Oh, the Joy! Bob gets a silly award that is stale and overdone.

Sat with a brexit voter last night, his reasoning was he didn't want ruled by Euros/wanted decisions made closer to home and the money that is being sent to Europe.

Stupid bastard hasn't a clue where he is from ffs.

Pretty standard for an Exiter. In all the conversations with workmates I had (none of my longstanding friends were Exiters) not one of them, all otherwise intelligent people, could contrive a reasonable argument in favour of leaving. All I got was vague and meaningless phrases centred around the words "sovereignty " and "immigration", with next to no thought given to what the former means in the modern world when the smaller guy has to bend to the will of the bigger guys, or how drastically limiting the latter will enable some important industries/agriculture to continue.

The whole Brexit package is so complex that it should never have been presented to the electorate to decide on.

You heard it first on twoplustwo

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-37691270

this is maybe a little self-serving but mainly seems like a very fair inside look at what happened from a cameron guy http://www.politico.eu/article/why-w...david-cameron/

i wish this part had been made clearer to voters, but it probably wouldnt have made a difference



also worth noting that, despite the complains about lack of democracy, the most democratic parts of the eu are the most disliked.

apparently this eu-canada trade deal which has been 7 years in the making and has the support of all member states is now gonna have to be renegotiated because the walloons have kicked up a stink

Good, another nail in the coffin of neoliberalism.

There's going to be a huge effort to persade Wallonia to change it's mind. This one isn't dead yet.

But if it dies it's one hell of a boost for the brexiters* Not only would it prove their point about the EU not being able to do deals but it will put huge pressure on the EU negotiators not to fail to do another one.

[The above is no comment on whether it's a good deal but if after all that work by the Canadians it's seen as pointless by the world because the EU can't sign off on deals then that is a disaster for the EU - at least in the short term until it gets some more PU.]


*or possibly great for remainers. Could provide the kick up the arse required for the heads of state to realise they need to stop brexit ever becoming a negotiation that requires unanimity.

The EU are clearly a bunch of fluffy-eared cretins who seem completely unable to grasp their version of democracy is stupid (that is, fiscal union without political/economic union).

Either devolve power back to member states or become a United States of Europe. This half-way house is proper useless.

'There was hard no evidence' should read as 'people with an interest were too useless to go out and investigate in the communities with a recent high immigration influx what the effects were'


To say there was no hard evidence is ridiculous when the evidence isn't gathered.

It's like saying 'there is no sun' because no one goes out to look in the sky.

They argued that the EU was going to change out of all recognition so the status quo was not an option. For example:

.. with 28 members (and a few more parts of members with veto power) its unworkable so it needs to change to be given the power to override member states - which on the other hand isn't acceptable to many people (except to those ITT who have evolved to a higher, post-national plane of existence), but in any case isn't the status quo.

This is ******ed even for you.

Its is absolutely not a given that the evidence exists and all you have to do is look for it.

True, but what's he's saying is that one cannot infer that the evidence doesn't exist when one has made no effort whatsoever to look for it, which is also true.

Did I say that?

My words were 'To say there was no hard evidence is ridiculous when the evidence isn't gathered.'

I realise the three-syllable words in this might be a bit much for you, so I'll try to explain in a way you understand.

What I said was you can't claim there's no evidence if you don't look for it.

There you go, there was only one word that wasn't a monosyllable in that, and I really couldn't avoid 'evidence'.

no, it should read as 'it's just nonsense people make up because they dislike foreigners'. the polish couple moving in down the street didnt actually make your small town in the middle of nowhere worse.

OMG, this vote we just had... didn't that tell you anything about how certain people feel? Deny all you want, that vote seems to indicate to anyone with an ounce of intelligence that there's probably would have been evidence it's an issue if someone had actually tried to gather it.

I'm sorry, I find this blindingly obvious, I really feel embarrassed some of you need this explaining like you are children.


You can pretend the real detail is all odd anecdotal nonsense if you wish, but voting in those numbers does indicate some evidence existed before the vote, right?

i mean i dont doubt they feel that way. they really dont like those polish couples and feel like it means they're losing their country. that much is true.

the stories about it making them worse off materially is just made up nonsense motivated by the first part though.

Your last statement is, imo, correct for a lot of UK people, and I know the media fuelled that belief, but that Cameron guy in that article seems more like 'The Thick of It' than real politics. I'm thinking of that episode where they just used one woman as a focus group to decide policy.

Wat?

The statement clearly indicates they looked for evidence and really wanted evidence, they even asked a very partisan interest group for evidence.

You are simply, via your own prejudices, assuming that there is no evidence because they did not look, in the same way you would assume someone who said they saw no sun did not look.

All the evidence we have to hand tells us they did look.

Ceta deal not going through.

Lol EU

Wait, are you actually pro CETA/TTIP?

Isn't it even more embarrassing for the EU if they spent all those years negotiating a terrible deal and had to be saved by Wallonia?

I'm probably pro the deal fwiw.

The thing to keep in mind about TTIP/CETA is that the UK was one of the strongest forces pushing for them. With the UK's influence gone in terms of long-term EU decisions this changes the picture a lot. I'd argue that both these deals would have a way higher likelihood of going through if the Brexit vote went the other way.

I think that true and while I still hope for a reversal of brexit, if not it's time for CUKTA or even better.

Why would that change the position of the Walloon government? They are saying "no" at the moment but if the UK government was around to push them in that special way that only they know how, then they would be saying yes?