UKH

Well, this is reassuring...

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/mar/22/secret-cabinet-office-docu...

Still, blue passports, sovereignty  and no pesky foreigners eh!

Sunlit uplands here we come!

Jk

Look on the bright side; at least someone is actually planning for for Brexit, rather than blundering about blindly...

G-g-Golly!  Do you mean it's not all in hand?

Surely with something as important and big as this we're not going to have the same chaos as a Little F & Mouth outbreak in 2001??? 

Apparently 43% of polling respondents would choose this armageddon over the status quo, having been so thoroughly brainwashed into demonising all things EU.

I can see a film appearing on the horizon in a few years time - 'Brexit - The inside story'. The problem lies in determining whether it is a tragedy, comedy or horror film.

Keep calm, KFC said they have got enough chicken... the most important things are sorted.

I'm stocking up on marmite and peanut butter. I'm trusting bread can be relied upon to be available.

The latest KFC crisis is they've run out of gravy. They're blaming the stock market...

My local pub (the Dog 'N Turd)   says it'll have to put the price of Theakston's up if we leave without a deal. Says it will cost more.    

And if we leave with a deal, says the Heineken will have to go up 'cos it'll cost more.   

it's an awful lot of SitReps

I suppose they will be good for the tummy muscles

We were skiing with some London doctors last week. They have been told to postpone the implementation of a new computer system, so that they are free to handle casualties arising from public disorder after Brexit.

Remainers wouldn't actually hurt anyone, would they ?

youtube.com/watch?v=s-cL5FEdDfo&

Cancel Brexit' petition woman receives death threats - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-47678275

Wiki on Thomas Mair - "He targeted Cox, a "passionate defender" of the European Unionand immigration, because he saw her as "one of 'the collaborators' [and] a traitor" to white people."

And every deranged post on Mail Online seems to be a call to arms for a civil war.

And Anna Soubry can't go home currently due to death threats and Riley thinks its all a joke. 

But that was Leavers ?   They won't be any trouble "after Brexit".

No, I'm sure they'll be entirely well behaved in future. People who issue death threats are like that. 

If they are always going to be like that, why do you support the claim they will be a particular threat after Brexit ?

Your faith is.... Is... Is... I'm struggling for the word. Delusional maybe? 

Abuse is not a considered reply.

I'll spell it out for you (haven't got the side of a bus, sorry)... Because 'they', the Leavers, haven't got a consensus of what 'it' is they want. There will no doubt many people 'they' want to blame when their particular version of 'it' doesn't happen.

But you knew all this. 

They will though, won’t they? Because the EU was never the cause of their problems, and many of them are perma-angry malcontents anyway.  They’ll still be angry, either at the EU for pushing us into a bad deal (even though we held all the cards apparently) or at the next convenient scapegoat. 

Very carefully considered and not abusive. I've given my reasons why your assertion that 'they' won't be any trouble after Brexit is delusional.

P. S. Not my dislike btw

"Them" is more than the number of people that voted to stay in the EU  !

And, it would seem, some of 'them' are willing to offer up death threats to anyone who holds a different view. Democracy eh? 

They nearly all want to leave the customs union, the single market, the EU court, and end free movement.

But you knew this.

You don’t know this, it’s wishful thinking on your part.

Not £350million then? 

Does this "nearly all", that you seem so confident in asserting, mean more than the 48.1% of voters who elected to Remain? Or is there a very significant chunk of very pissed off people who think the reality of leaving terms are looking disastrous compared to their expectations?

I'll answer that one for you: You don't know. I don't know. Nobody knows. There's only one way to find out.

That's what today's march was all about.

You are talking about changing the referendum result.

I was refuting the statement "the Leavers, haven't got a consensus of what 'it' is they want."

Completely different subjects.

The two most common reasons cited by many was immigration and sovereignty.

Well the sovereignty thing is sort of proving to be a bit problematic for Leave what with parliament asserting its sovereignty. 

