Do .EU have a domain registered in the UK? .EU may not have long to reregister it elsewhere...
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@Gąska said in Do .EU have a domain registered in the UK? .EU may not have long to reregister it elsewhere...:
. I really want some word I could use to group together all parties that plan to expand the government's influence over people's lives,
Authoritarian
and another for those who want the opposite. Right now, no such words exist.
Libertarian
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@HardwareGeek Maybe those words just don't exist in @Gąska's moon language?
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@HardwareGeek said in Do .EU have a domain registered in the UK? .EU may not have long to reregister it elsewhere...:
@Gąska said in Do .EU have a domain registered in the UK? .EU may not have long to reregister it elsewhere...:
. I really want some word I could use to group together all parties that plan to expand the government's influence over people's lives,
Authoritarian
Good luck getting people let it pass that you call Democrats (or your local equivalent - for Poland, it's PO) authoritarian.
and another for those who want the opposite. Right now, no such words exist.
Libertarian
Good luck getting people understand they're not for absolute deregulation of every aspect of economy.
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@Gąska If you want the extreme of "people against expanding the government's influence" you would end up at "anarchist".
Since that word is used so frequently to label vandals and troublemakers you'll also never get people to see the virtues behind the more optimistic brand of anarchism.
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@Gąska Like most everything else about politics, there's a spectrum: anarchism - libertarianism - authoritarianism - totalitarianism. Anything near mainstream in the US is in the libertarian - authoritarian range, probably more toward the libertarian side because of our history of civil liberties, although AOC seems to be trying to push through and beyond the authoritarian barrier. It'd help if people understood what the words actually mean instead of using them as pejoratives. It would also help if the capital-L Libertarians didn't represent the extremes of small-l libertarianism.
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@Gąska said in Do .EU have a domain registered in the UK? .EU may not have long to reregister it elsewhere...:
You're asking for the impossible. There's no such thing as a populist policy. Because there's no such thing as populism.
In the same way as, there are no left and right, no liberalism (but then why did you use that word yourself?), no nothing, because everything is just words we use to describe how we feel and words have no intrinsic meaning apart from that that we ascribe to them. That stance gets a chuckle from me when it's nicely wrapped in a joke in Existential Comics. Here I'll just raise my eyes to the ceiling and slowly back away.
I retract what I said previously: you're not "not making any sense". You are making some sense, just a very useless one.
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@admiral_p said in Do .EU have a domain registered in the UK? .EU may not have long to reregister it elsewhere...:
Considering that the EU is quite widely seen as "France and Germany, and others", I don't really expect the anti-EU sentiment to be as strong in France as it is elsewhere (especially the periphery and the Southern Mediterranean countries).
I don't know. Well, actually I really don't know because I have no real knowledge of the deep feeling running in most of those countries. But there is an aspect that you're forgetting, which is that France (and Germany, and a few others) are net contributors to the EU, and that fuels a lot of anti-EU sentiment (basically, "why should we pay for those corrupted Romanians who come begging (or stealing) in our streets?"). I know that receiving more money that you pay does not prevent a lot of countries seeing the EU as tyrannical, but giving more than you receive certainly doesn't make things better in that regard.
In France there is also a growing perception that, indeed, we are playing second fiddles to the Germans, and that irritates a lot of people who still haven't accepted that France isn't the world leader (news flash: it hasn't been since the 18-19th century, or the beginning of the 20th if you're being very generous...). In that regard I feel that the crushing defeat of Germany in WW2 has helped them properly reset their egos to something a bit more fitting to their actual power.
France isn't alone in that, the whole Brexit fiasco is showing how much Britain revels in the same nonsense ("the rest of the world needs us more than we need them, therefore they will all rush to offer us better trade deals than what we get through the EU!").
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@JBert said in Do .EU have a domain registered in the UK? .EU may not have long to reregister it elsewhere...:
@Gąska If you want the extreme of "people against expanding the government's influence" you would end up at "anarchist".
