Outrageous Excuses 8

...and silly reasons for leaving the EU.

I voted Brexit because I hate centimetres. (Any Questions)

A ‘no deal’ for our country would actually be a blessing in disguise. It would force us into hardship and suffering which would unite and bring us together, bringing back British values of loyalty and a sense of community! Extreme change is needed! (@antmiddleton)

A second Brexit referendum would threaten community cohesion.A second referendum would be “extraordinarily dangerous to the social fabric”. (Andrew Mitchell)

It was pathetic, almost laughable, this morning to hear Michael Gove trying to justify the position that to have another referendum would be undemocratic! After a lot of waffle, it seemed that the deciding reason for that position is that if one had another referendum some people might think they were being talked down to...! (CS)

I voted Leave because:
I didn't want to be part of a fear-mongering crowd.
I am fed up with unsustainable massed immigration from EU and non EU.
I thought Remain would win and I didn't want to see a landslide. (Radio phone-in)

We should Brexit because of foreign-language translators in the NHS.

Otherwise there’ll be violence.We’re an island.
We should have never went there in the first place.
I want everything to go back to how it used to be.
I want Britain to keep the three-pin plug.
Youngsters have stopped going to church since we joined the EU.
The EU won’t let us trade with the rest of the world. 
I didn’t know we were in it before the referendum. (BBC vox pop)

A man at our street stall on Saturday told me we should leave because of Waterloo. (@SherriDingle)

We voted to leave – why don’t we just get on with it? We’ll be OK – Nigel Farage says so!

NON-BREXIT
Theresa May risks undermining voters’ faith in politics by allowing them to vote for MEPs. (UK Electoral Commission, paraphrase)


Several complained it was so dark during the finale of Game of Thrones they couldn’t watch what was happening. A director has explained that he wanted to ‘make the storytelling of the lighting with the storytelling of the characters’… Many people, he said, can’t tune their TVs properly and anyway it is not always necessary to see what’s going on because ‘its more about the emotional impact’. Carol Midgley, Times 2019

A reader told me he wrote to a TV channel to complain about annoying recaps after every ad break during documentaries. He was told that it was “a technique of modern commercial broadcasting” and unlikely to change. Carol Midgley, Times, 2019

I joined/stayed in the (House of Lords, establlishment organisation I have always fought, party that has become unacceptable) so that I could effect change from within.

No-fault divorce could “trivialise marriage”. (April 2019)

Women earn less because they take lower-paid jobs (Times headline April 2019)

Speaking Arabic in a public space in Sweden “disrespects Swedish language and culture”.

Everybody (Barbra Streisand) makes mistakes.

Henry F. Pulitzer presents laboratory evidence... that his painting is a Leonardo. However, specific detail on the manner in which these studies were carried out, and by whom, is not provided. He writes: "I have no intention of cluttering up this book with too many technicalities and wish to make this chapter brief".

He ended the physical affair by telling me he was a codependent sex addict and that he thought I had some of those behaviors as well, and then left on a European vacation with his family. (Writer-in to Dear Prudie, slate.com)

Evolution is no longer taught in Turkish schools because it’s “too complicated”.

Alison Chabloz, who put anti-Semitic songs on Youtube that denied the Holocaust, said she did it not out of hate but out of “love”, also that they were “just silly songs”.

The painter of "potato Christ" says she was going to fill in his features but had to go on holiday.

Lifelong jerks have figured out a really successful grift when they can get, without even asking, other people to offer, “Oh, they’ve always been [ignorant/rude/boorish]” as a defense of their behavior and to prevent any real accountability or change. What your husband meant, of course, was that his sister makes a big fuss whenever he’s tried to get her to apologize or stop doing something hurtful, so he gave up ages ago to make life easier for himself and wants you to do the same. (Daniel Mallory Ortberg)

My guess is that his first response will be something along the lines of “I don’t really know why I do this,” followed by “It’s just blowing off steam, I guess” or “It doesn’t mean anything”… “Get over it”. (Daniel Mallory Ortberg)

Famous psychological experiments turn out not to be replicable – researchers protest that the experiment was done in California and people in Michigan are different. (British Psychology Digest points out that experiments should be carried out in many different cultures and not just in WEIRD populations – Western, educated, and from industrialized, rich and democratic countries.)

More here, and links to the rest.