And immigration? I can never get beyond the chap from Barnsley on C4 for an insight into that particular mindset. (Unfortunately I've met far too many of that sort). Funny he didn't mention any of your other claimed reasons. 

1 million or so at  todays march with no reports of violence or arrests. C. F. regular arrests of brexiteers along with the threats and intimidation  to anyone who disagrees with them. 

I'm not talking about changing any referendum result, so please refrain from telling me what I'm doing. I'm suggesting that the majority in favour of Brexit now that the reality of achievable outcomes is better understood may not match the reality of the referendum in 2016 when many people seem to have had a variety of desired outcomes in mind.

And that's not to mention the proven campaign irregularities which, had the referendum not been technically only advisory, would have been sufficient for its result to have been annulled.

No, he's not.  You can't change the result of the 2016 referendum: it's happened.  He's talking about holding a different vote, with clearer options on offer to try to find out which of those options actually commands majority support.

We seem to have acquired a phantom disliker who feels uncomfortable with stated truths but isn't prepared to put up a case for why they may not be truths.

No, it's not.  Have you seen other Leave voters on here posting anything different ? 

That is obviously not a relevant reply to Leavers "nearly all want to leave the customs union, the single market, the EU court, and end free movement.".

If that's the way you want to play, I'm out.

Since you asked the question, yes I have. The sample on UKC for leavers expressing their views on the specific form of Brexit they favour is small though, I tend to rely on a slightly wider assessment, including opinion polls (YouGov states that no deal is the preferred option for 19%), social media* and  talking to people.

* Not just my own social media bubble.

That's a no then.

I think we've found the phantom disliker.

Can’t you read?

It's the way he wrote "yes" that gives it away, I suppose? 

There is a problem with social media isn't there? Invariably the links are to The Guardian because it has no firewall whilst every other credible "newspaper" demands payment.  So there's no dissent.

I read the FT front to back every single day without fail and I’ve yet to come across an article that praised any aspects of the government’s preparations (or lack of) for (specifically) a no-deal outcome. I do take this to suggest that the government has little intention of taking us over the cliff edge but the lack of preparation hasn’t exactly strengthened our hand. 

So, based on the information in the other thread we've got Farage's parade of out-of-date gammon being the first secret, restricted attendance protest in history, and now based on this thread we've learned there is lots of positive, pro-Brexit analysis, it's just all locked up so that nobody can read it.

Secretive lot, the pro-Brexit folks.

No. We're talking about a new referendum to choose between a defined *and* deliverable version or versions of brexit and the alternative, to remain. We want to have our say, we want you to have yours, we want the electorate as it exists today to give informed consent for what comes next, those who have to live with what will doubtless be difficult consequences whichever option we choose.

You cannot 'undermine' or 'overturn' democracy with more democracy.

jk

If it was democratic to have a vote a couple of years ago then why isn't it democratic to have a vote now?

If we vote to leave then we leave (I'd like to imagine a 2nd leave vote would solve a few problems as far as the current debacle).

If we vote to stay we stay.

The main reason most brexiteers fear a new vote is because they think they will lose - this implies they don't think they have a majority for leaving and undermines any argument invoking "democracy".

Everyone keeps saying 'two years' when it's nearly three (2 years 10 months).

19 opinion polls up to March 22 indicate that Leave has not been the 'will of the people' for many months.

https://whatukthinks.org/eu/questions/if-there-was-a-referendum-tomorrow-wi...

Where the shit is really going to hit the fan - if Brexit goes through - is when eventually there is another proper vote (election or referendum) and it's found that this alt-right project was pushed through against the wishes of a large majority of the electorate.

Because it has not been implemented yet.

If Labour won a general election. The sitting Conservative government could not hold a second election ( to see if things had changed ) before Labour formed a government.

