Display MoreI think you are a pessimist, at least you appear so in your recent posts. I am an optimist. Maybe the two of us together would make a good balanced government. We agree on many things, but we don't always agree on the solutions.
Veering slightly off course, if you maintain things cannot improve, then they won't, because you will stop trying to make things better. It is defeatist, and is the main reason why remainers are so disliked.
As to Dominic Grieve, I would remove him from the whip, or whatever the correct term may be. That applies to Sourface and the rest of democracy deniers of whatever party they represent. An example has to be set!
During my years of employment I learned that others will take credit for your ideas and hard work, and do their best to get you out the way (by foul means) so they don't get found out. I had to battle for my promotions, but I got there, and I beat the cheats.
I learned to be even tougher and make harder decisions throughout my business life. It's that, or be a cashpoint to all the greedy/idle/money grabbing/con merchants/swindlers going. Small business is a favourite target for them all.
See ... I don't think everyone is a saint, but they are not all the devil either. The good people outnumber the bad.
There endeth the lesson ...... I really got into preaching mode there.
Me a pessimist? You’ve noticed?! I admire your optimism, even the parts of it that I think are misguided. And you’re right, in combination we do provide a balance.
Being my usual pedantic non-binary self, I fall nearer to the pessimist side of the scale but well short of the last notch. I justify my pessimism by observing that there is much to be pessimistic about. I try to attach myself nearer to the midpoint of this scale, which is to hope for the best, but be prepared or even resigned to the worst.
I realise saying “resigned” could be taken as a giveaway of deep pessimism. But here’s an alternative description of pessimism: realism. And here’s an alternative description of optimism: idealism.
You recommend putting optimism to work, to pitch in, make a difference. How? What can one do other than be a helpless spectator? Sadly I’m not a tv interviewer (Brian Walden was my hero), nor a persuasive polemical defender of free speech and personal responsibility, with an audience of devotees running in to several million (eg Jordan Petersen), nor have I written a best seller (like Douglas Murray) that encourages people to take a hard look at something very disturbing in Europe that’s getting out of control So what do I do? Go on a protest march? But what if everyone else is marching to a different tune ad especially when they’re foaming at the mouth?
Still asking, how does one make things better? You can’t talk about this stuff over a dinner table; if you try and do so, depending on the company, it will either be seen as unfashionable or unfathomable. Nor can one make conversational headway in a London restaurant with metropolitan friends, which revolves around general chitchat, gossip, the arts and property prices – anything ”heavier” is decidedly de trop. As for talking about anything of importance in my local village hall (which turns into a community pub on the last Friday of every month), there is not a hope in hell; favoured topics include fertilizer, both literally and metaphorically. The two most stimulating exchange of views on important topics are obtained from (a) my builder-landscaper and (b) one of my golfing buddies who, mercifully, doesn't want to talk about golf (not least because we're crap golfers).
In theory the outlet for debate could be the Times readers’ forum. In practice, one faces a gauntlet of moderators kicking one’s comment into the long grass of “pending approval” which kills the possibility of an exchange of thoughts and ideas. This leaves Horizon’s relaxed liberal Forum Box where people like you dig deep, are game for airing differences of opinion (and Horizon too whenever the poor devil has time off from managing the forum!). Which leaves you and I as debating performing seals, egged on by Horizon’s “keep going both of you, great stuff”. For the rest of FB members’ contributions, its mostly thin gruel, probably related to the use of a Smartphone rather than desktop PC. Or maybe I’m out of step with forum-speak and have become a bit of a bore - there becomes a stage in one’s life where one is reluctant to find out whether it’s me or most of everyone else who is on the wrong side of the cage.
Interesting point you make about remainers being disliked because they’re defeatist. That suggests that deep down they would like Britain to regain its sovereignty, independence, global trading prowess but they fear it won’t happen or will go pear-shaped. Maybe the Nanny State has emasculated national aspirations and the EU becomes the new Nanny State with a dash of cosmopolitanism. There are of course other reasons to Remain, including a complete lack of vision of the possible end game, of being part of the United States of Germany, with its partner on a leash, Germany’s favourite poodle, Vichy France.
I’m not saying things can’t improve. Instead I’m saying that from an impartial global stance, at certain points in time, there are countries and groups of people who become winners and others who become losers and, as with a giant oil tanker, it can take a long time for the losers to correct that trend and sometimes it ends up being an unrecoverable downturn. 650 MP’s is an oil tanker which can barely change course.
You talk of the importance of trying to make things better rather than having a defeatist attitude. Perhaps I set too much store on what my fellow countrymen think or, in most cases, don't think. Certainly that can make me defeatist. For example, I suggested to you that democracy could be improved if citizens were assessed for whether they are eligible to vote. You completely rejected this notion as anti-democratic and open to corruption. You talked of democracy being best served by relying on the wisdom of the crowd and when I asked you if that had to include criminals in prison, you duck that question. Presumably you are content with a definition of voting eligibility based on aged 18+ but surely you realise that is not a measure of eligibility but instead just a measure of age. So when I offered other factors which are obviously more highly correlated with a citizen’s ability to vote in a mindful rather than mindless way, you brushed aside those factors as "irrelevant", including factor (d) which had to do with a person's own capability to vote in a mindful way. That is the sort of thing which makes me defeatist: discovering a well-informed empathetic soul with clear opinions and then finding I have a hit a brick wall.
I appreciate the sermonising but I’m much more in the market for a debate with someone other than myself (the first sign of madness!)