Is Britain about to leave the EU?

[Phrossack]

You can't deny that this was a HUGE part of the reason for the UK voting to leave the EU. Your post is pretty much an example of exactly the attitude I was talking about.

"They disagree with us, so they must hate us!" is rather childish logic.

Scotland is having its economic well-being threatened against their will by the votes of English people who voted largely out of xenophobia and who, like you, seem to resent the Scottish for wanting out of the UK. There's a clear difference between the motives of the Scottish secessionists and the UKIPers.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

We actually do all hate them for their paranoia, siege mentality and martyr complex.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

"They disagree with us, so they must hate us!" is rather childish logic.

Indeed it is. Are you claiming that I've ever said that? I'm pretty sure I didn't. Do you deny that the "leavers" are being widely painted as ignorant, selfish, bigoted, xenophobic... er... pensioners? This thread alone is also full of people deriving some level of glee over watching us suffer for our misdeeds. That's more than just disagreeing. I'm just asking why Scottish people voting for essentially the same thing 2 years ago were hailed as forward-thinking champions of liberty.

 

[Cheetah]

Maybe it's not completely fair, but they should have known better!

Living in a democracy does confer certain responsibilities. One of them is being an informed citisen, so that one is able to vote in support for the solutions one desire. Not being informed is literally to fail ones de facto civic duties.

And the British has had decades, if not centuries, of opportunities for being among the most well-informed voters in the world. That they chose not to inform themselves, that they chose to disregard experts and ignore reason, is their own fault.

Sad for those who were informed, but simply out-voted though. Collateral damage I suppose... At least they will serve as a useful warning to others about the folly of leaving the EU, especially without a proper plan.

There's gonna be some hard years ahead, but without the UK, the EU can hopefully reform itself properly and become more functioning. Then some time during the 2040's, the UK, or what's left of it, can rejoin - without any of their special privileges of course!

 

[EnglishEdward]

staying means paying the same and having nothing in return

Yes, all the awarding of EU grants for research and regional aid to the UK etc stops
now, so that the UK net contribution will suddenly increase. The would have been
recipient bodies will experience an unpleasant cash flow crisis (why many of them
urged us to Vote Remain), and go to the UK government for intermediate funding.

This will result in increasing financial pressure for the UK government to agree
an exit date and thereby end payments to the EU.

Delaying invoking the exit clause simply means we pay for nothing for even longer.
Sooner or later a UK Treasury official will calculate this and point it out to ministers.

 

[Akka]

Well then how can you be annoyed that the people of that country voted to stop doing that? In fact does that not now make the Scottish the bad guys for wanting to continue that arrangement?

I'm not annoyed that a country decides to leave the EU. I'm very pro-EU, but I also respect the idea of nations. I'm annoyed at UK's hypocrisy (most whining country in Europe despite being the one with more special treatment than all others combined) and the fact it was a disgustingly selfish millstone that roadblocked Europe for 40 years and was never interested in it to begin with.

And the Scot have shown interest in staying in the EU, I don't remember them making a point of keeping the UK's advantages.

Don't play dumb, please, you usually are pretty level-headed and intellectually honest, but it seems you're slipping a bit there.

Maybe it's not completely fair, but they should have known better!

Living in a democracy does confer certain responsibilities. One of them is being an informed citisen, so that one is able to vote in support for the solutions one desire. Not being informed is literally to fail ones de facto civic duties.

And the British has had decades, if not centuries, of opportunities for being among the most well-informed voters in the world. That they chose not to inform themselves, that they chose to disregard experts and ignore reason, is their own fault.

Sad for those who were informed, but simply out-voted though. Collateral damage I suppose... At least they will serve as a useful warning to others about the folly of leaving the EU, especially without a proper plan.

There's gonna be some hard years ahead, but without the UK, the EU can hopefully reform itself properly and become more functioning. Then some time during the 2040's, the UK, or what's left of it, can rejoin - without any of their special privileges of course!

Couldn't have said it better myself

 

[Lexicus]

Oh, you should. They are a pathetic bunch, mostly. Feeling sorry for them is not the same as letting them remain in office or in politics. They should retire. All of them.

