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«12. . .1,3541,3551,3561,3571,3581,3591,360. . .2,6342,635»

Dry shoes are the best

nation=zwangzug
Legendary card I will take price suggestions

Atsvea, Lord Dominator, Sapnu puas, Aeterno tranquillitas, and 3 othersForgotten Beauty, Turbeaux, and Canaltia

Dry shoes are the best wrote:nation=zwangzug
Legendary card I will take price suggestions

Hol up, I just saw Muddy shoes are the worst bidding. Is that you too?

Atsvea, Lord Dominator, Aeterno tranquillitas, Dwardossa, and 2 othersTurbeaux, and Canaltia

Muddy shoes are the worst

Sapnu puas wrote:Hol up, I just saw Muddy shoes are the worst bidding. Is that you too?

Yes

Jutsa, Atsvea, Lord Dominator, Sapnu puas, and 3 othersDwardossa, Turbeaux, and Canaltia

Dear friends in Britain,

"Theresa May suffers humiliating defeat as MPs vote down her deal by 432 votes to 202," according to my American news.

Could I trouble anyone in the know for some distilled context of the overall situation? I don't need to be told how Parliament differs from Congress or anything like that, but more so of the overall feeling among people regarding Brexit and the EU. Is this due to people having second thoughts about leaving, or is it that Theresa May is seen as having gotten a particularly weak deal from the EU and that Britain could have/should have gotten a much better one, or...? I have sort of been following this, but it seems like things have come to a head now.

Thank you for indulging me, lol. I try not to get too wrapped up in political news, but here lately it's all been about the shutdown and Trump's declining popularity, and the Democrats in the house, etc, etc, punctuated by news about how at some point the economy is going to flop again in the next couple years.

The new bluestocking homeland, Caracasus, Frieden-und Freudenland, Mount Seymour, and 8 othersAtsvea, Lord Dominator, Aeterno tranquillitas, Uan aa Boa, Turbeaux, Canaltia, Altmer dominion, and Rivienland

Ruinenlust wrote:Could I trouble anyone in the know for some distilled context of the overall situation?

I don't think it's possible to identify a unified mood of the people beyond being totally fed up of the whole thing and just wishing it would go away. Society remains fundamentally divided on the issues involved.

Among the politicians who have voted tonight, May's proposed deal managed to alienate the pro-European side because it's a hard Brexit taking us out of the single market and the customs union, but also anger the anti-European side by failing to make a clean enough break.

The problem for the Bexiteers stems from a technical issue to do with the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. If the UK is to leave the customs union there has to be a border where duties and tariffs are imposed. An international treaty between the UK and the RoI prevents there being a hard border between them, and as this ended 30 years of terrorism and sectarian violence in the North it's a pretty big deal. The minority Conservative government is propped up by a party from Northern Ireland that will not accept a border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK (though that concern for unity doesn't stop them keeping equal marriage and abortion illegal in Northern Ireland only), so there's literally nowhere to put one. The deal that's just been voted down included a clause called the backstop, according to which should no agreement on how to resolve the border question be reached by the end of the transition period the whole UK would have to remain within the customs union indefinitely and be unable to withdraw without the consent of the EU. Many people felt that this didn't constitute leaving at all.

Theresa May seems to be indicating tonight that rather than return to Brussels to ask for concessions on the backstop, something that's already been refused, she will talk to other parties and see what possibility for a consensus there is. This is surprising because she'd originally hoped to present the deal as a fait accompli with nobody else getting any say in it. The fact that tonight's vote took place at all is due to a rebellious mood in a parliament that doesn't want to be excluded and now seems to be in the driving seat. The problem is that while there's a majority against this deal there doesn't seem to be a majority for any of the alternatives.

Tomorrow should see a vote of no confidence in the government but May is likely to survive - the rebels from her own party and their Irish associates didn't like this deal but they have no desire to bring down the government. After that we're in uncharted territory, although the EU has indicated a willingness to delay the date of departure while things get sorted out and that looks likely to happen.

Hope that's not too garbled.

Mozworld, The new bluestocking homeland, Caracasus, Frieden-und Freudenland, and 11 othersJutsa, Mount Seymour, Atsvea, Ruinenlust, Lord Dominator, Aeterno tranquillitas, Turbeaux, Seagull, Altmer dominion, The void territories, and Rivienland

Spokesperson of Love and nature crawls out from the deep stone catacombs and asks: "Y'all got any more of of those forest cards?"

