EU elections start today

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What it looks like is that you have no intention of actually discussing a subject that you started a thread about for some strange reason.

The results of the election are widely seen as a great success for far right parties like the ones I mention which are clearly anti-immigration and their party platforms make it abundantly clear that opposition is based on xenophobic, nationalist and bigoted grounds. The question I asked you (which you didn't answer) is are there other grounds why anti-immigration sentiment has taken such hold in the EU when the actual levels of net migration are modest.

You want to dodge that question, so so be it.

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Well, if 80% of refugees knock on Italy's door, you can place the refugees in various countries to lower the "burden" on individual countries.

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You were all lied to, yes.
No extra money towards the NHS, no control over your own borders, and austerity has kept on trucking.

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The weather sucks peanuts out of a koala’s arse.

But, other than that, everything’s fine… driving around, not having border crossing problems, no need for different currencies… the usual.

I have to admit that the best Chinese restaurant in “da hood” closed. So, getting good Chinese food has become an issue.
However, on the plus side, we do have great local Maroccan, Turkish, Greek, Indian and French cuisine restaurants close by. So, all is not lost.

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Do they still serve traditional pub grub?
A friend from Crawley was saying that a lot if the pubs have changrd their menus and, say, gammon with chips or a chicken kiev is hard to come by.

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That is a little strange, because:
A. A chicken Kiev has nothing to do with where it’s from. It’s generally thought to have come from French cuisine.

B.Kiev is in Ukraine… so, wouldn’t eating it be seen as an act of solidarity?

To paraphrase Obelix: “Strange people those English.”

@shavixmir said
Voting for the European Union parliament start today in the Netherlands. Voting continues in the various countries until Sunday (each country chooses which day from today until Sunday to hold the election).

Just a quick recap of the EU government:

[i]European council: heads of state of each country: think international treaties, European integration and the larger que ...[text shortened]... ng class level of voters.
With many younger people voting left-wing.

Same old, same old, really.

The retreat into nationalist isolationism is a worrisome development, and in exactly the wrong direction. There are so many issues--climate change (it does not matter whether caused by human activity or not, it is happening), resource and waste management, mass migration--which transcend national borders, that they cannot be addressed by single nations acting alone; these issues can be addressed only globally, by forming inter-regional alliances. Trump going around tearing up treaties, Brexit, and isolationist-populist movements in France (le Pen), Tschermany (AfD), and NL are all harbingers of worse to come.

@moonbus said
Preliminary results indicate the conservative CDU got about 30%, Alternative Facts Deutschland (the neo-Faschists) came second at 16%, all other parties lost votes compared to the previous election.

I report a fact, and somebody gives it a thumbs down. What is this forum coming to?

Oh, I get it: it was my characterisation of AfD as the party of Alternative Facts ... Bjorn Hoecke (AfD) just got sentenced for using Nazi slogans in public. AfD is the party of neo-fascists, that's an established fact, too; the German Constitutional Court has had them under surveillance for some time now. I know, I know, some people think it's censorship, Elon Musk and Donald Trump think freedom of speech means you may say anything you want, but freedom of speech does not cover incitement to forced deportation and holocaust. Not in Germany anyway.

@moonbus said
The retreat into nationalist isolationism is a worrisome development, and in exactly the wrong direction. There are so many issues--climate change (it does not matter whether caused by human activity or not, it is happening), resource and waste management, mass migration--which transcend national borders, that they cannot be addressed by single nations acting alone; these iss ...[text shortened]... populist movements in France (le Pen), Tschermany (AfD), and NL are all harbingers of worse to come.

I couldn’t agree more.

@shavixmir said
I couldn’t agree more.

Douglas Murray, "The Strange Death of Europe." On my reading list for this week.