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 Graphite wrote:

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
Really the situation in NI is an embarrassment upon the UK, that we’ve allowed them a situation where they can maintain such backward laws.

Wow.

"That we've allowed" does not demonstrate an overwhelming level of respect for one of the constituent nations of the UK and devolution of power.

Not that I agree with the DUP on very much, but that's a heck of an attitude.

Special treatment on things like abortion go back even before devolution because members of government just need to be kept on side by successive Westminster governments, as May does now. Similarly Northern Ireland has lagged behind the UK on gay rights, marriage, adoption, etc, and only implemented such things decades later than the rest of the UK by pressure sometimes from the EU court of human rights. So no, I don’t respect their autonomy to do these things.

Some things shouldn’t be devolved, it’s about human rights, and equal rights for everyone in the UK. A refusal to follow human rights in a constituent nation of the UK should not be a devolved issue, devolved issues should be about spending and local resources. Not denying equal access to healthcare and rights because of misogynistic and homophobic hardliners.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

No disrespect Kilkrazy, but waiting to win a political argument i.e return to the EU, on the back of the other side dying off, has to be one of the most morally and politically bankrupt arguments I have ever seen in all my years on God's earth.


For pure cynicism, it's up there with the Molotov/Ribbentrop pact.

Or your own post about preferring to see England reduced back to the stone age rather than be prosperous and linked to the EU.

And, cynical or not, if the typical leave voter is, in fact, old, then he does have a point. England will most likely leave the EU just in time to go back to it, under less favorable circumstances.

It's less about this specific issue (Yes, Northern Ireland does lag behind the rest of the UK on a whole variety of issues) than the overall attitude.

Which seems to be "As long as they're not blowing stuff up, let the locals run themselves. We don't care."

Wander off for a couple of years/decades. Looks back next time some crisis kicks off in Norn Iron.

"Horror! The locals have been running themselves, and not in the way that we would like them to! This must be forbidden!"

If the UK's politicians didn't utterly ignore large swathes of the country until something happened to rattle the cage, this would happen far less often.

It's like the Imperium of Man swooping in on some planet after the Administratum has ignored it for five millenia and finding that the population, while Imperial, still venerates Goge Vandire.

We've been over this point a couple of pages back.

Old people die. Young people achieve voting age. It's simple demographics.

It's not my fault that the elderly cohort overwhelmingly support Leave and the youthful cohort overwhelmingly support Remain.

Even the Conservative Party has started to worry about their problem of attracting the younger vote.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

No disrespect Kilkrazy, but waiting to win a political argument i.e return to the EU, on the back of the other side dying off, has to be one of the most morally and politically bankrupt arguments I have ever seen in all my years on God's earth.

Despite covering this before; no one wants people to die to suit their political goals. We're just pointing out that with such a major age divide to the vote, there's less leavers over time (to the tune of about 300,000 a year), and making such a huge political change when less people are in favour of it over time is frankly stupid.
All it means is we'll rejoin in another few years when there's a decisive majority to do so. Statistics indictate that if views don't change, there's more remainers than leavers already.

I don't blame Kilkrazy or Herzlos for demographics.

But feth me, where is the fire and brimstone argument for the EU? You guys believe that the EU and all the freedom of movement, trade, peace, stability, brotherly love, and whatever is great and is essential to the British nation's well-being.

Fair enough, but why aren't you selling the EU argument on what you believe to be its merits?

You forget that these old people who want out of the EU are probably the same people who voted to join the EEC back in the 1970s.

You convinced them once, why not again, rather than resort to the skulduggery of demographics and undertakers?

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
I don't blame Kilkrazy or Herzlos for demographics.

But feth me, where is the fire and brimstone argument for the EU? You guys believe that the EU and all the freedom of movement, trade, peace, stability, brotherly love, and whatever is great and is essential to the British nation's well-being.

Fair enough, but why aren't you selling the EU argument on what you believe to be its merits?

You forget that these old people who want out of the EU are probably the same people who voted to join the EEC back in the 1970s.

You convinced them once, why not again, rather than resort to the skulduggery of demographics and undertakers?

