Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson

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  • RooK wrote: »
    The part that is difficult to swallow about Marv's proposed narrative is that it assumes that poor people are mostly idiots.

    The usual Remain narrative on these boards is that everyone who voted for Leave is either evil or stupid. How odd that they are seldom criticised for it...
  • chrisstileschrisstiles Shipmate
    edited September 2019
    Anselmina wrote: »
    RooK wrote: »
    The part that is difficult to swallow about Marv's proposed narrative is that it assumes that poor people are mostly idiots. Which, obviously, they are not.

    Xenophobes, on the other hand, are idiots by definition. With a high probability of not being successful, but not necessarily. I think Marv's just grasping the wrong end of the stick.

    Yes. I'm sure the breakdown of how people voted by age, class, income level etc, would be informative, for this argument. Eg, a fairly significant proportion of older people voted leave; many of whom might've started life as struggling working-class

    Numerically a large segment of the votes came from the relatively well-off in in the South of England rather than the working class in the North, similarly it appears that at least some of perception that the working class voted in large numbers for leave was down to flawed socio-economic classifiers that misclassified relatively affluent pensioners alongside those who don't receive a wage. Equally it looks like the narrow vote in Wales for leave was down to English incomers and retirees - which means that Brexit was very much the vote of England minus the larger cities.

    To a certain extent this is intuitively obvious once you think about it - as these are the people most likely to vote, and obviously this has to still be interpreted with a certain amount of caution as some of these people will still be among the 'squeezed middle', and some of the NRS misclassification reflects the changing nature of employment. But you are correct to say that the figures don't seem to reflect what people think of when they talk about the 'traditional working class'.
  • RooKRooK Admin Emeritus
    RooK wrote: »
    The part that is difficult to swallow about Marv's proposed narrative is that it assumes that poor people are mostly idiots.

    The usual Remain narrative on these boards is that everyone who voted for Leave is either evil or stupid. How odd that they are seldom criticised for it...

    Do you mean to defend xenophobia as neither evil nor stupid? Or do you intend to argue that the objective stupidity of the Leave option is not mostly xenophobia?
  • RooK wrote: »
    The part that is difficult to swallow about Marv's proposed narrative is that it assumes that poor people are mostly idiots.

    The usual Remain narrative on these boards is that everyone who voted for Leave is either evil or stupid. How odd that they are seldom criticised for it...

    No, not that Leavers are stupid, but that they have been deceived by rhetoric that puts the responsibility for all the wrong in Britain on the EU, with sides of the poor, the disabled and black & brown people.
  • DoublethinkDoublethink Shipmate
    edited September 2019
    While everyone argues over what ‘the poor’ think, are there any uk posters on this board who would describe themselves as poor ?
  • (Poor as in living on benefits and/or a minimum wage job in rental accommodation, as opposed to thinking its really quite hard to make mortgage payments on top of the lease for the second car.)
  • (Poor as in living on benefits and/or a minimum wage job in rental accommodation, as opposed to thinking its really quite hard to make mortgage payments on top of the lease for the second car.)

    I know I'm not poor, but I'm still living in rental accommodation and our car is 12 years old and bought earlier this year with a personal loan. My standard of living is pretty damn comfortable, but I've had more than a few years of wearing 3 jumpers because I can't afford to put the heating on enough (one of the things that doesn't get mentioned enough about rental accommodation is the truly shocking levels of insulation and the tendency to have heating that is cheap to install and expensive to run). I'm on a pretty decent professional wage but my wife's health largely stops her working so my take home is similar to that of a couple both getting minimum wage. I'm certainly not complaining about my standard of living but I'm not Marie Antoinette either.
  • RooK wrote: »
    RooK wrote: »
    The part that is difficult to swallow about Marv's proposed narrative is that it assumes that poor people are mostly idiots.

    The usual Remain narrative on these boards is that everyone who voted for Leave is either evil or stupid. How odd that they are seldom criticised for it...

    Do you mean to defend xenophobia as neither evil nor stupid? Or do you intend to argue that the objective stupidity of the Leave option is not mostly xenophobia?

    Ok, so now you are saying the people who voted for Brexit are stupid. So why were you saying that even the implication of such in my earlier post was wrong?
  • RooK wrote: »
    RooK wrote: »
    The part that is difficult to swallow about Marv's proposed narrative is that it assumes that poor people are mostly idiots.

