The same majority which voted Yes in 2016, and Tories in 2 GE.

if you genuinely think the majority of the country is racist/xenophobic/wants to see the country go that way then you are off your rocker. It is a TINY (albeit vocal) minority.

Now hold on. I’m a die-hard remainer but not all leavers voted so for vile reasons, and to call them such is really not good. And you cannot justify being a dick to leavers just because they are leavers.

Get a grip, for goodness’ sake.

Eh? The vile comment was a response to Cinnamon Girl calling dannyh vile, entirely unjustifiably in my opinion. If you are going to call out my use of language then make sure you’re even handed with others that used it first.

Frankly, I don’t really care if you call me a dick, or threaten a ban, or think I need to get a grip. I’ve sat with my wife in tears worried she’ll be subject to abuse for being a foreigner, or even worse worried that our kids will be. My concern is for her and my kids, not what your opinion of me is.

I’m sure leavers are happy to have you leap to their defence on a mountain bike forum, but whether they like it or not voting to leave has (unintentionally in many cases I’m sure) lent a voice to more extreme factions of society, regardles of their reasons for putting a tick in the leave box.

Well this thread has turned out nice hasn’t it? Oh wait, no, it’s the old thread in a new flannel shirt.

******************

[Mod} REMINDER: PLEASE BE CIVIL OTHERWISE FURTHER BANS WILL BE HANDED OUT.

Thank you.

Claim that “by the end of 2020 Brexit will have damaged the British economy by more than the total net contributions since we joined the EU 47yrs ago”

According to Bloomsberg :
GB net contribution since joining £178bn
Brexit economic cost
– at end-2019 £130bn
– forecast at end-2020 £200bn

… by comparing our growth since the 2016 referendum to the growth of similar countries to us. More info / fact-checked here (from 9-minutes in): https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000d7k8

Anything to say about Brexit, Eddiebaby? As one of the rare people who voted for it to post on the thread about it. How’s it going for you and those around you ?

A tiny amount of people might be racists and xénophobe but they tend to be in positions of influence and power. And as someone wrote above it creates a toxix atmosphere for anyone foreign.

Dickyboy
The flip side being, why would the average private company employ anyone less able to do a job, which is one of my beliefs that either nationalisation is good or government needs to subsidise those companies that do employ those on the margins of employability.

The thought of paying a lesser wage for disabled people is vile. They have the same expenses as the rest of us, plus additional expenses depending on their disability.

The simple answer is make it worth the employer’s while. It’s cheaper for society to subsidise employment in these cases than have otherwise able people vegetating at home, never mind the beneficial effect on the employee.

And what’s in it for the employer? A very loyal worker for one thing.

Well said @epicyclo

Well this thread has turned out nice hasn’t it? Oh wait, no, it’s the old thread in a new flannel shirt.

I closed the other thread and created this one as lots of people asked for it. They wanted a symbolic gesture, a clean break, to be able start again without the shackles of years of history on the old thread.

As soon as I did this several people posted asking why I’d done it, complaining that it was pointless / a bad idea and moaning that I’d closed another thread at the same time. Now here we are today, a few days after brexit day, and it seems that nothing much has actually changed other than it seems to have emboldened a few people to be generally more unpleasant to each other.

It feels almost like it could be a metaphor for something, but I can’t quite put my finger on what…

Now here we are today, a few days after brexit day, and it seems that nothing much has actually changed other than it seems to have emboldened a few people to be generally more unpleasant to each other.

It feels almost like it could be a metaphor for something, but I can’t quite put my finger on what…

Don’t forget that ‘nothing much has changed’ includes various people refusing or being unable to answer apparently straightforward questions such as ‘why?’

Or ‘what are the advantages of Brexit ad you see them?’

Questions you would have thought would be easy to answer seeing as the result is dragging two thirds of the population off of cliff they didn’t vote for.

How many bloody times have I typed that?

Presumably they knew what they were asking for.

“Just get it done” I think is the turn of phrase often adopted at this point @cougar

Don’t ever, ever attempt to tell them that they didn’t!

Presumably they knew what they were asking for

Yeah. Even “we knew what we were voting for” is a lie. Or rather, it’s maybe true that they knew what they wanted, but what they voted for still hasn’t been defined yet nearly four years on.

It’s like agreeing to go out for a meal because you fancied a curry. You knew what you wanted – a curry – but you agreed to go out without even checking whether there are any curry houses open and are now crying because you’re in KFC.

I think I might have to accept that there are no logical reasons for doing untold damage to my country.

I think I might also have to accept that I am not even going to get a ‘sorry’ in lieu of any actual reasons.

So I am left thinking that the best thing we can do is some kind of damage limitation exercise whilst pretending to some people that they are getting their way. A damage limitation exercise to limit the totally unnecessary damage done by some people. A damage limitation exercise that is badged as something else to spare the feelings of the people that caused the unnecessary damage.

The thought of ‘accepting’ this makes me as mad as hell.

The thought of ‘accepting’ this defies the way I was brought up and try to conduct myself. If you do something stupid and hurt yourself you accept it. If you hurt someone else you apologise, mend your ways and try to mend the other person.

