Should the UK remain a member of the EU

[RoboRiise]

After 3 months whether they have a job or not and it would gradually increases over months.  And that deal Cameron got was only temporary. EFTA makes it permanent.

 

Over 20k came last year I believe without a job, although a tiny % its still quite alot. 

 

If 0.05% of the UK working age population is a lot.

[jimmycase]

That suggests that the referendum happened. Then somebody wasn't happy with the result so they set up a petition.

 

It's already been established that this is not the case.

 

Personally, I think the result has to be accepted. But, given the importance of the decision, the proposal put forward in the petition was actually a sound one.

 

Fucking weird unverse you're living in is all I can say.

 

But well done for the most bizarre explanation ever.

[KopOut]

The UK should look to New Zealand as an example of a successful independent mixed economy. Hell, we're even stuck down in the South Pacific, thousands of miles from the action.

 

We've successfully negotiated free trade deals with China and others.

 

 

We're currently accepting 30 odd thousand immigrants a year, mostly from Australia and UK.

 

 

There's no reason you cant go it alone with the right attitude.

[Nelly-Szoboszlai]

Fucking weird unverse you're living in is all I can say.

 

But well done for the most bizarre explanation ever.

Please expand....

 

Weird? I've only got one account on here, Ace. How many have you got?

[jimmycase]

Please expand....

 

Weird? I've only got one account on here, Ace. How many have you got?

 

I refer the less than honourable gentleman to the reply I gave earlier.

[Nelly-Szoboszlai]

I refer the less than honourable gentleman to the reply I gave earlier.

So, you can't expand then. You just want to indulge in ad hominem.

 

I refer you to my earlier comments. You're a cunt.

[The Midnight Rambler]

https://twitter.com/ijclark/status/746774581390745600

 

Bit like taking over Baconface's job but x 1000

[RoboRiise]

https://twitter.com/ijclark/status/746774581390745600

 

Bit like taking over Baconface's job but x 1000

 

His reported comment to an aide was 'Why should I do all the hard shit for someone else, just to hand it over to them on a plate?'.  Whilst on the one hand it's exactly what I'd expect of him, I have to condede that it's a fair question even without taking account of the aspects mentioned there.

[Strontium]

It was more metaphoric than actual!

 

Razor said to stop talking about his penis already.

 

 

 

 

(Razor, I'm just fuckin wit you dude x)

[Strontium]

He's probably hoping that the Lib Dems win enough kippers back to his party so as they can form another coalition to suck Tory cock. 

 

Win round Ukippers... by trying to overturn the referendum result? What?

[Red Phoenix]

A few extracts from Greenwald's take on this and western institutions :

 

The decision by UK voters to leave the EU is such a glaring repudiation of the wisdom and relevance of elite political and media institutions that – for once – their failures have become a prominent part of the storyline. Media reaction to the Brexit vote falls into two general categories: (1) earnest, candid attempts to understand what motivated voters to make this choice, even if that means indicting one’s own establishment circles, and (2) petulant, self-serving, simple-minded attacks on disobedient pro-leave voters for being primitive, xenophobic bigots (and stupid to boot), all to evade any reckoning with their own responsibility. Virtually every reaction that falls into the former category emphasizes the profound failures of western establishment factions; these institutions have spawned pervasive misery and inequality, only to spew condescending scorn at their victims when they object.

 

 - - -

 

The solution is not to subserviently cling to corrupt elite institutions out of fear of the alternatives. It is, instead, to help bury those institutions and their elite mavens and then fight for superior replacements. As Hayes put it in his book, the challenge is “directing the frustration, anger, and alienation we all feel into building a trans-ideological coalition that can actually dislodge the power of the post-meritocratic elite. One that marshals insurrectionist sentiment without succumbing to nihilism and manic, paranoid distrust.”

 

Corrupt elites always try to persuade people to continue to submit to their dominance in exchange for protection from forces that are even worse. That’s their game. But at some point, they themselves, and their prevailing order, become so destructive, so deceitful, so toxic, that their victims are willing to gamble that the alternatives will not be worse, or at least, they decide to embrace the satisfaction of spitting in the faces of those who have displayed nothing but contempt and condescension for them.

 

There is no one, unifying explanation for Brexit, or Trumpism, or the growing extremism of various stripes throughout the west, but this sense of angry impotence – an inability to see any option other than smashing those responsible for their plight –  is undoubtedly a major factor. As Bevins put it, supporters of Trump, and Brexit, and other anti-establishment movements “are motivated not so much by whether they think the projects will actually work, but more by their desire to say FUCK YOU” to those they believe (with very good reason) have failed them.