People tried selling the EU on its merits. The economic and opportunistic benefits were highlighted over and over again.

The older people would rather listen to demagogues who tell them to ignore the experts. They chose to put their personal feelings above the benefits that the EU would offer the population who actually want to make use of those benefits.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
I don't blame Kilkrazy or Herzlos for demographics.

But feth me, where is the fire and brimstone argument for the EU? You guys believe that the EU and all the freedom of movement, trade, peace, stability, brotherly love, and whatever is great and is essential to the British nation's well-being.

Fair enough, but why aren't you selling the EU argument on what you believe to be its merits?

You forget that these old people who want out of the EU are probably the same people who voted to join the EEC back in the 1970s.

You convinced them once, why not again, rather than resort to the skulduggery of demographics and undertakers?

People tried selling the EU on its merits. The economic and opportunistic benefits were highlighted over and over again.

The older people would rather listen to demagogues who tell them to ignore the experts. They chose to put their personal feelings above the benefits that the EU would offer the population who actually want to make use of those benefits.

I know from the book I keep banging on about that the Remain camp struggled to sell water to a thirsty man.

Poorly planned campaign, internal divisions, and relying on one David Cameron meant that Remain's campaign went down quicker than the Titanic.


Sell? With David Cameron leading the charge?

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
I don't blame Kilkrazy or Herzlos for demographics.

But feth me, where is the fire and brimstone argument for the EU? You guys believe that the EU and all the freedom of movement, trade, peace, stability, brotherly love, and whatever is great and is essential to the British nation's well-being.

Fair enough, but why aren't you selling the EU argument on what you believe to be its merits?

You forget that these old people who want out of the EU are probably the same people who voted to join the EEC back in the 1970s.

You convinced them once, why not again, rather than resort to the skulduggery of demographics and undertakers?

You, yourself area case in point about why this might not work. You have already stated several times that regardless of what evidence is put forth you will not change your mind on Wrexit. As for the older generation I think they are missing a trick. The pensions have massively benefited from the increased inflation. If they now voted for Remaining the £ would jump in value, inflation would decrease but they have a guaranteed pension rise. They would benefit twice...

You are arguing that the the debate for remaining isn't winning hearts and minds. However you are looking at it from a view of 'yesterdays' vote. People that are now, for example, 50, are more inclined to want to remain in the EU. There were less people two years ago at 50 that were inclined to vote for remaining in the EU. Hence that would indicate on a 'like for like' age group the Remain arguments are being more successful. The statement that the older you get the less likely you will want to Remain is just a statistical analysis of this situation. It is an argument that the demographics are changing and hence the democratic process should consider this change.

Its not 'skulduggery of demographics and undertakers' because demographics do change and politics should change with them. If we didn't then we'd still be building giant stone circles because that's what the demographics of the past thought were a good idea.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
I don't blame Kilkrazy or Herzlos for demographics.

But feth me, where is the fire and brimstone argument for the EU? You guys believe that the EU and all the freedom of movement, trade, peace, stability, brotherly love, and whatever is great and is essential to the British nation's well-being.

Fair enough, but why aren't you selling the EU argument on what you believe to be its merits?

You forget that these old people who want out of the EU are probably the same people who voted to join the EEC back in the 1970s.

You convinced them once, why not again, rather than resort to the skulduggery of demographics and undertakers?

People tried selling the EU on its merits. The economic and opportunistic benefits were highlighted over and over again.

The older people would rather listen to demagogues who tell them to ignore the experts. They chose to put their personal feelings above the benefits that the EU would offer the population who actually want to make use of those benefits.

I know from the book I keep banging on about that the Remain camp struggled to sell water to a thirsty man.

Poorly planned campaign, internal divisions, and relying on one David Cameron meant that Remain's campaign went down quicker than the Titanic.


Sell? With David Cameron leading the charge?

It's almost like there were other groups than David Cameron.

And nice job on not responding to the actual point. You asked why people didn't point out the benefits of EU membership. People did.

Remain - We’re discussing facts about the benefit of membership, whilst giving an idea of how hard those will be to replace if we go it alone.

