E.U: Leave or Stay? Your thoughts.

No he didn't say. I think it was Friday of last week. There's one on itv that matches that date but they read out questions on a card rather than actually talking to the audience.

 

He probably got distracted building an effigy of me to ritually burn in his garden.

 

The same goes for the majority of the Labour front bench: They (officially) favour remain. That is, despite Corbyn's long history of standing EU-scepticism.

The irony is that amongst core Tory and Labour supporters, Brexit tends to be more popular.

The reason Cameron wants the UK to stay in the EU has it's reasoned and thought-through basis. The problem, specifically for Cameron, is that he's often chosen to try to scare the pants of the UK electorate to make his point. That is, he's opted to rely on presenting negative reasons to stay, and not presented the positive.

 

I can't speak for unofficial support but this says officially both sides favor remaining, Conservatives 172-132 in favor of remain and Labour is apparently 218-10 in favor of remain.

 

True, Cameron made a balls-up of the campaign, but people are voting on an emotional basis anyway. The quality of the campaign on both sides, and its media coverage, reflects the quality of engagement on the part of the electorate.

The disturbing thing is how quickly this referendum was not a rational debate anymore about the pros and cons of the EU with respect the economy, sovereignty or global politics, but became a vicious, hate-filled fascist discourse on immigration and refugees. And the electorate just ran with it. And now somebody is dead.

Whichever side wins, nearly 50% of the population will end up deeply unhappy. I don't see that rift healing anytime soon. The British people lost faith in themselves and in their political system, and put it instead in demagogues and aspiring tyrants. And now they are just lost.

http://www.bing.com/news/apiclick.a...the-country/&c=17918588929719814515&mkt=en-gb

 

I think I'd wait for the final poll result to find out. I'm of the opinion that there's a silent, reasonable chunk of people who will vote Remain who haven't necessarily been polled. Only time will tell.

To alienate naturalised people like yourself is a very sad state indeed.

 

Trying to link the nature of the referendum debate to the sad death of Jo Cox is not sensible. In 2010 Roshonara Choudhry attempted to murder Labour MP Stephen Timms because he supported the 2003 Iraqi war (she had a list of MPs that she wanted to murder). Would anyone seriously suggest that the nature of the anti-War protests at the time caused or influenced Choudhry to attempt to murder Timms? Of course not, that would be a daft thing to propose. Choudhry had a screw loose. Further, it would be similarly daft to suppose that Choudhry is representative of individuals against the Iraqi war.
Similar here in the case of Jo Cox. The individual Mair had a history of mental illness, and the day before the murder sought help (he unsuccessfully tried to make an appointment with a therapist; Mair himself knew he was ill). It is alleged that Mair harrassed Cox for months, well before the referendum campaign started. What one cannot do is suppose that the Leave campaign killed Jo Cox. In my view, that would be a contemptible position to adopt. That would be to use the terrible murder of Jo Cox to try to silence one side of the referendum debate. Unfortunately, some (eg, Polly Toynbee) on the Remain side have more than hinted that the Leave campaign has blood on its hands. That some in the Remain campaign have stooped so low amazes, shocks and disgusts me. Fortunately, the Remain campaign has sensible supporters too, who have distanced themselves from those who have tried to use Jo Cox's murder in this way.

 

I'm sorry, but I have to disagree. Remember the murder of Lee Rigby? The media and politicians fell over themselves to label the perpetrators Muslim extremist terrorists with mention of their mental health problems only an afterthought. Now a crazy white fascist guy murders Jo Cox and he is just a "disturbed loner" and his motivations are not at all political, oh no!

I mean, come on. Mair cracked, but the cracks have a pattern. There is a reason why he upgraded from harassment to full-on murder at this particular time. Because there was a narrative, heavily pushed by Vote Leave and Farage (who is not officially part of Vote Leave, not that it has been making any attempts to distance themselves from him) that Britain is being invaded by Johnny Foreigner, is being sold out by corrupt politicians to a more corrupt EU and global corporate interests, that honest hard-working White Brits are losing their country, their culture, their sovereign control, their British birth rights. Notions that were unthinkable even a few years ago are now being spoken aloud as if they are part of a valid mainstream political discourse. Racism is suddenly a "legitimate concern about immigrants".

So yes, a suggestible mind like Mair watches all that, and the last internal inhibitions to acting out his fantasies fall away. Because the threat is real. Jo Cox is a traitor. His thoughts and feelings are legit, and therefore so must be his actions.

Of course at the bottom all this is just about a damaged guy sublimating his feelings of personal inadequacy into aggression against a powerful, unavailable woman he had the hots for (is my theory, for what it's worth). Feelings of personal inadequacy are at the bottom of most misogynist, fascist, racist men. But his fascist ideologies and his rage found a new legitimacy in the narrative of this referendum which said: Go ahead. It's OK. The time is here to make your stand.

I'm sure that the Brexiteers are in denial overdrive (it's the first stage of grief, after all). Nope, nothing to do with politics; this was just the meaningless act of a tragic, lone nutter. I would have been more prepared to accept that if they had worked a bit harder to distance themselves from Nigel Farage's poisonous rhetoric. But they didn't, because his milkshake brings the votes to the yard. They happily went along with his vicious xenophobia, in such tacit endorsement giving mainstream legitimacy to that hostile crazy talk. And lo, the crazies start acting hostile.