A few days ago there was an avalanche risk of 2 but experts have now said that it's gone up to at least 4 – but they haven't been able to update it because the nutters in charge say that 'an avalanche hasn't happened yet' (and we'll only change it if you're proved right)

Oops, sorry, wrong thread.

Might that not be because nobody has come up with an implementation that even the tiny fraudulent majority can agree on?

Suggests to me that perhaps they weren't really voting for the same thing, and that another ballot with more detailed outcomes might be the way to determine more precisely what achievable outcomes people are genuinely in favour of.

That is not a logical argument.

We voted to leave the EU. That means leaving the customs union, the single market, ending free movement and the jurisdiction of the EU court. We voted to leave without a deal unless we can negotiate a deal that meets these requirements and is voted for by MPs.

Implementing Brexit has been tried, but could not be made to work (no support for the negotiated agreement, no deal excluded but no majority for any of the proposed alternatives).

If a general election returns a hung parliament, with no individual party being able to secure either a coalition or a confidence and supply agreement, there will be another election. Rare under FPTP, but standard practise elsewhere and a perfectly democratic way to eventually find a government.

It makes IMO no sense to argue that elections can democratically be rerun if they fail to deliver a government, but referenda cannot if they cannot be turned into an implementation that commands a parliamentary majority.

CB

By that lack of logic there can't be any other countries outside of the EU that are in the CU or the SM. I'm sure you're not that stupid really.

Who is this "we" you speak of?  I imagine a lot of leave voters never considered no-deal as a fallback option. Rather they saw it as being "deals within days" and in the unlikely event that all that went tits-up then remain could be preferable to them.  Polls seem to support that.  But polls could be wrong.  lets put it to the vote to be sure. 

I don't ever recall "crash-out" as a box to tick on the ballot.

Absolutely reckless misuse of 'we'. 

That we voted to leave as a country is correct.

Since you voted remain. Perhaps you should leave it to people that voted leave to say what they considered and what would be preferable to them.  Not to mention if they want to vote again.

CRAP

The vote showed a split country.  We Voted to show the state of opinion in the country and many people were so confident of Remain winning thought they did not need to give their support.

The equivalent of a Foster Seeley Discriminator producing noise in the presence of a very weak signal.  Perhaps it said "Send Three and Fourpence We're going to a Dance" or Perhaps it said "Send Reinforcements We're Going to Advance".

We need the equivalent of Sunray saying "Say Again Over"

It's absolutely incorrect, amounting to a straightforward lie.

You seem to be confusing 'country' with 'electorate'. And, then, just 37.4% of the electorate voted for it. About a 1/3 couldn't be bothered to vote. But most importantly, a huge amount of our young people (16-18 yr olds) weren't allowed any say ... and they, and the rest of our younger generation, are surely those you are thinking of now? Unless you're just totally selfish, which I find hard to believe and won't accept until you tell me so.

No it isn't is it. Unfortunately it's a perfect parody of yours re. brexit.

Jk

Simple question, is Norway in the EU?

Jk

Does it?

Farage was advocating for Norway style deal which would include songle market and customs union.

This is the problem...

Leave does not mean leave, it means any number of made up "deals" that have never really been on offer.

That we voted to leave as a country is correct.

The permitted electorate decides for the country.

Yes, it does.  Because we elected a government with that in their manifesto.

There was a wafer thin majority for leave on that day. Obviously parliament (which in this respect, I think, reflects the wider population) can’t agree on what leave means or whether any of the realistically available options are better than just staying in. The other big issue is whether any of the hard-Brexit options are worth tearing up the Anglo-Irish agreement’s commitment to no hard border, that helped bring the troubles to an end.

We are at an impasse. How to resolve this? Despite being a remain voter, I’m uneasy about another referendum but I can’t see any less bad options. If we do have another one, I think it should be using STV between multiple options: from remain to full-on hard-Brexit and renage on the Anglo-Irish agreement but excluding fantasy cake and eat it solutions this time). With that sort of referendum, I think TM’s exit agreement (taking that as the direction for the eventual trade deal too) would stand a good chance as an acceptable middle way. 

