In, I guess

[steepholm]

At the beginning of the EU campaign I started a "bullshit arguments" tag, with the thought that I might highlight any particularly tendentious, emotive or illogical tactics used by either side. I haven't kept it up, though, because it would have meant transcribing pretty much every news bulletin in its entirety.

I was, and am, far from enamoured of the EU, and was genuinely on the fence at the start. However, I will now almost certainly vote to stay in, because no even vaguely acceptable alternative is available. To vote to leave has become synonymous with a vote against immigration, against workers' and environmental protections, and for economic neo-liberalism. It's very clear that all these - laced with coded and not-so-coded racism - are what we'd get in the event of an Out vote.

It absolutely didn't have to be that way: there are other models that an independent Britain might have followed, but at this time there is no group both willing and able to bring them to existence, or even to talk about them as a possibility. So, the choice is: EU, warts and all; or else a UK stripped of everything that's actually valuable and worth having about the EU. It's not really a choice, is it?

Comments

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

All the Poles I've met have been pretty pleasant people, many with excellent English and (for what's it's worth) a willingness to work. Some I count as my friends. Why would I want them to go back to Poland? Perhaps it's to make room for the influx of elderly British emigrants who'll be returning from retirement Spain and France to clog up the NHS wards once those governments decide to make it "too hot" for the British immigrants to stay?

(By the way, please don't use terms such as 'Polack' on this blog.)

[ron-broxted.livejournal.com]

I have been thinking of the nature of prejudice (before I logged on). I have some Polish pals, they speak fluent English and wash. Down at the DSS it is another story, Stanislaus gets to the head of the housing queue and has interpreters on £200 per hour. The million or so English in Spain are scum, they refuse to learn Spanish and want a mini Hackney replicated, only with sunshine and "no darkies". Polack is merely Ashkenazim Yiddish for Polish. Wladislaw usually refers to Jews as "Korva zydowa" (fucking yids) and the whole EU referendum was caused by Blair/Brown and their contempt of the white working class.

[vschanoes.livejournal.com]

Yiddish is the language of the Ashkenazi, so no need to specify. You're mistaken about "Polack." You can look that up on Wikipedia. It is considered a derogatory slur in the US and the UK.

[ron-broxted.livejournal.com]

Yes there is, Eastern or Western Yiddische. I never hear the P WORD over here in Britain, Irish in America use it. Wiki is not much of a citation.