    The usual Remain narrative on these boards is that everyone who voted for Leave is either evil or stupid. How odd that they are seldom criticised for it...

    Do you mean to defend xenophobia as neither evil nor stupid? Or do you intend to argue that the objective stupidity of the Leave option is not mostly xenophobia?

    Ok, so now you are saying the people who voted for Brexit are stupid. So why were you saying that even the implication of such in my earlier post was wrong?

    They fell for a position with absolutely nothing anyone has been able to identify in its favour, beyond its own label. As far as I have ever seen, that is objective fact. We will be out of the European Union. Beyond that fact, how does that help? No-one has identified a single way.

    Stupid, or easily triggered? To my mind the latter, by people with a very long xenophobic and tax-dodging agenda.
  • RooK wrote: »
    RooK wrote: »
    The part that is difficult to swallow about Marv's proposed narrative is that it assumes that poor people are mostly idiots.

    The usual Remain narrative on these boards is that everyone who voted for Leave is either evil or stupid. How odd that they are seldom criticised for it...

    Do you mean to defend xenophobia as neither evil nor stupid? Or do you intend to argue that the objective stupidity of the Leave option is not mostly xenophobia?

    Ok, so now you are saying the people who voted for Brexit are stupid. So why were you saying that even the implication of such in my earlier post was wrong?

    /sarcasm
  • RooK wrote: »
    RooK wrote: »
    The part that is difficult to swallow about Marv's proposed narrative is that it assumes that poor people are mostly idiots.

    The usual Remain narrative on these boards is that everyone who voted for Leave is either evil or stupid. How odd that they are seldom criticised for it...

    Do you mean to defend xenophobia as neither evil nor stupid? Or do you intend to argue that the objective stupidity of the Leave option is not mostly xenophobia?

    Ok, so now you are saying the people who voted for Brexit are stupid. So why were you saying that even the implication of such in my earlier post was wrong?

    See here lies the problem.

    I do not think that people who voted for Brexit are stupid. However, any kind of analysis of the reasoning for Brexit shows that the arguments are deeply flawed.

    Perhaps the following is true:
    [there was] a special kind of British suggestibility – willingness to obey orders, thinking in generalisations, the search for panaceas, faith in power, which made many Britons capable of falling to deeper depths than many people of other nations.

    In case you're wondering that is a quote Stephen Spender, a British commentator visiting Germany in 1945, and reflecting on what had led Germany to supporting Hitler. I replaced German with British. He was summing up what everyone thought at the time.

    Here's the point: ALL of us, all humans are vulnerable to propaganda - mostly because we all have cognitive biases. Most especially in this context, confirmational bias.

    If we take a step back from this week's events and people's reactions to Boris's "Humbug" remark; it's really obvious that those that support Boris lean towards it being a fairly benign comment in the context of high intensity in the Commons. Whilst those of us who think he has form for stirring up division think he's just continuing a pattern of absolute disregard for criticism.

    Now, I do think there's an objective reality here, and I do think the Prime Minister was completely out of line. However, if you look at newspapers or TV and radio or social media; it's really easy to see that confirmational bias is playing its part in how people respond.

    So, to one of my recurring themes; the majority of people do not take a deep interest in political issues. They make emotional decisions about policies and people. I say 'they' in this context purely because I am a political geek. I am not trying to say that I do not do this as well - it's a human phenomenon. I think most of us on the ship who participate in these discussions are much more engaged in the detail of politics than the average citizen and thus the effect is weakened. However this is why propaganda works.

    Here's the thing; the UK population has been exposed to three decades of conditioning about the European Union. Stating that fact is not calling people stupid; it's telling the truth about how this works. This is a really good summary: Euromyths - click on that link and just marvel at the sheer number of them! (In case you're wondering it's about 700 they've documented and debunked there). Not to mention how often so many of them are repeated again and again until they become established fact.

    Here's another brilliant example of that phenomenon.

    The truth is that the arguments for Brexit are stupid. You don't make things better by pretending that's not true to appease people.

    AFZ
  • Originally posted by Anselmina:

    Eg, a fairly significant proportion of older people voted leave; many of whom might've started life as struggling working-class, but are now living quite comfortably (possibly the last generation to do so) on work-related pensions, accumulated property investments etc, before current recessionary banking politics began to sell us off to the highest bidder.

