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I've seen a tweet of that petition loads of names and addresses and they aren't even in Britain. I'm not being manipulated any more I've said it all.
The internet is wonderful for getting names on petitions for almost any cause - but I don't think enough people really think what they are putting their names to.
or their X's on a ballot paper perhaps?
If the Leave campaign had lost to a narrow margin, Farage was getting ready to call for a second referendum on the grounds that a decision shouldn't be carried without two thirds of the vote.Funny that he's not arguing for that now, is he?
The argument for a second referendum is clear. We know that the Leave campaign misled the public with the £350 million a week figure plastered all over their bus. They are now wriggling out of any action on immigration. As Marc says, they are reneging on their promises.
The electorate now know that Leave probably means Scottish and Northern Ireland independence. Instead of some fantasy about saving us money, Brexit means a stock market crash, the chance of a recession, job losses and more austerity.
We need some honesty in the process and not the lies we've been fed up to now.
The electorate should have been able to figure out at the very least it would mean Scottish & independence and god knows what in Ulster. Ignorance is no excuse. An ignorant person's vote still counts the same as an educated person's vote.
Will wrote: "If the Leave campaign had lost to a narrow margin, Farage was getting ready to call for a second referendum on the grounds that a decision shouldn't be carried without two thirds of the vote.Funny that he's not arguing for that now, is he?
The argument for a second referendum is clear. We know that the Leave campaign misled the public with the £350 million a week figure plastered all over their bus. They are now wriggling out of any action on immigration. As Marc says, they are reneging on their promises.
The electorate now know that Leave probably means Scottish and Northern Ireland independence. Instead of some fantasy about saving us money, Brexit means a stock market crash, the chance of a recession, job losses and more austerity.
We need some honesty in the process and not the lies we've been fed up to now. "
And so speaks a bureaucrat who has no interest in democracy.
There speaks someone who is standing up for democracy in the face of dishonesty.But let's not start the ad hominem arguments again, eh?
Will wrote: "There speaks someone who is standing up for democracy in the face of dishonesty.But let's not start the ad hominem arguments again, eh?"
Then stop taking b*ll*cks, Will, The democratic process has taken place and the result is clear. I noticed all your protests that we shouldn't be having a referendum before the result. Odd that, isnt it?
Not odd at all. I couldn't comment before the referendum because I was a presiding officer at a poll station. Poll staff are required to stay neutral before and during a poll. But not after.We live in a democracy. That means that I have freedom of speech, as do you. I have a right to sign any petition I want, as do you.
And notice that I'm talking about the facts. I'm not name calling and I'm not accusing anyone of talking b*ll*cks.
Odd that, isn't it?
Many leavers voted because they felt their voice wasn't being heard. And now a petition and David Lammy MP's proposal that MPs should act to reverse decision, which only makes the discontents' point that their voice isn't being listened to
Well, yes, but some Leavers are also upset by Dan Hannan's claim that the Leave campaign never promised to make dramatic cuts to the number of immigrants:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/artic...
I certainly thought that a Leave vote meant a cut in immigration, didn't you?
That's the overall problem. No-one is quite sure what they have voted for. Is it Nigel Farage's version of Leave or Dan Hannan's?
The real test will come at the general election when both the Tories and Labour have to explain what they are going to do in a full manifesto. That's when people will have a better idea of what they are voting for.
no because there is still non-EU migration and we're no more able to define numbers and stick to it there either. Like I said, if Leave renege on all their promises then there is a case for opposing the referendum decision. But without that there isn't. If people didn't know what they were voting for well that's little different from a general election. Who agrees with every pledge in any party's manifesto?
All the promises made by leave were made by those who weren't at the time political decision makers - Johnson had no real power, Farage not even an MP, Hannan's just voted himself out of a job. But some of these could be in power soon to the address what they promised. Then they can be called to account.
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Geoff (G. Robbins) (merda constat variat altitudo)
(last edited Jun 25, 2016 11:37AM)
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Will wrote: "I couldn't comment before the referendum because I was a presiding officer at a poll station."Rubbish. As a presiding officer you had to remain neutral on who you would vote for. There was nothing to prevent you from saying that the referendum itself was a good or bad idea.
Normal Will obfuscation has resumed.
Wrong. The training we received on polling duties was quite clear that we should remain impartial and shouldn't express opinions on social media. I write under my pen name not my real name, but even so I was careful not to say anything before polling day that could be linked back to my impartiality as a presiding officer.And you're still playing the ad hominem game. It does you no favours - you do know that, don't you?
Geoff (G. Robbins) (The noisy passionfruit) wrote: "Will wrote: "I couldn't comment before the referendum because I was a presiding officer at a poll station."Rubbish. As a presiding officer you had to remain neutral on who you would vote for. The..."
