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Passporting rights might be on the table if and when we can get into the trade talks. Given our soon to be set in law deadline of March 29th 2019 for leaving the EU whatever happens, we need to clear the three hurdles of the Irish Border, Citizens' Rights and the divorce bill in the next few weeks, so that we can get to the trade talks.

We can agree on a divorce bill, but not a penny should be handed over until a deal on trade has also been reached.

Otherwise, whats to stop the EU from taking our money, then offering us a crap trade deal? We'd have lost our leverage.

Rumours are that May has been softening about ECJ oversight.

I don't think passporting rights will fit into any deal. EU are currently leaning towards imitating the Canada model as far as I can tell.

I think passporting will be tied to the 4 freedoms, and I can't see why the EU would give us it otherwise since France and Germany have made it clear they want our banking industry (who wouldn't? It all but prints money).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

We can agree on a divorce bill, but not a penny should be handed over until a deal on trade has also been reached.

But we agreed to settle the divorce bill first, and it's 100% unrelated to the trade deal.

Otherwise, whats to stop the EU from taking our money, then offering us a crap trade deal? We'd have lost our leverage.

We have no leverage.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

Passporting rights might be on the table if and when we can get into the trade talks. Given our soon to be set in law deadline of March 29th 2019 for leaving the EU whatever happens, we need to clear the three hurdles of the Irish Border, Citizens' Rights and the divorce bill in the next few weeks, so that we can get to the trade talks.

We can agree on a divorce bill, but not a penny should be handed over until a deal on trade has also been reached.

Otherwise, whats to stop the EU from taking our money, then offering us a crap trade deal? We'd have lost our leverage.

The money will be paid over several years.

@whirlwind and everybody else.

By now, we all know where we stand on certain political issues, and it's rare for us to unanimously agree on anything, but I can safely say that we're all in complete agreement over the following points:

A hardcore of Euro-skeptic opinion has existed in the UK since the 1970s, with many of the leading figures over the years being MPs.

British newspapers like the Mail and the Telegraph have been putting the boot into Brussels for decades.

There is a in-built historical suspicion of Europe, in particular of the French and the Germans, built into the nation's psyche, for a lot of people, but not everybody.

A lot of elderly people voted Brexit, and generally, elderly people tend not to be on facebook and twitter. (I'm not personally). Of course there is always exceptions.


Given the above points, where is all this horsegak coming from about Russian involvement? It's concentrated horsegak.

Whirlwind highlights undecided voters being swayed, and yeah, if Leave had won by a narrow margin, say, 100,000 votes, he'd have a point.

But leave won by more than a million votes.

The Russians are a convenient scapegoat for the West's ills these days.

A 52-48 split IS a narrow win.

..... this would be the taking back control yeah ?

Laws regarding financial spending and donations be damned, apparently.




meanwhile.....

https://www.ft.com/content/89bf6606-ce83-11e7-b781-794ce08b24dc



... how is this man still in his job ?

:

 reds8n wrote:
... how is this man still in his job ?

:

Because May is weak. Obviously.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

Given the above points, where is all this horsegak coming from about Russian involvement? It's concentrated horsegak.

It's still true, though.

Whirlwind highlights undecided voters being swayed, and yeah, if Leave had won by a narrow margin, say, 100,000 votes, he'd have a point.

Leave won with a 1.9% majority, statistically speaking you can't get much narrower. Russia might not have caused all of it but they could have skewed things by some small fraction.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
A 52-48 split IS a narrow win.

This is one of those rare occasions I agree with you - it is a narrow win, but where's the evidence that the Russians swung the vote?

All I'm getting is smoke and mirrors.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Herzlos wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

Given the above points, where is all this horsegak coming from about Russian involvement? It's concentrated horsegak.

It's still true, though.

Whirlwind highlights undecided voters being swayed, and yeah, if Leave had won by a narrow margin, say, 100,000 votes, he'd have a point.

Leave won with a 1.9% majority, statistically speaking you can't get much narrower. Russia might not have caused all of it but they could have skewed things by some small fraction.

People are always asking me to provide evidence, so I'm turning the tables here: where is the evidence that Russia swung the Brexit vote for Leave?

