Brexit win - 11 threads into one

[Churchill]

eh? No fekcer asked me.

There was a referendum, weren't you invited?

[Pondlife]

There was a referendum, weren't you invited?

Getting a new wooden building in Cardiff Bay and a raft more freeloaders does not an independent nation make.

[DodgyAgent]

Face it - the British people want out of Europe. The MPs want in because it's a massive gravy-train for them and also an ego-trip.

If we pull out of Europe, we can finally run our own country without being over-ruled by European law. First we could put a stop to all immigration, then that would quickly reduce the housing shortage, reduce the cost of the welfare state, and probably reduce crime too. Job done!

I thought I was a little Englander until I heard you. We need to be part of the EU though not governed by it. the gravy trains need to be stopped but I take issue about jobs. with the exception of the intra company transfer bobs, jobs taken by immigrants are jobs that British people do not want to do. So the real task is to dismantle the culture of welfare and make the public sector work for its consumers not for itself. If this were to happen immigrants would be shouldered out. The immigration problem is in allowing so many people from outside the EU here - I have no problem with poles as long as we are free to work there - labour flexibility is a great virtue to any economy.
Workers should never be "protected" from competition, doing so makes them lazy and creates a sense of entitlement. if you said to an olympic athlete he is guaranteed his place in the UK team irrespective of his performance he would not perform. pressure and competition (fair) should be an element of every job.

[xoggoth]

Mostly agree with DA's points although I'd put far more emphasis on solving our own problems before resorting to imigration. If we do not we are simply making matters worse and, if our welfare, entitlement culture and poor education is causing the problem, it will presumably only be a matter of time before those migrants in turn are lazy too. What do we do then, import even more?

Also talking about migrants in general is missing a lot of the point. The major problem is not the useful ones but the huge numbers of rather useless ones we are also getting. If we could get the first without the second, few would complain.

The government's 2007 report praising the wonders of migrants says they increased growth by a princely £6bn a year in 2006, just £100 for each of us and less than the foreign aid budget. They only arrive at that tiny figure by ignoring major factors including schooling their children and the money migrants send abroad and making totally incorrect assumptions, for example, that migrant health can be assessed simply on basis of age when other government reports show that migrants have significantly worse health. The conclusions of this report are pure nonsense and yet they still manage to come up with a trivial figure for the net benefit.

The really idiotic thing is that in the Gott and Johnson study they rely on, it states that migrants on average are more likely to be unemployed and that the net benefit is largely due to them being younger and not drawing retirement pensions. Why are we taking anyone who is likely to be unemployed? And what happens when these people, who have paid less in and are more likely to retire early due to ill health, do retire? Not a lot of forward thinking here methinks.

http://www.official-documents.gov.uk.../7237/7237.pdf
http://library.npia.police.uk/docs/h...c77migrant.pdf
http://www.parliament.uk/documents/post/postpn276.pdf

[Alf W]

The two newspapers with the biggest circulations in the UK are The Sun and The Daily Mail. This shows Joe Public is generally as thick as pig tulip and/or a bigot. For this reason I wouldn't trust the general public with a referendum on something so complex or requiring of rational thought as membership of the EU (or the issue of the Death Penalty for that matter).

[Jeff Maginty]

..

[d000hg]

Face it - the British people want out of Europe.

What a wonderfully unbiased, evidence-backed claim. I believe the majority don't want this, and of those who do, the majority don't know what they'd be getting out of because they only know about perceived negative/interference ideas... that's the problem because you have to make sure voters aren't just voting on a twitch-reflex to "be more independent", but understand what they gain and lose.

[xoggoth]

This is about democracy, not intellect or who is "right" or "wrong". It's about preference and opinion, not logical truth or scientific fact

Very sane stuff for CUK. Our happiness and wants are all we know to be real and generally those are what nature gave us to survive. There are no rational arguments for anything apart from greatest satisfaction for the most people.

For some reason, human history seems to be continually about pursuing some marvellous distant goal, some magnificent empire, Communism, Nazism, a united Europe, the Umah, a united world. We are persuaded by our wonderful leaders that if only we endure another decade, another century of misery and worry now, we will emerge into a wonderful world. Trouble is it never ******* happens because, as with the EU, it is all forced on people so fast that it just doesn't work. As with the EU the whole thing just falls apart.

The common sense and natural instincts of the common man trumps the lunatic unrealism of the intellectual idealist any day. As for them not understanding issues, I doubt there is less understanding and knowledge than among the supposedly intelligent. Intelligence not guided by a degree of impartiality and a genuine investigative nature is a poor substitute for logic or even basic sense.

PS d00hg, a margin of 9% want out according to this:

EU referendum: poll shows 49% would vote for UK withdrawal | World news | The Guardian

[xoggoth]

The two newspapers with the biggest circulations in the UK are The Sun and The Daily Mail. This shows Joe Public is generally as thick as pig tulip and/or a bigot

Not sure that was intended as a serious comment but one certainly does see such comments that are all too serious and they illustrate how the intelligent are no less inclined than anyone else to indulge in uninformed kneejerk reactions or smears, devoid of argument, no supporting facts.

[keninparis]

I'm not permitted to make any comment or opinion on Europe.