Year is 2190. The British PM is visiting EU to ask for another year extension for Brexit. Nobody remembers how this custom started but everybody is very happy and the event attracts yearly and endless crowd of tourists...

(translating from a friend's post in a different forum)

[url]https://xkcd.com/2218/[/url]

[QUOTE=LaurV;528594]Year is 2190. The British PM is visiting EU to ask for another year extension for Brexit. Nobody remembers how this custom started but everybody is very happy and the event attracts yearly and endless crowd of tourists...

(translating from a friend's post in a different forum)[/QUOTE]

PM will request Google’s quantum computer help to solve Brexit.


[url]https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2019/10/24/google-has-achieved-quantum-supremacy-could-gamechanger-tech/[/url]

Not sure whether this belongs here or in a thread of its own. Doubtless another supermod can take corrective action if I've screwed up

The [URL="https://twitter.com/peterkyle/status/1206994631088578560"]Twitter thread[/URL] was initiated by a Labour MP. In case you've not been paying attention, he is a member of a political party currently licking its wounds arising from its worst performance for 84 years and, with a few honourable exceptions, blaming all and sundry for their predicament.

[url=https://www.thefullbrexit.com/post/what-corbyn-got-wrong-about-brexit]What Corbyn Got Wrong About Brexit[/url] | Lee Jones, The Full Brexit -- NC reader/contributor Clive [url=https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/12/links-12-17-19.html#comment-3258946]comments[/url]:
[quote]Re: What Corbyn Got Wrong About Brexit

From the article, right at the end, so easily missed:
[i]
This debacle has important lessons for the left everywhere. In an era where traditional left and social-democratic parties have dramatically weakened ties with their erstwhile working-class bases, they will very rarely, if ever, get to decide the terms on which people revolt against the neoliberal order, precisely because they are not leading the people. The people are, in fact, out in front of them. [b]If the left then reacts in horror, and recoils from the people and the prospect of fundamental change, the leadership of anti-establishment revolts will fall, merely by default, to the right.[/b]
[/i]
My emphasis, but the entire article is that rare thing at the moment — correct analysis.

The above paragraph should be pinned up on the wall of every UK Labour or US Democrat strategy meeting. It should be written on a post-it note and securely fastened to the screen of any progressive media outlet.

The article is well worth reading in full because it also conveys an oft-missed point that, while in the UK Brexit started as an anti-neoliberalism backlash, it certainly didn’t finish there. It let to the accretion of a whole lot of other things which had been swept under the rug and needed bringing out into the open — phoney liberal (or liberal-authoritarian) thought-leadership, mainstream media capture by the aforementioned, experts who were far from neutral explain’ers of the supposed-truths… too many to list here.[/quote]

[QUOTE=ewmayer;533130][url=https://www.thefullbrexit.com/post/what-corbyn-got-wrong-about-brexit]What Corbyn Got Wrong About Brexit[/url] | Lee Jones, The Full Brexit -- NC reader/contributor Clive [url=https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/12/links-12-17-19.html#comment-3258946]comments[/url]:[/QUOTE]
Dr. Jones had another "Full Brexit" analysis, [url=https://www.thefullbrexit.com/why-labour-lost]Why Labour Lost[/url], in which he says Labour failed to respect the voters:
[quote]Accordingly, short-term explanations about media bias or Boris Johnson duping gullible voters just won’t wash. Few working-class voters backed Johnson because his clownish behaviour fools them into thinking he is “one of them”. Few even expect the Tories to solve their problems – they know whose side the Conservatives are really on. Nor can anyone have been enthused by the Tories’ vision for post-Brexit Britain, because they do not have one: they merely promised to implement Brexit then “get on with” the normal business of government, adding a bit more public spending.

Rather, many working-class citizens have temporarily lent their vote to the Conservatives because they promise to respect the EU referendum result and, in the words of the only slogan that cut through in the dreary election campaign, “get Brexit done”. Despite Labour’s attempt to convince everyone that this was not a Brexit election, the choice was clearly between a Conservative majority government that would implement Brexit, and a Labour-led minority government that would negotiate a Brexit In Name Only deal and hold a second referendum clearly intended to overturn the first. Confronted with a choice between a party that honoured their vote, and one that did not, many people held their noses and voted Tory, despite the gargantuan spending pledges that Labour dangled before them in the vain hope that they would trade democracy for better public services.[/quote]

This NC piece is on a more general societal theme, but uses Brexit and the latest UK election as a lens:

[url=https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/12/the-loss-of-fair-play.html]The Loss of Fair Play[/url] | naked capitalism
[quote]This site regularly discusses the rise of neoliberalism and its consequences, such as rising inequality and lower labor bargaining rights. But it’s also important to understand that these changes were not organic but were the result of a well-financed campaign to change the values of judges and society at large to be more business-friendly. But the sacrifice of fair dealing as a bedrock business and social principle has had large costs.

We’ve pointed out how lower trust has increased contracting costs: things that use to be done on a handshake or a simple letter agreement are now elaborately papered up. The fact that job candidates will now engage in ghosting, simply stopping to communicate with a recruiter rather than giving a ritually minimalistic sign off, is a testament to how impersonal hiring is now perceived to be, as well as often-abused workers engaging in some power tit for tat when they can.

