View Poll Results: What would you personally prefer to happen? |
I want the UK to stay in an ever-closer union
|    | 49 | 23.11% |
I want the UK to stay in a loosely connected EU
|    | 68 | 32.08% |
I want the UK out because the EU is bad for the UK
|    | 22 | 10.38% |
I want the UK out because the EU is a bad thing
|    | 23 | 10.85% |
I want the UK out because this would be good for the rest of us
|    | 17 | 8.02% |
I don't really care
|    | 33 | 15.57% |  | | | 
05.02.2019, 12:17
|  | Forum Legend | | Join Date: May 2008 Location: Kt. Zürich
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| | Re: The Brexit referendum thread: potential consequences for GB, EU and the Brits in | Quote: | |  | | | The people voted in a referendum & no government will go against that. If they did they won't be in government very long. | | | | | UK Parliament is sovereign so they can decide whatever they want to regardless of any referendums.
Voting for MPs in UK is local so people vote on local issues not national, it is fanciful to believe MPs would be voted out on national issues.
Give you a real example. Maidenhead constituency voted overwhelmingly for remain and against the third Heathrow runway.
Their local MP, Theresa May, is for leave and for the third runway.
So in the 2017 election May won with an increased % majority over 2010.
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05.02.2019, 12:24
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| | Re: The Brexit referendum thread: potential consequences for GB, EU and the Brits in | Quote: | |  | | | If you would have such a referendum and the government declares before the referendum that it will implement the decision, then yes.
Why else have such a referendum? If you don't want it as a country, then you shouldn't have such a referendum. Isn't that obvious? | | | | | The Govt. cannot declare "it will implement the decision" as this would mean them surrendering their sovereignty which no UK Govt. will do.
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05.02.2019, 12:27
| | Re: The Brexit referendum thread: potential consequences for GB, EU and the Brits in
Exactly, Cameron acted against UK Sovereign Parliamentary Democracy, and should have been stopped right from the start from making an illegal promise to implement.
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05.02.2019, 13:24
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| | Re: The Brexit referendum thread: potential consequences for GB, EU and the Brits in | Quote: | |  | | | My opinion is based on what the Auditor actually wrote. , of course you're not interested in that as you would rather attempt to score a point.  | | | | | Not really, it's you who tried to. I'm simply reminding you of the fact.
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05.02.2019, 13:46
| | Re: The Brexit referendum thread: potential consequences for GB, EU and the Brits in | Quote: | |  | | | Not really, it's you who tried to. I'm simply reminding you of the fact. | | | | | I think it's probably time to stop pulling at this thread of unreality. We're auditing a dead horse.
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05.02.2019, 13:52
| | Re: The Brexit referendum thread: potential consequences for GB, EU and the Brits in | Quote: |  | | | Exactly, Cameron acted against UK Sovereign Parliamentary Democracy, and should have been stopped right from the start from making an illegal promise to implement. | | | | | Parliament voted for the referendum! By 544 to 53!
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05.02.2019, 13:54
| | Re: The Brexit referendum thread: potential consequences for GB, EU and the Brits in | Quote: | |  | | | it is fanciful to believe MPs would be voted out on national issues | | | | | I assume you were around in 1997?
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05.02.2019, 14:07
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| | Re: The Brexit referendum thread: potential consequences for GB, EU and the Brits in | Quote: | |  | | | Voting for MPs in UK is local so people vote on local issues not national, it is fanciful to believe MPs would be voted out on national issues. | | | | | I know of a few Labour MPs who are currently being subjected to a sustained deselection campaign because of Brexit, completely despite how well they've represented their constituencies. In my UK hometown, the debate has become exceptionally toxic.
This 'deselection' first raised it's head en masse regarding MPs who resigned from Corbyn's government, but now it's also being used regarding Brexit issues. Some very unsavoury people are feeling newly empowered, and are weilding it in a very disturbing fashion.
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05.02.2019, 14:23
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05.02.2019, 16:50
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| | Re: The Brexit referendum thread: potential consequences for GB, EU and the Brits in | Quote: |  | | | It's long- so if you don't want to read it, just skip it.
