening pitch was that it would be mean of me not to look after my family to the highest standards available and have them properly treated in the event of accidents and illness (the same kind of insulting scaremongering used by the life insurance pushers).  The pitch then went on to how run down and grotty the NHS was and how I would have to wait years for anything. The NHS is in a mess. It will fail without the private sector. Well, I suppose it will if we can't keep trained staff in the NHS. And it will fail if having trained the staff, the taxpayer has to pay them twice. 

I had the crown bolted onto a dental implant yesterday. That was private and expensive. There is a place for private treatment.  And there are plenty of places where the private sector should not be permitted to drain public resources and them sell them back to where they took them from. 

Remember that big bloat clear out a few years back when PCTs morphed into CCGs and all the needless padding was stripped out? All those unnecessary admin staff, like pharmacists who just sat around talking about policy and statisticians? What are many of them doing now? Enjoying life, that's what. Going back contracted into CCGs at £500 a day and cherry picking the projects they want to work on.  But they are not on the payroll. Just like all those agency nurses who prop up hospitals. This is important because it demonstrates core cost cutting. Yeah, right.

Harry posted:

And there are plenty of places where the private sector should not be permitted to drain public resources and them sell them back to where they took them from. 

Maybe. My assumption is that the system we have at the moment is the least bad of several available alternatives.

C.

Christopher_M posted:

Harry posted:

And there are plenty of places where the private sector should not be permitted to drain public resources and them sell them back to where they took them from. 

Maybe. My assumption is that the system we have at the moment is the least bad of several available alternatives.

C.

It gets very complicated very quickly. How can a simpleton like understand how it truly works? Well, actually, I don't think anybody understands it fully. And just like my Leftish attitude towards it, ideological considerations are a driver. Still, I've had me rant. Feel better. Time to go and do some work.

Tarquin Maynard-Portly posted:

and when you've done that tell us

1. When you "allowed" blacks to vote ( clue: 1964.)

2. How the KKK is doing

3. About Rosa Parks

4. How many First Nation tribes still rule their own lands ( Clue; none. Nil. Nitch.)

5. Who is fifth in the world for executing their own citizens ( ahead of North Korea...)

6. How many tons of explosives the US dropped on Viet Nam

7. How come My Lai burned down

8. The difference between "Boer War Concentration Camps" and "Nazi Concentration Camps" - some simpletons don't understand that the latter set out to kill; the former set out to "concentrate" a population in one place, not kill them. 

Mau Mau? Oh now the US would have loved to have been able to suppress a single murderous militant uprising. Just once. 

The Chinese resettlement in Malaya? Another successful means by which the UK defeated Communist insurgents. Oh how the US would have loved to have done that. The Chieu Hoi program was nowhere near as successful.

The 1943 famine can't be laid at the door of the Empire - the statistics are just not reliable. Sorry. Plus the Japanese had invaded Burma, and we'd been fighting a war of survival for four years. Unlike some...

Partition of India? Allowing Muslims to have their own country separate from Sikhs, Hindus etc? Any chance Uncle Sam could allow, say, the Navajo or Cheyenne to self determine? Didn't think so.

I love the US. Uncle Same even gave me a medal for the time I spent working with 1/182 Inf. 

But you're one of those small minded Trumpers who think that just because other Nations did wrong many years ago, Uncle Sam can behave despicably.

Like you say,  it wouldn't hurt to know what you're talking about.

Like I do. Which will annoy you, no doubt.

Meh.

We get it TMP, you are a proud soldier. That's fine but pride alone doesn't correct history and a balanced view on the BE's past would seem more appropriate. Even among scholars there is debate as to how far Britain ceded control to its colonies or whether it wasn't more a case of giving in to local uprisings in the face of a very costly WW2, which left Britain essentially bankrupt - had it not been for a substantial loan from the US. The tide had turned and the reality was that Britain simply was not able to maintain control of its colonies. Nothing humanitarian there and most would argue very little voluntary impetus. 

There is no doubt that the British committed atrocities while ruling, at some point, nearly 20% of the world's population. The emphasis being on ruling, not governing. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed or died without a tear shed. If you factored in the loss of lives during the slave trade that number is likely to push into the millions. However, you don't have to go back in time that far to reflect with some humility, just take the role of the British government during the Apartheid years in SA as a more recent point in time. What is true, though, is that Britain, unlike many other countries, at least left behind an administrative infrastructure, which in most cases enabled the former colonies to govern themselves once Britain withdrew.

