Should the UK remain a member of the EU

[cloggypop]

Cunt writes for Breitbart as well

 

http://www.breitbart.com/author/matthew-ellery/

[AngryOfTuebrook]

I reckon the majority of people who voted had already made there mind up before all the bullshit campaigning had even started.

And you base this on...?

[Pidge]

Nobody has an idea what a successful brexit is outside the people who want to take control of our borders, whatever the fuck that means.

 

You're right. Seems to be one that suits someone's  specific business model, or one that doesn't totally shitcan the economy will be lauded as a success.

[njackets]

And you base this on...?

Real life mate, I didn't speak to anyone who was on the fence, haven't spoken to anyone who was swayed by any of the campaigning.

 

I know you like to base your opinion on polls and articles you read in the media, sure I had this conversation with you before the ellection it turns out my real life theory was more accurate than the polls.

[Barrington Womble]

I posted it just to highlight the bullshit spouted by both camps. In truth noone has the first idea what will happen in 2019. We could be at war with China by then.

It doesn't matter about the bullshit in both camps. Just the leave camp as it won. We keep getting told the country has spoken. From where I sit, that included £350m a week for the NHS. Why can the leave campaign pick and choose what bits they think people voted for?

[stringvest]

Can just imagine the told you so shite we'd be getting in here if Trump was saying what an epic fuck up it was coming out the EU.

 

 

There wouldn't be.  Because Trump has shown that he's a fuckwit that says the first thing that comes into his head and forgets it the following day before coming out with the opposite view.  And anyone taking any notice of that shite is a bigger fuckwit than he is.  

[Guest Pistonbroke]

Yep, hence the lack of kind words for Cameron and the current Tory witch in charge despite them wanting to stay in the EU. 

[AngryOfTuebrook]

Real life mate, I didn't speak to anyone who was on the fence, haven't spoken to anyone who was swayed by any of the campaigning.

 

I know you like to base your opinion on polls and articles you read in the media, sure I had this conversation with you before the ellection it turns out my real life theory was more accurate than the polls.

"Real life" = You speaking to a small, self-selecting, probably homogenous and certainly unrepresentative group, then extrapolating their views across the whole country.

 

Basically, you're doing a poll, but you're just doing it very badly.

[magicrat]

Matthew Ellery has always been a Euro sceptic and is an ex UKIP councillor, he's a prick.  

 

Exactly

 

We also haven't left yet or triggered clause 50  

[Anubis]

It's caption time!

 

Am I alone in thinking Trump probably doesn't have a clue who the bloke stood next to him is? He's probably thinking one of the waiters wanted a picture with him.

[cloggypop]

Needs to be a bit snappier, Anubis.

 

"Cunts" still in the lead for me.

[Atticus Finch]

Real life mate, I didn't speak to anyone who was on the fence, haven't spoken to anyone who was swayed by any of the campaigning.

 

I know you like to base your opinion on polls and articles you read in the media, sure I had this conversation with you before the ellection it turns out my real life theory was more accurate than the polls.

I love an ellection, I think I've got one now.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

Real life mate, I didn't speak to anyone who was on the fence, haven't spoken to anyone who was swayed by any of the campaigning.

 

I know you like to base your opinion on polls and articles you read in the media, sure I had this conversation with you before the ellection it turns out my real life theory was more accurate than the polls.

Your "real life theory" was a guess on a binary choice.  If you call a coin-toss correctly, it's not because you had any special insight; it's because it was a 50/50 chance.  You really can't go congratulating yourself on your "accuracy".

 

As it happens, I like to base my opinions on facts (or "real life" if you prefer).  I have never based my opinion on any polls;.polls reflect other people's opinions.  Occasionally, statisticians or pundits use polls to derive forecasts.  (NB - Forecasts are not the same as predictions.  So, for example, when FiveThirtyEight forecast that Trump had a 30% chance of winning, that's not the same as predicting Clinton would win.)  I'm not a statistician, so I don't make forecasts based on polls.  Also, I'm not a nobhead, so I don't claim to have made accurate predictions whenever events turn out to match my previous guesses.

