Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Tamas]

Anyone who is over 40 and claims the decade they were in their 20s just so happened to be the best decade ever is automatically ignored by me.

Also applies to the decade of their teenage years.

[Barrister]

Anyone who is over 40 and claims the decade they were in their 20s just so happened to be the best decade ever is automatically ignored by me.

Also applies to the decade of their teenage years.

I hear what you're saying, but the period from lets say 93 to 2001 were a pretty good time to be alive (and I just so happened to be 18-26 in that time span)...

[Sheilbh]

Of course, the pollsters have altered their methods again after blowing it in 2017 so while we probably could know how the 2017 polls would have looked with 2019 methods at the moment the two sets of headline figures are probably not directly comparable. However, Corbyn closed that gap to 2.5 percent over the course of the campaign.

They didn't really blow it. They captured the fact that there was a sudden consolidation of the Labour vote - YouGov got pretty close to the result in their predictions. The predictors just got how to extrapolate from national polls to seats wrong, but the polls captured what was happening. Also a lot of reporters and commentators were quite cynical even as the polls moved (I was the same).

But it is arguably even more difficult this time round. Especially as an unprecedented number of voters have switched parties in recent years and our polls were incredibly stable from 2017 until February this year when both parties collapsed. I think the initial post-election YouGov polls look a little like 2017, a FPTP squeeze:
[img]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EIcNB4rXUAEAttS?format=png&name=4096x4096/img]

[One thing that's been pointed out on UK polling report is that the age breakdown in the polls of where the majority of respondents support Labour switches to where the majority of respondents support Tory has got younger compared to 2017; I think one poster commented that it suggests that a lot of people who remember or who were born close enough to the 1970s to still feel the aftermath took fright at the probable Labour manifesto. It was about a six year drop in age compared to 2017, I believe.]

Yeah. The point at which voters switch from Labour majority to Tory majority has shifted. Cameron had it down to about 35, May took it to about 50, Johnson's apparently got it at somewhere around 45.

I think it's less to do with the 70s than, to be crudely materialist (:Marx:), about the fact that older people have capital and have property and are voting for their material interests. Younger people don't (and the age at which they do is increasing) and they're voting for their material interests.

But against Corbyn the throwback and Swinson the shouter? It may work.

It strikes me as being like "Strong and Stable", a slogan that doesn't poll well and kind of gets dropped mid-campaign.

It'll be interesting to see how Swinson does. She is the only genuinely fresh candidate.

Its rather more the Corbyn loves the IRA/hamas/whoever and is a communist (which just means bad thing) nonsense than any association with labour in the 70s.

I mean Corbyn and his team do kind of love the IRA and Hamas.

[Sheilbh]

Anyone who is over 40 and claims the decade they were in their 20s just so happened to be the best decade ever is automatically ignored by me.

I doubt I'll ever claim the years of roughly 2008-18 as the best decade ever

[Iormlund]

Anyone who is over 40 and claims the decade they were in their 20s just so happened to be the best decade ever is automatically ignored by me.

Also applies to the decade of their teenage years.

I hear what you're saying, but the period from lets say 93 to 2001 were a pretty good time to be alive (and I just so happened to be 18-26 in that time span)...

The one thing I definitely think was better was being able to do dumb, stupid shit without having it immortalized.

[celedhring]

Anyone who is over 40 and claims the decade they were in their 20s just so happened to be the best decade ever is automatically ignored by me.

Also applies to the decade of their teenage years.

I hear what you're saying, but the period from lets say 93 to 2001 were a pretty good time to be alive (and I just so happened to be 18-26 in that time span)...

Yeah. Near constant economic growth, little international tension, the good seasons of X-Files...

[Sheilbh]

Unrelated we have a new Speaker! The picture he tweeted at the weekend watching the England - South Africa Rugby World Cup final suggests he may be a tad less media-savvy than John Bercow:


Also as Robert Colville pointed out a wonderful time for BBC Parliament:
"If the Speaker is elected today and then not re-elected after the election, would that be the shortest term for a Speaker?"
"Well there was one man who was elected speaker and then declared a heretic by the Archbishop of Canterbury the next day. It was 1399."

