GPWizard F1 Forum
Everything Else => Off Topic => Topic started by: Scott on June 24, 2016, 07:48:34 AM
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:'( :'( :'(
...but coming from a country that was wise enough to never join, I kinda see where you're coming from. And for any of you who want to occasionally visit the EU, we have rooms available in a neutral region with great access to much of the EU. ;)
I see your money is worthless this morning, but we accept gold.
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Don't worry Scott, it'll bounce back even better now we're free of the corrupt, despotic and bloated money grabbing regime in Brussels. :P
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Don't worry Scott, it'll bounce back even better now we're free of the corrupt, despotic and bloated money grabbing regime in Brussels. :P
Certainly the EU parliament needed a kick in the shins/nuts/head and needs a major re-do, but it would be shame if it now collapses across the board with all the nationalistic groups opposing it. Hope not, but hey, I'm just a spectator.
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And as a added bonus Cameron is resigning
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We never did join the EU Scott, we were bamboozled into the Common Market by Heath.
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This was the first thing I read about it this morning:
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We never did join the EU Scott, we were bamboozled into the Common Market by Heath.
If you never joined, what's all the ruckus about?
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Sorry Scott, I meant to say that we were led into the beginning of the EU and it was compounded without a choice by the lying toerag Blair.
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I came across this (sorry for the crappy formatting). Pretty dire...to me it seems Britain's problems weren't really with the EU, but more among its own. There's a growing FB group with Brits pledging to move to Australia, but somehow I don't think Australia will let more than a few trickle in.
Do you want Boris as your PM? He used to be pretty funny, but less so these days.
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I assume this will have very real impacts on F1, given how much of the sport is based in England, while many suppliers are spread across the EU.
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I assume this will have very real impacts on F1, given how much of the sport is based in England, while many suppliers are spread across the EU.
As to that, it looks like Bernie stands to make a tidy little $180 million off of it.That might even make Ian regret it. ;)
http://autoweek.com/article/formula-one/brexit-vote-could-be-180-million-boost-formula-one
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Cos, Jeri, I'm not gonna get political here, but would the USA or Canada allow another country to dictate to them the size and shape of certain fruits or the power of a vacuum cleaner to them, because that's what we have to put up with, thanks to a spineless government. End of ::)
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I see their calling for a revote now.Just like Amer politics
if you can't win fair then go the other route.
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IMO any vote with less than 5% difference should be re-visited. And especially in this case I am all for an 'Are you sure? Are you really, really sure?' 2nd vote. The implications are massive.
I know the US is simply bizarre that way...most votes come down to 50.5-49.5% How the electorate is split so precisely down the middle is amazing, but it's not healthy that so many people vote the same way regardless of what has happened in a campaign. There should be a much larger group of swing voters who pay attention to the issues and candidates and vote accordingly instead of just how they or their parents always have voted.
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It'll probably go the way of the Irish referendum, you'll keep voting until it goes the way WE (EU & the Government ) want.
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I think it's bull to keep voting till you get the outcome
you want.They might have a 3rd and 4th vote if the stay
voters lose again.
In the US a few candidates have won the popular vote
but lost the presidency because of the electoral votes.
IMO what the majority wants should prevail.
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It doesn't look like it will happen anyway.
So far, this is the best feature I've found on the whole affair. It's worth a read, but it takes certainly 5 full minutes of your time, so grab a cup of tea, have a read and let me know what you think. I think this guy nailed it.
The second paragraph almost sums up everything for me...if you get nothing else from it, pay attention - "a day when we’re being congratulated by Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, and nobody else" ...so true.
or this one: "As the tattered remains of the government try to work out what Brexit will actually mean in practice, more damage has already been done to our economy, to our prospects and to the job market than years of open borders ever could have."
Or just read the whole article below...
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2016/06/i-want-my-country-back
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I've got as far as the 3rd paragraph and I'm disgusted, yet another scumbag invoking Jo Cox, I'll try to read the rest without puking. I'm not having a go at you Scott.
