Huguenot

Fun times

Ah! Not really, just followed the work :) I?m cruising merrily towards 50 now, just got married again! Moos seems really happy. We don?t chat, but exchange FB quips and family photos. I know she?s moving because FB is not as efficient as EDF when downsizing for a move.

I can?t be sure that I?ve got the right person because I can?t remember her username, but if she came to Singers too, she is just moving to Dubai soon!

Haha! Just moving to Guangzhou, and was thinking about times past!

Me, but not always!

Finding you all so well!

Hi guys :) Long time no speak! Southwark have explained that I need to proxy vote to get my vote in - it seems like the postal votes won't be released until 13th June, and the likelihood of that going to get to me and back again before the deadline is low. It's a big ask, with a lot of trust issues, but can one of you help me out on this? PM me?

Crikey - did my post from 7pm get 'moderated' out again??? It wasn't rude or insulting - it was addressing the flaws in the independence arguments. I've kept a copy and run it past a couple of mates here, no one can identify a problem with it. What exactly was wrong with it?

Incidentally, the European Voice describes itself as "essential independent insight into the Brussels beltway" Beltway??? What does that tell you?

Haha KirstyH, quite happy to argue at any level. Just offering a bit of the highland romance in favour of Britishness. There seems to have been a monopoly on romance from the 'Yes' team of late - it won't hurt you to feel a bit of the passion from the British now the referendum is over. Don't be churlish!

Haha, no EP, cannot quote you from twenty years ago! Can only paraphrase a brief exchange and a marvelous mental photo of a prematurely wizened claw shaping your point with total clarity ;-)

Phew, what a relief. It sounds somewhat nasal and priggish in my head when it's put like that. But, well, what a relief. Bloody hell. It's difficult to express the anxiety I felt about this whole destructive episode: "The markers of Britishness for me include empiricism, irony, the ad hoc approach, pluralism, and a critical awareness of its own rich and sometimes appalling history. It?s sceptical, too: it has seen a thing or two and knows nothing lasts. But perhaps what recommends it most is the frail senescence that makes it an undemanding kind of belonging, and unexpectedly fits it for the modern world. The untangling of the institutions ? military, administrative, academic, ambassadorial, commercial, cultural ? that have sustained this identity can?t but be painfully destructive. The past 300 years have not been about nothing." Modern Britishness is so vaporous. So poorly defined. So subject to the energy and visceral emotion of nationalism. So wispy in the face of economic imperative. But so damned important. Twenty years ago I heard El Pibe describe the value of things that lay just beyond your reach - things that could never be defined or seized upon without their very essence slipping between your fingers. It has remained deeply engrained within my psyche. "...a frail senescence..." What powerful words. Everything became petty about this Scottish independence campaign, compared with that frailty. Battered by this oh-so-unsubtle separatist bullshit, bludgeoned by the small mindedness of UKIP, I hope that the intangible and indefinable joy of our national identity isn't lost to the small minded idiots who dance on portacabins.

Same as UKIP - bullshit generally. Half witted at best.

My view is that the SNP have been very adept in migrating 'gut feel' emotional, historical and a sense of 'separate' identity issues into a false sense of rational, futuristic and deterministic ideals. It implies that Scotland would be better off alone. This would be the tragedy.

Haha Maxxi. I'm being pretty brutal with this analysis, it's clearly reductionist.

Ah! At last! I get the image to work - hard work off an iPad! I have pondered at will, especially after my spat with SJ, who I love and respect. This is supposed to be three dimensional. It's not about who you are, and how you consider yourself, but about what components have greatest influence when you consider the Scotland thing. What three factors influence where most votes lie, and what three factors drive you up the wall?

I often overstep the mark - but frankly SJ you have have continually made claims that I have said things that I simply have not, despite being corrected you have repeated the claim. This is a persistent smear. Nothing more. I think I'm entitled to lose my temper? Anyway, whatever.

Haha - moderators playing politics and deleting posts?

KirstyH, under your veneer of sensible comment, you make some pretty ridiculous and unpleasant generalizations. It's the most insidious behaviour. "You basically can't trust anyone in the UK to give you a clear line of the steps required". WTF?? Membership of the EU is nothing to do with deception from the UK. It's a trading block that relies on political goodwill. Many of those nations have petty separatists, some violent, and the members may look poorly upon the idea of endorsing the Scottish proposal. There is NO clear outcome at this stage. Your snot nosed swipe at the English is nothing more than a poorly disguised insult. The niggle at Canada is winsome. Scotland is part of an existing state, and you want to be separate, because you feel it serves your interests. 'Separatist' is exactly what it means. It's what you are. The 'factual' step by step approach to currency union is simply an attempt to disguise outcomes by process, and your attempt to claim that people are preventing this knowledge being shared is a deliberate misdirection. I can tell by your tone that you're a bright cookie, so I will not attempt to indulge it as a misunderstanding. The problem with 'currency union' is not that it cannot be enabled, but that the consequences of trying to run your economy on the decisions of a distant bank (whose priorities are elsewhere) is risible. Just ask Spain about Germany.

StraferJack - "But that paragraph doesn't negate or qualify the one where you call yes voters dicks, does it?" Except I never did. You're putting words in my mouth. Stop being a prick.

Read it here StraferJack, not 50 words from the out-of-context quote you are waving in order to pillory me: "I think I've been pretty consistent in my disdain for government by plebiscite. We have representative democracy because the avaerage guy in the street is simply not sufficiently informed to make a valid decision. It applies in this case." [sic]

I notice, incidentally, that the pound is in free fall. This is a situation that will raise investor doubts, increase the cost of lending, reduce business investment and drive the UK into a second recession probably lasting two or more years. Anyone who thinks that the short sighted male posturing of the Scottish separatist pathology is a harmless indulgence is woefully blind to the consequences.

"In Huguenots world, only dicks vote yes." I think that's what Otta means by putting words in people's mouths. I didn't say only dicks vote yes, I said clearly that the majority of people voting either way would be insufficiently informed to make a decision. The 'dicks' in this case described those peddlers of bullshit and nonsense willing to deceive the electorate with populist crap. "If that wouldn't want to make you vote yes.... " That's exactly what I mean by petty. It is shocking that almost 500 years of mutual history and 300 years of union could even be considered to be disposable on the basis that a self seeking nationalist leader was described, perfectly accurately, as a dick. The vote has no place in the hands of people who would draw such conclusions. This observation remains equally valid for an electorate who would even consider such a decision on the basis that they don't like the Tories (a party, don't forget, that has NO majority south of the border either). This is stupid little children stamping their feet, not national ambition. "Slack jawed ingrates" was a reference to people the world over who trash talk their own nation in spite of all evidence to the contrary. The world has seen a recession, the population is getting older, there is a pensions time bomb, healthcare costs are rapidly exceeding the ability of the electorate to fund them, and you can't give free education to your own kids when you're an individual member of the EU. That's the world - it's not some petty bullshit about not liking the Tories, and it won't get solved by jacking in 500 years of shared endeavour.

I don't think I had any particular expectations of the outcome - apart from that whatever the outcome it wouldn't be for the right reasons. My cynical side says the dicks will win, the eternal optimist tells me the arguments will win out, my rational self tells me just to wait and see. Career politicians are transitory - a decision like this should be about the good of the nation, not crowing over a slap in the face for politicians we don't like. It is shocking that voters are swayed by such petty justifications. I think I've been pretty consistent in my disdain for government by plebiscite. We have representative democracy because the avaerage guy in the street is simply not sufficiently informed to make a valid decision. It applies in this case.

What a very fine name!