Edit: Of course my preference would be to force Betty Boothroyd to return from the House of Lords, but from the Guardian video, he seems like he'll do.

[Josquius]

Anyone who is over 40 and claims the decade they were in their 20s just so happened to be the best decade ever is automatically ignored by me.

Also applies to the decade of their teenage years.

Definitely a factor. But here we are comparing the 70s and 80s across which many peoples youths stretched.
My dad, who is my main source for the regular guy of the era, was a teen in the 70s and his 20s in the 80s: he has a lot of good things to say about the 80s for him personally but is under no illusion that was a horrible time for most in the north.


Also, I really have to say despite it taking up the bulk of my 20s but the 2010s sucked. :p

[Sheilbh]

Compared to the 80s though I really do think the perception you see dominating the media is down to some very shrewd victors rewriting the narrative and making the mistake of taking overarching gdp figures and the like as representative of people's lives.

I'd say if anything it's the opposite. I can't think of a positive cultural depiction of the 80s/Thatcherism/Southern loadsamoneys.

It's arguably one of the most interesting things about Thatcher is that despite the success at the time, culturally the left won. From Yosser Hughes and Auf Wiedersehn, Pet, through to Billy Elliott, Pride, the Red Riding books and TV shows, GB84 and even Baga Chipz on Drag Race UK - the victors really didn't write the narrative.

[Agelastus]

The 50s were undoubtedly worse than the 70s. From all I hear from people old enough to be adults in that period it was really quite horrible with all the rationing, the news being full of the government's  futile waste of time and effort to stop Britain's decline from great power status, and attempts to attempts to undo what had been gained out of the war (as Attlees government was seen).

The Fifties started badly but improved as the Tories got the country off the ration - it is actually a fairly damning indictment of Attlee's running of the country between 1945 and 1951 that more things were on the ration in 1951 than that were in 1945; neither the ideological nor circumstantial causes of this excuse it. And as for attempts to undo what was done after the war by Attlee steel was about the only major industry affected by that; the NHS etc. had already become an untouchable shibboleth.

Which is a shame as the railways really could have done with re-privatising, or at least being broken back up into the big four* with semi-public ownership if full privatisation was a step too far, as this might have avoided the disastrous and costly failure of the 1954 "modernisation" plan. Modernisation was needed but more locally based planning would hopefully have avoided some of the, for example, massive over-ordering of diesels - many of which came from manufacturers with no experience of building them who thus produced crap that was retired even before the steam engines they were due to replace.

Of course, some of the issues couldn't be solved locally (such as the "common carrier" problem) and the government fumbled this with the historical plan so it probably would have done with the companies partly returned to private ownership being responsible for modernisation as well.

Middle aged people I know pretty overwhelmingly look on the 70s well. It probably helps that they were young at the time. But overall the story is if you wanted a job you could get one, if you had a problem in your street you would call the council and they would fix it, wealth was spread far more equally and you went out to towns all around rather than just automatically to the big city. Places that no outsider willingly goes to today attracted visitors from all over on the weekend.

I'm old enough to be middle-aged now...

I still don't have the same impression you have from my circle of acquaintances, although again, to be fair, it is probably much more limited than yours.

I don't believe you will find many members of my extended family of that age who agree with you and from what I know of them most would have had a decent Seventies themselves. If I recall my family history correctly the Seventies is when my extended family started extending to the USA, Australia and Malawi as parts of it emigrated.


*While I am aware that you and I fundamentally disagree on privatisation I am sure you recall that I have said before that I am not happy with the specifics of the current system - the privatisation should have been more along the lines of the "big four" model with the companies having responsibility for the tracks as well as the trains.

[Agelastus]

It strikes me as being like "Strong and Stable", a slogan that doesn't poll well and kind of gets dropped mid-campaign.