[clangers]

Well given May's impending speech effectively declaring a hard brexit we'll soon be able to begin to test the leaver's assumptions against reality.

[Moctezuma]

Well given May's impending speech effectively declaring a hard brexit we'll soon be able to begin to test the leaver's assumptions against reality.

Yup, there's nothing like the scientific method of observation of an experiment to tell youwhat actually happens rather than a load of people going around with a faith based mantra.

[Anubis]

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2017/01/brexiteers-turn-plebs/

 

The trouble with plebiscites is that they leave the plebs stranded. A complicated issue is reduced to one question: should we leave the EU, yes or no. Nowhere on the ballot does it ask whether we should leave the single market or currency union, crash into the WTO without trade agreements with the rest of the world, or tear up employment protections. There is just the deceptively simple question. It provides no guidance to which of the thousands of possible futures we could chose when it is answered.

 

The Leavers might have interpreted the referendum result as meaning Britain should embrace the Norway model; and pay the price for staying in the single market by accepting free movement. They might have interpreted the vote as meaning we should stay in the Customs Union, as we do not have the trade negotiators to cut new deals with half the planet. The world does not owe Britain a living, after all, and will want as large a slice of our industry as it can take. As Donald Trump’s advisor Wilbur Ross said, the UK’s withdrawal from the EU was a ‘God-given opportunity’ for London’s financial rivals.

 

Instead, the government has decided that vote leave meant vote hard Brexit. Philip Hammond is now saying Britain might become an Atlantic Singapore. He told Welt am Sonntag that if Britain was left closed off from European markets, it would consider abandoning the European-style social model, with ‘European-style taxation systems, European-style regulation systems’ and ‘become something different’.

 

‘We could be forced to change our economic model, and we will have to change our model to regain competitiveness. And you can be sure we will do whatever we have to do.’

 

We were not told Brexit would mean tearing up worker, environmental and consumer protections. On the contrary, the vote was meant to be a chance for the ‘left behind’ to ‘take back control’ of their lives. Hammond is now saying, or at least threatening, that control will pass to employers who can break free of ‘European-style’ restrictions on how they treat their workforce and corporations, who can break free of safety and environmental standards, and see their tax bills slashed. In the name of taking back control, ordinary people will lose what protections they have, and see the corporate tax take for public services fall.

 

EU labour protections are significant. They guarantee paid holidays, and childcare. They forbid discrimination against employees on grounds of religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation. When some of us tried to warn that Brexit would give the Tories the right to tear them up, we were denounced as liars misleading the public in the service of ‘project fear’. Andrea Leadsom and Gisela Stuart huffed indignantly in the Times in June that it was a ‘scare’ to suggest ‘there will be a bonfire of employment regulations after Brexit’ and the fat cats of industry will be ‘allowed to run free’.

 

Now it appears we may become a low regulation, low tax country where we bend the knee to every oligarch and asset stripper who wants to move here. The plebs may or may not get control of immigration from the plebiscite. But they will find control of their rights and lives slipping ever-further from them.

 

So here is the first problem with plebiscites. You only get the one vote, and there are no follow up questions. You might object that Leave won, and is entitled, like any other victor in British parliamentary politics, to govern and be judged by the electorate at the next election. But, and here is the second trouble with plebiscites, who is there to hold to account? The Tories in Vote Leave and Ukip supporters in Leave.EU made the promises about Brexit. When they won, they dissolved. Hammond and May, who voted to Remain, are leading the government. They are under no obligation to keep promises about Brexit made by others. Indeed, one assumes that, if they were sincere in June, they would keep us in the EU if it were up to them. Rather than being recognisable British politicians, they are almost civil servants carrying out a policy they regard as mistaken.

