BS: 51% will vote to leave EU

Subject: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Stanron
Date: 05 Sep 15 - 07:46 PM

According to the papers 51% of UK will vote to leave EU. I'm one of them. How about you?

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 05 Sep 15 - 08:07 PM

You are deluded.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 05 Sep 15 - 08:16 PM

If that's an accurate result it seems to indicate a sizeable vote to stay. When the referendum on whether to stay in the Common Market, the early opinion polls were heavily for leaving, but the final result was overwhelmingly to stay.

The crucial thing hould be the TTIP. If that gets approved, the only way to get out of it would be to leave the EU. And that would be a massive reason to leave, the implocations of that treaty being so bad.

But that treaty could still be blocked. The advocates of staying need to appreciate that.
If jeremy. Corbyn does win that's likely to be his price for asking Labour people to vote to stay, and a very reasonable price indeed.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Stanron
Date: 05 Sep 15 - 08:32 PM

But the previous referendum was predicated on a lie. We were asked if we wanted to join an economic community. I voted yes. Had I been asked did I want to join an ever closer political union I would have voted no, and I suspect a majority would have voted the same way. If our politicians knew that 'ever closer political union' was on the agenda we were lied to on an epic level.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 05 Sep 15 - 09:16 PM

We weren't actually asked whether we wanted to join anything. We were in already without any chance to vote either way. After Labour won the next election, we had a vote on whether to stay in or leave. I voted for leaving. If it had been a vote for an ever closer political union I might well have voted in favour of doing so.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 06 Sep 15 - 03:45 AM

Close political union does not mean surrendering our independence. It means coming together and achieving common cause with other countries on such things as trade, free movement, protecting workers' conditions, looking after the poorest people, reinforcing the rule of law and strengthening human rights. And avoiding conflict. Closer political ties would be going a long way to solving the current humanitarian crisis if we had them.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 06 Sep 15 - 03:57 AM

Anyway, I don't want any bloody referendums. I don't want millions of people who haven't a clue what they're voting about deciding the future of the country.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: akenaton
Date: 06 Sep 15 - 04:03 AM

I never saw such a list of contradictions...."free movement" is affecting every facet of life, it is making equality in workers pay and conditions even harder to achieve, as more REAL jobs disappear.

Free movement was created to provide cheap labour in the short term and break solidarity amongst the working people of this country.

Loss of sovereignty is the worst aspect, we will finally be swamped and cannot lift a finger to stop it.

I say removal from the EU is imperative. It will be difficult for England, but an independent Scotland at least has a fighting chance.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 06 Sep 15 - 05:13 AM

See what I mean about people without a clue getting to have a say? My case is well and truly rested.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: DMcG
Date: 06 Sep 15 - 05:30 AM


According to the papers 51% of UK will vote to leave EU.

Precisely so according to the papers.   There were 1004 people in the survey. So are the papers reporting the margin of error in the survey? Without going into the formal statistics of it, you only need 11 people to vote the other way to make the majority in favour of staying. So I would guess that if you looked at this formally you would find that an accurate headline is more like: "Between 45 and 55% of UK will vote to leave the EU: Poll totally inconclusive"

And that is without looking at the precise questions, since exactly how things are phrased has a major effect on the result, hence the hoo-hah about that the exact phrase of the question should be on the real vote (and equally on the Scottish referendum).

No, it is always worth remembering that what the papers say and what the reality is are frequently quite different.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: GUEST
Date: 06 Sep 15 - 06:38 AM

Could "will" be amended to "would"? AFAIK no referendum has yet been reliably announced, much less an actual question.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 06 Sep 15 - 09:37 AM

I am confused....

The Brits use their own currency....

The Brits are not part of Schengen....

What part of the E.U. do they want to forfeit?

Sincerely,
Gargoyle
A simple Yank with thanks we severed common bonds

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: akenaton
Date: 06 Sep 15 - 10:54 AM

Open borders, social nightmares made in Brussels! etc etc.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 06 Sep 15 - 11:03 AM

I don't recall hearing anyone moaning about open borders a few years ago when we needed all those Polish plumbers and dentists (my current NHS dentist, Hannah, from the Czech Republic, is the best I've ever had by miles). And what about all those Brits who live on benefits in other EU countries, who far outnumber the EU citizens on benefits over here (a tiny minority of them)? I'd have thought that would have suited you!

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: akenaton
Date: 06 Sep 15 - 11:14 AM

600,000 in    300,000 out. That's 600.000 into the UK, 300,000 out into the rest of the world.

What "Benefit Scrounger" in his right mind, would leave the UK to live on benefits anywhere else?

He could claim invalidity on the grounds of dementia?

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: GUEST,Allan Conn
Date: 06 Sep 15 - 11:31 AM

The poll headlines in some of the papers were totally misleading. They suggested that 51% of the UK electorate said they would vote to leave. That is not so though - it was only 43%. A whopping 17% had not made their mind up yet!

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 06 Sep 15 - 11:37 AM

Well they do go to live elsewhere. You're good at figures when you think they suit you, so go and find some. Preferably about benefit claimants!

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: akenaton
Date: 06 Sep 15 - 11:41 AM

Allan, I've been talking to my MP Mr O'Hara about the scenario if UK votes "out" and we vote "in".....they don't seem to see it as anything but an opportunity to go for another independence referendum.

