So the UK is finished says Theresa Mayhem

[woolley]

5 minutes ago, Freggyragh said:

You didn’t understand my post. My point is that the rules of the Single Market differ very little from the rules agreed on in any bilateral trade agreement, so if the U.K. wants to engage in trade it has to abide by trade treaties. The choice is whether it wants to be on the inside helping to make the rules, or on the outside being dictated to by bigger markets. Oh, but yeah, but if you actually think the U.K. would be ‘taking back control’ of the terms of trade by leaving the organisation that makes them and dictating the rules to the big boys all by itself, then yeah, I can see where you’re coming from; cloud cuckoo land. 

I did understand. I didn't agree. That's what you don't understand. What the UK agrees is fine. What is imposed from "above" is not.

[Freggyragh]

1 hour ago, woolley said:

No. Because as evolution proves, once isolated the characteristics change and adapt in different directions. In our case we emerged with a distinct British identity having a shared experience of life in our islands. As I said, well over a thousand years of almost total homogeneity with only minor exceptions.

Farage, François, Raab, Johnson, Fox, - how very homogeneous they are. Not. You’re talking out of your hole again Mr Woolley. 

[woolley]

6 minutes ago, RIchard Britten said:

A straw man is a form of argument and an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while actually refuting an argument that was not presented by that opponent. 

You attempted to attribute a statement or position to me that I did not present myself, and then used that to attempt to refute the actual statement I made.

Box in your box granddad.

You presented an effect directly attributable to a policy but deny the connection. Box in your box too.

[woolley]

1 minute ago, Freggyragh said:

Farage, François, Raab, Johnson, Fox, - how very homogeneous they are. Not. You’re talking out of your hole again Mr Woolley. 

Well as the expert, you would know. The very idea of denying a distinct British identity is precisely that.

[RIchard Britten]

1 minute ago, woolley said:

You presented an effect directly attributable to a policy but deny the connection. Box in your box too.

You still used a straw man argument, which I called you out on.  It is not my fault that you are not able to understand your own mental gymnastics.

 

[RIchard Britten]

1 minute ago, woolley said:

Well as the expert, you would know. The very idea of denying a distinct British identity is precisely that.

And how would you define this "distinct" British Identity?  Should ask someone who live in London, Birmingham, St Ives or York?  Maybe someone in their 20's, 50's or 80's?  Someone Caucasian, Black or Asian?  Someone who grew up on a council estate, in the suburbs or in Kensington?

 

[Barrie Stevens]

At school I was taught if I recall aright that the Romans made reference to the "little Brits" meaning Britons and invented the image of Britannia.. King James 1/VI proclaimed the Union Flag in 1606 when apparently we first see the term "Great Britain" itself a translation of the Roman name the other Britain being "Little Britain" or Brittany...The term Great Britain came in and took hold around the 1707 Act of Union as they were not sure what to call the new creation so formally used the old Roman name of Great Britain. However, Scotland also began to be known as North Britain although the term South Britain for England and Wales did not catch on. Way back in the mid 1950s the term "NB" for North Britain  was still being used when addressing envelopes for the post and I recall being instructed to do this. So this is when the term "British" came in but I suppose it is geopolitical. According to modern historians Paul Revere in 1775 did not say "The British are coming" he said "The regulars are coming".....(They tell me?)

[Barrie Stevens]

Proclaiming the union flag in 1606 looks a bid odd to me I would have thought later but that is what I have seen written down...

[rodders]

I've always believed England, Scotland and Wales were Great (as in large), Ireland was Minor Britain. I don't know where I learnt it though. Probably on here. 

 

[Barrie Stevens]

14 minutes ago, rodders said:

I've always believed England, Scotland and Wales were Great (as in large), Ireland was Minor Britain. I don't know where I learnt it though. Probably on here. 

 

The Romans originated it long before the countries making up the UK as now existed in their present form. The Romans were aware of two Britains. That is to say the mass of what is now England, Scotland and Wales. This they called Great Britain as they were aware of a small Britain which they referred to as Brittany or Little Britain/Lesser Britain. Ireland was seen as too cold to be of much comfort and was known as Hibernia as in hibernation. Eventually the Roman name Great Britain referred to the area south of Caledonia..