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Sorry Scott but I have read this through twice and it's nothing more than the verbal diarrhea we have been fed in the run up to the referendum by people living in their ivory towers, totally insulated from the normal walk of life.
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I honestly appreciate both sides to this whole thing. What I don't agree with is the amount and type of inflammatory rhetoric that persuaded an unusual number of people who don't normally care about such issues to jump in and sway the vote.
My points in the article below are simply that you must question the result when someone like Donald Trump congratulates the Leave side, and the fact that nobody, neither the Leave campaign nor the government itself has a clue what is supposed to happen now, and the EU leaders recognize that and have jumped all over it demanding immediate negotiations which will lead to impulsive mistakes that the UK will have to live with. Where the heck is Boris?? I know he's keeping his head down so nobody takes it off, but still, get in front of a camera and show some spine.
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I was hoping to stay out of this but the article you posted Scott just takes the biscuit as far as I'm concerned. The New Statesman is a left leaning political commentary magazine and therefore it's no surprise if they are very much in the Pro EU camp.
The biggest idiocy of the piece though is to refer to the population who voted for leave like this; "and yesterday the frightened, parochial lizard-brain of Britain voted out". Just who appointed New Statesman writers as the proper super brains in our country.
With intelligentsia like the author of this ill thought out attack on the ordinary folk of Britain it's no wonder we take no notice of their self opinionated scribblings. The monthly sale of the magazine by the way is about 21k copies, yes that's right just 21k.
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And now the knives are out for Boris, pro Cameron Tories are compiling a dossier on his private life to smear him, they should be back in the infant or primary schools they crawled out of.
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Cos, Jeri, I'm not gonna get political here, but would the USA or Canada allow another country to dictate to them the size and shape of certain fruits or the power of a vacuum cleaner to them, because that's what we have to put up with, thanks to a spineless government. End of ::)
The simple answer is, yes. The US Government has been guilty of telling us what kind of light bulbs we must use, put ethanol in our gasoline and a long list of other, some quite subtle, things they have been regulating over the past several years/decades.
I well remember the birth the the EU. I was living in Spain from 1990-94, and then in Italy until 1998. I watched the countries remove the border guards/customs officers from the crossings between countries. I was dismayed by it. I remember thinking - this is heading toward a "world government" and all countries will slowly lose their sovereignty.
Having been there during that time, I have perhaps, a slightly different perspective on this than most Americans. Many do not have much of the background, and what they have of it is largely based upon a left-leaning US media's thoughts on the history of it, from inception to the current state.
I have no vote in the decision the Brits make, nor should I. I thought our President an ass for his presumption of being in the position of telling you all over there what you should do, even to the point of a thinly veiled threat. The decision is entirely yours, and I applaud your taking the initiative to make a decision based upon the will of your citizens.
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I agree about Obama keeping his opinions to himself.I don't
know why the US thinks they have a right to tell other countries
how to tend to their affairs.
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Considering how much the government's income relied on the trade benefits brought by being in the EU that it is indicated we won't get to keep (not to mention avoiding the recession that looks like has just been kicked off)... ...I am extremely unhappy about Britain voting to leave the EU. I had hoped not to live in a bankrupt nation, but unless my vague plans to escape to Italy work out in the next 5 years, that's exactly what will be happening. That said, MPs have a statutory duty not to make the UK bankrupt, so it's unlikely we'll see Article 50 (the law that allows leaving the EU, that the referendum result allows to be used) invoked any time soon - something that was likely in the Prime Minister's mind when he declined to invoke the Article as he promised when the referendum was originally announced.
The EU is trying to protect itself by demanding a quick, clean exit, so that other countries don't follow suit before rebalancing of the group can be done. It won't get a quick exit because Mr Cameron would like to not be in prison after he leaves office in October. Boris Johnson might, but if so, the consequences will be extremely severe (for those wondering, losing 1/3 of the country's annual income in 2 hours on Friday morning is the beginning of the trouble).