Three years ago membership was portrayed as a plus for Scotland, now it's a definite negative.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: GUEST
Date: 06 Sep 15 - 12:46 PM

I shall vote to leave although if we wait a little longer the whole stupid European 'Union' will implode. There's no such country as 'Europe', never has been, never will be.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: GUEST,Allan Conn
Date: 06 Sep 15 - 01:19 PM

I know it is one of the so called special circumstances but I'm not sure about that causing another vote. I think there will be another referendum but not until they are pretty confident of winning it. They could brush away the loss of the first referendum a bit because all in all they did well - coming from way behind to a much closer result in the end than what was expected. They couldn't afford to lose a second though - that would kill the question off for decades. So just my opinion. I know the latest poll showed a clear majority for independence but I think these results will need to be consistent over a period before it'd be considered. So not as much if the UK votes to take us out of the EU against the Scottish opinion (if that was indeed different from the remaining UK) but more how Scottish opinion actually reacts to that scenario. I don't think the forthcoming SNP manifesto will promise a referendum but I think it may state it retains the right to hold a referendum if they have a mandate in Holyrood.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: GUEST,achmelvich
Date: 06 Sep 15 - 01:31 PM

we very often hear about being run from brussels, loss of sovereignty etc etc. However, as far as i know there has never been a serious attempt to rid ourselves from ongoing domination by the USA. our foreign policy is largely decided by the pentagon and our increasingly ruthless capitalist system is owned and run by american led free market interests. at least europe is prepared to pay lip service to the idea of a 'social' aspect to their systems - though that is the part that the UK government is least likely to want.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 06 Sep 15 - 01:33 PM

I am worried, as someone else mentioned, about the TTIP agreement. If it goes ahead we can wave goodbye to protesting about fracking or any other such thing. But I don't think that leaving the EU is a good option. Nationalism seems to be just pulling the drawbridge up and no good ever came of that. We are no longer in a position to be self sufficient and trade with the rest of the world is vital to our economy. If we keep the bonds we have with our closest neighbours we are in a much stronger position than without them. Free trade with the rest of the world sounds very grand but, to be honest, I think, on our own, we would be taken to the cleaners by some very powerful nations outside the EU. My vote is for staying.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 06 Sep 15 - 04:15 PM

Spot on, achmelvich.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: akenaton
Date: 06 Sep 15 - 04:23 PM

From Peter Hitchins

n we stop this transformation of all we have and are? I doubt it. To do so would involve the grim-faced determination of Australia, making it plain in every way that our doors are open only to limited numbers of people, chosen by us, enduring the righteous scorn of the supposedly enlightened.

As we lack the survival instinct and the determination necessary, and as so many of our most influential people are set on committing a sentimental national suicide, I suspect we won't.

To those who condemn reasonable calls for national self-defence as bigotry, hatred and intolerance (which they are not), I make only this request: just don't pretend you're doing a good and generous thing, when you're really cowardly and weak.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Raedwulf
Date: 06 Sep 15 - 05:11 PM

You'll find out how people will vote if a vote is ever actually granted. Until then, it's just an opinion poll. And they often bear little relation to reality. Claiming "will vote" is just plain stupid.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: GUEST,Roger Knowles
Date: 07 Sep 15 - 03:23 AM

I'll certainly vote to leave. I can't actually name a benefit since we joined, certainly my feet got bigger, from 8 to 42.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: GUEST,achmelvich
Date: 07 Sep 15 - 04:01 AM

what have the (mainland) europeans ever done for us?

germans have shown us how to organise football and they and the spanish have shown us how to play it.
finns have shown us the best education system in the world.
french have shown us how much a sensible person should work in a week while producing great food, wine and cinema. and spiral.
iceland has shown us to punish the bankers and help the people.
apart from the french all other nations have shown us how a modern, successful and secure nation has no need for nuclear weapons or ruinous military spending.
all have moved beyond our divisive labour relations model - with workers representation on the board the norm.
workers and public assets are treated with respect and properly paid.
etc etc etc
but we choose not to see any of this with our tongue so far up uncle sam's arse.
tragic really - we have so much to teach them about beer

but we can't see any of this with

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 07 Sep 15 - 04:15 AM

Steve, you response to the OP,
"You are deluded."

Jeremy Corbyn thinks you are.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 07 Sep 15 - 04:57 AM

Achmelvich, 07 Sep 15 - 04:01 AM

Spot on!

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 07 Sep 15 - 05:57 AM

Jeremy Corbyn has never met me (though I was at university with his brother). I don't give a damn whether or not he thinks I'm deluded. In fact, from what I've seen of him I wouldn't have thought he'd use that language. A puzzling and pointless post from you there, Keith.

What scroungers, Guest? Oh no! Don't tell me the royals are back from yet another foreign junket!

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: bubblyrat
Date: 07 Sep 15 - 06:59 AM

How will the "New Englanders" (sorry , I mean Syrians ) vote ??

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: GUEST,Raggytash
Date: 07 Sep 15 - 10:26 AM

Achmenvich, Belgium could teach us a bit about beer

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: GUEST,achmelvich
Date: 07 Sep 15 - 05:02 PM

true - we can share the love.

we could also learn from france, germany, hans blix et al that rushing into an illegal war cos george w says so is the height of idiocy. and a terrible crime against humanity

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 07 Sep 15 - 06:41 PM

The point about a very large proportion of overseas British receiving benefits is quite right technically. When people talk about massive benefits what gets overlooked. Is that by far the largest anount of that is State Pensions, and if you retire overseas you stilll are entitled to that.