I want the moderate of "people against expanding the government's influence". Like Trump, who isn't doing much in this regard, but is still more this way than the opposite.
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@remi said in Do .EU have a domain registered in the UK? .EU may not have long to reregister it elsewhere...:
@Gąska said in Do .EU have a domain registered in the UK? .EU may not have long to reregister it elsewhere...:
You're asking for the impossible. There's no such thing as a populist policy. Because there's no such thing as populism.
In the same way as, there are no left and right, no liberalism (but then why did you use that word yourself?), no nothing, because everything is just words we use to describe how we feel and words have no intrinsic meaning apart from that that we ascribe to them.
Not exactly. Populism is even more non-existent than all of those by an order of magnitude. Because there's not even a single thing that would differentiate populism from any other party. Left has gay rights and welfare. Right has upholding traditions and tax cuts for the rich. Liberalism has gay rights and legalization. Populism has nothing.
@HardwareGeek quoted that populism is "a political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups." Who's ordinary people? The lower and middle class? Everyone appeals to lower and middle class. Or maybe just lower class? It still qualifies most of the European political scene. Welfare is absolutely what lower class wants. That would make entire Scandinavia extremely populist. Most people are for open borders. That would make open borders populist. But somehow it's closed borders preachers that are called populist. There's no clear rule, or even half-assed rule, or anything that would let you take a given political party and determine whether their platform is populist or not - the only way is to look at who Merkel hates the most. And it has nothing to do with any policies, opinions, stances or anything real. It's pure name calling with literally zero merit.
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@Gąska said in Do .EU have a domain registered in the UK? .EU may not have long to reregister it elsewhere...:
It's pure name calling with literally zero merit.
And yes, it doesn't have a clear definition.
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@Gąska We could talk for hours about that, and judging by the length of the Wiki page, some other people did. I'm not gonna deny that the term has a strong pejorative streak (in the current mainstream political debate), but that doesn't mean it doesn't mean anything else than "people I don't like". I'll agree with you that there is even less of a clear definition of populism than some other things, and there is a bit of the pornography thing ("I'll know it when I'll see it").
Still, saying it doesn't mean anything is just wrong.
The yellow vests in France can be described as "populist", it's just a wide catch-phrase which allows giving people who don't know anything about it some very vague idea of what it's about. It doesn't accurately describe all of their ideas (and for a good reason, this isn't a movement with clear ideas, not even in the very vague sense that BLM or MeToo has some ideas), but it's still very applicable -- and whether you agree with the movement or not. It's hard to deny that it's, for example and to quote wiki, about defining ""the people" as a morally good force against "the elite", who are perceived as corrupt and self-serving". This is very much exactly what the yellow vests are saying themselves.
Also your attempt at listing things is IMO totally wrong (or at least it is in France). Welfare isn't necessarily what lower class wants, except maybe in the sense that everyone would like more money for themselves, but not for the others. And they usually ask for less taxes, not more welfare, to attain this. Most people are not for open borders, quite the opposite. At best they are for being free to travel for holidays somewhere else, but that's all. They all ask for more border controls, less opening onto other countries (the right focussing on controlling the movement of people, the left on controlling the movement of work/goods/money, which is reflecting how they structure their ideas around the populist streak, but is in no way incompatible with being populist).
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@remi said in Do .EU have a domain registered in the UK? .EU may not have long to reregister it elsewhere...:
Most people are not for open borders, quite the opposite. At best they are for being free to travel for holidays somewhere else, but that's all.
This boils down to the age-old: I want certain rights for my group, but I don’t want people outside that group to have those rights as well in return. Of course I should be able to live in another country for as long as I care to, but I don’t want those foreigners living in mine. I’m a good driver, but look at all those idiots on the road!
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@Gurth There is some of that, of course, but in the specific case of open borders, I'm not even so sure. I think a lot of people believe that they are of nationality X (at least culturally, I'm not talking the actual passport they might have) and therefore have no good reason to ever consider leaving country X. So it's not so much a question of "I want all the rights for me and fuck the other" but more "why would anyone want this specific right [except to fuck us]".
