Forums / Discussion / Serious Debate

14,139 total conversations in 683 threads

+ New Thread


UK EU Membership Referendum

Last posted Jul 02, 2016 at 01:27AM EDT. Added May 08, 2016 at 10:22AM EDT
144 posts from 31 users

I suppose RandomMan suggests a week because even if it does eventually rise in a month, damage would be done. Still, I don't know if a week is a good gauge of what will happen.

Also more demographics

The most notable takeaway?

"Turnout in areas with a higher proportion of younger residents tended to be lower"
So yes, the younger folk screwed themselves over not voting

I do not know enough about this situation to form a solid opinion, but I heard a troubling analysis on the news and I'm interested to know what other people think of it. The UK leaving will deal a death blow to the EU, which is the only thing keeping Putin in check. Yesterday's decision could mean Russia dominating eastern Europe. Is this a real concern or just a conspiracy theory?

Last edited Jun 24, 2016 at 07:22PM EDT

yah the EU's sanctions are the only thing keeping Putin in check as he annexes parts of other countries and aggravates NATO in the Middle East and deploys subs in numbers not seen since WWII…

Regardless, NATO exists. The EU is not the end all of Europe.

Farm Zombie wrote:

I do not know enough about this situation to form a solid opinion, but I heard a troubling analysis on the news and I'm interested to know what other people think of it. The UK leaving will deal a death blow to the EU, which is the only thing keeping Putin in check. Yesterday's decision could mean Russia dominating eastern Europe. Is this a real concern or just a conspiracy theory?

The EU? Doing things? That involve confronting people? And actually taking action?

What science fiction journals have you been skimming?

One thing that annoyed me from the Americans was that Obama came all the way to the UK and tried to warn us that we'd be back of the line and dismissing the special treatment if we left.

But he's seemed to change his tune. Saying nothing will change.

Greyblades wrote:

I get the feeling that there will be a concerted effort to make sure nothing actually changes.

Yup. That's the thing about globalization on the scale we have today. Every country is already linked, economically, so that no country can do anything without affecting others. So if the UK really does face the threat of tanking or if its goods get to unresaonably expensive prices, guess who's gonna bail them out of it. The EU, and the US, cause we can't afford a first world nation to crash, or else the whole of the first world crashes with it.

We've already seen it's not crashing. It closed at 1.36 vs the dollar, which is still higher what some big London investors were predicting (1.30) back in January even if the UK did not Brexit. That's a decent drop but it's not the financial apocalypse.

Here's an article from February, where they mention a predicted range of 1.30 – 1.35 vs the dollar.

{ A weaker pound is not necessarily a bad thing for the U.K., provided the slide doesn't get out of the control.

At the height of the financial crisis in 2008, the Bank of England demonstrated that it was willing to put up with quite a big devaluation without intervening. At the time, the pound weakened by 25% vs. the euro and by a whopping 30% vs. the U.S. dollar.

As the pound weakens, not all is gloom and doom. Exporters would certainly welcome such a development, as it makes them more competitive, and foreign investors will see that their currencies go further in the U.K. market. }

Not such a bad cause-and-effect in the long run for a country that's about to renegotiate a bunch of trade deals. A lot of economists felt the pound was a bit overvalued anyway. I'm going to formally call based on how Thursday and Friday went that it comes back up to ~1.40 vs the dollar and hangs there as the UK goes through negotiations. Hopefully all of the panicked traders have it out of their system by Monday and we see it start to stabilize.

Yeah, it climbed again, so I was wrong there. My apologies.


The UKIP promises are quickly turning out to be bull lol. Smuggy Farage always said that 350 million a week went to Europe, which could go to the NHS if a Brexit was supported.

Intentionally ignoring the part that 90% of that is back in a week. So of course what did Boris and Nigel say about that pledge which was central to the official Vote Leave campaign and was controversially emblazoned on the side of the busses?

"The money could not be guaranteed and he claimed he would never have made the promise in the first place."

Sure Nigel, it was all over your campaign but you didn't say so.


