May she rest in peace.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
(Since someone is now about to accuse me of stealth Brexit sideage—no, this is just about the tiny business of moderating an internet forum, and that is all.)
I don't lightly ban a 7-year-old account, but (a) we've warned you many times:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22976700 (April 2020)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20912638 (Sept 2019)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20477028 (July 2019)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19765448 (April 2019)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17865589 (Aug 2018)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17623237 (July 2018)
... and (b) you've broken the site guidelines repeatedly lately.
(in the same way the United States absorbed the obligations and responsibilities of Great Britain in the 13 colonies)
(regardless, I got my dates wrong, I was thinking of Nice...)
HN exists (partially) to surface interesting news and foster discussions of that news - flamebait is never interesting and it doesn't lead to interesting discussions. We of the internet discovered, during the usenet days, that reducing a conversation to a shouting match is boring - so to promote a more healthy dialog HN specifically removes inflammatory comments unless they bring an interesting topic to light (and even then it's just nicer to communicate in a polite manner) - as this is the goal for this private forum it's completely within its right to restrict discussions that go against that goal and restrict users that repeatedly violate that goal. The internet is a large place and there are plenty of other forums that cater to other forms of expression - the first amendment exists primarily to make it illegal for the government to say such places can't exist - it doesn't obligate all places to act in such a manner nor mandate the existence of such places.
Private entities are allowed to do whatever they want with their platform regarding speech. Twitter, HN, etc. are not obligated to give everyone a megaphone.
There's no way you don't know this already. It comes up every week.
It has been co-opted fairly recently -by some- to mean that no one can silence you anywhere. This is a new interpretation, and unrelated to the USA constitutional right to free speech.
This has never been the case. If you say something offensive to me in my house, I can rightfully remove you. You can continue to say the thing somewhere else, just not in a private house.
Hacker News -in this instance- is a private house. If they allowed unlimited free speech, they would have to allow personal attacks, spam, off-topic submissions, etc... Part of the value of HN is that the speech IS NOT free.
You and I can come here and trust that the conversations will meet a standard, banning people who flagrantly abuse that standard is also a form of free speech.
edit: after seeing your edit, it looks like this is a disingenuous question intended to start a flamewar. If that isn't your intention, you should be careful about how you phrase things.
This is meta navel-gazing and is generally not considered on-topic or useful here. That's probably the main reason for the downvotes.
To try to answer the question though, since we're already here:
There are two (at least two) definitions of "free speech" in the US. The "strict" one related to the Constitutional principle enshrined in the 1st Amendment which basically means that the government can't make certain speech illegal and then put you in jail or otherwise punish you for what you say. For better or worse, the courts have generally ruled that there are limits to that though, hence the old saw about "yelling fire in a crowded theatre".
Beyond that, some people look at free speech in a colloquial sense as meaning something like "I can say anything I want, anywhere I want, anytime I want, and nobody can interfere in any way with my doing so". This would mean, for example, that a private web-forum like HN banning an account could be seen as a violation of "free speech". This is not even close to a universally accepted definition, but at this point I guess we could say it's close to being "widely adopted" at worst.
I think most Americans though, accept that as an individual no one of us has standing to compel another individual, or private organization, to assist in transmitting, propagating, relaying, or distributing our speech. So HN banning an account may be distasteful to some people, but it's not a violation of the principle of "Free Speech".
YMMV.
Likewise, I would caution you about your own phrasing, particularly << So, there--the enlightened, FREE Western man or woman or "it", please tell me, is your freedom of speech an illusion and only applicable to Moslems? >>
You have had your question answered thoroughly, but you have escalated to examples that have already been explained (in one sentence: private companies can choose what to publish (Hebdo) and what not to publish (HN, Twitter) without government interference), and chosen a phrasing that is generally acknowledged to be insulting to non-gender conforming individuals.
This isn't a debate in intellectual good faith.
I've unbanned you now. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and mitigate the ways that you've been breaking the rules, that would be helpful so we don't end up in this boat again.
---
That may be, but you still have to follow the rules. You broke them here, have broken them elsewhere, we've warned you many times, and I've just told you how to get unbanned if you want to.
The answer to your question is that HN is just a specific type of web forum a specific set of rules. It's not an anything-goes place and never has been, and it's hardly the "western world".