Behave.
Will wrote: "Wrong. The training we received on polling duties was quite clear that we should remain impartial and shouldn't express opinions on social media. I write under my pen name not my real name, but even so I was careful not to say anything before polling day that could be linked back to my impartiality as a presiding officer."Okay, putting that aside, and I believe you are still obfuscating. Let me put the question to you, did you, prior to it taking place, think that the referendum should not have been called?
Oh dear. Let me put it as plainly as I can. All poll staff are instructed to be as strictly neutral as they can be. That means that we have to wear neutral coloured clothes. We shouldn't be seen reading a newspaper in the poll station (in case the headline is recommending one choice over another). Even down to little details like if we have the radio on in the poll station, we should make sure that it isn't on radio 4 as that might have the candidates speaking.And we are given very strict instructions not to use social media before or during the polling to tell people how we intend to vote. We are not even allowed to tweet that it's been very quiet in the polling station and hardly anyone has been in to vote.
That's not me making this up. That's the standard training that all poll staff receive. It's partly based on official written guidance from the electoral commission and partly down to the mandatory training sessions with the returning officer (or more strictly in this case the Counting Officer).
Did I think the referendum should have been called? I was in two minds about it. I didn't like the fact that Cameron was bullied into it by the right wing of his party, but I felt that it needed to be aired at some point. What has taken me by surprise has been how limp both the Tory and Labour Remain campaigns were, how scandalously dishonest the Leave campaign has been, and how the public have disregarded a mountain of evidence for a few soundbites and vague undeliverable promises.
Will wrote: "Oh dear. Let me put it as plainly as I can. All poll staff are instructed to be as strictly neutral as they can be. That means that we have to wear neutral coloured clothes. We shouldn't be seen re..."What mountain of evidence is this? The UK has been part of Europe for nearly 50 years and the Bremain side made no attempt to produce any statistical evidence that supported the idea that we have profited in some way from membership.
Having said that, the rapid back-tracking of the possibilities that were waved in front of us by the Brexiters also disgusts me.
any referendum that is status quo Vs leap into the unknown is structurally flawed because both sides are hard pressed to provide evidence for their case. Ergo these types of referenda are a disaster because the speechifiers descend into negative/fear campaigning because there is little else for them top draw on. Much of the public turn away from this negativity as much as others might buy into it. Politicians come over badly and the whole thing degrades our democracy. Which is counter-intuitive to the idea of giving all people a direct say on an issue
The mountain of evidence was the advice from organisations like the IMF, the CBI, the Bank of England, the Treasury, other countries and the huge number of businesses who all supported Remain. For a long time in this campaign, all we heard about in the press was the Remain camp wheeling in their latest expert quickly followed by the Leave camp bleating about how we shouldn't listen to them because ...Many people were swayed in their voting by claims that we would be better off outside the EU. It was sprayed on the side of the Leave bus that we would save £350 million which could be used to support the NHS.
But when Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England, tried to explain what Brexit would really mean for the economy, several pro Leave MPs tried to shout him down. They didn't want him to speak.
I'm sorry, but if the country is going to make a decision about whether to stay in the EU, I for one really want to hear what the Bank of England has to say about that.
There was plenty of statistical evidence. Here's what the CBI had to say:
http://news.cbi.org.uk/business-issue...
And here's the IMF:
http://www.economist.com/news/britain...
As I said, mountains of evidence. But for some reason it largely seems to have been ignored.
the reasons being:1) visceral sense of UK not being in control of its own affairs
2) visceral sense that our politicians don't listen to us & wanting to shake them by the lapels
3) visceral sense that London has everything at expense of provinces & London & its elites must also be taught a lesson
4) strange sense of pre-EU nostalgia even though world massively moved on from the early 70s
5) visceral sense of some communities (and British way of life) under threat from immigration
6) visceral repulsion at things like Osborne's crisis budget, the Brits don't like being bullied or threatened
Visceral out-trumps evidence in many, many cases.
Corbyn has massively misplayed this, but he is right on one thing. It has thrown into sharper relief the problems within our divided society
Marc wrote: "The electorate should have been able to figure out at the very least it would mean Scottish & independence and god knows what in Ulster. Ignorance is no excuse. An ignorant person's vote still coun..."the answer to that is to have decent education for everybody and not dump a fair proportion of our children in 'bog standard' comprehensives
Basically London got the electorate it was willing to educate
I was not convinced by the likes of the CBI, Bank of England, etc. As was stated, they were wrong when they said that we had to go into the Euro, because it would be a disaster not to. They were wrong when we were told to pin the pound to the Euro.What did not come over was the fact that we face a two-class EU - those who are in the Euro and those that aren't. Those in the Euro zone must integrate politically to make the Euro work. Those outside it will be increasingly pressured to join. Once that happens, our parliamentary democracy will be placed it the hands of the bureaucratic elite that runs the EU. The UK parliament will be, as the MEPs currently are, ignored elected officials who cannot hold anyone to account. Effectively a sop to those believing in democracy.
