[petejh]

Is this really such an impossible a thing to comprehend?

[tomtom]

Is this really such an impossible a thing to comprehend?

Yes. You have to make a highly specialised department 100 times bigger in no time. Sure it can be done - not in a (Boris Johnson style dismissal) 'couple of years'...

Naa. Won't be a problem. There's international trade deal negotiators all over the shop. I had to move a load on at the end of the road who were getting in the way of the bin men...

[petejh]

Explain why 'in no time'. That makes it sound like one week or one month. You must be aware that there's a minimum two-year exit process during which we remain with the current trade deals no?

It's good to debate these points and I'm open to being convinced but debate based on facts where they exist.

[tomtom]

This argument that Stu and TT and others are making about us 'having a good deal of influence in the EU to change things (standards etc) for our benefit'. How true is this really? Honest question. There are a lot of other countries in the EU all with their own interests - we can't steamroller over everyone else. How successful has the UK been in changing 'things' for our benefit? How did Cameron get on with his renegotiated deal? It wasn't a great success as far as I can tell. What evidence is there to support this assertion that we have all this influence in EU law-making? Crucially - who decides what new laws to make?

You're mixing laws with trade rules...

But of course we have influence. We are one of the largest members - have a larger number of MEP's - and contribute a large amount. We've successfully lobbied to reduce air pollution controls (because London is so polluted), lobbied to reduce steel import tariffs (that led to the collapse of tata). Not positive examples - but all examples of where we've got the rules changed in order to suit our (then) desires...

[petejh]

I'm not mixing laws with trade rules, I'm asking what evidence there actually is for the UK having 'a lot of influence' in the EU. Be that law-making, trade rules, standards etc. etc.

MEPs. What powers do MEPs have to influence law-making in the EU? I understand from the debate that they don't have any real power to influence EU law-making.

[erm]

Comments like your 'the subnormal level of intelligence that much of the Leave campaign has pitched at' make you come across (even if you're not) as the sort of patronising sneering intellectual portrayed in the film, contemptible of the silly people who he thinks he knows better than how their lives should be run.

While this may be a fair portrayal of how some people have responded in the wider debate from the In side, the film seems to assume that the watcher doesn't know a great deal about the how the EU actually works. This then allows the narritive to be cast in what I would call a misleading light.




PS. While I know little about it, I find the description of what Magna Carta to not match my understanding - I'll check, for my interest, later.

[Obi-Wan is lost...]

So Mrs Obi popped into the travel agents to get some euros in case the rate craps out after Thursday. The girl behind the counter had postal voted leave because 'we're getting a bit full'. When it was suggested that an exit may negatively impact both the exchange rate and her industry in general she seemed rather surprised. I fear we are all doomed.

[erm]

Or to put it another way you're suggesting the civil service would remain doing things in the same way it did when we were part of the EU, if the country left the EU. That would be more than a bit silly wouldn't it? I'm no head of civil service but here's an idea - change with the demands of the situation.

It might take us a while to train staff in trade negotiation and would likely be more effective to recruit internationally to acclerate this type of work. Not something that has been addressed by leave, how we fill skills gaps at short notice that is (remember big F is going for 30,000-50,000 migrants a year, so drop of an order of magnatude).


If I could make a wider point on what I have seen/heard/read:

- In have done a piss poor job of mythbusting and making a positive case

- Out haven't made a case. No answer on what the actual relationship we should have with EU/World. Instead they contradict themselves (Norway model sans free movement being feasible) and tell lies (Turkey will join the EU, flooding us with migrants and our vetos mean nothing).


Frankly from, both sides, it is below the required standard and mostly just embarrassing. But as a professional scientist hearing "serious" politicians say we should ignore the experts is really really scary and worry about the long term consequences that that idea will have (climate change, vacines, etc)!

[erm]

MEPs. What powers do MEPs have to influence law-making in the EU? I understand from the debate that they don't have any real power to influence EU law-making.

This is lifted from wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Parliament#Legislative_procedure) - best description I could find:

"
The procedure which has slowly become dominant is the "ordinary legislative procedure" (previously named "codecision procedure"), which provides an equal footing between Parliament and Council. In particular, under the procedure, the Commission presents a proposal to Parliament and the Council which can only become law if both agree on a text, which they do (or not) through successive readings up to a maximum of three. In its first reading, Parliament may send amendments to the Council which can either adopt the text with those amendments or send back a "common position". That position may either be approved by Parliament, or it may reject the text by an absolute majority, causing it to fail, or it may adopt further amendments, also by an absolute majority. If the Council does not approve these, then a "Conciliation Committee" is formed. The Committee is composed of the Council members plus an equal number of MEPs who seek to agree a compromise. Once a position is agreed, it has to be approved by Parliament, by a simple majority.[7][51] This is also aided by Parliament's mandate as the only directly democratic institution, which has given it leeway to have greater control over legislation than other institutions, for example over its changes to the Bolkestein directive in 2006.
"

The odd thing with this of course is that legislation is proposed by the Commission which isn't elected. However, each member state nominates a person for a role (there are 28 jobs handly) which are all confirmed by the parliment. So the MEPs get in on this one too.