The new referendum already passed 2 million signatures. Call it a reaction, but it's coming.

Scotland wants to get out (fast), London wants to get out. 5th GDP globally, 6th without Scotland (still high), but hoo boy if London pushes through it's actually going down fast.

Of course Europe is now turning up the fire and telling Britain to go through with it fast to get them nervous and avoid half a year of pointless negotiations

Last edited Jun 25, 2016 at 02:42PM EDT

Fun fact, I signed my name on both the London independence petition and the second referendum petition.

While calling for a second referendum sounds sour, to be fair people were lied to and the result (of nearly a 2% difference) was hardly a good majority (this is where democracy fails). Oh, and I really just hate how this country is full of abandoned people who have fallen for the scapegoat of the EU, failing to look at our own government (which they voted in?!?).


Also, RandomMan, what's the state of the Netherlands at the moment?

Last edited Jun 25, 2016 at 02:41PM EDT

Ah yes, I read about the Britain (and outside) reactions towards a possible Nexit.

Don't bet on it yet.

To give some quick summarized background: Our government makes decisions based on 150 "seats", these 150 seats are divided amongst all political parties based on the government elections. So if you have enough votes, your party gets 1 seat, and basically any vote passes once it has 76 seats voting in favour of it (or against, you get the point).

Because of our political system, no party ever gets 50% of the votes. So in order to assure 76 seats, the parties make coalitions through compromises.

Only 1 (!!!) party is shouting for a Nexit. That party has only 12 seats. Their popularity is increasing, but until the next elections (in November) they still got only 12 seats (polls placed them at 30 seats in February, but then the refugee crisis was still going strong). They are also not a part of the current ongoing coalition, so their voice means little in the decision making. Not a single other party of the remaining 138 seats is feeling something for a Nexit.

But some pillars have been shaken due to the Brexit, and other parties do realize people are getting less satisfied with the EU. So parties will most likely try to make promises for the next elections where they want to take more of a stand against the EU to give NL a more special position like Britain got itself awhile ago.

A referendum for a Nexit might come, but the government is 90%+ not feeling something for it. So I wouldn't bet on it yet unless France and Germany start warming up to the idea themselves.

Last edited Jun 25, 2016 at 03:35PM EDT

0.9999...=1 wrote:

Okay, let's be clear here- Scotland is one thing, but the idea that London could somehow become an independent city-state surrounded by the country that it used to be the capital of is completely preposterous.

Are you familiar with the concept of Berlin?

It's preposterous, but not impossible.

Last edited Jun 25, 2016 at 05:06PM EDT

@RandomMan
Don't you mean West Berlin? They were the ones in the middle of East Germany.
And yes, obviously that was a thing, but it was an extremely unique situation with multiple outside nations directly keeping it going.

And as an aside, this most recent referendum petition is looking a bit questionable.

I wanna see London try to secede, just to watch them realize how stupid it was to do so. They don't have enough farmland to sustain themselves as a country. They don't have industries that are viable to keep their local economy up and running. They've got no water or power that isn't connected to the rest of england.

It's like those stupid Texas people in the US who want to secede everytime a democrat gets in office. Except if it was only Austin that wanted to do it.

And scotland and ireland want to join the EU? Just what they needed, more dead weight to drag down the collective wealth. Let 'em join. It'll kill the EU faster.

Black Graphic T wrote:

I wanna see London try to secede, just to watch them realize how stupid it was to do so. They don't have enough farmland to sustain themselves as a country. They don't have industries that are viable to keep their local economy up and running. They've got no water or power that isn't connected to the rest of england.

It's like those stupid Texas people in the US who want to secede everytime a democrat gets in office. Except if it was only Austin that wanted to do it.

And scotland and ireland want to join the EU? Just what they needed, more dead weight to drag down the collective wealth. Let 'em join. It'll kill the EU faster.

Oh? Then why did the rest of the country fail to realise we're better together? This independence petition (I quote) 'originally started as a bit of a joke', but it's clearly a reaction: This country is divided and London is one of the only forwards places in the country. Sad.