But I suppose people who go on about benefits as going to "scroungers" they don't mean that. They mean people who can't work becacause of disability and so forth.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 07 Sep 15 - 09:03 PM

The current benefits regime in the UK is so draconian that it is impossible to be a benefits scrounger. On the contrary, many people who should be receiving benefits are excluded by the rules. Of course, there are some who gain big advantages from the system. Landlords who put up the rent every time housing benefit rises and massive profitable companies such as Tesco and Asda who pay so little that their employees can't afford to live in a house or flat unless they receive benefits. Then there's those royals. Those hawkish right-wingers who are on the lookout for benefit scroungers always seem to look in the wrong places.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 07 Sep 15 - 10:32 PM

The State Pension is NOT a bloody 'Benefit'! It is a right for which we have paid, through NICs, over years (in my case 50 years) of work.

As a recipient of a State Pension from a scheme that I've paid in to for 50 years, I strenuously object to being labelled 'On Benefits'. It's not a 'Benefit', I've bloody earned it!

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 08 Sep 15 - 12:08 AM

Mr Dick in David Copperfield, who could not keep King Charles's head out of any conversation, was a brilliant portrait by Dickens of a lunatic obsessive. So much so that a person's "King Charles's head" has become a useful sort of idiomatic elliptic trope.

Our dear old friend Steve Shaw's King Charles's head is the royal family.

We all know what you think about them, Steve mate. Your dragging them into every thread, relevant or not, can become excessively tiresome & tedious. How about giving it a rest, just as a favour to the rest of us, in, say, one thread in every five?!

Best regards

≈Michael≈

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: GUEST,Allan Conn
Date: 08 Sep 15 - 02:34 AM

The tag 'benefit' may not be welcome and people may have contributed all their lives but the fact is like it or not it is still classed as a benefit - and it is not a benefit paid equally to everyone even if they have worked all their lives. For instance many women retired now retired at age 60 which is a whole 7 years more of claiming this benefit than my wife will be able to claim for. 7 years less of claiming and 7 years more of paying tax. It is a touchy subject for my wife and one of our elderly neighbours once made the mistake of describing people receiving tax credits as scroungers! Sorry but right at the start of the credit crunch our income collapsed and tax credits helped keep us afloat for a couple of years. We'd both paid taxes all out lives and are paying them again so we felt we'd contributed and were grateful for the help. Current pensioners are receiving their benefit from anywhere between 2 and 7 years before many future pensioners will receive their benefits. So when talking about the cost of benefits that has to be taken into account. I'm not saying that current pensioners shouldn't get it just suggesting they should count their lucky stars!!

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 08 Sep 15 - 07:54 AM

It may be called a 'benefit', but it is patently not a 'benefit', it's an entitlement by virtue of having paid in to the fund, exactly the same as a private or occupational pension.

Referring to pensioners as 'benefit claimants' is demeaning and insulting to people who have paid their whack, and are receiving the pension that they have paid for, over many years - many more years than they are likely to receive their pension.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 08 Sep 15 - 08:44 AM

Well, Michael, when the chat turns to benefits recipients it's very hard NOT to include the royals! Including them may be an irritant to you, but it provides a corrective to those hawkishly-intolerant right-wingers and ignoramuses who are so quick to condemn the unemployed, the low-paid and the sick for receiving benefits. The royals are just as fully in receipt of state-money-that-they-haven't-actually-worked-for as any of those, and they don't even need it.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 08 Sep 15 - 08:47 AM

Oh well -- I'm an OAP of some long standing (18 years, blimey!), and it doesn't really bother me unduly if that's how I'm officially designated as long as the dosh goes into my bank every Monday. I'm reminded of the saying cited by an Evelyn Waugh character (in Brideshead Revisited iirc): "It doesn't matter what people call you, so long as they don't call you 'Pigeon Pie' and eat you up".

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 08 Sep 15 - 08:52 AM

Cross-posted -- sorry Steve. The money "the firm" get from their notional allowances is for the payment of their staff and the upkeep of their estates, largely accessible to the public. For their own menus plaisirs, I am pretty sure that they sedulously make sure that it their own money, rather than any public money, which pays.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 08 Sep 15 - 09:03 AM

Well I have a half-acre garden which I have to upkeep myself and I've just had my chimney repointed. I had to buy my own lawn mower and the petrol for it and I've just paid the bloody builder out of my own money. And I've got a lot less than they've got. Next...

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 08 Sep 15 - 09:04 AM

And all their money WAS public money until their ancestors/accountants robbed us blind.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 08 Sep 15 - 09:14 AM

Animadvert away, Steve. Have yourself a ☯ You're quite a nice, harmless, dear old fellow for all that, I dessay!

Best regards

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Raggytash
Date: 08 Sep 15 - 09:31 AM

Michael,

Perhaps you could expound and elucidate on the subject and proclaim to all we mentally impoverished folk just how the royal family came to procure all their (vast) substantiality.

Cheers

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 08 Sep 15 - 09:57 AM

No idea! Quite happy to take things as I find them, in general. How did Steve get his ½-acre of garden for that matter? (Not that I envy it; I mean, I have only an itsy-bitsy garden, but more than I want as Emma & I are no sorts of gardener and it's quite costly to keep under control). I'm sure that one could find the answer to your concerns by googling judiciously; but where it all came from is not a topic I wish to expend time & energy on. There it is; one can never start anywhere but here, you know. & what difference it makes, except to the perpetually and quasi-professionally and resolutely aggrieved who seem to abound, around here and passim, I cannot conceive.