Corbyn's the only one I'd feel sorry for and it's unclear as yet whether he's won or lost from this. As for Cameron, the man is a criminal swine. Johnson and Farage are even worse, they're Trumpish scum without a modicum of decency.

 

[Traitorfish]

I am curious as to why so many people see Britain wanting to leave the EU as symptomatic of right-wing, xenophobic, hateful bigotry. And yet somehow Scotland wanting to leave the UK, for essentially exactly the same reasons, is always talked about as if it's some forward-thinking, left-wing, progressive wonderfulness. It's almost as if... gasp... everyone hates England or something. Such that wishing to be free of England is automatically a good thing, whereas England* wanting to be free of any other influence is automatically a bad thing because, obviously, England left to its own devices will be a disgusting tyranny.

(*and yes I know this is Britain, not England, but it's how everyone's viewing it isn't it)

Nah. People associate advocacy of Britain leaving the EU with the right, xenophobia and bigotry because those groups advocating most prominently for Britain leaving Europe are right-wing, xenophoic and bigoted, while they associated advocacy of Scottish independence with the left, forward-thinking and progressivism because those groups advocating most prominently for Scotland existing the Union are left-wing, forward-thinking and progressive.

Euroscepticism is not inherently right-wing and Scottish seperatism is not inherently left-wing. There are left-wing Eurosceptics and even a few right-wing Scottish seperatists. But, in the UK, Euroscepticism has effectively been a force for reaction and Scottish separatism a force for- well, perhaps not "progress", but at least a rear-guard action on behalf of cultural pluralism and the welfare state.

You can't blame people for associating a movement with the people who predominate within that movement.

 

[Arakhor]

Why? If your argument is that people were lied to and manipulated into making the wrong decision, why on earth would you derive any pleasure at seeing them then suffer unless you were just a terrible person?

In my case, it's more a MASSIVE dose of "I told you so". The Indy100 has articles on the Daily Mail and the Sun finally admitting to their readers that so-called "Project Fear" was mostly correct and the comments are fairly understandable. They also have one on the eight most misleading promises from Vote Leave. One of them points out that we're soon to get a Tory MP as Prime Minister that of course only his/her constituents voted for. Essentially, we get to swap unelected Eurocrats for what may be a series of unelected Torycrats.

J K Rowling got in on the act too when Sarah Vine (Michael "people are tired of experts" Gove's wife) asked the people on Facebook to lend their advice and expertise to help the country.

 

[Dachs]

No, the phrasing doesn't matter; what matters is the substance. Respecting the wishes of the electorate, allowing Farage and friends to discredit their dangerous ideology--it does not matter in the least what some American calls it, it's the same exact thing with the same exact results regardless of the terms I use to describe it. It might matter what Cameron calls it, but you're the only one who cares what I call it. And you care far more about what I call it than you do about the actual effects of the potential failure of Brexit, for some odd reason.

This is ridiculous. Of course why one does something matters, because it indicates things about one's personality and has an impact on how one would act in related situations in the future. We don't give Hitler credit for enabling the Wirtschaftswunder and we don't give Napoléon credit for causing the creation of the Congress system: they were the result of bad actions for bad reasons that eventually kind of had some form of good impact for some people. You framing the Brexit debate as an exercise in punishing innocents for the greater good is a Bad Thing, regardless of whether it means that your ultimate policy in this particular instance is the exact same as somebody with less dubious motivations.

I refer to Benjamin Franklin:

.

And we won't get liberty or safety if we surrender our vote to appease terrorists.

Parody account.

We actually do all hate them for their paranoia, siege mentality and martyr complex.

At least they're not trying to start wars between other European states anymore! How things change in a hundred years.

 

[Phrossack]

This is ridiculous. Of course why one does something matters, because it indicates things about one's personality and has an impact on how one would act in related situations in the future. We don't give Hitler credit for enabling the Wirtschaftswunder and we don't give Napoléon credit for causing the creation of the Congress system: they were the result of bad actions for bad reasons that eventually kind of had some form of good impact for some people. You framing the Brexit debate as an exercise in punishing innocents for the greater good is a Bad Thing, regardless of whether it means that your ultimate policy in this particular instance is the exact same as somebody with less dubious motivations.

