[Closed] EU Referendum - are you in or out?

TBF I have nothing against models and modelling as simple tools to frame further research. It is when models are dogmatically used to justify policy decisions I have a problem.

Oh, and look how well appeasement works out....in my mothers lifetime

Ah, Brexit and Trump = the new holocaust

And you wonder why people stopped listening to the remain/anti-Trump campaigns 🙄

All those white supremacist Heil trumpers certainly got that message ninfan

And you wonder why people stopped listening to the remain/anti-Trump campaigns

No, I think we've all got a pretty good idea why that would be, TBH.

Let me guess Cougar - Cause they're all racists?

Democracy, eh?

Democracy means retaining the right to hold opposing views, protest, challenge, campaign, even after you have lost.

Let me guess Cougar - Cause they're all racists?

No, but thanks for assuming that.

Democracy means retaining the right to hold opposing views, protest, challenge, campaign, even after you have lost.

Quite.

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I agree, it does, and as is the right for the majority to dismiss those who do as hysterical, petulant, whining sore losers who just don't know how to handle not getting what you want.

I would certainly suggest that the vast majority would find comparing Brexit to the holocaust as at best distasteful, and that many would regard it as exactly the type of hysterical scaremongering and over exaggeration that made them vote leave in the first place.

You really don't like that we haven't just "shut up and got on with it," do you.

You really don't like that we haven't just "shut up and got on with it," do you.

It's not about 'liking' it, I just can't see much point in it, whine all you like, were still leaving, spend today posting all the pro EU memes and propaganda you like, tomorrow we'll still be leaving

and there's nothing you can do about it 😆

We probably should do, we are whining at exactly the time we should be getting on with things, it's poor.

WF agreed. Model and Maths lend an overly precise perception to a subject that is anything but. Assumptions need to be tested constantly.

You don't see any point in protesting?

Ok, protesting on a mountain biking forum is pretty pointless beyond the interest of debate, but if you think we're just going to go "oh, all right then" you're sadly mistaken.

Ninfan, did the brexiters shut up in 1975? Time to get used to the remainers now.

You don't see any point in protesting?

Do you think that protesting will make the government cancel Brexit?

Who knows. I know for certain though that not protesting won't make them do it.

I would certainly suggest that the vast majority would find comparing Brexit to the holocaust as at best distasteful, and that many would regard it as exactly the type of hysterical scaremongering and over exaggeration that made them vote leave in the first place.

no one would put Brexit on a par with the holocaust (but we don't know where this end) but it would appear that you as a Brexiteer are prepared to swallow any amount of vile behaviour in your dogmatic belief that you were right - if Trump says the cost of your free trade deal is that you sign up to whatever political agenda he is pedalling then you will say thanks, where do we sign.

time to get used to the remainders now

I know for certain though that not protesting won't make them do it

A campaign to bring about a speedy rejoining of the EU is practical and realistic, a cohesive campaign (and I said this months ago) for Brexit light/retention of the single market is entirely practical and realistic, perhaps even sensible, and would have been a worthwhile use of your efforts (indeed, if all your efforts had gone into this may well have been successful), but instead you have spent, and continue to spend, all your time campaigning and protesting ever more hysterically to block/ignore the Brexit vote, which simply isn't going to happen.

all your time campaigning and protesting ever more hysterically

It worked well for farage and co 😛

I agree, it does, and as is the right for the majority to dismiss those who do as hysterical, petulant, whining sore losers who just don't know how to handle not getting what you want.

You appear to have described the attitudes of an awful lot of brexiters, yourself included, over the fact that brexit (whatever it actually is) hasn't actually happened yet, and a whole bunch of people who disagree with you are making some quite credible predictions about just what a bad idea it is. But then, you enjoy your alternative facts.

we are whining at exactly the time we should be getting on with things, it's poor.

Getting on with what? Being bent over and royally done up the posterior by a bunch of myopic lunatics? If that's your idea of fun then knock yerself out, but don't suppose for one minute that going "oh alright then, you won on a grossly misleading campaign, but democracy, so meh" will improve things one iota.

Getting on with what?

Or would the leavers like us to step up and fix this mess?

We could all try and guess the best way to insulate out lives from the shock and crash that is very obviously coming.

Being in Australia seems to be working reasonably well 😉

(Well, until Trumpet and the Chinese have a nice little wrestle over the South China Sea, but I suppose even that's preferable to Putin having unopposed "holidaying rights" to a chunk of eastern Europe)

Yes remember a weak pound is great when you don't earn them...