The "Council" here are the various councils of minister (agriculture, justice, enviroment and so on) - which are staffed by the relevent ministers from the member states. So this body is also demonctratic but less directly than the parliment. The parliment also plays a part, with the Council again, in passing budgets.

I have seen the parliment and Council described as upper and lower houses in past, although I am not sure the comparison is fair to be honest.

[ghisino]

Politics is, in a way, ignoring what is "scientifically right" and instead reaching the most social acceptable compromise, or fits a certain long term vision best, etc.

The current cult of the scientific method and the attempt of any discipline to reach a status of "hard" science, in particular when it comes to social sciences (economy, sociology, demographics, etc) can be partly explained as a mean to restrict the horizon of political action, by putting it under "un-debatable" pressure..

[Will Hunt]

Remain people - you dont help your cause by being such patronizing, holier-than-thou cunts.

I might be wrong here but it seems to me that the patronising cunts are addressing one group of leavers, and another group (I.e you and dense) are assuming it's directed at them.

If you don't believe that sizeable chunks of the population are voting leave because they are both bigoted and not that bright you've clearly got your eyes closed.

I'd have thought it obvious this doesn't imply there's no case for leave, or that all leave supporters have the same motivations.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

What Stu said in each paragraph.

[Will Hunt]

So Mrs Obi popped into the travel agents to get some euros in case the rate craps out after Thursday. The girl behind the counter had postal voted leave because 'we're getting a bit full'. When it was suggested that an exit may negatively impact both the exchange rate and her industry in general she seemed rather surprised. I fear we are all doomed.

My previous comments were born of frustration at this sort of attitude which has mercifully been entirely absent from this thread but is rife elsewhere. I am a member of a Facebook group called "Harrogate Grumbler (No Rules)" which has a membership of about 20k people in Harrogate and the surrounding areas. The best way to describe it is that, in amongst the buying and selling, it's like an online version of the Jeremy Kyle show and is very much a guilty pleasure of mine. However it is also a useful gauge of public opinion as it seems to be populated by a broad demographic of people who are all there to speak their mind. I have been absolutely terrified at the amount of simplistic sentiment similar to what Obi relates above, and this is in Harrogate where they might be socially conservative but are nowhere near as affected by net migration as those in the SE of England.
I had a conversation about the referendum with my Singapore resident brother a few days ago. We can always be relied upon to disagree, with him being MUCH more conservative than I, but he does debate well. He made some very cogent points about why we should leave, but interestingly thought that the pragmatic way forward was to vote remain. They're the same points that Pete might make, however this is not the level that most people are thinking at. I would hazard a guess that 10% of the population share Pete's point of view (I.e a reasonably argued Leave position) and 35% of people have read the Sun this morning and think "we're a bit full". It's deeply depressing.

On a different note, I'm delighted to learn that JB is one of those awful technocrats that we keep hearing about! A technical expert in his field who has had an input into advising the EC. Tell us JB, how does it feel to pull the strings of the EU puppet with no accountability to anybody? Must be a bit of a kick, right?
Joking aside, can anybody explain to me how the system of technical experts making policy recommendations to those who draft legislation, which is in turn voted on by elected officials, is any different to our own system of governance? As I see it now the EU system is largely similar to our own yet seems more resilient to lobbying by those who don't have the people's best interests at heart. One point my brother made in our conversation was that the UK government could pass useful laws such as the WFD on their own. My counterargument was that "could" doesn't equal "would".

[Offwidth]

Politics is, in a way, ignoring what is "scientifically right" and instead reaching the most social acceptable compromise, or fits a certain long term vision best, etc.

The current cult of the scientific method and the attempt of any discipline to reach a status of "hard" science, in particular when it comes to social sciences (economy, sociology, demographics, etc) can be partly explained as a mean to restrict the horizon of political action, by putting it under "un-debatable" pressure..

Politics predates the scientific method having been around since civilisation started. Science by definition is about the public sharing  of testable and disprovable models, to best meet the evidence at hand. It gives us a useful tool to assess the veracity of what  politicians say.  If anything is a cult in this interface with science, it's some politicians: the attempted misuse or abuse of social science... creationalist ideas in US politics being a good example of the crazy end but the simple mundane misrepresentations of scientific results (that the scientists would not support) are all too common.

