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Because Brown has never been an aggressive Euro-skeptic, he's seen as someone who plays for the away team, and not a staunch patriot - unlike the UKIP and the Tories.
And since 'everyone knows' Brussels is corrupt, it makes perfect sense - in narrative logic - that he's semi-European, not One of Us, and likely to be stealing money from UK taxpayers.
It's easy to underestimate the not so latent xenophobia and the fundamental irrationality of the middle-englanders.
Because Brown has never been an aggressive Euro-skeptic
When was the last time Brown made any kind of significant overtly critical media noise about Europe in public?
what other country can boast a media environment where the internet rollout is less than latvia or rural india, the dead tree rags are owned by the first family, and where supporting 'murdoch's evil agenda®' is actually a vote for greater freedom and objectivity?
as for a euro pov, i rate cult tv as a perfect example, lotsa foreign flicks from all over the world, along with cutting-edge-6-months-ago americana, subtitles and choice of dub or original s/track available.
then there's current tv which is really good too. yes 90% is unwatchable, but that 10% is easily worth the euro p. day, worth more than that to evade the berlu-filter factor, made even easier by the fact that 90% of that is the intellectual level of a slow 8 year old with a voyeur streak.
so it is being done, arte tv is another excellent example. that and cult and current should be the top viewed channels in europe, available in all euro-tongues, this would do more for the sorry state of ignorance and 'm'enefregismo' (don't give a fuck attitude) that is the italian disease.
looked at from here, sky uk news is hopelessly parochial, and don't get me started on the yank main network news channels!
i wonder how controlled by murdoch all his organisation is, because right now some of his channels are all that's standing between now and greater media lockdown.
if sky were banned from italy, i would take that as a powerful reason to read the writing on the wall, same if beppe grillo's website was hacked to pieces.
but then on the other hand it might force the issues many are discussing over the web, into the piazzas, one step closer to really uniting the people to state their will, and test the state's resolve to hold onto the undeserved power it has today, votes bought through enabling italy's lowest common denominator to become the dominant political force through near-unilateral media control.
pravda with bimbos, greasy old bald guys with combovers and jowl-tucks spoonfeeding steaming bullshit daily, fresh from the liars' mouths, aaagh.
gimme sky uk news again, i'm sorry, i'm sorry, i take it back, at least adam boulton comes on once in a while.
bbc world is less tabloid, but a bit constipated and middlebrow, risk averse, to put it mildly.
euronews has great mag/culture section, where they tell you about which art exhibitions are on europe wide, but the overall programming is a bit on the bland side.
still the vestiges are already up and running...
i've never lived in a place surrounded by so much shitty tv, where i was also able with skysat to actually feel well served, abundantly so.
just another example of italy's love affair with duality. i'm glad some of my sub will go to supporting the channels i dig, but i get the horrors about financing the rest of the murdoch-ery, same with buying petrol, or using plastic bags.
ugh! (but thanks), just another daily dose of cog-diss, swallow it like a good lad, it won't kill ya hehe....yet... 'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty
And since 'everyone knows' Brussels is corrupt
in the UK, is there a sentiment then among Britain-firsters and Euroskeptics that by being for Europe, one is betraying one's country, not being patriotic, hating one's country, hating freedom, and so on? i always presumed that it was not so much a matter of tribalistic national loyalty, but rather something closer to national arrogance and ignorance about the practical cost-benefits of EU membership, a notion that Britain does it better than the feckless Continentals. in contrast, embracing an internationalist or non-American point of view in the U.S. lays one open to accusations of being un-American = anti-American. does a similar dynamic exist in Britain, i.e. by saying that one is for Europe, it is a short step to being called disloyal to one's country, if not a traitor outright?
if not, then there is more room for propagandizing the benefits of EU membership without having to waste time and energy defending oneself against attacks of disloyalty and treason. Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.
So if you are for the EU, you are willfully letting Britain go to rack and ruin. There isn't real logic to it. But that is the view of the 'patriots'.
Others who are anti EU are so because they see European Parliament as an irrelevant, undemocratic, wasteful body that brings no real benefit. Others are anti-EU simply because they haven't heard any reason not to be, they are ill informed.
Take (please), the Costa Brits with their depreciating Spanish villas and loud wails that their failure to learn Spanish in the five years they've been living there puts them at a disadvantage in the local job market.
Or the UKIP voting (I think) GP next door who plans to retire to Germany for the better health care.
I honestly don't know how to start negotiating with mindsets like that.
if the UK left the EU, how significantly would life change for these people? and how significantly would life change for British people in general? (i could speculate based on the list of benefits articulated by the EU Commission, but that would be more guess work than anything grounded in reality.)
there is a movie called A Day Without a Mexican (see trailer below). maybe there is a role for a movie called A Day Without the EU.
Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.
And then we can see an attack on our employment rights and equality legislation.
Example:
School cancels Christmas nativity in favour of Muslim Eid celebrations - Telegraph
A junior school has cancelled its Christmas performances because they got in the way of the Muslim children celebrating Eid. Greenwood Junior School sent out a letter to parents saying the three day festival of Eid al-Adha, which takes place between 8-11 December, meant that Muslim children would be off school. That meant planning for a traditional pantomime were shelved because the school felt it would be too difficult to run both celebrations side by side. The move has left parents furious.
Greenwood Junior School sent out a letter to parents saying the three day festival of Eid al-Adha, which takes place between 8-11 December, meant that Muslim children would be off school.
That meant planning for a traditional pantomime were shelved because the school felt it would be too difficult to run both celebrations side by side.
The move has left parents furious.
I linked in another comment to a BBC piece about a report on "citizenship lessons" in Schools which drew criticism because it mentioned discussing the slave trade, the legacy of Empire, and the European Union. The brainless should not be in banking. — Willem Buiter
Though how you go about being more unserious than the UK euro-sceptics is beyond me.
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