As I was reading "well, if they couldn't be bothered to register until the last minute then they don't deserve to be able to vote" into your own words, I addresssed rhat issue. You also seem to be imagining that the (re)enfranchisement of people who otherwise missed the opportunity whilst not doing anything wrong themselves is the equivalent of stuffing voting boxes with votes from the residents of the local cemetary.
I didn't make that argument
Britons have been asking for this referendum for 45 years. The referendum is pledged by Cameron in 2013. 7th of May 2015, General Election takes place. May 27 2015, the Referendum becomes certain after the Tories win and Cameron is forced to hold his promise. 5th of January, Campaigning officially begins. 20th of February, the Referendum date is announced to take place. 5th of May 2016, regional elections take place.
What was holding any of these people from registering any time before? There were drives in every Uni to get students registered, Councillors were going door to door to make sure people were aware whether they were on the electoral register or not, there were several years in which everyone was campaigning and months still when everyone and everything was focused on the EU referendum.
And you're telling me that in addition to the people who waited until the last 2 hours of registration, the people who couldn't even be bothered to sign up on the deadline and only bothered to sign up because Whittingdale told them to? More on the media campaign later, and if you can't be asked to read any of my posts, skip to the last paragraph. There was supposed to be two weeks grace before the referendum, giving time for the Electoral Commission to adequately prepare, but the sudden Brexit lead spooked the Conservative camp so much that they no longer felt confident in their superior resources and once more resorted to changing the rules yet again to suit themselves, yet again. There's a reason why I hold these rules so seriously, because they allow for a fair referendum, otherwise you get this farcical situation where one side can set the spending limit and airtime limit of their opponents whilst using state money to far surpass the limits they set and to top it all off, make unambiguously illegal actions legal at the same time they run a media blitz which would be unambiguously illegal for the Brexit campaign to run, and utterly impossible for the Brexit campaign to plan for - given that the Brexit campaign cannot move the registration date to whenever they feel like running their campaign.
A while back up and down Canary Wharf and Westminster where great big adverts for "Gatwick, obviously." They were campaigning for a Gatwick airport expansion. Their rival Heathrow waited for the "Gatwick obviously" campaign to run out of advertising funds before launching their advertising campaign, "Heathrow, obviously." Or perhaps the other way around. I found this to be most amusing. A while later there were 20ft high Vodka murals, Vodka posters all along every ticket barrier and behind the platforms and at the bottom of the escalator, a little A4 poster warning of the dangers of alcoholism. Two rivals with different levels of wealth to draw from.
These are just commercial disputes, but it is amusing to see how they ran their campaigns.
For the Brexit vs Brexin campaigns, this has been a much more contentious issue. From the start the Grassroots Brexit campaign got fucked out of the picture and the Brexit campaign was already at a half foot because the likes of Goldman Sachs, CitiGroup and Morgan Stanley were throwing vast sums of money at the pro-EU campaign in a bid to keep their deregulated window into Europe open, doing so before donations had to be declared. Pro-EU Charities and Universities were able to throw their voice in with great sums of the EU's grants at their back, with aforementioned money having come from British taxes in the first place - and there are no legal limits on this spending because they're not a part of the Remain campaign. That all of our highest posts of office are held by pro-EU Oxbridge alumni and that we've had the option of voting in pro-EU Oxbridge alumni or pro-EU Oxbridge alumni from the left or right wing Oxbridge alumni since William fucking Hague 15 years ago is just icing on the cake.
Whatever, right? That just comes with the territory of trying to work against the most powerful and wealthiest people in your government and the government above your government and many of the corporations and banks based in London. No one thought it'd be easy unless they were naive or drunk and if one side clearly has superior resources and connections, it only makes sense for them to use them.
Then things get worse from there.
