E.U: Leave or Stay? Your thoughts.

I like the example on page 32

 

We're not European enough to be in Euro 2016, I think we should leave

(not at all biased with my dislike of football, honest)

Edit:

 

Nicola just said that a second Scottish Referendum is highly likely.

Discussions to be made at the weekend.

Good on them. I hope they vote away and stay with the EU.

 

Oh, I don't think it'll be too long before the England team heads home.

My aunt has a big six bedroom house in Scotland - I may pay her a visit.

 

Never before has the term "little Britain" been more appropriate.

Not the result I wanted but I'll try and live with it. I'll give it 6-12 months before I Foxtrot Oscar somewhere more outward looking. I don't like what the UK has become.

 

Well, I guess we're going to have a new Prime Minister

 

Trump the tw@t - he really doesn't have a lot of grey matter, does he?!

As for the impending IndyRef2, I'm in two minds. I voted for independence the first time round (with good reason, IMO) but now it all feels very reactionary rather than balanced. I'd much rather a UK that worked through its problems rather than ran away from them (which is exactly what Scotland wanted - to be away from Westminster).

I'm holding out hope that the UK can manage, because another indy ref isn't in the bag by any means. There are a lot of voters from the 45% who would now consider themselves quite happy to stay in the UK.

It does make you wonder... we keep having referendums whilst our government does sh!t all about the real problems in our country. Have things really gotten so bad for the UK that the only solution is not to be united any more?

 

There's a lot of talk about the pound falling ovenight, global stock falls etc being "just the start".

But most of this fall is because most transactions in FX, shares, derivatives are done by banks and other financial companies.

These financial companies are simply giant bookies nowadays. All that has happened is the giant bookies collectively put the money in the wrong place on remain positions over the previous months.

They ended up not betting correctly hence everyone trying to correct their bets and minimise losses.

This is going to be a long period before leave happens and markets will wait for developments.

It's bounced back a bit since The BoE made clear "yes we will do anything, yes anything" and markets often overshoot because of human behaviour being involved.
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How the markets perform in the future will depend on how well decision makers play the game and how strongly the public push them in the right direction.

People on both sides need to pull together because this is happening now, it's been decided democratically and with the highest UK wide polling turnout since 1997.

Near everyone who voted leave did so because they very much wanted leave, many remain (at least who I spoke to) didn't want to remain but voted through status quo bias, and many I am seeing on the TV from remain are split 50-50 between gutted and "it doesn't bother me that much".

It's now up to remain voters, while accepting the result, to make sure the voices in the media, streets, your usual party, local and national politics aren't drowned out by the leave section and vice versa.


Now the European question is out of the way there is a lot the country roughly agrees upon now we have only one option which has come out leave.

All this political engagement before the vote, the turnout, the debate and the effort wasn't just for a tick in the box.

Much like a dog is not just for Christmas, our engagement is not just for polling day it needs to be every day.

Politics is a two way street, we got a referendum through engagement, debate and loud opinions. Right or wrong, best or second best leave won by engagement, turning out and debate. That needs to continue if we are to actually bring this country out better than when it went in.

We haven't just voted for leaving the EU, we have voted for total personal responsibility as a nation.... I don't think people have realised that yet....

It's a big ask, people haven't been used to behaving like that since the greatest generation.

 

In short, the primary question is - where do you leave to :
1) EEA - it is like being in EU, without having a say in a decision process. But it is likely the only option, if UK want to keep Scotland, Northern Ireland and also their financial sector.
2) EFTA - not a possibility, EU won't even talk about this option.
3) customs union - while UK would get access to the single market at 0% customs rate, UK would still have to implement various EU directives, plus there would be a limit on what trade agreements could UK do without EU.
4) trade agreement - good luck with this option. Also it would still make it very bad for car industry.

Option 1&2 does nothing to fix the reasons people in UK voted to leave (they include requirement for free movement), and options 3&4 would be disastrous for certain sectors in UK.

