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 Silent Puffin? wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

As I've said before, the Remain side had 40 years to make the case for Europe, but they failed.

They did indeed but the UK has had a press that has been noticeably hostile to the EU for that time as well. 40 years of utter gak about the shape of carrots and 'Now Brussels will force us to do x!1!' fabrications seriously tainted public opinion. I wonder just how many people in the UK know how EU legislation is actually made? I would be amazed if it was over 5%.

You're falling into the trap of thinking that people believe everything they read in the papers. I wouldn't use the Sun or the Mail for toilet paper, and I'd be the first to admit that Farage, Bojo, Gove et al, were spouting complete horsegak during the referendum...

It was unfortunate I was on the same side as them, but none the less, you can't blame the media.

The Mirror and the Guardian supported Remain, so it wasn't all one way traffic.

Eh. I think the media certainly had something to do with certain misconceptions held about the EU, the Mail has been leaking rubbish disguised as truth for years.

But then that begs the question, if someone believes immigration is bad because they've been supplied with regular material telling them it is (for various un-race related reasons), are they racists?

I would contend that they are not.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Racism is to some degree inherent in humans due to our cognitive psychological make-up which leads to the formation of groups based on very little differentiation with consequent pro-in-group and anti-out-group prejudices.

The second factor is the clear triumph of white European cultural history since 1500, leading to the "white man's burden" and other such notions. While these ideas are contestable on many grounds, they still existed and influenced people.

Despite the above we don't have to act on our racist impulses.

I agree with this, but linking in with r_squared's point, was racism really an issue during the referendum?

Eastern Europeans were cited as an example, but they are nearly 99.9% white. Given that the majority population in the UK is also white, how could white people be racist towards other white people? Unless being Polish or Estonian or Latvian is now considred a 'race,' rather than a nationality.

I think the problem was cultural bigotry and intolerence towards East Europeans, rather than a problem of 'racism.'

Insert standard explanation of the concept of "cultural racism", followed by three pages of back-and-forth about whether such a concept is valid or not.

 Ketara wrote:
Eh. I think the media certainly had something to do with certain misconceptions held about the EU, the Mail has been leaking rubbish disguised as truth for years.

But then that begs the question, if someone believes immigration is bad because they've been supplied with regular material telling them it is (for various un-race related reasons), are they racists?

I would contend that they are not.

C'mon, the remain side weren't a few brave souls rallying against an unstoppable mass. Look at what the remain side had on their side:

Vast majority of MPs

40 years to make a case

Banks, corporations

And a ton of other orginisations supporting them...

They had a ton of advanatges, and if you can't win with a hand like that, you'll never win...

Remain lost because of inept leadership from Cameron, a pretty rubbish campaign, and an inability to make the case for Europe...

Blaming the media is a smokescreen for Remain's failings...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Insert standard explanation of the concept of "cultural racism", followed by three pages of back-and-forth about whether such a concept is valid or not.

So why do you think the British people had a problem with East Europeans?

East Europeans are:

White, Christian, and come from nations that are democratic.

Not exactly barriers to fitting into Britain which is also a majority white, Christain, and democratic...

Poles integrated well into the UK after the war, there was quite a few of them, so I don't think the UK is inherently anti East European.

I think the reasons are more complicated than that, and mostly to do with jobs and public services...

The standard "they're taking our jobs!", in conjunction with the 2008 financial crisis, is part of the explanation.

You're also not being entirely honest with your descriptions of both Eastern Europe and Great Britain as "majority white, Christian, and democratic" in that you're treating both the concept of democracy and Christianity as being monolithic entities without internal differences. Poland, for example, is overwhelmingly Catholic, whereas Great Britain isn't. Eastern Europe are also much more conservative than the UK. You can do better than this.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

I agree with this, but linking in with r_squared's point, was racism really an issue during the referendum?

Eastern Europeans were cited as an example, but they are nearly 99.9% white. Given that the majority population in the UK is also white, how could white people be racist towards other white people? Unless being Polish or Estonian or Latvian is now considred a 'race,' rather than a nationality.

I think the problem was cultural bigotry and intolerence towards East Europeans, rather than a problem of 'racism.'

If I recall correctly the UK government includes discrimination on grounds of religion and nationality in racism.

The Polish were brought up because it's seen as more acceptable to discuss mass immigration from Poland than from nations outside of Europe.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

You're falling into the trap of thinking that people believe everything they read in the papers.

No, I'm not. The print media has been consistently anti EU for decades, based largely on gak, and people obviously like what they read in news papers other wise they wouldn't buy them (its not as if they are buying them for objective news reporting...) and as they have an unfortunate ability to shape the political climate its far too simplistic to say that I am falling into some kind of trap.

At least print media is dying on its arse.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
The standard "they're taking our jobs!", in conjunction with the 2008 financial crisis, is part of the explanation.