≈M

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 08 Sep 15 - 11:11 AM

I bought it with the house. I didn't inherit it (or money to buy it), steal it, enclose it, receive it as a gift or send soldiers in to take it over. I don't have tenants on it who do all the work of tending it, who then pay ME for the privilege so that I can make millions every year out of it without so much as lifting a finger. I look after it exclusively by myself and I've turned it into a wildlife haven. At the moment it's giving me first-rate organic spuds, beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, apples by the ton, raspberries and herbs and it looks very nice. It took me 26 years to pay for it. I don't breed animals on it so that I can shoot at them for fun. Everything opposite to how the royals come by and exploit their land.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Stanron
Date: 08 Sep 15 - 11:41 AM

How did the Royals come by their stuff? Look no farther than 1066. Actually you should. Bill the B claimed that Canute promised it all to him a couple of years earlier, but where's the proof? In the meantime Harold was on the spot and doing rather a good job of seeing off the Vikings. Bill the B got lucky at Hastings and it all went downhill from there. Bill the B won the lot and gave what he didn't want to his pals. Male offspring begat male offspring, with perhaps the occasional mattress mishap along the way and here we are today. Queen V started off rather lacking in the filthy stuff and only got rich as a result of donations from her subjects and inheriting the crown estates.

The crown estates are interesting. All the income from them, and that's a lot, goes straight into the treasury. The civil list, the money that goes to the Royal Family, comes out of that. Guess which is the larger amount?

One point of irony is that the Angles and Saxons, represented in the left corner by Harold (elected by the way, albeit from a small circle) were displaced by Bill the B in the right corner (elected only by himself). Harold's stock came from somewhere around what we now call Germany. Bill the B was from Viking stock who had settled in France. So the big pot originally belonged to Germany, was lost to Viking French and guess where the people who have it now come from? Funny old world.

Incidentally I have wondered if the virulent hatred the left have for the right is some kind of racial memory of the Saxon hatred for the Normans. It makes as much sense as any other reason.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: akenaton
Date: 08 Sep 15 - 12:36 PM

Stanron not all of the left "hate" the Royal family.

I think the Queen has done a sterling job, I find the Chookie Embra amusing and Charlie thought provoking.

I don't think they do any harm, don't meddle in politics and have a view of the world which is probably better than the whinging gits who get on their case.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Stanron
Date: 08 Sep 15 - 03:19 PM

Hi Ake.

I didn't mean to suggest that the left hates Royalty. But some members of the left hand of our politics express virulent hatred for the right wing. Dare I even mention Maggie?

The royals have a thankless task.

Had someone suggested to me in my early years that I would take on a job that didn't pay, that would offer me little choice of what I would actually do and that I could never retire, I would not have been keen.

And then I became a musician.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: GUEST,pete from seven stars link
Date: 08 Sep 15 - 04:19 PM

seems to me, that the royals ...at least the main ones... are in employment as representing GB . there may be argument as to the effectiveness of their role, and whether they are overpaid, but imo, it is a job of work to some extent.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 08 Sep 15 - 04:39 PM

Well, if you think that getting carted around the world in the lap of luxury, then doing little walks along fenced-off crowds of flag-waving sycophants occasionally saying "Hellay, and what do you do?", or simply doing funny little waves from carriages is a "job", well all I can say is that I'll do that for a tenth of their bloody expenses.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 08 Sep 15 - 07:24 PM

I would go so far as to say that you cannot defend in any way the existence of the royals and still be a leftie. The royal family stands for everything that true lefties fight tooth and nail against: unearned wealth, unearned privilege, enshrined inequality, the need for unqualified obeisance and deferential cap-wringing, expensive, near-paramilitary ceremony, the arbitrary granting of honours to people who toe the line, influence derived from tradition rather than merit... Oh gosh yes, it looks so nice and so, well, comfortingly British. But proper lefties are never taken in by such nonsense. And don't kid yourself that it's just harmless fun. It's far more insidious than that. It's all about the perpetuation of us-and-them, nothing more.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 09 Sep 15 - 03:50 AM

Thanks, Steve, for so perfect a digest or epitome of all that is wrong with you leftie lot over there. Never happy except when you're unhappy. Nothing ever bloody-well right for you. What you would do if we ever did abolish them, I can't imagine. Just find some other imagined grievance to maunder & whitter on'n'on about, I suppose. Just go on with all your never·ending moaning & whingeing which seems to be all that keeps you going; and hope it keeps fine 4U.

All v best regards

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 09 Sep 15 - 04:18 AM

Heheh. Life's always worth living when you get like that, Michael. You make being miserable so enjoyable. :-)

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 09 Sep 15 - 04:43 AM

LoL

☞☹

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Sep 15 - 05:12 AM

"Just find some other imagined grievance to maunder & whitter on'n'on about,"
Do you honestly believe 2 million unemployed, or patients on trolleys, or, increasing homelessness, or yet another recession on the way caused by over-indulgence on the stock exchange, or dishonest politicians and predatory bankers.... "imagined"
You really do live in a world detached from reality. don't you?
Some of us actually worry about these things because it effects us and ours.
Grow up, before it's too late for ****'s sake
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 09 Sep 15 - 07:47 AM

Grow up yourself, you rude little yobbo, & mind your manners. What warrant do you imagine yourself to have to address me like that?

