Agreed. Mirrors the argument that illiterate or uneducated should not have a vote in a democracy.
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Agreed. Mirrors the argument that illiterate or uneducated should not have a vote in a democracy.
Totally. I've just read Robert Peston's most recent book which was very informative on the subject, and I feel that I might be in a position to make an informed decision on the subject if another referendum were come around. I'm just not sure. I never studied law, politics, economics or anything of the sort at even a basic level in school, and when I read stuff about it I find it extremely difficult to understand. My view is simply that it is potentially very damaging to offer an opinion on an important subject that you don't understand on even a basic level. You can find lots of evidence for it. Democracy has its flaws, and we all deal with them differently.
I have no issues with non-voters. I was referring to the various "verbal" ticks in your post: "many people on here sneer at. Lazy bugger", "I'm one of those weirdos", "I find myself in the middle on many things. fecked up, right?"
I don't think non-voting is a matter of pride or a matter of shame, that post of yours makes it seem you think it is a matter of pride. "Being in the middle" and seeking compromise are also concepts that aren't half as rare as you think.
But that's now, what about before the referendum?
I have no issues with non-voters. I was referring to the various "verbal" ticks in your post: "many people on here sneer at. Lazy bugger", "I'm one of those weirdos", "I find myself in the middle on many things. fecked up, right?"
I don't think non-voting is a matter of pride or a matter of shame, that post of yours makes it seem you think it is a matter of pride. "Being in the middle" and seeking compromise are also concepts that aren't half as rare or unpopular as you think.
I'm sorry, but you misunderstood. It is a very divided time politically in the UK and in many other places - I know it's been well documented, but I don't know how much you've felt of that personally? That environment does lead people to describe me, a young non-voter, as a lazy voter. Without ever asking. Or better yet, when people do ask they assume my truth is a lie, an excuse. You can find evidence of it in this thread, if you think I'm making it up. Many people have literally said, people should be ashamed for not voting. It not being your view doesn't change the fact that it is a view, which it is legitimate to push back on.
I agree with you that being in the middle is not unusual. I'm not sure about right now, but I think most people, most of the time are somewhere in the middle. However at this point in time it is something that people get offended by, you're implored to pick a side because it is in the best interests of the country to do so, and if you choose not to, people hold it against you. This isn't the time to twiddle your thumbs, you have a responsibility to make a choice. I have been told that plenty.
If I hold an opinion against Jeremy Corbyn, I'm a "May-bot". If I hold an opinion against the Mueller investigation, I'm "probably a Trump fan in disguise". If I hold an opinion against the notion that the only reason people voted Leave is because they're racists, I'm assumed to be a Leave supporter, or at least a Leave apologist. You are not allowed to be in the middle, in many cases. People just assume you're on "the other side". I have direct evidence of it, right here, so you can't deny that reality.
For me, voting is not a point of pride. For some people it is. Just because you're not one of those people, or you're not exposed to it much, doesn't change the fact that I have been. And I do find similar sentiments from people on here, in this thread, regularly.
No, I didn't. At that point in time I was dealing with my step dad being diagnosed with a second bout of cancer, my girlfriend having an abortion that went badly, and was planning a move to South Africa. I was probably more conscious of South African politics than UK ones. It just didn't rank highly in my priorities at the time. I am selfish, and ignorant, and many other things. At the end of the day, I'm politically disenfranchised at least in part because of the political system, and the actors within it. I don't think that's a crazy thing to say, given the incompetence of politicians recently. That makes it sadly very easy to deprioritise it. I read up about it, I tried to understand it, I couldn't really, and I was ok letting the rest of the population make a decision without me.
I get why people don't respect that, but it's just my reality, and the reality of many people in this country. I don't think demonising those people is helpful, in the long run.
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Apologies, I can understand that completely and I hope things have worked out since. The reason I ask is because your opinion is slightly similar to one of my best friends; he didn't vote because he said he didn't see the point as he didn't think such an important and complex subject should be put to a vote by the general public, whose overall understanding is by and large very limited.