    My father fits into that description, and he voted Leave. At the time, he thought that the EU was about to collapse. He thought that Wilders was going to win the next election in the Netherlands, and take the Netherlands out of the EU, and that Le Pen was going to win in France and do likewise. He thought that if we didn't get out, we would be sucked down with the sinking ship.

    He knew that Leave would adversely affect the NE family (thanks, Dad!) and not benefit my brother's family. He talked about "short term pain for long term gain". To my intense annoyance he claimed that his great grandchildren would be the ones to benefit from Leave. (NB, there were no great grandchildren in 2016, there are none now, and I do not envisage there being any within the next five years, if then.)

    One of our older neighbours voted Leave for the same reason.
  • N.B. When Dad talked about "short term pain for long term gain" he wasn't envisaging experiencing any of this short term pain himself, that was for other people. Although in fairness, given his age, he wasn't expecting to experience any long term gain, either.
  • ApolloniaApollonia Shipmate Posts: 3
    Anselmina wrote: »

    Yes. I'm sure the breakdown of how people voted by age, class, income level etc, would be informative, for this argument. Eg, a fairly significant proportion of older people voted leave; many of whom might've started life as struggling working-class, but are now living quite comfortably (possibly the last generation to do so) on work-related pensions, accumulated property investments etc, before current recessionary banking politics began to sell us off to the highest bidder. Just one small dynamic amongst a whole mess of dynamics to be taken into account.

    This has often been stated. But a closer analysis of voting patterns (i.e. not lumping everyone above 65 together as ‘old’) shows that those of us who are old enough to have lived through the War were more likely to be Remainers.

    Incidentally, I don’t understand how a woman who hasn’t lived in the UK for 35 years was able to vote in the Referendum. It was a serious cause of resentment among Britons who lived on mainland Europe that they were not allowed to vote.
  • Apollonia wrote: »
    This has often been stated. But a closer analysis of voting patterns (i.e. not lumping everyone above 65 together as ‘old’) shows that those of us who are old enough to have lived through the War were more likely to be Remainers.

    Though for someone to have appreciably 'lived through the war' in any sense and voted in 2016, they have to at least be in their late 70s - as above it looks like the majority of Leave votes came from a younger cohort - mainly older boomers.
  • I suspect the relatively small number of people still left who actually fought in the war were more likely to be Remainers. However, there was a very strong contingent of Leavers among those who were too young to fight, but were brought up on a diet of plucky British fighter pilots, black and white newsreels, war films, the Sunday Express as it was in the fifties etc etc etc. They were taught a lot of gung-ho nonsense but most of them never saw anyone actually get shot or blown up. Quite a lot of the male ones among them are the generation who did national service, but it includes the next lot after that who didn't.

    Not all old people are Leavers. I'm over 70 now. I'm not and quite a few of the people I know aren't.

    Although some people support Leave for other and more complex reasons, if you engage with many Leave supporters, it's clear that they support Leave for predominantly emotional reasons, and that in many cases their support is driven by emotions that are uncritical, unpleasant and reprehensible. It has also become a creed that has a marked quality of idolatry about it.
  • Apollonia wrote: »
    This has often been stated. But a closer analysis of voting patterns (i.e. not lumping everyone above 65 together as ‘old’) shows that those of us who are old enough to have lived through the War were more likely to be Remainers.

    Though for someone to have appreciably 'lived through the war' in any sense and voted in 2016, they have to at least be in their late 70s - as above it looks like the majority of Leave votes came from a younger cohort - mainly older boomers.

    And yet my dad (admittedly a long-time lurker) and all the contemporaries he knows (or that will admit it) voted Remain.

  • My family are strong working class and would now be described as poor when I was a boy. My Dad had a main job and two part time jobs just to keep us going. I won’t go on. We are a northern family (Preston), though I live in London. My family all voted remain, as did a lot of their neighbours.
  • EutychusEutychus Shipmate
    edited September 2019
    Sorry @chrisstiles I misread while making the tea: I see my dad illustrates your point rather than contradicting it.
  • Apollonia wrote: »
    This has often been stated. But a closer analysis of voting patterns (i.e. not lumping everyone above 65 together as ‘old’) shows that those of us who are old enough to have lived through the War were more likely to be Remainers.

    In fact this interrogates my "UK has never really understood the EU because WW2" theory quite interestingly.

    The above quote suggests that those who actually did live through the war, as opposed to basking in its outcome and Oh-what-a-lovely-war/Spitfires-doing-victory-rolls-over-Kent-cornfields nostalgia, did acquire an intuitive sense of the "never again" that underpinned the European project - but that this was not passed on to the next generation by the form commemoration took.

