Same. Go there regularly with work and went for a long weekend recently to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary. It's pretty close to perfection, as city's go.
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Same. Go there regularly with work and went for a long weekend recently to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary. It's pretty close to perfection, as city's go.
He's right about the services and infrastructure but when it comes to "general shit to do" Dublin punches well above it's weight, if only because the countryside is so much closer/easier to get to than when you live in London. I've lived in both cities for a very long time and my general quality of life in Dublin is miles better than London because of the "general shit to do" factor. Although I guess that would differ if you're not a fan of the great outdoors.
Yeah if you have a car in Dublin then there are shitloads of things well within an hour's reach of your doorstep to do. Not to mention the city itself has loads of nice pubs, restaurants, activities etc and generally a pretty great atmosphere all year round. It will never compete with a London in size or vastness of places to visit within the city itself but as small cities go it's pretty damn good. Much more enjoyable city to be in than most of the similar sized mainland European ones I've visited imo (Brussels, Vienna, Lisbon, Copenhagen, Manchester). I'd say even the likes of Prague and Budapest despite how beautiful they are won't entertain you as long as old-grey Dublin will.
If by outdoors you mean going to the mountains or sea and then yes London is lacking any of that in near proximity. Just getting out of London (as in the M25 area) can take over and hour which makes it a drag as well. You end up going on pre-planned City/Weekend breaks rather than doing nature stuff on impulse. Therefore it's more rare
I was more referring to stuff to do within the city. The list of places, exhibitions, parks, museums, activities etc. within the city is unending. So long as you are motivate to move your arse, you'll never run out of things to do. I didn't get that feel from Dublin. But then again metropolitan London is 10 times bigger than Dublin so that's to be expected.
Yeah that’s very true. Although my own experience of London was that schlepping around the city could get quite draining so we tended to spend most of our lives in our own postcode. Probably an age thing too. Back when I used to spend a lot of times in bars/clubs the options in Dublin seemed absolutely pathetic compared to London but that doesn’t bother me any more.
If I didn’t have family in Dublin I’d choose Berlin ahead of either of the Irish/English capitals fwiw.
My only argument here is that referendums, other than for matters relating to constitutional change, should be utterly avoided under a Westminster form of democracy.
Cameron was anti-Brexit too, don't forget. What's your point?
That he offered the referendum, which shouldn't have happened in the first place. T
The point is fairly obvious, think.
It was naive, he never imagined the British public to be quite so fecking idiotically stupid/a bunch of racist cnuts.
That's not the point of the question. People that opposed to Brexit had an option that didn't include a referendum and he wasn't naive, he was being an opportunistic cnut.
I doubt he foresaw the migrant crisis and the rise of fake news which the Leave camp exploited to push those on the fence towards their side.
Cameron pinned his GE election with a referendum on Brexit. He came up with a moronic in or out question when he could have made it more detailed splitting the brexit vote in the process and he refused to give a vote to 16 year olds despite knowing that they would have voted to remain. He and those who voted for him did more for brexit then Farage did
He thought he'd be the one who gets to control the coverage as in his previous elections and the papers told him to do one.
I see. I'm not sure myself, I have nearly started a thread before asking if anyone lived in a country or state where referendums were frequent and what they thought about it. I wasn't thinking of Brexit though, it was well before that.
https://www.parliament.uk/business/.../written-statement/Commons/2018-07-24/HCWS924
Theresa May will now lead Brexit negotiations with the EU. Who's next?
Theresa May will now lead Brexit negotiations with the EU. Who's next?
Think that analysis oversimplifies things. Definitely a huge group in 'Middle England' and beyond who followed the jingoistic/bigoted Boris Johnson/Nigel Farage reasons for leaving, but a lot of people voted for it simply because it guaranteed change. That's the real key behind why people you wouldn't normally expect to back right-wing political movements went along with Brexit.
Take where I'm from (and still live), in County Durham which, aside from the university, has been declining for the last 50 years or so. We lost thousands of jobs from the 60s to the 90s as mining and industry was wound-down, with no investment coming in to replace the jobs and the wider communities those jobs underpinned. Up until 1997 people thought 'things will change when the Tories are out'. Then we had 13 years of Labour, with Blair himself having his seat here, and nothing really changed. Stuff like SureStart and investment in the NHS took some of the sting out of it but really we needed an investment and infrastructure strategy and one wasn't forthcoming. God knows the New Labour era until the crash was like the land of milk and honey compared to 2008 - 2018, but you can see why people who aren't necessarily politically engaged and who live in areas where things don't get substantially better regardless of who is in power are easily convinced that their problems lie elsewhere, or might be tempted to return a result that would be a slap in the face to politics in general. Not that I agree, for what it's worth I voted Remain.
Remainer politicians of all stripes' message in my area, and post-industrial areas in general, should have been to point out that whilst the UK as a whole gives less money to the EU than it gets out, the EU pumps huge amounts of funding into the poorer parts of the UK that they wouldn't otherwise get. That argument was never made as it would highlight the failure of both parties to address regional inequality. Arguments about the larger economic benefits of EU trade, or the benefits of EU migration were never going to work in areas which hadn't tangibly benefited from those things.
You can develop a feel for it if you look at the referendums in Switzerland, the subjects are generally simple.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Swiss_federal_referendums
Thanks, I was kind of aware of Switzerland. Still can't make my mind up though. Referendums apart, I do seem to hear a lot of anti-democratic opinions nowadays, 'people are too stupid, uneducated, old, whatever'. Quite worrying really, I can't think of any alternative that wouldn't be a step backwards.
