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Grant



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The more I read about history the more I realise that we are no superior to the Medievals except regarding technology and some of the sciences. In physics and chemistry we have them beat, but most of the other so-called sciences are worthless - climate science, economic science, social science etc. Most are no better than the 13th century.
Don’t forget they had Notre Dame cathedral; we have Banksie. They had Edward I; we have BoJo. They had leeches; we have lobotomies.

As someone once said, the only real advantage we have is modern dentistry.

As for the expulsion of the Jews, if you appoint yourself God’s chosen people, don’t be surprised that every couple of centuries you get a good duffing.
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Mick Harper
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The more I read about history the more I realise that we are no superior to the Medievals

Me too. Though maybe not Me Too.

except regarding technology and some of the sciences. In physics and chemistry we have them beat, but most of the other so-called sciences are worthless

Ya gotta be careful here not to mix up science with technology.

- climate science, economic science, social science etc. Most are no better than the 13th century.

Remember AE strictures about lists with an etc tacked on.

Don’t forget they had Notre Dame cathedral; we have Banksie.

Come on.
They had Edward I; we have BoJo.

I prefer BoJo.
They had leeches; we have lobotomies.

We got rid of lobotomies, they never got rid of leeches. That's quite a difference.

As someone once said, the only real advantage we have is modern dentistry.

This ain't medieval. Even in my lifetime it was normal for people to have all their teeth taken out when young and wear dentures just because dentistry was so painful

As for the expulsion of the Jews, if you appoint yourself God’s chosen people, don’t be surprised that every couple of centuries you get a good duffing.

This is sort of correct. Minorities are always going to get it in the neck to some extent, but Jews are specially talented in rubbing the populace up the wrong way. Being specially talented.
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Mick Harper
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Look, I understand this is a shooting-fish-in-a-barrel situation but anyone who listens to arguments about anti-Semitism in Britain (do they even have them in America?) will appreciate it is unavoidable. So I'll press on, hope something turns up, and finish off

Since the people making it rarely have anything else to say of any value, the argument should really end there.

This is true but not for the reason the writer thinks. Since there is an absence of anti-Semitism generally, it follows that anti-Semites are a kind of weird fringe, mainly not worth listening to because their arguments are so familiar. What the writer does not appreciate is that she belongs to the liberal non-fringe and is not worth listening to because her arguments are so familiar. This does not mean either anti-Semitic or liberal arguments are wrong, just not worth listening to.

If we could show that the authorities of states such as England sometimes treated Jews favourably then we can challenge the assumption of the argument and show that the logic of ‘whatever all these states thought about Jews must be right if so many thought it’ is contradictory because the successive opinions of medieval states often conflicted with one another.

The writer has finally grasped the reality of the situation, not just for Jews but for all minorities in any given state. For genetic and sociological reasons, it is part of the human condition to dislike anybody who is 'not like us'; for genetic and sociological reasons all human societies must contain people who are 'not like us.'. One of the tasks of government is to square this particular circle. One of the tasks of the Applied Epistemologist is to hold the ring. Message ends.
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Grant



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Problem with the Jews is that if you appoint yourself God’s chosen people and live separately on your wits for thousands of years you will become more intelligent than the host population. This is because unintelligent Jews will leave the tribe and blend in with the rest.
The remaining ones will be renowned for their brains, ability with money, and general cunning. Every so often the local population will throw them down a well.
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Mick Harper
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What incentive do unintelligent Jews have to leave the tribe?
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Grant



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Imagine living in a medieval village and having to a) not eat the most popular source of protein b) take a whole day off every week when you can’t do anything at all c) follow a host of other silly rules.

This all costs time and money. You have to earn more than the average villager just to keep up with your neighbours, who will all be Jews because you are supposed to live only with fellow Jews.

The only way to earn this extra money is to do the things Jews are supposed to be good at - buying and selling, lending, advising etc. You’ll never earn the extra money doing manual work and in fact your fellow Jews will look down on you if you do.

Now imagine you are a Jew of little brain. You can’t keep up with the others and in fact you prefer hanging out with the gentiles in the local pub: it’s less pressure. You’ll probably marry a local girl and because of the Jewish laws your children won’t even be classified as Jews.

Continue this for three thousand years.....
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Mick Harper
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You know very little about minorities.
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Grant



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No, the vast majority of Jews who struggle to maintain the standard required of them will not “marry out” or otherwise give up. Like all minorities they will stay with the tribe, but if one in ten drops out it will, over a long period of time, eventually have an effect on the gene pool of those remaining.

Without this artificial and accidental selection, how do you explain that the average Jewish verbal IQ is twenty points higher than the average non-Jew? Or all the Nobel prize winners? Or the World chess champions?
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Mick Harper
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What diff how the current situation was arrived at? Take it up on one of the Pre-history or Life Science threads. I'm not saying all this is not both interesting and significant -- I might even agree with you from time to time -- it just has no bearing on current anti-Semitism.
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Boreades


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Grant wrote:
Imagine living in a medieval village


Not hard at all.
I do live in a village, the railway disappeared 60 years ago, the bus service is disappearing as well, can't afford to use the car anymore, so walking is the best option (until my shoes wear out). The tythes we pay the local feudal baron / county council goes up every year, and what we get in return goes down every year. It's getting more medieval every day.