On the whole there seems little point in having a contest as to who was the better nation, Britain or the US. Based on today's ethical standards both behaved atrociously at various points in history. I would also question your argument that "most of our former Colonies choose to be members of the Commonwealth speaks volumes as to how they view it." This is a bit like saying just because Germany's former enemies are now united in the EU our atrocities during WW2 couldn't have been so bad (just to illustrate my point, I know you cannot compare the two). Sometimes old wounds are patched over for the sake of a better future or quite simply out of necessity, mostly in economic terms. It's a different world now but I think we all owe it to those who lost their lives to be brutally honest about history. That includes all lives, never mind what nationality or ethnic origin.

Best 

tp

totemphile posted:

Tarquin Maynard-Portly posted:

and when you've done that tell us

1. When you "allowed" blacks to vote ( clue: 1964.)

2. How the KKK is doing

3. About Rosa Parks

4. How many First Nation tribes still rule their own lands ( Clue; none. Nil. Nitch.)

5. Who is fifth in the world for executing their own citizens ( ahead of North Korea...)

6. How many tons of explosives the US dropped on Viet Nam

7. How come My Lai burned down

8. The difference between "Boer War Concentration Camps" and "Nazi Concentration Camps" - some simpletons don't understand that the latter set out to kill; the former set out to "concentrate" a population in one place, not kill them. 

Mau Mau? Oh now the US would have loved to have been able to suppress a single murderous militant uprising. Just once. 

The Chinese resettlement in Malaya? Another successful means by which the UK defeated Communist insurgents. Oh how the US would have loved to have done that. The Chieu Hoi program was nowhere near as successful.

The 1943 famine can't be laid at the door of the Empire - the statistics are just not reliable. Sorry. Plus the Japanese had invaded Burma, and we'd been fighting a war of survival for four years. Unlike some...

Partition of India? Allowing Muslims to have their own country separate from Sikhs, Hindus etc? Any chance Uncle Sam could allow, say, the Navajo or Cheyenne to self determine? Didn't think so.

I love the US. Uncle Same even gave me a medal for the time I spent working with 1/182 Inf. 

But you're one of those small minded Trumpers who think that just because other Nations did wrong many years ago, Uncle Sam can behave despicably.

Like you say,  it wouldn't hurt to know what you're talking about.

Like I do. Which will annoy you, no doubt.

Meh.

We get it TMP, you are a proud soldier. That's fine but pride alone doesn't correct history and a balanced view on the BE's past would seem more appropriate. Even among scholars there is debate as to how far Britain ceded control to its colonies or whether it wasn't more a case of giving in to local uprisings in the face of a very costly WW2, which left Britain essentially bankrupt - had it not been for a substantial loan from the US. The tide had turned and the reality was that Britain simply was not able to maintain control of its colonies. Nothing humanitarian there and most would argue very little voluntary impetus. 

There is no doubt that the British committed atrocities while ruling, at some point, nearly 20% of the world's population. The emphasis being on ruling, not governing. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed or died without a tear shed. If you factored in the loss of lives during the slave trade that number is likely to push into the millions. However, you don't have to go back in time that far to reflect with some humility, just take the role of the British government during the Apartheid years in SA as a more recent point in time. What is true, though, is that Britain, unlike many other countries, at least left behind an administrative infrastructure, which in most cases enabled the former colonies to govern themselves once Britain withdrew.

On the whole there seems little point in having a contest as to who was the better nation, Britain or the US. Based on today's ethical standards both behaved atrociously at various points in history. I would also question your argument that "most of our former Colonies choose to be members of the Commonwealth speaks volumes as to how they view it." This is a bit like saying just because Germany's former enemies are now united in the EU our atrocities during WW2 couldn't have been so bad (just to illustrate my point, I know you cannot compare the two). Sometimes old wounds are patched over for the sake of a better future or quite simply out of necessity, mostly in economic terms. It's a different world now but I think we all owe it to those who lost their lives to be brutally honest about history. That includes all lives, never mind what nationality or ethnic origin.

Best 

tp

 

You don't like what I say...

I'm not denying anything (unlucky) but the facts are that most of our former Colonies choose to remain members of the Commonwealth. 

Factually accurate, so not something you can "question".  Its nothing like the current relationship between Germany and other EU Nations. Nothing at all. 

We also realised many years ago that we'd need to change our behaviours and did so. We withdrew from the former subject Nations. The US remains on land originally populated by other people. 

