The erosion of Britain has been going on for more than 50 years. Drip, drip, drip... it is draining away. Because it is happening so slowly and in so many different ways most people don't notice. I am not a xenophobe, afraid of the foreign, I am a conservative, I want things to stay the way they are. The idea of wanting to change everything in every European country so there is complete uniformity across the entire continent is fear of difference, i.e. – fear of the foreign.

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Most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do.
"Emmett is able to write fairly well, he clearly isn't unintelligent overall" - Quote MALCO - Wed Sep 14, 2011 9:57 pm

This is called change, and has been going on for considerably longer than 50 years. It just happens to be change you don't like, so you seek to pigeonhole it as something separate and negative rather than anything else. And just for the record I'm no great fan of the EU - it's clearly overbureaucratic, some of its guidelines are poorly thought out and implemented, and it can have a tendency to micromanage. But I'm also no great enemy of it either - it's frequently misrepresented by people with their own agenda, it can and does do a great deal of good, and as a small island with limited manufacturing and natural resources we'd be fools to think Europe needs us more than we need it.

By all means, if you don't like a proposed change then feel free to campaign against it. But not just because it is change itself, or because you don't like where the idea comes from. Otherwise that just makes you look paranoid, which I'm afraid is exactly how UKIP often looks.

Broadly. But being able to identify one kind of change from another is what makes us human. A cat will always jump or go low and run away if it hears a loud noise. A human may jump the first time but the next time they hear that loud change they will have learnt there was no threat and not jump.

Change does happen. But being able to identify different changes and applying thought to each kind of change is what makes us so much more sophisticated than other animals. Weather and our understanding of it are great examples of us 'understanding' change.

Getting rid of the pint would be a change. So either accept it as simple change or think about why it is changing. Your choice. And before any smart arse tries to take this back to the 'where is your evidence that it is going arguement' - remember, I have already made clear I understand the article is simply 'suggesting' and probably having both measurements together is an interim step.

So why change?

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Most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do.
"Emmett is able to write fairly well, he clearly isn't unintelligent overall" - Quote MALCO - Wed Sep 14, 2011 9:57 pm

That's because you are a paranoid whacko.

Well for starters, Emmett, you're clearly not a cat owner.



OK, let's think about why it might change. You seem to have presented this solely as a bad thing designed to erode Britishness and British culture, and that is the only reason such a change could possibly exist. But what if people want it to change? Do you actually know for sure that the majority of the UK would be that bothered if (and let's remember here, by "if" I mean "oh god, this isn't actually going to happen so please stop trying to make an issue out of it, for pete's sake") the pint was to go?

I would wager you don't. You might suspect you know the answer, and a straw poll of blokes in your local to go with your straw man argument might give you 100% in favour of not changing anything. But then Conservative Home thought Nigel Farage was going to get 64% of the vote and beat John Bercow but he ended up coming third, so until you actually ask people and get concrete numbers you really can't be sure of absolutely anything

So tell you what. You go away and organise a massive, non-prejudicially worded survey covering a wide demographic of the UK population and see what they say. And then, if they say no, when the decision to withdraw the pint is publicly announced as policy that is to be voted on in parliament and you have concrete evidence that the majority of the UK don't want that, I'll happily support you. Otherwise, you are doing nothing more than asking people to get annoyed on your behalf about an assumption based on another assumption based on conjecture.

Only just noticed your sig. Emmett

'4 classic Saabs'

Well that makes all the difference

I certainly don't think your a xenophobe, just someone who has been sucked in by bullshit spouted by 'traditionalist' morons

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'Because we've reached the limits of what rectal probing can teach us'

Conservatism, small c, effectively means anti-ideology. Not necessarily 'no change', although that seems to be a more popular reading of it. 'No change' is impossible and self-defeating.

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http://redsparrows.tumblr.com

You're supposed to be a filthy liberal if you drive a Saab you know.

Who let Eric Cantona in through the back door? And does he, Eric, also lament the loss of chains, furlongs, groats and having three different flavours of mile to choose from?

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Brigate di Transizione

This is my cat. He's called George.

