We are actually a kingdom made up of three countries.

Actually Great Britain comprises three countries. The (United) Kingdom was created in the 1920s to comprise four countries including the newly formed Northern Ireland.

Yes but it was great Britain being talked about not United Kingdom.

Edited by groaver on 05/07/2021 at 20:28

We are actually a kingdom made up of three countries.

Actually Great Britain comprises three countries. The (United) Kingdom was created in the 1920s to comprise four countries including the newly formed Northern Ireland.

Actually, it was the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland which was changed after independence, the united kingdom bit referring to the unification of the crowns of England and Scotland.

Honda had long planned to consolidate manufacturing back in Japan, absolutely nothing to do with Brexit!

So far as I recall the consensus of reports at the time was that Brexit closed doors for them in relation to continued use of the Swindon plant for example for electric car components.

Perhaps you'd like to comment instead on Nissan closing THREE factories in Spain?

What about it?

It's good news about Nissan, but what about Honda leaving?

Honda had long planned to consolidate manufacturing back in Japan, absolutely nothing to do with Brexit!

Perhaps you'd like to comment instead on Nissan closing THREE factories in Spain?

Nissan building it's new car/batteries here is nothing to do with Brexit either...they were already here...when the UK left the EU they had a trade deal which Nissan found acceptable...they have some money from the UK government which enticed them to stay. All that could have happed in the EU or out of it.

What would you like me to comment about the closure of the factories in Spain?

"A suggestion for the mods. Please keep up the good work, it is a pleasure to come on here and see that you have bated away all the spam!"

Thanks! To be fair, the reduction in the spam is predominantly due to the IT people updating the filtering, there is less hitting the forum although still a fair bit that gets hidden but mods can still see. It's not very often that ORB or I have to manually deal with any, maybe a few a day but that's manageable.

I don't think I have much more to add to my post above, some posters have mentioned things better than I could put into words. Thinking back over the last eighteen years or so that I've been here, this forum has always appealed as it's a fairly civilised place, people come here asking for advice and for the vast majority of time get sound advice back. I've always found HJ to be a relaxing place after a day at work, a relative haven of peace. We should all do our bit to keep it that way.

To be honest I prefer the old format of the website, where there were only two forums: Motoring and Technical. Other issues just weren't discussed, although there was the IHAQ (I Have A Question) threads where people could ask non-motoring questions. Anything political or contentious that was not motoring related was just turfed out. The boundaries are a bit more blurred now. However, many forums just aren't as busy now as they were ten to fifteen years ago (some of my other haunts have either declined noticeably in numbers or even closed), maybe HJ needs the non-motoring forum to keep the Backroom viable.

While accepting that politics and Brexit will be a part of motoring, I think it's to everyone's benefit that these contentious issues are kept to a minimum whatever side of the fence we're on. For those that really wish to get deeply involved in these discussions there are more appropriate forums.

Yebbut,

Brexit, whatever you think of it and how it came about is the most significant change in this country since whenever. Entry was a big step but given the incremental changes during our membership leaving is much bigger.

It affects all aspects of our lives from what car we buy to the spares for it and what's in the supermarket.

I'm not clear where the 'more appropriate forums' are.

They are ones that either don't care that they've lost the specialism about this or that and now (even before the pandemic) mainly 'discuss' partisan politics (often just a bubble of people on one side of the political aisle or virtual slanging matches that achieve nothing) or ones specifically designed to discuss current affaris and/or politics.

There's more than enough of those to go around (including many 'Punch & Judy' political sites), and you appear to frequent at least a couple that you've already told us about over the years. Many members here don't mind discussing political issues occasionally or when it is very important or is related to motoring issues - but not all the time.

The problem comes when people appear to want to only or predominantly talk politics - sometimes I think they are deliberately doing so by starting certain threads or changing their debate to stir up trouble/shut down opinions different to their own. Not everyone (very few people, in fact) has lives that revolve around politics. I think it puts many potential users of this website and forum members off.

Many people (me included) frequent specialist forums to escape the daily grind of current affairs, rather like going on holiday, where the whole point is to distance ourselves from certain things to give us a break and recuperate. I think it does none of us any good to continually go deep into party politics day after day, especially at the moment.

If some people want that, then they need to seriously rethink their priorities in life, including being far more public (i.e. not hiding behind anonymous usernames on forums) and standing for political office and commenting under their real name, if they feel that strongly about political issues. Effectively using forums as campaigning/propaganda tools is not an honourable activity.