You're also not being entirely honest with your descriptions of both Eastern Europe and Great Britain as "majority white, Christian, and democratic" in that you're treating both the concept of democracy and Christianity as being monolithic entities without internal differences. Poland, for example, is overwhelmingly Catholic, whereas Great Britain isn't. Eastern Europe are also much more conservative than the UK. You can do better than this.

A few thousand Catholics turning up in Britain never bothered me in the slightest.

This isn't the 1500s


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Silent Puffin? wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

You're falling into the trap of thinking that people believe everything they read in the papers.

No, I'm not. The print media has been consistently anti EU for decades, based largely on gak, and people obviously like what they read in news papers other wise they wouldn't buy them (its not as if they are buying them for objective news reporting...) and as they have an unfortunate ability to shape the political climate its far too simplistic to say that I am falling into some kind of trap.

At least print media is dying on its arse.

I wish I had a quid for everytime I said this, but I voted leave, and yet, I consider the right-wing press to be full of horsegak, and the the likes of Farage and Bojo to be buffoons...and I still voted leave...

I'm not unique, so there must be thousands of leave voters like me, who didn't give two hoots for the anti-EU agenda in the newspapers these past 40 years...

I'm not saying that the Sun and the Mail didn't influence some people to vote leave, but I think their influence is overated.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

I wish I had a quid for everytime I said this, but I voted leave, and yet, I consider the right-wing press to be full of horsegak, and the the likes of Farage and Bojo to be buffoons...and I still voted leave...

I'm not unique, so there must be thousands of leave voters like me, who didn't give two hoots for the anti-EU agenda in the newspapers these past 40 years...

I'm not saying that the Sun and the Mail didn't influence some people to vote leave, but I think their influence is overated.

The issue is though because the result was so close then these papers actually only needed to influence a small minority to have changed the result. Even if only 2% of the voting population 'believed' the tripe these papers wrote (and to be fair calling them tripe gives that type of food a bad name!) then it affected the result. If the overall result had been 70:30 leave then fair enough, but with such a small margin you only needed a relative few number of people to be hoodwinked by these articles to make a difference to the outcome.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Racism is to some degree inherent in humans due to our cognitive psychological make-up which leads to the formation of groups based on very little differentiation with consequent pro-in-group and anti-out-group prejudices.

The second factor is the clear triumph of white European cultural history since 1500, leading to the "white man's burden" and other such notions. While these ideas are contestable on many grounds, they still existed and influenced people.

Despite the above we don't have to act on our racist impulses.

I agree with this, but linking in with r_squared's point, was racism really an issue during the referendum?

Eastern Europeans were cited as an example, but they are nearly 99.9% white. Given that the majority population in the UK is also white, how could white people be racist towards other white people? Unless being Polish or Estonian or Latvian is now considred a 'race,' rather than a nationality.

I think the problem was cultural bigotry and intolerence towards East Europeans, rather than a problem of 'racism.'

Count the white faces in the picture.

Whirlwind wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

I wish I had a quid for everytime I said this, but I voted leave, and yet, I consider the right-wing press to be full of horsegak, and the the likes of Farage and Bojo to be buffoons...and I still voted leave...

I'm not unique, so there must be thousands of leave voters like me, who didn't give two hoots for the anti-EU agenda in the newspapers these past 40 years...

I'm not saying that the Sun and the Mail didn't influence some people to vote leave, but I think their influence is overated.

The issue is though because the result was so close then these papers actually only needed to influence a small minority to have changed the result. Even if only 2% of the voting population 'believed' the tripe these papers wrote (and to be fair calling them tripe gives that type of food a bad name!) then it affected the result. If the overall result had been 70:30 leave then fair enough, but with such a small margin you only needed a relative few number of people to be hoodwinked by these articles to make a difference to the outcome.

You make a very good point, but the finger of blame has to pointed at the Remain camp - they ran a terrible campaign, it was bloody awful!

David Cameron was never a party leader, never mind PM, and having Nick Clegg visiting the North East of England to persuade people to vote remain, was rolling up the white flag, that's how desperate and inept the Remain side were...

With Cameron and Clegg, Remain were never going to win, never, never in a million years.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Racism is to some degree inherent in humans due to our cognitive psychological make-up which leads to the formation of groups based on very little differentiation with consequent pro-in-group and anti-out-group prejudices.

The second factor is the clear triumph of white European cultural history since 1500, leading to the "white man's burden" and other such notions. While these ideas are contestable on many grounds, they still existed and influenced people.

Despite the above we don't have to act on our racist impulses.

I agree with this, but linking in with r_squared's point, was racism really an issue during the referendum?

