E.U: Leave or Stay? Your thoughts.

Oh bugger it, I was about to log out!

Like I said, I think the (at this moment potential) lies about this are different because they were cross-party, unanimous, and unambiguous. A straight "we will do what you say" on a yes/no issue is hard to wriggle out of - in the court of public opinion if not the court of law.

If they were all so adamant we shouldn't have voted one way, they shouldn't have put it to the people in the first place.

I appreciate what you say re: UKIP & the Conservatives, and that's largely true, but it's also no longer the point. Whatever the reasons for the Conservatives wanting it, Labour and others supported it, so they are all equally complicit.

I don't think they can fudge it for another four years either. That can of worms is open, I don't think there's any putting it all back.

"And please don't pretend only one side told whoppers"

I didn't, have repeatedly, again and again and again and again and again, blamed both sides equally.

Regarding your last paragraph, (sorry, I'm getting fed up with keep multi-quoting!) Nexxo was quite explicit in the uniformed and unthinking comment. I appreciate that may not be how you feel, but it's what he (she?) said. It's just the superior attitude that made me first reply, as if only one side had given it any thought and the others were thick.

As for the game being rigged and full of dodgy characters, I agree, but as I keep saying, it applies to both sides. And lets not forget the lies that took us in in the first place, or all the treaties that were signed away by successive governments, (of both parties) without the electorate's consent.

Regarding answering my other points at a later date, mate, you don't have to at all. This is starting to bore the life out of me now as well - a conversation that would take minutes face-to-face takes hours when written down and I'm beginning to lose the will to live!

 

No, he was talking about Islamic terrorism in Europe and Russia's belligerence towards the Baltic States. And I don't think he was the only politician to worry about that.

You argued that some people keep causing Leave voters of being dumb and uninformed. I'm arguing that other people make similarly sweeping statements about immigrants or Remain voters. Never said you were one of them, just pointing out that both sides are making sweeping statements abut the other.

Yes, I think that most people who voted out were uninformed and unthinking. That is evident even now, when you hear people talking on Radio 4 Any Answers; when you read people's comments on newspaper reports on Brexit. Most of them absolutely haven't got a ****ing clue. That is not the same as saying that they are thick for having a different opinion from me; it's saying that they don't understand the issues and don't think about them critically.

I'm sure that many Remain voters were not very informed and thinking either, but then, we already knew what Remaining looked like because we were living it, so arguably they had a better idea what they were voting for.

Yup, that is wny we keep hearing the rhetoric that the people voted out, and that there was a clear decision to leave. No it wasn't; it was by a small majority, let's be honest about it. So small that even Farage felt it would have been contestable, should it have gone the other way.

Leaving the EU is not a straightforward in/out question, as we are finding out. There are many versions of "in", and it turns out that there are even more versions of "out".

I was asked what I considered the alternative to:

And I said:

At no point did I say that everyone who has a different opinion than me is thick; I was saying that people who voted for British sovereignty of parliament and control over their own laws should have taken a keen interest in, and campaigned against the investigatory powers bill. The fact that this bill passed almost unnoticed suggests to me that the electorate is neither informed nor thinks about what their recent vote meant.

Well, you started with making an assumption about what I was supposed to have said and then launched in a lecture about that (which was interesting, to be fair, but not entirely correct and a bit beside my point).

 

We can't trigger it now because of the court case.

But, I'd actually go further than the rest of what you said and say that nothing will be achieved in two years, and we will leave without any meaningful agreement - and only when out, payments stop and WTO tariffs kick in will any meaningful negotiations happen.

Junker doesn't like us, neither does Tusk much, and Guy Verhofstadt (the EU's appointed chief negotiator) actively hates the UK, so only when the problem becomes a crisis will the EU do anything - so just like with every other problem the EU deals with really.

Italy has an imminent referendum, next year France will have a general election, possibly followed by their own referendum, the Netherlands will have a general election, again possibly followed by a referendum, and while Merkel may cling to power in Germany in 2017, I think the general German political outlook could well be different too.

It's entirely possible there won't even be an EU to deal with, not as we recognise it today at least.

There won't be bugger all happening short-term anyway, whether we trigger it or not.

 

The government could drop the court case, accept the High Court verdict and proceed accordingly.

The UK has been hating on the EU for decades. Don't be surprised, especially after the rhetoric of the Leave campaign and Farage's little psychodrama in EU parliament, if EU politicians have less than warm and fuzzy feelings in return. But hate? No. More like mutual annoyance and mild contempt.

