Brexit

[tw]

Analysis of the vote says much about why that decision was made. For example, N Ireland and Scotland clearly did not want Brexit. The young clearly did not want Brexit. A vast majority who voted for it were older, white, less educated, and predominately from the midlands. These people have two gripes: income and immigration.

Brexit is about business and the many other economic and social aspects possible or improved because of business.

Their first complaint is accurate. Incomes have been stagnant. Innovation is the only source of increasing incomes. Britain (like the US) has seen diminishing innovation as more are educated in business rather than in productive disciplines. Voters did not blame the reason or resulting symptoms for stagnant incomes. That required learning facts while ignoring subjective soundbytes. Extremists successfully promoted a 'blame them others' mentality. EU was easy to blame using myths and outright lies such as globalization, people with accents, and European dictatorship. Especially since most Britains could not even name who they elected to Brussels. Extremists survive on myths that promote misdirected hate and fear.

Immigrants are numerous in a nation called New York State. Does NY get upset because so many valley girls from California now live there? Of course not. New Yorkers are not that dumb. Immigrants from other states are essential to growth and wealth of a union, nation, or state. Extremists successfully promoted hate of 'them' to a white, mostly blue collar Britain. Successfully blamed stagnant incomes on what is really a significant reason why their incomes have not dropped - immigrants and foreigners.

Soundbytes are easier to promote than reality. So as one said, "Nobody has withdrawn from the EU. So let's give it a go." Reasoning not based in educated or logical thought. But inspired by blaming others combined with emotion and rhetoric.

British pound has already fallen to lowest levels in 30 years. That will increase cost of living. Brexit supporters will not notice how much damage they have done because significant damage will appear in two and six years from now. We know this will create conflict and stress in culture, employment, trade, and national defense. Virtually every person educated in these various aspects have said so. It is that obvious. The emotional educated by soundbytes tend to forget events even six months ago. So they will not blame themselves.

Questions: should Scotland and N Ireland withdrawal from the UK. No longer any reason for not doing so. Since extremists say this is good; Scotland might. N Ireland probably will not reunite with Ireland. But they should consider it.

Britain may have started a process to become a second class nation. Will not be apparent this year. Because we know a nation's fabric is measured by its product. What is done productively today does not appear in standards of living for typically four or ten years. In twenty years, damage done by so many easily manipulated by extremists rhetoric will become apparent. Destructive Britains will blame other (simplistic) factors rather than the reason why all those degrading factors exist.

Britain's vote is praised by who? Right wing extremists in Denmark, Netherlands, Italy, and France. Extremists (ie Milosevic, bin Laden, Mugabee, and Hitler) need disunity and hate to obtain power. That should have had attention of so many who, instead, voted to do damage. That means learning what makes a productive and safer country.

US works because states, for example, do not stupidly call for NYexit. Now we learn how much damage is created by extremist rhetoric. We know it will be destructive. Only question is by how much. Scotland should withdrawal from a nation that no longer understands a well proven expression, "United we stand; divided we fall."

No surprise. Donald Trump loves Brexit. Resulting hate, pain, problems, and disunity promote extremists (and egotists) who crave power. Only extremists want that and everything else associated with that hate, dictatorship, concentration of wealth and what extremists most love - war.

Who wanted to advance the UK? The young. Scotland and Ireland. Londoners. Who blamed others because extremists (ie Boris Johnson) so easily manipulated them using half truths, intentional lies, and emotion?

[Undertoad]

Perhaps the masses will learn to vote correctly if the people who are better than them, insult them even harder.


...or will the "betters" will learn that insulting the masses has the opposite of the intended effect.

Trump 2016. Because fuck you.

[Happy Monkey]

Voters learn that voting matters.

I wonder if, now that reality is setting in, politicians could win the next election by promising to cancel the Brexit.

[DanaC]

Interesting article here, suggesting that Boris and his coterie were actually hoping to lose by a narrow margin. That they would gain the political capital of having stood up for Britain and weakened Cameron and his ilk within the party, without having to go through the pain of an actual brexit.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/...osts-of-brexit

Personally, I find the whole thing thoroughly depressing. The Leave campaign has outright lied to us on so many issues. The Remain camp frankly weren't much better with their scaremongering - but the outright lies from the Leave campaign were breathtaking. They were already distancing themselves from them, less than 12 hours after the polling stations closed. The campaign promise that all that money we've been sending to the EU every week would go to the NHS? No, no that's not happening. And so it begins.

They have launched a wrecking ball at our country. They have sold us a lie. Leaving the EU will not fix the things they claimed it will fix. The biggie, the one most people who voted to Leave seem to have taken most to heart is that this will allow Britain to reduce immigration. It won't. There will be no salve to the troubles of the working class from this decision. All it has done and will do is destablise the country and economy even further. This is the beginning of major fragmentation.

I hope I'm wrong - I really do.

[DanaC]

This sums up the Leave campaign for me:



This is what did it. Anti-immigration in its ugliest form. It it resonates pretty uncomfortably with a nazi propaganda film in its visual style:

[tw]

Among lies easily promoted to the most easily brainwash was £20 billion given away to the EU annually. Observe what happened today.

Extremists hate institutions that are essential such as Central Banks. So that Britains will have a paycheck next week, the Bank of England spent £250 billion just today to support the pound. What extremists hate, ironically, saved the pound today and their paychecks this week.

If pound sterling continues to drop (since it is now regarded less stable and less desirable then the Chinese Yuan), then even more money must disappear in UK economy. The naive must deny that £250 billion to deny brainwashing.