Eastern Europeans were cited as an example, but they are nearly 99.9% white. Given that the majority population in the UK is also white, how could white people be racist towards other white people? Unless being Polish or Estonian or Latvian is now considred a 'race,' rather than a nationality.

I think the problem was cultural bigotry and intolerence towards East Europeans, rather than a problem of 'racism.'

Count the white faces in the picture.

I take your point, but I think the issue there was with the threat of terrorist infiltration, rather than the colour of their skin, but I do admit, there were racists on the BREXIT side, I don't deny that.

Again, I come back to my earlier point: Remain didn't lose because of Farage and one dodgy poster, they lost because their campaign was non-existant and ran by people who would struggle to organise a car boot sale...

The campaign was not non-existent. Until the Immigration issue was brought up by the various Leave campaigns, Remain was winning by a good margin on the economic points.

The put downs and scare mongering probably didn't help them either.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
The put downs and scare mongering probably didn't help them either.

That was counter-productive and only ended up boosting the Leave campaign. If you keep on badgering and labelling voters racist for wanting to leave the EU, sooner or later that becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

You make a very good point, but the finger of blame has to pointed at the Remain camp - they ran a terrible campaign, it was bloody awful!

David Cameron was never a party leader, never mind PM, and having Nick Clegg visiting the North East of England to persuade people to vote remain, was rolling up the white flag, that's how desperate and inept the Remain side were...

With Cameron and Clegg, Remain were never going to win, never, never in a million years.
their campaign was non-existant and ran by people who would struggle to organise a car boot sale...

I tend to agree their campaign was bad. I don't think it was organised badly; it was their tactics that was just plain wrong. Rather than focussing on the positive things the EU does bring in (for example no one mentions how much EU money the RSPB gets for protecting areas of national interest for example) they focussed on the 'big fears' that became more ridiculous as the weeks went by (such as WW3 comments etc etc). The problem with 'Project Fear' is that it only works if you have the thing that people fear the most - if you don't you tend to lose which is what happened here. However it won the Tories the last election with this strategy because they persuaded a small proportion of society that Labour sharing power with the SNP would be a disaster and we shouldn't let those people north of the border hold the Country to ransom as it will wreck the Country. The shame of it was that in effect the Tories were being bigoted against one part of its own Country and no one pulled them up on it.

But there is never going to be one group to blame.

The Remain camp were at fault for using a flawed strategy (and in the end for not calling out the Leave group for not having an actual plan, that in itself would likely have significantly swung the vote)
The Leave camp were at fault for deceiving and telling big fat lies to everyone that was listening (should be illegal IMHO)
The media (or a vast part of it) was at fault for peddling it's own biased opinions of its owners and not actually undertaking quality constructive journalism (again should be illegal IMHO rather than controlled by a weak government body)
The public was at fault for not questioning what they are being told and actually hold people to account over it.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 Future War Cultist wrote:
The put downs and scare mongering probably didn't help them either.

That was counter-productive and only ended up boosting the Leave campaign. If you keep on badgering and labelling voters racist for wanting to leave the EU, sooner or later that becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

Yes, exactly.

 Ketara wrote:
About 52% of the country voted to leave. I'll repeat that again. Fifty two percent. Mere sprinkles? Are you honestly asserting then, that the vast majority of that 52%, say 48% of the country, are merely racists? Really? You think so little of your countrymen that you reckon almost half of them are 'racist'? Absolutely preposterous. The claim is nothing more than ludicrous nonsense, and I'll dismiss it accordingly.

Ummm no 52% of country did not vote for leave. 52% votes were leave. There's world of difference.

More like under 40% voted "leave".

Anybody claiming majority of brits voted leave is either misinformed or lying.

Perhaps. Perhaps not. Perhaps it will be better than if we'd stayed in the EU, perhaps it will be worse than if we had.

Well one thing is sure that history has shown. Many are stronger than few. And since economy is not plus game(ie where everybody can benefit) but one where others to be rich others have to be poor...Well you are trying to compete with multiple european countries now as your opponents.

Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
Eastern Europeans were cited as an example, but they are nearly 99.9% white. Given that the majority population in the UK is also white, how could white people be racist towards other white people? Unless being Polish or Estonian or Latvian is now considred a 'race,' rather than a nationality.

I think the problem was cultural bigotry and intolerence towards East Europeans, rather than a problem of 'racism.'

Whilst you're correct in that strictly speaking 'racism' has to be discrimination/prejudice against a race, what actually qualifies as a race is a social construct to begin with. It doesn't have to necessarily be based on skin colour, indeed, practically every attempt to categorise 'races' by skin colour has failed/differed to every other attempt on account of the fact that they all tend to merge awkwardly in certain parts of the world (Iran, South America, Mongolia, etc).

Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
C'mon, the remain side weren't a few brave souls rallying against an unstoppable mass. Look at what the remain side had on their side:

Vast majority of MPs

40 years to make a case

Banks, corporations

And a ton of other orginisations supporting them...

