Over one million people sign UK petition for second EU referendum • Hacker News Board

Re: Over one million people sign UK petition for second EU referendum

#91

Post by pbhjpbhj » Sat, Jun 25, 2016, 3:47 PM UTC

perlgeek wrote: post #80

sleavey wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Nigel Farage immediately claimed after the vote was finished that he lied about one of the key statements made during the campaign (£350M/week to be spent on NHS instead of EU). Does that qualify as a major fact changing?

As an outsider, this didn't surprise me very much, so I wouldn't count it. I mean, it's obvious that even though the UK may be paying more money to the EU than it receives, there are other ways in which the UK massively benefits from the EU, which will be gone after Brexit is done. So that money isn't all available. It is also not very unusual for politicians to promise more than they can keep.

It was a huge lie, after immigration it was probably the biggest vote winner.

Personally I think the Leave voters just realised that what they thought was an irrelevant naming convention is going to have serious hardships in store.

Seriously: Johnson & Farage, the lead personalities of the Leave campaign have come out and said the £350 million doesn't exist. Others are saying, from the Leave campaign that we'll maintain the status quo with European trading. I'd love for us to take it back, but if they were going to do that they shouldn't have campaigned to leave.

The Bank of England had plans for handling the financial downturn, uncertainty, and avoiding panic. Seems that none of the politicians for Leave bothered to think beyond the vote itself.

Politicians campaigning on a specific point should face prison for fraud when they U-turn on this scale. I'm not happy just to shrug and say 'what scoundrels, eh'; it's bloody criminal, far worse than any of the normal criminal frauds.

Re: Over one million people sign UK petition for second EU referendum

#92

Post by HoopleHead » Sat, Jun 25, 2016, 3:57 PM UTC

sleavey wrote: post #45

perlgeek wrote: post #30

That's not how democracy works. If there is a referendum, and you don't like the result, you don't just do a second referendum. If you'd do that, you could achieve any result you want, just by doing it over and over until. Due to voter's fatigue and/or daily sentiment, results will vary, so you can pick a result by deciding when to stop. It might make sense (though still be questionable) to repeat the vote if major f…

Well, Nigel Farage immediately claimed after the vote was finished that he lied about one of the key statements made during the campaign (£350M/week to be spent on NHS instead of EU). Does that qualify as a major fact changing?

If you want to have a re-vote after every referendum/election wherein one of the campaigning politicians lied, you might as well live in the polling station, as that's where you'll be spending all your time.

Also. It was a referendum, not an election. Farage wasn't officially representing "The NO Party" or making official policy statements. He's not even a member of parliament, never mind the government. So what he said or didn't say before the vote had about as much official standing as what your postman of milkman said —even if it did get airtime because of his notoriety.

Please try and think things through just a wee bit, before making such naïve suggestions.

Re: Over one million people sign UK petition for second EU referendum

#93

Post by DanBC » Sat, Jun 25, 2016, 3:59 PM UTC

perlgeek wrote: post #80

sleavey wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Nigel Farage immediately claimed after the vote was finished that he lied about one of the key statements made during the campaign (£350M/week to be spent on NHS instead of EU). Does that qualify as a major fact changing?

As an outsider, this didn't surprise me very much, so I wouldn't count it. I mean, it's obvious that even though the UK may be paying more money to the EU than it receives, there are other ways in which the UK massively benefits from the EU, which will be gone after Brexit is done. So that money isn't all available. It is also not very unusual for politicians to promise more than they can keep.

> here are other ways in which the UK massively benefits from the EU,

See Cornwall, who voted leave but now want the money that they were getting from the EU to be protected.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/brexit-cornwa...

> It is also not very unusual for politicians to promise more than they can keep.

It's unusual for the lie to be so blatant, repeated so often, so obviously wrong, and retracted immediately after the polls close.

Here's a picture of Boris by a sign created for the Leave campaign. It says "Let's give our NHS the £350 million the EU takes every week"

https://twitter.com/mgtmccartney/status/746245181532418048

Here's a picture of their campaign bus. That says "We send the EU £350 million a week. Let's fund our NHS instead"

https://twitter.com/mgtmccartney/status/746245181532418048

There's a bunch of interviews with Leave campaigners saying this money would go to the NHS. (And also being challenged on it).

Here's Farage, on the morning of the results, explaining that saying it was a "mistake" to say the £350m per week would go to the NHS.

https://twitter.com/GMB/status/746218028195426305

Re: Over one million people sign UK petition for second EU referendum

#94

Post by HoopleHead » Sat, Jun 25, 2016, 4:23 PM UTC

tim333 wrote: post #29

curun1r wrote: post #23

The funniest/most interesting part wasn't the call for a second referendum, but the second petition described at the end of the article: A map of the petition signatures showed that most came from England’s major cities, topped by London where there is a separate petition calling on Mayor Sadiq Khan to declare the capital independent from the United Kingdom, and apply to join the EU. I'm not even sure how that could…

There's no way the independent London thing could happen in practice but a 2nd EU referendum is possible. The Irish repeated their one, the Scottish one looks like repeating. Go 2nd referendum!

