That was a vote against Nick Clegg/Lib Dems...he was a fucking idiot calling it then, the Lib Dems were as toxic as anything....
You call the vote again and AV would win
Brexit |OT| UK Referendum on EU Membership - 23 June 2016
- Thread starter QuicheFontaine
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That was a vote against Nick Clegg/Lib Dems...he was a fucking idiot calling it then, the Lib Dems were as toxic as anything....
You call the vote again and AV would win
No it wouldn't, the Tories would campaign against it and that would be that. Voting reform is never going to happen under a Tory government, it would damage them forever.
QuicheFontaine
Member
Yeah, and this affects the odds offered. Bookies hedge their bets: if a lot of people have already bet on Remain, they will artificially lengthen the odds on Leave to make it more attractive and encourage people to bet on the other side. This way they don't lose money in either scenario. That's why they're called betting 'markets', and why I've encouraged people not to rely too strongly on their predictive power.
Edit:
Full disclosure, I stuck a tenner on Leave a few months ago and got odds of 3.4 to 1. At the same time I used a £10 free bet (on Betfair) to also bet on Remain. At the time the odds were 1.6 to 1, and it looks like they pretty much still are.
Stock market crashing on polls today
https://www.theguardian.com/business...-business-live
so do we blame Cameron for calling the referendum, or the leave campaign
https://www.theguardian.com/business...-business-live
so do we blame Cameron for calling the referendum, or the leave campaign
milanbaros
Member?
I would put a lot more faith in the betfair betting market than on polls.
QuicheFontaine
Member
Why? The bookies are basing their odds on the polls.
Cameron deserves 100% of the blame. It takes a special kind of moron to think that the Eurosceptics in his own party would just lie down and let him win.
This referendum should have been kicked into the long grass as soon as they won the election, instead he got high on his own farts and seemed to forget he was leader of the Tory party. At the very least he should have thrown any dissenting voices out of the cabinet, instead he has given Gove and Boris undeserved legitimacy by refusing to criticise them.
milanbaros
Member?
Because people with a lot more to lose than me and much more experience have applied a filter to the polls and all other collective information to come to their conclusion and then thousands of people have judged whether that opinion is realistic.
It was a manifesto pledge, he was re-elected on the basis of what he promised he would do; one of those things was to offer a referendum.
QuicheFontaine
Member
Are gamblers renowned for their good judgement? ;-P
milanbaros
Member?
I believe so, yes. I'm fairly sure gambling odds have a good predictive history.
anonymous_abc
Member
You wan't more democracy, why don't you start at home first then?
QuicheFontaine
Member
As a little experiment, pop down your local Ladbrokes and see how many people in there have a payday loan.
People break manifesto pledges all the time, they are all bollocks and not worth the paper they are written on. If he wanted to he could have delayed it indefinitely and taken the heat, it would have been less trouble than he's got now.
Cameron made the pledge because he thought it was an easy win, if he could have forseen the shitstorm that would ensue he would never have gone through with it. What he envisioned as a triumphant endorsement of his premiership has led him to the brink of being ousted by Boris Johnson.
The bookies are looking at historical data, and that data tells then that large swathes of people vote with the status quo when at the polls (remain)
Now, why they need to be ignored at the moment is that we still have 10% claiming as unknown voters....the more polls that start to show people making up their mind and if they go with leave the odds will start to move quickly...
Statisticians are saying it is a 64% chance for remain, that is why the odds are as they are
Because neither of those things are on the ballot paper. I don't know why people think I might be for those particular facets but it's irrelevant. The question on the ballot paper is the EU.
Turks aren't "brown people".That's the bullshit. People don't oppose Turkey's membership of the EU because of race.
What makes you think leaving the EU is about race?
That's true, but the FPTP mention was in response to someone claiming that Leave is winning because people want more democracy in their country and don't mind being worse off financially, given how the FPTP vote turned out I think it's a very valid counterpoint.
We'll have a Tory government as long as Labour is led by the useless Jeremy Corbyn.
