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UK votes to leave EU

bbc.co.uk

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Re: UK votes to leave EU

#241

Post by dangjc »

verroq wrote: post #226
dangjc wrote: post #95

It's amazing that such deep constitutional change will be achieved with such a slim majority. 48% of British people will be ejected out of the EU essentially against their will. The UK has always embraced first past the post voting, but it really shows here how it creates very discontinuous inflection points.

That's not true, the turnout is 76%. So the remaining 24% don't care. 0.51 * 0.76 + 0.24 = 0.62 So the majority of the population 62% are happy with decision.

You can't add non voters like that because you could also say

0.49 * 0.76 + 0.34 = 71.2%

do not support change.

Re: UK votes to leave EU

#242

Post by thewarrior »

martythemaniak wrote: post #13

Is Scotland going to be exiting the UK next? Guess we'll see in a few years. Hard to know what will happen here, but I suspect once the UK (or what's left of it) signs a trade deal with the EU, they'll get the same deal as Norway - all the compliance with EU regulations, with none of the say. I suppose people may be happy with that deal, as long as they can get to say they're "free". I'm hoping this somehow leave the…

I feel that the growth of Fascist sentiment worldwide can't possibly be a coincidence. Globalisation and it's benefits are being questioned.

People are disappointed. Even this vote , is actually a vote of dissatisfaction against the status quo. They just managed to direct enough of that anger against the EU.

I'd like to suggest the following three hypotheses and hear what you guys think :

1. As growth slows , liberal democracy ceases to be the status quo. It's much easier for a demagogue to whip up sentiments against the "other" when people feel that they have been left behind.

2. The media has always been a gatekeeper and helped keep the more extreme voices out of mainstream discourse. The internet breaks this dynamic and now disaffected majorities can coalesce across regional boundaries within a country.

3. The Western working class has realised that globalisation doesn't seem to be raising everyone's living standards. It's more of an equalisation where large numbers of people in Asia are lifted into the middle class while the western working class stagnates.

This diagram shows a clear class divide in the voting: http://i.imgur.com/SneDXWa.png

I don't have much more data to back these up so I'd be interested hearing any thoughts / anecdotes about such things around where you live.

Re: UK votes to leave EU

#243

Post by xienze »

mathgenius wrote: post #54
Johnie wrote: post #7

British Pound is at the lowest level since 1985 at 1.33 USD/GBP.

I wonder how many people would change their mind now because of this. If the pound keeps tanking, perhaps the market will end up forcing a bremain. Once again the financial markets behaving like a psycho bitch. Do you remember that one girlfriend that you knew was a bad idea but you just couldn't help yourself?

The thing to remember about currencies is that they don't move under the guidance of some magical force. Currency markets are literally people converting from one currency to another 24/7. Fear and uncertainty, whether warranted or not, is what rules the market, and makes it ripe for speculation. I haven't done Forex in quite some time but if I were, you bet your ass I would've been out there shorting the GBP like no tomorrow as the poll results started inching towards "leave" because of all the doom and gloom scenarios that have been floated about endlessly -- it logically follows that other people would be doing the exact same thing.

Remember, this won't even take effect for another two years or so. Literally nothing about UK or the GBP has fundamentally changed as of this moment, and yet the currency has been shorted as if the UK has simply snapped its fingers and is, as of this moment, no longer in the EU.

What you'll see in the coming days is an upward movement. Shorts are going to take their profits, which is going result in GBP buy orders, which is going to squeeze shorts, which will lead to more GBP buy orders. Will the GBP go back to its value as of yesterday? No. But it won't remain down 10% either. Bank on it.

Re: UK votes to leave EU

#245

Post by dangjc »

ap3 wrote: post #165
dangjc wrote: post #95

It's amazing that such deep constitutional change will be achieved with such a slim majority. 48% of British people will be ejected out of the EU essentially against their will. The UK has always embraced first past the post voting, but it really shows here how it creates very discontinuous inflection points.

What about those that were joined against their will? Politics is violence: 51% vs 49%

No, politics is a process to resolve disputes without violence. There should be a supermajority required to decide something so fundamental, and absent that, there should be a compromise found that satisfies people 70/30 rather than splitting the country 51/49.

Re: UK votes to leave EU

#247

Post by paganel »

> In my opinion, the chances of any sort of war at this point remain pretty low.

I would have said the same thing 4 or 5 years ago, but in the meantime we did in fact have a war in Europe, I'm talking about the war in Eastern Ukraine (which is still part of Europe). But you're sort of right, who can think of something like that spreading to the Western side of the continent?

Until last night I would would have answered: "no sane person", but after I saw the idiot Nigel Farage speak on the BBC (I don't actually follow UK politics, this was my first time hearing him actually speak) I had quite the internal shock. To hear a (what has now become) mainstream politician talk so vividly against immigration and against "multinationals" in 2016 was... don't know how to put it, harrowing. You're probably from the States where you people treat Trump like the idiot that he is and think that even if gets elected things will move on as usual, but us in this part of the world have had the privilege of slaughtering ourselves in the trenches of the Ardennes or in the steppes of Western Russia because of people like Farage in the past.

Re: UK votes to leave EU

#248

Post by PhantomGremlin »

meowface wrote: post #208

In my opinion, the chances of any sort of war at this point remain pretty low. However, it's possible a Trump presidency and fractured EU might lead to a perfect storm for some kind of global conflict in a few years. I think still a low chance, but it does almost sound like the beginning chapter of a history book.

In my opinion, the chances of any sort of war at this point remain pretty low.

You're right, there's little chance of a war between any of the EU (or soon to be former EU) countries. And, more importantly, there's no foreseeable reason for there to be a war.

But, not to put too fine a point on it, there also can't be a war for one other reason: Nobody but Putin has much in the way of armed forces. Things could get really ugly if Putin decided to, e.g. invade the Baltics.

I did some quick checking. Here's an example: Germany's current unified armed forces, the Bundeswehr, have 178,000 active soldiers.[1] In WW II, Germany's army (just the army) had 12,000,000 active soldiers in 1944.[2]

For today's EU, war would be more of a dalliance than serious business. And that's a good thing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundeswehr [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Army_(Wehrmacht)

Re: UK votes to leave EU

#249

Post by jbigelow76 »

meowface wrote: post #208

In my opinion, the chances of any sort of war at this point remain pretty low. However, it's possible a Trump presidency and fractured EU might lead to a perfect storm for some kind of global conflict in a few years. I think still a low chance, but it does almost sound like the beginning chapter of a history book.

    >However, it's possible a Trump presidency and fractured EU might lead to a perfect storm for some kind of global conflict in a few years.
Despite the Brexit and its aftershocks I don't think the next non-Middle East related conflict will originate in Europe. But a Trump presidency coupled with some sort of "mishap" between the US and China in the South China Sea, that's the stuff of nightmares.

Re: UK votes to leave EU

#250

Post by [deleted] »

owenversteeg wrote: post #195

Since for some reason the larger, older, higher-voted, more popular thread was marked as a dupe I'm copying my popular comment over here: The BBC just announced that "Britain has voted to leave the European Union". Leave only needs 2,105,984 more votes to win. [edit 12:15am EST] 1,715,256 votes now and closing fast. [edit 12:19am EST] 1,196,678 [edit 12:27am EST] 894,189 [edit 12:31am EST] 785,549 [edit 12:37am EST]…

[deleted]
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