Just watching thousands of protesters in London demanding a revote. Mainly younger voters from what I’ve seen.
First woman interviewed says people (presumably herself) voted on the basis of misinformation and misunderstanding.
Sorry love, if you really base your decisions on the bs we all know politicians come out with then you deserve what you get.
I voted Remain. We lost. Get over it.
Thanks Dennis for an interesting perspective. Howver, (at least) two points come to mind about this, Firstly, although 9 years is a significant period in many ways, it is not a long period in terms of a nation’s economic fortunes. The EU has been around a lot longer than just 9 years and this particular 9 years has been a period of continual economic weakness on a wider basis than just Europe. It might be exceptional but I do not think that constitutes evidence of a failure by the EU.
Secondly, the Euro is not the entire EU or the entire Europe. Although this chart shows a relative weakness of the Euro as a whole against the USD, how does this prove that the individual currencies of those countries within the Euro region would have fared any better on their own during this period? Would the Greek drachma or Spanish pesata or Finnish markka or Estonian krona remained immune from the impact of global economic weakness purely because they would have been outside the Euro mechanism?
It is good to hear that someone has seriously read and considered as many arguments as possible. Thank you for that. It just shows how complex the issue is and is revealing how much political manipulation and deceit during the campaigning is gradually being exposed.
I am sure many, many people share your concerns about the dangers of extremism, especially of a religious nature. But I don’t think the issue is as simple as closing borders and hoping it will go away. I personally fear that this overwhelming flood of asylum-seekers has provided a golden opportunity for infiltration of european countries by terrorist organisations and we will see high alerts for a long time. But I think history has shown that this kind of infiltration is possible even with strict border controls - and is likely to be an easier process where countries are not unified in their intelligence and security measures. In this sense the EU is in a far better position to protect against terrorism than as 28 separate countries.
In addition, terrorism is not a straight forward issue of foreign elements entering a country. In many cases, including the USA, terrorism is bred in the discontent of nationals that are actually born and raised in the country itself. Far more work needs to be done internally to avoid the social conditions that lead to vulnerability of persons to fanatical brainwashing. Terrorism is not new and has taken many forms in the past. Unless countries identify and deal with the issues leading to terrorism and countering its activities simply closing the borders and ignoring it is not going to resolve anything.
Manxx…
You are the best.
Great post
Well I dont know about that, but these are all sensitive issues that affect so many people personally and not just hypothetically. It is a big benefit that we can share views and information together here…
the article is truly flamed
but… oh my god… read the comments. they are hillarious. im about to pass out of laughing!!
this one is my favourite so far “many people dont know that the EU was originally created by the NAZIS prior to ww2 in order to take control of europe! so nazis beeing the biggest racist and EU their kid- how can you call brexit voters racists?”
omg hillarious
these are studies of 2009 and the article of 2014.
not much has been done to fight this uninformation as it seems
heres a detailed government study of how bad UK citizen are informed about the EU and how much of a negative picture is beeing presented to them by the media (mostly news papers) very interesting report.
i put EU in fault of this bad information. a part of EUs budget should be used to inform its citizen better. after all, every country uses fractions of its budget to inform its population about the culture and country and what the government/institutions are doing.
even in elementary school in most countries these things are explained to pupils about their own country. maybe spending a few hours in a pupils life (average 11.5 years) in the favour of explaining them the EU could be a good idea to fight this false information flaw. and could fight this "wrong picture drawn by media).
this is very interesting:
the average UK opinion is that 19% of their GDP is beeing used to be send to the EU? (Reality is 0.5%)
ok, i would vote my country out aswell if id think it uses 19% of its GDP to finance EU.
What was the date on what you’ve just quoted from, Turbo?