They had a ton of advanatges, and if you can't win with a hand like that, you'll never win...

Remain lost because of inept leadership from Cameron, a pretty rubbish campaign, and an inability to make the case for Europe...

Blaming the media is a smokescreen for Remain's failings...

I wouldn't pin it on this government or the campaign necessarily, but rather that many people feel that they have had no material gain from being in the EU, and hope to realise some change by leaving it. Immigration was merely one factor relating to that. Freedom to work and travel and no tariffs is all very well and good if you're a nice middle class educated fellow working in the city, but for a factory worker in Scunthorpe, it's a bit less beneficial.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Whirlwind wrote:
The issue is though because the result was so close then these papers actually only needed to influence a small minority to have changed the result. Even if only 2% of the voting population 'believed' the tripe these papers wrote (and to be fair calling them tripe gives that type of food a bad name!) then it affected the result. If the overall result had been 70:30 leave then fair enough, but with such a small margin you only needed a relative few number of people to be hoodwinked by these articles to make a difference to the outcome.

But how many people were hoodwinked by the (many) articles talking about WW3 or suchlike? It's imnpossible to quantify and say, 'If certain media sections and people had told less porkies the result would have been different', because for it to be meaningful, we have to say that should have been the case for the remain camp as well. Who were just as bad. When all is said and done, I suspect as many were swung one way as the other.

Whirlwind wrote:
The Remain camp were at fault for using a flawed strategy (and in the end for not calling out the Leave group for not having an actual plan, that in itself would likely have significantly swung the vote)

In all fairness, the Remain side were just as vulnerable to charges of not having a positive future plan, considering the alternative option to leaving was 'stay within an international entity that staggers from crisis to crisis like a drunk on early Sunday morning until it gets its crap together and unifies into a superstate'. There was no positive future for the EU portrayed because even the Government didn't think it could sell that.

tneva82 wrote:
Ummm no 52% of country did not vote for leave. 52% votes were leave. There's world of difference.

More like under 40% voted "leave".

Anybody claiming majority of brits voted leave is either misinformed or lying.

You're waaaaaay too late. Someone else already pointed out my mistake there, and I acknowledged it in a prior post.

 Ketara wrote:
.....
I wouldn't pin it on this government or the campaign necessarily, but rather that many people feel that they have had no material gain from being in the EU, and hope to realise some change by leaving it. Immigration was merely one factor relating to that. Freedom to work and travel and no tariffs is all very well and good if you're a nice middle class educated fellow working in the city, but for a factory worker in Scunthorpe, it's a bit less beneficial....

Remember Auf Wiedersehn Pet?

I would argue that the city gent is less likely to use freedom of movement to work, he's making big bucks in London after all, the tradesman from Scunthorpe is more likely the beneficiary. After all, the majority of workers from the EU are working class, labourers, plumbers, nurses etc.
My brother, for example, lives and works as a Chippie in the South East. As well as the work he gets locally, he often gets work in parts of Europe, and frequently drives his van all over the continent. Once we leave the EU, that may continue if we retain freedom of movement, but if not, there will likely be an added burden of visas, tariffs and administration which may make it harder for him to justify.

 Ketara wrote:


But how many people were hoodwinked by the (many) articles talking about WW3 or suchlike? It's imnpossible to quantify and say, 'If certain media sections and people had told less porkies the result would have been different', because for it to be meaningful, we have to say that should have been the case for the remain camp as well. Who were just as bad. When all is said and done, I suspect as many were swung one way as the other.

Agreed we don't know how many people were influenced by the media either way; however given how much the individual parties go to court the favours of the press we have to conclude anecdotally that it has a significant influence. We also don't know how many people chose to read these papers because they already 'confirmed' their view of the world. At worst some papers may have peddled certain lines because they thought it might increase their readers rather than put forward more balanced arguments. However as far as I am aware no pro-EU paper has had to retract articles it has released but I know of at least one example where they had to (after the event) which goes beyond media bias to just downright misleading.

 Ketara wrote:


In all fairness, the Remain side were just as vulnerable to charges of not having a positive future plan, considering the alternative option to leaving was 'stay within an international entity that staggers from crisis to crisis like a drunk on early Sunday morning until it gets its crap together and unifies into a superstate'. There was no positive future for the EU portrayed because even the Government didn't think it could sell that.

Now, now that's not particularly true is it. The EU has strategies for the future of which the UK is party to and influences, so in essence that was their future plan. You can also argue that DCs agreement with the EU on the future of the UK in the EU was also the future plan. After all we wouldn't have had the referendum until they had these discussions. The UK Government policies were also based on being within the EU, so there were at least policies and strategies in place for remaining in the EU (because they had to be because we were already there). This compares the Leave's plan of "It will probably be all right...erh...we think, but those things we told before the referendum probably won't happen...they were...erh...possible promises!"