Grant wrote:
having to a) not eat the most popular source of protein

Pork?
None of that round 'ere mate. Pig farming stopped with the Foot & Mouth disaster in 2001. I say disaster because someone called Professor Neil Ferguson produced some disastrously inaccurate theoretical computer modelling that greatly overestimated infection rates. I wonder what happened to him?

Lamb or mutton?
None of that round 'ere mate. The only sheep in the area are owned by the squire and kept for their wool. Hands off.

Beef?
None of that round 'ere mate. We do have some dairy herds, but all the milk gets trucked to France and comes back as Organic French Yoghurt for sale in Waitrose.

It's a good thing we've got a few hens that provide us with a small supply of eggs.

Grant wrote:
b) take a whole day off every week when you can’t do anything at all

I'm lucky to have one day a week when I can do anything at all.

Grant wrote:
c) follow a host of other silly rules.

Oh, have you met M'Lady Boreades?

Grant wrote:
You have to earn more than the average villager just to keep up with your neighbours, who will all be Jews because you are supposed to live only with fellow Jews.

To keep M'Lady in the style to which she has become accustomed, I have to earn more than the average villager just to keep up with our neighbours, who are all snotty nimby villagers because they only want to live in a village with, err, more snotty nimby villagers. Like lives with like? It seems like a bit of a circular logic.

The last village census counted about 400 heads. Of those, about 10 go to the village church on a regular basis, so may have a right to call themselves Christian. Not sure what faith the rest follow.
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Mick Harper
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More wondrous farming tosh as the government announces the end of subsidies within five years after Brexit and getting out from under the CAP. "They'll be custodians of the countryside from now on," says the minister. Naturally Channel 4 News sends its man to interview a typical farmer, if a typical farmer is a literary hobby-farmer feeding his free range animals on his organic corn but mainly saving the world with his hedges and his duckponds. He says it's all a great idea. Allow me to paint the real picture...
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Mick Harper
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Let’s get one thing straight. If subsidies are ended, so is British farming. You might get large prairie-style cereal agribusinesses in East Anglia surviving but apart from that it’s the dole queue for Mr & Mrs Farmer Giles. Everything else just doesn’t stand a chance against somebody else producing it miles cheaper somewhere in the world. With transport now so cheap and efficient, even milk will be overwhelmed. It’s not just our weather either. Intensive indoor agriculture – animals or plants – depends on imported cheap labour which we’re also supposed to be phasing out post-Brexit.

That’s assuming a level playing-field but what will stymie British farmers trying to scramble into niche markets ('You know where it comes from', 'contented cows make happy eaters' etc) is farmers’ biggest cost by far: the price of land. In Britain this is sky high (thousands of pounds an acre) because of ... eighty years of farming subsidies! Get out of that one, sunshine.

Well, of course they will. You won't be able to give it away if you can't afford to grow anything on it but have to rely on a government grant for keeping it green, with a duckpond in the middle. Then and only then will we find out what British farmers are made of. Hello-o-o, is anyone there?

PS All this will be marvellous for the 99% of us who aren't farmers, having access to the cheapest food in the world, but when did we ever count? Too many of us to form a vociferous lobby. Besides, with higher-priced food representing 2% of our household budgets, we'd probably vote to keep things the way they are.

There'll always be a Countryfile
As custodian of our land
Wherever there's a duckpond
In a field of meadowland
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Grant



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But won’t there be subsidies in the form of 40% tariffs on EU produce?
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Mick Harper
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Good point. Plus the level playing field to keep out American chlorinated ducks. And the Lomu Convention to ensure we get small, expensive bananas. Jaysus, I'm putting my money into land.
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Boreades


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Mick Harper wrote:
Let’s get one thing straight. If subsidies are ended, so is British farming. You might get large prairie-style cereal agribusinesses in East Anglia surviving but apart from that it’s the dole queue for Mr & Mrs Farmer Giles. Everything else just doesn’t stand a chance against somebody else producing it miles cheaper somewhere in the world.


Our Farming Correspondent reports (from out in the sticks)

Deja vu time?

I have the feeling we've discussed this before, but maybe not here. It was on the subject of more far-sighted agribusinesses that have increased their investment in the UK since Brexit was confirmed, and the end of EU quotas was visible on the business horizon.

Examples?

1) the UK milk producers that won't have to pour milk down the drain in the dead of the night (for fear of being fined for producing over-quota). So their milk can go to ...

2) UK dairies that could not buy enough UK milk (because of quota caps) and have been importing more expensive milk from places like East Germany, via a fleet of milk tanker trucks that run 24x7

3) New sugar beet processing factories are being built in the North East (on very cheap ex-steelworks land) that have twice the processing capacity of all existing factories in the UK. Are they bonkers? No, sugar beet production is already being scaled up to come on stream post-quota.

I could go on with more Good News examples. But I appreciate they usually come a poor second to Doom & Gloom stories that naturally attracts more attention.

Also, I'm not sure whether this is the kind of Good News we're likely to see mentioned on CountryFile. They may be more preoccupied with their own Cognitive Dissonance with more important issues. e.g. after learning that badgers can swim, and have been observed swimming across ponds to bird sanctuary islands, to steal the eggs from the nesting birds. Chris Packham will be beside himself (as if closing his long-haul safari adventures business hasn't already caused him enough stress)

M'Lady reports that it's hardly been mentioned on The Archers either.
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