The average punter is worried about Turkey because it's citizens have been categorised as locust-like invaders coming to steal as much as they can.
Do you really think the Leave campaign and the right wing press would characterise migrants from somewhere like Iceland in the same way?
milanbaros
Member?
I should qualify that as gamblers as a collective. Individual gamblers in Ladbrokes at 0948 are probably making all sorts of poor choices.
Don't worry, they've made another round of absolutely in achievable lies today to further help their case. They've now promised that anyone who relieves a grant from the EU will have that funding replaced if we leave - which, combined with all their other spending promises, means leave have now committed to spending far more than we currently give to Europe. But who cares about facts and figures.
The fact that a large driver of this is Boris Johnson's overwhelming ambition to be prime minister makes me feel sick to my stomach. The idea that a mayor of London could campaign for leave just demonstrates how utterly unprincipled and power hungry the man is - he'll do and say anything, no matter the cost, the get to number 10.
He was the only person standing who actually wanted to do something different to what the Tories are already doing. Pointless having a labour government if the only difference is that it's red instead of blue.
This is why he should have been thrown out of the cabinet when he came out for Leave, at least his credibility would have taken a hit. By leaving him alone Cameron has legitimised his argument.
It's also pointless having a Labour leader who can't actually get on the fucking TV, such is his antipathy to the political machine. Corbyn has been an utterly irrelevant speck in this entire debate and is letting his party down. If we vote to leave then Corbyn will be on the chopping block, the unions did not elect him so that he could let Tory hardliners take control of the country. In his heart of hearts Corbyn doesn't care about the EU and is unwilling to campaign seriously on it's behalf. All I've seen from him is an appearance on some gameshow where he said he was 7/10 in favour of staying. He doesn't give a shit.
They are all the same though mate, whist I agree it makes no sense that someone who was Mayor of one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world is anti EU, the same can be levelled at George Osborne who is desperate for remain to win as he feels that is the only way he gets to be PM...if reports are believed.
Now I accept he has always been pro EU but all of them are looking at what the vote does for them and their careers rather than the good of the country, and Cameron will be sitting there thinking he is fucked if we leave, rather than the country will need strong leadership
Osbourne has been pro-EU for as long as anyone can remember - it's simply part of his core beliefs, odious as they often are.
And my objection to Johnson is simply that, unlike everyone else, this represents a more stark betrayal. There is no question that London will be worse off if we leave the EU. He was the mayor of London, he knows this - and yet he has no issue throwing London under the bus to get into number 10. It takes a special type of sociopath to go from running one of the worlds capital cities for 8 years and then fcking it over before you even leave the job just to further your political ambition. The worse thing is, he's almost certainly going to be another Gordon Brown - someone so obsessed with getting to number 10, and yet fucking useless when he gets there.
The stories from city hall about Johnsons unbelievable idiocy when it comes to governance and policy would be hilarious if they weren't depressing - and they've been around for years. He's a very smart guy but utterly unsuited for leadership.
There's no point having a leader like Corbyn if he can't win them election. We will only ever have centre left/centre right governments in Britain. That's where most people are. Corbyn is an old man stuck on the level of student politics, utterly ill equipped to cope with the demands of leading a major political party in the modern age. If the Tories win in 2020 it'll be due in large part to his failings and the failure of the Labour machine to dump him.
I actually feel for the Labour party on this issue, as it is obvious they would drop him in a heartbeat if they could, but the problem is he was voted in with a landslide....so what do they do?
Stick or twist....stick you almost certainly lose next election, Twist...you please your MP's but piss off everyone who voted for him and make them feel like it is old politics at work again (we don't care what you think, we don't like him) sometimes you have to just accept what the electorate decided
Yes, the PLP is in a sticky situation because of Corbyn's mandate. Potential successors are biding their time until after the referendum. If we leave the EU they'll be in a better position to claim ineptitude on Corbyn's part and take advantage of the ill feeling growing amongst Labour figures towards his weak leadership during this referendum.