Realistically none of the crisis that the EU are facing are directly as a result of the EU and are only being managed by the EU because if it was left to individual countries you would likely have much worse financial and regional instabilities. Without the EU Greece would probably be up excrement creek without a paddle, the refugee crisis would be a disaster as countries looked to their own well being first completely. The nature of a crisis means that it is unpredictable otherwise they wouldn't have occurred. The EU had effectively 20 years without any major hiccups, it is unfortunate that a couple have turned up all at once. It was Greece's mismanagement of it's own Finances that caused their issue (and all related to banking deregulation across the world as well), but if the EU had been intervening much earlier then there would have louder calls of the EU trying to be a 'superstate' so it can't win - either it gets involved in national affairs earlier to stop a future crisis at the risk of being 'federal' or you leave countries to manage their own affairs but get panned for not resolving the crisis whilst having no control over the causes.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
The campaign was not non-existent. Until the Immigration issue was brought up by the various Leave campaigns, Remain was winning by a good margin on the economic points.

I stand by what I said about shambolic campaigns and non-existent campaigns.

Why?

Because after the Scottish referendum, various insiders who had been on the campaigns for both sides, wrote books about the inside story, and the details were an eye-opener to say the least.

In the months to come, expect to see a whole raft of books from people who were at the heart of the BREXIT and Remain camps: PR Men/women, media advisers, analysts etc etc that sort of thing.

I can guarantee you that the revelations will shock you, and then you'll see how really bad both sides campaigns were.

 r_squared wrote:

 Ketara wrote:
.....
I wouldn't pin it on this government or the campaign necessarily, but rather that many people feel that they have had no material gain from being in the EU, and hope to realise some change by leaving it. Immigration was merely one factor relating to that. Freedom to work and travel and no tariffs is all very well and good if you're a nice middle class educated fellow working in the city, but for a factory worker in Scunthorpe, it's a bit less beneficial....

Remember Auf Wiedersehn Pet?

I would argue that the city gent is less likely to use freedom of movement to work, he's making big bucks in London after all, the tradesman from Scunthorpe is more likely the beneficiary. After all, the majority of workers from the EU are working class, labourers, plumbers, nurses etc.
My brother, for example, lives and works as a Chippie in the South East. As well as the work he gets locally, he often gets work in parts of Europe, and frequently drives his van all over the continent. Once we leave the EU, that may continue if we retain freedom of movement, but if not, there will likely be an added burden of visas, tariffs and administration which may make it harder for him to justify.

I agree. From a personal point of view, I work in a professional job in Oxford. Nice middle class office job. We have people from all over the world working here, and all after those jobs. Realistically I cannot just move to a job overseas as I would need to be bilingual, both conversationaly and in the technical language relating to my industry, and whilst it legaly should not be a problem, the chances are that companies in other contries will not recognise my professional qualifications to the same level as someone who qualified with their local awarding bodies.

My brother, however, is does general building and labouring. He works all over the UK doing various things like shop fitting and groundworks, but this year he has also worked in France, Slovenia and Bulgaria. In his job they care about the forman being bilingual (generally a local that speaks english) and that you can show you can do the work.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

Because after the Scottish referendum, various insiders who had been on the campaigns for both sides, wrote books about the inside story, and the details were an eye-opener to say the least.

In the months to come, expect to see a whole raft of books from people who were at the heart of the BREXIT and Remain camps: PR Men/women, media advisers, analysts etc etc that sort of thing.

I can guarantee you that the revelations will shock you, and then you'll see how really bad both sides campaigns were.

Although I would advise some caution with such books. They are written and designed to shock so are likely to highlight the bad parts and diminish the better parts of the operation to make the book more shocking - this in turn means that they sell better.

If I picked at the bad parts of where I have worked I could make a book out of it and it wouldn't show the organisation in a good light. But it wouldn't be a fair representation as the poor elements only make up a small proportion of the overall picture. I'd always be cynical of any book relating to such events that are sold for shock and sale values.

Whirlwind wrote:

Now, now that's not particularly true is it. The EU has strategies for the future of which the UK is party to and influences, so in essence that was their future plan. You can also argue that DCs agreement with the EU on the future of the UK in the EU was also the future plan.

It is totally the truth. The outlined future financial strategy of the EU is do whatever they have to in terms of financial stabilisation whilst they push for fiscal union. Check the Five Presidents Report. On immigration? Try and outsource the problem to Turkey whilst pushing for a joint EU border force. Military spending? Unification to cut costs (see the merging of the Dutch and German armies currently). Etc, etc.