This is insane. It has been from the 23rd June 2016.

As a remainer I’m now beginning to think it would have been better to have lost by a bigger margin, obviously winning would have been better still.

It might sound odd but if that had happened then it might have been that remainers would have accepted the result and then put all their efforts in trying to influence the deal we end up with. With a result so tight though all the energy has been directed into trying to reverse it. It almost seems that some remainers now actually just want a disaster so they can be proved right.

I also think the real difficulty has been that leavers just wanted out, they felt no need to agree with each other on what that out looked like. Remainers on the other hand have been a very disparate group with different visions of what should happen. Maybe because they actually realised it was a complicated issue! Add in no effective opposition party and we are where we are.

The thought of paying a lesser wage for disabled people is vile. They have the same expenses as the rest of us, plus additional expenses depending on their disability.

Things aren’t always as simple as they seem. I recall reading about a program run by the government in iirc Canada. They employed intellectually delayed people to do secure document disposal. It cost far more than any number of alternatives, even though they paid the employees less than the minimum wage. Then the govt passed a law making it illegal to pay less than minimum wage. The program then had to close as completely unaffordable. As pointed out by the employees and their families, they didn’t need the money, they lived, for the most part, in sheltered housing, or with family, and were in receipt of various forms of social assistance, disability support payments and tax credits
What they needed was the social interaction with their co workers, he dignity and sense of purpose of having a job. They were aware, it seemed, that it was a make-work job but that didn’t reduce the positive effects they experienced.

Anything to say about Brexit, Eddiebaby? As one of the rare people who voted for it to post on the thread about it. How’s it going for you and those around you ?

You do remember that I was doing it as a protest vote don’t you? As I said at the time I had no idea it had any chance of occurring. Probable because nobody on here thought there was a chance of it happening. the whole thread was “nobody can be that mad” so I’m blaming you all 😁
For me? Well the price of paper affects me more currently. I have assorted Polish and Czech friends who are gloomy but resigned.
I have. Few friends in specialised engineering who all think things are OK.
Young people are already being shafted by boomers so a boomer government doing it should be no surprise. Sad for them, hopefully parent being concerned about their offspring Will see some boomer wealth being redistributed. Certainly the bank of mum and dad seems to helping more kids on the property ladder than before.
Their futures? Well that is really up in the air. No kids, so I do t have a dog in that fight though.
I have a cycling friend who believes in Brexit – didn’t stop him getting his Irish passport sorted. A lot of people in my local thinks it’s a good thing! But being honest it has had no real impact on those around me yet. God only knows where it will end up.

The thought of paying a lesser wage for disabled people is vile.

As other people have alluded to its not that simple though, personally I’d love it if government subsidised or nationalised companies employed people on the margins of employability but there are more benefits to employment than just being in receipt of a wage. Unfortunately, as Edukator pointed out the UK has sadly opted out of giving fiscal encouragement to UK firms.

…and Remploy, though I seem to recall that the government has already fundamentally undermined several of their programs and shut down factories https://www.remploy.co.uk/about-us/current-programmes

**though I must concede to lack of knowledge in this area

You do remember that I was doing it as a protest vote don’t you?

Great. Just great 🤨

personally I’d love it if government subsidised or nationalised companies… Unfortunately, as Edukator pointed out the UK has sadly opted out of giving fiscal encouragement to UK firms.

I wonder if a similar scheme to the apprenticeship levy might work?

If your company is over a certain size – I think the metric is if your gross salary spend is over £1M but would have to look it up to be certain – then you are legally obliged to put a percentage of that into a pot. You can then use that money to pay for apprentices. If at year end you haven’t spent it, the government keeps it. So whilst there’s no obligation for an organisation to take on apprentices if they don’t want to, it (usually) makes most financial sense to do so.

Maybe we could do something similar to offset any shortfall in wages under the national minimum for disabled people – the employer gets cheap labour and the workers get paid properly.

Meanwhile, over at number 10, Boris is trying to suppress unfavourable journalism. Tabloid journos have walked out in protest / solidarity (presumably neatly forgetting that they were the ones that helped put him there in the first place).

Breaking/ @BorisJohnson just tried to ban certain national newspapers from a Number 10 briefing.

This is truly sinister stuff.

Hats off to the BBC, ITV, Mail, Telegraph & Times for walking out too in protest, rather than let him get away with it. https://t.co/fs7IdryG9X

— Rachel Clarke (@doctor_oxford) February 3, 2020

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EP3K_aZX4AE9dmI?format=jpg

Great. Just great 🤨

I don’t feel good about it mate.

I don’t feel good about it mate.

Ok, this is nearly good enough for me.

If you don’t mind, eddiebaby, can you assure me you didn’t vote for the Tories in December?

If that is the case, I think we can call this repentance of a sort.

I could kick you when you are down and it probably would make feel better in the short term, but it won’t achieve anything.

I fear it is now too late in any case. Cummings et al are now operating from a handbook that the world has seen before.

I genuinely do worry about this. Yes there are ‘checks and balances’ but I’d be prepared to bet you would have found similar things being said in Berlin in 1932.

