Personally, while I admit the danger of a slippery slope, I doubt that an Orwellian world is likely, unless the world gets bombed back into the stone age --- as in some post-apocalyptic movies. And I tend to be optimistic enough to assume that Reason will ultimately prevail. Others may not agree, and prepare to despair. Nothing daunted, I hope for an upward slope. :smile:

Note -- Orwell prophesied the spread of Communism. But that seemingly inevitable domino-fall eventually ended in compromises with Capitalism and Democracy. — Gnomon

I's some time since I read 1984, but wasn't Orwell pointing out the dangers of totalitarianism rather than specifically communism? If I look at Russia, China and a potentially crippled US under Trump again I worry about a world dominated by totalitarian/authoritarian powers. One of the effects of globalism could well be the rise of Oeania, Eurasia etc as Orwell forecast. The EU could be the last bastion of smaller countries clubbing together, and its future doesnt seem to me assured at all. As you say the UN, which should be the way forward, doesnt have any power. Until its security council members are selfless enough to vote to give it real power it will remain a sideshow.

Will reason and democracy prevail? All I can learn from the 20th Century is that man is just about smart enough not to destroy himself, but that's all. Our best hope may be that the battle against global warming acts a uniting factor, as the one against Covid has over the past 2 years.

The internet is simply a medium and blaming it for the fall of democracy is like pointing the accusing finger at the paper on which news is printed. The real question then is, is information bad for democracy? You might want to unpack that. — Agent Smith

Information on its own is neither good nor bad. It becomes potentially destructive when it's based on distortions, simplifications and downright lies. And that depends on the motives of the person posting the info. Does he/she genuinelty want to inform people, leaving them to decide what they think? Or to scare/browbeat them into accepting his/her opinion as correct; and using the techniques above to help achieve it.

Which brings us back to my original point: When all available news was broadcast by journalists from companies with high standards of impartiaility, the public could trust it and form reasonable views. Now, when news is accepted by people form any old source they open themselves to being misled and manipulated.

To answer your question: information based on truth is good for democracy; that based on rumour, lies, half-truths and fear is not. Of course in a democracy the latter cant be prevented, the question is how we educate people to see it for what it is and seek their news from reputable sources instead. Are people really shunning those news organisations deliberately in favour of conspiracy peddlars? If so, what has caused such a catastrophic loss of trust? Or are people just more easily engaged by simplistic stories playing on their fears, slants that reputable organisations just won't print? If that's so for the majority, then democracy really is in trouble. We'll be back to burning witches before long..

A Constitution for the Internet :
http://www.federalist-debate.org/index.php/current/item/371-a-constitution-for-the-internet

Bill of Rights for the Internet :
https://edtechbooks.org/mediaandciviclearning/internet_constitution — Gnomon

[/quote]

The problem with constitutions and Bills of Rights is: who's going to uphold them? How are they to be policed? And if social media companies transgress where are they to be convicted? We've seen from the Haugen testimony how Facebook are quite capable of ignoring accusations - and unless they make their source code available to authorities, how can we prove they're deliberately allowing inflamatory information, hate-speak or whatever? I don't think the internet can ever be effectively policed. The only possibility is at UN level, but the chances of every country signing up to that look vanishingly small.
And even if specific hate-speak terms are successfully banned surely it will just mutate - ever tried filtering out all the viagra adverts? It's impossible...

↪Tim3003
The Internet is a many splendored thing. If Facebook and 4Chan or 8Chan are not good for it, other parts are. It isn't the Internet, per se, that is a threat to democracy. Powerful groups who dislike democracy are a muckiest bigger threat. — Bitter Crank

I think this is true. I've been reconsidering my initial question. Maybe it should be: is the Internet allowing democracy to destroy itself?

The Internet empowers democracy by allowing everyone to have their say, to everyone else. The problem is, most people have a 'confirmation-bias' - they are not capable of dealing rationally with the amount of information now available - without running away from its overload and taking refuge in what they already believe, and hence in new 'information' that bolsters their beliefs. Unfortunately the unscrupulous know that that fear can easily be manipulated and infiltrated with more extreme and fantastical views.