Leave - We’re going to promise you ]everything. Because we don’t expect to win this, so we’ll never actually have to follow through. And BoJo is only here because he thinks it’ll give him a crack at replacing Call Me Dave.

Lies and pipe dreams are damned hard to counter with mere facts. Especially when the gutter press will parrot and repeat everything you said to their braindead readers.

Two good reports on voter analysis of the referendum.

https://whatukthinks.org/eu/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/NatCen_Brexplanations-report-FINAL-WEB2.pdf

http://www.bsa.natcen.ac.uk/media/39149/bsa34_brexit_final.pdf

And an interesting comment blog post from the London School of Economics.

These articles discuss lots of factors but the basic message is that older voters favoured Leave, and younger voters favoured Remain.

 Whirlwind wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
I don't blame Kilkrazy or Herzlos for demographics.

But feth me, where is the fire and brimstone argument for the EU? You guys believe that the EU and all the freedom of movement, trade, peace, stability, brotherly love, and whatever is great and is essential to the British nation's well-being.

Fair enough, but why aren't you selling the EU argument on what you believe to be its merits?

You forget that these old people who want out of the EU are probably the same people who voted to join the EEC back in the 1970s.

You convinced them once, why not again, rather than resort to the skulduggery of demographics and undertakers?

You, yourself area case in point about why this might not work. You have already stated several times that regardless of what evidence is put forth you will not change your mind on Wrexit. As for the older generation I think they are missing a trick. The pensions have massively benefited from the increased inflation. If they now voted for Remaining the £ would jump in value, inflation would decrease but they have a guaranteed pension rise. They would benefit twice...

You are arguing that the the debate for remaining isn't winning hearts and minds. However you are looking at it from a view of 'yesterdays' vote. People that are now, for example, 50, are more inclined to want to remain in the EU. There were less people two years ago at 50 that were inclined to vote for remaining in the EU. Hence that would indicate on a 'like for like' age group the Remain arguments are being more successful. The statement that the older you get the less likely you will want to Remain is just a statistical analysis of this situation. It is an argument that the demographics are changing and hence the democratic process should consider this change.

Its not 'skulduggery of demographics and undertakers' because demographics do change and politics should change with them. If we didn't then we'd still be building giant stone circles because that's what the demographics of the past thought were a good idea.

You forget that people like me are a minority and are vastly outnumbered by millions of undecideds and floating voters who could have and should have won the referendum for Remain.

Blaming the Daily Mail, or Putin for sending subliminal messages or whatever, lets the Remain camp off the hook for a gak poor performance.

As I always say, I could have ran a better Remain campaign.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Remain - We’re discussing facts about the benefit of membership, whilst giving an idea of how hard those will be to replace if we go it alone.

Leave - We’re going to promise you ]everything. Because we don’t expect to win this, so we’ll never actually have to follow through. And BoJo is only here because he thinks it’ll give him a crack at replacing Call Me Dave.

Lies and pipe dreams are damned hard to counter with mere facts. Especially when the gutter press will parrot and repeat everything you said to their braindead readers.

You lost to Bojo and Gove. That's like Stephen Hawking getting outwitted by Katie Hopkins.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Two good reports on voter analysis of the referendum.

https://whatukthinks.org/eu/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/NatCen_Brexplanations-report-FINAL-WEB2.pdf

http://www.bsa.natcen.ac.uk/media/39149/bsa34_brexit_final.pdf

And an interesting comment blog post from the London School of Economics.

These articles discuss lots of factors but the basic message is that older voters favoured Leave, and younger voters favoured Remain.

Those younger voters will get old themselves one day. It's a sweeping generalization, but I think there's a kernel of truth to the old saying that If you've never been a socialist, then you've never been young, and if you've never been a Tory then you've never grown up.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
I don't blame Kilkrazy or Herzlos for demographics.

But feth me, where is the fire and brimstone argument for the EU? You guys believe that the EU and all the freedom of movement, trade, peace, stability, brotherly love, and whatever is great and is essential to the British nation's well-being.

Fair enough, but why aren't you selling the EU argument on what you believe to be its merits?

You forget that these old people who want out of the EU are probably the same people who voted to join the EEC back in the 1970s.