It couldn’t happen here. We are civilised. It COULDN’T happen here……right?

Cougar, thanks for post above confirming gov’s attempt to manipulate press briefing this afternoon.
Heard about it earlier but was unconfirmed at the time.
Shades of Trump & his team controlling pressers.
So, since 11am, we’ve had….johnson rejecting alignment, referring to ‘Australia type agreement’ when he means WTO rules, claims UK standards are higher in many areas than EU, attempts to exclude some political reporters from briefing.
Good on the reporters who walked out.
Briefing was to be given by a civil servant – ‘impartial’ civil servant giving political briefing?
In addition, Raab declines to answer question ‘which minister will be responsible for leading UK’s trade negotiations?’
Barnier making clear that he has negotiating teams ready to go on, I think, 12 specialist subject areas.
Oh dear, this won’t end well.

Just to clarify, I do not think Johnson is going to morph Hollywood-style into some tyrant.

But what he most definitely is is a hubristic, arrogant prat. The kind of prat that can convince himself he has found the magic formula to exploit nationalism just enough to get what he wants then pop the genie neatly back in the bottle.

I find Cummings a very disturbing character. Someone who only sees goals in one dimension. Someone who never considers whether the actions being taken to reach a set goal are moral or correct. I don’t think he cares about anything other than being seen to ‘get the job done’ and collect his reward. An amoral robot.

These people actually do not realise what they are playing with. They do not visit provincial small towns where being of a BAME background is a reason to be fearful. Even when they do, they will never get to see it unmasked.

But what he most definitely is is a hubristic, arrogant prat. The kind of prat that can convince himself he has found the magic formula to exploit nationalism just enough to get what he wants then pop the genie neatly back in the bottle.

I’ve said this a version of this before, but I’ll be amazed if BJ is still in charge at the end of the year. There’s no way he’ll go down with the ship, he’ll spend several months trying to make himself look as good as possible before blaming the EU27 for being obstructive and then letting some other poor sap take the fall when it all comes undone. Come brexit day he will be a very, very long way away from it, mark my words.

Ok, this is nearly good enough for me.

If you don’t mind, eddiebaby, can you assure me you didn’t vote for the Tories in December?

If that is the case, I think we can call this repentance of a sort.

I could kick you when you are down and it probably would make feel better in the short term, but it won’t achieve anything.

Well a kicking on the internet isn’t the worst thing I’ve had in my life, but no, no vote for the Tories just contempt.

And maybe “no kicking when you’re down” is the kind of guidelines being suggested for the thread? Because otherwise we’re just back to the circlejerk of hate and blame.

I’m sure leavers are happy to have you leap to their defence on a mountain bike forum

I’m defending rational and sensible debate. Not defending leavers in the slightest.

Anyway. First day of posturing and we’re nowhere.

I’ll be amazed if BJ is still in charge at the end of the year.

Nah, he’ll easily be able to blame the EU for everything, whip up even more anti-EU sentiment and he’ll still be the Tory hero.

Nah, he’ll easily be able to blame the EU for everything, whip up even more anti-EU sentiment and he’ll still be the Tory hero.

Unfortunately, this.

eddiebaby
…Young people are already being shafted by boomers …

Eh? That sounds straight out of the book of nasty stereotypes. Bollocks.

Eh? That sounds straight out of the book of nasty stereotypes. Bollocks.

Nope, my generation buying homes to let. Having pensions to pay for a retirement. I feel bad.
67 and still enjoying work but with a safety net.

Breaking/ @BorisJohnson just tried to ban certain national newspapers from a Number 10 briefing.

Not forgetting that they intend to move the ‘lobby briefings‘ to somewhere in Downing Street where they can control who attends.

Didn’t take long for the Dictatorship to start then.

Good they walked out. I think when Trump ejected a journalist, the rest just sat there.

I posted on the GE 2019 thread that both johnson & corbyn would both be out of their leadership roles by Dec 31 this year irrespective of which party won the GE.
Clearly, the loser would resign – which corbyn is doing.
As for johnson – he’s making promises which he cannot fulfill, has too powerful an adversary in the EU, will become frustrated by bureaucratic processes, has short attention span, doesn’t do detail, will be unable to offer up any quick wins, will be faced with negotiating and diplomatic failures, will run out of excuses. That’s for starters.
I stand by my prediction that johnson will not be leader of tory party at Dec 31 this year.

In lighter news, Nish Kumar’s played a blinder. (I wonder if the tide is finally turning over at Auntie Beeb?)

https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/top-stories/nish-kumar-and-horrible-history-on-brexit-day-1-6496322?

if you genuinely think the majority of the country is racist/xenophobic/wants to see the country go that way then you are off your rocker. It is a TINY (albeit vocal) minority.

One third of brexit voters self reported as being racist.

Those are just the ones who had the awareness to recognise that.

So it’s not a tiny minority at all. Brexiteers silence on the racists amongst their ranks – and their constant attempts to deny their movement is racist speaks volumes.

Apologies for quoting myself but,

…before blaming the EU27 for being obstructive

Oh look.

It took the British press just one day to start blaming the failings of Brexit on the EU