 

Obviously, those who are the target of this anti-establishment rage – political, economic and media elites – are desperate to exonerate themselves, to demonstrate that they bear no responsibility for the suffering masses that are now refusing to be compliant and silent. The easiest course to achieve that goal is simply to demonize those with little power, wealth or possibility as stupid and racist: this is only happening because they are primitive and ignorant and hateful, not because they have any legitimate grievances or because I or my friends or my elite institutions have done anything wrong.

 

 . . .

 

Because of how generally satisfied they are with their lot, they regard with affection and respect the internationalist institutions that safeguard the west’s prevailing order: the World Bank and IMF, NATO and the west’s military forces, the Federal Reserve, Wall Street, the EU. While they express some piecemeal criticisms of each, they literally cannot comprehend how anyone would be fundamentally disillusioned by and angry with these institutions, let alone want to break from them. They are far removed from the suffering that causes those anti-establishment sentiments. So they search and search in vain for some rationale that could explain something like Brexit, or the establishment-condemning movements on the right and left, and can find only one way to process it: these people are not motivated by any legitimate grievances or economic suffering, but instead they are just broken, ungrateful, immoral, hateful, racist and ignorant.

 

 . . .

 

Of course it is the case that some, perhaps much, of the support given to these anti-establishment movements is grounded in those sorts of ugly sentiments. But it’s also the case that the media elites’ revered establishment institutions in finance, media and politics are driven by all sorts of equally ugly impulses, as the rotted fruit of their actions conclusively proves.

 

Even more important, the mechanism that western citizens are expected to use to express and rectify dissatisfaction – elections – has largely ceased to serve any correction function. As Hayes, in a widely cited tweet, put it this week about Brexit:

 

I don't want a future in which politics is primarily a battle between cosmopolitan finance capitalism and ethno-nationalist backlash.

— Christopher Hayes (@chrislhayes) June 24, 2016

 

But that is exactly the choice presented not only by Brexit but also western elections generally, including the 2016 Clinton v. Trump General Election (just look at the powerful array of Wall Street tycoons and war-loving neocons which – long before Trump – viewed the former Democratic New York Senator and Secretary of State as their best hope for having their agenda and interests served). When democracy is preserved only in form, structured to change little to nothing about power distribution, people naturally seek alternatives for the redress of their grievances, particularly when they suffer.

 

More importantly still – and directly contrary to what establishment liberals love to claim in order to demonize all who reject their authority – economic suffering and xenophobia/racism are not mutually exclusive; the opposite is true: the former fuels the latter, as sustained economic misery makes people more receptive to tribalistic scapegoating. That’s precisely why plutocratic policies that deprive huge portions of the population of basic opportunity and hope are so dangerous. Claiming that supporters of Brexit or Trump or Corbyn or Sanders or anti-establishment European parties on the left and right are motivated only by hatred but not genuine economic suffering and political oppression is a transparent tactic for exonerating status quo institutions and evading responsibility for doing anything about their core corruption.

 

Part of this spiteful media reaction to Brexit is grounded in a dreary combination of sloth and habit: a sizable portion of the establishment-liberal commentariat in the west has completely lost the ability to engage with any sort of dissent from their orthodoxies, or even to understand those who disagree with them. They are capable of nothing beyond adopting the most smug and self-satisfied posture, then spouting clichés to dismiss their critics as ignorant, benighted bigots. Like the people of the west who bomb Muslim countries and then express confusion that anyone wants to attack them back, the most simple-minded of these establishment media liberals are constantly enraged that the people they endlessly malign as ignorant haters refuse to vest them with the respect and credibility to which they are naturally entitled.

 

https://theintercept.com/2016/06/25/brexit-is-only-the-latest-proof-of-the-insularity-and-failure-of-western-establishment-institutions/

[The Midnight Rambler]

Some interesting stuff about article 50 on @DavidAllenGreen timeline.

[Boss]

 

Peter Hitchens speaking complete sense for once.

[Dr Arthur De Sabre]

Based on my experience, I doubt if any more than one journey in tens of thousands between Ireland and the UK is checked. That is definitely going to change. And given the nature of the Brexit campaign, I have little faith that the regime will be anything other than in one direction, i.e. making travel between the two countries more difficult. On what do you base the idea that little will change? The centuries of friendship between our respective nations?