They need to take a leaf out of the Tories' book and be ruthless.Who better to let down: 120,000 full party members (the rest who voted for him are just registered supporters and affiliates) or millions of the public who are looking to Labour for a credible alternative to the Tories and are left wanting?
QuicheFontaine
Member
Monthly average wage:
United Kingdom - 2132
Iceland - 2015
Turkey - 584
Yeah, it might be reasonable to expect a tad more immigration from Turkey than from Iceland.
Indeed. I was working for a food distributor around the time when Poland et al joined the EU. It wasn't long before we had lots of eastern Europeans working for us. During my conversations with them they told me they could earn far more in the UK sharing a house with each other than working a better job back home. One guy used to be the manager of a large factory and he was earning more lifting boxes in England. It was common for them to send most of their money home. One guy saved up and bought his flat in Lithuania outright. Not surprising why so many of them came over.
That's not what I was arguing, I was saying that the way Turkish migrants have been characterised by the Leave campaign is of dirty commoners coming to rape and steal. They are portrayed as a swarm of locusts ready to invade, not as people coming here to work and pay their taxes. As if Boris and Farage are leaning against a door about to burst open and flood the streets with hairy criminals.
It's all a moot point anyway as Turkey is decades away from being able to make a plausible case for membership of the EU.
QuicheFontaine
Member
I really think you're editorialising quite a lot here. I honestly think the main issue people have about immigration is about numbers rather than ethnicity. And with respect to Turkey, it's true - there's a lot of them! In fact, if they joined the EU, they would be the country with the most MEPs.
I find the "scary brown people" thing ridiculous. Turks are about as "swarthy" as Greeks:
Frankfurter
Member
So in other (related) news, German 10 year bond yields have, for the first time ever, turned negative, certainly being influenced by the UK's referendum.
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-36526008
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-36526008
ultratruman
Banned
This is madness, feverish insanity.
The Leave campaign just dismiss all fears and worries for the future with a sneering ' do you reaaaally believe...?' that has come to characterise the anglo-stereotype of sobered to the point of incredulity. This is the attitude that elected appeasement governments, lead to the Munich Agreement and which refused to believe stories of the holocaust in 1942.
This is a planet full of threats and suffering, on our continent alone we've experienced 2 vicious wars and 1 financial catastrophe in the last 25 years alone. On our island, uninvaded for 600 years, it's so tempting to believe we can cut ourselves loose from compromises with Brussels. But sovereignty as a singular focus can so easily become solitude: North Korea is the most 'sovereign' nation in the world. We know what the alternative to a unified Europe looks like, and how different our world would be had we kept the drawbridge up in 1939. Europe is still worth fighting for.
The Leave campaign just dismiss all fears and worries for the future with a sneering ' do you reaaaally believe...?' that has come to characterise the anglo-stereotype of sobered to the point of incredulity. This is the attitude that elected appeasement governments, lead to the Munich Agreement and which refused to believe stories of the holocaust in 1942.
This is a planet full of threats and suffering, on our continent alone we've experienced 2 vicious wars and 1 financial catastrophe in the last 25 years alone. On our island, uninvaded for 600 years, it's so tempting to believe we can cut ourselves loose from compromises with Brussels. But sovereignty as a singular focus can so easily become solitude: North Korea is the most 'sovereign' nation in the world. We know what the alternative to a unified Europe looks like, and how different our world would be had we kept the drawbridge up in 1939. Europe is still worth fighting for.
ClosingADoor
Member
So same income as Hungary, Latvia, Bulgaria and Romania.
And Turkey is not joining. It's a non issue.
QuicheFontaine
Member
Yeah, except with a population of those four countries you mentioned combined, x2.
And yes, lots of people have moved from those poor countries to the UK for the exact same reason - average monthly wage in each country. About 220k Romanians and Bulgarians have come to the UK since they got free movement rights. If Turks moved here at the same rate that would be about 600k.
And I agree that Turkey isn't getting in for the foreseeable, I've never suggested that! I'm just replying to people's posts here if you look back up the quote chain.