So to reiterate, the future plan of the EU is to 'lurch from crisis to crisis like a drunk until it finally becomes a superstate'. I'm not pretending that Leave necessarily had a good plan, but the reason DC and the rest didn't try and promote a positive future vision/plan of the EU was because there isn't one that would be perceived as 'positive' within the UK.

I mean, let's be real here, everyone knew DC's agreement with the EU was subject to subsequent ratification and discounting by the EU later, and he asked for nothing and got half that to begin with.

Realistically none of the crisis that the EU are facing are directly as a result of the EU

The Euro?

and are only being managed by the EU because if it was left to individual countries you would likely have much worse financial and regional instabilities. Without the EU Greece would probably be up excrement creek without a paddle,

No, because if they had their own currency, they'd have been able to devalue it and introduce quantitative easing. The reason Greece is struggling so badly right now is because they can't control the basic fiscal levers of their economy because they reside in Brussels and Berlin. The people sitting in Brussels and Berlin, however, don't want to exercise those levers on Greece's part, because they would have a detrimental effect across the rest of the Eurozone. So they keep slapping financial band-aids on the problem and wait.

the refugee crisis would be a disaster as countries looked to their own well being first completely.

I guarantee you that if every country had a sealed border, not even a third of the immigrants currently sitting in Calais would get that far.

The nature of a crisis means that it is unpredictable otherwise they wouldn't have occurred.

No. It just means whoever was in charge ignored the warnings or didn't care.

The EU had effectively 20 years without any major hiccups, it is unfortunate that a couple have turned up all at once. It was Greece's mismanagement of it's own Finances that caused their issue (and all related to banking deregulation across the world as well), but if the EU had been intervening much earlier then there would have louder calls of the EU trying to be a 'superstate' so it can't win - either it gets involved in national affairs earlier to stop a future crisis at the risk of being 'federal' or you leave countries to manage their own affairs but get panned for not resolving the crisis whilst having no control over the causes.

That's precisely the issue. The EU wants to be a superstate, but because such a move is more or less universally opposed by the electorate of the EU, they have to edge there slowly. But that ends up with powers and responsibilities being very sloppily and inefficiently transferred from the national level, with the inevitable result that it causes massive problems.

Hence the comment at the start about the EU's goal being to stagger from crisis to crisis until its absorbed enough power that the crises which result from no one executive body having the appropriate levers cease to occur.

But I guarantee that if that had been the 'positive future' outlined by Remain during the referendum, Leave would have won by another ten percent at least. Which is why Remain focused solely on 'Look at how good you have it right now' and scaremongering.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

I stand by what I said about shambolic campaigns and non-existent campaigns.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/jimwaterson/click-here-to-discover-this-one-weird-trick-about-the-eu?utm_term=.kmE6j75rZ#.sqPRqzd8N

The government spent £2 million of public money on online advertising as part of the doomed attempt to keep Britain in the European Union, with most of the cash going to major multinationals such as Facebook and Google.
As part of David Cameron’s failed attempt to win the EU referendum, the then prime minister authorised £9.3 million of spending on the official government leaflet setting out the case for Remain, which was sent to 27 million homes in the UK.
This headline amount included a substantial amount spent on targeted online advertising, showing how paid-for advertising on social media has become a key battleground for all major political campaigns in the UK – circumventing Britain’s traditional ban on paid political advertising on TV and radio.
In total, the government spent £1,939,548 buying online advertising “as part of public information activity” during the EU referendum campaign, according to information released following a freedom of information request by BuzzFeed News, with almost all the money going to overseas internet giants.
This spending is in addition to the millions of pounds spent on online advertising by EU referendum campaign groups such as Vote Leave, Stronger In, and Leave.EU.
Facebook, which has been criticised in the past for its UK tax arrangements, received £894,237 of public money for adverts around the EU referendum. The government ran adverts on the service advising people to look out for the pro-EU leaflet and suggesting cheery lists with titles such as “7 things you might not know about the EU”.

A further £219,947 went on buying up links around Google search results on the referendum, ensuring that when people searched for information on the referendum they were directed to the official government site.

The government also spent a further £462,803 buying adverts on YouTube, which is also owned by Google.
Some sites received less public money for advertising. The government spent just £46,559 pushing its message on Instagram, where government adverts confused some people who logged on to the service in the hope of seeing artfully taken holiday pictures and snaps of meals.

A further £304,174 was spent on online advertising with an entity known as the “government trading desk”, which could include smaller sites and general online display advertising.
Almost all the £2 million government advertising money went directly to sites owned by Facebook or Google, reflecting their dominance in the online advertising marketplace.
Microsoft’s Bing search engine took a paltry £10,768 from the advertising campaign, according to the figures, while the government did not bother to spend any money at all directly on Twitter advertising, suggesting it did not consider the social network to be a site that could win over floating voters.
Still, despite buying the adverts the government-backed Remain campaign was ultimately unsuccessful. What’s more, the top comments on sponsored posts were hijacked by hundreds of comments from people furious about the decision to spend government money advertising pro-EU arguments.