Not sure why you raise slavery - annoying for some, as vile as the slave trade was, slaves where purchased from Africans and the Barbary Pirates captured many whites, selling them and using them as slaves. 

Which is why we led the world in abolishing the vile trade, and played a major part in stamping it out. 

Tschuss. 

Apart from the commonwealth a certain proportion of the British Empire has been living inside the UK since the 50's at least.

Don Atkinson posted:

I've been re-thinking this Brexit thing.

How about we go one better than Gove's idea of a "Hard" Brexit ?

Say,

• _{We close the Channel Tunnel at 23:59 tonight.}
• _{We telephone the EU Parliament (sod Junkers) at 08:00 GMT (forget UTC) tomorrow morning stating that we are invoking Article 50 with immediate effect and have left the EU and ALL it's subsidiary organisations eg the Single Market, Courts, Euro-Codes, EASA you name it, we left. There will be no more EU citizens allowed into the UK.}
• _{Make it clear in the phone call that if they want to send someone over to discuss trade, they are welcome. They can catch a ferry or an aeroplane}

 

Might save a lot of time and reduce the uncertainty that seems to feed the media and starve the ££

I kinda know what the Bemoaners will think (heck, it seems I’m one of them). But .............

......................I wonder what the Leavers think of this bright idea ?

Should probably deploy a couple of squadrons of Spitfires to patrol Kent just in case any of those continental bu**ers get through the closed Tunnel, too. Oh, didn't Al Murray have that in his manifesto when he stood against Farage? A man of great foresight (Murray that is).   

Tarquin Maynard-Portly posted:

 

You don't like what I say...

I'm not denying anything (unlucky) but the facts are that most of our former Colonies choose to remain members of the Commonwealth. 

Factually accurate, so not something you can "question".  Its nothing like the current relationship between Germany and other EU Nations. Nothing at all. 

We also realised many years ago that we'd need to change our behaviours and did so. We withdrew from the former subject Nations. The US remains on land originally populated by other people. 

Not sure why you raise slavery - annoying for some, as vile as the slave trade was, slaves where purchased from Africans and the Barbary Pirates captured many whites, selling them and using them as slaves. 

Which is why we led the world in abolishing the vile trade, and played a major part in stamping it out. 

Tschuss. 

It's not that I don't like what you say, I couldn't care less whether I like it or not. What I do care about is that you make it out as if there never was a thing that went wrong in The British Empire, except for some minor "unlucky" instances of course, you know, the kind of things that happen in any good company - after all the sun never set on The British Empire, right?

You may wish to continue to deny the facts, that is your prerogative, but here's a bit of factual reading to give you a new perspective on all the things you thought you already knew or didn't know. I think this article summarises nicely, and much more eloquently and lucid than I ever could, the condition you are suffering from. Call it delusion, if you wish...

"Deny the British empire's crimes? No, we ignore them.

There is one thing you can say for the Holocaust deniers: at least they know what they are denying. In order to sustain the lies they tell, they must engage in strenuous falsification. To dismiss Britain's colonial atrocities, no such effort is required. Most people appear to be unaware that anything needs to be denied.

The story of benign imperialism, whose overriding purpose was not to seize land, labour and commodities but to teach the natives English, table manners and double-entry book-keeping, is a myth that has been carefully propagated by the rightwing press. But it draws its power from a remarkable national ability to airbrush and disregard our past.

Last week's revelations, that the British government systematically destroyed the documents detailing mistreatment of its colonial subjects, and that the Foreign Office then lied about a secret cache of files containing lesser revelations, is by any standards a big story. But it was either ignored or consigned to a footnote by most of the British press. I was unable to find any mention of the secret archive on the Telegraph's website. The Mail's only coverage, as far as I can determine, was an opinion piece by a historian called Lawrence James, who used the occasion to insist that any deficiencies in the management of the colonies were the work of "a sprinkling of misfits, incompetents and bullies", while everyone else was "dedicated, loyal and disciplined".

The British government's suppression of evidence was scarcely necessary. Even when the documentation of great crimes is abundant, it is not denied but simply ignored. In an article for the Daily Mail in 2010, for example, the historian Dominic Sandbrook announced that "Britain's empire stands out as a beacon of tolerance, decency and the rule of law … Nor did Britain countenance anything like the dreadful tortures committed in French Algeria." Could he really have been unaware of the history he is disavowing?