You also seem to forget that just about every other country in the democratic western world, having a referendum that could overturn a key part of their constitution, would require a super-majority of over c. 65-66% for such a cataclysmic change.

You have also completely ignored my other point about young people/ the next generation. So I'm just about on the point of giving up with you because you seem to have your earplugs firmly jammed in to block any counter-arguments whatever.

He's effectively back to the 'we won, get over it' dogma. 

We didn't have that for the previous one.

I did reply to your point about young people.

The permitted electorate decides for the country.

Out of the two available realistic options, both of whom were pro-leave, one of them won.

Control taken back, eh?

I have to admit that I don't agree with a second referendum either - one has been damaging enough,  I am very sure if the result had been reversed Nigel Farage et Al wouldn't have shut up since that date

I would accept it.  But prefer no deal.

As a matter of principle would a majority of 1 have been enough to win?   Considering the scale of the Majority to Remain in the first Referendum?

All I can do is re-quote this, it's just so batty:

"I would accept it.  But prefer no deal."

Bats in the belfry.

I've not studied the deal.  I'm sure it was the best deal that we were going to be able to get while the EU thought we would never leave without a deal and were likely to be forced to remain.  But it does not please anybody. On one hand it will mean leaving arrangements are supposedly managed with the goodwill of the EU.  But on the other, the infighting will carry on for years.  Leaving without a deal and with the £39Bn they really need, is much more likely to resolve things quickly and give certainty to business.

Depends what the rules say, doesn't it ?

Just your opinion Gordon.   Have I insulted you ?

Yes, you have. I care for my country, but whenever I've mentioned what I believe is a very serious problem for the future, you simply dismiss it.

I have just given my honest opinions.  What would you like me to do ?

You could answer jkarran's question above, "Is Norway in the EU?"

No.  Why couldn't you look it up in google yourself ?

I know the answer already (as I suspect do you). The intention of it was though to make you realise that you should not conflate leaving the EU with leaving the customs union and that your contention, that voting to leave the EU was the same as voting to leave the customs union, was bollocks

https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/off_belay/hard_brexit_planning_leak-70226...

Wrong - we're a representative democracy, which was designed specifically to avoid mob rule and self-destructive votes such as "let's vote to split the treasury between all voters". Representative democracies allow everyone to be fairly represented, not just voters.

Try this one you and your family decide to sell your house. You, your daughter and your 3month old baby are in favour of selling up and moving to another city where job prospects are said to be good and the brochure looks fantastic. Your wife and son aren't so sure. Two years later still looking to sell you discover that the city you wanted to move to is the pits and knife crime is rife, the job prospects are not as you expected and the brochure lied.

Do you still move?

If the Tories had won a majority in 2017 then at least your post would have made logical sense. But they didn't. There was no electoral mandate for exiting the Customs Union. 

So David, when you make a decision about something important that’s you decided? Even if you didn’t have the full picture at the start and new information or changed circumstances come to light. The whole dogma of “we decided so we won’t change” fascinates me. Taken to an extreme conclusion we would never again need parliamentary elections because “we” voted for this  government. Laws won’t need to be changed or amended in light of new information or technology. Handy to have any thinking, debate, criticism or flexibility taken out of the system😏

My perception is biased as I sit in Europe but I think the UK government represented by TM and a big chunk of the population rather miscalculated the extent to which the EU would bend to avoid a hard Brexit, and the current withdrawal deal is as good as it gets.  Bear in mind these are only the withdrawal arrangements.  That I think isn't well understood by a large part of the UK population also 

I'm sure the EU would like the 39Bn but ultimately the economic loser is the UK so c'est la vie.  And not all arguments , decisions are just about money

It's definitely one that David's climbing partners would probably like to know about before setting out on a route with him.