He says it so much better than I ever could, AA Gill:
The late AA Gill on Brexit;
A.A. Gill writing about Brexit in the Times before his death in Dec 2016.
It was the woman on Question Time that really did it for me.
She was so familiar. There is someone like her in every queue, every coffee shop, outside every school in every parish council in the country. Middle-aged, middle-class, middle-brow, over-made-up, with her National Health face and weatherproof English expression of hurt righteousness, shes Britannias mother-in-law. The camera closed in on her and she shouted: All I want is my country back. Give me my country back.
It was a heartfelt cry of real distress and the rest of the audience erupted in sympathetic applause, but I thought: Back from what? Back from where?
Wanting the country back is the constant mantra of all the outies. Farage slurs it, Gove insinuates it. Of course I know what they mean. We all know what they mean. They mean back from Johnny Foreigner, back from the brink, back from the future, back-to-back, back to bosky hedges and dry stone walls and country lanes and church bells and warm beer and skittles and football rattles and cheery banter and clogs on cobbles. Back to vicars-and-tarts parties and Carry On fart jokes, back to Elgar and fudge and proper weather and herbaceous borders and cars called Morris. Back to victoria sponge and 22 yards to a wicket and 15 hands to a horse and 3ft to a yard and four fingers in a Kit Kat, back to gooseberries not avocados, back to deference and respect, to make do and mend and smiling bravely and biting your lip and suffering in silence and patronising foreigners with pity.
We all know what getting our country back means. Its snorting a line of the most pernicious and debilitating Little English drug, nostalgia. The warm, crumbly, honey-coloured, collective yesterday with its fond belief that everything was better back then, that Britain (England, really) is a worse place now than it was at some foggy point in the past where we achieved peak Blighty. Its the knowledge that the best of us have been and gone, that nothing we can build will be as lovely as a National Trust Georgian country house, no art will be as good as a Turner, no poem as wonderful as If, no writer a touch on Shakespeare or Dickens, nothing will grow as lovely as a cottage garden, no hero greater than Nelson, no politician better than Churchill, no view more throat-catching than the White Cliffs and that we will never manufacture anything as great as a Rolls-Royce or Flying Scotsman again.
The dream of Brexit isnt that we might be able to make a brighter, new, energetic tomorrow, its a desire to shuffle back to a regret-curdled inward-looking yesterday. In the Brexit fantasy, the best we can hope for is to kick out all the work-all-hours foreigners and become caretakers to our own past in this self-congratulatory island of moaning and pomposity.
And if you think thats an exaggeration of the Brexit position, then just listen to the language they use: We are a nation of inventors and entrepreneurs, we want to put the great back in Britain, the great engineers, the great manufacturers. This is all the expression of a sentimental nostalgia. In the Brexiteers minds eye is the old Pathé newsreel of Donald Campbell, of John Logie Baird with his television, Barnes Wallis and his bouncing bomb, and Robert Baden-Powell inventing boy scouts in his shed.
All we need, their argument goes, is to be free of the humourless Germans and spoilsport French and all their collective liberalism and reality. There is a concomitant hope that if we manage to back out of Europe, then well get back to the bowler-hatted 1950s and the Commonwealth will hold pageants, fireworks displays and beg to be back in the Queen Empresss good books again. Then New Zealand will sacrifice a thousand lambs, Ghana will ask if it can go back to being called the Gold Coast and Britain will resume hand-making Land Rovers and top hats and Sheffield plate teapots.
There is a reason that most of the people who want to leave the EU are old while those who want to remain are young: its because the young arent infected with Bisto nostalgia. They dont recognise half the stuff Ive mentioned here. Theyve grown up in the EU and at worst its been neutral for them.
The under-thirties want to be part of things, not aloof from them. Theyre about being joined-up and counted. I imagine a phrase most outies identify with is womens liberation has gone too far. Everything has gone too far for them, from political correctness well, thats gone mad, hasnt it? to health and safety and gender-neutral lavatories. Those oldies, they dont know if theyre coming or going, what with those newfangled mobile phones and kids on Tinder and Grindr. What happened to meeting Miss Joan Hunter Dunn at the tennis club? And dont get them started on electric hand dryers, or something unrecognised in the bagging area, or Indian call centres , or the impertinent computer asking for a password that has both capitals and little letters and numbers and more than eight digits.
