Iain or Duncan?
Poll: The EU Referendum: How Will You Vote? (June Poll)
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So if Britain does vote to leave does that mean Britain is a racist country? I assume people are also aware past immigrants are complaining about the current immigrants?
LOL sorry. I just realized how that read. Both IDS and DLJ had very soft hands and pretty limp handshakes but they seemed like nice enough people in person.
I'm voting out but I agree with you here, anyone who's observed Germany surely must wish we'd been governed by German politicians over the last 7 decades or so.
I totally understand your point of view, but on the flip side, surely you recognise that for something this significant and important, there is a certain amount of due diligence required on the part of the people empowered with the vote to ensure they they properly understand the situation and the implication of their decision? This does not seem to be the case from what I've seen.
There are some excellent arguments being made by the leave campaigners in this thread and whilst I don't agree with all of them, I recognise and admire the effort that people are putting into researching and arguing their position. But for every well reasoned reply, there's responses like the one below which don't give any confidence that the poster has put any sort of rational thought into the decision other than lapping up tabloid scaremongering about immigration levels.
I understand that it could well be little more than trolling, but if it's not and if I was supporting a Leave vote, frankly I would find such posts embarrassing and be worried that they actually undermine and drown out the reasoned arguments from my side.
And anecdotally this is not a trend limited to this forum, from what I've experienced. There is an old schoolmate on my Facebook friends list, who is regularly sharing propaganda from various Leave campaign pages. He shared one such article the other day that referenced an article about how easy people traffickers were finding it to smuggle people into the UK due to an under funded Border Force and our proximity to the mainland, and had a shouty comment like "More problems caused by our Open Borders with the EU. Vote LEAVE to end this madness!!" or somehting. I decided to reply and pointed out that the article in question actually made no link to the problem being caused by our EU membership, that we didn't in fact have open borders and asked him quite how he expected leaving the EU to solve such problems, given that we weren't actually going to be physically moving the entire country further from the mainland. There was a little back and forth and in the end he basically shrugged off my argument saying "at the end of the day, you believe the lies from Remain and I'll believe the ones from Leave and we'll vote accordingly!" (or words to that effect, basically).
I didn't respond, but it made me angry, because he pretty much openly admitted that he knew that what he was reading was tripe that could be exposed as little more than hysteric propaganda with five minutes of critical thought, yet he was happy to share and base his decision on it regardless.
In conclusion, whilst I totally understand the need to be democratic and I see your point, in a way, I actually kind of sympathise with Dawkins' point of view. What scares me most is not whether we vote to Leave, or whether we vote to Remain, but whether we make the decision ensuring that we give it the serious thought and consideration that it deserves; from what I've seen so far, a huge amount of people aren't doing that.
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No one's really given us the facts, though.
Someone made the decision to take us into war with / in Iraq. That was a good decision we didn't get a say in
(I share your fear)
No one's really given us the facts, though.
Someone made the decision to take us into war with / in Iraq. That was a good decision we didn't get a say in
(I share your fear)
Interestingly the government did tell us some facts before invading Iraq - they just turned out to be wrong after it was too late. There are facts out there, but I'm afraid you're going to have to use your judgement about which facts are true and which are misleading.
No one's really given us the facts, though.
Someone made the decision to take us into war with / in Iraq. That was a good decision we didn't get a say in
(I share your fear)
Absolutely. That's why the whole thing feels like such a farce. Too much hysterical and emotional rhetoric, from both sides, not enough fact to rationally weigh up.
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It's not just an issue trying to find which statements are actually factually correct, it's also a judgement over which statements are important which adds an extra level of complexity and subjectivity.
You need to get objective facts down and then make a subjective weighting over importance. That's an involved process, one that most people will not engage in to a meaningful level.
Remain will win, the only question is how far ahead it will be. Sanity tends to prevail in developed countries, luckily.
No it doesn't. Fear threatens ignorance and agendas. Tell people often it enough that it cannot be done and they will believe it. Britain is a demoralised nation.
We'll see.
One thing that is for certain is regardless of which way it goes, the result will leave a bad taste in the mouths of many. It'll also leave a scar on the political lannscape of the country and be a cause of many a rift.
Not to mention the many years of "we" told you so, over the next 5, 10, 15 & 20 years.
I wonder whether remaining would result in increased UKIP support (defecting tory leave voters). There will definitely be bitterness and division long after the vote.
i am still working on my pairwise criteria comparison where all the options (leave no EEA, leave with EEA, remain etc.) are listed and qualitative comparisons between each are made (ie equally preferred (1), moderately preferred(2) or strongly prepared(3)) for a series of criteria (defence, immigration, economy etc.).
The spreadsheet is getting bigger but I may share my own conclusions at some stage.
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Britain leaves the EU. In order to be part of EU single market means accepting the four freedoms of goods, services, capital, and labour that go with the EU single market. It means swallowing EU rules, and much of the EU Acquis, and it means paying into the EU budget. How in the gods name in hell does anyone wanting to exit the EU not understand this? The only thing that would change by UK leaving the EU is that the UK would no longer have a seat at the table in the discison making process.
Remember Britexit freedom of labour is all part of the founding principals of the single market.
Remember Britexit freedom of labour is all part of the founding principals of the single market.
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So I make a post, one of the key themes of which was criticising ill thought out rhetoric which does little more than question the sanity of anyone who opposes it and you proceed to quote me and do the exact same thing
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Alanis morissette is applauding somewhere.
If this forum is anything to go by, leave voters are 2:1. There wont be another referendum we are 30% ahead. A confortable majority. Only sone media meddling or something serious can change now.
The media will likely put a ban on all negative reporting of the EU, call Leave main people (other than the big hitters) get the small fish in and try to make them look stupid. That and more fear, fire and brimstone if we exercise a democratic dexision
The media will likely put a ban on all negative reporting of the EU, call Leave main people (other than the big hitters) get the small fish in and try to make them look stupid. That and more fear, fire and brimstone if we exercise a democratic dexision
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