The vodka people vs the anti-alcoholism people, that is a simple case of a giant stepping on a bug. The whole thing with Heathrow vs Gatwick, that is a case of two near-equals with one being shrewder than the other. But we have this curious thing where under Cameron's leadership, he made the state pro-EU. He damn well nearly forced Tory ministers to all be pro-EU under collective responsibility and was only forced to suspend collective responsibility after senior Tories and Frontbenchers threatened to resign en masse and paralyze the Tory leadership if they weren't allowed to take sides. Cameron finally says all MPs will be allowed to support Brexit, but only after renegotiations with the EU take place. For a month and a half pro-UK MPs are forced to remain silent or amicable to the EU in public, leaving 4 months to campaign. When it came to selecting the Campaigns to represent Brexit and Brexin, there was only one choice for Brexin, and the grassroots Brexit campaign lost to Vote Leave, with both campaigns getting one free postal leaflet sent to every house at State expense, TV broadcasting privileges, a state grant and a £7m spending limit. That is of course, ignoring private support, or that time where £9.3m on a pro-EU leaflet and internet campaign sending 27 million glossy 16-page leaflets to every household in Britain completely outside of the legal bounds of their Brexin campaign (not being a part of it at all) or without spending a single penny of the Brexin chest (being entirely funded by the state, because George Osborne is pro-EU). Outspending the entire Brexit campaign on leaflets without spending a single penny of theirs whilst the Brexit campaign is legally constrained. Nope, no trends here. Then we finally get to this wonderful day, where the Brexin campaign is capable of launching a media blitz after voting registration ends, because surprise surprise, they can just change the voting registration deadline to open a window in which no Brexit campaign is campaigning (and indeed, why would they be so foolish as to believe the deadline was a deadline) to keep things fair and balanced by registering the demographic most likely to vote-EU in an environment in which only pro-EU campaigns are running, all made legal after the action has already commenced because I suppose that's how law works now. Brexit campaigns were running on the information that that the registration ended on the deadline, Brexin campaigns were running through two days after where the registration deadline was helpfully moved.
If the situations were reversed and these were actions done by a Eurosceptic PM, a Brexit victory would be able to legally be challenged and its result overturned or a second referendum called.
Bolded is the question
Britons have been asking for this referendum for 45 years. The referendum is pledged by Cameron in 2013. 7th of May 2015, General Election takes place. May 27 2015, the Referendum becomes certain after the Tories win and Cameron is forced to hold his promise. 5th of January, Campaigning officially begins. 20th of February, the Referendum date is announced to take place. 5th of May 2016, regional elections take place.
What was holding any of these people from registering any time before? There were drives in every Uni to get students registered, Councillors were going door to door to make sure people were aware whether they were on the electoral register or not, there were several years in which everyone was campaigning and months still when everyone and everything was focused on the EU referendum.
And you're telling me that in addition to the people who waited until the last 2 hours of registration, the people who couldn't even be bothered to sign up on the deadline and only bothered to sign up because Whittingdale told them to? More on the media campaign later, and if you can't be asked to read any of my posts, skip to the last paragraph. There was supposed to be two weeks grace before the referendum, giving time for the Electoral Commission to adequately prepare, but the sudden Brexit lead spooked the Conservative camp so much that they no longer felt confident in their superior resources and once more resorted to changing the rules yet again to suit themselves, yet again. There's a reason why I hold these rules so seriously, because they allow for a fair referendum, otherwise you get this farcical situation where one side can set the spending limit and airtime limit of their opponents whilst using state money to far surpass the limits they set and to top it all off, make unambiguously illegal actions legal at the same time they run a media blitz which would be unambiguously illegal for the Brexit campaign to run, and utterly impossible for the Brexit campaign to plan for - given that the Brexit campaign cannot move the registration date to whenever they feel like running their campaign.
A while back up and down Canary Wharf and Westminster where great big adverts for "Gatwick, obviously." They were campaigning for a Gatwick airport expansion. Their rival Heathrow waited for the "Gatwick obviously" campaign to run out of advertising funds before launching their advertising campaign, "Heathrow, obviously." Or perhaps the other way around. I found this to be most amusing. A while later there were 20ft high Vodka murals, Vodka posters all along every ticket barrier and behind the platforms and at the bottom of the escalator, a little A4 poster warning of the dangers of alcoholism. Two rivals with different levels of wealth to draw from.
These are just commercial disputes, but it is amusing to see how they ran their campaigns.
For the Brexit vs Brexin campaigns, this has been a much more contentious issue. From the start the Grassroots Brexit campaign got fucked out of the picture and the Brexit campaign was already at a half foot because the likes of Goldman Sachs, CitiGroup and Morgan Stanley were throwing vast sums of money at the pro-EU campaign in a bid to keep their deregulated window into Europe open, doing so before donations had to be declared. Pro-EU Charities and Universities were able to throw their voice in with great sums of the EU's grants at their back, with aforementioned money having come from British taxes in the first place - and there are no legal limits on this spending because they're not a part of the Remain campaign. That all of our highest posts of office are held by pro-EU Oxbridge alumni and that we've had the option of voting in pro-EU Oxbridge alumni or pro-EU Oxbridge alumni from the left or right wing Oxbridge alumni since William fucking Hague 15 years ago is just icing on the cake.
Whatever, right? That just comes with the territory of trying to work against the most powerful and wealthiest people in your government and the government above your government and many of the corporations and banks based in London. No one thought it'd be easy unless they were naive or drunk and if one side clearly has superior resources and connections, it only makes sense for them to use them.