    I wonder how many of us on here are, as I am, stuck between the baby boom and Generation X (depending on which sociologist you ask), or pre-date it?
  • Jemima the 9thJemima the 9th Shipmate
    edited September 2019
    Mother in law voted leave. She is not stupid, though her formal education stopped at the end of school.
    She voted leave because she thinks it will reduce the number of immigrants (though she’s the daughter of immigrants) and she thinks this will give more opportunities to her kids, grandkids, and future generations. Her dislike of the EU is the same as her dislike of any institution or person she thinks has lots of money at the expense of those not well off. Basically, she thinks the EU are diddling her & the people she loves out of their rights. Her dislike of Gina Miller is on a par with that of her dislike of Jacob Rees Mogg.
  • RooKRooK Admin Emeritus
    RooK wrote: »
    RooK wrote: »
    The part that is difficult to swallow about Marv's proposed narrative is that it assumes that poor people are mostly idiots.

    The usual Remain narrative on these boards is that everyone who voted for Leave is either evil or stupid. How odd that they are seldom criticised for it...

    Do you mean to defend xenophobia as neither evil nor stupid? Or do you intend to argue that the objective stupidity of the Leave option is not mostly xenophobia?

    Ok, so now you are saying the people who voted for Brexit are stupid. So why were you saying that even the implication of such in my earlier post was wrong?

    Just because I like seeing my own words, I'm going to re-say what others have said: Just because a person done one stupid thing does not make them stupid, it makes them human. Brexit is objectively stupid, but it lured in support not with its stupidity but with an array of lurking xenophobia and paranoia.

    I mean, I've been saying essentially the same thing about religion on these boards for almost two decades. And that still hasn't had any effect, so I'm not kidding myself about the prospects here.
  • Eutychus wrote: »
    The above quote suggests that those who actually did live through the war, as opposed to basking in its outcome and Oh-what-a-lovely-war/Spitfires-doing-victory-rolls-over-Kent-cornfields nostalgia, did acquire an intuitive sense of the "never again" that underpinned the European project - but that this was not passed on to the next generation by the form commemoration took.

    This is also borne out by the results of the 1975 referendum, where older voters (those at that point who had actually been through the war) were generally more likely to be pro-EU than younger voters.

    My father was a rather indiscriminate buyer of second-hand books - and consequently I had a bunch of 1950s/1960s era boys annuals when I was growing up in the 80s. They were very much in the vein that @Enoch describes above, and I can see how they may have affected the views of those brought up on them.
  • Apollonia wrote: »

    Incidentally, I don’t understand how a woman who hasn’t lived in the UK for 35 years was able to vote in the Referendum. It was a serious cause of resentment among Britons who lived on mainland Europe that they were not allowed to vote.

    Thank you for calling me on this. It was careless of me not to fact-check my own assumption. I have to confess that I had assumed she had voted as that was what she had claimed to do, and I admit I didn't question her. Obviously wrongly, I granted her the licence of a relative (albeit one I never interact with) and took at face value her posts of indignation at Remoaners blocking democracy, and trying to prevent the Brexit 'we' voted for. So being honest I admit I was willing to believe the worst of her! Also being honest, I still think she's a big, fat, hypocrite and represents one of the worst aspects that has emerged from this whole dreadful mess.

    But if she wasn't resident and eligible to vote - which I would say is the more likely position - I apologise for misrepresenting that and her.

  • ApolloniaApollonia Shipmate Posts: 3
    And I must confess I wasn’t too sure myself of the exact rules, but knew a lot of British people, resident in the EU, were bitterly angry they’d been denied the right to vote on an issue that concerned them more than most others.

    I’ve now checked, and this is what the government website states:

    “British, Irish and Commonwealth citizens aged 18 or over who are resident in the UK or Gibraltar will be eligible to vote. UK citizens resident overseas will also be eligible to vote, provided they have been registered to vote at a UK address in the last 15 years.”