I was back home a few years ago, had sent in my British passport for renewal, and travelled over to Dublin on my Australian passport. Took a lot longer to get through on the Irish side, and coming back the Eastern European dude checking passports refused me entry telling me I didn't have right of entry to the uk as there was no visa. Let us on after a massive kick off, and it was funny later, but very unsettling to be refused entry onto a plane travelling back to the city I was born.

[KopOut]

 

great summary of Euro debt economics. Respect to Farage.

[Red Phoenix]

The 2nd referendum “petition” is wide open to fraud : https://off-guardian.org/2016/06/25/the-2nd-referendum-petition-is-wide-open-to-fraud/

[Lee909]

Another guardian article illustrating the madness of this vote.

 

View from Wales: town showered with EU cash votes to leave EU

 

http://gu.com/p/4myfh?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard

 

View from Wales: town showered with EU cash votes to leave EU

 

In Ebbw Vale, with little immigration and perhaps more EU investment than any other UK small town, the sense of injustice is greater than the sum of the facts

 



 

 

 

The newly opened A465 near Ebbw Vale. The West Wales and the Valleys region was identified as the poorest region in the whole of north-western Europe. To address this, from 2014 to 2020, Wales would have benefited from around £1.8bn EU European Structural Funds investment.Photograph: Matt Cardy/Getty Images

 

Carole Cadwalladr

 

Published:20:49 BST Sat 25 June 2016

 

 Follow Carole Cadwalladr

 

“What’s the EU ever done for us?” Zak Kelly, 21, asks me this standing next to a brand new complex of buildings and facilities that wouldn’t look out of place in Canary Wharf. It’s not Canary Wharf, though, it’s Ebbw Vale, a former steel town of 18,000 people in the heart of the Welsh valleys, where 62% of the population – the highest proportion in Wales – voted Leave.

 

View from Hampstead: the bonus-rich are immune to politics

 

To go there – along a new dual carriageway – and stand next to the town’s new sixth form and training college, a glass and steel architectural showpiece next to its new leisure centre, a few hundred yards away from a new train station, is to stare into the abyss of the UK’s failed Remain campaign.

 

Even Kelly, who has just finished a training session on a brand new football pitch, backtracks slightly after asking that question. “Well, I know … they built all this,” he says, and motions his head at the impressive facilities that are all around us. “But we put in more money than we get out, don’t we?”

 

AdvertisementHide

 

We’re standing on the site of the old steelworks, a toxic industrial wasteland left rotting when the plant, once the biggest in Europe, finally closed in 2002. It’s now “The Works” – a flagship £350m regeneration project funded by the EU redevelopment fund and home to the £33.5m Coleg Gwent, where some of the 29,000 Welsh apprenticeships the European Social Fund pays for help young people learn a trade. Add in a new £30m railway line and £80m improvement to the Heads of the Valley road from other pots of EU money, and the town centre has just received £12.2m for various upgrades and improvements.

 

Ebbw Vale, left devastated when the steelworks closed, has had more European money poured into it than perhaps any other small town in Britain. But according to the figures Kelly heard, “we get out £7m a year from the EU and we put in £19m”. Anyway, he says, “it was time for a change”.

 

And change is now coming. But what it will mean for an area dependent on inward investment and with the highest unemployment in Wales – nearly 40% of people are either unemployed or not available for work – has yet to be seen. In the local fish and chip shop, Deborah Basini says that she voted Remain. “All my family did. I’m very worried about what’s going to happen to inward investment. I’m 60 – this isn’t going to affect me. It’ll be my grandchildren who are not yet born.” Her customers, however, thought differently. “There was only one word people had on their mind: immigration. They didn’t look at the facts at all.”

 

Are there any immigrants in Ebbw Vale? “No! Hardly any. And the ones there are are all working, all contributing. It’s just … illogical. I just don’t think people looked at the facts at all.”

 

It’s a town with almost no immigrants that voted to get the immigrants out. A town that has been showered with EU cash that no longer wants to be part of the EU. A town that holds some of the clues, perhaps, in understanding quite how spectacularly the Remain message failed to land. There’s a sense of injustice that is far greater than the sum of the facts, and the political landscape has fractured and split. Zak Kelly says that many of his friends, in what is Nye Bevan’s old constituency, voted Ukip.

 

Wales isn’t just a net EU beneficiary, EU capital funding has been an essential part of attracting firms to come here. All around town are signs marked with the EU flag for the Ebbw Vale enterprise zone. The website notes that as an EU tier 1 area, “companies can benefit from the highest level of grant aid in the UK”. Earlier this year the sports car company TVR announced it would build a factory and create 150 jobs there. Will it still come? Will the Circuit of Wales, a multimillion-pound motor racing circuit a private company has been proposing to build on the town’s outskirts creating 6,000 jobs? Will the £1.8bn of EU cash promised to Wales for projects until 2020 still arrive? And what happens after? Will central government really give more money to Ebbw Vale than the EU has?