 

So here is the second problem with plebiscites: we have a government which is taking a dangerous position on trade that may threaten our jobs and living standards, and is threatening to take an ultra-conservative position on workers rights and corporate power, in the name of ‘the people,’ whose permission they did not seek, and because of a referendum, whose outcome they deplore.

 

No, Hammond, nobody is 'forcing' you to do anything you don't want to do.

[skend04]

Got to admire the brass tacks. May is going to say we "voted Brexit with our eyes wide open" which when translated in to Tory speak means "hey guys, you've given us carte blanche to fuck you in your arses."

[AngryOfTuebrook]

No, Hammond, nobody is 'forcing' you to do anything you don't want to do.

 

 

Got to admire the brass tacks. May is going to say we "voted Brexit with our eyes wide open" which when translated in to Tory speak means "hey guys, you've given us carte blanche to fuck you in your arses."

Here's Another Angry Voice's take on it.  He sees more than a whiff of The Shock Doctrine in the way the Tories - the people that njackets and his chums gave more power to - are going about things.

 

Philip Hammond's bizarre comments about Brexit to the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag have been interpreted by many as threats against the EU, but in my view they're actually a bit of a give-away about what the long-anticipated Tory "Brexit strategy" is eventually going to be.

 

For over six months after the EU referendum result came in Theresa May and the Tories have kept their Brexit strategy carefully hidden behind a wall of meaningless platitudes like "Brexit means Brexit" and "red, white and blue Brexit", but Hammond's comments give a very strong indication of what the actual Tory play is going to be.

 

The six months of strategic vacuum from the Tories has left people with little choice but to speculate about what kind of negotiating strategy the Tories are going to adopt. Will they press the economic self-destruct button by aiming for "hard Brexit"? Or will they enrage the significant Tory bigot demographic with a "soft Brexit" agreement to keep Freedom of Movement in return for access to the Single Market?

 

The problem with this hard vs soft debate is the fundamental assumption that the Tories have actually been working on a negotiating strategy with the EU, rather than devising a propaganda narrative to convince the British public to accept a savagely right-wing interpretation of Brexit.

 

Take this quote from Philip Hammond:

"If we have no access to the European market, if we are closed off, if Britain were to leave the European Union without an agreement on market access, then we could suffer from economic damage at least in the short-term ... “In this case, we could be forced to change our economic model and we will have to change our model to regain competitiveness."

Essentially what he is saying is that if the EU doesn't cave in to the Tories impossible demands to retain access to the Single Market whilst scrapping the right to free movement, then the Tories are going to set about trashing the remaining vestiges of the European social democratic model in the UK (universal healthcare, free education, the social security system, legal aid, workers' rights ...) in order to turn the UK into the world's biggest tax haven.

 

It's bitterly cynical, but the propaganda narrative the Tories seem to be trying to set is a pretty smart one. The hard-right fringe of the Tory party have always hated the socialist NHS , workers' rights and the idea of providing a social safety net to alleviate poverty and suffering. They want a ruthless right-wing dystopia where the rich are freed from all social and economic constraints whilst the poor and vulnerable are left to fend for themselves or die. They know that they can't push this savagely right-wing agenda as a choice, so they're going to try to dress it up as an unfortunate necessity that has been forced on us by the nasty foreigners.

 

It looks like the Tories have no honest intention of negotiating with the EU whatever. What they'll do is table an impossible proposition, then attempt to frame the debate so that the EU are the bad guys for dismissing the impossible proposition, rather than the Tories being the bad guys for tabling what they knew to be an impossible proposition with the intention of destroying the negotiations before they even got started.

 

The likely propaganda narrative will be that the evil EU is going to cruelly "close off" Britain, leaving the brave and defiant Tory party to take "the only possible action" of reducing corporation tax to pretty much zero and wrecking what's left of our public services.

