Proms strike sour note for Brexit

The outrage over a pro-Remainer demonstration at the annual Last Night at the Proms festival last month demonstrates the sensitivity of hard-line Brixiteers to the drumbeat of evidence that leaving the European Union has hurt the United Kingdom, economically, politically, and socially.

Angered at the waving of hundreds of European Union flags, mingling with the usual Union Jacks, they demanded the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), which hosts the event, hold an inquiry, even that the EU flag be banned in the UK.       

The Last Night of the Proms, usually a jingoistic platform where the audience sings along as the orchestra belts out patriotic numbers like Land of Hope and Glory and Rule Britannia, was very different this year with the blue flags with the yellow stars much in evidence.

The apoplectic reaction of Brixiteers cannot hide hard facts that show their beloved ‘going it alone’ experiment is failing. 

Remainers admitted the flag-waving was a stunt “in solidarity with musicians who feel (with countless others) the destructive impact of Britain's recent isolation from Europe”, emphasising how touring groups and orchestras have been affected by the end of free movement within the EU.  

What really got up the noses of Brixiteers was the call by the Remainer group that the annual demonstration of “problematic post-colonial anthems” be replaced by “something more enlightened and collaborative” and that the musicians who had to perform on the night might support this.

  Following hard on the Proms was an admission by a former senior public servant in the Foreign Office, Simon McDonald, that he had voted to Remain in 2016 and that many of his colleagues were in tears on the morning after the referendum.

Lord McDonald, as he is now, is long retired, but that did not prevent a wave of pro-Brexit vitriol descending on him, claiming he had breached the Civil Service Code requiring him to be impartial.

Speaking during a BBC documentary dealing with problems that have been piling up for the country since 2016, Lord McDonald said “people were in shock”.

“On this occasion, this solitary occasion, I decided to tell my colleagues and therefore let Ministers know that I voted to remain in the European Union,” he said.

Despite all this happening more than seven years ago, the hatchet men in the far right media were out in force.

The Telegraph’s Michael Deacon stopped just short of demanding the tearful Public Servants should be identified and thrown out of their jobs; Michael Fabricant and Peter Bone of GB News maintained, without a shred of evidence, that this proved the Public Service had tried to block Brexit.

The 2016 referendum still casts a long shadow over events in the UK. Despite the best hopes of the Brexit fanatics, people have not learned to accept the ‘new realities’ and are refusing to stay quiet when day after day new segments of the population are realising they have been sold down the river.

While the architect of Brexit, Jacob Rees-Mogg glories in his knighthood and spokesman Nigel Farage engages in endless self-promotion on GB News, ordinary men and women in industries from fishing to financial services are beginning to realise just how much they have lost.

Sadly a weak-as-water Conservative Prime Minister, and a Labour Opposition more interested in winning back a few seats in the North of England than in the good of the country as a whole, will not be coming to their aid.

Remainers will continue to fight on, but for the moment at least, they will be doing it on their own.    

 

Human Relationships: Sticking with the familiar

Opposites may attract if you are working with magnets, but unfortunately for the long-standing myth about human relationships, researchers at the University of Colorado in Boulder have found it’s more a case of birds of a feather flocking together.

Their analysis, which examined data from millions of couples over more than a century and across more than 130 traits, found that similarity often draws people together in relationships.

The study, published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, not only debunks the popular belief that dissimilar individuals are more likely to form romantic bonds, but also sheds light on the underlying forces shaping human relationships.

A doctoral candidate in the University’s Department of Psychology and Neuroscience and the Institute for Behavioural Genetics (IBG), Tanya Horwitz, who served as the study's first author, said the findings demonstrated that birds of a feather were indeed more likely to flock together.

The research has implications beyond the realm of relationships; it also challenges assumptions made in genetic research.

The senior author and Director of the IBG, Matt Keller said lot of models in genetics assumed that human mating was random — “this study shows this assumption is probably wrong".

The research combined a meta-analysis of previous studies with original data analysis.

In the meta-analysis, the researchers examined 22 traits across 199 studies, including millions of male-female couples, engaged pairs, married pairs, or cohabitating pairs, with the oldest study dating back to 1903.

Additionally, the researchers utilised the United Kingdom’s Biobank dataset to analyse 133 traits, including seldom-studied ones, in nearly 80,000 opposite-sex pairs.

The study excluded same-sex couples, as their patterns of assortative mating might differ significantly, and the authors are exploring those separately.

Across both analyses, traits such as political and religious attitudes, educational levels, and certain measures of IQ exhibited high correlations among couples.

For example, the correlation for political values was .58 on a scale where zero indicates no correlation and one means couples always share the trait.

Traits related to substance use also displayed high correlations, with heavy smokers, heavy drinkers, and teetotallers tending to partner with individuals who had similar habits.

However, traits like height, weight, medical conditions, and personality traits showed lower but still positive correlations. For instance, the correlation for neuroticism was .11.

The meta-analysis revealed "no compelling evidence" supporting the idea that opposites attract.

In the UK Biobank sample, a few traits appeared to have a negative correlation, although it was small. These included chronotype (whether someone is a morning person or night owl), the tendency to worry, and hearing difficulty.

The trait for which couples were most likely to be similar was their birth year.

The study suggests that even in situations where people believe they have a choice in their relationships, various mechanisms may be at play behind the scenes.

Couples share traits due to growing up in the same area, being attracted to similar individuals, or growing more alike over time.

For instance, if short individuals tend to have offspring with short partners and tall individuals with tall partners, there could be more people at the height extremes in the next generation.

A similar pattern may apply to psychiatric, medical, or other traits.

The study also revealed that the strength of correlations for traits varied across populations and likely changed over time. The authors hope their research will encourage further interdisciplinary studies in fields like economics, sociology, anthropology, and psychology.

"We're hoping people can use this data to do their own analyses and learn more about how and why people end up in the relationships they do," Ms Horwitz said.