What's the answer? I think self-censorship by social media companies is never going to work - the fear-mongers will always find ways around it. China would say it's a brutal regulation of the information available.
From a UK perspective I don't know why our govt hasnt initiated a TV ad campaign to encourage people to get Covid vaccinated. Have other countries? This would be a good way of countering all the disinformation. But I suppose I'm assuming people still watch broadcast TV..

The whole point of democracy is that the dictator isn't the one who decides what is "allowed", the institutions do. A democratically elected leader, whether he's going to get voted in again or not, lacks the legal power to undermine the democratic institutions. Otherwise, it wouldn't matter what the vote was, and that's normally how democracies become dictatorships because a leader is able to interfere with the election process and undermine it in some way. — Judaka

A leader may be elected democratically, but once in - like Hitler, he can easily disempower those institutions by force, stopping them from calling out his corruption. Come the next election, like Putin, he can ensure he wins. So it's not the existance of the institutions that safeguard democracy, it's their ability to continue to function without interference from the govt. Only via the next free-and-fair election can any wrongs a govt has committed on them be part of the campaign of a prospective new govt and if they win be righted.

Democracies are not kept in check by informed citizens, they are kept in check by powerful legal institutions and as well as various other rules and systems. — Judaka

But no dictator is going to allow those institutions to act fairly. He's going to install his own judges. Hence, they only survive under a democracy where leaders cannot dismantle them without being voted out next time..

Shows only the integral weakness built into the regime. Why once in power, do you still have to attack others as viciously as before? Your showing your weakness. What your base actually would want is for you to do what you promised to do, simple as that. — ssu

What type of people do you think make dictators?! The likes of Trump don't win by respecting their opponents, they trash them. Of course he's weak. Dictators are driven far more by egotism than ability. As for promsies: most of those on which they get elected are unachievable, and they knew that all along. Where's Trump's wall? And was it paid for by the Mexicans? It was a cheap slogan he could never make come true. Remember 'drain the swamp'? Surely that doubled in size during Trump's presidency. What about 'prosecuting crooked Hillary'?! Once in power his tactic was to attack his enemies and deflect attention from all those absurd promises.

Perhaps a democracy wherein the requirement to vote, or hold office, is an IQ above 130. That should remove a substantial amount of dead weight. Then at least I could say that my representative might be corrupt and a asshole, but not an idiot. That would be a good place to start. — Book273

I have pondered on an election held entirely online, where voters have first to answer say 5 multiple choice questions about the basic issues of the election; and if they get 2 or more wrong they can't vote. There'd have to be a secoind chance at it, incase they pressed the wrong key by mistake. So you'd need say 20 questions, of which 5 would be picked at random for each attempt to vote.

But it makes no difference what method of weeding out you choose. The only way to stop corruption is to let everyone vote. If not; what guarantee is there that your 130+ IQ elected govt wont decide on a policy of eugenics, to stop lower IQ babies being born? Power corrupts...

A couple of points in response:
1) When I said 'can democracy survive?', I meant a system where electors decide on real fact-based issues who will lead them, and their view is accepted and acted upon by those elected. You can talk about the democracy of social media and the 'post truth' world, where all views are accepted as valid, but that results in the absurd anti-vax movement we now have, which is seriously harming efforts to stop Covid. No matter how stupid, selfish and ill-informed the views of its supporters are, govts won't call them out in those terms; any attempts to make vaccination mandatory are met with riots by those defending their right to decide for themselves. You have to say that the Chinese anti-Covid measures have been most effective - brutal though they have been. So maybe 'a meaningful democracy' is a better phrase.

2) Those who reply with the 'things won't get better until we learn to think and act like responsible adults' point don't get it: Democracy invalidates that approach. Its tenet is that voters must be accepted for what they are and politicians should lead them with sensitivity and understanding - not arrogant judgement of their failings. Most people are ignorant, simple and prone to emotional decision-making. That's the way humanity is. To expect them to learn to act otherwise is naive.