And honestly, I don't really have issue with that stance. It's just human nature, if we fit in a group we don't see why it should be otherwise.
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@remi said in Do .EU have a domain registered in the UK? .EU may not have long to reregister it elsewhere...:
@Gąska We could talk for hours about that, and judging by the length of the Wiki page, some other people did. I'm not gonna deny that the term has a strong pejorative streak (in the current mainstream political debate), but that doesn't mean it doesn't mean anything else than "people I don't like". I'll agree with you that there is even less of a clear definition of populism than some other things, and there is a bit of the pornography thing ("I'll know it when I'll see it").
Still, saying it doesn't mean anything is just wrong.
Then what does it mean? How can I unambiguously tell if some party or politician is populist? Is there even one such rule? It doesn't have to be complete - not all populists have to qualify - but it does need to be definitive - no non-populist must qualify.
As far as I know, there's no such rule. And without such rule, it really doesn't mean anything. Not in any useful sense.
The yellow vests in France can be described as "populist", it's just a wide catch-phrase which allows giving people who don't know anything about it some very vague idea of what it's about.
Except it doesn't. Because it's an empty word that doesn't say anything.
It's hard to deny that it's, for example and to quote wiki, about defining ""the people" as a morally good force against "the elite", who are perceived as corrupt and self-serving". This is very much exactly what the yellow vests are saying themselves.
That would qualify everybody who's against the current government's policies as populist. Bremainers in UK, for example.
Also your attempt at listing things is IMO totally wrong (or at least it is in France). Welfare isn't necessarily what lower class wants, except maybe in the sense that everyone would like more money for themselves, but not for the others. And they usually ask for less taxes, not more welfare, to attain this. Most people are not for open borders, quite the opposite. At best they are for being free to travel for holidays somewhere else, but that's all. They all ask for more border controls, less opening onto other countries (the right focussing on controlling the movement of people, the left on controlling the movement of work/goods/money, which is reflecting how they structure their ideas around the populist streak, but is in no way incompatible with being populist).
Amazing. Everything you described is the polar opposite in literally every aspect of what Poland looks like. And US city population too (which I always found very similar to Europe politically and ideologically, as opposed to small town and rural USA, which is very different). Europe is way more diverse than I thought.
Given what you've described, it's amazing that France hasn't left EU ages ago. If that's really what majority of French people think, one would have thought they'd have voted into government an extremely anti-socialist, extremely anti-EU party ages ago.
Fun fact: PiS, the current government party in Poland, has earned the biggest majority in parliament of any single party in the last 30 years. They did so by promising completely flat rate 500zł benefit for every child, no requirements, no strings attached. And they delivered. Boy, did they deliver.
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@Gąska said in Do .EU have a domain registered in the UK? .EU may not have long to reregister it elsewhere...:
As far as I know, there's no such rule. And without such rule, it really doesn't mean anything. Not in any useful sense.
I can't help you read and understand the wikipedia page, for starters. I strongly disagree on that statement, but I'm not going to be dragged into a line-by-line discussion of lengthy definitions.
The yellow vests in France can be described as "populist", it's just a wide catch-phrase which allows giving people who don't know anything about it some very vague idea of what it's about.
Except it doesn't. Because it's an empty word that doesn't say anything.
Except everyone does it and it seems to work pretty well overall. You can put your fingers in your ears and scream "I can't hear you" as much as you want, it's not going to change.
Given what you've described, it's amazing that France hasn't left EU ages ago. If that's really what majority of French people think, one would have thought they'd have voted into government an extremely anti-socialist, extremely anti-EU party ages ago.
At the first round of the last presidential elections (the only one that counts, second round people vote by elimination, and on following legislative elections there is in practice a very strong advantage to the new president), anti EU parties got about half of the votes. The only thing that prevented them from being elected is that they're split between far right and far left, so convergence between the two is likely impossible. Which is in part because the EU isn't really at the fore-front of most political discussions, so even though there might be a majority against it, it's diluted behind other issues that are more visible in the political debate.
