UK EU membership referendum

[bionic 50,111]

8 minutes ago, faux said:

People who'll vote to leave are ignorant and brainwashed  I can't believe they're serious.

Statements like that are ignorant.

You really think nearly half the UK is ignorant/brainwashed? People from all walks of life have different reasons for supporting remain or leave.

[Better Day 5,766]

17 minutes ago, bionic said:

Statements like that are ignorant.

You really think nearly half the UK is ignorant/brainwashed? People from all walks of life have different reasons for supporting remain or leave.

The leave campaign is just based on lies and scaremongering. The politicians that are supporting the leave campaign (Johnston, Gove, Duncan-Smith) are some of the worse politicians to have entered the Houses Of Commons. Why should we trust them - Duncan-Smith had a vendatta against poor people, all the teachers in England hated Gove, Johnston just wants to be Prime Minister. These people are just spreading lies. 

[Benji 20,113]

I've decided to vote remain but it's too close to call really. I want to see what would happen if we left but I'd rather remain and not take that risk

[hmm 979]

6 minutes ago, MissRebelDolly said:

The leave campaign is just based on lies and scaremongering. The politicians that are supporting the leave campaign (Johnston, Gove, Duncan-Smith) are some of the worse politicians to have entered the Houses Of Commons. Why should we trust them - Duncan-Smith had a vendatta against poor people, all the teachers in England hated Gove, Johnston just wants to be Prime Minister. These people are just spreading lies. 

Gove could almost have his own comedy show in the UK tbf  

Considering his recent advice "don't listen to the experts" it's pretty obvious he really hates knowledge in general  

EDIT: For context, the pic is a quote from Gove being grilled on his aim for all schools to be 'good' (ie. above average) in the ofqual school ranking system. 

 

[faux 2,190]

3 minutes ago, bionic said:

Statements like that are ignorant.

You really think nearly half the UK is ignorant/brainwashed? People from all walks of life have different reasons for supporting remain or leave.

Let me quote this post that I found:

I’ll try to behave. I’ll try to be calm, rational and hopefully persuasive. I’ll grant you a bit of intelligence and wit and allow for a different political view to my own.

I’ll try to be better than this entire wretched, divisive, cruel and unnecessary EU referendum campaign.
I certainly agree that the EU is a problematic association, perhaps overly expensive and bureaucratic. It needs to change, it needs to be more transparent, it needs to evolve. But I am convinced that, on balance, we are better off within the EU. I have already cast my postal vote for Remain in the EU. I invite you to do the same.

Soul Food
My favourite reason to Remain is that I honestly believe that we are stronger together. And not just stronger, but better. The diversity of thought and culture that our close ties with Europe bring us are enriching and empowering. To understand and collaborate with our neighbours - some nearby, others more distant - is a strength that helps us politically and culturally. But even leaving the pragmatic reasons aside, this closeness is good for the soul. If your eyes and ears, and most importantly your minds, are open, you can learn and grow. You can also disagree and still grow. That’s how learning and knowledge works. A rational disagreement helps clarify your true beliefs and priorities. Without diversity you can just wallow in dogma, unchallenged and static.

Opportunities
Europe is full of wonderful places and opportunities. Not just for us, but for the next generation. You may want to work in Warwick, or London, or Cardiff, or Oxford or Edinburgh, or Haye-on-Wye or St Ives. But why stop there when your working world also includes Amsterdam, Helsinki, Budapest, Bruges, Paris, The Balaerics or Malta?
How about your son, or your grand daughter? What about their children? This is a cross-generational decision that grants or revokes some magnificent opportunities for your whole family line. This is bigger than each of us and we need to think bigger than ourselves.
True, if we leave the EU those places won’t suddenly vanish, but the distance grows, the complexity spirals and the opportunity dwindles.Unknown opportunity, stunted for a whole bloodline. For a whole nation.

And it’s not just moving for work that is at stake, the employment economy is changing, there are more temp and remote contracts available each day and it’s only going to become more widespread in the future. Selling creative and administrative services can be done over the internet with the whole world. At the moment it is easy to do some with Europe because we *are* Europe. This is something to protect and nurture, not to cry foul of and try to clamp down on.

