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James Woodcock
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 21 September 2007
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 7605
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| Posted: 09 September 2019 at 7:26am | IP Logged | 1
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JB - I think the global press must have got it wrong. It was made very clear to the U.K. voters that this was the vote & the government was to abide by its result - even if there was 1 vote difference between the two options.
The wording left no room for it to be otherwise.
It was, without doubt, the worst thought out thing I’ve seen our government do in a long, long time
Leigh - no I missed the drama as I think I was working away @ the time & forgot to watch it on catch up. I’ll have to hunt it down
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132241
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| Posted: 09 September 2019 at 8:00am | IP Logged | 2
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At the time the point was made that it was called a “referendum” to distinguish it from a vote. The words mean the same thing, but they were being used to indicate that what was being tallied was whether the British peoples wanted to vote on leaving. After the poor turnout at the poles, indicating general apathy, there was surprise when the referendum was suddenly being treated as a binding vote—and half the population was being forced out against their will. This was why I kept waiting for the actual vote, minus apathy. “Oh, you mean this is SERIOUS!”
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James Woodcock
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 21 September 2007
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 7605
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| Posted: 09 September 2019 at 10:13am | IP Logged | 3
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Where on earth did you get that report?
Voter turn out for the referendum was 72% and we knew it was serious all the way through. This thing literally split long term friendships and families.
I didn't follow how other countries were reporting on it but if that's what they led people to believe was going on, they were seriously wrong.
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Rebecca Jansen
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 February 2018
Location: Canada
Posts: 4499
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| Posted: 09 September 2019 at 1:19pm | IP Logged | 4
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There was a lot of deliberate misinformation during the Brexit vote same as in the U.S. 2016 election.I really won't even consider most news as actual information if it doesn't come via a long established source, and that isn't known to have an obvious slant to what it publishes/broadcast... people say BBC, CBC, CNN and NY Times are slanted but I find a lot of the people who say those things are very slanted themselves. CNN has devolved into lots of people 'her to talk about' though.. and the Headline News part is all serial-killers. A lot of people must really want crap and crap sources for information, makes me ill to see thing like The National Enquirer, News Of The World and various Sun tabloids still going really!
People have to have a lot of boring basic info to make good decisions, not 'infotainment', memes or sign/hat slogans, and if the job's too boring for them to be bothered than they (and all of us) might well be better off not voting. Ideally you should vote as your duty but better not to if you really aren't sure of what your doing or haven't done your part of the job properly in actually following along. I really can't imagine why anyone buys any grand promises from politicians... why not just get people qualified to do a job? Cameron and his 'no plan B' referendum was keeping a promise, very admirable I'm sure, but the road to hell...
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Koroush Ghazi
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 25 October 2009
Location: Australia
Posts: 1646
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| Posted: 09 September 2019 at 7:32pm | IP Logged | 5
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Rebecca Jansen wrote:
| I really can't imagine why anyone buys any grand promises from politicians... why not just get people qualified to do a job? |
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Because unqualified politicians seeking fame and fortune are the only ones willing to keep the charade alive that the ordinary person has any right to provide uninformed input into the running of government.
What we actually need is a Meritocracy, not a Democracy. That is, people selected to run various aspects of government based on their capabilities and qualifications, not their popularity.
Who does the selecting? Well that's the hard part. We could create committees of prominent scientists and professionals from various disciplines, and have them vote for who they consider the most qualified. But frankly, anything is better than the popularity contests that are general elections, where candidates - who have risen to the top of their parties through deceit and graft - are presented to us in a contest that rewards the one who promises the most to the electorate, whether true or not, with no personal accountability. The inevitable result of the current system is precisely what we have today: unqualified con-men who are willing to promise anything to court the vote of the average uninformed punter.
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Philippe Negrin
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 01 August 2007
Location: France
Posts: 2644
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| Posted: 10 September 2019 at 4:29am | IP Logged | 6
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Bleak but so true Khoroush...Democracy has gone trapped in a blind alleyway...It only works if the voters are educated and informed...One fairly recent former French president affirmed learning History shouldn't be a top priority anymore for graduation level of High School... How wrong is that !