I’m guessing it predates the EU referendum campaign, perhaps? Right now, someone would have to be blind and deaf and with no web connection, and have their head in the sand too, after all these weeks of campaigning throughout the media, not to know what the financial cost of our EU membership is. There’s been almost nothing else discussed here, for weeks and weeks!
its 2014. im pointing out how bad the public in general is informed. the number of 350 million/weekly is known widely. does the public know its only 0.5% annually?
you have a phd in sociology right? you must have a picture of how many people would know the gdp of their own country. i hardly doubt its more then 1% who know the true figures.
i aswell doubt that anyone in the brexit campaign bothered to mention that its €64 per UK citizen per year that goes to the EU (Thats those 350million/weekly minus what comes back from EU)
i aswell doubt that more then 3% of any countries population (not only UK) knows that the UK annually budget is 6 times the budget of the EU (german budget times 11, french times 6, italian times 4) and that the combined budges of the 28 (soon 27) member countries is more then 125 times the budget of the EU.
only talking maths and numbers here right now, sorry for beeing so dry. i dont think the EU is “expensive” especially compared to the benefits it brings.
or let me put it this way:
the 250 billion QE programm the BoE announced after brexit (in order to stabilize the markets) would have been enough to pay UKs contribution to the EU for 83 years.
the amount of money that was lost only in the brittish stock exchanges and the pund (compared to other currencies) would have paid UKs contribution to the EU for another 76 years.
so UK has 159 years to go to save the EU “membership fees” only to brake even with what they lost within 2 trading days after the brexit.
thats how cheap the EU actually is for UK.
Turbo, the public’s ignorance of the true costs and value for money is really disturbing, but was the cost of the EU the main reason why most people voted to leave? Very little of the arguments was actually covered here (where I live) and I am not sure of this but I have got the impression that amongst all the issues, the main concern was self-control over immigration?
Britain has a long history of struggling with control over immigration whether it is related to its colonial periods, EU membership or the asylum seeker camps on the other side of the channel in Calais.
Seems to me that the problem was not so much the raw cost of membership, rather it was the nature of what it was getting (or not getting) in return and how much (or little) self-control it was having over its own future.
I don’t think a role of just running with the rest of the pack sits very comfortably in the heart of the lion. It has always been, or at least believed it should be, the leader of the pack. It is very difficult for a nation so historically used to seeing itself as a prominent and influential world leader to succumb to directives originating from continental Europe even when it has itself participated in those decisions.
Many in other countries see Britain as depicted in its excellent TV series such as Lewis, Dr Martin, Heartbeat, Born and Bred, etc. but the reality of life in the big towns is surely very different and maybe the underlying tensions that have been present for so long are now being vented towards Brussels as the villain behind whatever one’s rant is without too much consideration of the purely financial and economic impact at all?
I’m posting this more as a question than a claim, as I really have not heard very much of the Pre-Brexit campaigning at all here!
Excellent thread…maybe the mods could pin it up? There should be an SNB equivalent thread pinned up, dealing with Brexit, I feel…
I agree with Manxx, this was not an economic choice by the people, but an angry shout at Cameron, wanting to punish him…had he applied reverse psychology, maybe the public would have voted Remain…
Thanks - that makes sense.
Yes, and you’re certainly right.
Now, yes, because it’s been so prominently discussed, with that point being made very repeatedly and publicly by the “Remain” side, and that 0.5% figure being quoted everywhere, for weeks. But not in 2014.
In [I][U]medical[/U][/I] sociology: I know a little about healthcare delivery systems, medical education, environmental medicine, epidemiology, medical statistics, and so on. Not quite so useful, in this context! :8:
Some of the top search questions googled in the UK on the morning after the Brexit were:
Q1: '‘What does it mean to leave the EU?’'
Q2: ‘‘What is the EU?’’