But more importantly there’s some amazing benefits from being part of the European Union, stuff from which I have directly benefitted. In my UK working life I’ve been forced to take holidays thanks to the European Working Rights directive - and been protected god knows how many times by the Human Rights Act. More pertinently I know what it’s like to be seriously injured in Europe (France) and have reconstructive surgery FOR FREE because I had a little plastic card that said I was from Europe. These are not small things. This is perks of being part of a progressive and often quite caring super-community with its heart in the right place. (Even though, yes, it is often opaque and stupid in the details. But the good stuff is really good.)

Protection Through Troubles Times
The world is a troubled place, difficult, dangerous, sometimes threatening. But those challenges are ones that we are better facing together. We can use diversity and sheer strength of numbers to solve problems and find better solutions.
Some of these challenges will be military, many more will be economic, the most important will be environmental. And this last will be the biggest change that ours and the next generations face. Climate change will lead to a new international landscape as energy and natural resources become more difficult and expensive to obtain. Will the smaller nations have the power to survive and thrive against the might of the biggest unions? I suspect not.

Only large unions like the EU will actually be able to effect any sort of meaningful action on Climate Change. And we must be part of this process. For the good of all humanity - and for those people in St Ives and Brighton and all those other nice coastal areas which will be under water in a hundred years if we don’t do something about the polar ice caps.

Buying and Selling
And what of trade and business? The economy simply cannot have thrive outside of the EU. The experts are near unanimous that the economy would suffer. I am going to trust the advice of the Treasury, the CBI and the Bank of England on this. International economics is way beyond my ken, but from my lay perspective, being outside of those damned EU restrictions will free us from nothing at all. Even if we can get some half-decent trade deals in the next decade, to buy from Europe will mean the products are subject to EU regulation, and the sell to the vast and lucrative Europe marketplace will mean exactly the same.
This means only nationally sourced and sold items will be free of anything at all. We’ll be surrounded by the the rules but powerless to influence them. And from what I can tell, a lot of the regulations are genuine safety concerns that are actually perfectly reasonable.

Those People…
And finally, perhaps a slightly more negative train of thought. Those Brexit leaders, Johnson, Farage, IDS and Gove. Are these the people we want to lead thought and policy in our country? The whitest, poshest, most establishment, most homogenous group of rich old men. All with a stated desire to dismantle the free NHS. The very notion of the money “saved” from the EU being spent on the NHS that they don’t want is the most absurd piece of political satire I have ever seen. These are not the people we can trust with our future. 
Is Duncan-Smith’s deliberate assault on the poor and the disabled our ethical future. Is our national ideology really that of parochial, racist thought vacuum Nigel Farage? 

Is our economy safe in the people who mislead and lie about £350 million pounds? A fact that has been crushed by just about every knowledgable person outside the Leave headquarters. Arbitrary arguments about Good Old England and The Union Flag and God Bless ‘Er an’ All Who Sail in ‘Er are all things I can handle, but these actual lies are utterly disgraceful.

Even at their best, these people hark back to an idealised vision of England that never really existed but lurks in the national psyche somewhere between The Good Life and Dad’s Army. And even if something similar did once exist, it was in a different era surrounded by a completely different environment. The world has turned, seemingly under the feet of these silly, old, white men. The rules under which the UK operated before the Common Market no longer exist.
At worst, these are cruel, proto-facist dictators with sympathies for Trump and Marine Le Pen; the very worst of hate-babbling troublemakers that create discord in order to build their own power base. Boris Johnson didn’t even believe in leaving the EU until he realised it could make him Prime Minister. He really is that lacking in political ideology or moral backbone, this whole thing is just a ****ing reality TV job interview to him.
These are political chancers whose interests are in their own agenda, not the good of our society. They seek power and control, not improvement and liberty. Each and every one of the Brexit leaders has shown themselves to be untrustworthy, self serving and at worst utterly cruel. What the hell are doing giving them such a loud voice in our country’s future?

Compare this with the legions of scientists and economists and writers and, yes, politicians that want us to Remain. A unity of Labour, half the Conservatives, all of the Lib Dems, Scottish Nationals, Plaid Cymru and the Greens is a powerful voice. Even I don’t agree with many of what those politicians say but the scientists really sway me significantly. Science doesn’t work on guesses, it’s works on testable hypotheses. The Leave hypothesis has been hammered by almost every rational scientific mind in the country. If we have to follow one group, how about the evidential thinkers and analysts - not the angry mob with no real information apart from provable lies.