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
A 52-48 split IS a narrow win.

This is one of those rare occasions I agree with you - it is a narrow win, but where's the evidence that the Russians swung the vote?

Ehm...

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:


Whirlwind highlights undecided voters being swayed, and yeah, if Leave had won by a narrow margin, say, 100,000 votes, he'd have a point.

But leave won by more than a million votes.

Make up your mind.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

People are always asking me to provide evidence, so I'm turning the tables here: where is the evidence that Russia swung the Brexit vote for Leave?

The adverts, paid for by the russian companies in russian currency were pro-leave.

Plus, why would Russia want us to remain? I assume their end goal is reduced stability in NATO nations, and Brexit has done just that.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
A 52-48 split IS a narrow win.

This is one of those rare occasions I agree with you - it is a narrow win, but where's the evidence that the Russians swung the vote?

Ehm...

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:


Whirlwind highlights undecided voters being swayed, and yeah, if Leave had won by a narrow margin, say, 100,000 votes, he'd have a point.

But leave won by more than a million votes.

Make up your mind.

Just because I highlighted a point made by Whirlwind, doesn't mean I agree with it.

Whenever I make a claim, the usual response from you is to get me to provide 100 sources and a write a PHD thesis to back up my claim.

So again, sir, I ask you to provide evidence for Russian involvement swinging the Brexit vote for leave.

You can't have it both ways


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Herzlos wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

People are always asking me to provide evidence, so I'm turning the tables here: where is the evidence that Russia swung the Brexit vote for Leave?

The adverts, paid for by the russian companies in russian currency were pro-leave.

Plus, why would Russia want us to remain? I assume their end goal is reduced stability in NATO nations, and Brexit has done just that.

Britain is still in NATO, and only this morning, Bojo reiterated Britain's support for Eastern European nations.

If, and it's a big if, the Russian plan was to destabilise NATO, then it's fallen flat on its face.

I'm not convinced for a minute that the Russians swung the Brexit vote

but as always, I'm not afraid to put up my hand and admit I was wrong, should it be proven otherwise.

If genuine, diamond hard, black and white evidence of Russian involvement swinging the Brexit vote appears, then I'll be the first to admit my mistake and condemn the Russians.

I'll show you evidence once you show where anyone has actually claimed that Russia swung the vote. It's not the last 10 pages of this thread, at any rate.

Plus, you claimed that Brexit didn't win by a narrow margin only to then swing around and claim the complete opposite in your next post, hence me asking you to make up your mind.

The Russian plan broadly is to destabilise the West, and it is having some success. They have also been implicated in the US election and the recent trouble in Catalonia.

It's impossible to give "legal" evidence for the effect of Russian trolling, because it has been developed by GCHQ, the CIA and so on, and they aren't going to reveal their secrets. It's also impossible to believe that it had no effect whatsoever. Could it have swung the vote by 1%? Who can say? I don't think that means it should be ignored.

Of course, the Leave campaign is now under investigation by the Electoral Commission for violations of the funding rules, which is another reason to lack confidence in the reliability of the result.

To get back to Bozo, though, he is one of the reasons why the UK candidate for judge in the World Court failed to be elected.

1. The man in question was part of Blair's efforts to "legalitize" the invasion of Iraq.
2. The UK no longer can automatically count on the good will and support of EU countries.
3. Bozo has spent the past 18 months making British diplomacy a hissing and a by-word.

In general this is evidence of the UK's slide down the international pecking order.

Bad news for reds8n

CBI says that British manufacturing order books are at their highest for 30 years

You'll remember that the CBI have been pro-EU for years, and wanted Britain in the Euro, so you hardly call this fake news.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/nov/21/uk-manufacturing-order-books-strongest-level-since-1988-cbi-says

The benefits of Brexit are merging day by day. Let the good times roll

As the article says, and I quote: "Global demand for British goods"

I'll drink to that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
The Russian plan broadly is to destabilise the West, and it is having some success. They have also been implicated in the US election and the recent trouble in Catalonia.

It's impossible to give "legal" evidence for the effect of Russian trolling, because it has been developed by GCHQ, the CIA and so on, and they aren't going to reveal their secrets. It's also impossible to believe that it had no effect whatsoever. Could it have swung the vote by 1%? Who can say? I don't think that means it should be ignored.