 

If I pack the sandwiches, can I come along too?

For those asking earlier, I'm a consultant for currency markets....hence potential job loss yay!

The joys of contracting

 

What I'm really worried about in the short term is how this will affect the prices of consumer electronics in the UK, since I rely so heavily on it for my business. More broadly, I wonder what it might do to fuel and energy prices.

The BBC are being very doom and gloom; I can't decide if this is because they've gradually developed a Remain bias over the course of the referendum (I like the BBC, but they undeniably have leaned a bit that way, probably out of career self-interest among their management) or if it's just the standard media tactic of focusing on fear and panic to get as much traction with viewers/readers as possible.

I'm a bit depressed that I voted Remain in what turned out to be the hottest Leave camp in the country - Lincolnshire. Good ol' racist, racist Lincolnshire.

I know elsewhere there are a diversity of reasons for voting Leave, but after speaking to a lot of people around here, I can confirm that it's just straight up xenophobia and backwardsness around the east coast. Grimsby, Cleethorpes and Boston are like 105% White Caucasian and as inbred as an Alabama farm.

edit -
I just want to throw my stone in the pot and say that I don't think StingLikeABee was being racist, hateful or xenophobic. He might be those things, but the recent posts and the quoted post before his ban were pretty inoffensive (unless you consider holding opposing beliefs offensive). I know bit-tech isn't a democracy, and one might argue it's none of my business, but I think it's everyone's business when people start getting banned for stridently disagreeing with each other. Note that he didn't descend into personal insults or bad language (unless he edited it out later). Maybe I'm risking a tempban myself by questioning moderator action, and I don't even like the guy one bit, but I feel obliged to say something. There are forum rules against hate speech, obscenity, vulgarity and abuse. There's no rule against being obtuse.

 

Will the EU provide the government support jobs that are lost back to UK if they leave?

 

The EU is a sinking ship and I think we are better off in the long term leaving it. I'm amazed at the negative comments leveled at the people who chose to leave. Like anyone actually knew/knows what was best. We needed change. Most of the reasons to stay/not leave was just fear-mongering.

 

Justifiable fear mongering, though. I voted leave, but I did it knowing full well that it was similar to jumping out of a plane without a parachute and hoping we could figure something out on the way down.

The plane may be on fire and spiralling into a mountain side, but that still doesn't mean it's the best idea to Jump.

Ultimately; it's all theorycrafting till the Government sits down and starts negotiating the kind of relationship we're going to hold with the EU, there's no way we'll sever ties entirely, because it's impossible to trade with independent nations in the EU, they're not allowed to make those kinds of agreements under EU law.

 

I voted to leave too. I know the change will be painful, but I wasn't about to let fear of change or fear of the unknown colour my decision.

 

I think the take-home point is that, even if it was a good decision, we'll only find out in a decade's time when it's settled down. For the time being, it's an undisputed fact that things are going to be rough, because big changes in such a complex, fragile economic structure are a disaster no matter what they precisely consist of. It will either be horrible now, better later, or horrible now, horrible later. So people are upset because, for the next few years, wages, cost of living, public services, the job market and personal finances are all going to suffer.

 

The leave vote misdiagnosed the symptoms. The illness is economics, not modern politics (it just happens to be infected too). Now we've given away all of our political influence over our biggest trading partners and much of our global economic leverage. We're now a very small fish in a very big pond. The cathartic eff you might have felt good, but it has severely damaged our chances of any real change even being possible.

 

Scotland is rather knackered either way.

If they leave the UK they will be more than likely be considered a new applicant to join the EU, since the UK was the member state and they have seceded.

If they do nothing they leave anyway, by the time they organise a second referendum they may have already left (two years from today, at most).

 

spain already said they would vote against that - they have their own issues with catalan;

if Scotland are forced to the back of the queue then its the euro , and all the steps to join.