When I voted to join the EEC, I voted for a free trade area, not a bureaucratic dictatorship with designs on becoming a super-state.
If you do not believe the £350m a week figure, you do not understand the difference between gross and net. The EU returns an amount back to the UK, however, that return does not come without strings. The UK is told where the money is to be spent and how.
To give you an example, the EU spent a large amount of money in Wythenshawe, Manchester. Huge amounts of grant money was spent to attract large corporations to move into the area, so that local people would be employed.
What actually happened was that these corporations - Shell, Barclays, Lloyds, etc, etc, moved into the area and attracted employment from people around Manchester, but only very small amounts of locals, all in menial jobs.
The reason for this is that firstly the EU does not understand local issues and how to solve them, but insists on how the returned money is spent. Secondly, the bureaucrats in Brussels and Strasbourg are constantly being lobbied by multinational companies to make sure that the money from the EU is spent to their advantage.
Marc wrote: "Many leavers voted because they felt their voice wasn't being heard. And now a petition and David Lammy MP's proposal that MPs should act to reverse decision, which only makes the discontents' poin..."And this worries me most of all Marc
If we have another referendum, what happens if this one is won by leave but doesn't reach 60%? Or we don't have the turn out. After all remain could win simply by not going to the polling station.
If you think there's bad feeling now it would be as nothing to what happens then.
And then we have a general election. How are all those hacked off people going to vote. Does anybody believe that they'll cheerfully go back to voting labour or Tory after those MPs have spat in their faces?
If you really want Farage in government as part of a UKIP plus coalition, then this is the way to do it
Marc wrote: "Corbyn has massively misplayed this, but he is right on one thing. It has thrown into sharper relief the problems within our divided society ..."The problem for Corbyn is that over the years he has been pretty well consistently anti-EU
Will wrote: "The mountain of evidence was the advice from organisations like the IMF, the CBI, the Bank of England, the Treasury, other countries and the huge number of businesses who all supported Remain. For ..."Not ignored, simply not signposted efficiently.
Did the media and the Bremain side think that Joe Public would be too stupid to read and and analyse the content of the two reports you cite as providing evidence for staying?
Equally, the Brexit side seem incapable of presenting a detailed and balanced set of accounts incorporating a forecast of the probable initial effect on the financial indices of a leave win, followed by the estimated effect of targeted trading alternatives.
Jim wrote: "Marc wrote: "The electorate should have been able to figure out at the very least it would mean Scottish & independence and god knows what in Ulster. Ignorance is no excuse. An ignorant person's vo..."oh I knew it would be London's fault! Do not equate London with the Westminster elite. We have consistently voted against the choice of government instituted by the rest of England at the last 2 general elections. Mind you we are responsible for foisting Boris Johnson on the world.
I saw a tweet today which seemed to make a lot of sense, albeit after the fact. An independent set of experts should have been charged with producing financial evidence of the implications of both remaining & leaving the EU before the referendum campaign was officially launched.
Marc - great idea. How about the CBI, IMF, Bank of England ...Oh, wait ...
Definitions of independent from both, please.
well had it been instituted before the campaign opened, none of whatever analysts/bodies would have declared their institutional preference
Jim wrote: "Marc wrote: "Corbyn has massively misplayed this, but he is right on one thing. It has thrown into sharper relief the problems within our divided society ..."The problem for Corbyn is that over ..."
I think one of the main problems for Corbyn is that until he was a runner in the Labour leadership election - most people would have said "Jeremy who?"
this is the dichotomy for Labour. he may well have the largest mandate within Labour party members of any Labour leader, but his support out in the electorate is paltry. He cannot win seats in Middle England and with Scotland likely to go independent Labour can't recoup the 50 seats it lost there in the last election
Marc wrote: "independent Will, independent"Indeed. The IMF, the CBI, the Bank of England ...
The problem is that the Leave campaign didn't want anyone to talk. There was a widely publicised spat with Mark Carney about whether he should be allowed to comment or not.
Whoever is chosen as the independent body there will always be someone who will challenge their independence. Anyway, we had all the evidence we could possibly need in the referendum and very few people were reading it.
for the reasons I cited above. Care to comment?Just as economics is flawed because it posits the rational consumer, so politics is flawed if it posits a rational voter...