Who decides whether the guidelines are fair? well, that has to be someone's job and it happens to be my job, so for now it's I who decide.
Since you've broken them badly in all kinds of places recently:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32671575
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32660805
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32659189
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32648075
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32646308
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32628649
(and that's just a few examples), I've banned your account. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with.
My general sense is that of respect for the Queen as a symbol. She did it right and wasn't a useless numpty like ... oh... all of the rest of them. Primarily nothing but B list celebrities. William and Kate seem fine enough, Harry and Meghan are .. irrelevant except to the nonces who have no actual lives, and let's not discuss Andrew...
Hopefully Charles will use the "soft power" he supposedly has to corral the professional sociopaths destroying this country (e.g. wind and solar power, given his supposed environmental leanings) but I don't know.... it very well may be all downhill from now. England (and by extension all of the UK) is destined to become a failed state.
Which is why I am looking hard at moving to Scotland (soon to be independent!) or even the EU to get the F out of here ASAP. It really is a transitional point.
I realize there's a critique of gardeners which argues that nobody should ever pull weeds, or even label any plant a weed—but I think most people come here for the flowers, and for that there needs to be a shit-ton of weed-pulling.
people who do nothing but shout their arguments without engaging in good natured discussion are therefore equally not welcome. as a community we need the ability to stop those people from derailing our discussions.
the problem with flaimbait is that it is that it motivates people who like to shout. in a perfect community where noone engages in shouting matches, flaimbait would be unable to start any fights. it would therefore be harmless and ignored. but rarely is a community perfect, and so it is helpful to remind people to not do that.
to know why this particular comment was flaimbait it may be necessary to learn more about the topic and what kind of responses it draws out. understanding this is the job of the moderators. and while the moderators aren't perfect either, they are doing a god job so far, and instead of rejecting particular moderation actions it would be better to find different, less controversial ways to approach the topic in question, which in this case surely did happen. the topic brought up by the banned account has been discussed on this site multiple times in a more civilized form.
right here we have an example of an engaged civilized discussion. this is as it should be, however it is off topic, so people would still be in their right to downvote all of the comments in this subthread, including mine. we can and should have this discussion, but not here where the topic is the death of the british queen and not freedom of speech.
Reducing evolution and time down to a steady state worldview, doesn't work.
Has there been any real progress towards another referendum on independence? I know SNP still has the lion’s share of seats in Scottish parliament, but what else? As a Scottish ex-pat of sorts (born UAE, to Scottish parents, but raised and educated in the US), I have nostalgic notions of moving to Scotland. Then I remember its dark much of the year and rains a fair bit. Heck, it even snowed in June the last summer I visited (yes, that was up Glenshee, but still).
The problem is, the mods at Twitter may have a disagreement with a user and ban them arbitrarily, like they did with Peterson. Pretty soon, you will not be able to read anything except what appeals to the Twitter mods. Your thinking will be forced and re-defined and you won't be able to say what you think, because of the repercussions.
[...]
In a world where you can only say what you are allowed to say, people will stop thinking and everybody will say similar things. I hardly call that "freedom" and "pursuit of happiness".
i agree with your general sentiment, which is why i pointed out the difference of how germany treats its freedom of opinion. a few years ago a new law was enacted that requires the swift removal of online hate speech and one of the first people blocked because that law was someone making anti-muslim comments. so no, there is no allowed hate speech there.
the difficulty is to figure out what is to be considered hate speech and what isn't. some of that we may have to learn through trial and error.
the new law is controversial because it forces companies to act on mere notification without a court order. which, while considered normal in the US, is not how germans like to do things.
Which is fully appropriate where it exists.
I would be 100% against the US having a 'Constitutional Monarch' but I'm 100% in support of the UK Constitutional Monarchy, given that it has come from their long established culture, nearly a 1000-year-old 'contiguous-ish' institution.
FYI in 1258 the Monarch signed documents which required him to 'Confer with Parliament' when changing rates of taxation. That's only 40 years past Magna Carta, and the first reference to 'Parliament'.