Caroline Elkins, a professor at Harvard, spent nearly 10 years compiling the evidence contained in her book Britain's Gulag: the Brutal End of Empire in Kenya. She started her research with the belief that the British account of the suppression of the Kikuyu's Mau Mau revolt in the 1950s was largely accurate. Then she discovered that most of the documentation had been destroyed. She worked through the remaining archives, and conducted 600 hours of interviews with Kikuyu survivors – rebels and loyalists – and British guards, settlers and officials. Her book is fully and thoroughly documented. It won the Pulitzer prize. But as far as Sandbrook, James and other imperial apologists are concerned, it might as well never have been written.

Elkins reveals that the British detained not 80,000 Kikuyu, as the official histories maintain, but almost the entire population of one and a half million people, in camps and fortified villages. There, thousands were beaten to death or died from malnutrition, typhoid, tuberculosis and dysentery. In some camps almost all the children died.

The inmates were used as slave labour. Above the gates were edifying slogans, such as "Labour and freedom" and "He who helps himself will also be helped". Loudspeakers broadcast the national anthem and patriotic exhortations. People deemed to have disobeyed the rules were killed in front of the others. The survivors were forced to dig mass graves, which were quickly filled. Unless you have a strong stomach I advise you to skip the next paragraph.

Interrogation under torture was widespread. Many of the men were anally raped, using knives, broken bottles, rifle barrels, snakes and scorpions. A favourite technique was to hold a man upside down, his head in a bucket of water, while sand was rammed into his rectum with a stick. Women were gang-raped by the guards. People were mauled by dogs and electrocuted. The British devised a special tool which they used for first crushing and then ripping off testicles. They used pliers to mutilate women's breasts. They cut off inmates' ears and fingers and gouged out their eyes. They dragged people behind Land Rovers until their bodies disintegrated. Men were rolled up in barbed wire and kicked around the compound.

Elkins provides a wealth of evidence to show that the horrors of the camps were endorsed at the highest levels. The governor of Kenya, Sir Evelyn Baring, regularly intervened to prevent the perpetrators from being brought to justice. The colonial secretary, Alan Lennox-Boyd, repeatedly lied to the House of Commons. This is a vast, systematic crime for which there has been no reckoning.

No matter. Even those who acknowledge that something happened write as if Elkins and her work did not exist. In the Telegraph, Daniel Hannan maintains that just eleven people were beaten to death. Apart from that, "1,090 terrorists were hanged and as many as 71,000 detained without due process".

The British did not do body counts, and most victims were buried in unmarked graves. But it is clear that tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of Kikuyu died in the camps and during the round-ups. Hannan's is one of the most blatant examples of revisionism I have ever encountered.

Without explaining what this means, Lawrence James concedes that "harsh measures" were sometimes used, but he maintains that "while the Mau Mau were terrorising the Kikuyu, veterinary surgeons in the Colonial Service were teaching tribesmen how to deal with cattle plagues." The theft of the Kikuyu's land and livestock, the starvation and killings, the widespread support among the Kikuyu for the Mau Mau's attempt to reclaim their land and freedom: all vanish into thin air. Both men maintain that the British government acted to stop any abuses as soon as they were revealed.

What I find remarkable is not that they write such things, but that these distortions go almost unchallenged. The myths of empire are so well-established that we appear to blot out countervailing stories even as they are told. As evidence from the manufactured Indian famines of the 1870s and from the treatment of other colonies accumulates, British imperialism emerges as no better and in some cases even worse than the imperialism practised by other nations. Yet the myth of the civilising mission remains untroubled by the evidence."

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/co...es-ignore-atrocities

Frank F posted:

The big problems with EU are the European Court of Justice, the European Court of Human Rights and the European Commission.  They all interfere with the existing National Standards which are much higher than the majority of  the Member States and appear to be out of control.

Frank, you appear a fairly intelligent person so I'm not sure if you are confusing the two institutions because of what is in the news or general confusion... but the EU is nothing to do with the European Court of Human Rights.  While it is true that to be a member of the EU requires signing up for the European Convention on Human Rights, leaving the EU will not mean we (the UK) are no longer subject to the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights.

 

Finally, I think (and correct me if I am wrong) that loosing the single market only means that UK will have to negotiate individually with each Member State (and the rest of the World).  In this way UKI can concentrate on buying good Spanish vegetables, excellent Polish apples and good produce from the rest of the World and then forget the inefficient common agricultural policy that supports poor standards and chemically grown produce.

Incorrect (afaik), being a member of the EU means that individual member states can not negotiate separate trade deals.  That was one of the arguments for leaving.

