World is Falling Apart Thread (Locked forever)

[alienjesus]

I'm not so sure that we're getting down to the wire on Brexit. The way I understand it, this is only a parliamentary vote on whether or not to hold another national vote. Even if this vote is Yes, the UK has to go through another vote. Even if both vote are yes, that only gives the UK the right to enter negotiations with the EU to negotiate terms of divorce... which may or may not pan out.

There's a lot of procedure here. Governments move slowly.

I would like to hear the insights of a racketeer who lives in the U.K.

This is a national referendum. It happens next week. The outcome of it will decide if the UK leaves the EU.

If the outcome were to be that Britain leaves, during the period where things were being sorted, the UK would still be subject to the rules of the EU. However, they would not be able to vote on EU legislature with immediate effect.

It's probably take a couple yeasrs to sort it all out.


Just for the record, I've already voted (by post, I'm away on the day of the vote). I voted remain.

[samsonlonghair]

Interesting. So how do you see this affecting daily life in the U.K. ?

[alienjesus]

Interesting. So how do you see this affecting daily life in the U.K. ?

I see a number of negative effects from leaving.

I see a recession in the future. Trading options, deals and the likes would need to be renegotiated, and during such uncertain times in the import and export market I can imagine a lot of businesses moving their bases of operations away from Britain. I also see this causing a big disruption to the banking sectors in London, which are some of the most significant worldwide. The pound is likely to become really unstable for a while. This is likely to harm relationships and put us on weaker trading terms not just with Europe, but with other major allies such as the US.

I see it causing a nasty shift to the right in terms of poilitics. I think a lot of the 'leave rhetoric (not all mind, but a not insignificant part) comes from a xenophobic and outdated view of Britain as an Empire. We are Britain, all powerful conquerors of the world, and we don;'t need anyone's help! And we especially don't need them sending all of those people over here to steal our houses and take our jobs!' Except the UK isn't the big fish it once was, and whilst our housing situations are problematic I feel blaming immigration is just targeting a scapegoat. Becoming 'just' the UK again is likely to further engender that sense of Britain as 'us' and everyone else as 'those dirty foreigners' I reckon.

I have a lot of colleagues from Europe who live and work in the UK, and frankly their future is in flux. Who knows if they'd be able to stay - no-one in the UK does right now, that's for sure. It's not just Europeans who are likely to leave though mind - Scotland's relationship with the UK is fairly tenuous as is (over 40% voted 'leave the UK' in the referendum a few years back) and being part of the EU was a big negotiating point on both sides (Remain was saying 'with us we can be a bigger and more important part of the EU, Leave was saying 'We don't need the UK, we can be part of the EU anyway). If they're not part of the EU, I can see a lot of Scots calling for another referendum. I'm doubtful they would styay this time. Scotaland's politics also leans further to the left than most of the rest of the UK, so that would signal a swing even further to the right of UK politics.

The other big argument for leaving is that '#the EU is unelected (not exactly accurate, and anyway, so is a significant sector of British politics - the House of Lords) and that they tell us what to do when we didn't vote for them. I can understand the sentiment here, but the fact is that something like 40% of British trade comes from Europe, and if we were to leave the EU we would still have to join the European Economic Zone in order to trade with them, in the same was as Iceland. This means we'd be subject to all the same rules basically, but with zero ability to vote on them or change them. In essence, we'd be told even more what to do by Europe, and we'd have no say on the matter at all. The EU is far from perfect, but I don't see how leaving it is going to help us change that at all.

Those are just obvious things I can imagine. Many of them have been said by very prominent figures - world leaders, banking moguls, monetary fund guys etc. There's lots of other things to worry about - UK farming is heavily subsidised by the EU, and many farms will fail without those grants. A significant number of farm workers are from eastern Europe too, so they also will likely lose a lot of their staff. The EU drives green policies as well. The leave campaign has already vowed to abolish the Human Rights Act if we leave Europe, which means basicn rights are likely to change on people. The same human rights act has prevented the passing of several laws in the UK which I was heartily against.

I'm sure there are people who can give good arguments for theleave campaign. As I've said, the Union is far from perfect. But to mje it just seems like economic and political suicide. The UK is a wealthy country with a lot of allies. If we leave, I firmly believe it won't stay that way for long.