If one of them gets to power, either they will do a Tsipras and suddenly decide to ignore all that they said before and follow more mainstream policies, or they're going to, essentially, kill the current EU (by leaving it or maiming it in an hard-to-repair way).
So yeah, it is amazing that France still internationally looks as strongly pro-EU as ever, because it really isn't.
(though historically it's a fairly new evolution, I think that until 10-15 years ago the anti-EU sentiment was much less widespread and visceral -- it always existed, of course, but even the 2005 European Constitution referendum didn't show hatred for the EU like we currently see)
(also, anti-EU != anti-socialist, at least in France, quite the contrary... the far-left France Insoumise is strongly anti-EU -- most people in France perceive the EU as too liberal, not too socialist!)
Fun fact: PiS, the current government party in Poland, has earned the biggest majority in parliament of any single party in the last 30 years. They did so by promising completely flat rate 500zł benefit for every child, no requirements, no strings attached. And they delivered. Boy, did they deliver.
Meanwhile the French government cut down on the rent allowance for low income people (not by that much in actual reality, and politically it was the daftest of decisions, but still).
And yet you still wonder why one might be called populist and not the other.
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@remi said in Do .EU have a domain registered in the UK? .EU may not have long to reregister it elsewhere...:
@Gąska said in Do .EU have a domain registered in the UK? .EU may not have long to reregister it elsewhere...:
As far as I know, there's no such rule. And without such rule, it really doesn't mean anything. Not in any useful sense.
I can't help you read and understand the wikipedia page, for starters.
There's a huge chance it won't explain anything either. Wikipedia articles on politics are usually terrible at explaining things in no uncertain terms.
The yellow vests in France can be described as "populist", it's just a wide catch-phrase which allows giving people who don't know anything about it some very vague idea of what it's about.
Except it doesn't. Because it's an empty word that doesn't say anything.
Except everyone does it and it seems to work pretty well overall.
It works because no one actually thinks about what it actually means to be populist. It's a very common pattern in politics - why would you listen to the other side when you can just label them as populists/communists/white supremacists/globalists/antisemites/SJWs/religious nuts and ignore everything they have to say with clear conscience? I mean, what reasonable man sides with populists, amirite?
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@Gąska said in Do .EU have a domain registered in the UK? .EU may not have long to reregister it elsewhere...:
Wikipedia articles on politics are usually terrible at explaining things in no uncertain terms.
You're still stuck on that weird idea of yours, I see. Each time you start discussing a topic you seem to try and make some interesting point, until you get back to your 100%-accurate-dictionary-definition fetish.
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@Gąska said in Do .EU have a domain registered in the UK? .EU may not have long to reregister it elsewhere...:
Then what does it mean? How can I unambiguously tell if some party or politician is populist?
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@boomzilla yes this shit again. And I will repeat it every time someone uses that word, until people stop using that word altogether.
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@remi said in Do .EU have a domain registered in the UK? .EU may not have long to reregister it elsewhere...:
@Gąska said in Do .EU have a domain registered in the UK? .EU may not have long to reregister it elsewhere...:
Wikipedia articles on politics are usually terrible at explaining things in no uncertain terms.
You're still stuck on that weird idea of yours, I see. Each time you start discussing a topic you seem to try and make some interesting point, until you get back to your 100%-accurate-dictionary-definition fetish.
Not 100%-accurate. Just not containing trivial contradictions.
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@Gąska said in Do .EU have a domain registered in the UK? .EU may not have long to reregister it elsewhere...:
@boomzilla yes this shit again. And I will repeat it every time someone uses
thatany word, until people stop using that word altogether.
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@boomzilla I promise not to behave like this for anything else than socialism and populism.
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@Gąska If only there was an efficient search engine in NodeBB so we could find that post back the day it will be needed...
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@Gąska Meh. Wikipedia articles are usually terrible at explaining things in no uncertain terms.
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@remi thanks goodness, then, that bookmarks aren't political subject!