I think the Guttenberg point is a good one. It has occured to me that down the ages the great advances in our civilisation have been brought about through improved communication: as witness the printing press, the railways, the car, the telegraph, phones, the mail, radio, TV and now the Internet. The possible dangers of the last of these are matched only by the first. (Maybe 'advances' should be in quotes?)

The difference getween a meaningful democracy and a dictatorship, by the way, is that the former has the means of turfing out corruption and ineptitude on the part of leaders.

Simply put it: Authoritarian regimes and governments in general have now learned how to control and use (or abuse) the new media called the internet and social media. That's just it. — ssu

Yes, but if well-meaning democrats find they can't compete except by copying that approach we get into Animal Farm territory - the pigs become men..

.

Franny Armstrong’s docudrama The Age of Stupid, set in 2055 – with its cities under floods or on fire, it looks more familiar this year than it did when it came out in 2009 – and she (Lucas) says a line from it still makes the hairs stand up on the back of her neck: “‘Why is it, knowing what we knew then, we didn’t act when there was still time?’ And frankly that is the question I go to bed thinking about, and wake up thinking about.”

It seems to me that the problem now is politicians lagging behind the views of the informed public. This is worst in totalitarian states where they can safely ignore the public - ie China, Russia. The dictators have their own continued power uppermost in mind, not enacting economic sacrifices to safeguard the planet's future. Trump was the most apposite example. Most democracies are accepting the inevitable
now though as even the most boneheaded concede the extreme weather events are warnings of worse to come. I forecast India will quickly come on board. So we - the consumers - have to start boycotting Chinese and Russian goods - hit them the only way they understand. I hope those who can advise on what products we can most effectively stop buying will soon do so..

No quick UK response to the EU's compromise attempts re the NI protocol... Presumably Frost daren't welcome it as it doesnt go all the way, but daren't reject it as it does greatly reduce the amount of red tape for GB to NI exports. The sticking point still seems the oversight of the ECJ. Hopefully that won't poison the whole deal..
It was clear the EU would have to abandon their stance of 'you signed it, so it must be fine'; which they did in the light of NI citizens' complaints of course, not the UK govt's. Boris can chalk that up as a minor win, the EU as a climbdown..

It's interesting to me that Boris has actually come up with a believeable rationale for Brexit, and something of a vision - which I thought was well beyond him. I mean; his idea of a high wage, high skills labour force, no longer dependent on immigration to fill its gaps and achieving the necessary extra productivity. It would need huge investment - our industry's past lack of will to make which is what has caused the dependence on cheap labour, so it's probably all pie in the sky and aimed mainly at the Party faithful. Whatever, it surely won't bear fruit before the next election. However if instead we get galloping inflation and continuing shortages it might be a petard by which Starmer can hoist him ..

A vote for Boris has never conceivably been a vote for consistency. — unenlightened

It's not so much inconsistency as lying that I mind. The only principle he seems to espouse is that of saying whatever half-truths are necessary to get away with as much as voters will let him.

You write about the gov in a way that the promises they make might have some credibility, that they might just do what they say. I understand this as it is how political discourse has been conducted for decades in this country. But surely by now you realise that these promises are laughable, especially on levelling up, global trade and Green issues. — Punshhh

Well how else is Boris going to win the next election? We agree that that is his overwhelming priority. If he just leaves a string of broken promises between now and then not even the most stupid voters will be fooled. It didn't work for Trump despite his willingness to bolster his promises by whipping up racist and leftist phobias.

Boris may be a lier but unlike Trump he's no fool. You can bet he has planned a strategy for the economic reckonning in the years ahead beyond just hoping people will forget. I think that by then he will have very little trust left anyway, so he'll be having to produce evidence for every claim he makes.

0) Pro business.
1) A safe pair of hands with the economy.
2) Levelling up (the inclusion of the poor, or deprived groups)
3) Managing a moderate/constructive capitalism, entrepreneurship etc.
4) An ambassador for the important position and role of the U.K. on the world stage.
5) Governance of the highest integrity, reliability and honesty at home and abroad.