And that was just my point anyhow, you booby. There are all these real abuses and misfortunes within our society, your unemployed and your trolley-patients and so on & on; and all the lefties can find to expend their ceaseless, tireless crusading efforts on is that a few people happen to be born to a few purely symbolic mini-privileges that they envy & wish they could have for themselves.

Pathetic!

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Sep 15 - 08:10 AM

Tsk, tsk, tsk. Mike - your superiority comlplex is showing.
Your seeerily dismissive attitude to those less well off than yourself epitomises everything wrong with the society your heroine claimed doesn't exist.
One thing I totally agree with you, it is the tendency of the 'lefties' to point out the failings of the system we live under, while you on the right ignore them, defend them or, in your case, sneer at them. - long live privilege and inequality, eh?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Sep 15 - 08:12 AM

'Sneerily' (of course) - why give you a typo to gloat over?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: GUEST,Raggytash
Date: 09 Sep 15 - 08:14 AM

"that a few people happen to be born to a few purely symbolic mini-privileges"

I have read some garbage on this forum in the past. On many occasions I have wondered at the ineptitude of the person writing said garbage. However Michael you have surpassed even the likes of KAOH with this bit of utter nonsense.

Purely symbolic mini privileges ............. my arse.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Stanron
Date: 09 Sep 15 - 08:19 AM

Purely symbolic mini privileges

and rather a lot of wealth. It's the wealth that gets up peoples noses.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 09 Sep 15 - 08:37 AM

"mini privileges ............. my arse."

.,,.

No thanx, ducky: not my sort of thing.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 09 Sep 15 - 10:55 AM

It isn't even the money. Loads of non-royals are stinkingly and undeservedly rich. Nah, it's their position at the apex of the pyramid of privilege. I'll not kneel before a royal to have my shoulder patted with a sword. I can think of better things to do with cold steel in the presence of a royal.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: akenaton
Date: 09 Sep 15 - 11:56 AM

The biggest obstruction to the construction of a socialist society is not the monarchy, it is people like you Steve, whiners who want it all.
Want it all handed to you on a plate.
The "liberal left" are simply frauds, they don't care about the real problems in society.....They say they want "freedom, equality, democracy", but only as long as it does not affect the political system in any way. When they get down to the wire they vote for people like Cooper or Burnham to lead the Party.

The fucking Party does not promote socialism.....It is the major problem, not the answer

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: The Sandman
Date: 09 Sep 15 - 12:32 PM

Norway manages to be out of the E U, But still close,through allsorts of treaties why is it not feasible for England to have a similiar position as Norway.
Personally,I am undecided, I would however never vote for UKIP, BUT IF CONVINCING AGUMENTS WERE PUT FORWARD FOR ENGLAND TO HAVE A SIMILIAR SITUATION TO NORWAY, I WOULD GIVE IT CONSIDERATION.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 09 Sep 15 - 01:26 PM

What is this "all" that I want, "handed on a plate"? Off you go for another vat of wee heavy, little man!

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 09 Sep 15 - 02:51 PM

Wowie, Steve. So when Her Maj begs you on her bended knees to accept a knighthood, you're going to turn it down, eh? Boy, is that ever telling her! Why, she must be absolutely devastated!!!


Teeheeheeheeheeheeheehee, but are some people ever bloody pathetic!

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 09 Sep 15 - 05:14 PM

Yes, and if Phil the Greek happens to be around, he'd better watch his arse if I ever get ahold of that cold steel! It won't be slitty eyes he'll be fretting about! :-)

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: GUEST,Allan Conn
Date: 09 Sep 15 - 06:37 PM

Re the situation with Norway. Not a member of the EU but yes closely linked to the EU and the free movement of labour etc extends to Norway as well as several other non EU members. As one of the main reasons given by many of the EU sceptics, especially Farage & Co, for leaving is to stem the free movement then I can't see how the situation for Norway at the moment is comparable to a UK leaving the EU.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Sep 15 - 07:37 PM

Allan

I didn't know that free movement also applies in Norway. My decision to vote to leave is based on the judgement that the EU is an experiment, an unnecessary extra level of government and while 'ever closer union' is probably the way to go for a common currency, it has no benefit for Britain, only dangers.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Sep 15 - 08:02 PM

"whiners who want it all."
Hate to be the bearer of bad news Ake, but if you're a socialist, my prick's a bloater.
You don't approve of immigration and you've complained that too many of them is leading to the native population being outnumbered.
You oppose giving basic human rights to homosexuals.
Your language to those who call for reasonable socialist reforms, describing them as "whiners who want it all." - just a right-wing elitist as anybody here.
Now you are a royalist forelock-tugger.
Wonder hos you feel about the public ownership of the means of production and distribution.
I'd be fascinated to know exactly what you'r definition of socialism is - (I suspect it's as individual as your definition as 'liberal') you appear to be as conservative as any Conservative I've ever met.
"Teeheeheeheeheeheeheehee, but are some people ever bloody pathetic!"
Aren't they just?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 09 Sep 15 - 08:10 PM

"Hate to be the bearer of bad news Ake, but if you're a socialist, my prick's a bloater."

