I/O

The only people to blame for where we are is everyone in the UK.
After all that is what a referendum is for, in reality no-one is to blame.
Decades of mistrust of the EU wasn’t resolved, but left to fester.
How this all turns out, only time will tell.

Keep having referendums until you get the result you want isn’t democracy, it’s anachy.

Anyone want to point that out to the SNP?

The only people to blame for where we are is everyone in the UK.

Hardly.
There are at least 16 million people who didn’t want this state of affairs.

The exit people seem to have dug a hole. I will observe to see if they know whether to stop digging.

Petition approaching 3 million rapidly.

When it reached over 2 millions, I read that only 350000 votes came from Britain. Makes it a bit less impressive.

I also heard that only 35% in the age range of 18 to 24 actually voted. Is this correct?

When it reachod over 2 millions, I read that only 350000 votes came from Britain. Makes it a bit less impressive.

The Petitions Committee had removed 77,000 fraudulent signatures by early this morning, but the total is way over 3 million and still rising pretty fast. UK citizens living abroad are allowed to sign, as are foreign citizens living in the UK.

@ Rick.
Just make sure that taking French citizenship does not
make you liable to compulsary military srevice!

@ all.
I have read the various comments, especially form our continental
members and friends. It was far more truthfull than the output of
our so called leaders.
This change my mind FOUR times ending with my first decision “Leave”

This was based on my experiance in France in the 1958/9 when the
first stage of the “Common Market” was launched with the abolition
of Custom and Passport checks at the internal borders of the initial
six members. A good idea of course but then the need for common standards arose (to enable freedom of trade)
and thus the begining of the huge secretariat to run it all.

Just around this time “Moi” DeGaulle (sp?) Initiated the Fifth Republic
and withdrew France from Nato (1960)

The Euro crisis was the final straw for me and I decided that if Britain could leave the EU then we should.

Now there is just the ever present question – Do we have any Politicions who are up to the job, rather than self servers?

Just make sure that taking French citizenship does not make you liable to compulsary military srevice!

Wiki says: France accordingly suspended peacetime military conscription in 1996. President Jacques Chirac’s government formally announced the end of compulsory military service⁴ in 2001. Young people must still, however, register for possible obligatory service of an unspecified nature (should the need arise). A recent change is that women must now register as well.

Mandatory conscription has been gone for a long time, and I’m not entirely sure that I qualify as “young” any more.

The Euro crisis was the final straw for me

The Euro debt crisis started circa 2009 following on from the American crisis of 2008, and largely for the same sort of reasons. I would not be at all surprised if there wasn’t a 2018 Euro crisis following the 2017 Sterling crisis.

Unfortunately, all of the money markets are inter-related, and the big banks have their tentacles all over the place (SocGen is currently getting itself burned for investments in the UK, for instance). As such, one part of the façade crumbling risks the whole thing being upset. While the Euro debt crisis is not good (especially for the Greeks who got screwed over by the IMF), one cannot view these events in simple isolation, especially considering that Britain, as an EU member, was not part of the Euro zone and adopting the Euro was never even an issue that anybody considered (as the answer would have been a resounding NO).

The collapse of the Fifth Republic, in ‘58, was ther Algiers crisis and the fact that successive governments kept failing following the effects of WW2. The system in use by the 4th Republic was not working.
France maintained an independence from NATO between the mid ’60s and mid ’90s (ish). Nothing to do with The Fifth Republic, just it seems to be felt here that NATO obligations are abused by certain members who consider it an additional unpaid army. Sarko brought France back into NATO (but France’s nuclear capabilities are off limits) and there were protests over the idea of using French soldiers to go fight other people’s arbitrary wars. You can probably guess what I’m referring to here.

Inter-related, but not direct cause and effect. Much like finance.

Oh, and this:

was launched with the abolition of Custom and Passport checks at the internal borders of the initial six members.

