E.U: Leave or Stay? Your thoughts.

True, but the additional problem is that politicians cannot be held to account for their BS. There is not even a standard which they have to adhere to. Sure, they can be voted out of office, but not for the next five years.

If the electorate has to take for granted that all politicians lie, and there is no way to hold them to account, then why even vote anymore? That is pretty damaging to the democratic process.

 

Holding politicians to account is a nice thought but it will never happen. For one it requires politicians to make the change. Forcing accountability is not just cutting the rope to hang themselves, but their mates, their party, everyone. I'm not against it, I'd love to see rules that hold them to stringent account, but it won't happen.

 

Not necessarily, adverts use to make claims that 76% of women prefer pantene pro V and other such claims, the ASA ruled that was misleading and now all adverts must state the sample size, without looking up all ASA rulings i dare say there's many more similar examples.

The only solution i can think of is the same solution the ASA uses on other misleading advertising, things like saying you can't claim every household will be £3,500 worse off, or that we send £350 million to Brussels as the former is a prediction not a statement of fact and the latter is the gross not net amount, once the rulings made any similar claims would be treated similarly, politicians would have to state something is a prediction and/or if they're using net or gross figures.

The differences may only be slight but the effect can be large, telling someone you will be £3,500 worse off is very different than saying you may, and saying we send £350 million is basically lying.

Yea well there's that an all, although for the sake of dissecting how badly it was setup, something i think we both agree on, I've chosen to focus on just the lurid claims made during the campaign as i feel if there were stricter rules on political advertising and the misleading claims then it would force politicians to set things up properly so they didn't risk falling foul of the rules.

And that's the truth of it, politicians need to make the change but they won't because they'd be held to account by a higher authority, we can dream though can't we.

Having said that if there was enough public pressure for such a thing it could force them into something similar, although for that to happen the electorate would need to be aware that it's no good blaming a politicians for promising unicorns and not delivering them, that you need to stop them promising unicorns in the first place.

 

The thing is you do send 350 million to the EU. The fact that some of it is returned doesn't alter the truth that 350 million is sent to Brussels.

As long as you don't claim it's the net cost of membership it's a legitimate statement. That is an example of the difficulty in trying to regulate this sort of thing.

 

See what i mean by misleading claims, we don't send £350 million to the EU each week.

Because of the rebate Thatcher negotiated we sent £248 million a week based on most recent figures (2013), from that £248 million we actually send to the EU in 2013 they invested £112m a week, in effect sending it back (yes i know we don't get to choose where it goes), technically we only send £248 million a week.

 

Fair enough. Just change the slogan to: the cost of EU membership starts at 350 million a week.

There we go, back using the big number These things can always be worded to be technically correct.

 

That would, IMO, still fall foul of misleading advertising as membership doesn't start at a particular figure.

The UK Statistics Authority – which polices the use of stats by politicians and civil servants criticised the use of that figure as inaccurate but was powerless to stop them using it, however that didn't stop nearly half of Britons believing the claim to be true.

 

Which is why it is important that the electorate takes ultimate responsibility for being informed. It's their lives and futures at stake, after all.

All politicians dissemble and lie. Everybody says they know that, but what they really mean is: "I know that the other politicians lie, except the one that I choose to believe, he tells the truth".


Me, I'm just quietly waiting for the government to realise that even a hard Brexit may in fact be practically impossible.

 

It's difficult to be informed when politicians and the mainstream media, who something like 46% of the voting public depend on for their facts, are not being held accountable or challenged when they make false claims.

 

You can't apply a rebate to a non existent figure. You must start with a number to apply the rebate to. Once you have that you send the remainder.

I've no doubt you'll find inaccuracies if they aren't monitored but my point is you can adjust the wording of many things to mean what you want. You'll just force the lies underground, to be technically correct rather than just be wrong. I'm not against getting to be more accurate and truthful I just don't think it would achieve much.

 

Well, my fanciful dream is that the electorate would en masse stop buying the Sun, the Daily Mail and The Express and other such tabloids.

 

But boobs!

 

Internet.

 

Yes but both those numbers are variable, at no point in history (afaik) have we ever sent the equivalent of £350m per week to the EU, like i said the use of the word "sent" may seem trivial but it has big implications, as can been seen by most of the UK believing we actually sent that amount to the EU each week, probably in a long line of wheelbarrows.

On that we're going to have to disagree then as personally i think without some form of watchdog to police what politicians claim we'll end up with something akin to advertising before it was regulated when people were regularly conned out of their money because they believed the claims were true.

Why should politicians be above rules and regulations?

EDIT: This article in the Guardian made me smile, it's done in the style of Yes Minister.

 

Which is why I didn't use the word sent on version two. I said the cost of eu membership starts at 350 million, which is a euphamism for the gross cost is 350 million but makes it sound like it's a conservative number that could go up. Where as in reality the first thing that happens to it is it drops by 100 million.

Likewise a Remainian on the very same topic could have the slogan: EU membership saves us over 100 million a week. Which is technically true, but is inconsequential because there's never a case where you would send the full 350 million.

 

I think Lynn was reading this thread [emoji14]

 

And that's why i said using the word "starts" was also misleading as it doesn't start at that amount, words have meanings and using the incorrect words leads to misinforming the intended reader.

They could probably get away with "up to" though as the ASA seems happy for BB provides to use it.

 

The 350 is a gross figure and is a starting point for calculating the cost.

 

Meanwhile:

"Gosh, turns out this Brexit thing is really rather complex!"




Brexiteers before the referendum - Parliament is supreme:

"Brexit vote is about the supremacy of Parliament and nothing else: Why I am voting to leave the EU"

Brexiteers after the referendum - Parliament is irrelevant: