Never said there was. Nor was there a political union.
Never said there was. Nor was there a political union.
Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer
A community with the purpose of creating ever closer union, federation not excluded. You may believe your own nonsense but you aren't convincing anyone else.
Congratulations America
I really dislike the fact that people who voted to leave now feel justified in using the term "we" when debating Brexit. RB has been doing throughout this thread, and it makes me glum. I don't believe his views are not representative of Britain as a whole. The fact is that almost the same amount of people voted to remain, and had the referendum been based on the same rules as Scottish Independence then all indications points towards a resounding remain vote.
I voted to remain. I'm able to objectively see all of the benefits we get from being in the EU, and I want a second referendum, just as those who voted to leave would want one if they had lost. I don't care about the history. I care about now, and whether it's cleaner beaches, or more renewable energy, or free data roaming across the EU or having the power to impose fines on companies like Facebook, MS and Google for monopolising their position - the benefits are clear for everyone to see.
Just want people to know that are many people in Britain who believe in a political community and see the value of being apart of it.
We're embarking on the biggest and most unnecessary risk this country has ever(?) undertaken for some hypothetical benefits that may or may not come true in a few decades time. I believe strongly that I and my children are going to be poorer as a result, and that makes me even more glum.
Anyway, I hope the EU continues to thrive without us. I'm interested to see how the tax evasion initiatives starting in 2019 play out. Just one of the many things we'll be missing out on.
I've never claimed to be representative of all Brits. As far as I know (not sure about Spawnie) all other Brits on this forum were Remainers.
As for your claim about if children could vote that might have swung the results, possibly though unlikely but I fail to see why it matters. Votes for children has never been an established thing and there are 1.5mn 16-17 year olds in the UK. Not all would be eligible to vote (non-citizens etc), not all who would be eligible to vote would register to vote and not all who registered to vote would vote the same way.
The winning margin for Leave was just under 1.3 million votes. Extraordinarily unlikely that votes at 16 could have overturned that, even if 100% were eligible to vote, registered to vote and turned out to vote then it would just take 7% of them to vote Leave to ensure Leave won.
EDIT I certainly don't see how adding 1.5mn potential voters could turn a winning margin of 1.3mn (described as "almost the same amount of people voted to remain") to a "resounding remain vote".
Last edited by RandBlade; 08-23-2017 at 12:12 PM.
+1 gbp
The light that once I thought compassion still casting shadows in your action
The words you shared were cold transactions that bring me to curse what you've done
When you're up there absorbed in greatness with such success you've grown complacent
I hope you scorch your many faces when you fly too close to the sun
That doesn't invalidate my point though, which is that it's disingenuous and rather crude to say "we" when describing your position on Brexit. Please respect the fact that a significant number of people in this country completely, utterly and profoundly disagree with your position on this. This was not an overwhelming majority. It was a tiny majority, and it's utterly ridiculous that we've initiated this process because of an advisory referendum based on such an inconclusive result.
Irresponsibility at its finest, from the greatest country in the world.
We is a collective term with different meanings, it doesn't mean that everyone unanimously agrees with me just because a majority did on a single binary choice.
The result was conclusive enough, any majority is a majority and it is utterly ridiculous to refer to something like the referendum as "advisory" - we all knew the consequences of a Leave vote didn't we? You may not like the outcome but that's democracy, it doesn't lock us down for life. There's no reason why in 40 years we mightn't have another referendum seeking to rejoin the EU.
You may feel that way, but I think this referendum wasn't just won by the enthousiasm from the Brexiteer side. It was also lost by the utter lack of enthousiasm on the 'In' side. The most pro-EU voices from the UK (at least in the media) were allways droning on on the need to reform the EU, where reforming basically meant less federal aspects. Seen from the continent pro-EU and anti-EU Brits were hardly different at all.
In general Brits are awfully proud of the foresight of Brown not to join the euro. Continentals only see selfish gloating and absolving of European problems.
I have little doubt that if you would today put a vote in front of the British electorate for U-turn on the basis of article 49 (which may very well be the question in your 'second' referendum if there will be one) a lot of 'remainers would flinch at having to sign up to the EMU and Schengen and God knows for what else you have opt-outs for under your present membership.
So, It may irk you that it's become 'us' and 'them' as if there isn't a difference between a remainer and a breximaniac, but on this side of the Channel that difference lost all relevance on the 24th of june, 2016. For it to matter you, and other people who want to remain, have to try much harder than you have done. Because we're done trying to solve the internal problems in your political parties with members who've got trouble moving on from the 19th century. Conservative and Labor.
Congratulations America
And this ladies and gentlemen is why voting to leave this organisation was ultimately inevitable.
Actually 40plus years of lies and kow-towing to people who didn't know what they were talking about (as we see very clearly demonstrated on a daily basis) is what made that vote inevitable.
Maybe your PM's should have done well not to come home every time as if they had won (not) WW2 all over again after major Council meetings.
Congratulations America
Yeah, Brexiteers presuming to speak for the UK is only marginally more ridiculous than Hazir presuming to speak for nationals of other EU member states.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
I can't think of any massive victories our PM's have had as long as I've been following politics. A few minor ones yes but nothing comparable to winning WWII.
Last major victory I can think of was getting the rebate but that is before I started following politics. Since the late 80s on the EU has been diverging with the UK and an opt-out from something we're not interested in is not a victory, it is just further divergence isolating us further still from the rest of the union.
Actually in the late 80s the influence of the UK was bigger than ever before or after. It was only after you started to pay lipservice to the weirdos that brought you Brexit that you lost influence
Congratulations America
So we pick the same point of time where divergence happened.
Now was it because of "weirdos" on our side, or was it because the EEC agenda and direction changed tack in a way we weren't happy with under Jacques Delors?