Do you think that protesting will make the government cancel Brexit?

No, but it ought to make May listen to our concerns. Given the strength of opposition to hard Brexit she should soften her position. That would be how to unite the country. But instead she's moving as far away from a conciliatory position as she can.

The best way to "step up and fix the mess" is to stop it from happening. A campaign to rejoin the EU seems a bit premature since we are several years away from leaving it!

hysterical, petulant, whining

Read the comments section on a newspaper website under the high court challenge story. A perfectly decent court case decided in the appropriate way. And yet hysterical, petulant and whining is exactly what these people are like.

Those people, those commenters - they are the ones who gave you the referendum victory. You prepared to stand with them?

No, but it ought to make May listen to our concerns.

Quite. (But it probably won't.)

I've said this before, but the one thing the referendum showed was that we are a country divided and that a lot of people aren't happy. Two, the two things the referendum showed, etc.

This whole "you lost, we won" and horseshit is on the same intellectual level as "two world wars and one world cup, doo daa." It's making the country [i]more[/i] divided, not less.

Abiding by "the will of the people" is laudable, but that's not what's actually happening, they're abiding by the will of some of the people who whichever way you choose slice it are a statistically irrelevant majority. Meanwhile, the other half of the population have got no voice, no representation, and are being wilfully ignored and shouted down. These Leave screwheads who keep banging on about "democracy" like a child who's just learned a new swear word would do well to consider this; how is ignoring half the populace in any way whatsoever a democratic process?

Off with their heads !

Let me do this the simple way.

Ninfan, chewkw, Jamba - nothing you have said in hundreds of pages makes a halfway decent case for leaving.
As I have never been a bandwagon jumper, particularly if it looks like it's heading for a cliff, forgive me if I don't jump in your bandwagon - think if it as just making Brexit that tiny bit more niche. You could have tee shirts saying "I was a Brexy before Wiggo won".

I hold Brexies responsible for splitting this country and I shall do my best to leave them at the back of the queue any chance I get.

I am, as I have said, in a very small way part of the recovery effort for this mess. I shall try and secure jobs for remain voters.

nothing you have said in hundreds of pages makes a halfway decent case for leaving.

Who cares, we voted, and we're leaving 😀

No, but it ought to make May listen to our concerns. Given the strength of opposition to hard Brexit she should soften her position. That would be how to unite the country. But instead she's moving as far away from a conciliatory position as she can.

But you're not arguing or campaigning for her to soften her position/soft Brexit, you are campaigning/protesting/arguing for her to ignore the outcome of the referendum and not do Brexit at all. The *reaonable* side of your argument is drowned out and lost in the shadow of the unreasonable demand, that can only and will only be ignored as a democratically unacceptable outcome.

Just as a matter of interest, what sort of Brexit would please you? Would you like it as hard as you can get?

hysterical, petulant, whining

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Ninfan, chewkw, Jamba - nothing you have said in hundreds of pages makes a halfway decent case for leaving.

I was going to ask exactly that earlier and got side-tracked.

The situation we're in now is full of if's and maybe's, as people scramble to try and plan out how to deal with this in a manner which gives us basically the "least bad" scenario. Most of what people have cited as actually remotely sensible reasons for leaving - control of immigration, trade deals, etc etc - are things [i]we already have[/i], and we're now looking at how to make deals to keep as much of it as we can.

Please, tell me. In what way are we better off out of the EU compared to where we are, well, not now but before all this nonsense started?

Who cares, we voted, and we're leaving

... and that's exactly the sort of brain-dead argument we get when we ask. WE CARE, you blithering eejit.

igm - Member
Let me do this the simple way.

Ninfan, chewkw, Jamba - nothing you have said in hundreds of pages makes a halfway decent case for leaving.

When you refuse to accept others' views and steadfast in your own then there is nothing more out there that can convince you.

That's because those are your values which make up your identify of who you are.

I accept your views and respect them but I also laugh at them which is normal just like everyone laughs at mine.

slowoldman - Member
Would you like it as hard as you can get?

All the whining is doing is demonstrating a failure to respect the vote and the democratic process and a "we know better than you" attitude. That may be correct, but it doesn't matter. We lost.