Abolition did not take place until the original Schengen Agreement was made, in 1985 and then revised in the Schengen Convention something like a decade later.
Citizens could move freely around the EEA (pre EU), but passports were still routinely checked. Maybe less so in high transit areas like France linking Brussels, but certainly in most other frontier areas checks were made. Customs as well.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/seven-eu-countries-to-scrap-border-controls-1571860.html
Note the date.

I’m not entirely sure that I qualify as “young” any more.

Me too! Approaching my 3 score and ten, perhaps it all doesn’t matter too much – death will release me!

Pity about that 350 billion for the Health Service turned out to be moonshine, though!

Counter at 3 and a third million!

This was based on my experiance in France in the 1958/9…

How would that be even remotely relevant to what the UK needs 60 years later in 2018/19…?

For anyone who supported the Leave campaign, I hope that you’re not too surprised to learn that whipping up a xenophobic frenzy amongst the disenfranchised has already had some entirely predictable results…

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/brexit-eu-referendum-racial-racism-abuse-hate-crime-reported-latest-leave-immigration-a7104191.html

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/26/racist-incidents-feared-to-be-linked-to-brexit-result-reported-in-england-and-wales

It could get very interesting indeed when Boris and Gove have to explain that although they forgot to mention it during the campaign¹, there will actually be a fairly straight choice between destroying the UK economy through skills shortage and trade blocks, or continuing to allow migration at current levels.

¹ Perhaps it slipped their mind while they were getting confused over that £350 million?

the huge secretariat to run it all.

Less than 25,000 for 742 million in the EU.
More than 425,000 for 64 million in the UK.

withdrew France from Nato (1960)

France has always been a member of Nato.
It did withdraw from military obligations.

The Euro crisis was the final straw for me

The Eurozone is not the EU; only 19 of 28.

Mom and I had (what we presume ¹) was racial abuse from an English person before the referendum had even been held!

¹ Too much booze slurred the words, but the gestures were understood. Though if we were to eff-off and we’re in a different country, rather begs the question – eff off to where?

@Steve: Don’t you think the kind of people carrying out this abuse and hate would have used a remain result to do so as well? They only care about spreading hate and will find any excuse to do so.

Sadly the article that quotes ‘more than a hundred incidents’ is a small number according to this document (https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/467366/hosb0515.pdf) which states there were nearly 43,000 incidents in 2014/2015 which averages 117 a day.

So no, I’m not saying it hasn’t got worse (before anyone accuses me of being a ‘denier’) but I am saying that we all have to be careful jumping on headlines. After all, everyone seems to be bitching about the lack of facts in all this and the media as much as the politicians did little to help. Why would they start now?

Don’t you think the kind of people carrying out this abuse and hate would have used a remain result to do so as well?

Indeed I do – which is why I wrote “campaign”, not “result”…

:-)

So, to be clear, if I read your response correctly, everything bad that happens now is all the fault of the Leave campaign? And because people had an opinion on something it’s their fault for the actions of the minority?

Perhaps it slipped their mind while they were getting confused over that £350 million?

Gove is involved and you suggest that you’re surprised is isn’t true?
Nah, not buying that one, you show too much evidence of having working braincells.

So, to be clear, if I read your response correctly, everything bad that happens now is all the fault of the Leave campaign?

Nope. Idiots doing things like that don’t need an excuse.
Mind you giving them even half of one doesn’t help.

So, to be clear, if I read your response correctly, everything bad that happens now is all the fault of the Leave campaign? And because people had an opinion on something it’s their fault for the actions of the minority?

No – not at all! It’s all David Cameron’s fault for conceiving the idea in the first place.

It’s right that he should fall on his sword – I’m sure he could borrow one from someone!

Actually it looks like it was put forward by Phillip Hammond and passed by the House of Lords. I can’t find any evidence that David Cameron was solely responsible….

So, to be clear, if I read your response correctly, everything bad that happens now is all the fault of the Leave campaign?

No, it isn’t, and that wasn’t what I wrote at all.

