EU referendum

[Dour]

You should read more history.

I suspect I've read more than you.

Care to point out where chaos has proved to be 'excellent' in history?

 

[camberwell fox]

Not in the slightest.

So you are compliant in the view of the stay 'rhetoric?'

 

[Miles Away]

So you are compliant in the view of the stay 'rhetoric?'

I believe that this vote, despite having a lot of nuance and valid reasons for choosing a departure, was ultimately driven by race, xenophobia and anti-intellectualism.

I believe that Nigel Farage is the face of this movement.

I don't believe that you are racist if you voted leave.

I do believe that if a racist did vote, they voted leave.

Most of all I believe that a referendum that impacts people's rights is absolutely ridiculous and it never should have happened. That isn't sour grapes from the losing side, it is a belief that the countries leaders badly failed to protect its people when they agreed to a referendum.

 

[fitz]

I believe that this vote, despite having a lot of nuance and valid reasons for choosing a departure, was ultimately driven by race, xenophobia and anti-intellectualism.

I believe that Nigel Farage is the face of this movement.

I don't believe that you are racist if you voted leave.

I do believe that if a racist did vote, they voted leave.

Most of all I believe that a referendum that impacts people's rights is absolutely ridiculous and it never should have happened. That isn't sour grapes from the losing side, it is a belief that the countries leaders badly failed to protect its people when they agreed to a referendum.

quite a numbet of racists seem to think that they're now the majority. Be interesting to see how much we pander to them in the future.

 

[fox58]

I believe that this vote, despite having a lot of nuance and valid reasons for choosing a departure, was ultimately driven by race, xenophobia and anti-intellectualism.

I believe that Nigel Farage is the face of this movement.

I don't believe that you are racist if you voted leave.

I do believe that if a racist did vote, they voted leave.

Most of all I believe that a referendum that impacts people's rights is absolutely ridiculous and it never should have happened. That isn't sour grapes from the losing side, it is a belief that the countries leaders badly failed to protect its people when they agreed to a referendum.

One of the EU team who'll head up negotiations with Britians exit, laid the blame squarely on David Camaron shoulders, for allowing the vote in the first place. Said he should never have promised the vote in his election manifesto.

Whichever way you voted that doesn't sound like a democracy?

 

[Miles Away]

quite a numbet of racists seem to think that they're now the majority. Be interesting to see how much we pander to them in the future.

And therein lies my point.

 

[Dour]

One of the EU team who'll head up negotiations with Britians exit, laid the blame squarely on David Camaron shoulders, for allowing the vote in the first place. Said he should never have promised the vote in his election manifesto.

Whichever way you voted that doesn't sound like a democracy?

A representative democracy doesn't have to have referendums and it's a sensible argument to say that it shouldn't.

 

[Miles Away]

Tyranny by the majority over the minority is not democratic. Anything but.

Democracy is not as simple as majority rule.

This referendum flies in the face of this principle.

 

[Blaarev]

An interesting twist, but I guess it won't lead anywhere.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-36633244

 

[City Fan]

http://news.sky.com/story/1717815/second-referendum-petition-was-set-up-by-outer

I love how he wanted a re-run if he'd lost but is angry that others are using his petition now that he has won.

What a ****.

 

[TornadoShaunUK]

I think the EU issue needs to take a back seat for a while as we attempt to sort out our own fecking Government which has aguably caused this whole shitstorm!

 

[bocadillo]

Shambles.

Do you think it would help if we took our shoes off and danced about whilst waving them over our heads?

 

[City Fan]

I think the EU issue needs to take a back seat for a while as we attempt to sort out our own fecking Government which has aguably caused this whole shitstorm!

That was one of my reasons to vote in. I don't trust our government to run our country themselves without the EU as the sort of "big brother" watching over them. They're all a bunch of wankers.

 

[TornadoShaunUK]

This is a good decision for the UK IMO.

 

[Dour]

This is a good decision for the UK IMO.

Hannan is a libertarian right loon in bed with shadowy American thinktanks.

The Norway option he likes is not going to down well with all those who voted Leave because of immigration. Out of the EU but still with free movement and, as Hannan acknowledges, the same level of immigration. For Hannan that's a win - an end to a shedload of workers' rights and no restrictions on cheap labour. I wouldn't like to be the one selling his vision on the doorstep.

 

[OldGit]

Here we go

http://www.thecanary.co/2016/06/26/explosion-post-brexit-racism-truly-heartbreaking-tweets/

 

[David Gwilliam]

The amount of shit being spoken, by both sides, before and after the vote itself, is astounding.

Quite right.

For me it should be 60% for a change as big as that.

Either way you are voting for a big change. People voting to remain in the European Economic Community in 1975 have seen it become the EU and far more than an economic area. We don't know what will happen to the EU in the next ten years let along forty. We do know that powerful voices want a European Army. Whether you agree or not that is a big change. Any body voting for the status quo is deceiving themselves; the status quo vanishes very quickly.

Only worth runnng it again if we exclude old people, uneducated people and vile racists from voting

Otherwise we should just get on with making the best job of the shitty mess we now have to deal with

One of the reasons older people tended to vote Leave is the way they have seen the European Union develop. That experience should not be dismissed. The only sensible solution is to give the vote to all citizens irrespective of your opinion of them.

History shows that chaos is only good if you are a fascist, communist or some kind of warlord. I'm not sure those are positive models.

You should read more history.

We should all read more History. However, my reading suggests that Dour is right in seeing chaos as dangerous.

Tyranny by the majority over the minority is not democratic. Anything but.

Democracy is not as simple as majority rule.

This referendum flies in the face of this principle.

Actually Democracy is as simple as majority rule. This is why you need "rights" and why Democracy should always be tempered with liberalism. The famous phrase is that "Democracy is essential but not sufficient."