Then things get worse from there.
The vodka people vs the anti-alcoholism people, that is a simple case of a giant stepping on a bug. The whole thing with Heathrow vs Gatwick, that is a case of two near-equals with one being shrewder than the other. But we have this curious thing where under Cameron's leadership, he made the state pro-EU. He damn well nearly forced Tory ministers to all be pro-EU under collective responsibility and was only forced to suspend collective responsibility after senior Tories and Frontbenchers threatened to resign en masse and paralyze the Tory leadership if they weren't allowed to take sides. Cameron finally says all MPs will be allowed to support Brexit, but only after renegotiations with the EU take place. For a month and a half pro-UK MPs are forced to remain silent or amicable to the EU in public, leaving 4 months to campaign. When it came to selecting the Campaigns to represent Brexit and Brexin, there was only one choice for Brexin, and the grassroots Brexit campaign lost to Vote Leave, with both campaigns getting one free postal leaflet sent to every house at State expense, TV broadcasting privileges, a state grant and a £7m spending limit. That is of course, ignoring private support, or that time where £9.3m on a pro-EU leaflet and internet campaign sending 27 million glossy 16-page leaflets to every household in Britain completely outside of the legal bounds of their Brexin campaign (not being a part of it at all) or without spending a single penny of the Brexin chest (being entirely funded by the state, because George Osborne is pro-EU). Outspending the entire Brexit campaign on leaflets without spending a single penny of theirs whilst the Brexit campaign is legally constrained. Nope, no trends here. Then we finally get to this wonderful day, where the Brexin campaign is capable of launching a media blitz after voting registration ends, because surprise surprise, they can just change the voting registration deadline to open a window in which no Brexit campaign is campaigning (and indeed, why would they be so foolish as to believe the deadline was a deadline) to keep things fair and balanced by registering the demographic most likely to vote-EU in an environment in which only pro-EU campaigns are running, all made legal after the action has already commenced because I suppose that's how law works now. Brexit campaigns were running on the information that that the registration ended on the deadline, Brexin campaigns were running through two days after where the registration deadline was helpfully moved.
If the situations were reversed and these were actions done by a Eurosceptic PM, a Brexit victory would be able to legally be challenged and its result overturned or a second referendum called.
Bolded is the argument
If this last minute action has then to be looked at in the event of a close Remain victory, imagine if it had not been done and it had been a close Leave victory. Just as valid grounds for a legal challenge by those who ultimately think they most lost out (should they even need it). And better to make things right than to go the way of a 'hanging chads' debacle.
The grounds are not just as valid, given that what was illegal had to be made legal whilst doing it, two hours with less people is not the same as two days with more amidst a unipolar media blitz. The two are comparable, but in your hypothetical there is no legal ground to stand on, just as Zac Goldsmith was fucked when technical difficulties wiped out his safe seats and guaranteed Sadiq Khan victory
Minor was perhaps not the right word, but the point you missed was that it's just one issue amongst many.
No point was missed Starver, because you didn't make that point. Was not just "perhaps", it was the entirely wrong phrase - please, for the sake of clarity, actually try to describe what you believe in in terms of what you actually believe in :
P
No one is claiming Brexit is the only issue in the world. The point of a major issue is that it is of higher significance than say, soap tariffs. No one will say soap tariffs are to be ignored without peril, as they are significant. But at the same time no one is going to say soap tariffs matter more than the fundamental destiny of the state, sovereignty, country and the first supranational state. Reread what Dorsidorf said - the most important issue the UK public has ever voted on, Dorsidorf did nto say it is the only issue the UK public has ever voted on.
I don't think I ever boiled it down to just money, that's just one of the things involved, but not the only one. I believe you're taking my recent "damaging to the UK and EU" as meaning financially when I equally (if not more) mean reputation, worldwide political clout, etc. If Europe (and UK) is getting clobbered by China/US/Russia/etc right now, by whatever measure, a visibly weakened EU and the exosed hermit crab in transition that is the UK are both going to have difficulties. But, yes, there's been strong information that the UK's triple-A credit rating could be downgraded upon Brexit. Or stated intention to Brexit.
1. No, no, I'm not taking your notion of damage to merely be financial - which is why I reckoned you weren't pecuniary in nature :
P Thanks greatly for elaborating
2. Reputation is an idle and most false imposition, oft got without merit and lost without deserving. Surrendering our own ability to conduct our own negotiations, the EU asking for our seat on the Security Council, the EU moving towards a common foreign policy? I'm willing to sacrifice private banks' ability to access European markets without obeying their local regulations if it means actually maintaining worldwide political influence.