Zokes, perhaps the reason we lost is a tendency to lose perspective as you wilder comments highlight. By 2020, our economy is likely to be somewhere around 4% smaller than it would otherwise have been. OK, not good but not a disaster. Behind this will be more costly trade and investment. Sad but true, but this is not a rogering, it is merely an avoidable deviation from a trend. We will survive.

farting around pretending it didn't happen, pissing off the Europeans EVEN more in the process is not going to make things better. it will more likely make them worse.

The idea that we don't have a plan is clearly Bllx too. What we don't know/have is the detail. You don't know what the detail is until you know what you are dealing with. You don't know what you are dealing with until your start negotiating. You can't start negotiating until you trigger A50. So very clear what has to happen.

So turn off the news, avoid the sensational headlines and Laura bloody Kuesnberg. None of this day-to-day stuff matters. We are leaving the EU rightly or wrongly. The only unknow is under what terms. This will become clear over the next 24 months.

you blithering eejit

Now, now cougs, you should be setting an example of treating each other with respect even if the arguments are bllx

"Zokes, perhaps the reason we lost is a tendency to lose perspective as you wilder comments highlight. By 2020, our economy is likely to be somewhere around 4% smaller than it would otherwise have been. OK, not good but not a disaster."

Agree - IIRC 6pc smaller after fifteen years.

Which, I think, is why MPs are willing to vote for it. It's just not going to be that bad.

All the whining is doing is demonstrating a failure to respect the vote and the democratic process

I don't respect the vote. It was an opinion poll, people cannot and should not be entrusted to make big decisions when the vast majority of us are ill-equipped to make an educated, experienced choice. This is why we have politicians.

It's important to note though that I do respect the opinions of those who voted, which isn't the same thing. As I've said repeatedly the sensible thing to do in the wake of the referendum would've been to act on the reasons people voted in order to appease the (actual) majority of people regardless of which way they voted. The country was split down the middle, the only logical course of action is a compromise solution.

A "hard Brexit," or ignoring it completely and carrying on as normal, is by turns be a disservice to Remain or Leave respectively. So I don't respect that on the back of it they've decided to completely ignore the wishes of half of the voters.

And as we've done to death previously, I don't respect that a referendum vote on an individual policy being held as a mandatory "well, that's what we'll have to do, then" decision has anything remotely to do with the "democratic process." We vote for MPs, not for policies, and we expect those elected representatives to then act in our best interests, not to blindly do what we tell them. We're proles, not newspaper owners.

The country was split down the middle, the only logical course of action is a compromise solution.

I don't respect the vote. It was an opinion poll,

OK, if that is your starting premise, then there is nothing more to debate.

There is of course the counter to you concerns of half of the population (yes we did we see what you did there, nice spinning), your solution is even works since it ignores the wishes of the slightly bigger half who want us to leave the EU.

the only logical course of action is a compromise solution.

But you're not arguing for a compromise solution, you're arguing that we should remain in the EU, that's not Compromise, it's the direct opposite of what we voted for.

But you're not arguing for a compromise solution, you're arguing that we should remain in the EU, that's not Compromise, it's the direct opposite of what we voted for.

I havent agree with you much on this topic ninfan, but +1

still leaves 50% of the population pissed off

Well, 48%, the loosing side.

48% of voters....

who knows about those who didnt vote?

There is of course the counter to you concerns of half of the population (yes we did we see what you did there, nice spinning),

Spin? Of those voted, it was as near to a 50:50 split as makes no odds (and I said "half" as I was trying to avoid yet another 48 / 52 / 37 / 27 who knows what other statistic argument). My point was that the country is split down the middle and you're seriously pulling me up for rounding by like two percentage points?

But you're not arguing for a compromise solution, you're arguing that we should remain in the EU, that's not Compromise, it's the direct opposite of what we voted for.

Are you being deliberately obtuse?

Leavers voted leave for any number of reasons. Some may not be reconcilable, I don't know, but many are. Some voted because they want tighter control of immigration for instance; we can do that already without having to leave the EU. Some believed the bus lie; again, we can give more funding to the NHS without leaving the EU.

And of course, some just want out at all costs. There's no reasoning with these people, largely because they don't seem to have any actual reasons, they just want it.

You'll never please everyone. But by finding out why people voted out and addressing those concerns, you'll please more people overall than any other course of action.

But you're not arguing for a compromise solution, you're arguing that we should remain in the EU, that's not Compromise, it's the direct opposite of what we voted for.