UK to leave EU

[Napoléon]

That's actually a pretty damned good rule Nap.  OFC a monocropper won't like it (not exactly talking small farmers here), but monocropping isn't a very good idea.  That's a rule they had to follow...to get some government cheese, right?  I'm not sure I understand the problem.  Don't want to follow the rule, don't get subsidies.  Follow the rule, get subsidies.

-edit: No..no, wait, I just looked it up, they don't even lose their subsidies...just a portion of them......

Do you know how stupid the EU farming subsidies are right now?

[The Grand Nudger]

That seems rather vague.  Subsidies are often labyrinthine and..imo, counterproductive...but in the case you specifically mentioned, it's all pretty straightforward. 

Some operations collect whats called a "greening" payment under the auspices of adopting more ecologically sound practices and models.  Large monocultures were collecting those payments, despite engaging what is probably the single easiest example of an ecologically unsound practice.  If they wanted to continue to collect the full payment, they needed to comply with a ruling designed at reducing large monocultures or forfeit 30% of their "greening" subsidy

How is that a bad rule for small business, or "farmers", how is it detrimental, how is it a bad idea as far as subsidies aimed at promoting ecologically sound ag is concerned? I'm almost -certain- there are better examples...but why did that one stick out to you? Where did you hear that this was redundant bureaucracy that was crushing the little guy? It's an example of larger commodities interests scamming the shit out of corporate welfare......

[Tiberius]

Did we as British citizens get a chance to vote for Juncker?

Directly? No. Indirectly? Yes. Juncker was elected as President in the same way David Cameron was elected Prime Minister. His party chose him as their candidate for President, and then the party won the most seats. You may have not cast a vote for Juncker personally, but did you cast a vote for Cameron either?

Ironically, Juncker was elected to President via a far more democratic method than the current UK PM, who was only elected as an MP, and then got the PM job basically by default.

Tell you what was democratic. The referendum. And the first thing the supposed liberal democracy loving lefties did was protest it because people are too stupid to know what they're voting for and because they didn't get what they wanted.

inb4 "hurrr democracy means we can protest", doesn't mean what you're protesting for isn't the reversal of democracy.

The referendum was democratic, I agree. However, that doesn't mean protesting the result is undemocratic. Technically speaking, it was a non-binding referendum. There's a legal case that might null the result entirely on technical grounds as well (if it's found that only Parliament can invoke Article 50).

Also, just because something is democratic doesn't necessarily mean it is fair. The "leave" campaign perpetuated lies and misled the public in the run up to the vote, not something that is fair in any sense of the word. In addition, there's an argument that any big change to the country shouldn't require a simple majority, especially when the voter turnout was 71.8%.

[Edwardo Piet]

I'd also be curious to know the percentage of how many Brexiters have changed their minds and become Remainers since realizing how much they are fucking the British economy.

[I_am_not_mafia]

Excessive bureaucracy from whose point of view? The consumer and worker or the corporations trying to maximise their profit margins.

The thousands of small businesses. The fishing industry. Farmers.

Exactly. Businesses. And referring to them as small business is an emotive argument. Unless you are saying that rules stop applying to businesses when they get large enough. And all businesses prioritise their own profit margins over other people's concerns. They have to in order to compete and survive. For example, take the fishing industry, if it wasn't for EU regulation of waters shared between us and Europe then the fishing stock would have collapsed by now. It's a classic case of the tragedy of the commons.

[I_am_not_mafia]

That's actually a pretty damned good rule Nap.  OFC a monocropper won't like it (not exactly talking small farmers here), but monocropping isn't a very good idea.  That's a rule they had to follow...to get some government cheese, right?  I'm not sure I understand the problem.  Don't want to follow the rule, don't get subsidies.  Follow the rule, get subsidies.

-edit: No..no, wait, I just looked it up, they don't even lose their subsidies...just a portion of them......

To put it into context:

Peak soil

Those of us living in modern cities can easily forget that without fertile soil we could not survive. Yet modern agricultural techniques are eroding the very soil on which food production depends. This ongoing soil loss means we face the problem of feeding a growing population from a shrinking land base. This should be troubling because even a casual reading of history shows that, under the right circumstances, climatic extremes, political turmoil or resource abuse can bring down a society. And in the century ahead we face all three, as shifting climate patterns and depleted oil supplies coincide with progressive loss of farmland.

Many currently profitable industrial farming methods would become uneconomic if their true costs were incorporated into market pricing. Direct financial subsidies and failure to include the costs of depleting soil fertility encourage practices that degrade the land. In the US, for example, the top 10 per cent of agricultural producers now receive 66 per cent of the more than $10 billion handed out in annual subsidies, and they use it to support large farms growing single crops, particularly wheat, corn and cotton.

I also posted earlier about how the UK only has 100 harvests left.

[Napoléon]

Directly? No. Indirectly? Yes. Juncker was elected as President in the same way David Cameron was elected Prime Minister. His party chose him as their candidate for President, and then the party won the most seats. You may have not cast a vote for Juncker personally, but did you cast a vote for Cameron either?

This is bullshit mate.

The answer is a flat no. Not 'indirectly' yes. When voting in a general election the general public get to vote for a political party. Who got to vote for Juncker's party in the EU? Not the general public of Britain. End of.

[abaris]

Who got to vote for Juncker's party in the EU? Not the general public of Britain. End of.

The sum of all national parliaments having enough conservative clout to install Juncker. I keep wondering what some people think the EU actually is. Conservatives of all countries installed him.

[Tiberius]

Directly? No. Indirectly? Yes. Juncker was elected as President in the same way David Cameron was elected Prime Minister. His party chose him as their candidate for President, and then the party won the most seats. You may have not cast a vote for Juncker personally, but did you cast a vote for Cameron either?

This is bullshit mate.

The answer is a flat no. Not 'indirectly' yes. When voting in a general election the general public get to vote for a political party. Who got to vote for Juncker's party in the EU? Not the general public of Britain. End of.

Blame that on the Conservatives. They were part of the EPP until 2009. A vote for a Conservative MEP was a vote for the EPP. I still don't see how that's an issue for you. If Labour, for whatever reason, didn't have a MP candidate for a constituency, but they won the general election, that doesn't mean the people who voted in that constituency had less of a vote, and it doesn't make it undemocratic.

The facts are, if you don't vote for a party (even if they didn't field any candidates in your area), and that party wins, they get to decide things. You not being able to vote for them is irrelevant.

By the way, here's a list of parties that are members of the EPP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_P...Membership

Conservatives used to be on that list too. Just because they left and made it so that there were no UK members doesn't make the voting unfair. A UK party could join the EPP and field their own MEPs if they wanted.

[I_am_not_mafia]

There's a loophole in Article 50 that lets Britain back into the EU whenever we want

So, to sum up, even if the UK triggers Article 50 we can still cancel that decision if, for instance, there was a change of government. But the government would be up against the clock: It would have to make that U-turn before the rest of the EU voted on the Article 50 request, and before the two-year deadline elapsed.

Given how long the exit process is likely to take, and how unpredictable UK politics has suddenly become, don't rule out a change of government or a change of heart.