Brexit is the fond belief that Britain is worse now than at some point in the foggy past where we achieved peak Blighty
We listen to the Brexit lot talk about the trade deals theyre going to make with Europe after we leave, and the blithe insouciance that what theyre offering instead of EU membership is a divorce where you can still have sex with your ex. They reckon they can get out of the marriage, keep the house, not pay alimony, take the kids out of school, stop the in-laws going to the doctor, get strict with the visiting rights, but, you know, still get a shag at the weekend and, obviously, see other people on the side.
Really, thats their best offer? Thats the plan? To swagger into Brussels with Union Jack pants on and say: Ello luv, youre looking nice today. Would you like some?
When the rest of us ask how thats really going to work, leavers reply, with Terry-Thomas smirks, that theyre going to still really fancy us, honest, theyre gagging for us. Possibly not Merkel, but the bosses of Mercedes and those French vintners and cheesemakers, they cant get enough of old John Bull. Of course theyre going to want to go on making the free market with two backs after weve got the decree nisi. Makes sense, doesnt it?
Have no doubt, this is a divorce. Its not just business, its not going to be all reason and goodwill. Like all divorces, leaving Europe would be ugly and mean and hurtful, and it would lead to a great deal of poisonous xenophobia and racism, all the niggling personal prejudice that dumped, betrayed and thwarted people are prey to. And the racism and prejudice are, of course, weak points for us. The tortuous renegotiation with lawyers and courts will be bitter and vengeful, because divorces always are and, just in passing, this sovereignty thing were supposed to want back so badly, like Frodos ring, has nothing to do with you or me. We wont notice it coming back, because we didnt notice not having it in the first place.
Nine out of 10 economists say remain in the EU
You wont wake up on June 24 and think: Oh my word, my arthritis has gone! My teeth are suddenly whiter! Magically, I seem to know how to make a soufflé and Im buff with the power of sovereignty. This is something only politicians care about; it makes not a jot of difference to you or me if the Supreme Court is a bunch of strangely out-of-touch old gits in wigs in Westminster or a load of strangely out-of-touch old gits without wigs in Luxembourg. What matters is that we have as many judges as possible on the side of personal freedom.
Personally, I see nothing about our legislators in the UK that makes me feel I can confidently give them more power. The more checks and balances politicians have, the better for the rest of us. You cant have too many wise heads and different opinions. If youre really worried about red tape, by the way, its not just a European problem. Were perfectly capable of coming up with our own rules and regulations and we have no shortage of jobsworths. Red tape may be annoying, but it is also there to protect your and my family from being lied to, poisoned and cheated.
The first X I ever put on a voting slip was to say yes to the EU. The first referendum was when I was 20 years old. This one will be in the week of my 62nd birthday. For nearly all my adult life, there hasnt been a day when I havent been pleased and proud to be part of this great collective. If you ask me for my nationality, the truth is I feel more European than anything else. I am part of this culture, this European civilisation. I can walk into any gallery on our continent and completely understand the images and the stories on the walls. These people are my people and they have been for thousands of years. I can read books on subjects from Ancient Greece to Dark Ages Scandinavia, from Renaissance Italy to 19th-century France, and I dont need the context or the landscape explained to me. The music of Europe, from its scales and its instruments to its rhythms and religion, is my music. The Renaissance, the rococo, the Romantics, the impressionists, gothic, baroque, neoclassicism, realism, expressionism, futurism, fauvism, cubism, dada, surrealism, postmodernism and kitsch were all European movements and none of them belongs to a single nation.
No time for walls: the best of Europe, from its music and food to IM Peis pyramid at the Louvre, depends on an easy collision of cultures
There is a reason why the Chinese are making fake Italian handbags and the Italians arent making fake Chinese ones. This European culture, without question or argument, is the greatest, most inventive, subtle, profound, beautiful and powerful genius that was ever contrived anywhere by anyone and it belongs to us. Just look at my day job food. The change in food culture and pleasure has been enormous since we joined the EU, and thats no coincidence. What we eat, the ingredients, the recipes, may come from around the world, but it is the collective to and fro of European interests, expertise and imagination that has made it all so very appetising and exciting.