Don't think that it will be the EU that feels all the pain if the UK drops into the WTO. It may well be the UK that will make concessions before that happens. You make the mistake, as British politicians do, that this is somehow the EU's problem to sort out and be reasonable about. It is not. And you forget the most important reality of this whole affair: Brexit is a proxy war fought by different factions of what is so popularly referred to as "the elite establishment". Some would benefit if the UK stays in; others will benefit when the UK comes out. Politicians and the electorate are just pawns in their game. Likewise the negotiations will ultimately be controlled by them.

And also don't think that nationalist governments in Europe would leave the EU (Austria's Freedom Party has already said it won't; Germany's AfD has no intention to) or go any easier on the UK than current pro-EU governments will.

 

You'll have to forgive me but as you seem to only be highlighting the lies told by only one side it seems you're missing the point, that you still can't see how the electorate played their part in what amounted to a political con trick.

I'm not going to enter into a debate about who was right or wrong (yet again), or that as we haven't actually left the EU yet, like we were told was going to happen the very next day after the vote, I'm not going to go over all the points and counter points in fine detail as we'd be hear for another 250 pages.

However i will reiterate what i said, people were hoodwinked by con-artists and they both failed to realise it at the time and still fail to recognise how they've handed over the keys to the castle without getting anything in return, it's not a matter of who you think was right or wrong, if you think we'd be better of in or out, it's that the electorate have given the politicians exactly what they wanted, that the electorate were nothing more than pawns in a House of Cards come Game of Thrones style political game, that the politicians played us (collectively) like suckers, and large swaths of the population didn't see it at the time and still don't see how they've been played.

This is what i mean, you and others were and still are so hung up on who lied the most, who was right or wrong, and what you thought best that you failed to see the Machiavellian nature of the whole referendum, that it was nothing more than a con trick with politicians being in a win win situation and the electorate being placed in a lose lose situation, the only thing the result effected was how big or small those wins and losses would be, the result turned out to be a big win big loss.

Further reinforcing my opinion that you still can't see the con trick, it seems you're hung up on who has the keys to the castle rather than what they do with them.

It's not about who you or i think should be making laws as despite what people say about holding our MPs to account if they do things they don't like it doesn't matter, it didn't matter when Blair took us to war, and it hasn't mattered with the snoopers charter.

Patronising it maybe but that doesn't change the fact that people were conned, that the game was rigged, that we should have called out the con trick for what it was, that despite knowing we were being lied to we never paused to ask what the liars had to gain.

If someone doesn't understand that they haven't won the Nigerian lottery that they never entered, and that sending their bank details isn't going to net them £100k, then yes they didn't understand what they were doing, and yes the money that vanished from their bank account should be returned.

It's not about who should have taken the high road, it's about not expecting that sending your bank details to a Nigerian prince is going to make you rich.

There was a right and wrong answer to the question, it was to call the con trick and walk away, it was not to get swept into what the conmen were telling you, it was not to give the conmen what they wanted.

Well based on Thursdays Question Time audience i fully understand why some people are being snide and patronising, why anyone who voted differently to them is seen as 'uninformed' and 'unthinking'.

I wish you had as i can't keep up, either I'm slow of mind or slow on the keyboard, if i get time I'll try to reply to what else you've said, although i get the feeling I'm playing catch up.

 

Or just don't write an essay and shorten it to:

It's not the brexit that matters, but what you do with it

 

Yea that condenses it down nicely.

If only it wasn't the politicians who were making the decisions.

 

One of whom just managed to top his own Titanic success quote

"The crucial thing to understand is that very large sums of money will be coming back to this country"

http://home.bt.com/news/boris-johns...e-market-access-is-speculation-91364118522290

 

Nobody takes what BoJo says seriously (well, except some Leave voters. ).

 

Related - Austria's far-right candidate, Norbert Hofer, concedes defeat to Alexander Van der Bellen in Austria's election

 

Yup. Apparently the discrepancy between the two was seven times bigger this time around.

 

Van der Bellen had a ~30k lead in April, it's rumoured to be ~300k now.

 

I wonder if anyone in the government reads Bit-Tech. I kinda hope so.

 

The snooper's charter would suggest that they do. Right now (don't forget to wave).

 

Hi Dave! *waves*

 

I think May get a fair idea of what we think of the snooper's charter in here. Replace the Adolf portrait with May's.

 

Don't forget, snoopers charter is far from the last step, next one is right around the corner:

https://www.openrightsgroup.org/cam...-bill-hub/stop-uk-censorship-of-legal-content

https://www.parliament.uk/business/news/2016/september/commons-digital-economy-bill/

 

I wonder who has the job of maintaining the block listings. Basically a bunch of dudes sitting in a room, looking at weird porn all day and adding block entries to a database.

"Ah I see in your previous role you watched porn for the government".

 

"Yup, I was a Civil Pervert at the Ministry for Porn".