And the USA are bound to think they have a right to comment - they will be much affected by their biggest ally altering its political arrangements as much as it is.
The New Statesman is American-leaning, which tends to limit its readership in Britain both ways - too left-wing for people looking for Americanised readings, too-pro-American for left-wing or even centrist British readers (both of whom tend to regard both major varieties of American politics as right-wing).
The article Scott mentioned does a decent job, if not a complete one, of describing what happened (Ian, the reference to Jo Cox was inevitable given that her getting shot by someone who shouted "Britain First" - a Leave slogan - at the scene contradicted Nigel Farage's claim that no shots were fired in Leave's victory). However, it does not particularly do a good job of describing why. Unfortunately I've yet to find somewhere that does. It is interesting, though, that the greatest pattern is not socioeconomic, but age. It's tended to be that under-50s voted Remain and over-50s voted Leave. Not sure what that says about the state of the country, but it is known that Britain's pensioners are already suffering from the decision due to reduced income from fixed-price funds (typically 2% for funds not linked to employer wages or inflation).
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Ali, I have no doubts whatsoever that we won't leave the EU, too many high end companies and MP's have a vested interest in remaining. What sickens me is being called a racist for voting out, one of the main reasons I voted out was the fact that when I reached the age of 21 and was able to vote we elected a government we thought would run the country, make the laws, etc etc etc, now we have a government that is redundant and might as well be disbanded. Although I have posted on this subject which I think is too political for our site I will not be posting on this subject again.
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Ali, I have no doubts whatsoever that we won't leave the EU, too many high end companies and MP's have a vested interest in remaining. What sickens me is being called a racist for voting out, one of the main reasons I voted out was the fact that when I reached the age of 21 and was able to vote we elected a government we thought would run the country, make the laws, etc etc etc, now we have a government that is redundant and might as well be disbanded. Although I have posted on this subject which I think is too political for our site I will not be posting on this subject again.
If we can agree to disagree whether Sebastian Vettel is the worst thing to happen to Formula One, I think we can survive debating something as trivial as international econo-politics.
We may not all agree Ian, but what I love about this site is that I feel like we're friends, and understand we're not going to see eye to eye, but we're willing to listen. You may be in the minority on this particular issue, but don't ever feel like your opinion isn't something we cherish.
Other members (no names) are happy to hold unpopular opinions about many things, it doesn't stop them from posting!
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As a Yank, I've made a point of staying out of this. It's not really my place to comment on it. We have a saying here in the hills: I don't have a dog in this fight.
I just wanted to agree with what Jeri said about us all remaining friends here. However it all shakes out, that won't change.
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I am gutted at the way the vote went. So much damage done and will continue to be done over the next few years. Boris and Trump in power is a real concern. I worry for the future, for my kids and their choices. Everyone is entitled to their opinion but I have spoken to a few people who voted out and didn't know what they were voting for, they followed their friends. And some of those would now change their votes. One of the most Googled phrases at the moment is 'what is the EU' that kind of sums it up.
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Ok, going back on my word.......
DH, you're right 'what is the EU ?' I would be too ashamed to ask that question.
Jeri, you're right too, we are all friends on here and we all have mostly differenf opinions on things, but it don't matter 'cos we are friends.
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I am gutted at the way the vote went. So much damage done and will continue to be done over the next few years. Boris and Trump in power is a real concern. I worry for the future, for my kids and their choices. Everyone is entitled to their opinion but I have spoken to a few people who voted out and didn't know what they were voting for, they followed their friends. And some of those would now change their votes. One of the most Googled phrases at the moment is 'what is the EU' that kind of sums it up.
I would think if the EU were 100% beneficial, it would be a trivial matter to simply hold up a list of things the EU does that the UK can't on its own.
Personally, I didn't follow it closely, as it doesn't affect me. I think that being united is better than separate, and that the EU is a good idea, even if it's not good itself: there's always room to improve a broken idea.