 

Even Kelly looks like he could be doubtful on this point. “David Cameron got a good kicking,” he says. So, what about Boris Johnson? Do you want him? “No way. He’s London through and through. He’ll just forget about Wales.”

 

Or as Michael Sheen, the Welsh-born actor from Port Talbot, tweeted: “Wales votes to trust a new and more rightwing Tory leadership to invest as much money into its poorer areas as EU has been doing.”

 

“It is what it is,” says Kelly. “We’ll see, won’t we?”

[Anubis]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnCvl2T_o5o

 

Peter Hitchens speaking complete sense for once.

The look on that Guardian bird's face when Hitchens tells her the parties are too similar, too Blairite. And he's right. And it just shows you that the media elite are as much out of touch as many of the politicians.

 

I've said for ages that the problem in this country is that we have a load of politicians and media bods who came up through certain universties, who (whether Tory or Labour or Lib Dem) all socialise together, and who have invented this cost little merry-go-round where they all try and look after each other. And woe betide if you're not, or don't want to be, on that merry-go-round.

 

Corbyn has found that out. I dearsay that if another independent mind like Skinner had ever been put in a position of prominence, he'd have faced the same.

[RedKnight]

That says it all really. You have a young man who is able to actually stand in front of physical evidence of huge infrastructure investment received from the EU, who would have been a kid growing up in that town before the investment came and so know what a complete wasteland it was, accept fully that there are virtually no immigrants in his town and that the ones who are there are productive members of society, yet then vote to leave the EU and his justification for it is 'the figures I heard said we put 19m in and get 7m out', 'it was time for a change' and 'something something immigrants'.

 

That's just wonderful son, take a bow. Well, he's going to get his change for sure, hope he likes it.

I mentioned the A465 on Twitter Friday and got over 100 retweets about the absurdity of Wales voting out - people can spot the rampant idiocy of what Wales did. It's clear people used it as protest vote with no clue about the ramifucations.

[Brownie]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnCvl2T_o5o

 

Peter Hitchens speaking complete sense for once.

I can't stand that twat but he's spot on.

[Barrington Womble]

 

 

Out of all the things I'm worried about, trade terms are amongst the least of them. I don't think Germany will try to punish us to discourage other countries and if they impose tariffs on us then we would obviously do the same which would damage their economy as well. We'd come out of it worse no doubt about that but they won't want be paying tariffs to import stuff into the UK market which is a massive consumer economy for the rest of the EU. Business in Germany and the UK will demand a deal is thrashed out. Wouldn't surprise me if they keep the free movement of people if it means they get a favourable deal.

 

I'm more arsed about things like the working time directive and the human rights act getting fucked off.

I would stake my life on riots on the street if we accepted a deal that includes free movement. The dickheads from the far right will see to that.

 

As for your last paragraph, I think it's safe to say it's gone already.

[Gnasher]

Mine a Sri Lankan, also voted to leave.

 

Mainly out of annoyance at the ease at which Eastern Europeans can move here compared to the year long set of interviews, paperwork, medicals, etc he had to go through.

A lot of Asians I know think the system is unfair and imo they have a point. Why should a fully qualified nurse/doctor from the outside Europe face stringent checks and delays whilst an unemployed labourer from Europe walks straight in?

[Brownie]

A lot of Asians I know think the system is unfair and imo they have a point. Why should a fully qualified nurse/doctor from the outside Europe face stringent checks and delays whilst an unemployed labourer from Europe walks straight in?

So what you're saying is you want more immigration?

 

Interesting.

[Barrington Womble]

A lot of Asians I know think the system is unfair and imo they have a point. Why should a fully qualified nurse/doctor from the outside Europe face stringent checks and delays whilst an unemployed labourer from Europe walks straight in?

Because we live in a world with borders and had chosen our neighbours to have a gang where movement is easier. All this fucking nonsense about points systems, we don't want it as it would cost too much to administer. Even Johnson and gove know that. They're now shitting themselves trying to figure a way out of this mess.

[PestiRed]

EU immigration is moot anyway. The next two years will see every major overseas company and most of the British ones putting enormous pressure on the govt to remain part of the common market and EFTA, probably successfully as the current threats to move thousands of jobs will actually become reality otherwise. Freedom of movement is written into that deal so nothing changes.