The Damage
The worst part of this stupid unnecessary referendum is the division it has caused. Let’s forget the tea-towel image of a United Kingdom, that doesn’t really exist and probably never has. But now it’s worse than ever. A whole nation now riven by anger and bitterness over a question that should never have been asked! The legal and economic realities of Brexit are too unfathomably complex for us to truly comprehend, so we have been given howling hatred in place of rational debate. This is exactly the sort of decision you elect a government to take on your behalf. Cameron is being wilfully neglectful of his own responsibility by holding the referendum. (Apparently only offered as a political play to prevent more of his party defection to UKIP before the last general election.)
Whichever side you lie on the question of Europe, all this bitter hatred is depressing and repellent.
A whole nation just got radicalised and we all went along with it.
It is everything that global community and international co-operation is trying to prevent. We’ve been lied to and agitated and whipped into a fury by both sides and the true hatred is actually now Brit-vs-Brit. 
We need to calm down, and breathe, and think for ourselves. Our country is better than these lies and this divisive power play by a bunch of untrustworthy agitators.

We are better than all of this.
And we are even better when we are working with our European and Global neighbours to solve our problems. We need to think bigger than this.

This is why I can voting to #Remain, and I invite you to do the same.

[Better Day 5,766]

Just now, hmm said:

Gove could almost have his own comedy show in the UK tbf  

Considering his recent advice "don't listen to the experts" it's pretty obvious he really hates knowledge in general  

 

 

Would not trust this guy if he was the last man on earth. 

[Benji 20,113]

I wish David Cameron got some better deals before this. I still can't believe an update for garbage disposal was vetoed just because France makes our current trucks. Obviously safety and greener disposal isn't a priority when money is involved for France. 

Europe is messy as f*ck. I would happily vote out if we had an actual plan in place.

[Better Day 5,766]

4 minutes ago, Benji said:

I wish David Cameron got some better deals before this. I still can't believe an update for garbage disposal was vetoed just because France makes our current trucks. Obviously safety and greener disposal isn't a priority when money is involved for France. 

Europe is messy as f*ck. I would happily vote out if we had an actual plan in place.

I am not a supporter on Cameron - Worse Prime Minister since Thatcher but at least he tried to get a better deal. It will be a long process to reform the EU but ain't it better reforming it as one and working together rather than isolating ourselves 

[Benji 20,113]

3 minutes ago, MissRebelDolly said:

I am not a supporter on Cameron - Worse Prime Minister since Thatcher but at least he tried to get a better deal. It will be a long process to reform the EU but ain't it better reforming it as one and working together rather than isolating ourselves 

The EU is corrupt through back doors like America with oil but I suppose it's better to be "together" than alone. Personally, I'd love for there to be a revolt and for us to leave and join together with more mutual countries to create a powerful union without EU / US corruption but I doubt that would ever happen due to a conflict in interest.

The world is f*cked. Hopefully we don't all blow each other up before we reach the end of our natural lives.

[hmm 979]

10 minutes ago, MissRebelDolly said:

I am not a supporter on Cameron - Worse Prime Minister since Thatcher but at least he tried to get a better deal. It will be a long process to reform the EU but ain't it better reforming it as one and working together rather than isolating ourselves 

This, plus any Norway model of access to the single market would probably force the UK into accepting freedom of movement and a lot of EU regulations without actually having a say in either those or any eventual expansion of the union  

I've also seen comments that it would cost us each an average of £400 per year for that access (although I don't actually know if that's accurate or what it's even calculating) and considering the constant cuts and austerity measures here, alongside not having the same sovereign wealth fund of Norway (worth over $690B), oil resources and lower GDP per capita - it just wouldn't work.

According to the GINI index, the UK is the third most unequal country in the EU after Latvia and Portugal (or even most unequal depending on the sources you look at) so that would be factor into it too  

[Better Day 5,766]

1 minute ago, Benji said:

The EU is corrupt through back doors like America with oil but I suppose it's better to be "together" than alone. Personally, I'd love for there to be a revolt and for us to leave and join together with more mutual countries to create a powerful union without EU / US corruption but I doubt that would ever happen due to a conflict in interest.

The world is f*cked. Hopefully we don't all blow each other up before we reach the end of our natural lives.

I do admit the EU is not perfect. But so is Wesminister, so is the White House, so is most of the political establishments 

[Benji 20,113]

Just now, MissRebelDolly said:

I do admit the EU is not perfect. But so is Wesminister, so is the White House, so is most of the political establishments 

Agreed.

Not gonna lie, the main reason I'm voting "remain" is so if things go tits up, I can just piss of to another country in Europe with ease.