Make no mistake: at the beginning of this referendum I was just mildly worried. Now I am ****ing scared. It took a young woman getting stabbed three times, shot twice and kicked in the face when she was already down and bleeding for all political parties involved to take stock and realise that maybe they took this referendum campaign a bit too far. Maybe they got a bit carried away. Maybe they should adopt a bit more "respectful tone". Well, it's too ****ing late for that. The electorate has been whipped up in a xenophobic hysteria, things have been said that cannot be unsaid, things done that cannot be undone, and an aspect revealed of the British people that cannot be unseen. This will be the lasting legacy whatever the outcome.

I am not a stranger to crazy people and violent behaviour. I work in mental health. I've talked down psychotics with knives and axes. A psychiatric nurse colleague of mine once faced down a guy with a gun. But right now, this country, this electorate, the way it seems to think and reason and feel and where it is all going, it scares me.

 

That pretty much sums it.

Must say, today I feel bloody ashamed of this state of affairs.

A maniac has appeared from the right to murder and a grieving husband is staging politics has appeared from the left (while his kids are in shock), The void is filled with media and establishment that all has it's own agenda of mud slinging.

EU/UK Referendum, more like EUUK!

I think i mentioned way, way back in this thread about society dropping this whole left/right political ******** as it only affects us, the people on the street. Were going nowhere quickly. SNAFU.

It's so bad even this guy is making more sense ffs.....



Question, If the whole nation ticked both boxes on the vote, what would happen?

 

Yeah well, if his wife is ostensibly killed because of her political ideals, then her husband will of course seek meaning for her death in those political ideals and seek to defend them. It is a natural psychological response.

 

or its all a conspiracy and the government did it - because you know aliens .....

 

Lizard men. You read it here first.

Now please excuse me while I go burn my laptop and cycle my spoofed IP address.

 

What eventually happens when you silence people by not allowing them to openly and freely speak about issues without branding them as either this or that is that eventually they will start to express themselves through violence instead.

The progressive left has created these problems with their actions and political policies. This is their creation. They created a pressure cooker when they replaced free speech with political correctness and in the process lost rational thought, common sense and connection with reality.

Let me also say that I find it despicable they would use a dead woman for their own political agenda.

 

Sorry, disagree. Free speech comes with the requirement of articulacy, else you're just making a noise and you can't blame people for not wanting to hear that. People could have debated immigration without resorting to xenophobic stereotypes and mindless scapegoating. The Leave Alliance managed it. But Vote Leave is happy to let Farage speak for them, apparently.

People may have valid concerns about immigration, sure. No problem with that. But if they align themselves with a racist, and echo his racist talk, and use his racist arguments to express their concerns about immigration, then yes, they look like racists, sound like racists and will be called out as racists.

Hey, I find it despicable that Nigel Farage uses images of refugees fleeing for their lives from the consequences of the West's misadventures in the Middle East to manipulate the electorate into xenophobic hysteria about immigration. He even photoshopped out the white faces so the crowd looks more foreign. But if a guy kills this woman for ostensibly political reasons then yeah, her death ends up having a political agenda.

 

There isn't even a political left in the UK, Labour has moved to the right so hard in the last decade that they have become indistinguishable from the Tories.

 

That's part of the problem: instead of challenging far-right views, mainstream parties emulate them to win those votes back. Thus those views acquire a mainstream legitimacy. That is political correctness gone mad.

 

So are you saying that the politics enables the crazies?

 

My father was killed due to workplace negligence, It was weeks before my mother could even start to face the facts, legal and public, Just saying like. It took him less than 24 hrs.

I understand about challenging far-right views but what about challenging far left views? They are just as destructive.

EDIT: If far-left politics drive a person to far-right (or vice-versa)..what then, See what I mean, everything goes nowhere and the mud slinging starts. It's all ******** and serves no purpose.

 

I think that the way this campaign has been run validates and endorses a certain mind set and how it expresses itself. So yes, it enabled this particular crazy.

To slap a psychological model on it: for people to engage in violent acts they have to first overcome their internal inhibition, then societal restraints, and finally, the victim's resistance. As such acts of abuse and violence tend to have a long build-up: fantasy, planning, preparation, mental (and sometimes practical) rehearsal and finally, acting out. Basically Mair gradually overcame his internal inhibition some time ago when he first started harassing Jo Cox. This was really a form of rehearsal and testing of societal restraint and victim resistance. The tone of the referendum campaign lowered his perceived societal restraint. Then it was just a matter of overcoming his victim's resistance.

I am sorry to hear that. I, too, lost my father at a young age (heart attack). You will undoubtedly agree that each death is unique, and how those who are left behind cope with their grief is also unique.

I totally agree. But this referendum has been right vs far-right, so that is what the debate has been focusing on.

 

Strange, because when there's an Islamic extremist attack you've defended the religion saying the terrorist just use it as an excuse for violence. Now here you are saying its the ideal that has caused the violence. You've made the same flip that the political right have, just in the opposite direction.