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Brian Miller
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 28 July 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 30890
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| Posted: 10 September 2019 at 4:09pm | IP Logged | 7
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https://ilikewordsdotblog.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/screen -shot-2017-11-20-at-23-09-31.png
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Koroush Ghazi
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 25 October 2009
Location: Australia
Posts: 1646
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| Posted: 10 September 2019 at 5:57pm | IP Logged | 8
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Regardless, it was technically a non-binding referendum:
QUOTE:
| In theory, in the event of a vote to leave the EU, David Cameron, who opposes Brexit, could decide to ignore the will of the people and put the question to MPs banking on a majority deciding to remain. This is because parliament is sovereign and referendums are generally not binding in the UK. |
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But of course, it would be totally unexpected that, having shown a complete lack of leadership by asking the average punter to make an important decision which has major long-term economic and social ramifications, said gutless leadership would then ignore the results.
Parliament was created for a reason, and one of them is to facilitate reasoned discussion with a view to the longer term, and make rational decisions, as opposed to swaying with the day-to-day whims of the populace.
It's interesting to see that in both the UK and the US, the respective Conservative parties are imploding under the weight of absurdist populist "leaders". Australia is heading that way - we recently had a nutjob right-wing Prime Minister who was deposed.
What is it about modern western conservatives that makes them gravitate towards irrational leadership like this?
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James Woodcock
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 21 September 2007
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 7605
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| Posted: 10 September 2019 at 8:12pm | IP Logged | 9
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It isn’t regardless Koroush. The level of bad blood that this has resulted in means we have to leave.
I don’t want to leave, I didn’t vote leave but I believe we now need to leave or we could see our entire political system fail (which it still may do to be honest).
I just want a sensible way of leaving that isn’t some scorched earth, UKIP/Brexit party inspired no deal. But no one can decide (or agree) what that should be. Because no one thought about that before having the vote.
Because no one thought the leave campaign might win. Which is the real tragedy here
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Leigh DJ Hunt
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 20 February 2008
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 1570
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| Posted: 11 September 2019 at 4:23am | IP Logged | 10
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Well the Scottish courts have declared the prorogation illegal. Lib Dems (and possibly Labour) to campaign on a Remain platform in a GE. There's still 0.01% hope within me that it can be stopped but I agree that it would cause nearly as many problems as it would solve. I see civil unrest either way the wind blows.
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Peter Martin
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 March 2008
Location: Canada
Posts: 15783
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| Posted: 11 September 2019 at 8:59am | IP Logged | 11
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The level of bad blood that this has resulted in means we have to leave.-------------------------- Why? It's entirely possible more people in the UK want to stay than leave right now. The last couple of years have been spent exploring how to leave sensibly and no-one likes any of the answers, which is why May's deal was rejected. The approach of it has to happen no matter what is what is driving the madness of a no-deal exit. It's completely irrational. We must leave, but we really don't like the options available, so let's just default into the very worst one.
The refusal to even countenance that a majority might want to stay in lieu of the bad options that have materialised seems undemocratic. And any kind of discussion is shut down with "No! We had a referendum. We must respect the people's wish. Therefore we must not listen to the people!"
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James Woodcock
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 21 September 2007
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 7605
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| Posted: 11 September 2019 at 11:36am | IP Logged | 12
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In reply to Peter.The reason I think we now have to leave is that I just don’t see how this will ever go away if we don’t. I’m also not sure what form the backlash would take if we didn’t leave & we could really end up ripping our country apart.
We may still do this even if we leave but we definitely will if we don’t.
This is a shambles. There is no solution. The country is still pretty much split down the middle. Leave won by a small margin & thus have claimed the high ground because they don’t need to show that had they lost by 4% you can guarantee that they would have been shouting from the rooftops that our relationship with Europe would need to change & we should decrease our involvement.
But they don’t need to prove that because they won. Which makes us remainers look bad.
No matter what happens, the country is broken, no one is trying to find a solution to this. The rhetoric is laughable - Johnson said it was time to heal the country & then set on a course that has split it even more by his bully tactics.
It really does seem to be that the policy seems to be burn it all down & start from scratch. I don’t think we should do that, but I do think we need to find a way to leave
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