181–190 of 345 posts
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Don't forget Spain claiming Gibraltar.
The odd thing is that after all the years of being staunchly British, Gibraltar might well accept. They were 95% in favour of the EU. Having that border heavily restricted will be a nightmare for them.
He'll go down in history as one of the worst leaders the UK ever had. Which he already was before yesterday. By the way, if he let the people decide on such a super topic as leave/remain in the EU, why does he not let his people vote on whether they want total surveillance or not? If they want a police state? Why can't they decide on stuff that affects their daily lives in a potential negative way? Or will they ignor…
"if he let the people decide on such a super topic as leave/remain in the EU" That was a popular demand by the public as the UK hadn't had a referendum on EU membership in 40 years. He made a promise to hold the referendum because of this and fulfilled his promise. If a politician keeping a promise is a problem, then we're all doomed
Yes. We are.
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Given that he's been writing against the EU for 15 years or more, that's pretty unlikely.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/2012/dec/04/boris-j... > He said that in such a referendum he would campaign for Britain to stay in. As a journalist in Brussels, he "migrated from being quite enthusiastic about Europe to being really very sceptical". But whenever he considered the prospect of Britain leaving, he always came down "narrowly" in favour of Britain staying in. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk…
Thinking in 2012 that the EU is marginally better than the alternative is not exactly incongruous with changing your mind - especially given the past 4 years of the Euro project?
Most importantly, prior to Cameron "renegotiating", Boris took a position of not saying out until he saw the final deal. Again, this is not unreasonable. He was not an Outer - just waiting to see whether Cameron would deliver what he promised (and he didn't).
I have seen people try to spin Boris as just an opportunist but I'm not sold. His ~non fiction~ book about Churchill is not something I'm taking as a primary source on his views...
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I suspect that a country has to have referendums fairly often for them to work as intended. One problem in the UK was that people were answering different questions to the one asked.
...and basing their answers on blatant lies. (EG We can spend some of the £350m per week on NHS.)
Wow. A new Prime Minister and a new President within about a month of each other. At this point though, it doesn't seem like the former will matter much anymore. I hope this shit hole of a year turns around for the second half.
And so it begins... If a Brexit-fanatic like Boris somehow gets hold of the UK, and Trump does the same in the US, we'll be looking back at "those good old days prior to June 2016" in no time... The world-economy will get more introvert, like the "me first" kids at school who don't care about the rest. And that will be the fuel of the upcoming unrest in the rest of the world...
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This government is for austerity and cutting public services and expenditure. He is no less a reflection of his party. Next PM's in line: Theresa May: Pro snoopers (spying) charter. I don't like the term police state but her actions are worryingly in line. Boris Johnson? A very charismatic idiot. His selling point being the golden coloured hairy creature that has permanently occupied his scalp. Yes. We have a great l…
Theresa May is one of the scariest contenders as far as I've seen. Very pro-surveillance and anti-open internet. She would be a (nother) disaster for UK tech. If there's anybody left who hasn't moved to Dublin/Berlin by October.
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You can buy a house in the North for 100-200k without any problems, and saving 10k for a deposit is not exactly difficult if you have a job. I'm in the same situation as OP, live in UK, everyone I know is quite well off and the economy is doing very well for us(or was until today).
I think I'm one of those rare people who lurk on hackernews, but who's friends are normal working types. Nurses, janitors, teachers, teaching assistants, plumbers, electricians, carpetenters, fisher men. None of these people are on your facebook feed, or hackernews comment section. These are the people who have had enough of all this crap. We're not stupid. We're just poor.
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> opened the doors to mass migration without thinking about the implications for those who might be displaced by it (or rather feel they were displaced by it) just... wow
Please elaborate, as in the Northeast this is exactly what happened. Do you agree or disagree, or are you just saying "wow" as youngtaff has opened your eyes to how many members of the tradition labour vote outside London view Europe?
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Blaming people (older people, immigrants, whatever) for our problems isn't productive. Let's figure out what's broken about the systems we're living in instead of alienating the people we should be working with to fix them.
In both the US general election and this referendum, the primary forces at play are emotive campaigning backed by false or at the very least misleading information (in our case: portrayal of immigrants, the '£350m a week' figure that has already had some very serious backpeddling, etc. etc.). We have an electorate that is woefully misinformed for a whole host of reasons. How you address this is beyond me.
Are you going to learn from that and change your ways?
There was lots of flatly false and misleading crap coming from the Remain camp as well. Just look at how Cameron see-sawed on the consequences of an exit. Before his negotiation it was "things will be OK even if we leave, the economy is fundamentally strong". Then it was chaos, doom, "economic self harm", permanently worse off etc. Now the vote went against him it's back to "everything will be fine".
When the leader of the campaign can't even stay consistent on such a basic thing, that campaign cannot claim a monopoly on truth.