    So maybe your relative had some inkling of what was coming and managed to register somehow to qualify. How that would be achieved I wouldn’t know. In fact, I’m not sure what it means exactly or what would be involved.
  • One could register if one had had a UK address in the 15 years prior to the referendum. Or lived in Gibraltar. The rest of us UK passport-holders in the diaspora, sod all. Still, it'll be useful for jumping the "rest of world" queue as long as they don't make us rescind our nationality.
  • My wife and I have a friend who lives near Arnhem. She is 88 years old, born in Rotterdam, and lived through the German occupation. To this day, she says, she has a cold feling in her stomach on hearing that language spoken. Every year she goes to the memorial service at Oosterbeek on the anniversay of the airdrop and lays flowers on a war grave.
    She is bewildered and distressed at the turn politics have taken in this country. 'Don't they understand that the days of Rule Britannia are over, she asks us, and we are at a loss for a reply. My wife and I are 81, and we too lived through the war. Had the bomb which dropped behind my wife's parents' house in Liverpool exploded, she would not be here today. We well rmember those years, and feel no nostalgia whatever for them. We have German friends too, who are equally bewildered. In the nature of things, we may not live long enough to see the full consequences of Brexit working themselves out, but our undying curse will lie on those who brought such shame and disgrace on our country.
  • This goes very deep, Eirenist. Thank you for your hearfelt, true post!

    The confusion and anger you describe are shared amongst most, if not all, the ex-pats I know over here, on The Continent. You are very right in what you're saying.
  • So why is it when British people move to another country, they become ex-pats, not migrants?
  • Maybe because they're not brown.

    Or horrid.

    Or both.
  • We've just had the regular newsletter from our dozy Tory MP, who enthuses, among other entirely imaginary qualities, about Boris's "gravitas". I'm very tempted to email her and ask if she actually bothered to look up the word to see what it meant before she used it.
  • Jesu, mercy. Mary, pray.

    They don't live in this universe, do they?

    Dignity? Seriousness? Solemnity of manner? Sounds more like Caroline Lucas to me - is your MP a closet Green?
    :confused:
  • Doc Tor wrote: »
    So why is it when British people move to another country, they become ex-pats, not migrants?

    Because it relates to their relationship with Britain. You can't immigrate out of the country, only into it.
  • I’m sure I am not the only person here who real
    Doc Tor wrote: »
    So why is it when British people move to another country, they become ex-pats, not migrants?

    Because it relates to their relationship with Britain. You can't immigrate out of the country, only into it.

    When I lived in Malta, working for a bank there, my status according to my visa was "Migrant worker".
  • sionisais wrote: »
    I’m sure I am not the only person here who real
    Doc Tor wrote: »
    So why is it when British people move to another country, they become ex-pats, not migrants?

    Because it relates to their relationship with Britain. You can't immigrate out of the country, only into it.

    When I lived in Malta, working for a bank there, my status according to my visa was "Migrant worker".

    Other countries can use whichever words they like.
  • sionisais wrote: »
    I’m sure I am not the only person here who real
    Doc Tor wrote: »
    So why is it when British people move to another country, they become ex-pats, not migrants?

    Because it relates to their relationship with Britain. You can't immigrate out of the country, only into it.

    When I lived in Malta, working for a bank there, my status according to my visa was "Migrant worker".

    Other countries can use whichever words they like.

    I doubt Malta is unique and most of its officialese is straight out of the UK Civil Service.
  • Doc Tor wrote: »
    So why is it when British people move to another country, they become ex-pats, not migrants?

    I tend to think of "ex-pats" as living in little enclaves of Brits abroad - a whole bunch of Brits sitting around together drinking Stella and whinging about the locals on the Costa del Sunburn or whatever.

    For these kinds of people, it's not actually important what country they're in, so their primary relationship is with the country they no longer live in. Hence ex-pats.

    I am, technically, an expatriot Brit, but I consider myself an immigrant to the US, rather than an ex-pat (because it's more important that I'm living in the US rather than a different country, and the fact that I'm British rather than French, Canadian, or whatever is secondary.
  • Doc Tor wrote: »
    So why is it when British people move to another country, they become ex-pats, not migrants?

    Because it relates to their relationship with Britain. You can't immigrate out of the country, only into it.

    Sophistry. We don't refer to Afghans or Bangladeshi communities as 'ex pat'. It's Empire, and we need to get over it. There are around a million UK immigrants in other EU nations. Immigrants. Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander.
  • RossweisseRossweisse Hell Host, 8th Day Host
    Margaret wrote: »
    We've just had the regular newsletter from our dozy Tory MP, who enthuses, among other entirely imaginary qualities, about Boris's "gravitas". I'm very tempted to email her and ask if she actually bothered to look up the word to see what it meant before she used it.
    If she's serious, this might well belong in the "Proof Americans and Brits speak a different language" Heaven thread. Or maybe she's just having a giggle.