@RandomMan
Don’t you mean West Berlin? They were the ones in the middle of East Germany.
And yes, obviously that was a thing, but it was an extremely unique situation with multiple outside nations directly keeping it going.
And as an aside, this most recent referendum petition is looking a bit questionable.

Oh dear, I didn't know it was possible to do that… After all, 2 million (nearly 3 now) is the largest I've ever seen on that website.

But will we leave, really?

Last edited Jun 26, 2016 at 04:22AM EDT

Nicola Sturgeon says MSPs at Holyrood could veto Brexit

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-36633244

I hope to god the Scots are seeing this, thier independance leader wants to overrule a populations decision to leave a union.

Brexit ain't doing well. The EU is pushing for a quick leave intentionally, but Britain doesn't have that luxury of course.

In order to leave quickly, by rewriting all those EU laws and redoing all the trade treaties, they would need an army of like 1,000 jurists. They don't have that.

The Pound recovered for now, but because nobody really knows what a Brexit means, investors kinda postponed any investments until they got a better picture. In the current vague Brexit, the Pound's recovery risks being merely temporarily.

Meanwhile the Brexit camp is pushing for postponing the negotiations. But EU of course won't allow that. Cameron meanwhile is shining through absence over the weekend.

Farage meanwhile gets his statements back again. A while ago, he claimed a 52-48 result should lead to a second referendum, of course if that was not in his favour. Now the result was a 52-48, but in his favour, so let's see if he'll support a second referendum after all.

A lot of the Brexit politicians suddenly seem to realize they kinda didn't plan this far ahead.

Last edited Jun 27, 2016 at 04:19AM EDT

OK, I'm sick of seeing this Farage quote paraded out, so I'm going to put this to rest even though it's two in the fucking morning here.
All he said was it would be "unfinished business" should the vote have been 52-48 remain. If you want to interpret that as "pound (no pun intended) the British public with a vote over and over again in rapid succession until we get the result we want," then go right ahead, but that really doesn't seem to be in good faith. Obviously it would have been unfinished finished. Right now it's unfinished business. It's always unfinished business. Otherwise this first referendum would have never happened because "obviously" Brits made it very clear what they thought back in '75. And in the case of this result, it makes perfect sense to continuously reevaluate whether the UK should return to the EU into the foreseeable future, because the situation can and will change. Just like if Remain had won out, it would've made sense to watch events unfold and see if the people's opinion would continue to sway. I think that's what Farage was saying.
So no, that doesn't somehow justify this "let's try it again" bullshit.

Fair enough, but point is that in the case of a divided opinion (said 52-48), he would further pursue a Brexit as it means there is no large majority against.

He is no longer pursuing this 'unfinished business' now that the 52-48 is in his favour.

Does that mean he wants a second referendum? Fair enough, it might not; but he's suddenly no longer calling it unfinished business and is instead going full smug.

So it's no suprise this is biting him back.

The EU seems split on this: Brussels wants Britain out ASAP so we dont have time to set our house in order before leaving, por encourager les autres, whereas the european leaders like Merkel are pushing for a slow departure as they dont want to lose a high value trade partner.

{ He is no longer pursuing this ‘unfinished business’ now that the 52-48 is in his favour. }

But the Remain side is actively looking for ways around the fairly voted referendum in which a majority decided to Brexit.

The loser always looks for some alternative way to get what they want, this is not a revolutionary tactic that Nigel Farage invented when things were looking grim for the result he wanted.

Remember those apologies?

Yeah I'm taking them back for the time being:

Hell, compared to the Dollar, it hasn't gotten this low since '85. The exchange rates were just going pretty stale due to the weekend. Now the weekend has passed, and uncertainty is still ruling the market. All Major European markets end in the red, Britain is risking to lose its Triple-A status; which come to no suprise of anyone. In the current state of the Brexit, it's not predicted to rise again quickly.

They also finally got the chance to investigate some stuff. British employers expect the Brexit to be bad for business (64%), expect they have to relocate part of the activities to outside Britain (22%), stop hiring (25%), and are preparing to fire employees (5%). This is still not taking into consideration the EU-related jobs which have to relocate in due time.