George eying up a mouse




Relaxing on the dashboard of a Saab 900 Turbo




Being held uncomfortably by a friends child - looks a bit pissed off




If I had to put money on it I'd say it would split three ways. Two majority opinions and a third minority (discounting the don't knows and can't be arsed to answers) Firstly, one part of the results of any survey will be people feeling they don't give a monkeys and they would support 'what's the point in changing it' argument more than anything else. Secondly, you will get the group who say 'give up the pint? You must be joking, no way' Lastly, there will be a minority of people who would want the change if it's related to metrication and vis-à-vis necessary for the advancement of the EU. Those are the people who would 'want' it to change and they would be the people I would argue with.

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Most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do.
"Emmett is able to write fairly well, he clearly isn't unintelligent overall" - Quote MALCO - Wed Sep 14, 2011 9:57 pm

Seriously - have you got the permission of that child's parents to post a picture of her on a public forum?

yes.

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Most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do.
"Emmett is able to write fairly well, he clearly isn't unintelligent overall" - Quote MALCO - Wed Sep 14, 2011 9:57 pm

Do they know that we do occasionally get some, shall we say, worrying types on here? WeAreTheBritish, for one.

Gets more like Cheezburger every day

Fair enough on the cat front. One of mine doesn't jump at noises though, and is more likely to go and investigate!



Point 1: you can put forward what you think will happen, but you do agree you don't actually know for sure, yes?
Point 2: you can't say you think a lot of people wouldn't be bothered, then assign them to having an opinion! If they're not bothered, then by definition they're not bothered. So even if things were largely as you suggest, rather than lumping in the "not bothereds" with the "no ways" which gives you a majority, the actual result if it came to a vote could be very open indeed.

I guess in a nutshell, given this thread has gone on 4 pages now, what I want to know is what answer or reaction is it you're continually fishing for? Of all that's been discussed in this thread:

1. There's a possibility a new additional measure will be introduced
2. If it is, there's a slim possibility that somewhere a long way down the line the pint might be withdrawn
3. If that unlikely event happens, you don't even know if people would be in favour of it or not, because:
(a) you haven't asked them (and indeed can't, because that circumstance doesn't yet exist)
(b) you have no idea whether the new measure will take off or not - it might die on it's arse meaning no change, or it might be outrageously popular meaning the change is actually not only acceptable, but indeed popular

Point 1 is the ONLY one that is a fact. So again, I'm back to asking - what, exactly, is your aim? If you want concern or action, your cause is just suspicion based on someone else's suspicion about something that probably won't happen until a fairly long way into the future if indeed it ever does; it's thus incredibly nebulous as an issue and simply not worth worrying about. On a day-to-day basis I don't worry about the sun going supernova and destroying the Earth - and that's DEFINITELY going to happen (and indeed really will do a number for British culture) - because there are so many other real things actually happening right now that are more worthy of attention. So concern about the possible retirement of an arbitrary unit some way off in the future that people might not even be bothered by naturally isn't top of my list.

If you want me (and I suspect this would be true for a lot of other people) to worry about it, then I'd need a lot more (in fact, any) evidence that it was definitely going to happen at all AND evidence the majority of people didn't want it to happen AND evidence that it was going to be pushed through regardless of public/business opinion. In that set of circumstances and that set of circumstances only, I would agree it was a bad thing, but that set of circumstances doesn't exist. If you want to know what I think about it as a concept, I don't know (and the key point here is NEITHER DO YOU) because the new measure, if it ever does get introduced, isn't here yet. I might prefer it, I might not. Others might prefer it, others may not. The majority may prefer it, they may not. Heck, after a while you might prefer it, you might not. All those events and possibilities may mean that if the pint is withdrawn, almost no one will care because it will have become as archaic as a furlong, a flaggon, a drachm, or an Egyptian cubit. But in the here and now I don't dislike it simply because it's new, I can see it has quite a few merits, and I don't automatically think it will lead to the withdrawal of the pint and a change in the UK's culture, and I certainly don't think it will automatically be a negative change.

If you do dislike it, well fair enough. But a lot of that dislike seems to be stemming from personal paranoia about a specific, narrow, hypothetical chain of events rather than any genuine fault with the concept or the execution. So, are we done now?