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Re: Should the UK leave the European Union?

Posted: August 11th, 2018, 3:50 am
by ThomasHobbes
Steve3007 wrote: August 11th, 2018, 3:46 amI can't think of a way to do the equivalent of "remoaner"" to the word "leaver".
Cleaver.

Re: Should the UK leave the European Union?

Posted: August 12th, 2018, 3:08 am
by Mark1955
ThomasHobbes wrote: July 30th, 2018, 3:30 pm
Mark1955 wrote: July 30th, 2018, 1:51 pm
Interesting you think this as the spin from the remoaners is that those who voted to leave are old and stupid, not usually people who are very well off.
Wot about Rees-Mogg?
1 = a lot [OK include Boris 2 = a lot], votes to leave = 17.4 million, number of millionaires in the UK ~ 800,000, that leaves a lot of not rich people voting leave.

Re: Should the UK leave the European Union?

Posted: August 12th, 2018, 3:09 am
by Mark1955
Steve3007 wrote: August 11th, 2018, 3:46 am
Interesting you think this as the spin from the remoaners is that those who voted to leave are old and stupid, not usually people who are very well off.
I think one of the problems that the "remainers" have faced when trying to oppose the "leavers" is that the word "remainer" is easier to alter, to turn it into a pejorative term. Off the top of my head, I can't think of a way to do the equivalent of "remoaner"" to the word "leaver".
If you wanted to deride their intelligence "Brexnit".

Re: Should the UK leave the European Union?

Posted: August 12th, 2018, 4:12 am
by Steve3007
Mark1955 wrote:If you wanted to deride their intelligence "Brexnit"
I guess so. But to be consistent with "remoaner" it would have to not deride their intelligence so much as accuse them of moaning/winging/complaining. "Brexwinge" doesn't really work.

Re: Should the UK leave the European Union?

Posted: August 12th, 2018, 4:16 am
by Steve3007
1 = a lot [OK include Boris 2 = a lot], votes to leave = 17.4 million, number of millionaires in the UK ~ 800,000, that leaves a lot of not rich people voting leave.
So I think we've probably established that roughly 1/3 of the people voted to leave, 1/3 voted to remain and 1/3 didn't care enough to vote, and of those people, regardless of how they voted or abstained from voting some were rich, some were poor and some were in the middle.

That's some kind of progress, I suppose.

Re: Should the UK leave the European Union?

Posted: August 12th, 2018, 5:25 am
by Georgeanna
Here's one breakdown of the areas and demographics where the Brexit vote was won.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/databl ... te-was-won

Brexit was overwhelmingly supported in areas of England with low income and education levels.

Scotland voted to remain in the European Union regardless of their education and income.

Outliers in densely populated urban areas with a lot of young people in London voted overwhelmingly to remain.

Again, in London, with a high proportion of people born outside the UK also voted to remain.

As an educated, average Scot, tagged as a 'baby-boomer', I voted Remain. It is more important to discover the reasons why people voted as they did.

As to the possibility of a second referendum...

Re: Should the UK leave the European Union?

Posted: August 12th, 2018, 5:34 am
by Georgeanna
Now that the realities have hit home:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... xit-remain

"People voted to leave the EU on the promise of more money for the NHS from the membership fee, access to markets and more trading opportunities, and taking back control of our borders,” he says. “People are now realising that a lot of those promises won’t be delivered.”

Re: Should the UK leave the European Union?

Posted: August 12th, 2018, 6:02 am
by Steve3007
On the subject of a second referendum:

Here's a thought on referenda/ums and voting in general. Perhaps all these kinds of votes should come in two stages? After all, as a general rule, when voting on something like this none of us really has a clue in advance what the outcome of our collective vote will be. It's just too complicated to predict. That's surely true of all major political decisions.

So perhaps all such votes should have a "try before you buy" principle? Just as our statutory consumer rights mean that we can return a product that we've bought if it turns out to be defective, perhaps that should also be true of political "products"?

Just a thought.

---

An aside:
Georgeanna wrote:As an educated, average Scot, tagged as a 'baby-boomer'...
Is that the original boom or the echo of the boom? The original boom was soldiers returning from the Second World War to their sweethearts and making babies with them. I was the child of one of those babies. An echo-boomer. As with a real echo, it spread out over the generations as different people had children at different ages. I think it's dissipated into a general background rumble of distant thunder now.

Re: Should the UK leave the European Union?

Posted: August 12th, 2018, 6:24 am
by Steve3007
Me wrote:So perhaps all such votes should have a "try before you buy" principle? Just as our statutory consumer rights mean that we can return a product that we've bought if it turns out to be defective, perhaps that should also be true of political "products"?
On second thoughts, the trouble with political "products" is that it often takes years for the defects to become apparent. By that time we've already opened the packaging, inserted the batteries, thrown away all those little bits of twisty wire that held it to the packaging and generally voided the warranty. I think it's going to be very difficult to return the leaving of the EU in its original packaging so that the supplier can resell it to someone else.