I personally don't even sneer at most leave voters. I think the EU needs a lot of reform, but I also think that's not going to happen from the outside.
Edit: I also agree that the country is incredibly divided, over this and many other issues, and unfortunately I think this division has cut deep into the country since the 2016 referendum and will not heal itself for a long long time.
1200+ pages 
Can someone please summarize what's at stake?
Can someone please summarize what's at stake?
Everything1200+ pages
Can someone please summarize what's at stake?
1200+ pages
Can someone please summarize what's at stake?
Life
@Brwned I actually get where you are coming from and that's why I'm against referendums, that's why we use representative democracies and not direct democracies. A direct democracy would demand way too much knowledge from everyone on subjects that touch way too many fields, at Uni I didn't like EU law, so I can totally see why the average man wouldn't want to spend time on it after work.
Mostly - life's complicated! Apologies for being on the defensive. It's difficult to deal with so many questions on a delicate issue, some of which are embedded in deep criticism, without feeling like you're under attack from all angles!
Again I don't really know enough but I have listened to some senior (ex-)politicians and political analysts that put forward a convincing case for why such a complicated issue should never have been put to the public, and it made sense to me. There are some questions which do require expertise - we've designed lots of societal structures around that belief. It does seem to be a general consensus that the reason it was put the public was for the wrong reasons, in any case. I understood that much at the time and it was another thing that made me despair about the politics of this country. Despair isn't a reason not to vote, but it is a contributory factor.
Agreed, for the most part! I do get why people take a different view, in that they don't trust politicians to make decisions in the best interests of the country (or the member states), and they're wary of handing over so much control to entities they don't trust. Unfortunately we haven't found the perfect way to organise societies and different parts of the population will have different views on how to fix the problems that do exist. It's generally a good thing to disagree and fiercely debate things, and on particularly important things it seems entirely natural to pick sides. What I think is really dangerous is deciding that the other side's view is not legitimate. There's a a big difference between thinking someone is wrong and thinking their view is illegitimate, but in particularly toxic political environments, it seems to me they often get conflated, and that only makes the issues worse.
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I'm trying to work out its evolutionary purpose because by its very nature it's extremely harmful and damaging. Longing for times that are never coming back and viewing them through rose tinted spectacles as well. It's sadness inducing but without the capability to be a catalyst for change towards something better, like normal sadness.
How did humans even evolve to be nostalgic?
Thats the point. You're precisely who the tweet was directed that.
my word, there’s 40,000 sneering posts in this here thread.
I’d be happy for the UK to bring back the penalty if it would be used on the 48% who voted for pounds and ounces ffs.
Although there may some partial truth in it, I don't think the accusation of nostalgia is entirely correct. The view that a country or society has chosen the wrong future is not the same thing as being nostalgic for the past.
lots of products things already have both metric and imperial measurements, it's like, be more ambitious for fecks sake
3 years watching the HoC seeing how they don't have any clue about anything, even that GB is an Island, completely destroys your argument about knowledge on the representative democracies. I can guarantee that I would a much better job than any of the Spanish PM during the whole democracy and I am not specially gifted
Referendums in my opinion are the epitome of Democracy, though they have to be well informed and well presented with the correct questions and options. Then, make them mandatory to avoid the excuse "the results explains because the low turn-out" and basically because the people that wants to change the status quote, will always have a biggest % of turn-out than the ones that don't want the things to be changed
Surely in this case it makes sense to vote remain? What you know, where we were once a pretty respected country with a strong currency, or the unknown that is already an incredible mess, ran entirely by the same people that made it such a massive mess?
It’s not solely nostalgia, you’re correct about that.
But why does the majority of pro-Brexit vote come from age groups of 50+? I mean 25-45yo people are mature enough to judge a right or wrong path and they voted majority pro remain. And why is there a strong correlation between higher levels of education and voting remain? Or higher incomes and remain?
A judgement on the path of the country has to be based on logic and rationale. So why do the indicators show that this was largely an emotional vote by people who were either nostalgic of the past or angry with the establishment or overly patriotic or gullible or xenophobic?