Pound will rise some. Either way, Bank of England must spend more to protect the pound at higher costs. Either way, UK lost £billions only in one day because so many voters voted their emotions. Many business deals once done in pounds must be done in Dollars, Euros, Yuan, and Yen. Pound sterling will not longer be regarded safe enough for tranactions without some additional concessions British companies will pay penalties to banks and fat cat financial institutions to complete business deals once done almost transparently when part of the EU.

I was struck by Boris Johnson's contrite speech. He should have been cooing like an egotistical Donald Trump. Maybe he was trying to not alienate most of his party who regard him as Republicans regard Trump. Guardian article makes sense even though some is only speculation that connects the dots. But Johnson's objective was to achieve power at any expense. That is his history.

EU leaders are blunt. Britain must leave as fast as possible no matter how destructive those actions may be to Britain. No mercy. EU leaders have implied Article 50 will be executed vicious - as it should be to avert uncertainty. Expect them to also protect themselves at the expense of Britain. British representatives in the EU Parliament now have virtually no power and have contempt from their peers. Expect Britain to be handled with the disrespect it has earned.

[Happy Monkey]

Silver lining - it's probably going to be a very good time to buy stock.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

Silver lining - it's probably going to be a very good time to buy stock.

These events are what currency traders dream of. Profit margin on currency trades are typically tenths of a percent. People such as George Soros have made fortunes trading at the expense of a country's Central Bank when that country had contempt for its economy. This is as much as 10% profit margins in only weeks or months - if one understands that market. Plenty of money to be made because the Bank of England has been forced to lose so many billions of pounds to protect liquidity.

[Dr. Zaius]

Not good. Banking and Financial makes up a huge part of the UK economy; some 10-12% of GDP, from what I understand. One of the reasons is that London is the top trading market for the Euro. Except ... whoops, the only reason that the financial services in London can trade the Euro is because it is part of the EU. That access is going to be cut off now - apart from the natural unwillingness of the EU to make any exceptions for this, there are financial centers in Frankfurt, Paris and Brussels that will gladly take over that business. In addition, the UK financial services will also lose free access to the European market - which severely curtails the usefulness of UK offices.

In short, absent an absurdly unlikely deal for the UK, the financial sector in the country is facing a devastating period of uncertainty, most likely terminated by the loss of tens of thousands of jobs. There is a reason why banking services were hardest hit on the stock markets once the verdict was in and rumors of massive cuts started almost immediately.

In addition, new investments in the UK are screeching to a halt right now. No sane industry is going to spend money in a place where they don't know what the future trading conditions are going to be like, and - absent a truly remarkable deal - the UK is going to be prioritized a lot lower going forward. The UK may be the world's (now) sixth largest economy, but Germany and France are - as of this morning - both bigger, - and for most companies free access to the Eurozone will be more important than free access to the UK.

There was an old joke about "Holy Roman Empire" being neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. We now have a new iteration of this joke: the "United Kingdom" is not united. It is split right down the middle, and some regions are poles apart from others (e.g. Scotland vs. rural England).

And yes, all evidence points to the EU wanting to make an example of UK, lest there is a domino effect: "if you vote to get out, we will screw you up royally". Now that just reinforces the prejudice that those Eurocrats are bastards now, didn't it? Well played from both sides.

[Pamela]

[DanaC]

The Queen has very little actual power. Or, more accurately, the Queen has nominal powers which if ever used would signal the end of the monarchy. The crown stays aloof from political decisions, they don't even publicly declare positions on anything. They adhere to a kind of constitutional neutrality. It was a potential scandal brewing when it was discovered that Charles had written to the prime minister expressing a view on some minor matter.

[DanaC]

And continuing the climb down from all their promises of what Brexit would mean for the UK:

The appearance of pro-Brexit Tory MEP Daniel Hannan on BBC’s Newsnight on Friday night is causing some indignation.

After Nigel Farage’s admission on Friday morning that the official Leave campaign claim that it could spend money recouped from Europe on the NHS was “a mistake”, Hannan told the BBC that Brexit would not necessarily end free movement of Labour. Newsnight presenter Evan Davis was a bit taken aback, given the core immigration message of the leave campaign:

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/...b0be24d34f6017


All the so-called benefits of Brexit with which they sold the idea to the voters are falling by the wayside already. So what exactly have we, the ordinary people, gained? There won't be additional money for the NHS, the immigration situation won't change. These were the two core planks of the Brexit campaign. Most people I know who voted to Leave did so because they thought the money saved would boost the NHS and other services and because they thought it would end what they saw as an onslaught of immigration.

We've crippled our nation, for what?

[sexobon]

Originally Posted by DanaC

... We've crippled our nation, for what?

To make it less attractive to immigrants 'cause many of them are fussy. It's a technique.

[Griff]

I saw it expressed as trading one group of distant oligarchs for a nearer group but I doubt any of your masters were upended. I'd guess that's the last popular vote you'll see related to the EU.

[sexobon]

Petition for 2nd EU vote hits 1 million signatures

... 1.2 million people signed a petition on the official government website by late morning calling for a repeat vote -- more than 12 times the 100,000 signatures required for a proposal to be discussed in the lower house of parliament. ...

... A parliamentary committee, which can put forward petitions for debate by lawmakers, will consider the proposal Tuesday. ...

... "A second independence referendum is clearly an option that requires to be on the table," First Minister Nicola Sturgeon declared after an emergency meeting of Scotland's parliament, which agreed to start to draw up legislation that could enable such a vote once a decision is taken. ...