Well, since the whole campaign was about implementing the referendum result the "stable" part was something of an oxymoron!

While I am, and have been for over 20 years, pro-leave I am well aware that there will be short term issues even if I believe the long-term to be for the better for the country.

I hope the current Conservative campaign is not employing the same "Talent" for their campaign slogans this time.

It'll be interesting to see how Swinson does. She is the only genuinely fresh candidate.

Well, she's not impressed me yet. But then neither did Menzies Campbell, Tim Farron or Vince Cable.

Clegg impressed me, and Ashdown*, and Steel back when they were the Liberals without the redundant "Democrats" in their name**. As for Charles Kennedy...I'm not sure. I remember liking him as an individual but not being overly impressed with him as a party leader. It was sad what happened to him though.



*Even if I do mentally call him Paddy "Pantsdown" about 80% of the time I think of him.

**I know why it is there but it is still redundant and should be dropped.

[Sheilbh]

I see Jacob Rees-Mogg has been let out in public again.

Interestingly his comments are taking off on Facebook. At the last election it was the fox hunting and ivory stuff that got traction on Facebook. Again doesn't look like the Tories have learned much from 2017

Unrelated but I swear the Remain/People's Vote campaign would storm to victory if they just campaigned on Brexit ending our role in the EU pet passport scheme, meaning a return to quarantine.

[Agelastus]

I see Jacob Rees-Mogg has been let out in public again.

Speaking on LBC's Nick Ferrari's show on Monday, Mr Rees-Mogg said: "The more one's read over the weekend about the report and about the chances of people surviving, if you just ignore what you're told and leave you are so much safer.

"And I think if either of us were in a fire, whatever the fire brigade said, we would leave the burning building. It just seems the common sense thing to do.

"And it is such a tragedy that that didn't happen."

Mr Rees-Mogg said on Tuesday: "What I meant to say is that I would have also listened to the fire brigade's advice to stay and wait at the time.

"However, with what we know now and with hindsight I wouldn't and I don't think anyone else would. I would hate to upset the people of Grenfell if I was unclear in my comments."

Yes, for a man who tries to portray an image of wit, erudition and urbanity (in an old-fashioned way) he has a definite tendency to put his foot in it.

I doubt his clarification has helped either as there's good reasons for the "stay in place" advice and people who live in tower blocks who weren't aware of it before are probably aware of it now because of Grenfell leading them to look more carefully at their own residence's fire precautions.

Many tower blocks of the era do have the correct cladding, and the issue with the staying in place advice is as much a function of their design as the need to allow firemen access. They were designed so that a fire could be kept isolated to each apartment and floor by fire barriers as they were not being equipped with stairs and other accesses that could adequately evacuate the residents all at once. The failure of the cladding at Grenfell bypassed these barriers inherent to the design of the structure. (This "compartmentation" policy is discussed in chapter 4 of the Phase 1 Grenfell Report, although a cursory glance at suggests that it doesn't seem to include the issue of inadequate evacuation capacity being purposely designed into the buildings because of this strategy - that is an assertion from architectural articles concerning the buildings of the period.)

The visual images of the blaze suggest that the Fire Brigade should have altered their advice earlier but that is an issue with their command and control once on site and communications back to HQ more than a flaw in the initial advice that was given with what they knew at the time.

[The Larch]

I see Jacob Rees-Mogg has been let out in public again.

Interestingly his comments are taking off on Facebook. At the last election it was the fox hunting and ivory stuff that got traction on Facebook. Again doesn't look like the Tories have learned much from 2017

Ivory stuff?

[HVC]

I see Jacob Rees-Mogg has been let out in public again.

Interestingly his comments are taking off on Facebook. At the last election it was the fox hunting and ivory stuff that got traction on Facebook. Again doesn’t look like the Tories have learned much from 2017

Ivory stuff?

With Rees-Mogg that could either mean ivory tower, or he literally shot an elephant in the face. I too am confused