PS. Sorry reading that first paragraph back sounds rather condescending perhaps... I was just meaning that "leaving the ECHR" was one of the superfluous reasons some people gave pre-referendum as to why we should leave the EU.

totemphile posted:

Tarquin Maynard-Portly posted:

 

You don't like what I say...

I'm not denying anything (unlucky) but the facts are that most of our former Colonies choose to remain members of the Commonwealth. 

Factually accurate, so not something you can "question".  Its nothing like the current relationship between Germany and other EU Nations. Nothing at all. 

We also realised many years ago that we'd need to change our behaviours and did so. We withdrew from the former subject Nations. The US remains on land originally populated by other people. 

Not sure why you raise slavery - annoying for some, as vile as the slave trade was, slaves where purchased from Africans and the Barbary Pirates captured many whites, selling them and using them as slaves. 

Which is why we led the world in abolishing the vile trade, and played a major part in stamping it out. 

Tschuss. 

 

It's not that I don't like what you say, I couldn't care less whether I like it or not. What I do care about is that you make it out as if there never was a thing that went wrong in The British Empire, except for some minor "unlucky" instances of course, you know, the kind of things that happen in any good company - after all the sun never set on The British Empire, right?

You may wish to continue to deny the facts, that is your prerogative, but here's a bit of factual reading to give you a new perspective on all the things you thought you already knew or didn't know. I think this article summarises nicely, and much more eloquently and lucid than I ever could, the condition you are suffering from. Call it delusion, if you wish...

 

"Deny the British empire's crimes? No, we ignore them.

There is one thing you can say for the Holocaust deniers: at least they know what they are denying. In order to sustain the lies they tell, they must engage in strenuous falsification. To dismiss Britain's colonial atrocities, no such effort is required. Most people appear to be unaware that anything needs to be denied.

The story of benign imperialism, whose overriding purpose was not to seize land, labour and commodities but to teach the natives English, table manners and double-entry book-keeping, is a myth that has been carefully propagated by the rightwing press. But it draws its power from a remarkable national ability to airbrush and disregard our past.

Last week's revelations, that the British government systematically destroyed the documents detailing mistreatment of its colonial subjects, and that the Foreign Office then lied about a secret cache of files containing lesser revelations, is by any standards a big story. But it was either ignored or consigned to a footnote by most of the British press. I was unable to find any mention of the secret archive on the Telegraph's website. The Mail's only coverage, as far as I can determine, was an opinion piece by a historian called Lawrence James, who used the occasion to insist that any deficiencies in the management of the colonies were the work of "a sprinkling of misfits, incompetents and bullies", while everyone else was "dedicated, loyal and disciplined".

The British government's suppression of evidence was scarcely necessary. Even when the documentation of great crimes is abundant, it is not denied but simply ignored. In an article for the Daily Mail in 2010, for example, the historian Dominic Sandbrook announced that "Britain's empire stands out as a beacon of tolerance, decency and the rule of law … Nor did Britain countenance anything like the dreadful tortures committed in French Algeria." Could he really have been unaware of the history he is disavowing?

Caroline Elkins, a professor at Harvard, spent nearly 10 years compiling the evidence contained in her book Britain's Gulag: the Brutal End of Empire in Kenya. She started her research with the belief that the British account of the suppression of the Kikuyu's Mau Mau revolt in the 1950s was largely accurate. Then she discovered that most of the documentation had been destroyed. She worked through the remaining archives, and conducted 600 hours of interviews with Kikuyu survivors – rebels and loyalists – and British guards, settlers and officials. Her book is fully and thoroughly documented. It won the Pulitzer prize. But as far as Sandbrook, James and other imperial apologists are concerned, it might as well never have been written.

Elkins reveals that the British detained not 80,000 Kikuyu, as the official histories maintain, but almost the entire population of one and a half million people, in camps and fortified villages. There, thousands were beaten to death or died from malnutrition, typhoid, tuberculosis and dysentery. In some camps almost all the children died.

The inmates were used as slave labour. Above the gates were edifying slogans, such as "Labour and freedom" and "He who helps himself will also be helped". Loudspeakers broadcast the national anthem and patriotic exhortations. People deemed to have disobeyed the rules were killed in front of the others. The survivors were forced to dig mass graves, which were quickly filled. Unless you have a strong stomach I advise you to skip the next paragraph.