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@remi [citation needed]
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@Gąska said in Do .EU have a domain registered in the UK? .EU may not have long to reregister it elsewhere...:
How can I unambiguously tell if some party or politician is populist?
Learn Lojban? That's the only human language I know of that even tries to be unambiguous.
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@HardwareGeek I'm not sure if it would help anything when discussing politics. Especially considering who I'd be discussing politics with then.
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@Gąska said in Do .EU have a domain registered in the UK? .EU may not have long to reregister it elsewhere...:
@HardwareGeek I'm not sure if it would help anything
It's Lojban. It wouldn't help.
Especially considering who I'd be discussing politics with then.
Touche̾̿̋̎̏
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@Gąska said in Do .EU have a domain registered in the UK? .EU may not have long to reregister it elsewhere...:
bookmarks aren't political subject
yet
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@Khudzlin said in Do .EU have a domain registered in the UK? .EU may not have long to reregister it elsewhere...:
@Steve_The_Cynic said in Do .EU have a domain registered in the UK? .EU may not have long to reregister it elsewhere...:
Native-born citizens in most countries would absolutely fail any "know about your country" test that exists to torment would-be naturalised citizens.)
I'd be interested in the questions to see how badly I'd fail the test. Also, tell us the date when you have it, so we can say "merde" to you at the relevant time.
OK, I've had the interview, and the steak, and the bottle of wine.(1) I feel ... positive.
=> 
!!!!!!!!!Oh, and Chumbawumba on the Bluetooth speakers singing "Tub Thumping" just to add an extra "zing" to the afternoon. I am absolutely not going to the office this afternoon!
Seriously, I drank enough at lunch to make typing less easy than it normally is, but it absolutely was not "drown my sorrows" mode. The interview itself went very well, and all that's needed for the next step is a document from the French tax service, intended to show that I do, indeed, pay my taxes. When I went to the tax office nearly two years ago for an equivalent, they were able to do it on the spot, but this time around, they decided that I'd have to put in a request and that it would take a GDMF month.
Anyway, the interview itself was pretty straightforward:
- A review of the dossier itself, including a confirmation of various stuff related to the late Mrs Cynic's habit of changing her name from time to time (because it's really easy in England).
- Several questions about France and so on (see below).
- Several questions from me on what happens next and how it interacts with Brexit.(2)
(below) The questions were fairly straightforward:
- Why do you want to become a citizen? (Duh, the principles of the Republic suit me, and I like the French people, the territory, and the culture.)
- What is the devise (French: motto) of the French Republic? (Liberté, égalité, fraternité, duh.)
- I shortcut a follow-up by exploring the implications of these ideas, what they mean, and so on, and how they interact with the more recent concept of laïcité.
- Government: name two members of the government: I named three, just to be difficult: Président Emmanuel Macron, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, and Justice Minister Nicole Belloubet.
- How long is the (French) President's term of office? (Five years, with a limit of two terms.)
- How long is it between local elections? (Six years)
- Who is the mayor of [the commune(3) where I live]? (No problem, I named him effortlessly, but the answer is only useful if you live in the same commune as me.)
That's all. One of my colleagues is married to a Ukranian woman (no, there is no implication of mail-order brides, thank you), and she had to give the words of La Marseiilaise, but I was spared that particular form of torture, and frankly, so were they.
(1) No, only a half-sized bottle. Really. I am totally not drunk. Well buzzed, but not really drunk.
(2)
Don't tell anyone, but apparently they've had a lot of applications from British expats recently for some reason(3), and they are putting some effort into expediting them. (3) Of course it's nothing to do with some weird thing called Brexit. If you believe that, I'm sure I can sell you this nice bridge and a couple of acres of prime property in mid-Florida.
[Ugh. I have, indeed, had more to drink than is conducive to coherence.]
Here is the (3) attached to the word commune:
(3) A commune is an administrative unit at the lowest level, approximately equivalent to a town, although a large agglomération like Lille contains multiple communes. Each commune has its own mairie (town hall).
