Malign incompetence of the British ruling class

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/opinion/sunday/brexit-ireland-empire.html

by fanf2 • 8 years ago

23 17 8 years ago

earnubs• 8 years ago

To quote Marcus Leroux (@marcusleroux):

"I will accept being called a settler by the New York Times only if the New York Times accepts it is a settler publication. (Plantation of Ulster: 1609. Arrival of Mayflower at the conveniently-named Plymouth Rock: 1620)."

https://twitter.com/marcusleroux/status/1085885980173832192

borvo• 8 years ago

He misses the point by a mile, as do his twitter correspondents. If we're to indulge him let's ask if the staff of the "nytimes" consider themselves "American" or if they're stuck in a time warp clinging to a 1609 "British" identity that even the British no longer recognize.

sctb• 8 years ago

Related discussion from yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18935572.

gaius• 8 years ago

imposing a patently unworkable timetable of two years

That simply isn’t true - the 2 years is written into Article 50! Any PM would have faced the same timetable.

datdata• 8 years ago

I think he is implying that by triggering Article 50 before any preparation has been undertaken you are imposing a 2 year deadline.

sago• 8 years ago

I think the point is that there was no compulsion to begin the two-year countdown before any plan was formed or a strategy agreed.

I agree that I don't think another PM would've been obviously more clear thinking. And I also think two years should've been plenty of time, if the government hadn't run the clock down quite so spectacularly. As late as October, EU negotiators were pleading with Britain to figure out what deal it wanted.

But the comparison with Mountbatten isn't invalid: the timing itself is a self-inflicted wound.

candiodari5• 8 years ago

Maybe it's just me but unless I'm really blind, it seems to me that the British ruling class is doing everything it possibly can to avoid a Brexit, including sabotaging democracy, and generally grasping at straws. They're also clearly expecting to lose a lot of money in the process.

The support for cutting out the EU is very much carried by the worker class, and this seems to be done very much in open conflict with the ruling class. Even most of the conservative

drcongo4• 8 years ago

I think there's probably quite a lot you're missing, which is not a criticism because there's simply so much at play with Brexit. The ruling classes, or more accurately a particular branch of it, are very much driving Brexit as they're disaster capitalists - they know it's going to cause misery to millions of people, but they stand to personally profit hugely from it. Owners of tabloid newspapers have for years been fuelling the anger that has led to the working classes backing the idea. Our newspapers regularly run stories, that are out and out false, about immigration, EU bureaucracy, migration etc. It's straight up propaganda as a long game designed to enrich a few people.

candiodari5• 8 years ago

"Owners of tabloid newspapers" ... you and I have very different ideas from who and what the British ruling class are.

Might I suggest you put yourself through another test. Get a job at the local McDonalds (or a cleaner, or driver, or ...). Look at the conditions, look who takes the jobs and why. Because it will make it VERY obvious what needs to change, and why exiting the EU is seen as a viable option.

I understand why you say that Brexit won't help with that (although I do think it might make it possible to prevent things from deteriorating further). And I even agree with that assessment, you see, but at least take a look at the other side of the argument from the perspective of the other side of the argument.

agurk• 8 years ago

Churchill displayed in his long career a similarly imperial insouciance toward Ireland, sending countless young Irishmen to their deaths in a catastrophic military fiasco at Gallipoli, Turkey, during World War I and unleashing brutal paramilitaries against Irish nationalists in 1920.

I was unaware of the Irish serving at Gallipoli so I looked it up[0] and apparently 15,000 served with 3,000 fatalities - a similar number to New Zealanders.

Interestingly there never was conscription in Ireland - it was planned later in the war but never implemented due to the crisis it created[1].

[0] https://www.independent.ie/life/world-war-1/sea-at-gallipoli...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_Crisis_of_1918

Malign incompetence of the British ruling class

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