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HAThe advantages are there in today's report. Something between £200bn and £1trn extra economic growth over the next 15 years. It's blindingly obvious.
The latest news confirms what BST has been banging on about for months.ALL options for leaving the EU range from bad to disasterous.We need another vote when hopefully the electorate will come to their senses and overturn the 2016 debacle.
HoundThat's precisely the point. There IS no Brexit deal which combines:1) Us leaving the EU2) Us being economically no worse off 3) EU acceptance. Those three things are mutually incompatible. That was clear from before the referendum, but Leave voters were promised some magical world in which inconvenient facts like that evaporated.
If we vote Leave in full knowledge of the real consequences, not the bullshit that was spun in 2016, then I for one would accept that as the decision of the country.
We'd be economically hammered. But we'd have made the decision in the full knowledge that we'd be economically hammered. If people choose to leave the EU in the knowledge of what the consequences will be, that's democracy.
There's only one person responsible for this whole sorry mess, and that's David Cameron; he called an unnecessary referendum to fuel his own ego, because he was certain that Remain would win; when the result went against him, he just turned round and f*cked off.There will be another vote, and Remain will win. Then just wait for the water cannons.
Which is why the referendum should be a 3-option one with a transferrable vote.Do you want to:a)Leave with No Dealb) Leave with May's Dealc) RemainYou put a 1 by your first choice and a 2 by your second. All the 1s are added up and the option in third place rejected. Then all the people who voted 1 for the third placed option have their "2" votes reallocated to the other two options. Whichever one of those then wins is the final decision, to be implemented by Parliament. THAT is democracy. It's easy and unambiguous.
Quote from: scawsby steve on November 28, 2018, 08:36:25 pmThere's only one person responsible for this whole sorry mess, and that's David Cameron; he called an unnecessary referendum to fuel his own ego, because he was certain that Remain would win; when the result went against him, he just turned round and f*cked off.There will be another vote, and Remain will win. Then just wait for the water cannons.That is (the Cameron thing) quite true Steve.I wouldn’t be too sure that Remain will win though mate.I thought that last time.BST says that all remainders should get up and vote but don’t forget that the leave campaigners will be telling people to get up and vote leave.It will probably be quite a big turnout this time instead of the apathetic one last time.
Politically, there is the historical fact that Europe (including the UK) has been a horrifically dangerous place when nations are in opposition. The whole purpose of the European project has been to make people realise that jaw-jaw is better than war-war. Working and trading together, and ceding a bit of your right to act as you damn well please is a better environment than trying to do down your neighbours. Then there's the other point that I've pointed out numerous times. Democracy is not a given. Within living memory, the following countries have been ruled by dictatorships. FranceSpainPortugalItalyCroatiaSloveniaAustriaGermanyBelgiumNetherlandsDenmarkPolandHungaryLithuaniaLatviaEstoniaBulgariaRomaniaGreece. The following countries have experienced military invasion or civil war within living memory.UKSpainFranceItalyAustriaGermanyNetherlandsBelgiumDenmarkPolandLithuaniaLatviaEstoniaCroatiaSloveniaRomaniaBulgariaHungaryGreeceCyprusIt is currently unthinkable for most of those countries to go back to dictatorships and a major part of that is the requirements of the EU. I don't want to live in a continent where democracy is weak and countries fight with each other.
Quote from: drfchound on November 28, 2018, 08:40:54 pmQuote from: scawsby steve on November 28, 2018, 08:36:25 pmThere's only one person responsible for this whole sorry mess, and that's David Cameron; he called an unnecessary referendum to fuel his own ego, because he was certain that Remain would win; when the result went against him, he just turned round and f*cked off.There will be another vote, and Remain will win. Then just wait for the water cannons.That is (the Cameron thing) quite true Steve.I wouldn’t be too sure that Remain will win though mate.I thought that last time.BST says that all remainders should get up and vote but don’t forget that the leave campaigners will be telling people to get up and vote leave.It will probably be quite a big turnout this time instead of the apathetic one last time.I might be completely wrong here Hound, but wasn't there a high turnout for the referendum?.
HAYour argument is getting confused. You're setting up straw men. 1) No-one said that the original Treaty of Rome countries were straining at the leash to go to war between 45 and 57. The cementing of the countries into a union was always intended to make it much less likely over the long run that they would go to war. 2) The countries of Yugoslavia weren't in the EU when they disintegrated into civil war. That is kind of the point. It is inconceivable now that Croatia would go to war with Serbia or Bosnia, because the EU would act as a restraining force. 3) Look at how recent democracy is to many European countries. Greece, Spain and Portugal were ruled by fascist military dictatorships only a decade or less before they joined the EU. NATO membership didn't stop that. A reversion to that condition now is unthinkable, again, because the EU demands democratic systems. 4) The Cold War ended nearly 30 years ago. So the idea that the stand-off between NATO and the WP was the guarantor of peace is a bit out of date.There's been three decades of post Cold War peace in Western Europe. No fighting. No revolutions. No military coups. Not only that, but it's nigh in inconceivable that fighting will recommence in the medium term future. Look back through history at how rarely we've had periods of peace and stability of half a century in Western Europe. It's obtuse not to give a great deal of the credit for that to the binding together of countries that the EU has facilitated.
HAYou were asking for a positive political message about the EU, so if you don't mind, I'm going to stick on topic and not get sidetracked into the much broader question of political influence. There were brutal civil wars in Yugoslavia and (to a lesser extent) Cyprus in the second half of the 20th century. None of the participants were in the EU at the time. NATO existed and its existence did nothing to prevent those wars from occuring. My point is that it is inconceivable that there would be civil wars or Inter-country wars in or between countries that ARE NOW members of the EU. Similarly, the presence of NATO forces in Europe and the discipline of the Cold War did nothing to stop the Iberian peninsula being governed by fascist dictators up to the 1970s. Nor did it prevent a military coup d'etat in Greece. It is inconceivable that any EU country would now see democracy collapse(*), and that is in large part due to discipline that membership of the EU imposes. It's one obvious reason why Turkey under Erdogan will never join the EU, despite the bald lies that the Leave campaign quietly pumped into vulnerable people's social media feeds in 2016. And none of that covers the two FAR bigger issues. That the really dangerous historical fault lines in Europe have been between UK, France, Germany and Russia. The EU (and NATO, of course) has been instrumental in binding three if those together against the changing threat of the fourth. Why do you think Putin has invested so much time, money and effort in supporting anti-EU forces in the UK, France, Hungary, Poland, Italy...That final point is the overwhelming political positive of the EU.
One of the things I heard this morning, on the news, is that some MPs are planning to abstain in the vote or even be absent from Parliament on the day of the vote.WTF is that all about?Surely they are elected to add their weight to such decisions, not dodge them.