Would you change your Ref vote if you could go back time?

[Mario149]

Jinx said:

NinjaPower said:

+1

I saw a news reporter asking people for their opinion as they exited from polling stations and one middle aged chap stated he voted Leave to 'get rid of the Muslims' as he had 'had enough of them':

A guy from Bradford on the radio this morning said he wanted to leave because he blamed the EU for 'the bedroom tax'.

Another interviewee I saw was voting leave to 'send all the immigrants home'... Which of course isn't going to happen.

It's things like that which make me genuinely believe the British public should never have been asked for their opinion on such an important and complex matter.

So you don't think you were being shown a carefully chosen selection of comments/sound bites that reinforce a particular narrative?

I dunno about NP, but I'm more than happy to admit there are idiots on both sides. Which just add to the reasoning that the question shouldn't have been asked of us to start with.

[Mario149]

Jinx said:

Mario149 said:

I dunno about NP, but I'm more than happy to admit there are idiots on both sides. Which just add to the reasoning that the question shouldn't have been asked of us to start with.

Politicians ask us to put our lives on the line to defend the sovereignty of a country when under external threat - surely asking our opinion when they've given it away isn't too much to want. There are idiots in every profession (including the HoC) so even a parliamentary vote isn't safe for idiocy (for example the un-costed CCA)

I'm all for them canvassing our opinions, but at a certain point, if they think they're ridiculous they should ignore us. Then if we want to vote them out next time we can. But while they're in charge, the decisions should be left to them.

Example: if there was a non-binding referendum called to decide whether we should all receive £1K per month tax free as a sweetener on Labour party manifesto, they were elected, and we all voted a gleeful "yes!", parliament would be well within its rights to not honour if a majority of MPs thought it'd be a very bad idea from a fiscal PoV. Indeed it would actually be remiss of them to honour that referendum if they believed it would do more harm than good.

[Mario149]

Mark Benson said:

The veto is available, but if you're put in an impossible position (as Greece are currently) then a veto is useless.
It's only a power worth having if you can use it without putting yourself in a worse position either politically or financially.

That's why, I believe the Commission is now keen to have us sign article 50 and get on with the process of leaving. We have less to lose from using our veto than other countries. We're also less committed to the EU project and it irks many (including a lot of Germans I've spoken to this week) that we have 'special status' outside the Euro and exempted from some of the rules the rest of the EU is expected to follow.
They want us fully in or fully out and, now we've shown the level of discontent with the EU they see it as the more pragmatic course of action to give up trying to persuade the British people of the benefits and have us wavering on the sidelines and clear the way for a more closely integrated EU.

At least that's how I see it, and how David Cameron saw in in 2014 when he wrote in the Times

"And dealing properly with the concept of 'ever closer union', enshrined in the treaty, to which every EU country now has to sign up. It may appeal to some countries. But it is not right for Britain, and we must ensure we are no longer subject to it."

He then spoke in the Commons as recently as June 2015 of the June European Council and the UK’s reform proposals, saying

"We will put the Common Market back at the heart of our membership, get off the treadmill to ever-closer union, address the issue of migration to Britain from the rest of the EU and protect Britain’s place in the single market for the long term."

I see what you're getting at, but let's be clear, as much as I have sympathy for them, Greece's problems stem from their own making. And we are not Greece and we could use our veto. The issue is not whether other countries could be forced to do something they don't want, it's whether we could. And if we think we're man enough to go it alone, I can't see how we couldn't be man enough to stick up for ourselves in the EU. We either have balls, or we don't.

IMO the biggest issue we've had with the EU was actually highlighted by Alistair Campbell on an interview I saw this morning. He's a wker but he makes sense: we've had a right wing / eurosceptic press constantly slating the EU for 25 years or more with very little to balance it out. If you're told something is ste for long enough, you'll eventually believe it. At which point the gov starts pandering to your thoughts to get your vote. So they have to whinge about the EU too, and it's a vicious cycle. It's like immigration, study after study shows it has been massively beneficial for our country as a whole, yet people still think we have a problem. But because our politicians pander to us and don't challenge the narrative with facts pointing out the benefits it has brought us, we still have idiots in towns with almost zero immigration complaining "we're full".

[Mario149]

Mark Benson said:

I honestly think that if the vote had gone the other way a similar number of remain voters would be having the same 'buyers remorse' this week.