However, given that the people who voted to leave the EU are the people who remember what life was like before the EU. They can directly see how the UK has been affected by the EU. How can someone without experience argue with someone who has experience?
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However, given that the people who voted to leave the EU are the people who remember what life was like before the EU. They can directly see how the UK has been affected by the EU. How can someone without experience argue with someone who has experience?
My sentiments exactly Jeri :good:
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However the UK was a very different place before the EU. Now we have no industry, we have foreign investment it can't go back, it won't work. Just one example, Nissan, not far from me, the next new model will almost certainly go to somewhere in the EU and not Washington. The older generation fought to free the world from fascism, they may well have opened the door for it.
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I just saw my first real-world fallout from the Brexit. I received this e-mail advert from SpridgetMania, a supplier of Austin Healey Sprite, MG Midget & Morris Minor parts.
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What? What? Boris spearheaded this thing and now he's bowing out of a race for the PM? What a spineless git. I am starting to think you are right Ian, this eventually won't even happen, but not for the same reasons as you think. I don't think it's going to happen because there is nobody in the Leave camp who has the kahoonas to lead the country through the negotiations and exit. Sad...
...on second thought, there is one guy in British politics with the brains and brawn to do the job, but he's Canadian, and a wee bit Irish. Mark Carney, your current head of the Bank of England. He would never go for the PM job, but he could be appointed to a new position - Lord of the Leave or something. ;)
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Oliver Letwin, a pro 'Remain' is sorting out the 'Leave' negotiations, says it all doesn't it, said we wouldn't be leaving didn't I.
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What? What? Boris spearheaded this thing and now he's bowing out of a race for the PM? What a spineless git.
That's the game of politics Scott, it's a lot like poker, you've got to know when to hold and when to fold - if you ever want to get the top job.
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I'd avoided logging in here all week in the vain hope that this hadn't been discussed, but my hopes have been dashed.
I'm disgusted by some of the comments here, and how they lack any factual basis. So, let's start to inject some facts into this discussion:
1. The EU is not a dictatorship. Here is how the ordinary legislative procedure works:
The Commission makes a proposal. This is then approved, amended, or rejected by the Council of Ministers and European Parliament in conjunction. The parliament is fully elected and the the Council of Ministers comprises elected members of each national government, regardless of which ministerial configuration is sitting. As for the Commission, its members are nominated by the elected heads of state and government, but have to be approved by the European Parliament, which has the power to refuse any candidate (and it has exercised that power in the past), and also has the power to dismiss the entire Commission (as it was preparing to do in 1999 before the Santer Commission resigned en masse).
So, where is the dictatorship in all of that? Nowhere is the answer.
2. There is no EU government. All member states have their own governments and have the power to vote against policy they do not like (see above), and also can wield the veto over certain policy areas that sit outside the framework of the Ordinary Legislative Procedure.
3. The EU is not a large bureaucracy. It is smaller than all the government departments individually in the UK and the Commission employs fewer civil servants than any UK government department.
4. The EU budget has been decreased for a number of years now. Also, the UK's contribution is £8.5bn net per year. £350 per week was lie promoted by the deceitful Vote Leave campaign (see below), which did not include the rebate. By comparison, the NHS budget for the year 2015/16 is £116bn. The EU, furthermore is, along with International Development, the area which receives the smallest amount of UK taxpayers money. Thus, claims that the EU costs us a lot of money are false.
5. The EU spends a lot of money in the UK. It is correct that the UK is a net contributor, however, that is as it should be, given our economic status. The Germans and French contribute more to the EU than we do, and all the member states contribute to the UK's rebate. Furthermore, the EU allocates money to the UK for research, farming, and regions to name but three areas. The regions, such as Cornwall, the North East, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, in particular receive significantly high sums of money, among the highest in the EU, because of their relative poverty.