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@Steve_The_Cynic Congratulations! And welcome to France, you bloody rosbif! The questions don't seem too bad, to be honest. Though I couldn't have named 3 members of the government.
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@Steve_The_Cynic said in Do .EU have a domain registered in the UK? .EU may not have long to reregister it elsewhere...:
How long is the (French) President's term of office? (Five years, with a limit of two terms.)
Did they change that recently then? I'm quite sure it used to be seven years, with the two-term limit.
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@PleegWat said in Do .EU have a domain registered in the UK? .EU may not have long to reregister it elsewhere...:
@Steve_The_Cynic said in Do .EU have a domain registered in the UK? .EU may not have long to reregister it elsewhere...:
How long is the (French) President's term of office? (Five years, with a limit of two terms.)
Did they change that recently then? I'm quite sure it used to be seven years, with the two-term limit.
Chirac changed it in 2000 (first applied in 2002). The two-term limit dates from 2008 (it's a limit on consecutive terms, but only 3 presidents have ever served 2 terms, and none ever ran for a 3rd).
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@Khudzlin said in Do .EU have a domain registered in the UK? .EU may not have long to reregister it elsewhere...:
Chirac changed it in 2000 (first applied in 2002). The two-term limit dates from 2008 (it's a limit on consecutive terms, but only 3 presidents have ever served 2 terms, and none ever ran for a 3rd).
Sarkozy wanted to, didn’t he? But then (surprise, surprise) not enough people wanted him to.
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@Gurth said in Do .EU have a domain registered in the UK? .EU may not have long to reregister it elsewhere...:
Sarkozy wanted to, didn’t he? But then (surprise, surprise) not enough people wanted him to.
Yeah, he really wanted a second term. Turns out that his opinion of himself was pretty far from the opinion everyone else had of him.
@Steve_The_Cynic: Bienvenue !
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@Gurth He's not the first incumbent to lose an election, either. Giscard did it first in 1981 (against Mitterrand, whom he beat in 1974).
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@Steve_The_Cynic You’re not the only one trying to get this over with before it’s too late, it seems. In my newspaper this morning was an article about how the number of British people applying for Dutch citizenship has steadily risen: apparently there were (IIRC) 19 in 2016, 40-something in 2017, about 200 last year, and 80 already this past January.
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@Steve_The_Cynic said in Do .EU have a domain registered in the UK? .EU may not have long to reregister it elsewhere...:
Each commune has its own mairie (town hall).
And a Salle de Fête. And halfway through everyone has a boulodrome too
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@Khudzlin said in Do .EU have a domain registered in the UK? .EU may not have long to reregister it elsewhere...:
@Steve_The_Cynic Congratulations! And welcome to France, you bloody rosbif! The questions don't seem too bad, to be honest. Though I couldn't have named 3 members of the government.
I named three because I had a sudden doubt about whether the president is considered to be part of the government (and on talking to my colleagues this morning, it seems this doubt was justified).
And of course normally, I wouldn't be able to name many members of the government of whatever country I live in(1), except that my searches revealed that this sort of question is common in naturalisation interviews in many countries, notably France, so I looked it up and studied the list closely.
(1) I've lived in three so far, on two different continents.
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@Steve_The_Cynic Right, "the government" usually refers exclusively to the ministers, with specific instances named after the Prime Minister (and a number if the PM in question led several). I'd guess most people wouldn't be able to name anyone beyond the PM (and I'll admit I wasn't even sure about the current one).
Out of curiosity, what's the 3rd country (other than the UK and France)?
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@Khudzlin said in Do .EU have a domain registered in the UK? .EU may not have long to reregister it elsewhere...:
@Steve_The_Cynic Right, "the government" usually refers exclusively to the ministers, with specific instances named after the Prime Minister (and a number if the PM in question led several). I'd guess most people wouldn't be able to name anyone beyond the PM (and I'll admit I wasn't even sure about the current one).
Out of curiosity, what's the 3rd country (other than the UK and France)?