I do think, Miles Away, that you have come to believe the wilder fringes of the campaigns both of whom have behaved shamefully

With all due respect you and some of the others sound "certain" as though you think you understand what is going on in 2016. I look forward to reading your posts in 2066 when we will hopefully have some understanding of what has just happened. .

 

[fitz]

With all due respect you and some of the others sound "certain" as though you think you understand what is going on in 2016. I look forward to reading your posts in 2066 when we will hopefully have some understanding of what has just happened. .

My guess - we'll be a united Kingdom of England and Wales with a hospital for every person but no doctors.

 

[Brown Nose]

Here we go

http://www.thecanary.co/2016/06/26/explosion-post-brexit-racism-truly-heartbreaking-tweets/

I really struggle with this sort of thing. Surely you know that you can use vitriolic nonsense from social media as evidence for just about anything? There are as many nut-job racists today as there were last week. Same as with football hooligans.

I've not got involved in any debate about immigration and xenophobia because I find the subject much too difficult to do justice to in a post on a forum. But some of these posts wildly misinterpret the relationship between a 'leave' vote and immigration.

I've got some understanding of what I'd call 'casual xenophobia'. I was brought up in an almost exclusively white/english area and by the time I reached 16, I knew no better than to snigger at a racist joke. I was uncomfortable around people that weren't like those I'd grown up with. I'd even smile at a racist chant at the football. I then suddenly found myself in a environment where I was the small minority in terms of colour and religious background. This was a serious culture shock, but it educated me. I learned that all people were the same. When I experienced it myself, I realised that xenophobia was something common to all races and colours. I came to view it as a 'natural' state if you hadn't been exposed to anything different. Probably something to do with our innate need to be suspicious of others. After all, we were once homo sapiens competing with other human species and back then, we'd have really needed to be xenophobic.

My reality now is that I am married to someone that is a different colour to me and I have a mixed race child. I voted leave and so did my wife. I'm nothing like that 16 year old me at all but I'm smart enough to understand him.

People from the generations older than mine or from largely 'white/english' communities have been taught that they cannot be xenophobic any more. It's not allowed. They've not been exposed to the sort of education that I had. They've not been allowed to evolve naturally. They've just been told that it's no longer acceptable. So they've hidden it or internalised it. And they've seen their communities change around them and have had to internalise the worry about what's happening to their communities. It's happening at rates that large parts of our society simply cannot evolve through. That's not their fault and it's not the fault of those that have sought a better life here either. It's what happens when you import large numbers of people from a wide variety of cultures, countries, languages and religions too quickly. When I say too quickly I mean this in two ways. One in terms of the pace of change. The other is in terms of our ability to support the increasing population with limited finances for public services, housing, etc. Governments and political parties have refused to 'go there' with this subject, much to their eternal shame. The best example was Gordon Brown dismissing a woman as a 'bigot' for expressing her fear. How out of touch he was and how he simply helped harden many people.

As a quick aside, one argument in favour of immigration is that we need young people in this country. People to do the jobs our own people can't or won't. People to pay their taxes to support our ageing population. This argument is only logical in the short term. What happens when this generation ages? Do we carry on importing people to support the ageing population forever? Because it's not something that's going to end. It's a blinkered, short sighted and stupid way of running a country.

I'll take my argument one step further too. The focus of much of the xenophobia are followers of Islam. This is because they look most different to us, with often a widely different belief and culture. The links to extremist and terrorist atrocities in this country and around the world has only exacerbated this. Christians are not far behind in recent times and were far worse long ago but that's another time. My atheism has hardened over recent years. I loathe religion in all its backward guises. But there is something deeply wrong about the spread of Islam around the modern world that I think people have a justifiable and genuine fear of. I took time to learn about the religion and I have plenty of muslim people in my life that I'm close enough to that I can question and learn from. It's an awful religion and culture. Every time I see a woman covered up head to toe because a man-made instruction told her to, I want to scream. My closest muslim friend is a quite senior person at his mosque. He's very well thought of in his community. He's also very westernised and rational in every way imaginable. Following 9/11. he was clearly struggling to come to terms with it all. One day, he whispered to me that he'd heard that all jews had left the twin towers before the planes hit. He'd been taught this at his mosque. I know that's just one person and everything but I'm trying to share enough to emphasise the difference between followers of this religion and the 'white/english' community. Throwing the two together with little time for evolution and understanding is a recipe for xenophobia.

I expect everyone has given up reading by now so I'm talking to myself. For me, all this is real and should be acknowledged as such. It simply isn't enough to say that you can't feel the way you do or think the things you do without doing something real and meaningful to support people in an educational sense or give them genuine time (generations) to adjust. It is also utterly insane to change communities and just tell people that they're not allowed to be concerned about it. "What's happening to my country" people cry. The political elite and well-educated reply "Shut up racist".

Now I know people like Farage pursue their cause incorrectly. They pander to simplistic arguments. But the truth is that they resonate with millions of people for the reasons I've tried to explain here. And to deny this or dismiss it is foolish.

A very small number of people voted 'leave' because they're racist. Many, many more did so for much more complex reasons that most of the posts above utterly fail to acknowledge or understand.

 

[Mawsley]

We should all read more History. However, my reading suggests that Dour is right in seeing chaos as dangerous.

Really David?

Now I grant you that it depends upon how you define chaos - but it could be argued that all major advances come through disorder and conflict, or are essential in the protest of unfairness. The Civil Wars, emancipation, the poll tax - all periods of short to medium term chaos.

I'd say that protracted periods without chaos does nothing but breed complacency and inequality, something our society has running to its core.

But then I guess the answer to my first question is a second: how do you define dangerous?