Although they probably wouldn't have been pushed to the fore in the same way by the broadly Remain-supporting media.

What would they have remorse about? Nothing the Remain campaign said has turned out to be untrue as far as I can tell. Basically, the markets would have got a bit of a boost, we'd still have a functioning gov and opposition (okay, it's all relative with Corbyn :hehe) and things would have carried on as normal

[Mario149]

Mark Benson said:

matsoc said:

What I can not understand is why a discussion on the referendum outcome has not been made months ago between EU and UK.
The moment the referendum was made possible the two outcomes should have been investigated and discussed.
How can it be that UK gov. wants to wait to use Art.50 while large part of the EU thinks it should be made immediately?

because both the UK and EU governments couldn't countenance the idea that the plebs might actually misbehave.

I'd say they just didn't think the Turkeys would vote for Xmas, I think they gave us all a bit too much credit in the intelligence stakes. Everyone, including the Leave campaign, was saying we'd be in for a bumpy ride, and I guess they just assumed people who'd just got another job and/or just got things on track after the last recession probably wouldn't fancy another. And probably wouldn't want to risk being at the mercy of a "nasty" Tory gov for their benefits.

It always amazes me when politicians say "we trust the British people", I mean do they really? I f*cking don't! The beauty of our system is that when run it correctly, it's reasonably idiot-proof. You seek to elect someone who appears to broadly have the same views as you, you check their prior form, check a few main new points of their manifesto, hope they fulfill it, but don't really expect it. Rinse and repeat every few years. It's not perfect, but it's reasonably stable and it broadly works. Letting the public decide an issue as complex as EU membership was just a massively stupid idea. 99% are probably unable to make a truly informed decision, the 1% ironically being our political and business leaders who tend to run things anyway.

I mean, let's be clear here, the moment we trigger Article 50, the sh!t hits the fan for *minimum* of 2 years on top of whatever we'll have endured up to that point anyway, and the people who suffer first are the poorest. There is clearly already another spending cut/tax rise budget in preparation, and while I can stump up a few £k extra in tax on top of the minor stiffing I got as a result of the last election, the vast majority of the people that voted out probably can't. My family is well placed to ride out a few rough years, hell, with a bit of forward planning we could just take a 2 year holiday, or in extremis I could grab myself German or Italian passport and take my family somewhere sunny and set up shop there, work 3x less and let someone else pay the taxes.

The nasty side of me says "f*ck 'em", if people are gullible enough to believe that stopping (but not actually stopping in the end) immigration is going to make their life better, that leaving the EU (but not really leaving and doing a Norway) really is the simple answer to all their problems because Nige and Bojo said so, that "defying" the "elite" actually does anything beneficial (when none of them gives a sh*t, and the new people you're asking for are "elite" as well and they can all retire and never work again if it goes wrong), then they're welcome to it. But they can pay for it. Given how it was by and large the older people and lower income people who have brought about this change it seems, the irony would be strong if as a result of this, one or more of these happened: predicted rises in living wage stopped, the basic tax free thresholds were reduced, the pension triple lock removed. Frankly, I'd rather give my tax money to people in Spain etc to get back on their feet than indulge a society here that, compared to pretty much anywhere else in the world, has it bloody made.

Anyway, that's my nasty side which I try to keep in check. But I don't half feel like I'm being poked with a sharp stick and told to hold my temper!

[Mario149]

JoeMarano said:

Why would immigration bother the rich? It's not like they have to put up with living next door to a house full of them is it?

The people "lower" in society have finally taken a stand and have voiced the fact that they are pissed off with constantly being shat on from above

I think the referendum was less about the EU and more about reclaiming the idea of being British, power to the people and all that and I whole heartedly applaud it.

Can you tell me why immigration should bother the poor? Employment is at its highest rate ever (or was, we'll see now), immigrants over contribute to the exchequer compared to UK people, public services are not under pressure due to the "uncontrolled" EU migration driven rise of a "massive" 0.24% last year and the towns with the highest anti immigration sentiment are the ones where there are barely any bloody immigrants.

The only reason that is obvious as to why they're bothered by immigrants is that the Sun, Daily Wail et al tell them to be and they believe it.

[Mario149]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

So basically your entire argument rests on the hope that someone has forgotten to take inflation into account when calculating the extra money (over what a "regular" UK person would contribute) that an immigrant on average brings? Right.