I lived in the US from 1981 (when I was 15) to 1990. I like to joke that I entered the US on a 90-day tourist visa, and stayed for nine years. It happens to be true, but doesn't tell the whole story, since during that time the visa was converted to a proper one for staying a long time, then later into an actual green card, which is in fact pale pink and made of some sort of laminated plastic stuff.
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@Khudzlin said in Do .EU have a domain registered in the UK? .EU may not have long to reregister it elsewhere...:
I'd guess most people wouldn't be able to name anyone beyond the PM (and I'll admit I wasn't even sure about the current one).
Quoted for truth ; I'd be curious to know how many citizens could answer that question correctly. This tends to happen when media attention is mainly focused on the president.
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@Zerosquare said in Do .EU have a domain registered in the UK? .EU may not have long to reregister it elsewhere...:
I'd be curious to know how many citizens could answer that question correctly.
Speaking purely for myself, twenty or so years ago I could probably name half or more of the Dutch cabinet without really trying, but nowadays I only know the names of the couple of ministers who regularly get mentioned in the news and even then wouldn’t recognise half of them from pictures. But if I were to apply for another country’s passport, it’s indeed one of the things I’d probably brush up on, as it seems likely that examination committees want you to
feigntake an interest in this sort of thing.
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@Gurth said in Do .EU have a domain registered in the UK? .EU may not have long to reregister it elsewhere...:
@Zerosquare said in Do .EU have a domain registered in the UK? .EU may not have long to reregister it elsewhere...:
I'd be curious to know how many citizens could answer that question correctly.
Speaking purely for myself, twenty or so years ago I could probably name half or more of the Dutch cabinet without really trying, but nowadays I only know the names of the couple of ministers who regularly get mentioned in the news and even then wouldn’t recognise half of them from pictures. But if I were to apply for another country’s passport, it’s indeed one of the things I’d probably brush up on, as it seems likely that examination committees want you to
feigntake an interest in this sort of thing.No, "feign" was right. As I've remarked elsewhere on these
severely brokenfine forums, there's a high probability that actual native-born citizens of most countries could not pass their own country's "become a citizen" test, and knowing who's in the government is a common part of that. The type of thing you have to know in order to feign interest in that sort of stuff (to pass the relevant test) is widely discussed on "teh interwebz", as it were, so the test is largely noise, serving mainly to weed out the willfully inept and similar, which is probably a good thing.
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@Steve_The_Cynic said in Do .EU have a domain registered in the UK? .EU may not have long to reregister it elsewhere...:
No, "feign" was right.
I was debating which way round to do the two words :)
As I've remarked elsewhere on these
severely brokenfine forums, there's a high probability that actual native-born citizens of most countries could not pass their own country's "become a citizen” testI think I replied to that that about ten years ago, my experience was much along those lines when I tried a text exam for
funwant of anythingbettermore interestingto do.As for British people getting other passports: this morning the newspaper continued its story from yesterday, now publishing interviews with a number of Brits who have applied for, or are on the path to, a Dutch passport. One of them said that what she’d like to do is post her passport to the relevant UK authority with a note reading “FUCK YOU ALL” to express her feelings about how this whole Brexit thing is going. Apparently, though, actually actively giving up British nationality costs something like €1500 (or was it £?).
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@Gurth said in Do .EU have a domain registered in the UK? .EU may not have long to reregister it elsewhere...:
actually actively giving up British nationality costs something like €1500 (or was it £?).
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@Gurth said in Do .EU have a domain registered in the UK? .EU may not have long to reregister it elsewhere...:
actually actively giving up British nationality costs something like €1500 (or was it £?).
My Google-fu says that it is significantly less than that, under £400 (many sites claim £372) per person, with, of course, the total mounting up pretty quickly for a family. (Family of four? £1488, which may be the origin of the £1500 figure.)
EDIT: but the cost has increased significantly since the Brexit referendum in 2016...
EDITED EDIT: In passing, I'll observe that the fee for applying for French naturalisation was fifty-five euros.
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