I'll need these to make them my precious: page=deck/show_trades=bids?start=0

Crawls back in and waits hopefully. Don't want to wake up those mad card gods and make them angry.

The Americans and British are both in gridlock situations at the moment.

Trump won't back down on his wall. Pelosi won't fund it.

May wouldn't back down on her deal and that there will be no People's Vote. While Corbyn just wants another general election.
So if she wins another vote of no-confidence (thereby no election) I've no idea where we go from here.

The new bluestocking homeland, Caracasus, Frieden-und Freudenland, Jutsa, and 12 othersMount Seymour, Atsvea, Ruinenlust, Lord Dominator, Aeterno tranquillitas, Uan aa Boa, Turbeaux, Canaltia, Seagull, Hediacrana, Entitize, and Rivienland

The geeses commonwealth of goosedom

Prime Minister May is in a much more ticklish and much less obvious position than President Trump though.

President Trump is not finding a solution to the border issues that pleases all sides, for him the wall is binary, it either is or it is not.

Prime Minister May on the other hand must hold together her coalition, please her own party, which is far from unanimous on the details of Brexit, whilst making sure the U. K. does not suffer economic collapse, though negotiations with the E. U.

Caracasus, Atsvea, Ruinenlust, Lord Dominator, and 5 othersAeterno tranquillitas, Uan aa Boa, Turbeaux, Canaltia, and Rivienland

And all of this with a clock ticking down to March 29th.

Caracasus, Atsvea, Ruinenlust, Lord Dominator, and 8 othersThe geeses commonwealth of goosedom, Aeterno tranquillitas, Uan aa Boa, Turbeaux, Canaltia, Seagull, Hediacrana, and Entitize

Post self-deleted by Entitize.

Mozworld wrote:And all of this with a clock ticking down to March 29th.

Eh, who needs medication and lorry drivers anyway? And forget about Ireland, if it is any good it would be a part of the United Kingdom!

Candlewhisper Archive, Atsvea, Ruinenlust, Lord Dominator, and 5 othersAeterno tranquillitas, Uan aa Boa, Dwardossa, Canaltia, and Entitize

hello! I made a new newspaper thingy and would ya'll rate it and give me some tips?

Thank you for reading today's edition.

Here is the actually RP, but there is no more war was it has ended.

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=457388

Please Upvote if you enjoyed this!
Watch out for the next Daily Incident!

Read dispatch

thanks!

The new bluestocking homeland, Sacara, Frieden-und Freudenland, Calenmor, and 9 othersMount Seymour, Atsvea, Ruinenlust, Lord Dominator, Uan aa Boa, Turbeaux, Canaltia, N1xon, and Rivienland

Mozworld wrote:The Americans and British are both in gridlock situations at the moment.

Trump won't back down on his wall. Pelosi won't fund it.

May wouldn't back down on her deal and that there will be no People's Vote. While Corbyn just wants another general election.
So if she wins another vote of no-confidence (thereby no election) I've no idea where we go from here.

Where you are, is there reliable reporting on covert elements working to destabilize democratic governments worldwide in favor of authoritarian nationalist regimes? Does anyone else see philosophical parallels playing out in NS? Is anyone else noticing this?

I’m fairly new to This game, but part of its appeal for me is a desire to prove to myself that, yes, democracy works and it can even be beautiful (If only just limited to my own tiny Azaffran).

I know from history, we have weathered far worse in terms of world wars, genocides, various reigns of terror, but I haven’t really weathered these things personally. So For now at least, I’m choosing to work through my anxieties by answering issues and reading message boards like this. Hopefully The way we conduct our nations will teach us about how we conduct ourselves.

Caracasus, Ownzone, Atsvea, Ruinenlust, and 6 othersLord Dominator, Aeterno tranquillitas, Turbeaux, Canaltia, Seagull, and Cat-herders united

Turbeaux wrote:Eh, who needs medication and lorry drivers anyway? And forget about Ireland, if it is any good it would be a part of the United Kingdom!

I'm thinking if / when the second referendum comes up, people may vote for Brexit purely from the sunk cost fallacy. I know of quite a few sensible Remainers and quite a few reformed former Brexiteers who say they want to see it through just because we've come this far, and they don't want all the chaos to have been for nothing.