- https://slendertroll.tumblr.com/post/66114152363 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Town_(Specials_song)
"Naivete can also be detected in my supposition that it would take something as melodramatic as a near-miss nuclear conflict to nudge England toward fascism. Although in fairness to myself and David, there were no better or more accurate predictions of our country’s future available in comic form at that time. The simple fact that much of the historical background of the story proceeds from a predicted Conservative defeat in the 1982 General Election should tell you how reliable we were in our role as Cassandras. It’s 1988 now. Margaret Thatcher is entering her third term of office and talking confidently of an unbroken Conservative leadership well into the next century. My youngest daughter is seven and the tabloid press are circulating the idea of concentration camps for persons with AIDS. The new riot police wear black visors, as do their horses, and their vans have rotating video cameras mounted on top. The government has expressed a desire to eradicate homosexuality, even as an abstract concept, and one can only speculate as to which minority will be the next legislated against. I’m thinking of taking my family and getting out of this country soon, sometime over the next couple of years. It’s cold and it’s mean-spirited and I don’t like it here anymore."
It's pretty sad because people here come from different cultures and different personalities, and some people just naturally express themselves more assertively, cynically or provocatively.
Some people prefer hypocrisy and softened words and respect for others, while others prefer getting a clear point across, and using cynicism and exaggeration are valid tools for that.
Looking at previous posts of this person, he's clearly naturally cynical. Does that merit ban? Should all cynical people walk on the tips of their toes in HN to avoid "flamebait" ?
In the name of protecting those easily offendable, we're becoming intolerant of those who don't understand subtle nuances. Or those that just have to respond. Or those coming from cultures with naturally less tact.
This poster didn't even open up the problematic subject himself but responded to someone else.
Without an objective way to measure "badness", all you're doing it reflecting what the TV told you to feel.
That's not quite how it felt as a 52 year old Brit off of mostly England wot lived here at that time, as well as West Germany. I got the full Cold War experience.
I'm not sure about V for Vendetta - that's a film released in 2005 so a retrospective of {something}. "Ghost Town" by the Specials is of its time and an absolute belter and it does evoke emotions.
I can understand that a Canadian that wasn't even born at the time might find it hard to usefully engage with the past of a foreign country.
However we as Canadians and Brits and many others shared a Queen and she has passed away to all our loss.
I think he was referring to the 1982 graphic novel of the same name that the film was based on.
EDIT for spelling
If you'd like a tale about the 1970-80s then feel free to ask and I'll tell you what I saw. With luck, my memories aren't too shot.
Living in W Germany in the 1970/80s was rather safer than Ukraine now. A threat of nuclear shenanigans back then is nothing compared to a rocket salvo now.
Ukraine is being attacked right now by Russia and has been for months. Civilians are dying daily in this revolting attack on common civility.
I'm not too sure how important V for whatevs is. It's a story.
It absolutely isn't when that expression is Correct™. You can blather about Brexit horrible and its voters are deluded or selfish, but you have to tread carefully if you voice the opinion that the EU is not roses or Brexit is the better alternative. You must be very polite and non-confrontational about it.
Same as covid. You could rant and rave about anybody questioning the ever-changing official narrative and denounce them as science deniers and selfish, and that was pretty well tolerated. Asking any questions or expressing any doubt would have to be done extremely carefully again.
Same as any topic. This is better than most places I've found though. At least you can be in the minority, question authority, and have "wrong" opinions about many (not all) things. You are definitely not afforded the same privilege as others though. Which shouldn't be a surprise, you have to learn to read a room, especially a room in somebody else's house.
Maybe you're young, but this 'feeling of stability' really has only happened since 1991.
I remember before that, and it was very scary living with the Soviet Union and all those countries with nukes pointed at us.
Also, the 1960s-1980s wrought huge economic change, as the last phase of major 'Democratic Socialist' changes occurred, desegregation/civil rights in the US along with giant leap in crime, and most of the west moved out of a very chaotic political climate only towards the end of that.
1990-2010 was a bit of a calm period.
Also, 'Brexit' is not a net negative thing (I think it's neutral on the whole). The EEC (i.e. trade) is almost all of the benefit of the EU, some of the post EEC i.e. EU artifacts are actually quite a bad thing (though not all of course). Even Euro itself, is probably only 'neutral' in that it has very harsh externalities that are just not obvious.