And I'm the Queen of Sheba, but you're a damn sight more imaginative, Jim! :-)

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: The Sandman
Date: 10 Sep 15 - 04:20 AM

"From: GUEST,Allan Conn - PM
Date: 09 Sep 15 - 06:37 PM

Re the situation with Norway. Not a member of the EU but yes closely linked to the EU and the free movement of labour etc extends to Norway as well as several other non EU members. As one of the main reasons given by many of the EU sceptics, especially Farage & Co, for leaving is to stem the free movement then I can't see how the situation for Norway at the moment is comparable to a UK leaving the EU."
    free movement is not one of the reasons why I would consider leaving the EU, IN FACT IT IS IN MY OPINION ONE OF THE BETTER ASPECTS OF THE EU.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 10 Sep 15 - 08:49 AM

This is what happens when you put caps lock on to do an abbreviation such as EU, THEN FORGET TO TURN IT OFF AGAIN. :-)

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Stanron
Date: 10 Sep 15 - 09:56 AM

I was cookieless at 09 Sep 15 - 07:37 PM when I said that I was not as bothered with free movement as I was with 'ever closer union'.

Also the European parliament is an extra, massive, uber expensive and unnecessary level of Government. It can only have been designed as it is if the long term plan is that the European Parliament replaces or supersedes all national governments.

There is a case for this for those countries which share a common currency but the UK is not a part of that (and I hope it never will be) and if it takes leaving the EU to formalise that distinction I'm all for it.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: akenaton
Date: 10 Sep 15 - 11:35 AM

I fail to see any advantage to anyone in the free movement policy especially when the countries involve have such huge variants in wage rates and living standards.

The only people who may benefit, in the short term, are capitalist employers and rogue landlords.....in the richer countries wage rates and living standards will be driven down for private gain, in the poorer countries their best people are being lost and their own infrastructure and services will be adversely affected.

Blair made it clear what "free movement" meant for the UK it was intended to "make us competitive in the global economy"

It had nothing to do with socialist principles , or helping poor people.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 10 Sep 15 - 12:31 PM

But you are always telling us that we'll all have to be poorer and give stuff up in order to achieve socialism. Make your mind up.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: akenaton
Date: 10 Sep 15 - 01:19 PM

Of course we do Steve, but we have to change the system first.

We must ensure the wealth gap closes, that the sacrifices in wealth are channelled into better public services......and that people do not exploit those services.

But of course you knew that didn't you?

Try writing something constructive for once....tell us how we are going to reform capitalism, and make every body wealthy and equal have both unregulated freedom AND democracy .....:0) I'm sure you could do it   "Stephen's Book of Fairytales"(after the brothers Grimm)!

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: The Sandman
Date: 10 Sep 15 - 01:36 PM

Also the European parliament is an extra, massive, uber expensive and unnecessary level of Government. It can only have been designed as it is if the long term plan is that the European Parliament replaces or supersedes all national governments.
correct.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 Sep 15 - 03:37 PM

"Try writing something constructive for once"
Secong that - how about your giving us a definition of Socialism which includes Royalty, deprivation of rights of homosexuals and describing people who want to change the system as "whiners|"
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: akenaton
Date: 10 Sep 15 - 03:47 PM

The whiners I was referring to have no interest in changing the system Jim.

I wouldn't have thought the rulers of a socialist system would not wish the monarchy to continue. What I said was that the Queen had done a good job and was to be admired for her forbearance in not advancing her political views.
The Duke is acerbic and amusing, while the Prince of Wales seems to have a better grasp of thing ecological than many "lefties"

Please criticise only what I have written.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: GUEST,Allan Conn
Date: 10 Sep 15 - 03:47 PM

Whatever individuals think there is no doubt that the Brexit movement continually cites the unrestricted movement of EU citizens into the UK as one of the main reasons for leaving! Hence I don't think they (ie the anti-EU amongst the Tories and UKIP) would accept a Norwegian type arrangement. In fact not only is Norway fully part of the free movement of people and services etc but it is also part of the Schengen Area. Something that UKIP etc would baulk at.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: akenaton
Date: 10 Sep 15 - 03:49 PM

One "not" too many?

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: The Sandman
Date: 11 Sep 15 - 02:02 AM

I am critical of the EU,but i am not a tory or a UKIP.to be critical of the EU is not a prerogative of the right

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: GUEST,Allan Conn
Date: 11 Sep 15 - 02:13 AM

I never said you were a Tory or UKIP member (in fact I started off by saying whatever individuls think) but there is a strong anti-EU movement amongst, obviously UKIP, and also a section of the Tory Party - and one of the main things they constantly bring up is the inability of the gvt to stop any EU citizen who wants to come here from coming to the UK. It is one of the main points, possibly the main point, of their argument. Everyone from the UK on here will know that and Farage is constantly in the media bleating about it. Hence a Norwegian style solution would not appease the main bulk of the anti-EU movmement. That is all I pointed out.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: GUEST,Dave
Date: 11 Sep 15 - 02:43 AM

Leaving the EU would be a massive mistake for the UK. It would not save us from TTIP, Cameron is one of the biggest backers of TTIP and would sign us up for this or something worse as soon as we were out. It would not save us from the refugee crisis, they would be coming anyway. Free movement within the EU is a massive benefit, as it gives our bright young people access to jobs in the modern, high-tech economies of Germany and France. We would not have the same access to the job and export markets if we left, and those who claim that we would are deluded. There are things wrong with the EU, the directive on services in the internal market for example, but these are best changed from within.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Sep 15 - 03:24 AM

"The Duke is acerbic and amusing" (Presumably Phil the Greek)

"Please criticise only what I have written"


Oh, where to start?

