Brexit

It's not about some crap left or right wing divide. It's about thinking logically about what's best for the mid to long term.

Here we've lived for last couple of decades under right wing policies, a watered down labor and a under national. How is that going for you?

I need a colonoscopy. I am considered highly at risk from bowel cancer. Publicly I will have to wait until I have symptoms to get one. Pointless as by then it will already be a death sentence.

Privately I have 3 resumes of top consultants to choose from. I just have to pick one. They will do the colonoscopy in a couple of weeks with or without symptoms as I'm paying for it. This will allow treatment and recovery.

Brilliant health service. But we voted them in. The tragedy is there is very little to choose from the conservatives and labor but neither favor the poor.

It was a passive aggressive name calling and you know it.

This does not surprise me at all.

http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/682339/Brexit-...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/...

Yeah great idea with an upbeat and punchy Russia.

i just think the european parliament is a junket for political aspirants and is about as effective as the United Nations. Some of the ideas that come out of it  really give paper shufflers a bad name.

Allowing the people to vote for the Brexit, is the same then asking the YF forum to coach the Phoenix, we would always loose.You need real expert to deal with this complex matters. European Union will be stronger after some years hiccups, England not.

Couldn't find the rugby thread.Here will do.

Hated them for much longer than this!

The whole left vs right divide is so damaging and I personally don't believe in either - all it does is give an excuse for one group to dismiss and marginalise the ideas of the other without thinking about them logically and critically. You can be conservative and be on the "left", just like you can be liberal and be on the "right".

What you'll find is that in the demographics  the young and educated voted to stay while the uneducated and older people voted to leave. It's more down to generational based viewpoints than political ones. And it's true that older people are more likely to be bigoted. 

People were lied to, just look at how much the UKIP has backtracked on key pledges. They claimed that an extra £350 million a week will be in the NHS system now they are saying that was incorrect, they were saying that they would stop immigration from the EU (even though immigration from Europe was outweighed by foreign immigration) now they are saying that free movement of labor will have to remain. They lied about a number of things ranging from issues designed to make the EU look overly bureaucratic and foolish (saying that bent bananas are banned when actually there are only guidelines to say what constitutes a Grade A banana) to expensive (saying that the EU costs £350 million pounds a week when in fact the UK receives more than half that back in grants.) 

If you look at that article I posted last night the number two search result from the UK after Brexit is "What is the EU", they have interviews with people on the street saying they regret voting to leave and if they did it again they would vote to stay. It's clear that there was a tremendous amount of disinformation, probably from both sides, and the public weren't adequately educated to the realities of a vote. The fallout is already more than what the UKIP indicated.

They advocate being like Norway, Norway pays more per population than an EU country to be in the common market, and to be involved they have to accept EU laws the same as the UK, they also have to accept the free movement of people. The difference is after several months of not working Norway can deport people, where as the UK can only cut off their benefits. And deporting when you have limited borders is stupid (Latvia recently deported a reporter for writing bad things about the government, he was back inside the next day writing articles about how stupid they were to try and deport someone without any border control). 

It seems to me if they want Norway style access they may save a lot of money on grants, but they also loose the grants that return to them, they will have to pay money for things that the EU manages for them, they will pay more to be in the EU common market, have to accept the key political points that made them want to exit, and will have less say over their future because they will have to accept European law and won't have a say in crafting it. 

Seems actually like a lose lose.

If you followed the discussion month before the referendum and with a bit of reading the news, instead of wasting your time posting shark on Facebook, you could have known that they are many risks in a Brexit.

What they now facing is divided country to have to pull this off, this won't be easy.

Of course this could also turn out like the K2 scare when everyone was told that computers were going to fail etc. The world might just keep on spinning. What interests me is how many more will be sick of propping up countries like Greece and pull out. Spain was also in trouble at one stage and Italy. The only real losers will be the beurocrats and their junkets. Bit like Blatter and FIFA. The gravey train is becoming derailed.

You mean you as in the British voting public or you as in me? As I hardly every post anything on facebook, seldom even login.

The fact is that people took what they were told at face value and didn't dig any deeper than that, and because of the whole attitude of the right dismissing anything that the left says as lies, and the left dismissing anything the right says, any time someone tried to correct the story they were ignored. People see what they want to see and these deep divides within our community actually stop us from taking educated and informed decisions.

There are articles that people are posting from the likes of The Sun saying all the crazy things that the EU makes the UK do, and there are articles from the likes of The Guardian debunking every single one of those points and showing that they were exaggerated, taken out of context, or blatantly made up. But people still use the anti EU stories as justification and ignore any counter argument. On Stuff, for instance (and I know I must have hidden masochist tendencies to go on there), those articles are posted in the comments constantly, and if i post any counter articles I get down voted and abused for being a greeny, as if that has anything to do with anything. 

People are extremely close minded, so even if they did do the research they would ignore it as leftist propaganda.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euromyth

Why should cities like Wellington and Auckland pay for places like the Manuwatu and Bay of plenty? When you live in a larger community you spread your wealth around and the rich pay for the poor and help develop the regions. 