Notably, we have seen a massive failure in the EU to not only protect itself, 100% dependent on US military defence, even in 2020 - but one of the 'root problems' was the EU powerhouse, Germany, abdicating it's defence responsibilities, and selling out the entirety of the EU to Russian energy dependence which put the EU in an existentially weak position vis-a-vis Russia. If the US did not exist, Putin would be dominating the EU via it's vast tentacles (like it is in Hungary, but much worse, and all over).
Obviously some nations, like France, Sweden and Finland are quite prepared, but on the whole, it's bad.
Europeans are know this, Macron himself has suggested 'something else' for Ukraine and Georgia.
It will literally take decades for Ukraine get into the EU, which is nary impossible for any normal country as they cannot maintain a consistent strategic orientation for that long, which speaks to the gigantic bureaucratic complexity of the EU.
Instead - UK, Turkey, Ukraine, Finland, Georgia, Switzerland will possibly join the 'expanded' EU (by another name), which will mostly be trade focused. The interesting thing about that however, the other nations, notably Spain, Italy, Greece will definitely start to wonder about 'the grass being greener' in those countries.
QE2's death is definitely a kind of geostrategic demarcation, along with the failure of Russia in Ukraine as it's 'last gasp' as a major power, and COVID. The rise of China as well, but that's in phases.
This is kind of a WW1 moment.
As for the future of the Royals? It's hard to say - some progressives may want to think more 'Republican' but I'm not so sure. We are choking on materialism and people are yearning for authentic things.
'Secular Ideologies' including Socialism and Capitalism have brought us some nice things, but we are fundamentally more hollow. 'De-culturlization' isn't going so well, people are spiritually empty, we lack community. Putting a 'Starbucks on Every Corner' of the world is good for the GDP, but it's woefully lacking otherwise. A trip to the suburubs of Toronto where things are actually technically 'good' from a culturally secular perspective (i.e. peace, jobs, people get along well) ... but you'll find it's a kind of cultural death: absolutely no local culture whatsoever, almost the entire population working for 'local offices' of international firms, nothing to even identify the area as belonging to it's actual nation, culture and values being dictated by the marketing rooms of foreign countries, mostly in the name of selling sneakers and iPhones. That's 'materialism' not true 'prosperity'. It's amazing if you were a poor kid from Hyderabad (i.e. to have material stability), but not so good otherwise.
In that context, everything that has cultural authenticity is basically worth more than anything else. Do you know what's exploding in value? Authentic Faberge eggs. As we also realize the value of cultural institutions. Other things, even neat things like iPhones, are ultimately just commodities.
The EU is not without a great many issues, notably the weakness is the central banking mechanisms of the EU/Euro - and the Euro in inseparable from the EU, and tbh, kinda endemic of the issues with the EU. It's an almost country, its missing the accountability of a full country, but still has some sovereign powers. I think the flaws in the EU are fixable, but not without making it look more like a democratic supranational government.
However, for all of the EU's flaws - the UK is hurting now, largely because of Brexit - who knows, in 50 years it may turn out for the best. But I honestly suspect not - only time will tell.
Yes, it's fiction, but the comment you were replying to mentions Alan Moore's foreword to his work where he mentions the context in which he created the comic -- and that context was the despair and hopelessness he felt in the UK of the 70s and 80s.
Alan Moore is talking about the reality that inspired his fiction (and in fact, mentions how his fiction fell short of what actually happened next).
> I'm not too sure how important V for whatevs is. It's a story.
"V for whatevs"? You are being needlessly dismissive. Alan Moore is a highly influential and political comics book author whose work has a lot to say about the 70s and 80s. Just like punk was also a reflection and a product of its era.
The romantic in me likes to believe the Queen would step in if the British parliament tried passing some truly terrible bill. Basically acting as a last stop gap of human and British sensibility. Though with Queen Elizabeth II gone I'd have less trust in the judgement of a monarch.
Part of me does wonder if US politics would've been much different with a ceremonial figurehead. And that'd be a fun alt-history where a great-great-grandchild of George Washington is the ceremonial head of the US government and has to deal with intrigues of Washington politics while just wanting to live quietly on the ancestral Virginian home.
I do think the banned comment was the tired, tiresome kind of thing that people who feel passionately seem to find a way to shoehorn into discussions where they are off topic or add nothing substantive. And I think the comment they replied to was as well.