Raise a question how many people actually know what did they vote for?
it was an emotional choise on the believe to reestablish the glory days of the empire and the collective believe that the glory empire collapsed because of
1st UK beeing part of the EU
2nd too many immigrabts washing out the brittish culture and destroying good old cultural habbits and sociological herritage
the reason why i was so passionate about this topic is because i felt it on my own skin 25 years ago where the spirits of seperatism, trying to reestablish former glory, racism/religionism can lead to. when yugoslavia broke apart because my country seperated out of the very same country and days later a war broke off which lasted 5 years and killed 450.000 people. leaving the economy and industry that much devestated that even today the capacity of 1991 is still not reestablished.
but it is not part to judge on the attitude of the brittish people towards the EU or towards its immigrants. everyone makes his own mistakes and noone can learn by beeing told (by other EU states or EU itself) but only when the consequences are beeing felt on its own skins.
that is why im staying very strictly on the part of the hard facts and numbers. because if id start going on emotionally about it then my textes would be the equivalent of 50 pages and they would make some people see and understand some diferent perspectives.
to my person. i was born before war and i witnessed war as a child. i grew up in a communism system and became a turbo capitalist (thats why TURBO in my name) and i understood in order to build new monumemts you need to burn the old ones for building land (thats why Nero in my name) i have a master in economics and a bachelor in sociology and phylosophy. english is not the first not the second but the third language i learned (sorry for my bad english at times but i never use spellcheck on forum) and with my 32 years i learned enough in my life to not try to argue with a crowd, and especislly not a crowd of public opinions.
i appologize for things i wrote which may have offended someone from UK in this forum.
it was a topic to which i was emotionally attached but if you want the truth: in the past 2 days i completely unattached myself emotionally from this “problem” that UK created for itself. it happened after i heard the phone call (to a english radio station) of a elder woman which is originaly born in germany and lives for 40 years somewhere in england. after her english born husband died last year at the age of 70+something and she living alone - now after brexit the racist felt like they have the right to knock her door at nights throw trash and “poop” at her garden and window and spray words like “go home to germany *****” at her house door and worse things… i understood there is no need for anyone from the outside to interfer with brittish home made problems and especially not with such problems. so why worry my head? not with the emotionals. the economic numbers and facts is what im focusing on.
anyways. by now everyone, absolutely everyone in the EU, japan, usa and other countries has realized that the brexit will actually never happen. even if one day (and the date gets postponed weekly for more months- fist october now, a week later, december) article 50 is beeing triggered it will only lead to renegotiations of UKs staying in the EU and those renegotiations will lead that UK looses a lot of its extra privileges it had over other EU members.
mark my words on this one. whoever likes to bet with me if free to PM me. i hold a 5:1 bet with anyone that UK will never leave the EU.
by the way lexy, was nice to finally for the first time talk with you directly. we never actually exchanged direct words in this forum (you answareing or asking on one of my staremenrs or vise versa) this was the first time.
Sorry about what you went through… the conflict in former Yugoslavia was a European genocide that still remains hard to put into words… how it could happen under everyone’s watch, right in the heart of Europe… and the atrocities of those years, within everyone’s memory and radar, are beyond words… Humans are the most cruel animal species on the planet, capable of barbaric acts of sadism on each other, including raping, killing for the sake of killing, torturing for sadistic pleasure, and so on… It is because of this that we should all pull together and not fight each other… But violence is human and unfortunately no amount of talking it out of our language can eradicate it in real life… I see it in children, the sadistic instinct of killing insects or of hurting another child… who taught a young child to hurt another child? Sometimes children can be cruel and it is not out of a need, of self-defence, of fighting for survival… So I look at the racism and intolerance that was lurking around, waiting for a Brexit debate to emerge and find a reason to be allowed out, and I know that those racists and bigots will always exist, unfortunately, no matter what political situation the UK will choose to build for itself…
I agree with you also, Turbo, that the Brexit was already a done deal, perhaps, meaning that once the ‘CNBC’-style hype will die down in the media, everyone will realise that this is an impossible dream of independence that will go absolutely nowhere, a dead duck that has absolutely zero sense and then all will revert to the usual: compromise, trade deals, handshakes and a sheepish UK prime minister (whoever that will be) trying to scramble for some dignity…