[erm]

Politics is, in a way, ignoring what is "scientifically right" and instead reaching the most social acceptable compromise, or fits a certain long term vision best, etc.

The current cult of the scientific method and the attempt of any discipline to reach a status of "hard" science, in particular when it comes to social sciences (economy, sociology, demographics, etc) can be partly explained as a mean to restrict the horizon of political action, by putting it under "un-debatable" pressure..

Politics predates the scientific method having been around since civilisation started. Science by definition is about the public sharing  of testable and disprovable models, to best meet the evidence at hand. It gives us a useful tool to assess the veracity of what  politicians say.  If anything is a cult in this interface with science, it's some politicians: the attempted misuse or abuse of social science... creationalist ideas in US politics being a good example of the crazy end but the simple mundane misrepresentations of scientific results (that the scientists would not support) are all too common.

Here here.

Also, the "cult of science" has been our single most effective problem solving method to date. Vaccines, dams, long distance communication (the sharing of ideas), widgets in a tinny...

[Offwidth]

My previous comments were born of frustration at this sort of attitude which has mercifully been entirely absent from this thread but is rife elsewhere. I am a member of a Facebook group called "Harrogate Grumbler (No Rules)" which has a membership of about 20k people in Harrogate and the surrounding areas. The best way to describe it is that, in amongst the buying and selling, it's like an online version of the Jeremy Kyle show and is very much a guilty pleasure of mine. However it is also a useful gauge of public opinion as it seems to be populated by a broad demographic of people who are all there to speak their mind. I have been absolutely terrified at the amount of simplistic sentiment similar to what Obi relates above, and this is in Harrogate where they might be socially conservative but are nowhere near as affected by net migration as those in the SE of England.
I had a conversation about the referendum with my Singapore resident brother a few days ago. We can always be relied upon to disagree, with him being MUCH more conservative than I, but he does debate well. He made some very cogent points about why we should leave, but interestingly thought that the pragmatic way forward was to vote remain. They're the same points that Pete might make, however this is not the level that most people are thinking at. I would hazard a guess that 10% of the population share Pete's point of view (I.e a reasonably argued Leave position) and 35% of people have read the Sun this morning and think "we're a bit full". It's deeply depressing.

On a different note, I'm delighted to learn that JB is one of those awful technocrats that we keep hearing about! A technical expert in his field who has had an input into advising the EC. Tell us JB, how does it feel to pull the strings of the EU puppet with no accountability to anybody? Must be a bit of a kick, right?
Joking aside, can anybody explain to me how the system of technical experts making policy recommendations to those who draft legislation, which is in turn voted on by elected officials, is any different to our own system of governance? As I see it now the EU system is largely similar to our own yet seems more resilient to lobbying by those who don't have the people's best interests at heart. One point my brother made in our conversation was that the UK government could pass useful laws such as the WFD on their own. My counterargument was that "could" doesn't equal "would".

Harrogate is a 'blue rinse' conservative dominated town,  I'd expect it to be firmly in the leave camp.

I'm in Malaysia currently and some of my old chinese research student pals are really interested in brexit following the death of Jo Cox and are attracted to the 'being in contol' message of leave. They have also noted the conspiracy theories that Jo was killed by a secret pro stay cabal.

In reality control is rather overstated:  if we leave just swap some control to a different group of people with different democratic deficits (we have a monach in the political system, no written constitution, the lords -with some taking ministerial posts, FPTP elections which heavily distort the proportions not voting for the two biggest political parties, a civil service which is not as detatched from politics or forming law as it should be and just as much lobbying as in Europe)

As for JB he straightens bananas.

[seankenny]

Or to put it another way you're suggesting the civil service would remain doing things in the same way it did when we were part of the EU, if the country left the EU. That would be more than a bit silly wouldn't it? I'm no head of civil service but here's an idea - change with the demands of the situation.

It might take us a while to train staff in trade negotiation and would likely be more effective to recruit internationally to acclerate this type of work. Not something that has been addressed by leave, how we fill skills gaps at short notice that is (remember big F is going for 30,000-50,000 migrants a year, so drop of an order of magnatude).

Of course if the UK is suddenly renegotiating trade deals with everyone then the foreign trade negotiators might be a bit busy working for their own countries? After all, we're the 5th biggest economy you know and all the countries will want to do a deal with us (except the US, who has handily told us so). But these trade negotiators are probably career civil servants who wouldn't want to lose their cushty pensions for a short term contract with perfidious Albion, and who knows if they speak good enough English to draft highly complex technical documents. Sure, we could probably hire some British lawyers to do the job but they will all be salivating at the prospect of rewriting the oodles of UK law which would need to be untangled from EU law should we leave, and are we willing to pay loads of new unelected officials public servants the 100k+ a year needed to tempt them away from the private sector.