6. Immigration. The House of Commons Library Report on Brexit, Full Fact, and Open Europe (all of which were neutral during the EU referendum) all reported, together with academic studies, that EEA migrants (which include all EU migrants) are of net benefit to the UK economy, and do not represent a burden to public services. In fact, they use public services less than UK nationals do. If you want a summary of all this, take a look a former of colleague's short blog post on this subject: http://nottspolitics.org/2016/04/13/brexit-or-bremain-immigration-and-eu-membership/
7. Border controls. The UK is outside Schengen. The Vote Leave leaflets saying that we cannot control our borders are, therefore, false. The UK does have border controls, does monitor people coming in and leaving, and, crucially, there was no way that the UK would have had to accept Turkish nationals under the deal that was agreed between Merkel and Erdogan. It did not affect the UK. So, Vote Leave lied again.
8. Leaving the EU will not stop immigration. Another false claim made by some in the leave camp. The UK is a signatory to the 1951 Geneva Convention. This obliges us to take in asylum seekers. This will not change. In other words, all those coming from Africa, the Middle East, and the camp at Calais will still come, because nothing, for them, has changed. Given that 188,000 net migrants came from outside the EU at last count, this is something else that Vote Leave didn't want people to know.
9. That mythical £350 million will not be spent on the NHS and isn't even available for two years at least in any case, as Gove, Boris, and Farage have been forced to concede.
10. The infamous Farage poster. For those who don't know, Farage took a poster of refugees heading for the Slovakian border, and manipulated it to make it look as though they were coming to the UK instead, thus suggesting they were EU migrants coming to Britain. This was extremely offensive, disrespectful, and xenophobic. He totally misrepresented the facts to make a false case and scare people to vote to leave.
11. Boris has been stabbed in the back by Gove, not Cameron. Cameron has had nothing to do with that.
Passing to my opinion now, this is what I wrote on the morning of the result, having stayed up all night:
Farage has shown even more of his true colours this morning with his assertion that 'real and decent people voted to leave'. In other words, he is stating that I, and everyone else who voted to remain in the EU, is not a real of decent person. This is a truly reprehensible and divisive statement, which will serve to widen the divide between the public, not to heal it.
The most astonishing aspect of the discussion this morning is all this talk from members of the public and Conservative politicians about how shocked they are that Cameron has resigned. I'm amazed by their naivety. Cameron was always going to resign immediately if remain lost. He had staked his career on winning.
I take one small crumb of comfort, in that my own region (North East Hertfordshire) bucked the trend for Conservative held areas by voting to remain, but that's not much consolation. I did put a lot of effort into educating people locally about the EU, so perhaps it made a bit of a difference, but I don't know.
For me personally, this is the worst thing that has happened in my life time. I have never felt as bad as I do today about anything. Yes, the sun still rose this morning and the country is still functioning, but the sense of loss is extremely hard for me to bear.
I feel it that it comes down this. This result is a victory for fear, ignorance, and prejudice. It is the most depressing, distressing, and upsetting thing that has ever happened to me, and I think that this country is going to find itself in a very perilous position for a very long time. The EU is weaker as of today and the lights of peace of prosperity that have united us with continental Europe for so long have just been snuffed out.
I am still going through a bereavement process over this. Some of you here will doubtless scoff at this, but we all have different feelings and different emotions. I have always had a European identity and a European ethos. I do not feel British at all, and, following the result of this referendum and how some people have behaved in the aftermath, I am glad to have this identity.
The very distressing thing for me is that this country has rejected me and all the values I stand for, along with all my EU and non-EU friends who live, work, and study here. This is not progressive and this is not the country that I know. This vote has taken the UK back to the 1950s.
Some of you might want to go back to that time, and think it was some sort of paradise, but I know enough about that time and what it was like from my parents and their parents to know that it was an extremely racially intolerant society, where white upper class men were dominant, and women and any foreigners were not equal and were discriminated against. In the past few days, there have been racially motivated attacks on a Polish cultural centre, leaflets posted in some towns saying hateful and racist things to Polish and Muslim people, people talking in foreign languages on phones have been stared at in the street, and foreign nationals have been told verbally to 'go home because we voted leave', this even happened to a woman from Wales!