... £2m

"Facebook, which has been criticised in the past for its UK tax arrangements, received £894,237 of public money for adverts around the EU referendum."

Vindication! Thank you reds8n

On a serious note, I'm not laughing at public money going down the drain, I'm disappointed, but not in the least surprised.


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Whirlwind wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

Because after the Scottish referendum, various insiders who had been on the campaigns for both sides, wrote books about the inside story, and the details were an eye-opener to say the least.

In the months to come, expect to see a whole raft of books from people who were at the heart of the BREXIT and Remain camps: PR Men/women, media advisers, analysts etc etc that sort of thing.

I can guarantee you that the revelations will shock you, and then you'll see how really bad both sides campaigns were.

Although I would advise some caution with such books. They are written and designed to shock so are likely to highlight the bad parts and diminish the better parts of the operation to make the book more shocking - this in turn means that they sell better.

If I picked at the bad parts of where I have worked I could make a book out of it and it wouldn't show the organisation in a good light. But it wouldn't be a fair representation as the poor elements only make up a small proportion of the overall picture. I'd always be cynical of any book relating to such events that are sold for shock and sale values.

That doesn't mean to say that everything they reveal should be discounted.

Joe Pike, who worked for Better Together during the Scottish referendum, wrote a book called Project Fear.

It was a pretty sober analysis, and was generally well received.

Yeah, former New Labour spin doctors might go for the sensationalist approach, but some good inside accounts of the EU referendum will emerge IMO.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:


Vindication! Thank you reds8n

On a serious note, I'm not laughing at public money going down the drain, I'm disappointed, but not in the least surprised.

I don't actually mind some public funds being used for election/referendum campaigns. I think it would be a much fairer system if both sides had been given the same funds but weren't allowed to take donations as I that leads to less impartiality (or being held to ransom depending on your point of view).

Really it's the tax system that is criminal - it's no real surprise that anybody uses Facebook, Twitter etc to advertise their cause. The only real way of reducing their power as companies is to stop using them and find alternatives.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

That doesn't mean to say that everything they reveal should be discounted.

I didn't say discount, I said caution is advised. Like any media sales are driven by shock and telling tales which the book could be overly weighted in that regards to drive sales. If you inflate the importance by representing it more within an article it gives the impression of bigger wider issues than there really are. The media is the same, if something goes wrong in the NHS, Local Authority, Police Force etc they are all over it and it's main news which is repeated over and over. You never see front page news of "Person has successful heart operation and is now perfectly healthy again" because it simply doesn't sell. But it doesn't mean that there aren't 1000's of these operations each year and maybe only a handful that go wrong. The BBC does the same thing with Climate Change; whenever there is a debate there is usually one scientist and one person in denial debating the issue - but to the public this makes it appear that each argument is equally valid when in reality a proportional representation of the evidence would be one person arguing against a toenail of the 'sceptic'.

I exalted your post Ketara. Sums up everything I think.

Also, anyone seen the EU trying to claim all those Olympic medals for themselves, including Britain's? Pretty much sums them up in a nut shell.

 Ketara wrote:


It is totally the truth. The outlined future financial strategy of the EU is do whatever they have to in terms of financial stabilisation whilst they push for fiscal union. Check the Five Presidents Report. On immigration? Try and outsource the problem to Turkey whilst pushing for a joint EU border force. Military spending? Unification to cut costs (see the merging of the Dutch and German armies currently). Etc, etc.

So to reiterate, the future plan of the EU is to 'lurch from crisis to crisis like a drunk until it finally becomes a superstate'. I'm not pretending that Leave necessarily had a good plan, but the reason DC and the rest didn't try and promote a positive future vision/plan of the EU was because there isn't one that would be perceived as 'positive' within the UK.

Ah, so you admit there was a plan and policy's in place as before you said "In all fairness, the Remain side were just as vulnerable to charges of not having a positive future plan". Whether that plan was positive and whether you agree with the policies is a different issue because it comes down to personal perspective. But it was more than the Leave camp had which amounted to watching "It will be alright on the Night" and hoping we're not the 'person' that swings head first into a tree.

You do also realise that the UK and France are sharing armed forces at the moment as well? The idea of sharing resources from a military perspective is not a bad idea. Do we think the Falklands would have happened if there was thought that they would only be fighting the UK but also 27 other nation states?

 Ketara wrote:
I mean, let's be real here, everyone knew DC's agreement with the EU was subject to subsequent ratification and discounting by the EU later, and he asked for nothing and got half that to begin with.

My understanding that the EU thought the opposite and was bringing back the Kitchen sink. I reality it was probably somewhere in between.