I don't really see much difference, other than the nature of the opinion. Yes the banned poster did address their parent specifically, but... really the parent put out their opinion about a bunch of things, if that is substantive then it should invite questions or disagreements so addressing them on the topic of their opinions is appropriate, surely.
No disagreement there, the glib angry stuff people insert into a conversation tend to flatten all reasonable conversation into vitriolic bursts of outrage or anger.
There is no clear '4 years to election' as they have in the US.
In my home country, Canada, it gets dicey as we wonder sometimes just what the 'Governor General' (Queen's rep in Canada) will do.
I don't think the Queen is going to be interjecting on any 'legislation' unless there is something fundamentally unconstitutional about how it was passed; but there's definitely some question marks about 'how and when government falls and is formed' - and especially, how 'minority governments' are formed. If there's no obvious winner, then minority situations form, and it can get weird.
That's still a thing.
I suggest the US would have been a better country were the American revolution to not have happened. Sounds totally crazy, but true. I think the US would have healthcare, be a bit more socially minded, slavery would have ended a lot sooner, and the US still have all of the 'good parts' (except a cool national anthem).
How do you want to agree on a common set of values with, say, the Taliban and the CCP?
Would you yourself rather live in a giant dormitory with a thousand other people, everyone eating the same breakfast, than in your own house according to your needs and wishes?
It is not that different with nations.
True equality comes when we realize both men and women screw up just as much, and have just as much good potential IMO.
Celebrities don't wield any power comparable to that of rulers or monarchs. We allow unbounded accumulation of wealth but that's a facet of our political and economic system.
Most social animals imbue their elders with some level of authority but this is easy to explain as an evolutionary habit to make use of lived experience and thus, hopefully, expertise. It's obvious why you'd ask the person with the most experience or the best domain knowledge for their assessment or even to lead you in that domain. It also makes sense to appoint a leader during times of war when the battlefield requires split second decisions that don't allow for consensus seeking.
But human nature is cooperative if nothing else. We resort to exclusion, hierarchy and domination/obedience only under duress, which our current system helpfully maintains perpetually.
Yet Thatcher is basically remembered as the devil.
I can't fathom the complete cognitive dissonance of people who believe these two things at once.
The expected value of a post includes the subthreads that it generates: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor.... You can't just evaluate each comment atomically and then sum up the values of the atoms.
This is the real reason for the dynamics that you and throwawaylinux are talking about—not cultural or ideological bias by the mods. That's just the reason people tend to reach for because it's simpler and feels like it must be the reason.
We do what we can to mitigate such effects but there's only so much we can do. In the end, this is one big community system and people are responsible for the effects they have on it. That's one of the more counterintuitive and little-noticed aspects of how things work here.
Here are a couple of older comments explaining more about this, in case anyone wants more.
Reduction of UK public debt by Thatcher (visible in the second half of the eighties):
https://ercouncil.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/ercchart171...
Increase of US public debt throughout the eighties by Reagan:
https://zfacts.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/US-National-De...
There is no 'massive' failure in the EU to protect itself as it has no such objective nor a mandate to protect itself. It's up to individual countries to spend on their armed forces as was up to Britain to spend when it was part of it and the EU didn't stop it, it did so just fine. If the US did not exist that would have been taken into account by the member countries themselves and acted accordingly.
> Instead - UK, Turkey, Ukraine, Finland, Georgia, Switzerland will possibly join the 'expanded' EU (by another name), which will mostly be trade focused. The interesting thing about that however, the other nations, notably Spain, Italy, Greece will definitely start to wonder about 'the grass being greener' in those countries.
Spain, Italy and Greece have all joined the Eurozone (Italy is a founding member btw) for their own good reasons. If they wanted less integration they could have not adopted the Euro just like a number of other countries. People seem to forget what inflation looked like for their national currencies of these countries before getting the Euro and it was not very green.
The 70s were crap because of high inflation and fuel costs. Winter of discontent etc.
The 80s were crap because Thatcher basically dismantled the working class.
Is it dissonance about Germans complaining about interwar issues and complaining about the leader they ended up with?
Indeed. It is amazing to not starve and live a prosperous yet "boring" lives. Wouldn't have it any other way.