The restaurant was a European invention, naturally. The first one in Paris was called The London Bridge.
Culture works and grows through the constant warp and weft of creators, producers, consumers, intellectuals and instinctive lovers. You cant dictate or legislate for it, you can just make a place that encourages it and you can truncate it. You can make it harder and more grudging, you can put up barriers and you can build walls, but why on earth would you? This collective culture, this golden civilisation grown on this continent over thousands of years, has made everything we have and everything we are, why would you not want to be part of it?
I understand that if we leave we dont have to hand back our library ticket for European civilisation, but why would we even think about it? In fact, the only ones who would are those old, philistine scared gits. Look at them, too frightened to join in. | | | | | Blimey. Did he die of writer's cramp?
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05.02.2019, 17:09
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| | Re: The Brexit referendum thread: potential consequences for GB, EU and the Brits in | Quote: | |  | | | Blimey. Did he die of writer's cramp? | | | | | can anybody summarise that for me?
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05.02.2019, 17:14
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| | Re: The Brexit referendum thread: potential consequences for GB, EU and the Brits in | Quote: | |  | | | Blimey. Did he die of writer's cramp? | | | | | | Quote: | |  | | | can anybody summarise that for me? | | | | | Sure:
dead?
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05.02.2019, 17:25
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| | Re: The Brexit referendum thread: potential consequences for GB, EU and the Brits in Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
Someone had blundered.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the Brexiteers. | 
05.02.2019, 17:32
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05.02.2019, 17:34
| | Re: The Brexit referendum thread: potential consequences for GB, EU and the Brits in | Quote: | |  | | | | | | | | Jeremy Corbyn is Benjamin Button? Who knew?  | This user would like to thank for this useful post: | | 
05.02.2019, 17:37
|  | Senior Member | | Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Baden AG
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| | Re: The Brexit referendum thread: potential consequences for GB, EU and the Brits in | Quote: | |  | | | I know of a few Labour MPs who are currently being subjected to a sustained deselection campaign because of Brexit, completely despite how well they've represented their constituencies. In my UK hometown, the debate has become exceptionally toxic.
This 'deselection' first raised it's head en masse regarding MPs who resigned from Corbyn's government, but now it's also being used regarding Brexit issues. Some very unsavoury people are feeling newly empowered, and are weilding it in a very disturbing fashion. | | | | | Tories too with Nick Boles (Con, Grantham) up for deselection next week. https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk...eselection-bid
He was 'Remain' but said he'd abide by the referendum result. He's being deselected because he's advocated for a deal, when his local association will only accept a No Deal exit.
It's like a religious mania. Burn the heretic!
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05.02.2019, 17:48
| | Re: The Brexit referendum thread: potential consequences for GB, EU and the Brits in | Quote: | |  | | | | | | | | Jeremy Corbyn is a Leaver?? Who knew?!
Oh, everyone.
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05.02.2019, 18:03
| | Re: The Brexit referendum thread: potential consequences for GB, EU and the Brits in | Quote: | |  | | | | | | | | friend from NY sent it to me this morning. It forgot to say 'I want to screw the common people, oh yes I do'
Last edited by Odile; 05.02.2019 at 18:58.
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05.02.2019, 19:06
| Banned | | Join Date: Jun 2013 Location: North
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| | Re: The Brexit referendum thread: potential consequences for GB, EU and the Brits in | Quote: |  | | | Jeremy Corbyn is a Leaver?? Who knew?!
Oh, everyone. | | | | | Well he pulled the wool over the eyes of the 300,000 new labour party members that joined since he was elected.
OK, a good deal were not Brexit related at the beginning, but the last 200,000 will have been over Brexit.
Those people have had their subs p1ssed away.
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05.02.2019, 19:38
| | Re: The Brexit referendum thread: potential consequences for GB, EU and the Brits in
A large proportion have left since, due to his stance on Brexit. Especially young people.
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