Politics Discussion Thread (Heated Arguing Warning)

[Bacchus]

Interesting that something hardly ever mentioned in the above discussion is that Britain is funding Europe and will stop doing so. For all the money returned to the UK via EU programs, every estimate of this, from any camp, is billions of pounds less than what UK pays into Europe. Being the relatively de-regulated, hard-working economy in a union where other major economies have a 35-hour working week and 50 days per year of paid leave sucks (France, http://qz.com/412130/frances-10-week-hol...er-attack/, many US guys I talked to don't even appreciate that this is possible).

Also, to me, the Brexit vote was, if anything, quite anti-racist, as a turn away from Europe is pretty clearly a turn towards the other two major sources of funds (Gulf countries) and workforce (Pakistan, Bangladesh, Carribean). But maybe the Brexiteers didn't quite realize how much EU was doing to keep the UK whiter

As a local immigrant, I had no right to vote, but am overall quite sad about the result -- I actually share most of REM's worries about the EU and the hopes for independent Britain, but I also think the actual outcome of the Brexit will be far worse for the UK than if it remained, the concrete realities are that the British (and UK residents) are going to suffer, as they have already begun with the stock and currency crashes, and the trade negotiations are going to be extremely difficult, given that UK has no corps of specialists, whilst the task is huge. Obviously hoping to be proved wrong.

I also think that any Brexit government may well be defeated by no-confidence vote forcing a general election which would de facto be a second referendum. UK is not a majoritarian democracy with national referendums as a means of decision making, the way national representation works is via MP's representing their constituencies. Every MP whose constituency voted Remain, AFAIAC, has a duty to vote no-confidence against any Brexit cabinet.

[MJW (ya that one)]

I also think that any Brexit government may well be defeated by no-confidence vote forcing a general election which would de facto be a second referendum. UK is not a majoritarian democracy with national referendums as a means of decision making, the way national representation works is via MP's representing their constituencies. Every MP whose constituency voted Remain, AFAIAC, has a duty to vote no-confidence against any Brexit cabinet.

This won't work. Your vote counts far less as I just pointed out. They know this so they are just going to fold.

Edit: Not worth its own post but a best way of showing how screwed the government would be an election is that Leave would get almost half the seats in Scotland: http://www.libdemvoice.org/how-did-our-c...51142.html

[Bacchus]

I also think that any Brexit government may well be defeated by no-confidence vote forcing a general election which would de facto be a second referendum. UK is not a majoritarian democracy with national referendums as a means of decision making, the way national representation works is via MP's representing their constituencies. Every MP whose constituency voted Remain, AFAIAC, has a duty to vote no-confidence against any Brexit cabinet.

This won't work. Your vote counts far less as I just pointed out. They know this so they are just going to fold.

I'm not talking about the government, MJW, they are definitely going to go ahead with the Brexit agenda, as they (as national government) have an apparent obligation to do. But individual members of parliament, who are not part of the government, have no such obligation at all. The MP for, say, representing Oxford East, which voted 70% for Remain, and who is a member of the Labour party, has no obligation at all to support the government and will vote against any move on Brexit. The question is how many such MPs can remainers assemble. I'm pretty sure even Cameron will vote against Brexit -- the guy has already sacrificed his career to the cause, after all.

[AdrienIer]

Being the relatively de-regulated, hard-working economy in a union where other major economies have a 35-hour working week and 50 days per year of paid leave sucks (France, http://qz.com/412130/frances-10-week-hol...er-attack/, many US guys I talked to don't even appreciate that this is possible).

Have you read the article you linked ? Its title is misleading, the 10 weeks are for the EDF employees who work more than the normal 35h work week (and therefore get compensated by having more paid leave). On the 8th line (you didn't need to read very far) it says that the standard number of days you can have is 27.

Stop spreading the lies. Don't make contrasts between "hard-working" Britain and "lazy" France. Our average work week is the same as everyone else (around 39h pw) and our productivity was the best out of all OECD countries a few years ago (I haven't heard any recent number).

[Bacchus]

Being the relatively de-regulated, hard-working economy in a union where other major economies have a 35-hour working week and 50 days per year of paid leave sucks (France, http://qz.com/412130/frances-10-week-hol...er-attack/, many US guys I talked to don't even appreciate that this is possible).

Have you read the article you linked ? Its title is misleading, the 10 weeks are for the EDF employees who work more than the normal 35h work week (and therefore get compensated by having more paid leave). On the 8th line (you didn't need to read very far) it says that the standard number of days you can have is 27.