Of course, the Leave campaign is now under investigation by the Electoral Commission for violations of the funding rules, which is another reason to lack confidence in the reliability of the result.

To get back to Bozo, though, he is one of the reasons why the UK candidate for judge in the World Court failed to be elected.

1. The man in question was part of Blair's efforts to "legalitize" the invasion of Iraq.
2. The UK no longer can automatically count on the good will and support of EU countries.
3. Bozo has spent the past 18 months making British diplomacy a hissing and a by-word.

In general this is evidence of the UK's slide down the international pecking order.

Electoral commission? When you consider the whitewash investigation they did concerning the Conservatives and the 2015 GE, I doubt if anybody at Vote Leave is losing sleep over this.

The EC is a toothless tiger these days, sadly.

Russian businesses paid for Brexit related adverts on facebook and even paid in Rubles. They didn't do it for the lulz. Bear in mind the margin here is so thin that they could have swung it by passing even more disinformation.

Isn't that what all of the intelligence services do - the West certainly did it in Central and South America as well as Europe. I always thought it was part of their job.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
A 52-48 split IS a narrow win.

This is one of those rare occasions I agree with you - it is a narrow win, but where's the evidence that the Russians swung the vote?

All I'm getting is smoke and mirrors.

To be fair, without trying to say whether they had any impact or not, that's the point. The Russian doctrine of late has been to create confusion and distrust and undermine the very idea that there is any truth. They're not looking to press "Russia Good", rather "You cant trust anything, nothing is true, go with your gut however crazy that may be".

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
A 52-48 split IS a narrow win.

This is one of those rare occasions I agree with you - it is a narrow win, but where's the evidence that the Russians swung the vote?

All I'm getting is smoke and mirrors.

To be fair, without trying to say whether they had any impact or not, that's the point. The Russian doctrine of late has been to create confusion and distrust and undermine the very idea that there is any truth. They're not looking to press "Russia Good", rather "You cant trust anything, nothing is true, go with your gut however crazy that may be".

We don't need the Russians to create confusion and distrust - we're perfectly capable of doing that ourselves!

I don't know how closely you follow British politics, but believe me, in the last 10 years, there have been some really bad feth ups, and there wasn't a Russian within 100 miles when these happened.

British history is full of feth ups. Here's a historic example: I'm reading about Operation Battle Axe in 1941. So who do the British appoint as ground commander to command this vitally important armoured battle against the Afrika Korps? An infantryman who's never commanded an armoured force before in his life...

This is Britain: we invented incompetence and made it into an art form!

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:


but as always, I'm not afraid to put up my hand and admit I was wrong, should it be proven otherwise.

You get proven wrong on a regular basis on here and have never once admitted it, so I'm not going to waste the effort this time; no evidence will be sufficient for you, and that's fine.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
A 52-48 split IS a narrow win.

This is one of those rare occasions I agree with you - it is a narrow win, but where's the evidence that the Russians swung the vote?

All I'm getting is smoke and mirrors.

To be fair, without trying to say whether they had any impact or not, that's the point. The Russian doctrine of late has been to create confusion and distrust and undermine the very idea that there is any truth. They're not looking to press "Russia Good", rather "You cant trust anything, nothing is true, go with your gut however crazy that may be".

We don't need the Russians to create confusion and distrust - we're perfectly capable of doing that ourselves!

I don't know how closely you follow British politics, but believe me, in the last 10 years, there have been some really bad feth ups, and there wasn't a Russian within 100 miles when these happened.

You know those spivs that you so despise? How much of what they've wrought was made possible because Russian capital was invested in the UK? There's significant investments in London by Russian oligarchs, no?

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
Bad news for reds8n

CBI says that British manufacturing order books are at their highest for 30 years

You'll remember that the CBI have been pro-EU for years, and wanted Britain in the Euro, so you hardly call this fake news.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/nov/21/uk-manufacturing-order-books-strongest-level-since-1988-cbi-says

The benefits of Brexit are merging day by day. Let the good times roll

As the article says, and I quote: "Global demand for British goods"

I'll drink to that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
The Russian plan broadly is to destabilise the West, and it is having some success. They have also been implicated in the US election and the recent trouble in Catalonia.