The Delors Commission was instrumental in the creation of the single market.
Congratulations America
Agreed.
The remain campaign was a disgrace and full of complacency. It was the perfect opportunity to counter the myths and untruths of the leave campaign, but the country continued to be peddled hyperbolic untruths about "open borders; no control", "corruption in the EU; accounts never signed off" and "undemocratic bureaucrats in Brussels". There was no planned or coordinated focus on countering those lies and describing the benefits of being in the union. It's really not that hard, because there are so many.
This was too big a decision to leave to the public without them being presented with fact and evidence, derived by a thorough period of expert analysis. Instead we were left in the hands of the uneducated and bitter/resentful/intolerant older generation who take the opinion that if living standards decline for their children and grandchildren after we leave the EU, it'll still be worth it because we "took back control". I'm generalising I know, but I say that because my father and his friends are all of those things.
I don't want my living standards to decline. At all. For any period of time. I don't want my children's living standards to decline. At all. For any period of time. &^%$ Cameron for allowing this to happen. It's not the way to run a country.
The lies weren't around for only the duration of that campaign. The reason why they were so effective was that they were repeated, re-inforced for decades with nobody to actually counter them. Johnson's first big lies about the EU weren't spread out on the side of a bus, but they sure as hell did their work.
And honestly, I feel quite a bit of resentment about 'remainers' post-referendum who thought they could afford to be neutral when I was debating the brexiteers in the years before. Some of them even seem to think that there is a neutral middle ground where they can stay safe as if Brexit isn't happening right under their noses. Unlike them I never considered an OUT vote as impossible.
Congratulations America
Indeed based on the Single European Act signed years before Delors speech to the TUC that was pivotal in reversing how Europe was viewed in this country.
A free trading single market was what we were seeking yes, not a Delorsian centralised social Europe.
Viewed, not what it was though.
Congratulations America
Yes what it was. Delors pledged to the TUC to implement more "social" legislation and the EU did precisely that. The stuff that has bugged me: the social chapter, the working time directive etc, etc - are all stuff that didn't exist pre-Delors, weren't part of the Single European Act and aren't things that should be determined continent wide. They're not even stuff the Federal Government in America deals with (they're States issues if that).
Or do you think Delors speech to the TUC was a pack of lies that we were wrong to pay attention to?
Can you explain to me how the President of the Commission can write and enforce a treaty between memberstates without the memberstates taking influence on the treaty at all? If you can I can tell you how important that speech at the TUC was. I also wonder why an entire country would have to go into a 40 year hissyfit about a single speech.
Congratulations America
The issues I named were promised in that speech, followed that speech and did not predate it. They didn't stem from the Single European Act, they were in Maastricht which in case you failed to notice at the time the Maastricht Treaty was not unanimously popular in the UK. Getting an opt-out (which the Labour government gave away) didn't change that.
The issue is not the speech, the issue is what the speech represented: a complete change in direction by the EEC to a more social model that we on the right were not happy to sign up to. The actions that followed in Maastricht and elsewhere followed that change in tact that Delors pledged and Thatcher and others opposed.
Are we talking about a alternate dimension where Delors was the autocratic ruler of Europe?
Congratulations America
No I'm talking this dimension where he was in your own words "instrumental".
Dear Randy, as someone with a business in the hospitality industry you may understand that a chef has an important role in the business but in the end he's usually not the boss.
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It's interesting that almost half a year after notification Barnier still has to urge the Brits to start negotiating for real.
Congratulations America
Doing what you want != negotiating for real.
The UK has gone into this round of negotiations with serious position papers on all sorts of topics including customs etc which need resolving.
The EU side so far hasn't been serious going in with impossible demands. Not just improbable or onerous but literally impossible 'circular reference' demands. One early issue to be resolved is apparently what happens with the Irish border, but the Irish border can't be resolved until we know what customs arrangements there are. So we make customs proposals to address the issue but are rebuffed with a message that they can't be discussed until the first round is cleared, but we can't clear the first round without knowing what the customs arrangements will be between Ireland and the UK. It's like saying that you won't have sex until marriage but then further stipulating you won't marry someone who hasn't satisfied you in bed first - then complaining that the other party hasn't proposed yet.
Or that the UK is supposed to pay some sort of exit bill but the EU still hasn't presented any sort of bill to discuss. Are you expecting us to present ourselves with a bill? Not the way it works.
Maybe your side has no intention of being serious in which case we need to prepare for the hardest of Brexits and you can prepare for the massive black hole in your budget.
There is nothing serious about putting business before the rights of actual people. People who, as we have seen, can't trust the British government to give them a decent treatment while it is still bound by the EU rules. You can go shove your business friendly approach somewhere where the sun doesn't shine and keep them there untill you start talking about what you have agreed you would setlle first; the rights of citizens, the Good Friday Accord and the financial settlement.
We don't need a deal, you do. Rest assured that when you crash out we will not consider anything 'mutually beneficiary' any longer.
Congratulations America
Your false dichotomy between business and people is a fallacy. There is no distinction. Businesses are actual people too and you betray your extreme socialist tendencies not to realise that.
The rights of citizens we have already spoken about. The two sides are pretty close there.
The Good Friday Accord has been dealt with too. We want to maintain it and maintain a frictionless customsless border between ourselves and Eire - it is your side rejecting that not us. What more do you expect us to deal with here?
Which just leaves the financial settlement. Which we have already addressed, we will honour all obligations until the moment we leave. If you want a penny more than that then there needs to be a quid pro quo of a trade deal to justify it.
So everything has been dealt with already and you guys need to talk seriously about trade for which the Irish border and the financial settlement both hinge upon.
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