Now all of these principles has been trashed over the last 5 years. — Punshhh

Other than 5), I think it's a bit early to convict Boris of all these crimes. He's only been in power for 18 months, and that period has been totally unprecedented in peace-time history due to the pandemic.
1). Too early to say, given the pandemic.
2) As it's his own mantra, he deserves a bit of leeway - we have the social care paper coming out soon, so he says..
0) & 3) Again, hard to judge yet. What is your evidence to the contrary?
4): He would say he's doing that, his redefining of what that role is may not be too everyone's taste. I don't think anyone trusts him, but no-one believed the U.S. was just Trump...

The demographic time-bomb: if there's one difference between the young and the old politiclly, it's the young's greater openness to Green politics. He's making the right noises there; although, again, too early to tell if real actions follow them.

Since I've never been a Tory voter I don't feel the pain of betrayal that you apparently do, so my outlook is more measured. Where going too far is concerned, I'd say this govt is less extreme than Maggie Thatcher's in economic and social policies. Who was it caused the current housing crisis by selling off all the council houses? Not Boris. That one policy is as much the cause of your gravy-trainless young would-be Tories as anything.

On the issue of integrity and lying, peddling half-truths, lack of concern about means when the end is expedient, and ignoring fact-based arguments on the basis that the pleb-voters he seeks won't understand or care about them, then yes, Boris has gone too far. I think this will bring him down in the end. Trump has gone; Bolsonaro's in dire trouble. I even hear Marine Le Penn has now retreated from her rabidly anti-EU position. We will see how long populism can survive...

My rationale is that Tory’s have been in crisis following the growth of UKIP and the fallout from the financial crisis of 2008... — Punshhh

I agree with all you say, but as I said. It was once the Maggie party, now it's the Boris party. In time it will evolve again under a new leader. Look at how Labour party policy and ideology has flip-flopped under its widely differing leaders over the past 4 decades. I don't think we can expect our parties to remain set in aspic in such a fast changing world. When the public tire of Boris he'll fall and maybe Hunt or someone more moderate will re-establish the integrity and genuine political philosophy the party has lost.

Quite, I am ambivalent on the question of UK’s membership of EU in principle. But see the current situation as a train wreck and more about a psychotic episode in the Tory party, than any rational process about the UK’s position in world affairs.

In fact the train is shortly going to run out of track. Time to reach for the popcorn. — Punshhh

You have often spoken about this implosion of the Tory party as a cause of our ills. And I still don't understand the reasons for your conclusion, or your forecast that its effect will be so disasterous! Yes it's now the Boris party, just as 35 years ago it was the Maggie party. So what?

The Aussie trade deals shows post-Brexit Britain is outward- and forward- looking. Farmers may have reservations, but I've yet to hear any concrete reasons why the deal is very disadvantageous.

↪Christoffer
You won’t find any Brexit supporters on a philosophy forum. — Punshhh

I thought the same thing. Then again, given the idea that pre-Brexit there were some but they've now disappeared I may have appeared (falsely) to be one myself! I find it interesting as an student of people and their motivations to dissect and argue the pros and cons of the issue from a neutral point of view. Those who cling to one side of an argument often seem filled with resentment and anger to me - as if cursing the world for refusing to realise they're right. If things really were so clear cut there would be no disagreements. Any familiarity with philosphy will soon convince even the most radical that there are no universally agreed truths.

Regardless of whether we're educated in philosophy or laymen however, I think that the use of the word 'philosophy' in the forum name is useful to put off would-be contributors who have nothing original or thought-through to say. No post of less than 3 lines should be allowed . :wink:

The best strategy for the EU, as is best in dealing with a bully, is to stand firm on what was negotiated. Because to concede won’t improve the situation, — Punshhh

And standing firm will? In what way is escalating tension in NI improving things? Boris knows he can simply blame riots on the EU for being intransigent. The Good Friday agreement is bigger than the NI Protocol. Boris knows this. Biden believes it. The EU may have to concede it. A face-saving fudge will doubtless be found in time.