Oh, wow, Godwinning. I used to think you were above this kind of pathetic discourse, but it looks like your urge to express your years-old contempt for me through self-righteous posturing won out. Apparently you're a force for Good and I'm a being with Evil Motivations because of the way we phrase the exact same thing. Well, if you so badly want to stroke your own ego and bash people you've always despised, there's little I can do to stop you from indulging in your little fantasy.

 

[Arakhor]

I just found an eerily prescient article by Nick Clegg. Who knew that sometimes politicians get it very right indeed?

 

[Traitorfish]

Oh, wow, Godwinning. I used to think you were above this kind of pathetic discourse, but it looks like your urge to express your years-old contempt for me through self-righteous posturing won out. Apparently you're a force for Good and I'm a being with Evil Motivations because of the way we phrase the exact same thing. Well, if you so badly want to stroke your own ego and bash people you've always despised, there's little I can do to stop you from indulging in your little fantasy.

It's not really Godwinning if it's a legitimate analogy. In this case, he's saying that Hitler did Bad Things, and that some of those Bad Things eventually produced results that were Good Things, but that didn't make the things Hitler did not-Bad. So, similarly, if we accept the pretty self-evident proposition that enacting constitutional change simply to punish a population, especially when most of them don't even deserve it, is a Bad Thing, and that even if this eventually gives rise to Good Things (a more thoughtful electorate), that doesn't make the original thing not-Bad, it just makes it a Bad Thing that had not-Bad outcomes.

I'm not entirely sure I agree with Dachs, because Hitler never remotely intended to lay the ground for the post-war Germany economy, while you at least seem to take a more thoughtful electorate as the eventual long-term goal, but I think he's trying to make a more nuanced point than "Dachs good, Phrossack bad".

 

[Phrossack]

It's not really Godwinning if it's a legitimate analogy.

Because I am literally a Nazi cheering on Hitler, amirite

 

[Traitorfish]

Because I am literally a Nazi cheering on Hitler, amirite

Well, I mean, even if that's what I meant (I expanded on the point; see edit), you'd be analogous to a Nazi cheering Hitler.

 

[Lexicus]

I don't even see where he compared you to a Nazi...

 

[Akka]

I just found an eerily prescient article by Nick Clegg. Who knew that sometimes politicians get it very right indeed?

Wow. That just looks like time-travel.

 

[Dachs]

Oh, wow, Godwinning. I used to think you were above this kind of pathetic discourse, but it looks like your urge to express your years-old contempt for me through self-righteous posturing won out. Apparently you're a force for Good and I'm a being with Evil Motivations because of the way we phrase the exact same thing. Well, if you so badly want to stroke your own ego and bash people you've always despised, there's little I can do to stop you from indulging in your little fantasy.

Dude, you're having a meltdown. Calm down. All I did was say that it's a pretty crappy thing to be okay with bad things happening to people who don't deserve it, so they can be used as a cautionary tale.

Instead of saying "yeah, that is pretty crappy, lemme rephrase", you decided to die on that particular hill for some bizarre reason, and you turned a couple of relatively inoffensive posts by me into some huge phantom persecution complex. I never mentioned myself, my ego, my alleged (nonexistent) moral superiority, or anything like that. And I certainly don't hold contempt for you, especially not over things that happened years ago. (That part is genuinely bewildering to me, because I respect what you have to say, especially about history, and I think you're one of the few denizens of this forum that's pretty good at it.) I'm sorry that you feel that way. I don't believe that I did anything to warrant it, but if I did, I apologize for it.

Maybe I caught you at a bad time, so I'll just drop this.

 

[uppi]

Wow. That just looks like time-travel.

No, but it should be framed and put in the Brexit-memorial as evidence that its consequences could be and were foreseen.

 

[Phrossack]

Apologies to TF and Dachs; I'll send PMs.