It's impossible to give "legal" evidence for the effect of Russian trolling, because it has been developed by GCHQ, the CIA and so on, and they aren't going to reveal their secrets. It's also impossible to believe that it had no effect whatsoever. Could it have swung the vote by 1%? Who can say? I don't think that means it should be ignored.

Of course, the Leave campaign is now under investigation by the Electoral Commission for violations of the funding rules, which is another reason to lack confidence in the reliability of the result.

To get back to Bozo, though, he is one of the reasons why the UK candidate for judge in the World Court failed to be elected.

1. The man in question was part of Blair's efforts to "legalitize" the invasion of Iraq.
2. The UK no longer can automatically count on the good will and support of EU countries.
3. Bozo has spent the past 18 months making British diplomacy a hissing and a by-word.

In general this is evidence of the UK's slide down the international pecking order.

Electoral commission? When you consider the whitewash investigation they did concerning the Conservatives and the 2015 GE, I doubt if anybody at Vote Leave is losing sleep over this.

The EC is a toothless tiger these days, sadly.

I appreciate you probably don't have a degree in business. That said, you do come out with some rather nonsensical statements at times, in your enthusiasm for the destruction of the EU and the UK..

How can full order books be a result of Brexit when Brexit hasn't happened? How can full order books in 1988 be a result of the prospect of Brexit when the referendum was 30 years away?

It's obviously complete rubbish. There are other reasons. What are they?

1. The sharp fall in the foreign exchange value of the pound is a boost to exports. Unfortunately, it is a bonus that contains the seeds of its own downfall, since foreigners need to buy £ to pay for their extra orders, and this naturally tends to drive up the foreign exchange value of the £.

2. Order books are full because Britain has a serious productivity problem, which makes the size of the order books smaller than they could have been. This is partly a result of the referendum and subsequent arseing around, which have made business reluctant to invest. To be fair, British businesses have always been bad at investing, it's just become worse in the past 18 months.

And other factors.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:


Whirlwind highlights undecided voters being swayed, and yeah, if Leave had won by a narrow margin, say, 100,000 votes, he'd have a point.

But leave won by more than a million votes.

The Russians are a convenient scapegoat for the West's ills these days.

The figure is actually 634,750 votes swayed the result. You are making a classic mistake because the figures are in percentages that you are considering things out of 100%. However it is actually out of 50%. This is because for each person that changes their opinion that is in effect a net effect of '2' In the percentage figures. It is in a sense the same as a '6-pointer' game in football where if a team loses they effectively lose 3 points to the opposition, but the opposition also gains 3 points on the loser. The same goes here. To have changed the result you only needed 635,000 people to vote in the opposite way and you would have had a completely different result. That's not an unreasonable number of people to 'persuade' given that the number of undecided going into election day was running to much larger figures than this.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

People are always asking me to provide evidence, so I'm turning the tables here: where is the evidence that Russia swung the Brexit vote for Leave?

This is a fair request.

There was research done by Swansea and University of California titled "Social media, sentimentality and public opinions: Evidence from #Brexit and #USElection". A summary can be found here:-

https://chicagoinformationtechnology.wordpress.com/2017/11/16/study-russian-twitter-bots-sent-45k-brexit-tweets-close-to-vote/

Additionally the University of Edinburgh found active twitter accounts that linked directly back to the Russian Internet Research Agency

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-latest-russian-twitter-accounts-eu-independence-referendum-tweets-influence-result-a8055746.html