But on a higher level, the idea of fair play was about self-regulation of conduct. Most people want to see themselves as morally upright, even if some have to go through awfully complicated rationalizations to believe that. But when most individuals lived in fairly stable social and business communities, they had reason to be concerned that bad conduct might catch up with them. It even happens to a small degree now. Greg Lippmann, patient zero of toxic CDOs at Deutsche Bank, was unable to get his kids into fancy Manhattan private schools because his reputation preceded him. But the case examples for decades have gone overwhelmingly the other way. My belief is that a watershed event was the ability of Wall Street renegade, and later convicted felon Mike Milken, to rehabilitate himself spoke volumes as to the new normal of money trumping propriety.

Another aspect of the decline in the importance of fair dealing is the notion of the obligations of power, that individuals in a position of authority have a duty to those in their sway.

The abandonment of lofty-sounding principles like being fair has other costs. We’ve written about the concept of obliquity, how in complex systems, it’s not possible to chart a simple path though them because it’s impossible to understand it well enough to begin to do so. John Kay, who has made a study of the issue and eventually wrote a book about it, pointed out as an illustration that studies of similarly-sized companies in the same industry showed that ones that adopted nobler objectives did better in financial terms than ones that focused on maximizing shareholder value.

Our Brexit regulars wound up talking about these issues as part of a UK election post mortem...[/quote]

A note from Peter Woit's blog:
[URL]https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=11537[/URL]

[QUOTE=Nick;534442]A note from Peter Woit's blog:
[URL]https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=11537[/URL][/QUOTE]
(my emphasis)[quote]Demolition is definitely on the agenda for Cummings. The main target to be demolished is likely those aspects of the “establishment” that stand in the way of total control. [b]Here in the US we’ve seen how this works, as the Republican party and mass media (Fox) have been forced into submission to the Trump personality cult. In the case of Trump what has become clear is that he has no interests beyond narcissistic ones.[/b] Cummings/Johnson seem to want to destroy the establishment and take total power, with no more of an idea than Trump of what to do with this power, other than to gloat at the defeat of their enemies.[/quote]:tu:

Here in the good ol' USA, a lot of people would become apoplectic at such a bald statement of the blindingly obvious.

One minor quibble: That Trump is a narcissist, and is therefore [i]incapable[/i] of having any interests beyond narcissistic ones, has been clear for decades.

In case it wasn't already eminently clear months ago, we are officially deep into silly season:

[url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/27/brexit-50p-coin-boycott-philip-pullman-oxford-comma]Philip Pullman calls for boycott of Brexit 50p coin over 'missing' Oxford comma[/url] | Guardian.com: [i]Critics fume over the omission of Oxford comma from phrase ‘Peace, prosperity and friendship’ as new coin enters circulation[/i]

But note that I found some highly objectionable phrasing in the above article:
[quote]Three million coins bearing the slogan “Peace, prosperity and friendship with all nations” are due to enter circulation from 31 January, with Sajid Javid, chancellor of the exchequer, expressing his hope that the commemorative coin will mark “the beginning of this new chapter” as the UK leaves the European Union.[/quote]
ITTM
[quote]Three million coins bearing the slogan “Peace, prosperity and friendship with all nations” are due to enter circulation from 31 January, with Sajid Javid, chancellor of the exchequer expressing his hope that the commemorative coin will mark “the beginning of this new chapter” as the UK leaves the European Union.[/quote]
Lapsing into a language famously suitable for such grammatical disputes, such a [i]grober Verstoß gegen die moderne Rechtschreibung[/i] means war!

[QUOTE=ewmayer;536084]In case it wasn't already eminently clear months ago, we are officially deep into silly season:

[url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/27/brexit-50p-coin-boycott-philip-pullman-oxford-comma]Philip Pullman calls for boycott of Brexit 50p coin over 'missing' Oxford comma[/url] | Guardian.com: [i]Critics fume over the omission of Oxford comma from phrase ‘Peace, prosperity and friendship’ as new coin enters circulation[/i]

But note that I found some highly objectionable phrasing in the above article:
[quote]Three million coins bearing the slogan “Peace, prosperity and friendship with all nations” are due to enter circulation from 31 January, with Sajid Javid, chancellor of the exchequer, expressing his hope that the commemorative coin will mark “the beginning of this new chapter” as the UK leaves the European Union.[/quote]

Lapsing into a language famously suitable for such grammatical disputes, such a [i]grober Verstoß gegen die moderne Rechtschreibung[/i] means war![/QUOTE]

"Objectionable phrasing" is an understatement. (Spelling, I'm not overly picky about.)

My high school grammar teacher probably would have penciled in a big [size=4][b]r-o[/b][/size]. The following may be a bit of an improvement.

[center]Three million coins bearing the slogan "Peace, prosperity and friendship with all nations" are due to enter circulation from 31 January.

Sajid Javid, chancellor of the exchequer, expressed his hope that the commemorative coin will mark "the beginning of this new chapter" as the UK leaves the European Union.[/center]