And how can someone strongly affected by such emotional drives make a right assessment on the path of the country?
I'm not attempting to advocate for the Leave vote here but there's a couple of general points I'd flag up about the correlation between the Remain vote and higher levels of education (which I assume relates to university/college education) and higher incomes. In respect of the former, it's a mistake to assume the possession of that equates to greater wisdom, and with the latter I'd say that many people on lower incomes felt left behind and forgotten about. In the aftermath of all of this I think it has become increasingly clear that the EU became a kind of proxy for a deep sense of discontent and detachment that many people feel towards the political system/class and with the status quo in general.
I didn't have the breakdown of the vote by age groups to hand and just found the following from a BBC article published the day after the referendum, so it may not be exactly accurate -
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-36619342
What that shows is that broad statements can only be made about the over 65s and the under 34s. The in-between is mostly Leave.
Should’ve just saved money and waited for the dark blue one without “Northern Ireland” on it.
Edit: and (ironically enough) the unicorn I guess.
Edit: and (ironically enough) the unicorn I guess.
You do notice that JRM is one of the most popular politicians residing in the most popular party in the UK don't you? He is currently supporting Boris who is equally filth and whose among the favourites to become the UK next prime minister
Why should we risk giving these guys a veto on European matters? We did not voted brexit so why can't we be allowed to move on from the chaos created and sustained by the UK in the first place?
If you have a European Army you will also need an Airforce. And Germany wants an aircraft carrier. All sounds pretty expensive to me but I am sure that you will be delighted to pay the taxes necessary.
Incidentally you are completely wrong. As soon as Europe opts to defend itself just watched Russia push west.
You can... That said there is around 49 million EU citizens who did not vote for brexit being taken out of the EU against our will in the UK... If EU citizenship means anything one would hope that it means that the EU will do it's best to somewhat protect our interests?
Why would that happen? Russia hasn't pushed forward even when they had an aggressive NATO busy planting missiles defense systems around its borders, why on earth would it strike the moment we take control over our defence? Unlike the US who won't be impacted by a war in Europe unless they want to, both Russia and Europe would get hurt by such a war. Both parties would therefore be careful not to step on each other toes.
Well they should address their complaints towards their government and their media who first demonised the EU, then allowed a Tory cat fight to spiral out of control through a referendum only to lose such referendum. The people could have stopped this madness at various stages but they chose not to. They could have voted Miliband who was against the referendum in the first place, they could have voted remain and they could have voted the Lib Dem during the last GE. They are as guilty as the Brexiteers whom they voted in.
Now if Malta voted a cretin as PM then I don't expect you to suffer because of him. Why are you expecting us to be dragged into Westminster's chaos?
As said I don't mind if the EU give unrestricted access to the single market to the UK as long as they obey the rules. However god forbid if we allow such unreliable and treacherous government whose political elite clearly hate the EU to keep its VETO. That would be madness.
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If you look at the graphic @Silva posted above, how else could you interpret a sizable chunk of leave voters wishing for changes such as return to empirial units?
Second bolded part: Not sure anyone has argued that equivalence.
I'm not attempting to advocate for the Leave vote here but there's a couple of general points I'd flag up about the correlation between the Remain vote and higher levels of education (which I assume relates to university/college education) and higher incomes. In respect of the former, it's a mistake to assume the possession of that equates to greater wisdom, and with the latter I'd say that many people on lower incomes felt left behind and forgotten about. In the aftermath of all of this I think it has become increasingly clear that the EU became a kind of proxy for a deep sense of discontent and detachment that many people feel towards the political system/class and with the status quo in general.
I didn't have the breakdown of the vote by age groups to hand and just found the following from a BBC article published the day after the referendum, so it may not be exactly accurate -
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-36619342
What that shows is that broad statements can only be made about the over 65s and the under 34s. The in-between is mostly Leave.
I didn’t correlate education and higher earnings with wisdom. Higher education correlates with higher earnings. Lower earnings correlates with what you mentioned about people feeling left behind. The anger and mistrust towards the establishment.