And I don't think you understand how a Ponzi scheme works: they require new people to pay for the previous joiners. If we stopped EU immigration dead, assuming our EU residents wanted to stay here (and I'm not sure they would want to and I don't blame them), they'd still be contributing more than the equivalent number of UK people. They don't need further immigrants to support them. UK Plc would actually be better off if a few hundred thousand UK residents buggered off to Spain and left the immigrants here to it.

The massive irony in all this is that given our aging population and the fact that as a country we don't want to pay more taxes, we *need* immigrants to come here to boost our GDP to help pay for all the stuff we want and look after our aging population.

The "immigration = bad" argument has about as much logical structure and coherence to it as a wet paper bag.

[Mario149]

motco said:

Exchanging UK born, English speaking people with an equal number of non-native non-English speaking people would not go unnoticed. You cannot presuppose that all those leaving are incomers in the first place when many are not. A lot of UK born people emigrate for a range of reasons as well as some foreign people returning. It's not simple at all. One of my worries with mass immigration is that UK schoolchildren's education suffers because increasing numbers of their classmates cannot speak English. Only detailed breakdowns of immigration figures with ethnic and language details included can inform this.

Maybe look at it another way: are there any teachers/school groups out there who are saying that EU immigration is causing the problems you're worried about?

[Mario149]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Good points as always. And there *will* be people who "lose" due to immigration, it's inevitable. And if the warehouseman wants to vote out believing it'll help him, so be it. But, now he's assumed it's the lesser of 2 evils because as a less well off and presumably not highly skilled worker, he's put him and his family at risk due to the inevitable economic effects we're going to see. It's his demographic that suffer first. And it should be plainly obvious to him now that he's not going to see any change in immigration for 5+ years at least.

I said in another thread that some people may have very specific work-related reasons to vote Leave, but I would suggest that the vast majority of people who think immigration is causing their problems could show little if any empirical evidence that would stand up to scrutiny. The "immigration issues" can almost always be traced back to something else, immigration is just an easy catch-all. The real problem is that governments are ignoring the real problems. They let, indeed enable, people to blame immigration because as long as they can keep people focused on that and manage it, they're not focusing on the real problems. What they should be doing is putting forward a pro-immigration policy vocally at every point, showing how much we fiscally benefit from it and how that pays for things we all use, while at the same time acknowledging that the reason your wait at the hospital is longer than planned is because it's been a political football for so long, not because Slavek moved in 3 doors down.

[Mario149]

Mark Benson said:

I don't disagree with any of that. However I do think it's a bit simplistic to say that hospital waiting hours is all down to the NHS being a political football. I do think there are areas where immigration has put a strain on local resources and that's been ignored, probably for political reasons (ignore it and it'll go away, address it and we might have to talk about some of the downsides to immigration, worse still we might have to do more about it).

And zero hours contracts can be a huge benefit to some, but not to all and this is what allows Slavek to come along and take hours from Dave in the warehouse. Dave didn't have much choice on his employment contract, he just wanted the job.

But that's not to say I can't sympathise with Dave and understand why he'd come to the conclusion that fewer Slaveks = more hours for him.

Just to clarify, when I said political football, I was trying to be diplomatic Some people think it lacks investment, some people think it lacks good management etc, some people think both. What I was trying to convey was that it's not displaying the problems it does because we added a few fractions of a percent of population last year, it goes far deeper than that.

In terms of strain locally, I think you're right, and I think we're probably saying the same thing: that it goes back to funding and planning. We know we have more money due to immigrants, we know that they more than pay their way, so we should not only be able to keep services at a stable level with immigration, we should in theory be able to improve them and indeed enjoy greater economies of scale. Foreign people in the waiting room are just an easy target for blame, and that narrative is supported by the rags and not challenged by our leaders.

Like you I sympathize with Dave's situation, but that sympathy stops at a very defined point for me when he can't, when presented with facts, see that he should be challenging zero hours contracts rather than voting Leave to improve his lot.

[Mario149]

Mark Benson said:

However where does Dave turn to challenge zero hours contracts - he used to vote Labour but they have long since stopped championing the working man (I seem to remember but could be wrong that zero hours contracts were made legal under their watch). He can only deal with what it's in his power to change, which in this case is migration given that he had the chance to vote to be out of the EU and close the borders to EU migrants.