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: akenaton
Date: 11 Sep 15 - 04:03 AM

Oh come on Dave, even if we were to leave the EU, "our BRIGHT young people" would still be welcome in France or Germany.
I don't think losing our bright young people is necessarily a good thing for the UK economy


What you are saying has no bearing on "free movement", which simply provides a source of relatively cheap unskilled labour.
Good for Capitalism, bad for society.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Sep 15 - 05:40 AM

"The whiners I was referring to have no interest in changing the system Jim."
Far more than you have with your coinservative pro-establishment ideas Ake
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 11 Sep 15 - 05:42 AM

GUEST of 0324 -- rude little nonentity. Come out & tell us your name, you smartarse little coward!

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: GUEST,Raggytash
Date: 11 Sep 15 - 06:34 AM

Once again Michael you accuse someone of being a "rude little nonentity" and call them a "smartarse little coward!"

Once again I am reminded of a pot and a kettle. It is a recurring theme with you really.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Stanron
Date: 11 Sep 15 - 04:44 PM

Guest Dave

If our beloved Prime Minister is going to sign up for TTIP anyway it makes no difference regarding the argument of whether to leave the EU or not. As to the refugee crisis, Ukippers and some Conservatives are more concerned about economic migrants than refugees. The consensus here is that a Norwegian type arrangement would still allow free movement so that makes no difference to the argument.

So where is the 'massive mistake'?

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Sep 15 - 04:29 AM

I might just be a smartarse, Raggy. But I am not a coward like you & the rude "Guest" above you were supporting, in using an unrecognisable nickname on this site. How is anyone supposed to know who the scruffy creature is who can't keep his moustache neatly trimmed? - whilst anyone who knows anything about the Folk Scene knows the identity behind MGM·Lion.

But just in case anyone ignorant of the history of the Scene doesn't know: I hereby re-identify myself as Michael Grosvenor Myer, sometime monthly columnist of Folk Review, regular folk record & book critic & feature writer for The Guardian & The Times, contributor on folklore to Notes&Queries [OUP], "The Republic" of Columbus Indiana, &c; singer with a record on the Brewhouse label; &c&c&c...

And just who may you be, Raggyface? Come out from behind those scruffy whiskers & identify yourself.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Sep 15 - 04:33 AM

And to end this somewhat unworthy drift ...

I shall welcome the opportunity to vote against continued membership of the EU. And before anyone asks: yes, I voted for UKIP. I have a right to vote as I see fit, & who wants to make anything of it! [My sister professed herself shocked; & then admitted to voting Labour, "because I always have". Nuff said!]

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: akenaton
Date: 12 Sep 15 - 04:46 AM

Well said MGM Lion......People vote for all sorts of reasons, I am presently a member of the SNP, because I favour Independence for Scotland, If Mr Corbyn sets a real socialist agenda, I may consider it more important than SI and vote accordingly.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Sep 15 - 07:40 AM

"People vote for all sorts of reasons,"
Decent people don't vote for racist parties, and those who are aware of the horrendous effects of racism should be ashamed of voting for scum like Ukip
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Sep 15 - 08:49 AM

Usual self-righteousness of the self-hating middle-class leftie. Predictable as ever, Jim.

Best regards

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: akenaton
Date: 12 Sep 15 - 09:36 AM

Jim, you do yourself no favours by ranting on about non-existent racism.
Mr Farage has been proved correct over EU migration and it's nothing to do with "racism".........I bet you just wish all these Eastern Europeans were black?    It could be argued that you were the racist Jim...get it?

Free movement of labour amongst diverse economies is a recipe for disaster for everyone.....It is as much tactic of capitalism as Imperialism or Colonialism.

Removing ourselves from the EU is extremely important and UKIP were the only Party to address the problem. The others KNOW the problem, but are afraid of people like you.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 12 Sep 15 - 09:36 AM

Cor, impressive CV there, Michael. Then you tell us you voted UKIP. Bwahahahaha!

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Sep 15 - 09:46 AM

Enjoy your merry mirth, O Stevie, my Ickle Duckli-Boo. Can't see quite what you are bwaha-ing on about; but there, it seems to keep you happy and out of mischief.

                      ☺

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: GUEST,Rockall
Date: 12 Sep 15 - 02:36 PM

I suggest we get out of the EU and ask Canada if we can be their 11th Province.

We could all learn French too.

R.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Sep 15 - 03:34 PM

Farage and his party hav proved themselves crudely racist over and over again - and I agree with you - he hates eastern Europeans too
" It could be argued that you were the racist Jim...get it?"
Nope - fraid not - beats me even more than your definition of 'Social;ist' or Liberal'
"Usual self-righteousness of the self-hating middle-class leftie."
Middle class electrician (retied after fifty hears living out of my tool box - now that's a new one Mike)
I' rather be a leftie than vote for potential oven-door bangers.
Farage's racism
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: akenaton
Date: 12 Sep 15 - 06:08 PM

Jeez Jim to think I once gave you a tiny bit of credibility.

That link was the worst piece of misrepresentation that I've ever seen!!

Dan Hodges? David Camerons favourite columnist?
Have you seen what he says and thinks about Jeremy Corbyn?