This is awful, just absolutely terrible, and is so upsetting that I can barely find the words to comment on it. Even some who have been voting leave have been interviewed to say that they feel they have made mistake. Even some Daily Mail readers have suddenly realised the implications of what this could mean for them when their horrid newspaper finally decided to spell out what its readers stand to lose, all after the vote of course.
This country has just taken the worst decision of my life time and I am heartbroken about it. I don't expect the views of some people here change just because of that, but I would, again, encourage a thorough reading of the facts, because while everyone is entitled to an opinion, nobody is entitled to make things up which are factually incorrect.
Finally, I will conclude by saying this. I find some of the language used in this thread disturbingly vitriolic and extremely unpleasant. Given the age of some of you making such comments, I would expect more level headedness and wisdom to be on show. I cannot express just how disappointed I am with some of the language that I have seen during the course of this discussion.
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Sorry you are so sad about how it's turned out Irisado, however the public have chosen from two options and it's now up to the elected representatives to decide how to deal with it.
No amount of mud slinging or weeping over what might have been can change the result of the referendum, which in my opinion was played for an emotional response by all sides. Not sure I heard much truly objective reasoning from anyone in the campaign.
We'll have to see how it all pans out I guess but our system recognises democracy by the majority choice - and for right or wrong a majority have backed the leave side.
I think it's a great pity that the EU has not done a better job of promoting itself to us citizens of member countries over the years. The commission in particular appears much too aloof and self serving, in standard Quango style, and the perceived poor image of it has been allowed to take hold.
We all love to discuss the modus operandi of one Bernie Ecclestone, for good or ill, in F1. Well at least we get more than enough coverage about what he's up to for some open and frank discussions on the merits of his actions.
I simply cannot recall any full, or even small promotional effort over the role, benefits and decision making process of the EU aimed at the general population. All we've had for years is an unchallenged negative image build up from the media. This leave vote may be a shock to most of us, but surely the EU commission ought to have expected it - seeing how out of touch with member populations they have become.
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No comment.
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Vitriolic and unpleasant language, where ?
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Not sure I heard much truly objective reasoning from anyone in the campaign.
You didn't, but that's the responsibility of national politicians, as I'll come on to shortly. However, what I will say at this juncture is this. Remain exaggerated some of their economic claims, and Osborne was very unwise to make silly comments about emergency budgets, but and this is very important, Vote Leave flat out lied about a whole series of issues (see my list of facts above). That's the crucial difference.
We'll have to see how it all pans out I guess but our system recognises democracy by the majority choice - and for right or wrong a majority have backed the leave side.
True. There is, however, an important point to consider here. How legitimate is an outcome in a referendum when people may have voted based on lies and how legitimate is an outcome which was heavily swayed by postal votes which had to be submitted long before the end of a campaign and at a moment when leave was doing particularly well in the polls? It's food for thought for all us. Our system of democracy is far from faultless.
I think it's a great pity that the EU has not done a better job of promoting itself to us citizens of member countries over the years. The commission in particular appears much too aloof and self serving, in standard Quango style, and the perceived poor image of it has been allowed to take hold.
Depends on which country you go to. When I was working in Bucharest last year, there was information about the EU in one of the parks, for example. There were statues of the heads of all the founders, with placards explaining who they were, what their role was, and how the EU started. Lots of people were there reading about it all.
Information about the EU is much harder to find in the UK, but that's not the EU's fault. The national government has to take responsibility for that.
I simply cannot recall any full, or even small promotional effort over the role, benefits and decision making process of the EU aimed at the general population. All we've had for years is an unchallenged negative image build up from the media. This leave vote may be a shock to most of us, but surely the EU commission ought to have expected it - seeing how out of touch with member populations they have become.