You have to remember how old she was. The Queen's first Prime Minister was Winston Churchill, born in the 1870s. A staunch Empire man to the last, he was one of only two Prime Ministers for whom the Queen attended their funeral. He is famous for successfully defeating Europe when it was united under a dictator determined to reduce Britain to rubble and ship its population to labour camps. She was Queen as the British Empire wound itself up and became the Commonwealth. She saw the nationalization of the British railways and then the re-privatization of them decades later. She saw the birth of the European Coal and Steel Community, she watched as it evolved into the European Economic Community, and then into the European Union. She saw Stalin fall, then she saw the Berlin wall fall, and then the USSR. She observed passively as millions of people from the former Eastern Bloc then moved to the UK a decade later to make a new life. She saw the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. She saw the space race. She was Queen throughout the Troubles, living with the constant threat of being assassinated by the IRA, who at one point dropped a concrete breeze block on her car. She visited over 100 countries. She watched as countries fell to communist revolutions. She watched her country be brought to the brink during the Winter of Discontent, she watched as European nations transitioned from dictatorship to democracy. She watched global COVID lockdowns. She watched the Euro debt crisis and a thousand other crises come and go.
In short, she saw political institutions far larger and more important than British membership of the EU rise and fall over her lifetime, and far more dramatically. She saw the UK join the EEC, she saw it transform into the EU and then she saw the UK leave it again. Of all the things she's seen and done, of all the life and death battles she witnessed or even took part in, EU related events were surely some of the less memorable and important, especially given the relatively imperceptible changes Brexit so far brought about.
If you really want to engage in speculation about the Queen's views on Brexit and the EU, consider this. I already said Churchill was one of only two Prime Ministers the Queen honored by attending their funeral. The other was Margaret Thatcher. Both had complex views on the merits of European integration, with both being positive in their earlier years but coming to regard it as a mistake in their later years.[1][2] Both were strongly committed throughout their lives to the strength and independence of the United Kingdom regardless of what Europe did.
There has been a lot of speculation over the years about whether Charles might be a more activist monarch, but I’ll be really surprised if he actually tries to exercise any of his theoretical powers. He might be a bit more outspoken in public, and do a lot more lobbying in private, at most.
And the long-term negative effects of Thatcher's legacy (much like Reagan's in the states) are being felt now. The homeless situation is (in large part) a product of Thatcher selling off public housing and turning actual care into "community care".
“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”
Maybe it is not so universal, but an actual predictor of civilizational decline?
She is adored in some of London and all the Home Counties where her polices led to increased wealth and life outcomes.
In the rest of the country, she is the person who destroyed communities and the fabric of what it was to be British for many.
This is not cognitive dissonance. It's different experiences by different people.
Given this is a thread about HRH Queen Elizabeth II, it's worth noting that she herself and her family were no real fans of how Thatcher conducted herself in relation to some of her policies that were _actively hostile_ to many working class communities.
When the Royal family quietly whisper that they think someone is a snob, well... that's saying something, eh?
Some people who were working class may have done well, but the working class as it was basically ceased to be.
Bookmakers price a referendum before 2025 at about 10% probability. I think that's too big a number - I'd say 10% chance by 2030.
Let's suppose it happens in 2025, though. At that point, the UK and EU will still be at loggerheads over the border with NI meaning the SNP's central premise - that Scotland should be able to rejoin the EU - will look more and more like a dangerous and economically calamitous poison pill. Even pro-independence financial analysts will warn of a deep recession with house prices falling off a cliff. That'll make independence about as popular as mouldy bread.
In addition, the EU will be quite feckless and tone deaf to what that SNP promise of independence is centred on, and during any campaign will confirm confidently that yes, Scotland could rejoin the EU, all it'll take is adoption of the Euro (non-negotiable), and a complete adoption of all protocols and laws that the UK - including Scotland - will have mostly dismantled by that point (for better or worse). The timeline will be a decade or more, and the estimated costs will be in the billions, but the EU think it's still value. Meanwhile Scottish voters will wonder if a generation of being out of the UK _and_ the EU is worth the candle.
The idea that against that backdrop the SNP think their argument for independence is stronger, not weaker, is strange.
I think you'll also see a slight shift in polls in coming days and weeks because of the death of the Queen. Operation Unicorn is designed in a small way to allow Scottish unionists to show what the United Kingdom is all about. Sentimentality has been proven time, and time again, to be incredibly powerful in changing people's minds quite irrationally.