  • WandererWanderer Shipmate Posts: 47
    Doc Tor wrote: »
    So why is it when British people move to another country, they become ex-pats, not migrants?

    I thought it was one of those irregular verbs : I am an ex-pat, you are an immigrant, they are economic migrants.
  • Wanderer wrote: »
    Doc Tor wrote: »
    So why is it when British people move to another country, they become ex-pats, not migrants?

    I thought it was one of those irregular verbs : I am an ex-pat, you are an immigrant, they are economic migrants.
    I think the last would be "skiving, scroungers here for free health treatment and benefits, and stealing our jobs (which we didn't want to do anyway)".
  • Doc Tor wrote: »
    So why is it when British people move to another country, they become ex-pats, not migrants?
    Maybe because they're not brown.
    <snip>

    This article from a few years back reaches the same distressing conclusion.


  • Well, except that brown brits living abroad could be described as expats.
  • I mean, they could, but my strong suspicion is they wouldn't be.
  • Olly WelchesterOlly Welchester Shipmate Posts: 15
    Margaret wrote: »
    We've just had the regular newsletter from our dozy Tory MP, who enthuses, among other entirely imaginary qualities, about Boris's "gravitas". I'm very tempted to email her and ask if she actually bothered to look up the word to see what it meant before she used it.

    Does it imply a tendency to fall down?
  • Margaret wrote: »
    We've just had the regular newsletter from our dozy Tory MP, who enthuses, among other entirely imaginary qualities, about Boris's "gravitas". I'm very tempted to email her and ask if she actually bothered to look up the word to see what it meant before she used it.

    Does it imply a tendency to fall down?

    In that our use of gravitas is derived from the Latin in which it means weight or heaviness, it would appear that Boris is already as low as he will get.
  • HugalHugal Shipmate
    sionisais wrote: »
    Margaret wrote: »
    We've just had the regular newsletter from our dozy Tory MP, who enthuses, among other entirely imaginary qualities, about Boris's "gravitas". I'm very tempted to email her and ask if she actually bothered to look up the word to see what it meant before she used it.

    Does it imply a tendency to fall down?

    In that our use of gravitas is derived from the Latin in which it means weight or heaviness, it would appear that Boris is already as low as he will get.

    I wouldn't Put money on that
  • Hugal wrote: »
    sionisais wrote: »
    Margaret wrote: »
    We've just had the regular newsletter from our dozy Tory MP, who enthuses, among other entirely imaginary qualities, about Boris's "gravitas". I'm very tempted to email her and ask if she actually bothered to look up the word to see what it meant before she used it.

    Does it imply a tendency to fall down?

    In that our use of gravitas is derived from the Latin in which it means weight or heaviness, it would appear that Boris is already as low as he will get.

    I wouldn't Put money on that
    Hugal wrote: »
    sionisais wrote: »
    Margaret wrote: »
    We've just had the regular newsletter from our dozy Tory MP, who enthuses, among other entirely imaginary qualities, about Boris's "gravitas". I'm very tempted to email her and ask if she actually bothered to look up the word to see what it meant before she used it.

    Does it imply a tendency to fall down?

    In that our use of gravitas is derived from the Latin in which it means weight or heaviness, it would appear that Boris is already as low as he will get.

    I wouldn't Put money on that

    True. He could still be digging.
  • Doc Tor wrote: »
    Doc Tor wrote: »
    So why is it when British people move to another country, they become ex-pats, not migrants?

    Because it relates to their relationship with Britain. You can't immigrate out of the country, only into it.

    Sophistry. We don't refer to Afghans or Bangladeshi communities as 'ex pat'. It's Empire, and we need to get over it. There are around a million UK immigrants in other EU nations. Immigrants. Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander.

    As far as those other countries are concerned, they are indeed immigrants. As far as Britain is concerned, they’re expats, or possibly emigrants if you want to be pedantic.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    Doc Tor wrote: »
    So why is it when British people move to another country, they become ex-pats, not migrants?

    Because it relates to their relationship with Britain. You can't immigrate out of the country, only into it.

    You emigrate from.

    Even back in the 50's, we called all those who had arrived after WW II "migrants" regardless of from which European country they had come from - mainland or island. Those were the last days of the White Australia policy.
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