 

"We don't want to do this" they'll protest as they gleefully trash the post-war legacy "but the evil EU made us do it". And disappointingly millions of people will buy into the story that the UK has to take a massive lurch into fanatical right-wing territory, not because that's what the Tories always actually wanted, but because the nasty, awful, horrible, evil EU made them do it.

 

The beauty of this propaganda strategy is that it feeds into the self-pitying victim complex mentality that Nigel Farage and the Ukippers have fostered as a national characteristic, and which worked such a treat in convincing people that things like the EU and immigration are to blame for the appalling consequences of four decades of hard-right Thatcherite economic dogma.

 

If millions of people were gullible enough to buy into the austerity con (that the burden of the economic crisis should fall on poor and ordinary people rather than the super-wealthy bankers who actually caused it with their utterly reckless deregulated gambling), then it seems pretty damned likely that there will be plenty enough idiots to buy into the ridiculous self-pitying idea that Britain has to turn into a fanatically right-wing Tory dystopia of a tax haven economy because the nasty EU made us do it.

 

The Tories and the right-wing press will frame the whole thing as a story of plucky down-trodden Brits doing what's necessary to stand up to the nasty European bullies, and millions of people will actually celebrate the ruination of what's left of their public services, the annihilation of their workers' rights, the removal of their individual liberties, and the massive reductions in corporation tax and regulation.

 

They'll actually celebrate it like some kind of magnificent victory for plucky little Britain rather than a deliberate hard-right assault on their wages, public services and standards of living obscured behind a thin veil of self-pity and xenophobia!

 

It looks an awful lot like the strategy the Tories have been working on isn't one of how to form a post-Brexit co-operation with the rest of the EU, but actually a plan to convince a significant enough portion of the British public that there's no alternative to their wet dream of turning the UK into a savagely right-wing tax haven in order that they don't end up losing their grip on political power in the process of enacting such an atrocious scheme.

[Moctezuma]

The only element the above doesn't touch on is the fact the conservatives need the old to keep voting for them, so a situation where you get Medicaid (i.e. free at the point of access healthcare) for those over the age of 55/60ish wouldn't surprise me at some point in the future. Of course the NHS signs and paraphernalia will stay up as well but a hollowing out and replacement with and insurance based scheme for those between the age of 16/18 to 55/60 would be entirely predictable in the long run.

 

I hope the Lexit (those who were on the left advocating coming out of the E.U.) bunch are happy about the noises being made by the chancellor, they seem to have forgotten this thing called pragmatism that leaving the E.U. at a time when we have a load of right wing heed the ba's might not be the best of ideas.

[Moctezuma]

 

hahahahahaha

[magicrat]

Last quarters trade deficit worst for 3 years and inflation up again, All to be buried under Mays Brexit bollocks speech later.

How can people be so stupid as to be led by the likes of Gove, Farage and Johnson ?  Still can't get my head round that. That Nuttall cunt saying he was exited about Trump today, What a prick

[Moctezuma]

Last quarters trade deficit worst for 3 years and inflation up again, All to be buried under Mays Brexit bollocks speech later.

 

 

Notable that she has picked a time of 11.45, perhaps she's hoping the Supreme Court (likely to go against her) make their announcement at the same time and undo her damage to the pound.

[Moctezuma]

 

£360 an hour for Gove's services. So that's how much it costs to get someone to insert their nose up your backside.

[skend04]

One thing that has escaped people is the noise about leaving the customs union. Isn't that a signal to the remaining car and airplane manufacturers, that have parts zig-zagging across borders multiple times that they can fuck off too? At least these highly qualified engineers in Sunderland can look forward to spending their days outdoors picking fruit and veg. The massive spastics.

[Guest Pistonbroke]

She'll whip the uneducated racist** turds into a frenzy. They don't understand economics or indeed what is better for everyone, they are just interested in themselves and what suits their wishes. 

 

**Not all brexiteers are uneducated and racist before NJ comes along with his words of wisdom. I'm on about, well, the racist and uneducated ones.