Why do we want to lose all these diplomatic relations lolSince the Treaty of Lisbon the Commission's gained a true diplomatic corps and foreign office and already the foreign offices of the other Yuros besides the big three are useless vestigial things - ambassadors go to the big three if they want something done in Sweden ;
D
The question I then think of is how long that situation will last. I'd have to see political reform in the EU tend towards national democracy and not further integration, but there's not been a single EU Pres. who's not said integration is the name of the game. Bit out of luck then
I don't know where you got the idea from that we're being clobbered by the USA, China or Russia. Europe is threatened by the USA and China and scared of Russia but we're not the protectionists of Europe, we're the lolberal merchants of the British Isles. Chinese value is welcome, American value very very welcome, Russian value warily accepted and British troops garrisoned in Poland. I think it would be most amusing to see European workers have the TTIP brought to them by the EU, but I'd much prefer British free trade deals that actually promote free trade.
And I really want to stop this shit. It's not right for a larger business to be able to wipe out smaller competitors merely by putting up regulatory
barriers through their m8s :P
I honestly don't know how it will go. With the right leadership (none of which can I see in the offing) perhaps we can' rebuild the Empire' on the back of Brexit. Not in any traditional sense. Colonialism is dead, unless new beaches can be found that yet remain undiscovered (save for by the natives, who don't count) to plant flags on. A 'new Industrial Revolution' seems unlikely, in the current circumstances, with both the Colonies and the Orient doing moat new things on grander scales than ourselves. Militarily, we're not likely to be able (or be wanted to!) dominate any theatre not already under our own remit (and, depending on your desired metric, US/China/etc probably outguns us).
Jesus fucking Christ m8, it's the current year not the 19th century
I don't know about you, but I really don't need world domination to be content in life
Bloody hell, I don't even want to dominate Europe, I'd much rather let the Germans and French do that
Our colonies were founded on the principle that raiding Spanish galleons wasn't as profitable as taking over / establishing sugar plantations, but now we can just buy sugar without using slave labour and global Empire and all that. There's no need. Protecting textiles, oh we just buy those now. Tea? No more opium wars, we just buy that now. Raw materials? Free trade, yada yada yada. Naval coal depots? For nuclear warships, we're not all that concerned xD
Venturing outside the theatres already under our remit is a desirable idea, that's a whole lot of cost to gain control over things we already have, likely to result in many people dead for no reason. I think this is undesirable ;
D
My guess is the next two big things will be massive commercial industrial automation and space exploitation and as always, services. I don't think innovation is going to be a big issue for as long as we stop our youth thinking themselves incapable or useless and our intelligent shakers don't become useless neets, fortunately we have avoided the latter case of Japan but we're still in much peril in the former. It is astounding to me how any young Briton thinks the EU commands trade through the pen, rather than the toil of British merchants making British trade
It is altogether troubling if British workers continue to lose what was once one of the world's greatest work ethics. Hopefully that's just me being overly cautious, but of course I don't like taking chances when the stakes are this high.
The perfect storm that made Great Britain great, originally, just doesn't seem to be blowing in the same direction any more. So much so that having cast off from Europe the (already on-the-cusp, not that long ago!) fragmentation of Great Britain is even on the cards. It may not happen if the EU shatters, first, but then it's anybody's guess what happens. Certainly well beyond my pay-grade.
Don't do the same thing expecting the same results when the environment has changed considerably in the last 200 years, thus I support continual support for innovation (what an odd phrase, that). We have the world's largest financial sector so we're doing plenty in that regard, but a rather valid criticism I find is that the benefits for such finances do not always do much for ordinary Britons. We're world-leading in loads of shit like pharmacy and medicine, creative industries, aerospace, one thing I do find particularly odd though is we have a tendency of inventing great things and then letting our neighbours use them whilst trying to rake patent money off them. Seems like if British kids believed in themselves we could get a lot more done xD
And fuck the European Patent Office,
that shit is fuckedThey're a minor issue, the EU is a bigger one for the time being
I must also admit, the armchair general stuff is especially fascinating to me. Especially when it comes to why we even bother to maintain a navy most bleu :]
I know that word. I even know why Brussels (interesting, if irrelevant) but I'm not sure what that has to do with what I said or was replying to. Looks like I am failing to understand you a lot.
There is indeed a great deal of confusion then! I thought you believed my criticisms were solely limited to the institutions headquartered in Brussels, given that you found it jarring when I talked of corporations
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Topic: Breeki British Brexit thread (Read 155587 times)