I don't think we can ever have a watertight definition of "independent" which will satisfy everyone. The working definition which I use is that the organisation doesn't have a strong reason to be biased. The Bank of England is charged with protecting the UK economy and so I would trust them not to recommend something which would harm the UK economy. Similarly the CBI represents businesses and so would not recommend something which would hurt their membership.But the easier test of independence is to look at several different bodies to see if they are saying the same thing or different things. One or two might be biased, but it's hard to see all of them being unreliable. In this case, the Remain campaign had far more organisations providing supporting evidence that Leave could muster.
but as we've established, these arguments were completely overridden by a more emotional, visceral vote
Marc wrote: "the reasons being:1) visceral sense of UK not being in control of its own affairs
2) visceral sense that our politicians don't listen to us & wanting to shake them by the lapels
3) visceral sense..."
Brilliant, Marc. That's the best summary of the reasons for the referendum outcome that I've read.
Marc wrote: "but as we've established, these arguments were completely overridden by a more emotional, visceral vote"Agreed, and which was based on misunderstandings and deliberate lies. A protest vote against the establishment which will benefit the Tory right wing. A protest vote against the cost of the EU which will cost us all more in the long run. A protest vote against immigration which the Leave campaign have no intention of reducing. A protest vote by the old which is leaving the young fuming.
Astonishing that we have just seen a protest vote demanding the right to shoot ourself in the foot.
I'm not thrilled about it Will, but I do try and drill down to to understand it. Our country is riven, has been riven for 30 years or so. Nothing will get healed until these divisions are addressed
Will wrote: "IBut the easier test of independence is to look at several different bodies to see if they are saying the same thing or different things. One or two might be biased, but it's hard to see all of them being unreliable."The problem is one of groupthink. This is why apparently different groups of experts agree on something and then get it so wrong.
And when a vast number of the public have just been conned by the Tory right wing.
Elizabeth wrote: "Equally, the Brexit side seem incapable of presenting a detailed and balanced set of accounts incorporating a forecast of the probable initial effect on the financial indices of a leave win, followed by the estimated effect of targeted trading alternatives...."to a certain extent Cameron is responsible for this, because he refused to let the civil service to any preparatory work for it in the months prior to purdah
Marc wrote: "I'm not thrilled about it Will, but I do try and drill down to to understand it. Our country is riven, has been riven for 30 years or so. Nothing will get healed until these divisions are addressed"MTM mentioned this blog which I thought was as perceptive as any
https://roughseasinthemed.wordpress.c...
According to prestigious Fox News out of the states, the U.K. left the UN. Surprised the Daily Mail didn't report on it.http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry...
Jim wrote: "Marc wrote: "I'm not thrilled about it Will, but I do try and drill down to to understand it. Our country is riven, has been riven for 30 years or so. Nothing will get healed until these divisions ..."I think that blog illustrates the problem. It is half right and half very wrong.
The bits that are right ...
There is indeed a disconnect between a lot of working people and "the establishment" - whether this is Whitehall or the EU or the Town Hall. There is a severe lack of trust. A lack of understanding on both sides. A strong feeling of there being something wrong with the world. People feeling that they aren't being listened to. People worried about immigration. Worried about their jobs. Worried about experts constantly giving them bad news.
The wake-up call in this referendum is just how deep that sense of hurt and anger is. That much of the blog is quite right.
The problem is that on Thursday we didn't vote for the solution to that problem.
People think they voted for reducing the cost of supporting the EU. They didn't. This will cost us far more than it will save us.
People think they voted for a reduction in immigration. They didn't. The Leave campaign are now saying that there will be no significant reduction in immigration.
People think they kicked the elites in the goolies. They didn't. They have boosted the right wing of the Tory party, swapping one Old Etonian Prime Minister for another Old Etonian Prime Minister.
People think they have voted for a better economy, better jobs, a better standard of living. They almost certainly haven't. All the evidence is pointing to recession, fewer jobs and a slowdown in the economy. And that will lead to inflation, austerity and tax increases.
People think they have voted to get rid of EU red tape. They haven't. In order to be able to trade with the EU we are going to have to comply with much of their regulations anyway. And people will be shocked to find how little of our really important laws are made in Brussels.
We now need to make the best of it. That includes helping people when they realise that they aren't going to get anything like what they were promised.
Some interesting reaction this morning from within France and Germany - a sense of relief that we voted to leave. We have clearly been regarded as the annoying, troublesome member, always wanting opt-outs and special treatment. Now they can move on without the UK keeping a foot on the brake through their journey to greater political union.I can't help feeling that such comments are likely to increase the demand for their own referendum within the Netherlands and Italy.
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Hold on Marc, on that basis all general elections would be invalid.