You convinced them once, why not again, rather than resort to the skulduggery of demographics and undertakers?

People tried selling the EU on its merits. The economic and opportunistic benefits were highlighted over and over again.

The older people would rather listen to demagogues who tell them to ignore the experts. They chose to put their personal feelings above the benefits that the EU would offer the population who actually want to make use of those benefits.

I know from the book I keep banging on about that the Remain camp struggled to sell water to a thirsty man.

Poorly planned campaign, internal divisions, and relying on one David Cameron meant that Remain's campaign went down quicker than the Titanic.


Sell? With David Cameron leading the charge?

It's almost like there were other groups than David Cameron.

And nice job on not responding to the actual point. You asked why people didn't point out the benefits of EU membership. People did.

All I saw was the EU is gak, but change is risky, for a Remain campaign message point of view.

It was half-hearted at best.

You really don’t get it, do you?

Leave lied consistently. You can’t fight lies that appeal to jingoistic mouth breathers, because all they want to hear is that they’re right, anything else must be wrong, or simply ignored.

£350,000,000 was a lie.

Giving to the NHS was a lie.

Not being able to control our borders was a lie (and still is)

Sovereignty of Parliament was a lie.

It. Was. All. Lies.

But now the penny is beginning to drop. The Express and Heil are reduced to claiming the EU is ‘bullying’ the UK - even though we warned you at the time that they’d be holding all the aces. As will China, the USA, Australia - pretty much anyone we want and need to hammer out a trade deal with.

This is your gak show. You fethed it all up. Not Remain.

The Remain campaign was pretty poor. But more important was 20+ years of dishonesty from the media, and a sort of harrumphing arrogant disdain from many in the UK toward the EU. The sense of exceptionalism was also pretty apparent. The Remain campaign was both operating in this toxic culture and trying somehow to undo it. They decided to go for a strategy of fear and inertia, as it had worked in Scotland. However, in the Indy ref they faced a scottish independence movement that had to publish all of it's plans for independence for criticism. For some reason they did not hold the Leavers to this standard. Also, the anti-Indy side lied about devolution in "the Vow", which helped their cause a lot. they didn't have the ability to do that in this case.

The Remain campaign was poor. But the Leavers were worse, and do bear responsibility.

You know what, when these particular chickens come home to roost, I hope you lose your job and livelihood. I hope you find yourself unable to get medical help, because the US has demanded the NHS be dismantled in order to agree a trade deal.

I hope you lose the roof over your head, and end up destitute, because there’s no council housing to be had, the building industry has collapsed, and you wind up being ferried from grotty hotel room to grotty hotel room.

That might give me some small sliver of satisfaction. To know those that foisted this upon us take the brunt of the economic suffering. And I hope you look to your Brexiteer Overlords, and finally see that, for them, it was only ever about Disaster Capitalism, and making a quick buck. And I hope that makes you sick to your stomach.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

You forget that people like me are a minority and are vastly outnumbered by millions of undecideds and floating voters who could have and should have won the referendum for Remain.

Blaming the Daily Mail, or Putin for sending subliminal messages or whatever, lets the Remain camp off the hook for a gak poor performance.

As I always say, I could have ran a better Remain campaign.

This is not the point we are discussing. You've commented that the Remain are using 'skulduggery' to support the argument that Remain views are a growing trend. Yet that isn't the case as the on a like for like basis in an age group there are more people willing to vote Remain than 2 years ago. That would indicate that the Remain argument is winning. It is irrelevant how ineffective the previous campaign was because that was in the past and what we are arguing is what the demographics now is. That is the basis of democracy that the populace continue to have a choice/voice.

There's no indication people will turn more pro leave as they age.

The remain campaign was garbage, no one will say otherwise, but the truth takes a long time to catch up with serial liars. By the time one claim is disputed the liar is only the next one and no one cares.

When faced with that I'm not sure what the remain camp can do for those that leave promised the world (and failed to deliver).

 Howard A Treesong wrote:


Special treatment on things like abortion go back even before devolution because members of government just need to be kept on side by successive Westminster governments, as May does now. Similarly Northern Ireland has lagged behind the UK on gay rights, marriage, adoption, etc, and only implemented such things decades later than the rest of the UK by pressure sometimes from the EU court of human rights. So no, I don’t respect their autonomy to do these things.