Goddess Relief Office, The new bluestocking homeland, Frieden-und Freudenland, Mount Seymour, and 9 othersOwnzone, Atsvea, Ruinenlust, Lord Dominator, Aeterno tranquillitas, Uan aa Boa, Turbeaux, Canaltia, and Rivienland

I have a feeling if there was a second vote, England minus Scotland and Northern Ireland would be a toss up. But with the other two in the mix the chance for it being reversed is pretty high.

Chan island

Candlewhisper Archive wrote:I'm thinking if / when the second referendum comes up, people may vote for Brexit purely from the sunk cost fallacy. I know of quite a few sensible Remainers and quite a few reformed former Brexiteers who say they want to see it through just because we've come this far, and they don't want all the chaos to have been for nothing.

Ah the sunken cost fallacy. Just generally one of the most destructive mindsets around.

Whatever the case is, if a second referendum does come around, you can bet your life savings that I will spend every single opportunity possible campaigning for the remain cause (exactly like I did the first time around). I'm ready for another round in the trenches.

The bing dianisty

We're burning the world, not only by burning fuels, but also by releasing greenhouse gases into the environment which will eventually make the earth so hot it BURNS

Caracasus

Ruinenlust wrote:Dear friends in Britain,

"Theresa May suffers humiliating defeat as MPs vote down her deal by 432 votes to 202," according to my American news.

Could I trouble anyone in the know for some distilled context of the overall situation? I don't need to be told how Parliament differs from Congress or anything like that, but more so of the overall feeling among people regarding Brexit and the EU. Is this due to people having second thoughts about leaving, or is it that Theresa May is seen as having gotten a particularly weak deal from the EU and that Britain could have/should have gotten a much better one, or...? I have sort of been following this, but it seems like things have come to a head now.

Thank you for indulging me, lol. I try not to get too wrapped up in political news, but here lately it's all been about the shutdown and Trump's declining popularity, and the Democrats in the house, etc, etc, punctuated by news about how at some point the economy is going to flop again in the next couple years.

After the referendum, the government faffed about and did nothing very productive during talks. This made both leave and remain side angry.

Then May called a general election. She managed to cling on to power by signing a deal with a Northern Irish party. The government continued to faff around and do nothing productive. Again, this made both leave and remain sides very unhappy.

Then May managed to cobble together a potential deal to leave the EU. As it was based on 2 years faffing around, it made parliament, leave and remain very unhappy.

Then there was a vote last week. May's deal got voted down with quite a large majority. Inexplicably this has made large amounts of the leave and remain camp happy, even though it will no doubt lead to the government faffing around for even longer.

The new bluestocking homeland, Frieden-und Freudenland, Mount Seymour, Ruinenlust, and 8 othersLord Dominator, Aeterno tranquillitas, Uan aa Boa, Turbeaux, Canaltia, Seagull, The void territories, and Cat-herders united

The bing dianisty wrote:We're burning the world, not only by burning fuels, but also by releasing greenhouse gases into the environment which will eventually make the earth so hot it BURNS

For sure, though it's often worth being careful with statements like that, as the holes in it can be jumped on by climate change deniers. We're also shifting away from the "global warming" explanation, as while that's part of the process, the scientifically illiterate are likely to misinterpret that, and - for example - say that they'd quite like it to be warmer. Climate change of course increases all sorts of extreme weather, including cold weather events.

Even if it's less snappy, I prefer to say that there's overwhelmingly strong evidence that anthropogenic climate change exists, which is causing increasingly unpredictable weather patterns, which already has a significant human and economic cost, and which will eventually be an existential threat if not to human life than to human society at the least. It's also expert opinion that we're moving too slowly and being too unambitious in addressing this.

So while we may not burn in our lifetimes, it's entirely possible that we'll starve, drown or fall into poverty as a result of environmentally irresponsibility.

The new bluestocking homeland, Frieden-und Freudenland, Mount Seymour, Ruinenlust, and 7 othersLord Dominator, Aeterno tranquillitas, Turbeaux, Canaltia, Seagull, Rivienland, and Cat-herders united

Caracasus wrote:After the referendum, the government faffed about and did nothing very productive during talks. This made both leave and remain side angry.

Then May called a general election. She managed to cling on to power by signing a deal with a Northern Irish party. The government continued to faff around and do nothing productive. Again, this made both leave and remain sides very unhappy.

Then May managed to cobble together a potential deal to leave the EU. As it was based on 2 years faffing around, it made parliament, leave and remain very unhappy.

