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E.U: Leave or Stay? Your thoughts.

Discussion in 'Serious' started by TheBlackSwordsMan, 22 Feb 2016.

  1. adidan

    adidan Guesswork is still work

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    Yeah a genuine mistake my backend that in the tight votes tory MPs paired up not to vote actually voted (usual agreement with MPs off in other parties who would vote opposite is to be paired up and not vote to cancel each other out).
     
  2. littlepuppi

    littlepuppi Currently playing MWO and loving it

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    On the subject of "spending".. Although leave spent more... Remain pulled out some pretty dodgy tricks... I give you just one which has recently come out.. Cameron admitted he asked Obama to say we would be "back of the trade queue". No cost involved but certainly pulling in a favour... Leave could not carry out activity like this realistically so although I think its bad that there were rules broken, neither side were clean.... I think its a blind alley trying to make a big deal out of it... They were both as bad as each other, but that IS politics... Like it or not.
     
  3. Corky42

    Corky42 Where's walle?

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    Because one is the breaking of the law/rules put in place to ensure free and fair elections the other is not.
     
  4. RedFlames

    RedFlames ...is not a Belgian football team

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    Leavers on President Obama: **** off out our politics, damn American Meddling. Go back to Kenya.
    Leavers on President Trump: See! he says it'll all be fine. Suck it Remoaners! Это хорошо, господин Путин?
     
  5. Nexxo

    Nexxo * Prefab Sprout – The King of Rock 'n' Roll

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    Meanwhile, Brexit boldly bumbles on... with epic White Paper translation fails.

    They actually mistranslated "German" in German. :duh: In the end EU officials had to refer to the English original to understand the translated text.

    EDIT: just read the Dutch translation (all versions available here). Oh. My. God. :hehe: It's like they pushed the whole thing through Google Translate and then tried to tidy it up a bit. Whoever wrote this isn't Dutch (or Flemish).

    (Ironically, my clinical letters --written in English-- are always shown to trainees as gold standard examples of how it's done. I feel smug. :D)
     
    Last edited: 19 Jul 2018
  6. littlepuppi

    littlepuppi Currently playing MWO and loving it

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    So you don't think asking the leader of the free world to make a false statement is dodgy? Yes there is no "law" against it but it is highly questionable and IMO could have a much bigger impact that one side spending an extra 600k... Add to that the numerous interventions by Mark Carney, nudge nudge wink wink... Yes the "cost" nothing but its all very undignified and I would argue carries the potential to influence the electorate in a more significant way. But that said.. No "law" against it... Maybe there should be...

    IMO no side comes out of this well - at all... But spending 600k more in a 2 month long campaign is literally a drop in the ocean....
     
  7. Nexxo

    Nexxo * Prefab Sprout – The King of Rock 'n' Roll

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    It was not a false statement. The account is that in discussion between US and UK officials (including Obama and Cameron) the topic of Brexit inevitably arose and the UK officials asked about the UK's chances of striking an FTA with the US as an independent country. The US officials replied that the EU, being a much bigger fish, would take priority. "So we would be at the back of the queue?" One of the British officials asked. Obama confirmed that would be the case. Cameron then asked him if he could say that officially, in more or less those words, and Obama obliged.

    Compare this to Trump who waded into a negotiating process between the UK and EU. I don't see much difference there.

    Carney is just saying what the world markets think: Brexit is a risk to the UK economy. It's why the Pound is tanking (again). Carney's job is to anticipate and mitigate that risk, and that is what he is doing. Unless you'd rather have him base his fiscal policy for the Bank of England on happy thoughts and faith.
     
  8. adidan

    adidan Guesswork is still work

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    It would be interesting to know how much of this is a fiasco and how much is careful manipulation of events to make the £ go short and long so as to make a shed load of cash.

    Somewhere someone is making a lot of money.
     
  9. Anfield

    Anfield Multimodder

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    I disagree that the statement was false.

    If you look at the things Trump said about trade during his campaign / early in his presidency the priorities where Nafta, TPP and China while the rest of the world was very much back of the queue, so the prediction of Cameron / Obama (regardless of how and why it came to be) was correct.

    Does that make it right to ask a foreign politician to promote any one side in a domestic referendum?
    I'd say no, it wasn't right.
     
  10. Corky42

    Corky42 Where's walle?

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    There used to be laws/rules that, to some extent, kept political communications/advertising in check but politicians decided not to renew the powers given to the Advertising Standards Authority around a year before the referendum.

    I completely agree that making misleading and/or false claims undermines our democracy but I'd say breaking spending rules is a lot worse, misleading and/or false claims are easily checked and you can either be gullible enough to be taken in by them or not, breaking spending rules however means we basically turn the democratic process over to whoever's got the most money, we risk turning the country into an oligarchy.