Why does the EU have to back up from a deal where it's the UK breaking a promise the UK willingly signed up to? I'm not saying there aren't alternative solutions but it's up to the UK to offer an alternative that effectively meets the concern for which the original promise was made. If the EU just moves that is tantamount to inviting the UK to break more promises to get concessions from the EU. — Benkei

The problem is that whatever the UK suggests it is shot down because it isnt sticking to the letter of the agreement. Fair enough. But in that case the EU has to come up with a way to stop the tension escalating among NI loyalists - either within the protocol or outside it; or take the risk of insisting on the letter of the agreement and incurring Biden's wrath for the riots that could follow.. This is Boris's tactic - sidestep the issue of what's just and force your opponents to negotiate an expedient fix via the threat of a bigger problem down the road. 'Realpolitik' it's called.

Now that Biden's in town maybe we'll see some progress. If the US manages to separate the issue of the NI protocol from the Good Friday agreement he may soften his pro-EU tone. Whether the EU will accept climbing down from the letter of the protocol to help NI may depend on their accepting their hardline stance is causing loyalist unrest and so jeopardising the peace..

It's typical of Boris to have signed up to something he didn't fully understand at the time, and now be trying to unpick the problems he stored up then. One day his 'optimism first detail last' philosophy will break him. As yet the voters haven't tired of him putting his foot in it. I predict the Covid-19 enquiry will add further weight to the case for his cavalier attitude causing problems. Maybe then an analysis of the number of unneccessary deaths will wake up the public and the chickens will come home to roost. But I wouldnt bet against him wriggling out of it. He knows the public cant grasp detail either.

In truth, natural resources give far less income than something manufactured with skill and technology. — ssu

Oh? I think you'll find some of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world have been accumulated by the oil-rich middle eastern states. The largest belongs to Norway..

Why has Scotland remained in the union? — ssu

1) Money: England subsidises Scotland to the tune of nearly £2000 per year per person. I remember in the 2014 referendum Salmond made a lot of Scotland being able to pay its way via its oil revenues - then oil was $100 per barrel. That looks like a pipe dream now.

2) Fear of going it alone as a minnow. What currency would they use? They want to keep the £, but Westminster will not be so amenable. Sanctuary should be found within the Euro, but post-Brexit it's a longer and uncertain road to get into the EU. And I think many Scots aren't ready for the loss of Queen's-head-on-the-coins Britishness.

I think that when the reality of the financial hit Scots will take from independence becomes clear in a ref campaign they may lose their courage. But then I thought that about Brexiteers too!

What is your logic here? SNP were 1 seat away from a majority. The fact that the whole SNP campaign revolved around a 2nd referendum and that the green party are also pushing for the indy ref clearly shows that the majority want it to happen. — emancipate

Referendums are won by % votes, not seats. The SNP and Greens may have a majority of seats but not votes cast. What is your answer to the fact that the % voting for them was 49% and for the Unionist parties 51% ? Surely my logic is clear... Admittedly, since people voted twice with Alba in only 1 vote the water is muddied, but given the 'once in a generation' nature of the 2014 vote surely it needs a clear majority in favour of independence to make the 2nd vote case unanswerable.

btw: I'm not against independence.

The SNP has boobed. The election was effectively a 2nd referendum. And the combined vote shares were 51/49 in favour of the Unionist parties. How is a 2nd ref now justified? I suspect the Sturgeon/Salmond infighting has turned just enough people off to lose the nationalist majority. Maybe voters suspect the SNP aren't quite the knights in shining armour they seemed..

If you say everything is predetermined you have to say by whom or what. If there is no God (for want of a better term) to design and make a plan, and to know how it will work out, and to have decided that we mortals are simply pawns he is manipulating within the plan; then the term is meaningless. 'Predetermined' implies the existance of a plan which is known or recorded somewhere, so that in theory we could access that plan. Possibly the plan only exists in God's brain, but he could still print it out for us if he had a mind to!
Personally I think objectivity for any partially aware being like us is impossible regardless of whether the universe is predetermined.