[Freggyragh]

That was a distinction based on language. Great Britain (England, parts of Scotland, Wales and Cornwall) and Little Britain (Brittany) spoke British (the older form of Welsh, Cornish and Breton). So, a thousand years ago British meant Welsh, varieties of which were spoken everywhere in these isles except the Gaelic speaking areas - Ireland, the West of Scotland and the Isle of Man. 

Angloish, or Anglo-Saxon,  (a mixture of languages spoken by the Jutes, from Denmark, Angles, from North Germany / South Denmark, the Saxons North Germany and the Frisians from Holland and Flanders) came later, after the Romans had gone, but didn’t become anything like what we know as English until it merged with Norman French, Latin and a host of other languages to form English - a language that did not exist anywhere near a thousand years ago.

 

 

Edited June 14, 2019 by Freggyragh

[Barrie Stevens]

The ancient Britons were au fait with Latin and to a lesser extent Greek long before the Roman colonisation and they used both sometimes in abbreviated form on their coins. Colchester museum has a collection of pre-Roman coins minted by the Trinovantes of Camulodunon in the Brythonic way or Camulodunum in Latin. ie Colchester. As Rome took hold the coins of the Britons gave way to Roman issue. I do not know what the Britons called themselves in their own language but the tribes seem all to have their names in Latin presumably because they had no clear written language themselves or so it is said. 

 

[Freggyragh]

So, here we have a culture formed by waves of immigration from Europe to add to the native Welsh, first from Ireland and France, then from Italy (and all areas under Rome, including North Africa and the Middle East), Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Holland, Germany and Belgium, then from Spain, Greece, Italy, Germany, Poland, , Central Europe (Roma) and France again (Huguenot refugees). By the time Disraeli (descended from Sephardic Jews from Spain and Italy) was PM there was mass immigration from Ireland, Belgium and Germany. Before WW2 there were refugees from the Basque Country and during WW2 and the postwar era there was further immigration from Italy, Poland, Germany, Czechia and Hungary, and later, from Malta, Cyprus, Poland and France. You could also talk about immigration from North America and Caribbean, South America, Africa, China, the Indian Sub-Continent as well, but the numbers are far less, and Woolley was talking  about a culture formed over a thousand years. Whatever you think ‘Britishness’ is, it is very definitely European in all aspects; religious, political, fashionable, industrial, musical, military, design, ethical and philosophical. Always has been, always will be.

Edited June 15, 2019 by Freggyragh

[P.K.]

58 minutes ago, Freggyragh said:

So, here we have a culture formed by waves of immigration from Europe to add to the native Welsh, first from Ireland and France, then from Italy (and all areas under Rome, including North Africa and the Middle East), Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Holland, Germany and Belgium, then from Spain, Greece, Italy, Germany, Poland, , Central Europe (Roma) and France again (Huguenot refugees). By the time Disraeli (descended from Sephardic Jews from Spain and Italy) was PM there was mass immigration from Ireland, Belgium and Germany. Before WW2 there were refugees from the Basque Country and during WW2 and the postwar era there was further immigration from Italy, Poland, Germany, Czechia and Hungary, and later, from Malta, Cyprus, Poland and France. You could also talk about immigration from North America and Caribbean, South America, Africa, China, the Indian Sub-Continent as well, but the numbers are far less, and Woolley was talking  about a culture formed over a thousand years. Whatever you think ‘Britishness’ is, it is very definitely European in all aspects; religious, political, fashionable, industrial, musical, military, design, ethical and philosophical. Always has been, always will be.

Careful now.

If you start to pick apart the brexit "arguments" you will be branded a member of the "liberal elite" sneering at the proles and standing in the way of "their" brexit. Well, that's the tactic the brexiteers use to keep their troops on side. They can't play the ball so they have to play the man.

I can understand the disaffection of folks with politics. At one point the Eton educated "call me Dave" (laughable!) had some fourteen millionaires on his front bench. After years of austerity courtesy of Gideon Osborne people were looking for a way out and they've been sold Brexit as the yellow brick road to the sunny uplands.