a much shorter summary can be found here:-

http://www.itv.com/news/2017-11-15/twitter-russia-bots-brexit/

Some 45,000 messages about Brexit were posted from Russian Twitter accounts in 48 hours during last year's referendum, a report in The Times reveals.
Researchers at Swansea University and the University of California, Berkeley found 150,000 accounts based in Russia that switched their focus to Brexit around the vote, with many of the messages coming from automated accounts, or bots.
The newspaper said many of the tweets pushed voters to leave the EU, though some favoured Remain.
Meanwhile, research from the University of Edinburgh has revealed more than 400 Twitter accounts run from a Russian propaganda unit posted tweets about Brexit.
Of the 2,752 accounts suspended by Twitter in the US, 419 accounts operating from the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) tried to influence UK politics, data scientists said.
Speaking to the Guardian, Professor Laura Cram said the 419 accounts tweeted about Brexit 3,468 times, though mostly after the 2016 vote had taken place.
Commenting on the tweets, she called the content "quite chaotic and it seems to be aimed at wider disruption. There's not an absolutely clear thrust. We pick up a lot on refugees and immigration".
Twitter responded to the revelation, telling the newspaper the company "recognises that the integrity of the election process itself is integral to the health of a democracy.”
“As such, we will continue to support formal investigations by government authorities into election interference as required," the spokesperson added.

Of course we do also have anecdotal evidence from TM herself and pointing the finger at meddling by Russia in elections.






Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
Bad news for reds8n

CBI says that British manufacturing order books are at their highest for 30 years

You'll remember that the CBI have been pro-EU for years, and wanted Britain in the Euro, so you hardly call this fake news.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/nov/21/uk-manufacturing-order-books-strongest-level-since-1988-cbi-says

The benefits of Brexit are merging day by day. Let the good times roll

As the article says, and I quote: "Global demand for British goods"

I'll drink to that.

It's driven by a weak £ and the same trading conditions. That might not be the same in the future. There is also a risk that companies are seeing large orders at the moment whilst companies fill stocks with what they need in case hard taxes/customs come in the future.

It would be better if our trade deficit was the opposite way round. Manufacturing might be up, but it is only 10% of the economy. We are much more reliant on imports than exports. Not every sector will suffer under Wrexit, it's what happens to the majority that is important. Anyone can point to individual items and say things are getting better but it's the wider picture that is important and we are still far behind the EU in growth terms (apart from perhaps Italy).

There are also other worrying elements, for example "Food and drink firms and companies producing chemicals have experienced a particularly marked increase in demand." In effect companies are buying our food cheap because they can afford to do so because of the weaker £. The problem is that our own population has to then compete to buy those same food types. That sees significant inflation on these types of essentials (food inflation is >4%) whilst the poorest are not gaining any level of increased income to compensate. That means and especially the poorer elements of society have to buy cheaper, less healthy food. In the long term this then has a knock on effect on our health system, sick days and so on. It is for this reason there are concerns about butter shortages over winter. With increased global demand for milk (especially china) that drives prices ever upwards to point where people can not afford it. Now suppose we get a free trade deal, that makes the situation even worse. Increased exports is not necessarily a good thing when the costs to your own populace is much greater.

Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

but as always, I'm not afraid to put up my hand and admit I was wrong, should it be proven otherwise.

Is this a joke? You either flatly ignore posts that contradict you with evidence, or perform majestic mental gymnastics to convince yourself that you haven't been contradicted (e.g. the UK outlawing the death penalty prior to joining the EU/EEC nonsense). Can you actualy give an example of a time when you've admitted to being wrong without a big slab of qualifiers?

Paperchase has pulled a promotion from the Daily [Hate] Mail and apologised to customers who contacted it to complain about their financial support for the fascist gak rag.

The Daily [Hate] Mail, which had hoped to profit from £1000s of extra sales based on bundling a wrapping paper voucher, has accused Paperchase of bowing to a hate campaign against free speech.

Pathe Tique News! Sweet irony!

Who are the enemies of the people now?

nfe wrote:

Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

but as always, I'm not afraid to put up my hand and admit I was wrong, should it be proven otherwise.

Is this a joke? You either flatly ignore posts that contradict you with evidence, or perform majestic mental gymnastics to convince yourself that you haven't been contradicted (e.g. the UK outlawing the death penalty prior to joining the EU/EEC nonsense). Can you actualy give an example of a time when you've admitted to being wrong without a big slab of qualifiers?

If you have a new scientist subscription these are worth a read.

https://www.newscientist.com/round-up/living-in-denial/

@kilkrazy. I'm just the messenger here. I didn't write that article. If you have a problem with that article, then I suggest you diect your complaint to The Guardian and/or the CBI.