It was not expected, because all the polls predicted a remain victory in the final few days leading up to the actual vote. However, I'm sure that all the EU institutions and other member states were nervous, but there was nothing they could do. Any intervention by them would have been hijacked by the Leave campaign as 'telling us what to do'. That even happened when Obama gave his speech, where his comment about the 'back of the queue', which was not even in his speech, but was part of a much longer response to a question from an ITV reporter, was deliberately taken out of context by the media.
That leads me on to my next point, and this is where we are in agreement. The media has fed the people of the UK so many negative, distorted, or downright false news stories about the EU for years, and it has skewed the minds of some. Boris Johnson didn't help by lying about EU directives on bananas and other fruits and vegetables, many of which were scrapped years ago, and even when they were in existence didn't say what he claimed. For example, there was never a rule about having to buy bananas in bunches of three. That just told everyone how often Boris went shopping for groceries.
Incidentally, that last point ought to have been in my list of facts, because that's another lie that vote leave told.
Vitriolic and unpleasant language, where ?
Here's a list (parts in bold):
Sorry Scott, I meant to say that we were led into the beginning of the EU and it was compounded without a choice by the lying toerag Blair.
It has never been proved that Blair lied about Iraq or WMD, I tried to when I was working on my PhD, but the evidence isn't there. There are all sorts of other things you can say about his foreign policy, and how unwise and ill thought through it was regarding supporting Bush, all of which I would agree with, but to refer to him as you have is exceptionally rude in my opinion.
Don't worry Scott, it'll bounce back even better now we're free of the corrupt, despotic and bloated money grabbing regime in Brussels. :P
Despotic? Really? Come on Ian, if you cannot see that this is vitriol I'm astonished. The rest is just factually inaccurate as I've already explained.
And now the knives are out for Boris, pro Cameron Tories are compiling a dossier on his private life to smear him, they should be back in the infant or primary schools they crawled out of.
The part in bold is extremely offensive and over the top.
I've got as far as the 3rd paragraph and I'm disgusted, yet another scumbag invoking Jo Cox, I'll try to read the rest without puking. I'm not having a go at you Scott.
Again, was this necessary? You can have a forthright opinion, but to be so nasty and aggressive about it strikes me as being completely over the top.
No comment.
I have a question. Why would you be ashamed to Google what the EU was?
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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.
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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?
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?
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. :confused:
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Opinions are not necessarily fact based. They are a mixture of information an individual chooses to accumulate from sources that individual trusts, emotion and upbringing, and knowledge based on past experience. Anyone can point out facts according to a particular source, but it's not going to change someone's opinion necessarily. I value Ian's opinions as much as yours or John's or Dare's or Cos's or Jeri's...but in whole I don't share opinions with any of you. And I'm glad, and so should you be. Otherwise life would be boring.
My opinion is that Britain should have stayed in the EU, but am really glad the democracy you have allowed you to choose.
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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. :confused:
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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As we all know GPWizard is an international site, therefore we have members of all ages and from all walks of life. We all have different upbringings and different life experiences which 'mould' our personalities and opinions. With such a diverse membership I simply cannot imagine the many different cultures that we all experience today or have experienced in the past. Bring such a group of people together and it is without doubt you will have a difference of opinion.
The Brexit campaign has also been diverse with both sides making mistakes by offering confusing and sometimes misleading facts. It is no wonder then that with such a lack of guidance from the very people that are employed to move the country forward that the general public made their decisions based on their very own life experiences.
The result has happened, like it or loath it the British people have voted. Life will carry on. Will it be for the best or the worst? Nobody knows. I repeat that Nobody knows. None of us can predict the future and everything that is said about the future of the UK is pure speculation at this point.
At the moment this is still very raw in our lives and with so many people shouting, nobody can be heard. What we need now is calm and forward thinking on what is best for the country, the people within it and our relations with the rest of the world.