As if thinking about a massive increase in capacity in one of the more technical aspects of running the country doesn't throw up some obvious and rather difficult to solve problems, there's the obvious irony of getting in some immigrants to help us reduce our reliance on immigration. It would be funny, if it wasn't so serious.

As for the smart Leavers, who are like rich folks staying in trailers in a rain-soaked Festival of Dumb and trying not to get their chinos muddy, do you really trust your leaders to steer you through the course ahead? Boris, with his well known inability to grasp of detail. IDS, whose attempt to reform the benefits system reached about 150,000 people after six years of effort. Gove, with his flagship policy of creating new schools in areas that didn't need them, the radical destroyer whose own boss described him as "a bit of a Maoist". Steve "blue sky thinking" Hilton who wanted to close jobcentres, abolish maternity leave and alter the weather. Government by TED talk isn't my idea of fun. And, erm, Priti Patel and Penny Mordaunt.

You might want to divorce the principle from the personnel, but you can't. These are the people we'll have running the most complex and intricate challenge the government has faced in decades. Feeling lucky?

[galpinos]

I had a conversation about the referendum with my Singapore resident brother a few days ago. We can always be relied upon to disagree, with him being MUCH more conservative than I, but he does debate well. He made some very cogent points about why we should leave, but interestingly thought that the pragmatic way forward was to vote remain. They're the same points that Pete might make, however this is not the level that most people are thinking at. I would hazard a guess that 10% of the population share Pete's point of view (I.e a reasonably argued Leave position) and 35% of people have read the Sun this morning and think "we're a bit full". It's deeply depressing.

Pete's posts sound to me like he'd vote remain but is just challenging the arguments and pointing out that it's not black and white and just shouting "Dumb Racist" at people considering voting to leave isn't very conducive to convincing them to change their vote.

[Offwidth]

You forgpt to mention this will supposedly occur in a civil service pared to the bone due to austerity and post brexit that will be run by small government fanatics. It's all so unlikely that they must have a privatisation plan for the necessary regulatory change.

[tommytwotone]

Current betting markets offering - there or thereabouts:

1/4 - Remain
3/1 - Leave

http://www.oddschecker.com/politics/british-politics/eu-referendum/referendum-on-eu-membership-result

[dave]

Interesting on the odds - all the media/papers are giving it all this "it's a close thing, it's all hanging in the balance" stuff based on opinion polls, yet the bookies are painting a vastly different picture, and the bookies are usually right on these things, especially given how wrong the polls were a year ago in the election. Are the papers just trying to talk-up their own influence?

[erm]

Interesting on the odds - all the media/papers are giving it all this "it's a close thing, it's all hanging in the balance" stuff based on opinion polls, yet the bookies are painting a vastly different picture, and the bookies are usually right on these things, especially given how wrong the polls were a year ago in the election. Are the papers just trying to talk-up their own influence?

The pollsters are trying different methodologies to compensate for the effects which affected them at the general election.

For a bookie looking at a general election they can discount all the safe seats and then look at the big issues of the day, as they relate to the few swing seats which actually exist. In this question there are no safe seats so you can't narrow the number of actors/variables as in the general election.

Still the bookies give me some hope.

[Offwidth]

Hope ?  Try this...

http://www.politics.co.uk/news/2016/06/21/half-of-leave-voters-believe-eu-referendum-will-be-rigged

[a dense loner]

Seankenny, do I trust the politicians who will get in if we vote leave? No, is that a question for a simple child? I wouldn't trust them any more or less than I do any other politician.

Regarding smart leavers v idiot racist leavers, it doesn't matter which is which. Same as in any other kind of vote with equal weighting. You deal with what's in front of you before you deal with the next bit.

[tomtom]

Well whatever happens I hope people remember that the arguments, hate and general bad feeling surrounding the referendum are all self inflicted.

Thanks To Cameron and the Faustian pact he made to get his party behind him in the General election. Bell. End.

[roddersm]

If I could make a wider point on what I have seen/heard/read:

- In have done a piss poor job of mythbusting and making a positive case

- Out haven't made a case. No answer on what the actual relationship we should have with EU/World. Instead they contradict themselves (Norway model sans free movement being feasible) and tell lies (Turkey will join the EU, flooding us with migrants and our vetos mean nothing).

That pretty much sums up the whole debate - pretty embarrassing and depressing to be honest from both sides.

I actually think leave have presented the more compelling case, albeit it's been based on 90% fiction.