UK to leave EU

[Thumpalumpacus]

My reasons for voting out had nothing to do with immigration.  I'm generally a liberal minded guy who has never voted conservative in his life.

The fact that i have to keep repeating this to anyone I converse with on this is the most saddening thing.

You needn't repeat it to me. But out of curiosity, what drove you vote?

[Edwardo Piet]

Lol I just saw Boris Johnson's speech where he argued for why we should vote Leave. His argument was "Well at least we're offering some sort of hope and solution. The Remain campaign isn't offering any hope or solution at all." It's the Optimism Bias: Completely failing to address the fact that no solution and no hope is better than false hope and making things even worse than they already are.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emxumavBU3M

"They say we can't do it, we say they can" "they offer fear we offer hope"

LOL

The question is whether you actually can or if your hope is genuine. Offering hope and saying you can isn't enough: if you're wrong you're only making things worse.

Better to offer sensible fear than insensible hope.

It's like when atheists admit they don't know the ultimate origin of life and theists are like "Well at least we are offering an answer! Goddidit" a bad answer is worse than no answer.

People just want any answer even if it's a terrible one that makes shit worse. The fact that no solution is automatically seen as a weakness is awful when the other side's so-called "solution" is deemed legitimate rather than harmful simply through being a mere attempt at a solution. No answer is better than a bad answer, having an answer is no more a sign of strength than it is a sign of weakness. It depends on the quality of the answer: not the mere availability of answer. If I answer the question of "What is 2+2?" with "5" that incorrect answer isn't superior to my ignoring the question. Better to keep silent than give the wrong answer and spread misinformation or worsen things.

This kind of stuff makes me agree with the esteemed Daniel Kahneman even more:

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Daniel_Kahneman

Most of us view the world as more benign than it really is, our own attributes as more favorable than they truly are, and the goals we adopt as more achievable than they are likely to be. We also tend to exaggerate our ability to forecast the future, which fosters overconfidence. In terms of its consequences for decisions, the optimistic bias may well be the most significant cognitive bias.

Boris Johnson's entire speech is rhetoric using appeal to emotion playing on people's need for reassurance regardless of if based on anything or not.

Notice how in this entire speech he spoke of hope and offered a can-do attitude but offered no facts or evidence that his hope was genuine or if what he is saying can be done can actually be done.

[Pat Mustard]

Of course they didn't. This is a huge deal and a major part of the reason they wanted independence to begin with. Even if all of Scotland pulls together and votes one way, their votes will never be heard because the rest of the U.K. does not align with Scottish view on politics. Now they can show it. And now is the time to get out before the deal is sealed.

Now replace Scotland with the UK and the UK with Europe and THAT is why I voted leave!  We may as well not even have a UK government as all our laws have to be given the ok from Europe first, just look at the Tampon Tax debacle!

You know, back in the 80s and 90s the UK could have built a counterweight to the Franco-German axis that would have had a majority. But the Tory and Nu Labor goverments' utterly selfish attitude to the EU (all take and no give) alienated their natural allies (Scandanavia, Netherlands, Ireland, Czechs and others) to the point that they lost all crdibility within the EU. Th straw that broke the camel's back was Call Me Dave's realigning of the Tory MEPs with the Neo-Fascist grouping in the European Parliament. The UKs lack of voice in Europe was completely self inflicted.

[SofaKingHigh]

My reasons for voting out had nothing to do with immigration.  I'm generally a liberal minded guy who has never voted conservative in his life.

The fact that i have to keep repeating this to anyone I converse with on this is the most saddening thing.

You needn't repeat it to me. But out of curiosity, what drove you vote?

I could, literally, be here all day, but for me it boiled down to a few core issues:

We joined a common market, however, the EU also legislates for it's members.  It has legal supremacy over it's member states too, meaning that any time a UK parliamentary statue comes into conflict with a Brussels made law, Brussels wins.  This doesn't sound like the end of the world, but this legal supremacy is the basis for a political merger of the member states.  The EU now has, among other things, a passport, a written constitution, a national anthem, a criminal justice system, a president, a foreign minister......... The Five Presidents report has set out a plan for deeper integration of fiscal and economic polices, plans for a "social union" have been touted and Juncker has openly admitted he wants an EU army, none of these things can be achieved without all 28 member states, Euro-zone or not. 