But there's also good news for the Brexit camp: Cameron is not seeing anything in another referendum.

Last edited Jun 27, 2016 at 02:49PM EDT

It's at 1.32, that's still above where all the big econ institutions predicted the UK would be without a Brexit, as I pointed out already. ~1.30 is where the GBP was expected to fall and stabilize (ed: expected to fall and stabilize BEFORE Brexit happened, this is their prediction for the last two years!). Its fallen ~12% vs the dollar from where it started, I posted earlier that the GBP has seen a 30% drop vs the dollar and the government still didn't step in. Are you all just not aware of this, or is the globalist media feeding lies, or what, what is causing all of this frenzied terror?


The globalist raters did in fact lower the UK's status to AA. They did the same to the USA in 2011 because of "congressional deadlock". They are utterly panicked at the thought of the EU disintegrating. Look at Germany and France, their jimmies are so rustled they're actually aiming for a full Hitleresque superstate! The global order is being massively interrupted just as it was looking sure to succeed. This will only benefit the people in the long term, idk why you guys can't grasp that.

Last edited Jun 27, 2016 at 03:46PM EDT

We knew the hurt would come when we voted, it was just an overly optimistic wishfulness when we saw the dead cat bounce that made us think leaving might not hurt after all.

It still isnt going to kill us and we'll be back to normal in a decade at most, if only our politicians could accept reality and push the damn button so we can stop fooling ourselves we can stop this and get to work.

Last edited Jun 27, 2016 at 07:14PM EDT

no for real though what the fuck is this.

EU nations 'to be morphed into one' post-Brexit

{ The foreign ministers of France and Germany are due to reveal a blueprint to effectively do away with individual member states in what is being described as an “ultimatum”.

Under the radical proposals EU countries will lose the right to have their own army, criminal law, taxation system or central bank, with all those powers being transferred to Brussels.

Controversially member states would also lose what few controls they have left over their own borders, including the procedure for admitting and relocating refugees.

The plot has sparked fury and panic in Poland – a traditional ally of Britain in the fight against federalism – after being leaked to Polish news channel TVP Info.

Excerpts of the nine-page report were published today as the leaders of Germany, France and Italy met in Berlin for Brexit crisis talks. }

Wat. This cannot be real, this is propaganda right? There is no way they would ever be so forward about it. It's a bond villian losing control and snapping level of tyrannical.
This cannot be real, this is too convenient for anti-EU sentiments This would vindicate absolutely every concern about the unreasonableness of the EU and would literally end it.

Last edited Jun 27, 2016 at 08:21PM EDT

From the beginning of voting to now:

The gap is after the weekend where a huge sell off occurred at open. I think as a percentage the total drop is somewhere around 11% or a little higher. It can bounce around quite a bit more and still be nowhere near the 30% drop I mentioned previously.

Here's the past day and a halfish with scale:

Also notably, ~12% with a good possibility for recovery means people who support Brexit or who just like to make money in general will be eager to invest in the UK once things settle down. We know it can get back up there and beyond if negotiations go well, think of all the people who will buy in nice and low at 1.30 or wherever this hangs. They stand to gain an awful lot of money if it shoots back up to 1.50+ down the road. Buy low sell high. If I had a shit ton of money I'd think about jumping on board tbh, it just seems terribly unlikely to me that it goes down and stays down.

Last edited Jun 28, 2016 at 12:02AM EDT

lisalombs wrote:

no for real though what the fuck is this.

EU nations 'to be morphed into one' post-Brexit

{ The foreign ministers of France and Germany are due to reveal a blueprint to effectively do away with individual member states in what is being described as an “ultimatum”.

Under the radical proposals EU countries will lose the right to have their own army, criminal law, taxation system or central bank, with all those powers being transferred to Brussels.

Controversially member states would also lose what few controls they have left over their own borders, including the procedure for admitting and relocating refugees.