Farage
Would be great if we could making voting easier e.g. on a weekend or a national holiday. Even make it online as well as a few countries have done.
No idea how it works in Switzerland and I think I’ve said this before but, for me, it’s the way that referenda can be achieved via a tiny minority is the problen. I think there should some sort of rule that a two thirds majority is the minimum required. Without that, nothing changes.
I’d also be easily convinced that some sort of minimum turnout is also required, or the whole thing is null and void.
It’s madness that as big an issue as Brexit can be achieved with a 1.9% margin and 28% of the population not even voting.
I'd quite like a future system where voters are asked for their positions on a range of policies and that automatically allocates their vote based on the candidates positions. I'd love to see the results that would produce, I think it would be fairly astonishing. 
I'd quite like a future system where voters are asked for their positions on a range of policies and that automatically allocates their vote based on the candidates positions. I'd love to see the results that would produce, I think it would be fairly astonishing.
Have you seen/used the website that does that for you?
Appoint a joint team of Farage and JRM and they can take the blame for the fall out.
Was there anything the Irish govt could have done to stop JRM relocating his firm to Dublin?
I get the desirability of a margin before any change is effected, but turnout doesn't worry me. As Flawless says above, make it as easy to vote as possible, but if some doesn't that's up to them.
Yeah, turnout definitely the lesser of the two issues here.
I think that you make a mistake by labeling it as anti-democratic. Think about it this way, I said in this thread that I didn't even want to vote for some subjects because I know that I am totally out of my depth, if you look at Brexit there isn't a single official that understands every aspects of it, not one. But people were asked to have an opinion based on anecdotal or flat out lies, and logically most people were unable to spot it, in fact some officials probably didn't spot some of the most ridiculous claims, one of them was Cameron claiming that he successfully negotiated for a law that was created in 2003.
What I'm trying to say here is that in theory in a representative democracy, parliamentarians are given the tools and time to study subjects that are out of their remits, you and I don't have that time, we can't study CETA article by article and be supported by experts, we are not in an optimal context and our potential vote will definitely be misguided even if we take the correct decision.
That poor context is what fringe politicians want, that's why they are often asking for referendums. They know that we don't know and they know that we won't know unless someone tells us which they can label as scaremongering or conspiracy.
I'm happy with representative democracy, it's the people that think others shouldn't be allowed to vote that worry me.
Labour’s Pat McFadden goes next.
Q: In the Sunday Telegraph you said the UK would only pay its exit bill if the EU offered a trade deal. But at the moment the draft withdrawal agreement does not include a conditionality clause, does it?
Raab accepts that is not in the withdrawal agreement now. It needs to be added, he says.
He says this can be done in different ways.
One option would be to insert a clause in the withdrawal agreement.
But there must be clear obligation on the EU to move expeditiously and get the trade deal agree.
Q: But the December agreement said the financial settlement was without prejudice, and hence not dependent on a final trade deal.
Raab says the government has also always made it clear that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.
Robbins says this is not a new feature. It is something the UK has discussed with the commission on many occasions already.
Q: In the Sunday Telegraph you said the UK would only pay its exit bill if the EU offered a trade deal. But at the moment the draft withdrawal agreement does not include a conditionality clause, does it?
Raab accepts that is not in the withdrawal agreement now. It needs to be added, he says.
He says this can be done in different ways.
One option would be to insert a clause in the withdrawal agreement.
But there must be clear obligation on the EU to move expeditiously and get the trade deal agree.
Q: But the December agreement said the financial settlement was without prejudice, and hence not dependent on a final trade deal.
Raab says the government has also always made it clear that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.
Robbins says this is not a new feature. It is something the UK has discussed with the commission on many occasions already.
Raab and Robbins at the Commons Brexit Committee.
75% of the withdrawal agreement was supposedly agreed in December. Recently 80% was supposedly agreed as stated by Barnier.
In fact as has been said nothing is agreed until everything is agreed because the British government cannot be trusted.
Remain overshot the mark too by telling people that there was going to be an immediate economic disaster.
This was their biggest mistake - because when it didn't happen it gave rise to the notion that you couldn't trust experts.
Now there is a lot more known and much better data. And none of it reads well.
For that reason I think it should be put to the people again with the questions properly formulated, the facts clearly laid out - and anyone pulling downright lies out of their arses publicly flogged.
This was their biggest mistake - because when it didn't happen it gave rise to the notion that you couldn't trust experts.
Now there is a lot more known and much better data. And none of it reads well.
For that reason I think it should be put to the people again with the questions properly formulated, the facts clearly laid out - and anyone pulling downright lies out of their arses publicly flogged.
Do you believe your MP should vote according to his convictions or have to tow the party line and vote against his convictions?
Yeah, I think its a much better system than asking people to vote for individual people/party with all the celebrity/charisma/partisan bullshit that brings with it. Not that it's really practical in the real world, but I can dream..
That's not true at all. First of all, the predictions of economic disaster were about what would happen when Brexit happens. And it still hasn't happened. Second, the "we don't trust experts" stuff was doing the rounds before the referendum took place, being spread by shit-heads like Michael Gove.
I'm a fan of it too.
So you would allow goods into Britain from the EU tariff free whilst Europe checks all goods from Britain and hits them with tariffs? Clever idea mate.
What you say may be right but it was spun to look like they meant 'immediate'. The fact that we didn't experience an instant meltdown gave fuel to the whole notion that it was 'dodgy' experts scaremongering.
Sure but you can't put that on the Remain campaign. That was just more mendacious spin by the other side.