Some things shouldn’t be devolved, it’s about human rights, and equal rights for everyone in the UK. A refusal to follow human rights in a constituent nation of the UK should not be a devolved issue, devolved issues should be about spending and local resources. Not denying equal access to healthcare and rights because of misogynistic and homophobic hardliners.

Basically DUP's position goes something along the line of:-

Wrexit - We want the same rules as everyone else
Abortion/human rights - We want to be able to have different rules to everyone else.
May - I'm too terrified of upsetting the people keeping me in power (and secretly I'm a religious fruitcake anyway).

Perhaps one solution on the abortion issue would be to call another NIA election but include a question on abortion that whoever was in power (either NIA or Westminster) would implement. That would put DUP in a much more difficult position to refuse the change in law which is way over due (as are other areas that the DUP nut-cases oppose).

People in Britain tend to ignore NI until something forces them to pay attention. They ignored systematic discrimination against Catholics for decades and equal rights were only secured because of a bloody civil war.

So I hope some movement will happen on this issue, but I think it's mostly MPs pushing for a bit of limelight and it'll fall back as soon as the next scandal rocks up, and it'll be up to people in NI to sort it out.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
You know what, when these particular chickens come home to roost, I hope you lose your job and livelihood. I hope you find yourself unable to get medical help, because the US has demanded the NHS be dismantled in order to agree a trade deal.

I hope you lose the roof over your head, and end up destitute, because there’s no council housing to be had, the building industry has collapsed, and you wind up being ferried from grotty hotel room to grotty hotel room.

That might give me some small sliver of satisfaction. To know those that foisted this upon us take the brunt of the economic suffering. And I hope you look to your Brexiteer Overlords, and finally see that, for them, it was only ever about Disaster Capitalism, and making a quick buck. And I hope that makes you sick to your stomach.

I think an important point here for the leavers is that whilst they "won't, the resentment for everything that gets worse because of it will be placed firmly at leavers feet. Kids disownong their grandparents for screwing up their futures, open hostility to the people who made their lives worse.

For everyone's sake; I hope that of we do leave, that we can somehow make a success of it, because leavers won't be allowed to forget it or wash their hands of it. Remainers will not be silenced.

People should be held to account for their decisions. I would disown people in Ireland who voted to leave the EU and I would not remain friends with anyone who did so, as they'd be voting to feth me over.

Except apparently it’s all Remoaners fault that Leave’s lies are now seen to be lies by a wider range of people.

This is why Das Daily Heil viciously attacks anyone trying to get some kind of brakes and checks on the nuttier Brexiteers in Parliament. Judges confirm that yes, Parliament is sovereign, so none of that - Traitors. Enemies of the People.

A free press, in a free society, is entitled to call judges whatever they want. Our judiciary is not above criticism nor should it ever be.

It wasn't helpful, and it's not something I would have done myself, and I would always defend the judiciary's right to be independent, but I would always defend people's right to criticise them.


There's a lot of harsh words being spoken here about leavers, wishing plague and pestilence on us etc et


I find it very dissapointing. We obviously disagree, but tolerance and respect is the bedrock our democracy.

Remain supporters have a God given right to criticise Brexit. No problem there.

But we on the Leave side have the same right to criticism them for criticising us.





Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Da Boss wrote:
People should be held to account for their decisions. I would disown people in Ireland who voted to leave the EU and I would not remain friends with anyone who did so, as they'd be voting to feth me over.

People do get held to account. We have elections every 5 years and we've had 2 referendums on the EEC/EU.

I think Da Boss made a good point about the white paper earlier. That might have enforced some honesty into the campaign, and actually produced a unified Leave movement, however what it did show from the very start was that there was no plan or consensus, so that should tell you something. Farage would say one thing, then be contradicted later on by the official leave campaign.

The fact that there was no white paper, or any sort of formal strategy produced by those looking for change for afterwards should have been a huge red flag for anyone, but I believe that even when it was mentioned it was buried under "project fear".