Re: Should the UK leave the European Union?

Posted: August 12th, 2018, 6:29 am
by ThomasHobbes
Georgeanna wrote: August 12th, 2018, 5:25 am Here's one breakdown of the areas and demographics where the Brexit vote was won..

As an educated, average Scot, tagged as a 'baby-boomer', I voted Remain. It is more important to discover the reasons why people voted as they did.

As to the possibility of a second referendum...
I think a second referendum would be a mistake.
I was a remainer, on balance, but now having seen to what degree the EU is punishing the UK to leave, even cutting off its nose to smite its own face, I think it would be a grievous error to rejoin the EU.
The EU is going to collapse. All the wealth has been concentrated into the core; France and Germany, with outlying countries such as Greece and Spain who have list their sovereign ability to control their own economies are suffering massive poverty.
The EU has not only turned their backs on this poverty, but has denied Greece sufficient help with their growing refugee crisis.
The EU is a busted idea. The sooner it responds to the actual needs of ordinary people, and has respect for local economic arrangements it will continue to fall in popularity and wither.

Re: Should the UK leave the European Union?

Posted: August 12th, 2018, 6:33 am
by ThomasHobbes
The EU thrives on offering benefits to the rich and the corporations which it controls. Greece should have left when had the chance rather than accept austerity it should have acted for its people not the few.

Re: Should the UK leave the European Union?

Posted: August 12th, 2018, 7:31 am
by Steve3007
The United States ambassador to the UK, Woody Johnson, has called on Britain to side with President Donald Trump on Iran or risk "serious trade consequences" for UK businesses, I read today.

It's fairly clear why Trump was keen on Brexit. Divide and rule. It works. If a country, the US or any other country, has the economic might to seriously damage the economies of those who do not follow its geo-political line then that country, for all intents and purposes, rules the world and can unilaterally dictate its will to that world. All agreements between nations are thereby meaningless because the enforcement of agreements needs rules that cannot simply be ignored. So breaking up blocs that might be big enough to oppose it is an obvious move. This is separate from the issue of whether the Trump administration was actually right or wrong to unilaterally abandon the Iran Nuclear deal.

Re: Should the UK leave the European Union?

Posted: August 12th, 2018, 10:12 am
by ThomasHobbes
Steve3007 wrote: August 12th, 2018, 7:31 am The United States ambassador to the UK, Woody Johnson, has called on Britain to side with President Donald Trump on Iran or risk "serious trade consequences" for UK businesses, I read today.

It's fairly clear why Trump was keen on Brexit. Divide and rule. It works. If a country, the US or any other country, has the economic might to seriously damage the economies of those who do not follow its geo-political line then that country, for all intents and purposes, rules the world and can unilaterally dictate its will to that world. All agreements between nations are thereby meaningless because the enforcement of agreements needs rules that cannot simply be ignored. So breaking up blocs that might be big enough to oppose it is an obvious move. This is separate from the issue of whether the Trump administration was actually right or wrong to unilaterally abandon the Iran Nuclear deal.
Then the Uk seems to be stuck between the Devil and the Deep.
More cause to aim to be self sufficient.

Re: Should the UK leave the European Union?

Posted: August 12th, 2018, 10:25 am
by Karpel Tunnel
Steve3007 wrote: August 12th, 2018, 7:31 am The United States ambassador to the UK, Woody Johnson, has called on Britain to side with President Donald Trump on Iran or risk "serious trade consequences" for UK businesses, I read today.

It's fairly clear why Trump was keen on Brexit. Divide and rule. It works. If a country, the US or any other country, has the economic might to seriously damage the economies of those who do not follow its geo-political line then that country, for all intents and purposes, rules the world and can unilaterally dictate its will to that world. All agreements between nations are thereby meaningless because the enforcement of agreements needs rules that cannot simply be ignored. So breaking up blocs that might be big enough to oppose it is an obvious move. This is separate from the issue of whether the Trump administration was actually right or wrong to unilaterally abandon the Iran Nuclear deal.
From within the EU the UK has happily gone along with all sorts of things including Gulf War 2 on garbage grounds and with France as a third partner destabilizing Syria which led to the crisis. What EU allows is for the Neo Cons to influence one big country and dissent amongst members gets stifled.

Re: Should the UK leave the European Union?

Posted: August 12th, 2018, 11:02 am
by ThomasHobbes
Lucylu wrote: May 20th, 2016, 2:02 pm The out campaign (BREXIT) makes much of the fact that the UK currently pays £350 million a week to the EU,
How do you feel now about this empty bus slogan?