Then there was a vote last week. May's deal got voted down with quite a large majority. Inexplicably this has made large amounts of the leave and remain camp happy, even though it will no doubt lead to the government faffing around for even longer.

So if I've gotten this right, the common thread is the faffing around, as you put it. The United Kingdom of Faffers. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, looking at the American "Govern"ment. The Faffing States of America.

The whole thing with the shutdown in the US is absurd. It perfectly embodies the fundamental operating principal of the Republicans as of late: it's better to have nothing at all than to have an imperfect thing. Better to shut the government down than to fund the wrong things in wrong amounts. Better to sabotage and subvert the system than to have the wheel of electoral fortune turn against you. Willingly throw the economy away by triggering a skunk fight over a damn wall in the desert. It's good that America has no seashores or airports, incidentally, otherwise the sacred wall might not be the best barrier in the 21st century.

You get so many problems in an institution when one of the groups involved is against the institution itself. For some reason, hobbling the ability of the government to operate properly is a laudable goal with the Republican base voters, which makes about as much sense as trying to ruin your house's furnace in the winter to bring spending down. Better to have no heat at all than to opt for insulation or for changing the system to something new. "Elect me to federal government; the feds are all corrupt and evil."

Personally I am half-gleeful when Trump's "ideas" and "plans" (I don't really think he's got a firm grip on those vocabulary words, but whatever.) colossally fail. I actually agree with one thing he says: let the shutdown go on for weeks or months. The longer it goes on, the more rank-and-file people will gradually start to see how ineffective and dumb he is, and how complicit the Republicans in the government are. We ("we" here meaning the voting population in the US) may need to burn our hands a bit in order to not touch the stove in the future. If this sucks so badly for so many people that our voting habits and political engagement change for the better in the future, perhaps this will not have been an unmitigated disaster. The true disaster to me would be if Trump's "preside"ency ends in 2021 or 2025 with half of the country still insisting that he's the best thing ever, because it would only let the alternate reality live on and spawn new people like him in the future.

I also, incidentally, think the Democrats may be riper than they realize for falling for a demagogue as well. Obviously the content of what is said and the prejudices would have to significantly realign, but it's entirely conceivable to me that Democrats are not so immune from swinging in a more leftist direction in order to combat the rise of the right wing.

The important thing to remember, though, is that it's all just faffing around. Few are looking candidly at the impending set of world-changing disasters that climate change is sure to bring, and even fewer are actually seriously planning for these things to happen. Right now, we all ought to be pushing pause on politics and normal debates, and instead should be treating climate change and the resilience of our infrastructure like the hugely important issue that it is. We'd all be better off if, instead of doing this nonsense with border walls and scandals, we had been all focused on moving out of floodplains, moving inland from the ocean, allowing areas of land to revert to forests, performing costly improvements on existing infrastructure, making hard decisions about where and in what numbers we ought to live in different places to best weather the all of the things that the 21st century can be reasonably expected to bring. Eventually, countries around the world will be faced with regular, massively inflated costs of maintaining working systems within their borders, as extreme weather events create cascades of economic, physical, and social problems around the world.

The new bluestocking homeland, Caracasus, Frieden-und Freudenland, Mount Seymour, and 8 othersWindow Land, Lord Dominator, Aeterno tranquillitas, Uan aa Boa, Turbeaux, Canaltia, Seagull, and Rivienland

Ruinenlust wrote:So if I've gotten this right, the common thread is the faffing around, as you put it. The United Kingdom of Faffers. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, looking at the American "Govern"ment. The Faffing States of America.

The whole thing with the shutdown in the US is absurd. It perfectly embodies the fundamental operating principal of the Republicans as of late: it's better to have nothing at all than to have an imperfect thing. Better to shut the government down than to fund the wrong things in wrong amounts. Better to sabotage and subvert the system than to have the wheel of electoral fortune turn against you. Willingly throw the economy away by triggering a skunk fight over a damn wall in the desert. It's good that America has no seashores or airports, incidentally, otherwise the sacred wall might not be the best barrier in the 21st century.

You get so many problems in an institution when one of the groups involved is against the institution itself. For some reason, hobbling the ability of the government to operate properly is a laudable goal with the Republican base voters, which makes about as much sense as trying to ruin your house's furnace in the winter to bring spending down. Better to have no heat at all than to opt for insulation or for changing the system to something new. "Elect me to federal government; the feds are all corrupt and evil."