However, some of the Leave campaign have been entering some fairly dangerous waters over the past few months, and only time will tell what long-term damage they’ve done.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/16/nigel-farage-defends-ukip-breaking-point-poster-queue-of-migrants

I apologise if you’ve taken offence. But you did write ‘For anyone who supported the Leave campaign’ so that would account for my confusion, and in all of this it is easy to take bits and pieces out of context and at best misunderstand or at worst twist them. Something we must all be mindful of moving forward.

The Euro debt crisis started circa 2009 following on from the American crisis of 2008, and largely for the same sort of reasons.

The reasons were completely different, although both times politicians decided to do the same wrong thing: rescuing banks instead of rescuing the banks’ customers.

The American credit crisis happened because the US government decided to remove most of the risks for private customers to finance real estate. After that, it happened because the credit rating agencies completely lost the plot and gave low risk ratings for essentially high risk stuff.

The Euro crisis on the other hand happened because a lot of governments (especially in Greece, Spain, Ireland and Portugal) spent a lot more money than they could realistically refinance.

Serially breaking various clearly worded treaties when trying to handle the Euro crisis showed (IMHO for the first time in such a clear way) that European treaties are basically worthless, because they will be broken whenever politicians don’t like them anymore. See also: immigration crisis and Chancellor Merkel’s catastrophic decisions basically destroying the Dublin treaty.

While the Euro debt crisis is not good (especially for the Greeks who got screwed over by the IMF)

Actually, the Greeks screwed themselves because they constantly voted for politicians who promised that the spending party will continue – and, atypically for politicians, they held their promise (on the other hand, spending other people’s money is probably the very definition of a politician). Especially the Tsipras government rolled back a lot of sensible decisions of the previous goverment which made things a lot worse.

I don’t remember the IMF doing something wrong wrt Greece – maybe suggesting the possibility of a credit haircut was not the most intelligent thing to do.

You say it’s the exit people who dug the hole, but the in campaign was just as full of lies and no-one likes doom and gloom stories.
So from what I saw from the remain campaign – there are no benefits of being in the EU (there are plenty).
As I said before, if you see it that way, its the country that failed – people just like to blame anyone other than themselves.
Oh, and an online petition isn’t a show of anything – it’s just sheep following each other.
I know a few people who didn’t vote at all.
Of the people I actually spoke to, no-one actually knew any of the benefits or negatives of the EU – that’s both stay and leave – just rubbish spouted by the media.
People just turned up and blindly voted, both leave and remain.
So yes of the 16 million who voted remain I suspect most of those were idiots too.

The only way to be sure is to have an enforced IQ test before voting, people below 120 aren’t allowed and then a further test to ensure people know the in’s and out’s of the EU – but I suspect the amount of people voting would be rather small.

The only way to be sure is to have an enforced IQ test before voting people below 120 aren’t allowed…

I’d put that down as elitist.

The only way to be sure is to have an enforced IQ test before voting, people below 120 aren’t allowed…

It’s not the IQ part. For all kinds of things in life you need a diploma or certificate. Except for very important things like being a parent, a politician or a voter.

it’s just sheep following each other.

…rather like this entire referendum, then.

Obviously we cannot have intelligence tests for voting, but it might be useful for people to vote to have a diploma of some sort. We are pretty civilised in here. Other forums have devolved into slagging matches of why this and that sucks and people have been saying good old Nigel has “finally saved us” from eurovision and the eurofighter and one person even said the English should be honour bound to withdraw from Euro2016; as if everything that begins with “euro” is something to do with the EU and is therefore bad.
Or those people who used this referendum as a protest vote and voted Leave but didn’t actually think that leave meant, you know, leave. I’ve seen a copy of the ballot paper. It couldn’t have been more obvious – one box to stay in the EU and one box to quit. How could somebody cock that up?

Today I’m not sure what is scarier – that the UK is playing chicken on a dark road with no lights, or that such people have the ability to collectively determine the outcome of vastly important decisions…