The EU has no trade deals with China or India, neither does it have any trade deals with most other commonwealth countries.  because the EU has no trade deal, nor do we.  Talks have been ongoing for YEARS with countries like Australia and Canada, they have been held up for so long because of......Italian Tomatoes, among other things.

I could go on and on Thump, but I'll leave it there.  I simply have no wish to become a part of a huge EU state, I understand many others do, and I am sorry for them, I really am.

.

[SofaKingHigh]

The Maastrich treaty, coupled with the Euro and our failure to join meant that this vote was almost inevitable.

I would rather put it down to you own politician's inability to communicate with their people and populists taking advantage of an already skeptical climate.

What you just mentioned is a failure of the UKs own politics. As far as we are concerned, the british always made home with the very best deal possible, compared to all the other members. They always got the cherry on top, whenever Blair or Cameron showed up at the table.

Or, could it be a failure of European politicians on the whole?

[Edwardo Piet]

The EU is hugely influential, and we have shot ourselves in the foot by losing our membership.

[Pat Mustard]

What goes on inside is pretty secretive even MEP's are on the outside .... sorry never really watched Yes Minister

Yes I can see the fear of Nationalism, which I share ... Note my personal, I have also had a case before the European Parliament through the Peti -Committee, issues have been built up from experience, which is why I never tried to sway anyone prior to the vote ....

Right, I see. You're missing out... Yes Minister's (and Yes Prime Minister) brilliant and you can learn a lot about British politics from it - I think Thatcher said it was a very accurate portrayal of government. There's a clip from it earlier in this thread which I've just found for you http://atheistforums.org/thread-43710-po...pid1312963. Humphrey Appleby's the one on the left... and btw that's why I call Hammy Humpy... cos of his run-on sentences (which you'll understand if you see it) 

Cool. Sorry about pretty much ignoring you first time round... I was angry at the time and not inclined to read what looked like a very technical pro-leave argument... but I'm calm now and I'll read it properly at some point. So sorry about that.

Madog's whole case is an egregiously stupid "I vape therefore the EU is teh evuuuuuuls". Half of what he links to doesn't say what he wants it to say, the other half does, but is bad science. And what he himself says is all too often meaningless jargon.

[Edwardo Piet]

I would agree that I make run-on sentences I don't make them all the time I'm not suggesting that you're saying I do Squishy in fact that's a rather accurate characterisation of how I speak a lot of the time I really like the whole "Humpy" thing it suits me that's just fine.

Geddit?

[Pat Mustard]

Sure it is. We don't live in a direct democracy. We live in a representative democracy. That means we elect people to make decisions for us. Just because we don't vote on everything individually doesn't mean we aren't democratic.

This was a complicated issue. Most people didn't properly understand it. Lies were spread, there was fear mongering. The vote should have never happened.

Nigel Farage just admitted on TV that the Leave campaign were wrong to say £350 million a week could be spent on the NHS if we left the EU. The lies are already emerging.

QFT. When one considers that this was mostly a ref called by David Cameron to hold at bay the growing right wing euro-skeptic element both of his party and UKIP, you see it as less of an opportunity for people to 'have their say' and more of a political gamble to cement the Conservative position of pro-EU.

Of course, it back fired because it was actually more older and disenfranchised Labour voters who came out to vote instead. And why people thought Corbyn was truly a remain campaigner I'll never know. For 30 years he has actively campaigned *against* EU membership. An article published today accuses Corbyn of effectively scuppering the remain campaign by refusing to stand with Conservative remainers, and choosing to keep party lists secret which indicated that more and more working class voters in traditional heartlands were voting leave. Again, catastrophe.

http://www.politico.eu/article/how-david...ina-obama/

Well considering that Labour brought home the same vote in % tems as the Nats, yes Corbyn did deliver a proper yes campaign. The only leader who failed to bring his party with him was Call Me Dave.

I'm sick and tired of the Blairite bashing of the Labour left. They had their go, they nearly desroyed the party (once voters realised that the Tuberculosis Baccili wasn't actually lefit in any way, he hemorrhaged votes from Labour. Over 1 million were lost before Iraq).

Edit: Liebor lost 3m votes between 97 and 2001.

[Edwardo Piet]

Corbyn seems the most honest. It's rare for a politician. When he admits his weaknesses a lot of people see that admission of weakness as a weakness. It isn't.

His weakness in my view is his unpopularity: It's unfortunate that because the public vote matters even when people are idiots, if people incorrectly see weakness in a politician then that perceived weakness becomes real weakness due to public opinion having relevant power.