Edit:
Incidentally, I don't think any of those countries you mention should have even been allowed to join the EU for this exact reason. The EU was initially a collaboration between more or less equal partners, and it made sense in the way that, for example, the Benelux countries have a high degree of cooperation. In that situation you can have freedom of movement and it won't massively affect anything since it will balance out. The rapid expansion of the EU in 2004-7 caused a lot of problems, and I can't work out why it was done other than to satisfy some "united europe" vision.
I strongly support the idea of a federal, united Europe.
but I'm probably going to vote leave because I don't think the EU as currently constituted can get there. Like the League of Nations vs. the UN, I think the EU needs to dissolve so it can be replaced by something better.
EU undemocratic?
These people are voted in by the people we vote in. It's no different to how the prime minister is elected. We don't vote for them and people have no problem with that. Why should they have a problem with the EU?
if anything the EU has done more good for me recently than my own government has.
These people are voted in by the people we vote in. It's no different to how the prime minister is elected. We don't vote for them and people have no problem with that. Why should they have a problem with the EU?
if anything the EU has done more good for me recently than my own government has.
This, people moan about the torys but it's not their fault there is no opposition. Instead we have muppets like Corbyn.
New export markets, very cheap capital and cheap but very close outsourcing for western Europe. It wasn't done for some great political vision.
QuicheFontaine
Member
The EU is an ostensibly political project. I don't see anything there that necessitates them joining the EU. They should have formed an Eastern European Union with internal free trade and movement, and we could have dealt with that en bloc.
ultratruman
Banned
Eastern Europe is Europe, whether you consider them 'equal' or not. They hold European secular, liberal values of rules based governance and strong democratic institutions all the more closely because they still remember the demeaning existence of life under authoritarianism. You only have to look at the languishing state of post-communist countries who didn't work so hard to be part of the EU to see why it matters that they joined, but then again that would require a sense of history that seems to evade myopic leavers. A sense only for vapid, phoney economics is why they'd rather tie us closer to secretive police states like China than our European partners.
You don't understand how trade works, even in political terms, then. To get something you must offer something else in exchange. I understand that you have preferred some Eastern Europe gulag from which you to order whatever you need, but luckily things don't work that way.
QuicheFontaine
Member
Whoa whoa whoa. I meant 'equal' in a strictly economic sense. Like, GDP per capita. On a basic human rights level of course eastern Europeans are equal, I never meant to imply otherwise. But economically there is a stark contrast once you get east of Austria.
Why on earth would it be a "gulag"?? I've just been told by ultratruman that eastern Europeans hold European secular, liberal values of rules based governance and strong democratic institutions all the more closely because they still remember the demeaning existence of life under authoritarianism. My hypothetical EEU would surely be wholly democratic.
Starwolf_UK
Member
This brings me onto this piece of satire a friend of mine showed me on Facebook:
Anyway moving on from that. My understanding is the vote leave argument is member states and MEPs only get to vote on laws rather than propose them and that is somehow twisted into "unelected bureaucrats making decisions".
More info on it here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36429482
Really both sides are cherry picking things and knowingly misleading the public (remember George early on deciding to present fall in GDP fall by dividing it by number of households and calling it a fall in household income)
so normal politics, right
That is only one frustrating part of it. Other things I've been flustered by are people who value their beliefs of "freedom, independence and democracy" over everything else (beliefs are hard to argue against and at the end of the day those points matter the most to them) or just the plain irrational "I don't like African doctors in the NHS so I want to leave the European Union"
Completely fails to understand the question and in democracy that view when turned into a vote is worth the exact same as mine or anyone elses...makes me despair
phisheep
NeoGAF's Chief Barrister
As I understand it this, or something like EFTA, was proposed early on but the countries pushed for full membership as a sort of protection from Russian influence. I don't blame them at all for that, following all the cold war and iron curtain stuff - and neither do I blame the EU for acceding, though it was rather a lot to swallow all at once.
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