Irisado, list of vitriol I'm accused of.
1/ I mistakenly said Blair instead of Heath, also I never mentioned Iraq or WMD. Blair DID lie in his Election Manifesto with his referendum statement.
2/ Despotic, it is when we are told that whatever Mr Cameron was told can easily be overruled.
3/ Knives are out for Boris. Is it not more vitriolic to defame someone on their private lives ?
3/ I make no apologies for using the word 'Scumbag' In my opinion using the death of what seems to be a fine person for your own own ends is disgusting, 'infant or primary school' in retrospect I should have said RATHOLE.
Pointing out how I perceive your comments isn't an accusation. I also have no expectations that you're going to change how you word things. I pointed those things out in the hope that it might encourage you to consider how you think about other people, but if not, then that's life - a cliché which I'm not a fan of at all, but it's true, unfortunately.
1. Okay, I thought that bringing Blair into this discussion was a bit strange, so now I know that you meant Heath, it makes sense. Heath actually didn't lie in my opinion. Lying involves saying something which you know to be untrue and he didn't do that. What he did do was to omit some information. This is misleading and not providing a complete picture, but that's not the same as lying.
Which election manifesto? Are you talking about Blair or Heath? If you're referring to Blair, I've no idea what you think he lied about unless you can be more specific.
2. Nobody told him that. That's just the media jumping up and down proclaiming things that are not true.
3. I didn't question that comment. It was a fair observation, targeted at the wrong group of people (Cameron and his close allies had nothing to do with stabbing Boris in the back), but definitely a very accurate reflection of what happened otherwise.
4. Fair enough, as I say, it's your choice. I just don't agree with such a choice of language I'm afraid.
I'm still interested in why you would feel ashamed to Google what the EU is though, as I found that statement of yours intriguing.
Irisado as you yourself have mentioned you feel rejected, whilst I sympathise with you over that I have to point out that our system here in Britain of a simple majority has existed since before I was born, so one side was going to be disappointed in what was always seen as a close run contest.
Suppose for a moment the remain side had won, would you be still be questioning the legitimacy of the result?
If Remain had lied, I would have questioned the democratic legitimacy, yes. They did not though. Had Vote Leave not lied, I also would not have questioned the legitimacy of the result, but they did lie.
The media has been going round conducting a lot of interviews in the streets since the result, and members of the public have also made a number of interesting comments during phone ins on Radio 2 and Radio 4. The gist of a lot these are along the lines of people saying that they are regretting having voted leave on the grounds that they didn't think it through properly and/or they feel duped.
Admittedly, this is an unscientific sample and there's no way to know whether enough people feel like this for the result to be affected, but there has certainly been little celebration about leaving the EU. All that has happened is that a lot of people, including Vote Leave leaders, have been going around looking depressed (Gisela Stuart, Boris, and Gove all looked terrible on the Friday morning after the result, for example, and that's because they actually wanted Remain to win 51% to 49%, so that Boris and Gove could force Cameron out but keep the UK in the EU).
Also, the day after the referendum, the BBC conducted interviews with people in Hartlepool. For those of you on the forum who are not from the UK, Hartepool is a very run down old town in the old manufacturing area of North East England. A working class Labour stronghold. 70% voted for Brexit, going against the Labour position, and here are some of the comments from the people who were interviewed:
'I voted leave because of all them immigrants in the schools and in the NHS'
'I voted leave to get the immigrants out'
'I voted leave and I don't know why' (I'm not kidding here).
'I voted leave because I don't like Cameron'
'I voted leave [insert numerous expletives]'.
Are these the sorts of attitudes that are desirable to deciding the outcome of a referendum of such national importance? It was so depressing watching that report. The lack of education on display was truly frightening, and raises massive issues about the quality of education in the UK, and the role of the Labour Party in how it is failing to keep in touch with its old grass roots in the north of England and the Welsh valleys.
It's also worth pointing out that the North East England receives EU funding, which it will lose once the UK leaves the EU. This vote isn't going to improve their lives at all.
Speaking of the regions, the Cornish are already complaining about the money they'll lose, yet they voted to leave!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-36616955. This is another example of what I mean about the naivety of how some people have voted.
You also mention that you do not feel British, unfortunately that's in quite a big way what this whole referendum has been about - are we British or European?
I'd say that was definitely a factor John, yes. I'd say that certain people, notably Farage, hijacked that though and tied it into the whole immigration issue and thus turned the whole debate about the EU into a referendum on immigration in a very pernicious and xenophobic manner.
It is quite OK to claim Scottish, Irish or even Welsh identities and nationalist aspirations, but as soon as a claim for England, or it now seems Britain, as an identity comes up the strange line 'little Englanders' is usually trotted out.
Why is that do you think? It sure puzzles me. 
Comes down to historical separation of all these countries, and Celtic and Gaelic languages giving them a different sense of identity too, I would imagine. It is also because the voting patterns of Scotland in particular have changed markedly in recent times with the dominance of the SNP.
'Little England' arises from the notion that there are people who voted to leave who seem to think that that the UK can just go back to the 1950s and everything will be 'just like it was'. They even interviewed a couple of elderly women on the BBC News a couple of nights ago who said exactly that. It's a totally unrealistic notion.
Globalisation means that it's impossible to go back to how things were in the 1950s. Trying to cut the UK off from the rest of Europe and act like an imperial power won't work in the twenty-first century. The Empire was lost decades ago, the Commonwealth countries all wanted the UK to stay in the EU and don't see view the UK as being a preferred country because of the colonial heritage, they've long since moved on, and the UK is not superpower either. The economy is strong, but it is dwarfed by the might of the US and China, while India is catching up fast. How, therefore, can the UK expect to receive the sort of preferential treatment that it did in the 1950s when the world has changed so very much? It's this kind of thinking that has led to the label 'Little England' being applied to the UK, and note that the label has been applied by British people.
One thing I'd like to add, and this isn't in response to anything anyone has posted here, but I just want to emphasise that the UK's membership and contribution to the EU has been valued and we haven't been ignored. You only need take a look at the standing ovation our outgoing Commissioner received in the European Parliament to appreciate this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/36650012.
Scott: Just to clarify one thing. I've made it clear that people do not have to share my opinion of the EU. I am very concerned, however, to see how many people (I don't mean on this forum, I mean in the public at large) have clearly made a decision based on untruths and not based on the facts. That, I believe, is a serious problem. To come to a conclusion to leave on the basis of the facts is one thing, but to come to that conclusion based on not knowing any of the facts is a terrible state of affairs, especially since that this has been the most important vote to take place in this country since the referendum of 1975.
Lastly, on a personal note relating to me, I believe, but please correct me if I am wrong, a lot of you here are retired. I am still trying to get my first full-time job in higher education, and higher education is going to lose an awful lot of funding if the UK does leave the EU. As a result, the difficulty of getting a job for me is going to increase even further. Younger people are going to be hit much harder by this leave vote, especially if they work in EU funded sectors like me.
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