[samsonlonghair]

Fascinating. Thanks for your viewpoint.

[marurun]

What I'm saying is that hateful violent people always hate something within themselves, then externalize that anger onto others.

But there are a lot of people who hate others for other stuff they hate in themselves that DON'T go and shoot up a club. I don't think this would be an issue if we didn't, as a society, stigmatize LGBT individuals so much. Our culture has this built-in MACRO right now for automatically labeling LGBT folks as "other", and so they are easier to hate, easier to discriminate against, because they aren't "normal". That's the challenge, to culturally normalize this.

[Betagam7]

Many people in the #leave camp on Brexit seem to have misguided beliefs about what being part of a union actually is.

In truth Britain already has a pretty sweet deal for being part of this club such as keeping our own currency when most of the others had to switch to the Euro. This leads to many Europeans seeing us as lacking in perspective:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiH3L3XpJHY

Freedom of movement which works both ways, is seen as only leading to immigration, ignoring the million plus Brits who currently choose to live and work in Europe not to mention all of the pensioners who opt to retire to Spain etc for the warmer climate.
The majority of the noise about immigration tends to come from people who have never left the UK (or perhaps even their home city). It's an island mentality that ignores the benefits available to those of us who have chosen to take advantage of them and see the world as our home rather than a particular patch of land on a particular island.

As another poster has mentioned, you also tend to hear alot of "unelected" quips about the EU but this ignores that the UK has an unelected "house of lords" that until recently was actually hereditary!
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/po ... 12231.html

There are valid arguments about corruption within the EU but there are equally valid concerns about what the current government (led by a man who once placed his penis inside the mouth of a dead pig) would do without the EU reigning them in (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/po ... 91173.html)

It's quite important to remember that last bit.

A pig.

A dead pig.

Actual sex with a dead pig's mouth.

The Prime Minister.

[Pulsar_t]

It's quite important to remember that last bit.

A pig.

A dead pig.

Actual sex with a dead pig's mouth.

The Prime Minister.

And let's not forget the pedophile ring that was under wraps for decades. Every nation, and I stress every, has a clique that is above the law.

[Nemoide]

Details still sound a bit sketchy, but it sounds like a teacher protest in Mexico resulted in police killing multiple teachers.

[Erik_Twice]

Speaking of which, there's a lot of talk about the whole "Brexit" thing. As we get down to the wire on it, any thoughts?

Mostly that the ignorance on the subject is massive, which is why it is so scary.

Most "leavers" think the EU is "undemocratic" and that leaders are "unelected" despite there being elections every five years and their ringladier, Nigel Farage, being one of those "supposedly unelected" members of the parliament.

Most leavers think leaving the EU will reduce migration, even though the UK is not in the Schengen area and most inmigrants are not from the Union. In fact, the inmigrants the racists and xenophobes are most concerned with, you know, muslims and brown people are not European citizens.

The British have been relentessly given massive amounts of dumb anti-EU propaganda like "The EU bans curved bananas", "The EU wants to ban the Union Jack on meat products" and "The EU bans fresh pasta". The EU has been a scapegoat for the single most idiotic things you can think of for decades.

Conversely, Brits are not exposed to many of the cultural benefits of the EU. Britain is the country with the smallest proportion of Erasmus students and it's one of the very few European countries pan-European student organizations don't have a foothold in. Getting to know people from other countries on a personal level has been shown to be the key to the European identity and young Brits are far less likely to do that than other nationalitities.

The attitude of British politicians is also very negative. The EU flag is not flown or shown along the national flag, unlike every other EU country I've been with, and politicians shy away from the project. The conservative party left the conservative block in the EU parliament to go join a bunch of meaningless racist, extremely homophobic parties. There's an active disinterest in political spheres to educate the population about the EU or the work done there as it would reduce the power of the British political chaste.

If anything, I'm surprised it's so close, specially with the pathethic "Remain" campaign being led by people who don't believe in the project like Cameron and Corbyn.

[marurun]

Thing is, lots of Brits live and work in Europe proper, certainly more than the other way around. An exit will definitely have a deleterious effect on the British economy and those workers abroad.

Proven dead wrong below. Kept because I sometimes need a reminder to read more before typing.