It's a shame that many respondants are splitting hairs about the way I asked the question rather than taking up what was clearly my main point. Presumably they pass their whole lives refusing to see the wood for whatever tree is infront of their nose..

Given the prominence of Covid in the news over the past year, for 50% of people to say they don't know what symptoms to look for in their own health as indications of whether they have caught the virus is surely alarming. It shows that people are not only not taking in what the trustworthy news media say, but that they are so complacent about the virus that they aren't bothering to find out about it for themselves.

Another sign is that vaccine uptake is so low in some communities - even those mainstream populations of the largest EU countries, where I'd have thought education rates would be high. Many people still believe the scare stories and conspiracy theories, regardless of how many eminent scientists restate the facts.

I'm tempted contemptuously to throw them into my TSTL bucket. (Too stupid to live). But I suppose I should be more forgiving..

If you believe we need to test a pattern an infinite number of times to prove it is reliable you don't believe in science at all! Scientific advance is not the result of an infinite coincidence of the same results from an action, it is the acceptance that the results of a specifically designed test prove a previously stated theory.

As an example. If I toss an unbiassed coin enough times, the longer I go on, the closer the results will come to exactly 50% heads and 50% tails. By your criteria, since I probably won't ever reach an exact 50/50 result - and even if I do, the next toss will break it; then I cannot say the chances of heads vs tails are 50/50.
The scientist presupposes that the chances are exactly 50/50, and over time the test result tends ever more closely to that. Statisiticans use confidence limits to rate how sure they are that an achieved appearance of a result is trustworthy. You can never be 100% confident - as you say, but to progress you have to say "99.99% is close enough", or something like that. There must come a stage where you decide you have ruled out any possible error in your test.. That's why at the LHC they have 2 totally separate teams analysing the results of every experiement.

Your inability to believe natural selection has brought about the development of life from single cell organisms to man is natural when we cannot conceive of the timescales involved. Millions, even billions of years are way beyond what we can imagine. However, we are currently witnessing the rapid evolution of the Covid-19 virus in a timescale of months; rapid because it has managed to transfer to millions of humans. The arising of new variants demostrates the process, and shows that species usually do not evolve gradually and smoothly, but in spurts due to sudden changes in their environment. Imagine that we could not produce a Covid-19 vaccine. Humans would need to evolve. Over generations our genetic make-up would mutate until some Covid-immune variant of man became the norm.

It's probable that without evolution by natural selection life over any length of time would not be possible. The strong would eventually eat up all the weak, and then die out through lack of food. And how can you account for the millions of different but similar species on earth, except via the deduction that they evolved from fewer species, which in turn came from fewer species...?

There are explanations of how the eye evolved. I suggest you seek them out.
As for self-aware intelligence: try subduing your ability to use and understand language for a few minutes, and see how self-aware you are then..

It's daft to judge the rightness of an approach which we all know was a gamble on the basis of whether that gamble paid off. — Isaac

I don't think the UK's medicine regulators would agree with you that they took a gamble..

Why is speed approving a new drug an "impressive" thing? I could approve anything with tremendous speed by just rubber-stamping it, would you be impressed? — Isaac

Given that the EU has taken a month longer to come to the same approval of the Covid drugs as the UK did, they have probably allowed thousands more deaths than if they had started vaccinating when the UK did...

Anyway the value of the EU is as an overarching agreement of cooperation and unity among the nations of Europe. Without it Europe would still be beset with squabbles, rivalries and even wars. Imagine the breakdown in relations between Britain and the EU multiplied 27 times. This is why the EU was created and in spite of its overbearing bureaucracy, it works and is a good foundation from which Europe can grow in mutual cooperation. — Punshhh

I wasnt saying the EU is a bad thing, merely that in the Covid vaccine rollout the UK has benefitted from being outside and free to move at a speed a large beaurocracy can't match.