I'll tell you what is important. Loving your family. Being nice to the person standing next to you in any situation. Laughing as often as you can. With the things that have happened in my life over the past few years I have grown to realise what is important and how fragile life can be. I'm not saying politics doesn't matter, of course it does, it affects us all. What I'm saying is, relax, take a breath, look around you and count your blessings. There is always someone worse off than you and none of us appreciate just how lucky we are.
Live life to the full my friends.
Wiz
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:good:
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Well said Wizzo!
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Hear, hear Wizzo. :good:
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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.
I wish I could retire Irasado, I'm over the national retirement age but don't have enough pension to make do - so I have to keep slogging away in a menial job for a couple of years yet.
The banking crisis of 08/09 made me redundant from a reasonably paying job and has caused such low (or should I say non-existent) interest rates to damage my savings almost beyond repair.
A awful lot of us have not been viewing anything, either backwards or forwards, thru rose tints.
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I have a year on you John and I still work more than full
time.I could probably make ends meet by stop working now
but I'd like a little more than that.
Most of us or a lot of us on here have reached a age where
we need to follow Wiz's advice and stop and smell the roses.
Seems like every generation something happens where the
world is coming to a end but it's still here and I imagine it
will be after where long gone.We need to be thankful for what
we have a cherish the new friendships we've made here.
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I now live in NZ and although we have the right to vote we both took the decision not to so we watched from afar and ended up confused. :crazy:
I've not read all of the posts but have read lots on mixed sites and some of it is so contradictory that I was puzzled on why the political parties went down that route. None of them gave a positive opinion and concentrated on the potential negatives so is it a wonder that people became confused and sadly the fallout we are now seeing could not have been foreseen.
The call for a second referendum is quite bazaar as once the result was known it was the result and should stand.
So who is to blame? Those who didn't vote? Those over 50 who voted?
We are visiting the UK from next week for the first time in six years and I'm wondering what I'm going to find everything as normal or anarchy I'm staying with friends as I work my way down the country and I'm sure I'll get different views on the way.
Your wisdom is sound Wizz and life is too short as it is so I whole heartedly support what you say treat everyone as you would expect to be treated yourself.
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I wish I could retire Irasado, I'm over the national retirement age but don't have enough pension to make do - so I have to keep slogging away in a menial job for a couple of years yet.
The banking crisis of 08/09 made me redundant from a reasonably paying job and has caused such low (or should I say non-existent) interest rates to damage my savings almost beyond repair.
I have a year on you John and I still work more than full
time.I could probably make ends meet by stop working now
but I'd like a little more than that.
Thanks for the clarification to both of you :).
Where I suspect that we are all likely to agree is the financial crash of 2008/9 hit us all hard and that we're all still suffering from the consequences of that in one way or another.
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Irisado if you didn't know I'm from the US,we have
our problems too.
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I didn't know that, and I'm very glad that I don't live in the US.
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I didn't know that, and I'm very glad that I don't live in the US.
I'm very glad I do....for now
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Future problems for auto manufacturing in Britain?
http://www.motor1.com/news/65521/gm-most-likely-to-be-first-automaker-casualty-of-brexit-decision/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=www_2016-07-19 (http://www.motor1.com/news/65521/gm-most-likely-to-be-first-automaker-casualty-of-brexit-decision/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=www_2016-07-19)
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Both GM and Ford have been reducing their manufacturing presence in the UK for the last decade so there is not really a great deal to lose.
Ford finally ceased building any vehicles in Britain in 2013 and now has only engine manufacturing plants in England and Wales.
GM - (Vauxhall in Britain) has just two plants left, the Ellesmere Port factory turning out only one model, the Astra car, and a stand alone subsidiary Van plant, IBC vehicles, at Luton turning out vans under licence from Renault/Nissan. This van plant produces Vauxhall, Renault and Nissan badged product for the British market so may well continue on, producing small runs of right hand drive commercial vehicles may not be cost efficient from other EU countries - especially if tariffs get added.
In fact the EU has probably as much to lose from tariffs in the vehicle sector as we do in Britain if some free trade deal is not done.