Interrogation under torture was widespread. Many of the men were anally raped, using knives, broken bottles, rifle barrels, snakes and scorpions. A favourite technique was to hold a man upside down, his head in a bucket of water, while sand was rammed into his rectum with a stick. Women were gang-raped by the guards. People were mauled by dogs and electrocuted. The British devised a special tool which they used for first crushing and then ripping off testicles. They used pliers to mutilate women's breasts. They cut off inmates' ears and fingers and gouged out their eyes. They dragged people behind Land Rovers until their bodies disintegrated. Men were rolled up in barbed wire and kicked around the compound.

Elkins provides a wealth of evidence to show that the horrors of the camps were endorsed at the highest levels. The governor of Kenya, Sir Evelyn Baring, regularly intervened to prevent the perpetrators from being brought to justice. The colonial secretary, Alan Lennox-Boyd, repeatedly lied to the House of Commons. This is a vast, systematic crime for which there has been no reckoning.

No matter. Even those who acknowledge that something happened write as if Elkins and her work did not exist. In the Telegraph, Daniel Hannan maintains that just eleven people were beaten to death. Apart from that, "1,090 terrorists were hanged and as many as 71,000 detained without due process".

The British did not do body counts, and most victims were buried in unmarked graves. But it is clear that tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of Kikuyu died in the camps and during the round-ups. Hannan's is one of the most blatant examples of revisionism I have ever encountered.

Without explaining what this means, Lawrence James concedes that "harsh measures" were sometimes used, but he maintains that "while the Mau Mau were terrorising the Kikuyu, veterinary surgeons in the Colonial Service were teaching tribesmen how to deal with cattle plagues." The theft of the Kikuyu's land and livestock, the starvation and killings, the widespread support among the Kikuyu for the Mau Mau's attempt to reclaim their land and freedom: all vanish into thin air. Both men maintain that the British government acted to stop any abuses as soon as they were revealed.

What I find remarkable is not that they write such things, but that these distortions go almost unchallenged. The myths of empire are so well-established that we appear to blot out countervailing stories even as they are told. As evidence from the manufactured Indian famines of the 1870s and from the treatment of other colonies accumulates, British imperialism emerges as no better and in some cases even worse than the imperialism practised by other nations. Yet the myth of the civilising mission remains untroubled by the evidence."

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/co...es-ignore-atrocities

 

 

Such a shame that, while you've typed *such* a lengthy reply ( too long to bother with) you've not noted that I've said - three or four times - that I deny nothing. 

PS -looks like >80% of your spiel is cut and paste from a book review...  Tut. 

Frank F posted:

I stand corrected but did Cameron not propose a UK Bill of Human Rights the would replace UK commitments without too much dilution.

Well "dilution" is all in the eye of the beholder.  Many people had (have) grave doubts over the thinking behind the Bill of Rights legislation.  There have been some bad outcomes for the UK from the ECHR but there have also been strides forward in legislation pushed by the ECHR.  

The main reason for disliking it amongst politicians is that the righter wing MSM (main stream media) have picked a few cases and ran with them.  They of course have their own agenda and generally misrepresent the rulings from the ECHR too.

The case of someone arguing that a criminal should stay in UK rather than go to a Greek jail even though Greece is part of the convention is an example.  This argument seems to me only an excuse to make money and maybe Cam and Theteressa are correct?

Teressa May hates the ECHR because she actually had to have responsibility for someone she wanted to deport and because they make mass surveillance she is so in love with (despite its doubtful usefulness) trickier.  Cameron hated the ECHR because it ruled that there can't be an automatic ban on prisoners voting.  Politicians hate any power / anyone who thwarts them from doing whatever they like.

Generally though I feel the ECHR is a force for good and by holding ourselves to account with a "higher power" makes the UK more effective in pressuring other countries and holding them to account.  Taking the moral high ground as it were.

For example, how can the UK government criticise Turkey for considering suspending their commitment to ECHR which will mean they WILL restrict human rights as they see fit, when we are considering similar.

As an aside, I worked in the Commission for some time as a Detached Expert and have first hand experience of the biased decisions and tonterias (stupidities) that they produce.

The problem is (IMO) this is no worse than national government.  

I'm not blind to the failings of the EU.  But weighing up the evidence think that the UK was better as part of it: the benefits outweighing the negatives which for the most part could have been controlled and mitigated better by our own government.

The main issue with the EU was this abstract concept of sovereignty... the fact we were agreeing to legislation not directly passed by our own government.  But the truth is that most of that legislation was to allow trading on an equal basis with others in Europe, has generally improved the UK and the UK workforce, in some cases is irrelevant to the UK (some legislation passed refers to very specific situations in specific countries) and for the most part the UK have agreed with anyway.