Originally posted by Ghost of a Duke
Farage has always been a non entity and will soon realize (to his dismay) that his fizz no longer has any bubbles.
The out vote was brave as a short term slump in the economy was to be expected. Scotland will settle down and will also look back to see the out vote as the right decision (though of course never admit it).
Boris is the man to help us navigate the rough seas ahead. (I'm resisting making a Churchill comparison).
The out vote was brave as a short term slump in the economy was to be expected. Scotland will settle down and will also look back to see the out vote as the right decision (though of course never admit it).
That is clearly insane.
Boris is the man to help us navigate the rough seas ahead. (I'm resisting making a Churchill comparison)
That is clearly insane.
Farage has always been a non entity and will soon realize (to his dismay) that his fizz no longer has any bubbles.
That -- I sincerely hope -- is sane (but please define 'soon'...).
there is a phenomenon that i like to term, "fraternity mentality"...
if a man sees that beer is being drunk, he too, will drink...
if that man sees chairs being tossed off the frat house, he too, will hurl furniture until arrested...
if that man sees a bonfire being lit under the broken furniture, he too, will dance naked in the firelight, until arrested...
momma called it, monkey see, monkey do...
all it takes for the snowball to gain speed rolling down the hill to become an avalanche is a push...
there is a fallout...
there are consequences for all actions...
and the reaction is gaining heat and nearly at an uncontrollable stage...
our world,
our single flat planet,
is about to burn...
Aaaaand an account of the lies, with facts and explanations plus some
diagrams for the... brilliant Brexiters --some of those lies contained in
the OP, by the way.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36641390
P.S. And a bit more of economic crisis, courtesy of the chavs...
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-36636853
Originally posted by Ghost of a DukeSorry, but though I dislike him, Farage now clearly is the most successful/important UK politician of recent decades.
Farage has always been a non entity and will soon realize (to his dismay) that his fizz no longer has any bubbles.
The out vote was brave as a short term slump in the economy was to be expected. Scotland will settle down and will also look back to see the out vote as the right decision (though of course never admit it).
Boris is the man to help us navigate the rough seas ahead. (I'm resisting making a Churchill comparison).
It was Alex Salmond, but Farage took a party and agenda that was widely dismissed as a lunatic fringe, won a national election and forced a referendum which was won.
-Removed-15% is amazing for a single issue party, especially on our first pas the post system.
And the 52% wouldn't have had the chance to vote Leave without him.
Do you really think Cameron would have offered the referendum if UKIP had carried on polling the 1-2% it was before he took over?
I believe there are three main reasons why many Britons voted to leave.
1. British politicians decided to go into the 'EU thing' decades ago without polling the British public, and the British public have felt growing disenfranchisment about it ever since. That is an issue which has little to do with the EU per se (the issue could have been almost anything else--such as a massively expensive UK space programme to land a man on Saturn's moon, Titan, or to nationalize the universities or privatize the NHS); it is much more to do with the British political system (the so-called nanny state). Remember Maggie Thatcher's downfall? The poll tax. She thought she could just ram a new tax down the taxpayers' throats, and it cost her the prime ministership.
2. There is a clear demographic divide in Britain: London, NI, and Scotland voted to stay, non-London England voted to go. That is a specifically British issue, nothing to do with the EU per se. This shows a clear dissatisfaction in the English country-side with London-centric politics. Woe to a political system which is so out of touch with its constituents.
3. There is a wide-spread feeling in Britain that Britain is being controlled from abroad (often hypostatized as 'Brussels' ). I submit, however, that Britons have already long since accepted a level of government control and intrusion by their own government which the rest of Europe would find scary and intolerable. There are more surveillance cameras in Britain than anywhere else in the world, and the intelligence services in Britain are actively monitoring all telecommunications. Britain already has all the infrastructure in place to implement a police state, and there is no written constitution limiting the power of Parliament to take the last few steps (which, no doubt, will seem expedient when the time comes). This control-freak issue too is really a specifically British issue, mistakenly projected onto 'Brussels'. Britain thinks it will recover its lost sovereignty by exiting the EU. It won't; it didn't have any sovereignty left to recover anyway. Yeah, ok, it'll be able to refuse Syrian refugees at its border. So what. Britain will still have to abide by international laws and treaties regulating exports and imports, aviation and maritime procedures, it ratified the terms of the ICC and is bound to abide by them, and all the rest of it. Thing is, it will now have to negotiate or re-validate many of those items piecemeal, whereas as an EU member it could have continued to negotiate treaties and agreements en bloc.
It is going to be a stoney road Britain (or rather, non-London England) has chosen to go down, and I expect the Scots will be the first to jump ship and hold a new referendum on Scottish independence.
For a long time I have been a supporter of the Euro concept, anything which may improve dealings between different populations seemed like a good idea after two big wars. But then, when the Eurozone became a reality, I saw a whole lot of negatives, the most significant being that it enabled political apparatchiks to keep democracy under restraint. I was occasionally reminded of George Orwell.
I suspect I'd have voted "stay" rather than "leave", but now that "leave" is actually here I can see many positives.
Australia is due to elect a new government in a week or so, and since Brexit the political tone has completely changed. The complacent "they'll vote for us if we just keep repeating a mantra or two for the rednecks" has given way to "if we do some of the things the voters want they may vote for us".
Perhaps this big change is a preview of a new democracy. I certainly hope it is.