@whirlwind. Let me say this for the record: I don't doubt for a minute that the Russians tried something during the referendum - that's great power politics that everybody does. But it's a long way from actually INFLUENCING the result one way or another.

@ everybody else. It's no crime to be anti-EU on these pages, and if I'm voicing an opinion e.g I think the EU is rubbish, then how can you be 'wrong?'


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Whirlwind wrote:

nfe wrote:

Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

but as always, I'm not afraid to put up my hand and admit I was wrong, should it be proven otherwise.

Is this a joke? You either flatly ignore posts that contradict you with evidence, or perform majestic mental gymnastics to convince yourself that you haven't been contradicted (e.g. the UK outlawing the death penalty prior to joining the EU/EEC nonsense). Can you actualy give an example of a time when you've admitted to being wrong without a big slab of qualifiers?

If you have a new scientist subscription these are worth a read.

https://www.newscientist.com/round-up/living-in-denial/

It was a common tactic during the Soviet era to say that critics of the regime were 'mentally ill.'

It's an old Stalin trick.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

nfe wrote:

Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

but as always, I'm not afraid to put up my hand and admit I was wrong, should it be proven otherwise.

Is this a joke? You either flatly ignore posts that contradict you with evidence, or perform majestic mental gymnastics to convince yourself that you haven't been contradicted (e.g. the UK outlawing the death penalty prior to joining the EU/EEC nonsense). Can you actualy give an example of a time when you've admitted to being wrong without a big slab of qualifiers?

In the days of the US politics thread, I admitted I was wrong about Trump's foreign policy. I initially thought it could be a good thing. Ouze, an American dakka member, made a post acknowledging my admission. Tht was a few months back.

Weeks ago, I made a mistake and forgot that Norway was a member of EFTA. I was happy to hold up my hand and admit I got that wrong.

As for ignoring posts, I try my best to reply to every post concerning me. If I forget to reply, it's usually because I'm distracted by something else. I have got other things to do apart from hang around dakka all day I'm only human.

As for the death penalty, I stand by my comments. You know perfectly well I was making a distinction between high treason and a bar room brawl that went wrong and ended up with somebody with a knife in the back.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
A 52-48 split IS a narrow win.

This is one of those rare occasions I agree with you - it is a narrow win, but where's the evidence that the Russians swung the vote?

All I'm getting is smoke and mirrors.

To be fair, without trying to say whether they had any impact or not, that's the point. The Russian doctrine of late has been to create confusion and distrust and undermine the very idea that there is any truth. They're not looking to press "Russia Good", rather "You cant trust anything, nothing is true, go with your gut however crazy that may be".

We don't need the Russians to create confusion and distrust - we're perfectly capable of doing that ourselves!

I don't know how closely you follow British politics, but believe me, in the last 10 years, there have been some really bad feth ups, and there wasn't a Russian within 100 miles when these happened.

You know those spivs that you so despise? How much of what they've wrought was made possible because Russian capital was invested in the UK? There's significant investments in London by Russian oligarchs, no?

There's also significant investments by the Chinese, but I've yet to see anybody point the finger at China for meddling in the referendum.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

nfe wrote:

Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

but as always, I'm not afraid to put up my hand and admit I was wrong, should it be proven otherwise.

Is this a joke? You either flatly ignore posts that contradict you with evidence, or perform majestic mental gymnastics to convince yourself that you haven't been contradicted (e.g. the UK outlawing the death penalty prior to joining the EU/EEC nonsense). Can you actualy give an example of a time when you've admitted to being wrong without a big slab of qualifiers?

In the days of the US politics thread, I admitted I was wrong about Trump's foreign policy. I initially thought it could be a good thing. Ouze, an American dakka member, made a post acknowledging my admission. Tht was a few months back.

Weeks ago, I made a mistake and forgot that Norway was a member of EFTA. I was happy to hold up my hand and admit I got that wrong.

Faor. The US politics thread must have been locked before I joined, but I do recall the Norway example.

As for ignoring posts, I try my best to reply to every post concerning me. If I forget to reply, it's usually because I'm distracted by something else. I have got other things to do apart from hang around dakka all day I'm only human.

Well, I don't suppose I can prove you don't simply miss tons of posts, but I've never seen you fail to flag one that agrees with you...