The other day a state school educated ex-barmaid, charity worker and psychiatric nurse was outed as a member of this "sneering liberal elite" when, lets face it, you can't possibly be less elitist than a barmaid! But it doesn't matter to those manipulating the disaffected and just plain fed up with the whole farrago. As long as they can portray themselves as being under attack from this "liberal elite" they'll keep the whole deception going in the direction that's best for their personal ambition...

[woolley]

On 6/15/2019 at 10:10 AM, Freggyragh said:

So, here we have a culture formed by waves of immigration from Europe to add to the native Welsh, first from Ireland and France, then from Italy (and all areas under Rome, including North Africa and the Middle East), Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Holland, Germany and Belgium, then from Spain, Greece, Italy, Germany, Poland, , Central Europe (Roma) and France again (Huguenot refugees). By the time Disraeli (descended from Sephardic Jews from Spain and Italy) was PM there was mass immigration from Ireland, Belgium and Germany. Before WW2 there were refugees from the Basque Country and during WW2 and the postwar era there was further immigration from Italy, Poland, Germany, Czechia and Hungary, and later, from Malta, Cyprus, Poland and France. You could also talk about immigration from North America and Caribbean, South America, Africa, China, the Indian Sub-Continent as well, but the numbers are far less, and Woolley was talking  about a culture formed over a thousand years. Whatever you think ‘Britishness’ is, it is very definitely European in all aspects; religious, political, fashionable, industrial, musical, military, design, ethical and philosophical. Always has been, always will be.

This minor subplot to the thread arose when Manxman questioned whether the UK has any more legitimacy to survive as a union than does the EU. My answers were posted entirely in that context and I persist in my assertion that the population of the British Islands (present day UK & Ireland) are a people with an almost homogenous cohesion that embraces many, many generations. It has been nurtured through their inter-island travel, trading, intermarriage (even during internecine warring) and many other common bonds for over a millennium. The come lately EU, by contrast, stretches across a continent of disparate peoples with far less in common than have the British. Hardly surprising given the geopolitical overreach of the project.

There was little disruption to the homogeneity of the population of the British Isles from outside prior to WW2. However we identify personally, most of us have traceable connections to other parts of the islands, in my own case England, Ireland and Scotland. We have far more that unites us than divides us. The very idea, for instance, that Scotland would more appropriately be outside the UK and in the EU is risible, flying in the face of all logic. It is political opportunism of the worst kind, similar to that of the frightful Johnson who, it should not be forgotten, spent a week agonising over whether supporting Leave or Remain would better further the interests of Boris himself. Whatever happened to conviction politics?

It is undeniable that there has been some immigration over the centuries from all of the places you mention and elsewhere, no doubt. From all over the globe in fact, particularly from the empire, but the numbers were absolutely minimal until the mid 20th century, and easily assimilated into the indigenous population. Not waves of immigration at all, as you would have us believe, but perhaps, by the same analogy, the gentle murmur of occasional wavelets. Even the Huguenots, who are often trotted out as proof positive that Britain has forever been a destination for mass immigration, only arrived at an average of a thousand a year over 40-50 years or so. Correcting for the difference in population, a factor of about eight between 1700 and now, would give a pro-rata inflow of about 8-10,000 a year in today’s terms for comparison, which is vanishingly small. (2018 net immigration was 258,000 and it’s been far higher in recent years – 30 times greater than the height of the Huguenot arrivals based on today's population level!). The number of Jews in Britain as late as the last quarter of the 19th century was less than 50,000. The Basques and the others: A mere handful. The much vaunted melting pot throughout the centuries changing and moulding Britain is a carefully crafted illusion. Within a couple of generations such limited numbers of incomers as there were had themselves acquired and, for the most part, gladly embraced Britishness.

I agree that none of this detracts from the fact that the distinctive – and they are distinctive - British culture and characteristics are intrinsically rooted in various European influences from way, way back before they acquired their uniqueness. It is self-evidently so, but that was not the question posed about the legitimacy of the respective unions. The salient point is that the UK is bonded and bulwarked by a British culture which has grown and flourished in these islands. It has no single EU-wide parallel.