Personally I am half-gleeful when Trump's "ideas" and "plans" (I don't really think he's got a firm grip on those vocabulary words, but whatever.) colossally fail. I actually agree with one thing he says: let the shutdown go on for weeks or months. The longer it goes on, the more rank-and-file people will gradually start to see how ineffective and dumb he is, and how complicit the Republicans in the government are. We ("we" here meaning the voting population in the US) may need to burn our hands a bit in order to not touch the stove in the future. If this sucks so badly for so many people that our voting habits and political engagement change for the better in the future, perhaps this will not have been an unmitigated disaster. The true disaster to me would be if Trump's "preside"ency ends in 2021 or 2025 with half of the country still insisting that he's the best thing ever, because it would only let the alternate reality live on and spawn new people like him in the future.

I also, incidentally, think the Democrats may be riper than they realize for falling for a demagogue as well. Obviously the content of what is said and the prejudices would have to significantly realign, but it's entirely conceivable to me that Democrats are not so immune from swinging in a more leftist direction in order to combat the rise of the right wing.

The important thing to remember, though, is that it's all just faffing around. Few are looking candidly at the impending set of world-changing disasters that climate change is sure to bring, and even fewer are actually seriously planning for these things to happen. Right now, we all ought to be pushing pause on politics and normal debates, and instead should be treating climate change and the resilience of our infrastructure like the hugely important issue that it is. We'd all be better off if, instead of doing this nonsense with border walls and scandals, we had been all focused on moving out of floodplains, moving inland from the ocean, allowing areas of land to revert to forests, performing costly improvements on existing infrastructure, making hard decisions about where and in what numbers we ought to live in different places to best weather the all of the things that the 21st century can be reasonably expected to bring. Eventually, countries around the world will be faced with regular, massively inflated costs of maintaining working systems within their borders, as extreme weather events create cascades of economic, physical, and social problems around the world.

On mobile, so I do apologise as I don't have time to write out a proper response to this.

I sort of agree with most of this, esp. The idea that our govts and leaders are basically 'fiddling while Rome burns.'

To add to that, I'd also suggest that under the current neoliberal status quo, things have broadly 'worked' in developed countries for the last few decades. This has meant that govts have basically been able to cruise along doing not very much at all really aside from the occasional incramental changes.

Now we're seeing multiple problems emerge that can't be solved easily. I know I call them incompetent all the time, but honestly 10 or 20 years ago they'd have done alright. In the face of today's challenges however, they are shown up as hopelessly oit of touch and incompetent so they do what anyone does faced with a problem that they can't solve. They faff.

The new bluestocking homeland, Frieden-und Freudenland, Chan island, Mount Seymour, and 8 othersRuinenlust, Lord Dominator, Aeterno tranquillitas, Uan aa Boa, Turbeaux, Canaltia, Seagull, and Rivienland

Candlewhisper Archive wrote:For sure, though it's often worth being careful with statements like that, as the holes in it can be jumped on by climate change deniers. We're also shifting away from the "global warming" explanation, as while that's part of the process, the scientifically illiterate are likely to misinterpret that, and - for example - say that they'd quite like it to be warmer. Climate change of course increases all sorts of extreme weather, including cold weather events.

Even if it's less snappy, I prefer to say that there's overwhelmingly strong evidence that anthropogenic climate change exists, which is causing increasingly unpredictable weather patterns, which already has a significant human and economic cost, and which will eventually be an existential threat if not to human life than to human society at the least. It's also expert opinion that we're moving too slowly and being too unambitious in addressing this.

So while we may not burn in our lifetimes, it's entirely possible that we'll starve, drown or fall into poverty as a result of environmentally irresponsibility.

Sea levels are going to rise so much that it's hard to understand. Antarctic is melting six times faster than 40 years ago. If all the ice melts from there sea levels are going to rise 57 meters.

""Depending on how old you are and how fast we keep warming up the planet you may see the vector of catastrophically rapid sea level rise (4 meters per century scale)." A rise of 4 meters (about 12 feet) would be enough to put many coastal towns and cities underwater and submerge much of South Florida."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/antarctica-ice-melting-six-times-greater-study-finds/
http://fortune.com/2019/01/14/sea-level-feet-rise-antarctic-snow-melt-glacier-report/?xid=gn_editorspicks

P.s. And this is just one of many problems. We are living a time called anthropocene and this stuff is also happening: "the Holocene extinction, otherwise referred to as the Sixth extinction or Anthropocene extinction." I think as a species we are pretty much totally f'd up already, because that pyramid of life always crumbles from the top when the base is destroyed.