The plot has sparked fury and panic in Poland – a traditional ally of Britain in the fight against federalism – after being leaked to Polish news channel TVP Info.

Excerpts of the nine-page report were published today as the leaders of Germany, France and Italy met in Berlin for Brexit crisis talks. }

I'm skeptical to believe this given that the ones reporting this are the right-leaning sites. Not that that exactly dismisses this given the bias that the hard-left has as well for what media it chooses to give attention to, but until some more concrete evidence is presented, I will look at this skeptically. Especially considering the quotes for this article aren't sourced.

While there are plenty of reasons to despise the EU, such as their unwillingness to install reforms into their own policies, and their refusal to look at anything objectively, I'm not sure if the superpower confederation is actually something in the works.

That's much more then what the Daily Express article. But I will still need to wait and see if more countries come forward with this.

I'd just like to tell KYM if they don't already know: The shadow cabinet are seeing brexit as an excuse to suddenly de-throne Jeremy Corbyn.

Will that happen though? Haha, I hope not. He's the only good guy in Parliament and they want to get rid of the left-wing voice (again)?

awaits Chilcot report

Quantum メメ said:

Will that happen though?

Maybe. He's hated by Labour politicians because hard left Labour hasn't won an election in decades and they're worried the possible snap elections that might happen in the next few months will sink the party down as SNP and UKIP eat up their vote share.

But, the activists and unions love the guy and they'll likely rally around him if there's a leadership vote.

'Unelectable' because most of the country voted conservative, basically. When will people see sense? Thanks to Cameron, maybe many are? Now's the time for Corbyn to push forward and flex his muscles as leader of the opposition.

Get rid of him and we're back to new labour, the left wouldn't win.

I think he was unelectable for his party, not himself. Corbyn is old labour, actually caring about the working class, retaining the common touch and all that, were the party to revert to that sort of direction it would have stood a chance against the conservatives but it's been hamstringed by the feeling that he cannot control the blairites hovering over corbyn's shoulder.

As long as they stay un-controlled the people are going to vote conservative, for the simple reasoning that it's better to have borderline competent assholes in charge than backstabbing lunatics.

Last edited Jun 29, 2016 at 07:15PM EDT

BRITAIN's top stock market has surged to its highest level in five years, just one week after the vote to leave the European Union (EU).

>The FTSE 100 jumped again in Friday trading to sit at around 6,577 – its highest level since August 2015.
>The index has been climbing since Tuesday as confidence recovered from the initial shock over the outcome of the referendum.

>Despite experiencing one of the most volatile weeks since the 2008 financial crisis, the FTSE posted its best week since December 2, 2011, making gains of 7.15 per cent.

>Bank of England Governor Mark Carney yesterday evening injected extra confidence into markets by promising Britain is tough enough to deal with the transition period of leaving the bloc.
>The chief also heavily hinted interest rates are set to be cut in the next couple of months to provide extra stimulus to the economy.

>The comments helped continue the rally that has taken hold since Tuesday and pushed the market far above its pre-referendum high of around 6,300.
>It is now expected the Bank's base rate will be cut from 0.5 per cent to 0.25 per cent in August.

>The prospect of a rate fall, however, has weakened the pound, which is now at 1.19 against the euro and 1.32 against the dollar.
>Connor Campbell, financial analyst at Spreadex.com, said: "Markets are continuing their recovery this Friday, lifted by Mark Carney’s Thursday comments.

>"Considering we are exactly a week on from the Brexit referendum, and subsequent market panic, the fact that the FTSE has climbed all the way above 6500 for the first time since last August is staggering.
>"The index was propelled to this 10ish month high by the promise of stimulus, including a rate cut, from the Bank of England.

>"Understandably this news wasn’t greeted with unanimous cheer; cable (the dollar/pound exchange), which had been teasing $1.35, plunged to $1.32 during Carney’s speech."

Last edited Jul 02, 2016 at 12:41AM EDT
Skeletor-sm

This thread is closed to new posts.

Old threads normally auto-close after 30 days of inactivity.

Why don't you start a new thread instead?

Hi! You must login or signup first!