The clumsy attempt at vaccine exit controls enacted and then removed by the EU shows it is rattled by its failures over this issue. As for the claim that all they want is transparency re vaccine exports - what happens if they do see Astra Zeneca exporting vaccine outside the EU ? Do they just ignore it? As the NI Unionists have said, for all the insistance on no hard border throughout the Brexit negotiations, as soon as the EU sees its own supply possibly affected by vaccine coming in From Eire it slams up a border. This casts Brussells in a very bad light. I wonder if Von Der Leyen will survive?

Somewhat red-faced, I have to admit that the saga of Covid vaccine procurement in UK and the EU has added weight to the idea that Brexit was a good thing! The slow, bureaucratic - and now bitter - efforts of the EU have made the UK's quick regulatory approval of the vaccines and swift ordering look very impressive. I'm surprised Boris hasn't made more of this - maybe he knows he has so much ground to make up in his overall handling of the pandemic that he daren't blow his own trumpet yet.

Our lives as a whole seem to be insignificant yet our emotions change this as we are able to stay in the present reality and have our own meaning of life regardless of the grand scheme of things.

What do you think of this? Is there another reason to exist other than our own feelings? — existentialcrisis

I think you make the mistake of separating 'our lives' from 'our emotions'. They are part of the same whole. Consider a dog, who has both but lacks the brainpower and language to conceptualise as you do. The dog's life doesn't need a meaning. It is simply driven by its instincts, which are an expression of its genetic programming, which is geared to its survival. This explains why we similarly exist - our evolution is just a few steps more sophiosticated than the dog's. If you want to consider 'meaning' you need to clarify that vague term. By 'meaning' I'm guessing you're asking 'What should we do with our lives, given that our survival is taken care of?"

The dog doesnt have that problem (luckily for it!) The answer is different for different people. My advice is to look around and see whom you admire. There will be someone. They will perhaps have put into practice a set of priorities that will suit you..

Well, at least Dublin, Frankfurt and other smaller financial centers are very happy about Brexit, if we look for those who are the winners. — ssu

I think this is more to the point. Whilst trumpeting a not-as-bad-as-it-might-have-been deals for goods, the govt conveniently overlooks the 80% of UK exports that are services, not goods. The deal doesn't cover these.

Not sure about the figures re shifting assets though. Other than staff, what assets can you move overseas except cash? And with the internet nowadays cash does not really have a location - it can be shifted anywhere immediately.

less fish than the Brexiters wanted — Punshhh

Less fish too than the fishermen wanted. Part of the advantage of announcing the deal just before Xmas is that no-one wil be able to plough through the 2000-odd pages too thoroughly before the Commons vote. I forecast one or two unwelcome surprises for Brexiteers when it is examined. Boris says no red-lines crossed. We'll see..

Brexit doesn't make sense to me — Hippyhead

It doesnt make sense to anyone who has any sense - except a few rabid right-wing free-marketeers. But then over here we are still scratching our head wondering how such an appalling human being as Trump could ever get elected! The sad fault with democracy is that its politicians often have to lie to win, and when they all stoop to it the most brazen liers win..

You think this is short-term?

Why?

Just when do think the global economy will roar back to a state that nothing has happened? All those service sector jobs just magically reappear back again? This year is lost, totally lost. — ssu

Yes, this year is lost, but assuming the vaccines are successful in bringing Covid under control all those restaurants and air flights will be required again by 2022. People's jobs (at least in the UK) have been fairly well protected by furlough, and even if not; people won't suddenly give up eating out or flying abroad for their holidays, so those industries will expand to take up the slack, re-employing many of those made redundant. I'm not saying everything will be as if Covid never happened, but there is no reason to assume it will have a permanent effect on longer term growth is there?