Again, if the polls (and the swing towards Remain) are to be believed, then those who voted leave have said what they think.  It seems those who don't want a second vote to be held are just as keen to deny ex-leave voters a voice as they are to deny those who vote remain.

Leaving now would be more undemocratic than not leaving at all.  A vote would likely prove that. 

The UK is not a representative democracy, it’s a dysfunctional electoral dictatorship.

For a starter, we routinely elect MPs a majority of people do not want to see elected. That doesn’t seem democratic nor representative.

Too many people on both sides of the debate are demonstrating a lack of respect for others who hold a different opinion.

Have a think about how it looks to those of us who are stuck in the middle waiting to find out how we can move our lives and businesses forward.

It's no good blaming Brexit when even the remain side have lost their manners.

The problem is there's nothing left to debate. In June 2016 there was a case for saying that leave might pay off (albeit with a level of risk involved) but all the available information has been analysed and re-analysed to death over the last 3 years and has left us with two camps:

1) People who recognise that all the evidence says the sensible thing to do is to remain

2) People who apply magical thinking to visualise some form of leaving which may or may not actually be possible to achieve, purely as an act of faith, even though all the information says it will make our situation worse.

It's like the anti-vax situation, except the effect of the 'anti-vaxxers' on 'pro-vaxxers' is far more direct and significant. It's very difficult to keep the debate civil in those circumstances. 

You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves in to.

Sorry but your post is a perfect example of the sort of thing I'm talking about.

It is not just your way or the wrong and your allusions to "magical thinking" and "anti-vaxxers" are just disrespectful to those who don't share your way.

AND before you leap to an incorrect conclusion I voted remain, my personal opinion is that it would still be the best answer but we don't get anywhere by acting like dicks because others hold different opinions.

They solve that problem in Russia, N Korea, Cuba and so on. Can't think of any western democracy where the representatives are routinely elected by the majority.

I know it is, and what I'm saying is that there comes a point when that's the only thing left.

On this issue my way is not correct because I chose it, it's (overwhelmingly likely to be) correct because that's the opinion of the vast majority of the experts who have voiced their opinion. We're not arguing about whose music taste is 'best' here, this is an issue where there will be a definitive better outcome.

Anti-vaxxers take small snippets of tenuously credible or outright disproven information in support of their cause and consider that more compelling than the mountains and mountains of credible evidence on the other side of the debate. Any pro-vax information, no matter how rigorous, is written off as automatically biased because it doesn't support the foregone conclusion that vaccines are bad.

As I said in my previous post, that description wouldn't have been fair on the pro-leave demographic 3 years ago, but as far as I can see it's a perfect fit for the ones that are still championing it now.

Happy to be persuaded though.

Are economics, trade and international relations as objectively simple as the science of vaccination for well known and researched diseases?

Just how.much trust should we place in the opinions of experts in such subjective matters?

Nope.

More than the opinions of complete non-experts on the other side who can't even agree with each other?

I think you're doing the BBC anit-bias thing of finding an excuse to give credibility to both sides of an argument just because that feels like the just thing to do. Someone continually advocating a game of Russian roulette is an idiot, even if there's a chance they could win.

I must admit the workings of international trade and economics might as well be some sort of esoteric witchcraft as far as I'm concerned, and I'm certain there are a fair few charlatans employed in those fields.

However, when the vast majority of experts agree that the effect on the economic wellbeing of the country will be overwhelmingly negative, and the proponents of Brexit seem to be unable to articulate any benefits, I think we'd be foolish to proceed with Brexit.

It's almost become a religion to supporters, or they're fixated on 'We won and won't be cheated of victory, regardless of bad the consequences are'.

I honestly don't know how we move on from this, maybe we have to hit absolute rock bottom before we can recover.

Everybody is biased, even you and even the experts

From a business perspective we've been hamstrung by uncertainty for far too long now. It stifles investment and opportunity.