Coupled with Charles' political will - as you note, towards radical environmentalism and architectural protectionism that aligns neatly with a decent proportion of the Scottish populace - you might find Sturgeon and the SNP looks more and more marginal as time goes by.
The Queen oversaw a decline in Empire and a rise in the British believing in - and committing to - a people's right to self-determination. And so it will be in Scotland, just as it has been for so many countries that have gained independence from British rule in the last 75 years. But the backdrop right now is firmly that the SNP is about to slide, independence will become less popular to many, and Scotland will either be part of the renaissance we are all hoping for, or is coming down with the rest of us.
First - change EU to Europe and the point is more clear: 'Europe' failed to defend itself.
Second - Though you're right, EU is not a defensive pact, it's inexorably irresponsible for EU to not provide for defence. Defence is an existential concept - one that involves parts of the state.
How can there be 'ever closer union' and 'open borders' if nations can't even provide for their own defence.
This is 100% clear with Germany's 'sellout' to Russia: Germany, the leading 'political' block in the EU, gave Russia massive leverage which has put Estonia, Latvia etc. at huge risk, and effectively handed over Ukraine do the hungry dogs.
In that dsyfunctional dynamic, 'Sovereign Europe' is still dependent on the Anglosphere: USA, UK and even Canada (!) all of whom have provided much more support than France, Italy, Spain etc (!) in defence of Europe.
"People seem to forget what inflation looked like for their national currencies of these countries before getting the Euro and it was not very green. "
"If they wanted less integration they could have not adopted the Euro just like a number of other countries."
Inflation is much more preferrable than the current straight-jacket death of a hard currency. The lack of inflation relative to Germany is killing Europe.
As for 'adopting and not' - there's no way for them to adjust otherwise. The EU is a 'one size fits all' regime and also a 'Hotel California' (i.e. cannot leave) game.
The Euro won't work without political and fiscal integration and that will never, ever happen, so it's probably better to find something a bit looser.
Imagine kids in Hyderabad having the stability, economic opportunity, 'decent government', clean air of Ontario ... but in Hyderabad.
I think that's 'easy to imagine' and 'much better'.
I mean, different strokes for different folks etc. but to me it seems fairly straight forward.
I think it is more of an indicator of overall prosperity, which may, in fact cause civilizational decline. I'm reminded of the mouse utopia[0], and my own family.
Otherwise, we might need a 'Supreme Parliamentary Council' to basically enact those duties, and if any members of Parliament didn't agree on the outcome, they'd take it to the Supreme Court who would rule on it kind of thing. Something that would only happen 'once in a century'.
Where there are Presidents, it's generally straight forward: the Dude with the most votes (of whatever type) is the Dude and that's it. There can be voting shenanigans but generally not outcome shenanigans.
I'm fine the way it is in the UK and Canada, I wouldn't change a thing.
If we want reforms, we can do that at more operational levels, aka 'governance by blockchain' to put it in 2019 Valley terms.
> ... She passed the Brexit bill ...
> Of course she passed the Brexit bill
> not sure what the point of this comment was
It was to point out the absurdity of picking out this particular example given her long life and the many, many events and bills you could describe as 'terrible' along the way. If she was going to have broken her convention and tried to assert real power, that would be have a really odd one to pick.
BTW I didn't assert any opinion on Brexit itself, only that the level of hatred of it reached by some people is irrational.
> the Queen was ... a closet Tory
You don't actually know what the Queen's politics were. She lived through several Labour governments and never stopped their bills or expressed opinions on them either, that's just not the sort of monarch she was.
But no I think it's even simpler and it's not about what should be. People are generally fairly close minded and are easily upset by hearing about opinions contrary to their own. That's it. It's just the human condition.
"QI has determined that the author of the quote is not someone famous or ancient.
It was crafted by a student, Kenneth John Freeman, for his Cambridge dissertation published in 1907. Freeman did not claim that the passage under analysis was a direct quotation of anyone; instead, he was presenting his own summary of the complaints directed against young people in ancient times. The words he used were later slightly altered to yield the modern version. In fact, more than one section of his thesis has been excerpted and then attributed classical luminaries."
Please do.
With leftists nutcases... never short of a good laugh!