That was the real issue, one side tried to make pragmatic arguments, and the other was all about emotion. It's impossible to make a rational argument against an emotional one. Just try talking a toddler down from an emotional meltdown over wanting to wear her lemon socks, not the white ones if you don't believe me.

However, I'm not one for wishing penury on anyone, but I think the country as a whole will suffer for this, but there will be plenty of people desperate to blame anything but that decision for what's happening to them and the rest of us. It's already started, saboteurs, traitors etc.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
...People do get held to account. We have elections every 5 years and we've had 2 referendums on the EEC/EU.

Well, we can hope that the Tories get held to account over the whole Brexit debacle, but somehow I think they'll wriggle out of it. They always seem to.

 Da Boss wrote:
People should be held to account for their decisions. I would disown people in Ireland who voted to leave the EU and I would not remain friends with anyone who did so, as they'd be voting to feth me over.

How very intolerant and extreme of you.

By that logic, should we not disown New Labour voters who voted for a government that took us into the illegal Iraq disaster? 2010 Lib Dem and Tory voters, who voted in a government that screwed over students? Tory voters who voted in a party that is savaging the NHS and other public services? A lot of people have been fethed over as a result of other people's votes.

You won't have any friends left if you live your life by this philosophy.

I'm not ready to disown my parents for voting Leave (or Tory.)

OTOH I recognise that their ages (90 and 85) mean they are a lot less likely than my daughter (19) to be able to vote in the next referendum or the general election in 2022.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:


All I saw was the EU is gak, but change is risky, for a Remain campaign message point of view.

It was half-hearted at best.

Mosty because they were the same people that kept using the EU as a scapegoat each time they wanted to shove an unpopular decision down the throats of the electorate or just to draw attention somewhere else.

"We need to privatise rail because of the EU", "Foreign ships take our fish quota because of the EU", "The EU will ban bendy bananas", "The EU mandated burgundy passports", etc.

And so on.

jouso wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:


All I saw was the EU is gak, but change is risky, for a Remain campaign message point of view.

It was half-hearted at best.

Mosty because they were the same people that kept using the EU as a scapegoat each time they wanted to shove an unpopular decision down the throats of the electorate or just to draw attention somewhere else.

"We need to privatise rail because of the EU", "Foreign ships take our fish quota because of the EU", "The EU will ban bendy bananas", "The EU mandated burgundy passports", etc.

And so on.

I rarely agree with you, but I'm 100% in agreement with you on this.

As I said earlier, if politicians keep attacking the EU whenever it suits them, then they shouldn't be surprised if the electorate takes them at face value.

For 30 years at least, we've al been let down by gak politicians, regardless of what side of the political spectrum you're on...

I would say to Dakka members that my voting over the years has rarely made an impact.

In the 1980s and 1990s, I voted Labour, but the Tories ran the show.


I voted for New Labour in 1997 for all the good that did and abandoned them after Iraq.


And recently, I've been voting SNP so can't be held to account for Clegg and Cameron or Cameron's pledge to allow an EU referendum if elected...

Railway privatisation was a policy of the Major government in the early 1990s, and can be seen as following the policy of privatising national industries (gas, water, electric, phone) which the Conservatives had followed since Thatcher's election as PM.

The fishing quotas were also sold off in a typical capitalist fashion which meant that the big companies bid for and got the lion's share of the catch. Sadly, these large companies were not British. This can be seen as a continuation of the Conservative policy of not caring where the people live who own the assets.

The Bendy Banana Ban was a lie made up by the Daily Mail as part of its EU Hate campaign.

The EU never did mandate burgundy passports and I'm not aware how this became an issue. In terms of sovereignty, if the UK leaves the EU we will still have to use the same passport design because it's mandated by the ICAA, which is dominated by the USA. If we want to influence the ICAA we will be better off to stay in the EU. It will add weight to our arguments.

That said, I think the issue of passport design is something of a red herring. It's obvious that the world needs a standard design at the highest level of security that technology can provide. I don't see why anyone would want to deviate from that.

No-one cares about the cover colour except identity concerned Leave voters.

If anything, rather than impose a "traditional" blue cover, the government ought to allow people to have a choice of colour.