As for the banning of UK citizens travelling. This is a panic response. The French have already realised it's absurd. Nothing we in the west have tried has stopped the virus spreading so far. It's likely that the new strain is already far more widely spread than just the UK, but other countries haven't realised it yet. Anyway, there's now a new South African strain which looks just as infectious. Random mutations can happen anywhere, and likely there will be more yet. The UK is ironically suffering for having the world's best genome sequencing industry..

thanks to the pandemic the Global economy is already in the gutter, hence the feared "Brexit recession" felt only by the UK, which would have been the worst thing for Boris, will not happen. So might be a great time to do the Brexit, already thanks to the new pandemic strain UK is quarantined. So, what's a Brexit in all of this hassle? — ssu

A no-deal Brexit is estimated to take 2% off UK GDP next year, and tariffs will have an effect for many years. Covid-19's effect is bad but hopefully only short-term; but + Brexit it'll be even worse.

Both sides hinting that a deal could be immiment. Ok, we'll believe it when it happens. But they haven't said that before..

Also there is the possibility that they are using the new variant as a pawn in a high risk negotiation tactic in the trade deal negotiations. By goading EU countries into taking strong measures against the UK and then painting them as trying to control, or punish us and creating the image of Johnson as our saviour. This works with either a deal, or a no deal. Also it creates a smoke screen of chaos, classic divide and rule tactics. — Punshhh

By 'using the new variant into goading...' do you mean somehow deliberately egging on the EU countries' individual bans on UK road export traffic, resulting in the tailbacks outside Dover? If so I fail to see how this could benefit Boris. All it does is give us a preview of the Jan 1st chaos, thus making everyone here more desperate than ever for a deal. If Boris fails to get one he looks worse, not better.

Either Barnier or VDL seems to be quoted every day as saying this is the crunch point. It's getting so that I just ignore them now. 'Crying wolf' it's called, not least because we know the EU is happy for the talks to go into 2021. If it gets to Dec 31st with a deal close Boris is going to find it very hard to insist on ending the talks at that point. Especially if we're still short of fresh veg etc. Another reason the current Dover chaos is bad news for no-deal supporters.

There’s a lot of confusion in the UK about how virulent the new strain is. Because at the weekend government spokesmen were saying its a lot more virulent, that it’s out of control, that it was spreading exponentially during the November lockdown. It is comments like this which may have resulted in the travel bans. There is a wide spread view that they hyped up the new variant to justify their U turn on easing restrictions over Christmas and going back into lockdown.

Also there is the possibility that they are using the new variant as a pawn in a high risk negotiation tactic in the trade deal negotiations. By goading EU countries into taking strong measures against the UK and then painting them as trying to control, or punish us and creating the image of Johnson as our saviour. This works with either a deal, or a no deal. Also it creates a smoke screen of chaos, classic divide and rule tactics. — Punshhh

What confusion? Whose 'wide-spread view'? Look at the number of cases reported daily. Before lockdown it was around 23000. That came down to 16000. Now it's shot up to 35000. That increase cant be explained just by the end of lockdown. The fact that the new variant seems to have hit the UK hardest could be explained by the excellence of the UK genomics scientists, who have identified it faster than their foreign equivalents.

As for your second paragraph: twaddle.

There is a particular problem evidenced in this negotiation caused by the hostile dishonest, caniving approach by one party, the UK. As a result there is very little trust and the EU, understandably wants every term legally binding. Particularly while the UK government states that it seeks to diverge from the terms when expedient to its own interests.

As one commentator said today, the level playing field is only problematic to a country which intends to lower standards, to deregulate, to diverge. If that country was intending to maintain high standards maintain good regulations and be cooperative with its partners, the level playing field would be no problem at all. There is a sliding scale here which has implications for trade. — Punshhh

Yes I agree. The UK govt has ruined the relationship with the EU, with that absurd NI lets-break-the-law bill (threat), which it has had to pull at the last minute. And no-one in Brussells trusts the ERG to maintain high standards when given the freedom to lower them.

That's why I said a few messages back that I can't see either side compromising at this late stage. Without trust the EU won't, and Boris cant with the ERG and Brexiteers yapping at his tails. I don't know why the 2 sides are still talking, except for the fact that neither wants to be the one to give up first and take the blame. That short-sightedness is making the Jan 1st cliff-edge even worse. I wonder if they'll carry on over Xmas?!