Give me a result, any result and it's possible to move forward. People will adapt, businesses will adapt and the UK will adapt.

Continued uncertainty is financially, physically and mentally damaging.

Personally I've lost the only certainty that I had which was that next week I could start moving forward again, however hard it may have been if we wound up with no deal. That certainty has now gone and it is mentally and emotionally devastating, the smug superiority exhibited by both sides just makes it worse.

Which is why on matters with no empiricallly verifiable correct answer we look for consensus as the next best thing.

This is true. It’s also true that human society existed ‘just fine’ before vaccination. Doesn’t mean the anti-vaxxers wouldn’t cause enormous damage if they were on a position to force their viewpoint on us all.

Its ok to give up if fighting for the best outcome for the rest of your (and my) and most of our children’s lives (I believe 50 years was the estimate from Grand Wizard Mogg, wasn’t it?) if it’s proving tedious, but personally I might stick with it a little longer.

There is nothing wrong with sticking with an opinion, it's the accusations that those who have a different opinion are brainwashed, stupid, magical thinkers etc that I find objectionable. 

You started this line of reasoning commenting on one of my posts in which I told another poster, having claimed something fairly evidently not true, that he wasn't as stupid as that. That's actually giving someone credit for more intelligence than displayed, and a long way from calling people "brainwashed, stupid, magical thinkers".

I think there's a danger of inferring unwarranted and unhelpful insult where none was written.

?? It seems to me that’s the case pretty much everywhere in Europe, except the UK.

Most Europeans countries have some form of proportional representation and/or a run off system, which prevents electing people who have a majority against them.

the uk is the only non-federal country in the world to use FPTP, as far as I am aware. Probably because it’s shit.

I live in a country with PR (Germany) and from the current 709 representatives I'd guess less than 10 got over 50% of the vote (highest was 57%). 5% for party gets them seats in parliament.

Then there's the other 20% of the electorate that didn't vote out of protest or indifference......

Sorry, seeing the word stupid used yet again was just the last straw. I really am sick of the whole charade and it was a general venting rather than something that was aimed at you specifically.

I'm really struggling to deal with the despair that an extension to the uncertainty is causing for me. I really did hope that we would know where we were destined before the end of this month.

Yes but you have PR, which solves the problem, as your vote always count.

In FPTP your vote doesn’t count unless you vote for the winner, and worse, this could be the case for a majority of voters.

Thanks for the apology, and I sympathise with and share your frustration. I've had to defer or change any number of important decisions because of this fiasco and I can't wait to be rid of it.

But my view is that, however frustration and damaging is the current uncertainty, the damage is far far less than would be the case if we end up with the worst case scenario of a no-deal crash. Avoiding that catastrophe is worth a great deal of frustration.

Hmm, well roughly half the seats are actually by FPTP (direct mandates) and then by a bizzarely complicated system the other seats by the proportion of the second votes (PR) with a shedload of fudges which virtually no-one understands and seems to be continually reformed, the second vote candidates are unknown, faceless people taken from a party list. Whether your vote actually "counts" when some guy from the Danish Minority party in Schleswig Holstein sits on his alone in the bundestag is questionable!

As over 70% of the electorate don´t even understand the difference between their first and second vote it´s hard to see there is any more democracy than the British system!

I hate to pile this on you but if we press on with brexit to 'end uncertainty' deal or no-deal all we're doing is moving on to the next decade of negotiations during which there will be at least two changes of government and significant demographic change, there will be no certainty at all. We need to take the opportunity we have to end this here if it isn't what the electorate actually want. That's going to take a bit more time but the extra couple of months will pale if we do decide to press ahead.

Sorry, there are a lot of lives already wrecked and many more in limbo but that isn't a reason to rush a bad decision.

jk

The concern that I have with the notion that we can stop this now is that I don't think it will go away and it will be back again in the near future.

By all means postpone if we think we can come up with a significantly better deal but I'm afraid that I can see little likelihood to that.