One of the goals for the EU was to develop all the countries within the Union, and you can only develop by investing. The poorer countries take money in grants but they also take a hit, their most productive, brightest, and most talented people all move to countries like the UK and contribute to growing those economies and not the economies of their own countries. 

The UK actually pays a pittance to the EU compared to other countries ($180 per person compared to more than $300 for Sweden, $280 for France, etc). 

There are also very real European success stories - Ireland being one but in the east there is Estonia. Estonia is probably the most tech focused country in the world. Every student is required to learn how to code in school, all elections have been electronic for years, you can actually be an Estonian E-Citizen no matter where you live, the government regularly hosts world wide tech conferences and subsidises R&D and startups to a much greater extent than NZ does. They have by far the fastest growing economy in Europe and the gap between what they spend in EU Grants and what they provide is shrinking rapidly. They have gone from Eastern Block (although always the richest soviet country which was used as a showcase for the soviet lifestyle to foreigners. Latvia, Lithuania, and Kaliningrad were also treated like this to a lesser extent) to having very western standards of living in a short amount of time. The NZ Government could actually learn a tremendous amount from them and how they are innovating in every aspect of government and society.

As far as the greek bailout is concerned, that was the German government borrowing from German banks to pay themselves back, Greece didn't get much of that bailout money at all:

Estonia are  not in the top 10 fastest growing economies in Europe.

Over the last 15 years they have been, they may not be top 10 at this moment but overall they are when you take into account overall growth over a few year period. In the mid part of last decade they were the fastest growing economy in the world. They are also now classed by the world bank as a high-income economy, it's hard to keep up rates of growth as a percentage when you are taking a percentage of a higher total. They have more than doubled the average wage in 15 years.

The point is that they are a very real success story, and it's forseable that several of these countries - including Slovenia and Estonia will contribute back more than they take from the EU very soon.

An interesting article on implications for Ireland

"Meanwhile, the cornerstone of the peace settlement, the Belfast agreement of 1998, is being undermined. One of the key provisions of the agreement is that anyone born in Northern Ireland has the right to be a citizen of the UK or Ireland or both. What does that mean in the new dispensation? Can someone be both an EU citizen and not an EU citizen? Likewise, the agreement underpins human rights through the “complete incorporation into Northern Ireland law of the European Convention on Human Rights”. Though not strictly required by Brexit, the leave leadership is committed to removing the convention from UK law – in other words to ripping out a core part of the peace settlement."

Yes, this could be a big problem as there are a few nutters on both sides.

That is why the UK has to stay in the Shenghen - which completely undermines their reasons for leaving, otherwise there is going to be an explosion in Ireland. Sinn Fein wants unification but there are enough Protestants in the north that that isn't likely.

What is interesting as well is Scotland has said that they are exploring their options on staying in the EU or keeping strong relationships with the EU regardless of what the rest of the UK does. Considering it would take a few years to organise another referendum it would be very interesting to see if they could negotiate some sort of free trade zone where part of the UK is nominally EU and the rest is not. 

In the far east along the Amur river there are free trade areas between Russia and China where nationals of either countries can cross without visa to trade. So they are cities with kind of a special status, I'm sure there are other such places around the world. Having Scotland as a part of the EU and the UK could be an acceptable compromise for everyone. Much like how Greenland is part of Denmark but not the EU

The British (or most other people on the planet) not you, you write like you can make informed decisions.

Me as PM? Cripes!

Anyone know of any polling done leading up to the referendum looking at arguments for and against brexit? Would be interesting to see how strong these arguments for leave were:
http://m.huffpost.com/uk/entry/uk_576e9c3ce4b08d2c56394817?edition=uk

Have not really been following it but remember about a month ago seeing something that the Remain has a 12 point lead.

The article linked says how those on the leave side are already distancing themselves from key arguments in favour of leave, such as freeing money to spend on the NHS, stopping free movement of people from Europe etc. It would be interesting to see which arguments, that are now being proven to be misleading, were the major drivers for people to vote leave.

Sure the remain were not telling all either. I guess this is what 'politics 'is really like.

That's a very nice thing to say, although I'm as biased as anyone.

With Boris and Donald being front runners for two of our most influential partners either John Key needs to get a bad hair cut or risk falling into political oblivion.

So if people don't trust any information they are receiving - assuming that they think both sides are playing 'politics', on what do they base their vote? A flip of the coin? The vibe?

I'll probably start a fight here but I'd suggest that LEAVE won due to a campaign of fear riding on the back of increasing racist sentiment. 

And that's the problem when the information it seems has been misleading (some may say lies).

You never said that during the course of the election, but you had it on a bloody big bus. And it turns out the real figure is less than half what was quoted, the UKIP was reprimanded twice for using those figures and still continued to use them.

Boris Johnson said today that because it wasn't a massive majority not much will change and that people from Europe will be able to travel and work in the UK and vice versa... So the backtracking is well and truly under way. Apparently Johnson was late on the leave band waggon and was a remain supporter until recently. Some are suggesting that he didn't expect leave to win and was simply using it as a way to gain publicity.