Re: Brexit, I think it's a grand fiction perpetrated by all sides that PM May has failed because she wasn't decisive or strong enough.

I don't like the woman at all, but lack of determination is not one of her weaknesses. Disregard for civil liberties, sure. High-handed, moralising and paternalistic, sure. Bad dancing, sure. But she's always been decisive.

Of course, I also think strength and decisiveness are leadership qualities that are over-valued by the general public. There's always been a desire to have our leaders show stubborn determination, to always stand by their initial assessments, and to never back down. It's why we denigrate "u-turn politics", and why interviewers always tear into politicians who've changed their positions on something.

What I'd like to see is a Prime Minister who says "I don't actually know the answer, but we're working on it" and "that was my position, but I've since reconsidered the evidence, and I don't believe that anymore", and then for the electorate to stand up and applaud, because actually, admitting ignorance is the key to knowledge, and being open to changing your mind is the key to rational action.

Sadly, human psychology is such that the myth of the "strong leader" persists...

The new bluestocking homeland, Sacara, Frieden-und Freudenland, Chan island, and 12 othersJutsa, Mount Seymour, Ruinenlust, Lord Dominator, Aeterno tranquillitas, Uan aa Boa, Turbeaux, Canaltia, Seagull, Hediacrana, Rivienland, and Cat-herders united

Love and Nature wrote:Sea levels are going to rise so much that it's hard to understand. Antarctic is melting six times faster than 40 years ago. If all the ice melts from there sea levels are going to rise 57 meters.

""Depending on how old you are and how fast we keep warming up the planet you may see the vector of catastrophically rapid sea level rise (4 meters per century scale)." A rise of 4 meters (about 12 feet) would be enough to put many coastal towns and cities underwater and submerge much of South Florida."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/antarctica-ice-melting-six-times-greater-study-finds/
http://fortune.com/2019/01/14/sea-level-feet-rise-antarctic-snow-melt-glacier-report/?xid=gn_editorspicks

P.s. And this is just one of many problems. We are living a time called anthropocene and this stuff is also happening: "the Holocene extinction, otherwise referred to as the Sixth extinction or Anthropocene extinction." I think as a species we are pretty much totally f'd up already, because that pyramid of life always crumbles from the top when the base is destroyed.

Indeed. That and a million other things, all simultaneously.

Climate change is not so much going to suddenly make the system implode as it will destroy it by a thousand cuts. The seas won't rise tens of meters overnight, but every year places at the margin will be lost, and hitherto inland areas will gradually become marginal and exposed to the ocean. Settlements will simply have to retreat, once the walls are overwhelmed.

--

In terms of personal belief and philosophy, my ideas regarding the environment and human population are probably the most radical and out of the mainstream. I firmly believe, however, that in the area of environmentalism, today's radical ideas will be tomorrow's common sense, moderate positions, or even may seem conservative and "business as usual" by many. I think we are, today, like people from 500 years ago speculating about how this newfangled "Renaissance" and "sciences" thing might change society. Even their wildest dreams are off the mark.

Candlewhisper Archive wrote:Re: Brexit, I think it's a grand fiction perpetrated by all sides that PM May has failed because she wasn't decisive or strong enough.

I don't like the woman at all, but lack of determination is not one of her weaknesses. Disregard for civil liberties, sure. High-handed, moralising and paternalistic, sure. Bad dancing, sure. But she's always been decisive.

Given that her promised cross-party talks today ruled out any budging on May's position before they even started and that the leader of the opposition wasn't invited it's hard to disagree with you. Yet viewed from Europe indecision must be the impression our political system is giving. It took our government 15 months of the 2 year negotiation period even to set out (in the form of the Chequers plan) what it actually wanted, after which it signed up to a deal it was clearly unable to ratify in its own parliament. As the person with whom the buck stops May carries responsibility for that. If she failed to realise the deal would be unacceptable then that was a serious error, and if she knew that it would fail then she's wasted months of everyone's time by not admitting that agreement couldn't be reached - we could have been where we are now more than a year ago instead of playing chicken with the deadline like this. Her failure time and time again to react to, or even to acknowledge, the difficulties looks more like paralysis than determination.

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