Stop spreading the lies. Don't make contrasts between "hard-working" Britain and "lazy" France. Our average work week is the same as everyone else (around 39h pw) and our productivity was the best out of all OECD countries a few years ago (I haven't heard any recent number).

Sorry, you are right, what I've written looks like an appeal to national character, I should have made clear that it wasn't -- I've just returned from Provence, and the people there are as industrious as anywhere, we've met many who work on the land, and then also have second and third jobs in services. I meant the statement purely statistically and this holds, hours worked per year in the UK are about 10-13% higher than in France in the last 15 years, this is a long-term and consistent difference (https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS). The difference with Germany is even bigger, FWIW.

[Gavagai]

I'm not British and I don't have a personal stake in this matter but I want just to say this. The arrogance of "Remain" camp, their utter contempt and disrespect towards political adversaries are so off-putting that it makes me root for "Leave" voters (even though I would most probably vote "Remain" if I were UK citizen).
Because of mostly same reasons, I root for Trump in US elections in November in USA, btw (to be fair, even ignoring this aspect I would vote for Trump in November if I were US citizen). Really, a guy said that a Mexican is a Mexican and he is somehow racist because of that. When I hear stuff like this, I just wonder, what a person should have done with his mind to find that kind of logic appealing.
However, I may get permabanned from this forum if I make my political views fully known. So, I better stop right here and now.

Instead I want to share one completely unpolitical observation which, I think, sheds an interesting light upon the "racism" controversy. A friend of mine is doing a research and systematization of Harry Potter fanfiction. And she told me that she has never seen a story in which it was true that "mudblood" are weaker than "pureblood" but it was still considered "bad" to mistreat "mudblood". And vice versa. All authors who wanted to show that opressing mudbloods is wrong wanted also to make them as strong and capable as purebloods and were using it as an argument against opression. But that implies that it would be OK to opress mudbloods if they were in fact less capable in magic.

Why I'm saying that? Well, if we could say something like "yes, purple people are weaker and sillier than blue people but they still have all the same rights", then racism would in instant cease to be a political problem. But instead of saying that liberals go out of their way to prove that all races and ethnicities are equally capable in everything. I wonder what it says about their underlying normative beliefs...

[T-hawk]

But maybe the Brexiteers didn't quite realize how much EU was doing to keep the UK whiter

They don't care, or rather want to avoid that question entirely. They want the UK, not the EU, to make the decisions about the whiteness of the UK. That's orthogonal to what amount of whiteness they actually want. (It may correlate with being whiter, but that doesn't invalidate their position.)

However, I may get permabanned from this forum if I make my political views fully known. So, I better stop right here and now.

We've never had to do anything of the sort. Any opinion if argued reasonably and civilly belongs here.

[BRickAstley]

However, I may get permabanned from this forum if I make my political views fully known. So, I better stop right here and now.

We've never had to do anything of the sort. Any opinion if argued reasonably and civilly belongs here.

Agreed.

[Gavagai]

Hey, was joking about permaban I think, I'm not bad enough anyway. It's just that it is demographically unlikely that there is any other person here whose top preference in current US presedential campaign was Ted Cruz

[Nicolae Carpathia]

I'm not British and I don't have a personal stake in this matter but I want just to say this. The arrogance of "Remain" camp, their utter contempt and disrespect towards political adversaries are so off-putting that it makes me root for "Leave" voters (even though I would most probably vote "Remain" if I were UK citizen).
Because of mostly same reasons, I root for Trump in US elections in November in USA, btw (to be fair, even ignoring this aspect I would vote for Trump in November if I were US citizen). Really, a guy said that a Mexican is a Mexican and he is somehow racist because of that. When I hear stuff like this, I just wonder, what a person should have done with his mind to find that kind of logic appealing.
However, I may get permabanned from this forum if I make my political views fully known. So, I better stop right here and now.

Instead I want to share one completely unpolitical observation which, I think, sheds an interesting light upon the "racism" controversy. A friend of mine is doing a research and systematization of Harry Potter fanfiction. And she told me that she has never seen a story in which it was true that "mudblood" are weaker than "pureblood" but it was still considered "bad" to mistreat "mudblood". And vice versa. All authors who wanted to show that opressing mudbloods is wrong wanted also to make them as strong and capable as purebloods and were using it as an argument against opression. But that implies that it would be OK to opress mudbloods if they were in fact less capable in magic.

Why I'm saying that? Well, if we could say something like "yes, purple people are weaker and sillier than blue people but they still have all the same rights", then racism would in instant cease to be a political problem. But instead of saying that liberals go out of their way to prove that all races and ethnicities are equally capable in everything. I wonder what it says about their underlying normative beliefs...

hahahahahaha