However making that a protest a vote against the EU, which has little control over how we spread our wealth, is an irrational, emotional vote. Same as voting for nostalgic reasons is an emotional, irrational vote. And I was at pains to explain that nostalgia wasn’t the only emotional reason that some people leaned towards Brexit.
But to get back at the nostalgia thing and that age group graph. You say broad statements can be made about only 3 age groups. But all age groups conform to a trend. Which is that the older you get the more likely you are to vote for Brexit. Every age group is more Brexit-leaning than the previous. That, along with the statements we see in all the interviews from people of older age groups, indicates a strong impact of nostalgia in their decision making process.
Indeed no one has argued equivalence. It’s a strawman. We are arguing for a strong presence of the effect, among many other effects.
Yeah, unless you are an ultra or stand to profit from the chaos, the trouble with Brexit is that there are no good arguments for it other than emotional ones. People try to post-rationalise, but sooner or later the rationalisations run into trouble for pure lack of logic or supporting facts.
I voted leave.
Very simple reason why.
Projected UK population growth & long term sustainability of resources.
The remain argument seems to involve the here & now and the constant need for economic growth. I’m saying no. So, anything that doesn’t encourage population growth I’m in favour of.
So, controlled immigration (EU and non-EU) it is then.
My hometown is planning another 20,000 homes over the next 20 years. 7-8,000 of which will be on the green belt. Also lots more of that green belt planned for huge warehouses & extra employment required as a result.
No thanks. I’d honestly rather take the hit on the GDP.
In addition to that main reason, some other observations:
I don’t like the fact the UK hasn’t held any referendums on EU treaties or anything passed since 1975. Other countries did.
Also, have to question the EU’s motives for expansion into the poorer countries in Eastern Europe, thus promoting movement en masse. Would point out Germany blocked access to their employment market for 7 years initially. We didn’t. And we the people didn’t get a say in that one either.
Was the expansion into Eastern Europe more about kerbing Russian influence?
Buttering up the old Eastern Bloc countries to keep them onside?
Very simple reason why.
Projected UK population growth & long term sustainability of resources.
The remain argument seems to involve the here & now and the constant need for economic growth. I’m saying no. So, anything that doesn’t encourage population growth I’m in favour of.
So, controlled immigration (EU and non-EU) it is then.
My hometown is planning another 20,000 homes over the next 20 years. 7-8,000 of which will be on the green belt. Also lots more of that green belt planned for huge warehouses & extra employment required as a result.
No thanks. I’d honestly rather take the hit on the GDP.
In addition to that main reason, some other observations:
I don’t like the fact the UK hasn’t held any referendums on EU treaties or anything passed since 1975. Other countries did.
Also, have to question the EU’s motives for expansion into the poorer countries in Eastern Europe, thus promoting movement en masse. Would point out Germany blocked access to their employment market for 7 years initially. We didn’t. And we the people didn’t get a say in that one either.
Was the expansion into Eastern Europe more about kerbing Russian influence?
Buttering up the old Eastern Bloc countries to keep them onside?
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What you describe isn't epistemic humility. It's decision paralysis. The opposite of responsible action basically.
I didn't describe it as epistemic humility, nor did I describe the inner workings of my decision-making process, nor did I describe it as responsible. So yes you've successfully created a clever description of a reality you've invented. I'm glad that helps you feel superior.
Your problem is your ageing population. Immigration is the solution, not the problem.
You already have control of immigration, both EU and non-EU. Now the non-EU immigration is skyrocketing and the EU immigration has dropped considerably since 2016.
If you stop immigration altogether the population will shrink and the economy will decline progressively and eventually die.
Given my limited experience of malteasers that seems within the bounds of probability
By the way when are you going to give us the third hairdryer instalment?
Not saying stop it all together. As my post says. Controlled. Not sure how we control EU immigration at the moment, as you are saying?
Anyway, ultimately: Environment, resources & sustainability > economic growth.