As for the death penalty, I stand by my comments. You know perfectly well I was making a distinction between high treason and a bar room brawl that went wrong and ended up with somebody with a knife in the back.

I know perfectly well you retrospectively insisted you'd been making such a distinction and that everyone should have assumed so after your sweeping, incorrect statement had been proven wrong, you mean.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:


@whirlwind. Let me say this for the record: I don't doubt for a minute that the Russians tried something during the referendum - that's great power politics that everybody does. But it's a long way from actually INFLUENCING the result one way or another.

Erm, do you ever actually question your own logic? After all businesses, industry etc all use social media to influence people to buy their products. Yet when a foreign state does it that has no influence? If it was that ineffective then why do any organisations use it at all? The difficulty we have is that there is no test group to determine whether people were influenced at all. But make no mistake it is an extremely subtle way of changing peoples perceptions so that they don't even notice. It's not like they sent a post out to everyone stating "We're from Russia we think you should vote Wrexit" as that will fail to convince anyone. The subtlety comes from exposing people to low level negative information on a certain group or person. The daft thing is that those that think they can't be influenced and have made up their own mind are in fact the ones most vulnerable to being manipulated in this way.

If you have a new scientist subscription these are worth a read.

https://www.newscientist.com/round-up/living-in-denial/

It was a common tactic during the Soviet era to say that critics of the regime were 'mentally ill.'

It's an old Stalin trick.

Did you actually read the articles or just read the title and jump to your own conclusions. These are scientific reports as to how peoples behaviour is influenced and how we act as a species. It has nothing to do with anyone being considered 'mentally ill'.

On the other hand it's all based on scientific evidence so why shouldn't I be surprised this is the response.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

You know those spivs that you so despise? How much of what they've wrought was made possible because Russian capital was invested in the UK? There's significant investments in London by Russian oligarchs, no?

There's also significant investments by the Chinese, but I've yet to see anybody point the finger at China for meddling in the referendum.

Which is entirely beside the point. You said, and I quote, "[...]in the last 10 years, there have been some really bad feth ups, and there wasn't a Russian within 100 miles when these happened.". Whether or not there were any Chinese investors or not is completely immaterial, the Russian investment in London has been going on for more than 10 years.

@whirlwind. Hell, I may as well say this to everybody.

It's important to note that I'm not accusing anybody on dakka of saying these things. If anything, dakka has been a beacon of polite, robust debate, which has been conducted in a friendly manner. Long may it continue.

But this is what I'll say. Ever since June 24th 2016, a narrative has developed in the Remain supporting media, and amongst prominent Remain supporters, and it goes like this:

Brexit supporters:

are racists and xenophobes.

automatically believe everything they read in The Mail, the Express, and The Sun.

Want to destroy human rights.

Worship Nigel Farage

Didn't know what they were voting for.

Are thick and didn't have a proper education.

Probably shouldn't have been allowed to vote in the first place...

And so on and so on and so on...

There's only so much you can take of that. And the amazing thing is, not amazing, it's sad If I'm honest, these are the EXACT same arguments used in the Victorian age to stop working class men and women from getting the vote.

People are saying Brexit has set this county back. I would argue that we never really progressed. The elites, the establishment, have never lost their disdain, fear, or contempt they have of the so called 'lower' orders. They'd take the vote off us tomorrow if they thought they could get away with it.

These people love the EU. And they'll NEVER forgive people like me for voting for Brexit.

To cut a long story short, when this Russian influence argument gets wheeled out, I roll my eyes and think, here we go again.

Working class people are so stupid, they don't even know the Russians are telling them how to vote.

That is exactly what the establishment and the elites are thinking, and they cannot face the truth, and the truth is this:

Their campaign, and their arguments for remaining in the EU, were so worthless, so feeble, as to be fething useless.

Hell, I probably could have put up a better defence of the EU myself, than the likes of Clegg, Cameron and Miliband.

The EU is gak, but change is risky. That was their message, the grand vision they tried to sell to the British people. And they lost.

And deservedly so.

And the irony here is that the winning margin was so narrow, they could have won that with a better campaign, and a bit more passion...