ForenSix Opposition - Politics in the Soon To Be Former UK in Autumn 2020

If you can murder someone Sir Kieth to steal their train ticket these days,

is good self sufficiency an important metric? or, to put it another way, does it matter?

is good self sufficiency an important metric? or, to put it another way, does it matter?

need more lebensraum, need more Australian bacon rather than Danish!

There's plenty of raum to leben in Scotland.

"If you pretend the U.K. is a small, powerless, hot-air factory, you can ignore the arms trade, propping up dictators"

I got this link from a slightly "tin-hatty" twitter poster about the UK's huge *invisible* military industrial complex (something like 140+ foreign military bases) which is not something the UK govt boasts about very often!

yeah, national military pride boasting - lots, inaccurately, dark nasty military stuff - not so much, also inaccurately.

> ‘lol, we are a small insignificant joke of a place with delusions of grandeur’

but isn't the flip side of this british exceptionalism? and that's dangerous too.

(i guess the truth is somewhere in the middle, "Parts of it are excellent!")

yeah it's the binary stuff that's dangerous. people who aren't capable of saying 'these things are good, how do we build on that' 'these things aren't so good, how do we make them better' are a problem, because you have 'fix everything' solutions like brexit, or remaining in europe will solve everything.

There are specific ways in which the UK won't be able to feed into climate change response because it isn't part of the EU anymore, I think. So it may have less power.

And by becoming poorer and more insular we will be on the path to perhaps closing some of those bases, but still exporting hardware and the like and doing more of the nastier stuff. Maybe like a Gulf-style state?

I have never heard the word 'cadastral' before.

"i count population size as one of those things you should just *know* and they should beat into you with a stick at school"

It's probably a good thing to know, but I'm not sure it's more important than knowing a thousand other things, eg: mathematical skills, cooking, history of medical science, history of forms of government, how solar energy works.

(i guess the truth is somewhere in the middle, "Parts of it are excellent!")

Not sure I'd be using too many words like excellent tbh. I get irritated by people saying stuff that is plainly untrue however.

I have never heard the word 'cadastral' before.

I thought it was that thing where Derek Jacobi played a monk.

I don't think I know anyone who knows the population size of most countries, so Fizzles, the former chimp, has a lot of beating to do with his stick.

> Not sure I'd be using too many words like excellent tbh

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:True_humility.png

I don't think I know anyone who knows the population size of most countries, so Fizzles, the former chimp, has a lot of beating to do with his stick.

― the pinefox, Saturday, 12 December 2020 11:47 bookmarkflaglink

totally agree. but i think it's one of those useful 'world knowledge' items that is worth knowing, just for purposes of proportions and relative understanding.

I'd expect people to know that the UK is one the bigger countries in Europe, in terms of population, at least.

that country.meters link I posted upthread is excellent btw. It's essential if you find yourself wracked with anxiety and insomnia and wondering how many people currently live in Indonesia and how rapid was their population boom in the post war years, like you do.

conversely, i was amazed when i realised how small england is in land mass size. less than twice the size of the free state. My sense that it was so much bigger was inflated by the presence of scotland and wales and the relative differences in population.

ireland c. 70k km2 and england c. 130k km2

an arctic canadian island with a population of 12 you say

*googles "nunavut visas" *

i spent some time dicking about on the open data site, when i was trying to find out more about an estimation that the world population would top out at ~9 billion. i think the current estimation there is 11 billion, but i still don't really get what causes it to change. i guess life expectancy and fertility rates?

the UN open data site, sorry.

blimey, there is a lot to look at there!

lol i know. more food for your insomnia travels.

My recollection is UK population now is 67 million. And has grown by 10 million since ... 10 years ago? 30 years ago?

I think the figure is bigger than Spain.

^
My attempt at Fizzles' basic knowledge.

The UK is so keen to protect its fishing boats, but what about the fishing boat of Louis Mountbatten it failed to protect on 27 August 1979...?

— Father Pissmas Shitty (@doctor___fuck) December 12, 2020

Lol, nice

My recollection is UK population now is 67 million. And has grown by 10 million since ... 10 years ago? 30 years ago?

I think the figure is bigger than Spain.

^
My attempt at Fizzles' basic knowledge.

there's a chart of growth at the link calzino posted. spikes in 1963 and 2008

https://countrymeters.info/en/United_Kingdom_(UK)

you'll probably need to add a ) to that url due to long-standing ilx bug!

One thing I've noticed people are also surprised to hear (as was I when I saw the stats) is that only in recent years has what passes for Greater London's population exceeded its previous peak from the 1930s. The figures from back then are from the ONS matching the census data they have with the boundaries as defined in 2001.

london popn was declining right thru to the ,mid-1980s iirc -- one reason why there was lots of unused property and semi-tolerated squatting and so on

Honestly the mental gymnastics of The Observer describing the Tories winning 63% of Leave voters as "Starmer winning Leave Voters!" is incredible pic.twitter.com/TCtfFjhG1V

— Morgan Paulett 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 (@MorganPaulett) December 12, 2020

latest Opinionium poll: kieth not 20 pts ahead (in fact 2 pts behind)

very interesting Observer poll analysis: kieth is winning over tory leave voters

Wait does the Oberzerwer think Leave voters are good now?

london popn was declining right thru to the ,mid-1980s iirc -- one reason why there was lots of unused property and semi-tolerated squatting and so on

closet brexiteer jeremy corbyn was way more anti brexit as a leader than his successor has been and it’s amazing how little the EU flag fuckers seem to care

I even knew those facts about London population!

There is one truly big expert on TfL revenues on ILX. I will not, nay, need not, remind you of his name.

is there any hope of london ever becoming remotely affordable again

where do you live

is there any hope of london ever becoming remotely affordable again

how many merman shells do you get to the pound these days?

Merman shells? German shells?

Bio-domes don't come cheap you know, imagine the carbon monoxide-recycling costs alone

Isn't part of the reason for the tiny island perception that in a lot of ppl's heads the immediate points of comparison are either the US or the EU as a whole?

where do you live

kingston, or sometimes croydon, edinburgh, other ppl’s houses- kingston won’t house me or cover local rents. but the inner boroughs sound even worse

xp we also had a massive empire & haven’t got over losing most of it

Isn't part of the reason for the tiny island perception that in a lot of ppl's heads the immediate points of comparison are either the US or the EU as a whole?

Hmmmm, possibly, Europe rather than the EU though. There so many things going on here, depending on your politics: plucky little Britain; crowded little Britain; insignificant little Britain; delusional little Britain.

This is part of my "fuck positive patriotism" rationale: the same ideas and myths fuel the alleged nice guy patriotism as much as the race hate version. Pluckiness, eccentricity, always the underdog. Enslaved half the world for cheap shirts ffs