    Also £600k maybe a drop in the ocean but, and I'm to dumb to do it myself, it's possible to work out how many votes that bought. Simply take the total campaign spend of all the groups on both the leave and remain sides and divide it by the relevant amount of voters for each side and you get a 1 vote = £ x.xx, some guy on reddit did a similar thing but I'm too stupid and lazy to check if it's right. :)
     
    Last edited: 20 Jul 2018
  11. DXR_13KE

    DXR_13KE BananaModder

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    It looks like they have a Portuguese n the team. So far it is rather well translated.
    Also the document is kind of on the side of having a cake and eating it.
     
  12. Anfield

    Anfield Multimodder

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    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...never-accept-eus-ideas-on-irish-brexit-border

    I better wrap myself up in sticky tape because I'm about to explode from laughter...

    Does Mrs Strong and Stable not remember that she signed up for the backstop?
    https://www.irishtimes.com/news/wor...-solution-for-border-in-treaty-text-1.3432512

    And does she not see the bigger issue that her very public flip flopping makes the UK government look like an extremely unreliable partner for any negotiation?

    Imho the damage of brexit by itself will be tiny compared to the damage inflicted by the incompetence of the government left to implement it.
     
  13. adidan

    adidan Guesswork is still work

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    And it was only about a year ago Boris said we wouldn't be leaving without a deal and Fox reckoned it was the easiest thing in the world.

    In other news the House did agree on something, to keep it hidden which MPs are under investigation for corruption or sexual harassment.

    Yeah that's not on the government website anymore.
     
  14. Corky42

    Corky42 Where's walle?

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    Not only that but isn't the GFA legally binding? Although I'm not sure what court would deal with any legal repercussions from breaking it.

    EDIT: She's doing a good job of constructing her straw man though, her claims that the EU are being inflexible and the feigned ignorance over the already agreed backstop was directed at a domestic audience, she want's to cement in peoples minds that when it all goes wrong it's the EU's fault and that she tried her hardest, she was flexible but they were not, she was ambitious and they weren't..

    I read about that, i guess if we don't like it we can kick them out come next GE, at least that's what I'm told. Although much like when they didn't renew the ASA's powers over false advertising in political campaigns a few years ago i can't see any politicians rushing to make themselves more accountable, so how being able to hold politicians directly accountable seems rather moot.

    It's rather ironic though that (afaik) the government, opposition, and most other MPs support the naming of those suspected of serious crimes, like Cliff Richard, but that they shouldn't be named when actual being investigated.
     
    Last edited: 20 Jul 2018
  15. Anfield

    Anfield Multimodder

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    Yes it is legally binding and no one actually knows for sure where jurisdiction will end up due to brexit.
    As both Ireland and the UK where in the EU at the time it was written the decision was made that the ECJ would be the venue for that, but obviously the UK has a legitimate claim that it would no longer qualify as neutral post brexit.

    Leaving as the only realistic option to shuffle responsibility of the GFA from the ECJ to the ICJ (while that is in The Hague it has nothing to do with the EU).
    However that then opens the can of worms regarding the legal status of the EU, can Ireland get out of jail (figuratively) by claiming at a trial that it was only following orders of the EU? Just how closely do countries have to be associated with each other to share responsibility?
    But who has the time to deal with that? So I suspect the ECJ will remain as the guardian of the GFA.

    On another note, the Barnier rebuttal to the Chequers Fudge is pretty fun to read (if you like to watch the world burn).
     
  16. Corky42

    Corky42 Where's walle?

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    Something i don't get, why in defense of the Leave EU's overspend are people bringing up the £9m spent by the government on a leaflet shot before the campaign spending rules came into force?

    I mean i get why their bringing it up but don't they understand that a) it was spent before the official campaign spending rules came into force, and b) if they want to go back before the rules came into force then it's only fair to included every penny UKIP has ever spent as leaving the EU was their raison d'etre.
     
  17. Nexxo

    Nexxo * Prefab Sprout – The King of Rock 'n' Roll

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    Brexiteers don't understand anything. They just think that they do.
     
  18. RedFlames

    RedFlames ...is not a Belgian football team

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    Brexit is Quantum Mechanics?

    'If you think you understand quantum mechanics brexit, you don't understand quantum mechanics brexit'
     
  19. adidan

    adidan Guesswork is still work

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    I'm sure if the Remain camp had overspent and they won then nobody in the Leave camp would bat an eyelid or say the referendum was invalid and needed to be rerun...
     
  20. RedFlames

    RedFlames ...is not a Belgian football team

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    IMO the fact both sides were cheating cockwombles just demonstrates what an utter shitshow the whole thing is and how it all is in dire need of a proper reevaluation.

    Else we end up in a situation where elections stop being about how good your polcicies are and all about how well you can cheat.

    ...some reckon we are already there.
     

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