An Irish one ain't gonna happen. The majority Unionists' anti-anything-Irish hatred and desire to remain British is far stronger than their wanting to stay in the EU.

As an Irish Nationalist myself, the only outside chance for Irish unification that I can see would be if Scotland voted to leave the UK first.

The Unionists in N. Ireland tend to identify themselves as "Ulster Scots"[1], so the advent of a Britain without Scotland in it might just be enough to loosen their attachment a bit. There is no great affinity for Wales and their attitude towards England is not much warmer than the Scots have for the 'Auld Enemy'

[1](http://www.ulsterscotsagency.com/what-is-ulster-scots)

Re: Over one million people sign UK petition for second EU referendum

#95

Post by Tenoke » Sat, Jun 25, 2016, 6:02 PM UTC

sleavey wrote: post #45

perlgeek wrote: post #30

That's not how democracy works. If there is a referendum, and you don't like the result, you don't just do a second referendum. If you'd do that, you could achieve any result you want, just by doing it over and over until. Due to voter's fatigue and/or daily sentiment, results will vary, so you can pick a result by deciding when to stop. It might make sense (though still be questionable) to repeat the vote if major f…

Well, Nigel Farage immediately claimed after the vote was finished that he lied about one of the key statements made during the campaign (£350M/week to be spent on NHS instead of EU). Does that qualify as a major fact changing?

That promise was not in any way made by Farage, it was made by Boris Johnson and co.[1] [2] I don't like Farage, and I hate the leave vote, but his criticism of it was honest given that he was definitely not the one who made the promise.

For what is worth, he was criticising them (though not sure about this specific point) from before.[3]

1. http://leftfootforward.org/2016/05/boris-johnsons-brexit-bus...

2. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3584627/The-Boris-bl...

3.http://www.politico.eu/article/nigel-farage-ukip-leader-vote...

Re: Over one million people sign UK petition for second EU referendum

#96

Post by dang » Sat, Jun 25, 2016, 6:42 PM UTC

sklogic wrote: post #37

Over 50% of the country are chavs. There is nothing more stupid in this world than a chav.

Oh, good grief. You know you can't comment like this here (or "fuck the lefties", below, which reads like self-parody). As I explained before, I don't want to ban you because you post interesting technical comments. But if you post anything else like this, we will have to ban you or other users will correctly complain about a double standard.

Civil and substantive comments only, please, from now on.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11976171 and marked it off-topic.

Re: Over one million people sign UK petition for second EU referendum

#97

Post by rrss1122 » Sat, Jun 25, 2016, 7:52 PM UTC

And over 50M voted for Leave.

Re: Over one million people sign UK petition for second EU referendum

#98

Post by ProxCoques » Sat, Jun 25, 2016, 7:57 PM UTC

HoopleHead wrote: post #94

tim333 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no way the independent London thing could happen in practice but a 2nd EU referendum is possible. The Irish repeated their one, the Scottish one looks like repeating. Go 2nd referendum!

An Irish one ain't gonna happen. The majority Unionists' anti-anything-Irish hatred and desire to remain British is far stronger than their wanting to stay in the EU. As an Irish Nationalist myself, the only outside chance for Irish unification that I can see would be if Scotland voted to leave the UK first. The Unionists in N. Ireland tend to identify themselves as "Ulster Scots"[1], so the advent of a Britain witho…

I guess you've not been following Ian Paisley Jr on Twitter then...

Things are going completely through the looking glass right now...

Re: Over one million people sign UK petition for second EU referendum

#99

Post by kbody » Sat, Jun 25, 2016, 8:06 PM UTC

ap3 wrote: post #85

tim333 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite a lot of the not voting were young people who had not figured the logistics of registering a month before and so on. The oldies who votted for brexit had mostly voted before and so were pre registered and know the procedure which slewed the results.

Maybe we should not lend a lot of weight to the opinions of adults who have not figured out how voting works

The same thing could be said to people that vote but don't understand what they are voting about. A lot of of the Exit votes were a way to express disappointed to the state of things of their lives.

Re: Over one million people sign UK petition for second EU referendum

#100

Post by ProxCoques » Sat, Jun 25, 2016, 8:12 PM UTC

mirekrusin wrote: post #36

Democracy doesn't work by voting until you get results you want.

"Democracy doesn't work by voting until you get results you want."

No, it works when people make informed choices they understand. That didn't happen in this case.