I would make the case that Labour ran on a very "working class" ticket in the last election, definitely as left wing as it's been in a long time.

But even assuming it wasn't, he's exercised his power to change something that everyone in the know was saying could negatively affect him for several years immediately, with the result he wants not appearing any time in the near future and maybe never. It's not a rational choice and so pretty much by definition it's a wrong choice. He was given it, and it was his to make, and now he, or other people like him, will pay for it. And then more than likely they'll blame someone else again for their woes and we'll be back to square one. Very sad.

Mark my words if we do go through with it and Leave, this will blow up in our faces again in a few years time, maybe not even that long, when the "left behind" who protest voted realize nothing of substance in their lives has changed, and worse than that, that they were suckered in by the very same "right-wing elite" that they have always despised. And it won't be pretty. There's been a paradigm shift in our country and its culture overnight and we will reap what we have sown.

[Mario149]

sealtt said:

I'm not sure how relevant immigration / x of population is. That doesn't really tell us much other than, on average, how likely it is that any given person in the population is an immigrant. Which doesn't really mean anything. I suppose it shows that culturally/genetically the country is not 'overrun' by foreign blood, but that's a pretty xenophobic argument which I don't believe (/hope) the majority of anti-immigrant sentiment is about.

More relevant statistics would be:

- No. of immigrants / No. of new houses - to compare stresses on housing supply
- No. of immigrants / £ of education / healthcare / etc budget - to compare stress on public services
- No. of immigrants / sqm of land - to consider physical overcrowding of the island
- No. of immigrants / No. of jobs

Now that would give more insight given the leave campaign complaints.

A quick google suggests:

- 141,000 home built last year with a net immigration figure of 330,000
- ref public services, the figures will likley be complex, but given that we know that immigrants over contribute in relation to "indigenouss" persons, we have more to spend per person than if they didn't come
- population increased by ~0.5% last year due to immigration, so on a immigrants per sq mile basis it's a little under 3.5
- given that our employment rate is the highest it's ever been (or at least was before Brexit, we'll see now I suppose), I'd suggest that job supply is not a problem

[Mario149]

motco said:

How do we 'know' migrants over-contribute comapred with the indigenous population? Serious question; not a dig.

If you have a quick google of something like "how much do immigrants contribute to the uk" there's lots of stuff out there to read. Figures vary a bit, but for EU immigrants from some countries it can actually be as much as £1.65 for every £1 they take out. A more average figure would be something like £1.12 for immigrants from the last 10 countries to join in 2004. EU immigrants actually seem to contribute more than non-EU ones on average, despite the non-EU people already being subject to a points-type system.

[Mario149]

motco said:

Mario149 said:

motco said:

How do we 'know' migrants over-contribute comapred with the indigenous population? Serious question; not a dig.

If you have a quick google of something like "how much do immigrants contribute to the uk" there's lots of stuff out there to read. Figures vary a bit, but for EU immigrants from some countries it can actually be as much as £1.65 for every £1 they take out. A more average figure would be something like £1.12 for immigrants from the last 10 countries to join in 2004. EU immigrants actually seem to contribute more than non-EU ones on average, despite the non-EU people already being subject to a points-type system.

The Economist and Guardian say they do but Migration Watch says they don't. See my confusion and the basis for querying 'know'?

Unbiased opinion, still less fact, is a rare commodity.

As with all info, the calculation method varies, where costs are allocated etc. I wouldn't cite the guardian as a source as it implies bias, but cite where they got the info instead. MigrationWatch is one source that shows negative impact, but there are plenty of others that show otherwise. I'm not going to post the links as they're easy to find, but if you google what I put in above, about 80% of the research referenced has EU migration as a positive impact and non-EU (where ironically we do have control) as a net drain. One suspects that is why none of this was mentioned by the Brexit campaign. Other than that, we're back to a Brexit economics style argument which consists of "I don't believe what most of the experts are saying", to which there is no answer.

Frankly, even if EU immigrants only just broke even or were in fact a slight drain (even the negative reports seem to only have them at fractions of a percent of GDP), I'd say the opportunities free movement provides to our own people, especially the young, are more than worth it. In a world where we talk about having no digital borders, and being part of a global family, it seems crazy to be putting physical borders and restrictions back up for anything less than a cast iron reason.