 Ketara wrote:
The Euro?
No, because if they had their own currency, they'd have been able to devalue it and introduce quantitative easing. The reason Greece is struggling so badly right now is because they can't control the basic fiscal levers of their economy because they reside in Brussels and Berlin. The people sitting in Brussels and Berlin, however, don't want to exercise those levers on Greece's part, because they would have a detrimental effect across the rest of the Eurozone. So they keep slapping financial band-aids on the problem and wait.

On that basis the Euro would have caused their economy to collapse when they joined in 2002. No, Greece's issues arise because it took the money from day one and then assumed it would never have to pay anything back. In essence they stuck everything on the credit card and ignored the due dates. They could have closed loop holes in their tax system to bring it to some semblance of order during those years (such as changing house property tax so that leaving a bit of the building unfinished exempts you from tax forever). Even if they had stayed out of the Euro but kept the same strategy then they would still be in debt up to their eyeballs and even devaluing their currency wouldn't have stopped this. All that does is encourage people to spend more money there because it is cheap, it's trying to resolve the issue rather after the event. In some ways you can understand Germany and France being a bit peeved because some countries raided the candy store and now they have to clear up the mess as they throw up everywhere.

 Ketara wrote:

I guarantee you that if every country had a sealed border, not even a third of the immigrants currently sitting in Calais would get that far.

Strange last time there was such a large wave of migration due to conflict was WW2. Unsurprisingly borders didn't seem to hamper movement then. I find this idea a bit naïve to be honest, once there are sufficient numbers of people there's going to no chance to stop the movement (unless you propose to machine gun any that get within a few metres of the beach). Where there is a will there is a way as the saying goes. Greece, Italy, Spain etc would find it damn near impossible to secure their borders completely and the easiest and cheapest solution for people that wanted to move on to the UK, Germany, France etc would be to give them a train/bus/airline ticket, take away their passport and let them travel to where they want to go because then it is not their problem. Calais probably wouldn't have happened without the EU because there would have been no reason to co-operate , just let them get on and cross the border, then it's the next Country's issue.

Also we're not the only areas being affected by the Syria crisis. South Africa has just as much of a problem of migrants entering the Country from places like Syria. People just buy a one way ticket, destroy their IDs on the flight out and then claim asylum when they get there. So being out of the EU does not solve the problem.

 Ketara wrote:

No. It just means whoever was in charge ignored the warnings or didn't care.

Again that seems cynical and a bit naïve. I don't think anyone 10 years ago would have predicted that Syria would have gone into melt down

 Ketara wrote:
That's precisely the issue. The EU wants to be a superstate, but because such a move is more or less universally opposed by the electorate of the EU, they have to edge there slowly. But that ends up with powers and responsibilities being very sloppily and inefficiently transferred from the national level, with the inevitable result that it causes massive problems.

I think you are mixing up some individuals views and the direction the EU would like to be. The idea of a Federal Europe has been diminishing fro some time now because as you say the populace don't really support it (and we are too divided as nations to achieve it). Everyone has policies that they would like to put in place but like with all things compromises have to be made so it at least try and works for the best for everyone. Surprisingly the EU isn't a dictatorship and few people with their views does not make a reality.

 Ketara wrote:
But I guarantee that if that had been the 'positive future' outlined by Remain during the referendum, Leave would have won by another ten percent at least.

But then that would have been an outright lie as there are no plans for this and we wouldn't expect our politicians to lie to the populace...oh wait the Leave campaign, I forget....


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 Future War Cultist wrote:
I exalted your post Ketara. Sums up everything I think.

Also, anyone seen the EU trying to claim all those Olympic medals for themselves, including Britain's? Pretty much sums them up in a nut shell.

You mean this one...

http://www.medaltracker.eu/index.php?article_id=1

Generated by a PR company and which has nothing to do with the EU other than being employed by them from time to time. So it's accusation and guilt by association is it now?

In reality it's a PR exercise, they are advertising themselves having access to a large, competitive sporting base that's all. Companies do it all the time. On this basis next time the one the papers lies about something I suppose we have to assume that all the readers are just as guilty!

I suppose it shows good examples of people being hoodwinked by misleading titles such as

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/olympics/2016/08/18/eu-puts-itself-at-the-top-of-rio-olympics-medal-table/ and even worse
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/701448/Rio-2016-Olympics-European-Union-EU-Brexit-Ukip

I mean lets look at the first sentence

"The EU has sparked outrage after trying to take credit for Britain's incredible haul of olympic medals" (No the EU hasn't)
"It (EU) has placed itself at the top of an online Rio 2016 medal table after combining the 28 members of the bloc into a federal superstate. (No the EU hasn't)
"The table, created for the EU..." (No it wasn't)

I assume in tomorrows headlines the Express will be outraged that we are part of planet Earth