You really should check your sources.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Sep 15 - 03:42 AM

Ake
Ukip is an extreme Nationalist party based on ridding Britain of foreigners and closing its borders to more - its policy is to blame foreigners for all Britain's ills - it is an extreme racist-based nationalist party - and has no other tangible policies to offer.
Anybody supporting it is supporting extreme British Nationalism based on racism.
Anybody supporting it who describes themselves as a 'socialist' is therefore a...... well, you work out the title (easily unconverted into a well-known acronym) for yourself.
I don't care who Dan Hodges is or is liked by - he lays out his case well, as do the dozen or so selection of writers I could have chosen from - Ukip is a racist party      
TRY THIS
Ukip are little different to B.N.P. but don't have their track record - their policies attract open racists, so , like B.N.P. have, they are attempting to clean up their act for the electorate - doesn't make them any less racist
CLEANING UP THE ACT
So support away.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 13 Sep 15 - 04:28 AM

Steve, when the OP said he favoured exit you said he was "deluded."
No room for discussion.
No "on the one hand/on the other hand."
Why are you so black and white dogmatic about a complex issue?

Presumably you regard Jeremy Corbyn as deluded.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 13 Sep 15 - 04:46 AM

Re the class thing, Jim. The self-employed, or even employed by others, trained and skilled artisan, which is what you appear to have been, is arguably a member of the middle-class. There are no really precise definitions in these nomenclatures, and wide ambiguous borders between the social classes. I don't think my summation of you above as a "middle-class leftie" was all that unreasonable or inaccurate within the context of the debate as then ongoing. But if you really object to it, then I will happily withdraw it.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Sep 15 - 05:17 AM

" is arguably a member of the middle-class. "
What a strange definition - I always thought working class was someone who had no other form of income other than that earned by that earned by his work - which sums up my position throughout my life.
I don't mind the term 'middle class' being used as abuse - but nuffin' to do with me, I'm, afraid.
As for 'leftie' - don't mind that either, it is an indication that the left didn't buy into Thatcher's dog-eat-dog, "there is no such thing as society" philosophy -
Predictable - aren't we all? depends what were're predicted for.
All pretty meaningless really
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 13 Sep 15 - 06:23 AM

Many indubitable middle-class people -- professionals like lawyers docs teachers &c -- have no income but what they earn, surely? You don't really believe that every teacher in your school, or medic in your local practice or hospital, owns inherited wealth? & apart from work-earned or inherited, either as real-estate or capital, what other forms of income are there? Puzzled by your distinctions.

Still, this is drift & I don't propose to pursue matter further.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Sep 15 - 06:25 AM

Jeremy Corbyn has been out of sync with his party apparatus and apparatchiks for decades. So what did he do? Up and leave? No, Keith, he did not. He changed it from within. I haven't a clue whether he'd vote to leave the EU but if he were here now I'd be telling him that we must do the same in the EU as he's done in his party. There is far too much wrong with the EU, not least a shortage of democracy, but anyone who really thinks at this time that the UK is better out than in is up ordure creek sans paddle. One other thing, Keith. Contrary to what you gentlemen of the hard right seem to believe, and as your post seems to imply, we proud lefties do not feel the need to march in perfect step with our Great Leader. This is new politics, the politics of good, HONEST, unspun argument. If Jeremy wants to vote us out of the EU now, then some of us will go along with him and some of us will get him to change his mind if we can. There is water still to go under the bridge.

And who said there was no room for discussion?   I discuss plenty of things here about which people are deluded. You are deluded about Israel and men of Pakistani origin, Christians are deluded about the existence of God, Musket is severely deluded about Sheff Wed (Jaysus, have you SEEN their ticket prices?!), and there are fools who would have it that I'm deluded because I support Liverpool, just because they've been a bit unlucky so far this season. It's a very human thing to be deluded about something or other yet be perfectly rational in most other regards. Room for discussion about all of it, which doesn't always mean you'll find too any people who want to discuss stuff with you, Keith, because we all know what you're like. The post to which this is a response being a classic example. I must be mad.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Sep 15 - 06:43 AM

"Puzzled by your distinctions"
Don't be - I'm a manual worker who served a five year apprenticeship (glorified can-lad and gofer for two of those) , plain and simple, with a working class, bog-standard State education (was actually told by a teacher that all I needed to know when I left school was how to tot up my wage packet at the end of the week), totally reliant on the National Health Service grew up on Council estates and was forced to leave home at 25 to find work.
That is the definition of working class, as I understand it - whether those you mention fall into the same cater gory is a moot point.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 13 Sep 15 - 07:13 AM

I think I have told you before of my opinion of your appalling teacher -- in 30 years teaching I should have been ashamed to say such a thing to any pupil.

But it was not your career that I found puzzling, but your definition of what you thought working-class -- anyone with no other source of income but their earnings. Still puzzled by it. Where your own career and work trajectory might place you class-wise is incidental to this overall point, as to whether all unarguably middle-class professionals {dons, teachers, doctors, lawyers, journalists ......} have independent means apart from what they earn by the exercise of their callings. You don't seem to me to have defended this assertion in a fashion to address my puzzlement.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Sep 15 - 07:48 AM

"You don't seem to me to have defended this assertion in a fashion to address my puzzlement."
I said it is a moot point - a point worth mooting over- nothing more than that.
As I'm none of them and have lived as I have lived - don't think there's too much doubt where I fall in the grand scheme of things.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 13 Sep 15 - 09:18 AM

Steve, I do have views on Israel, but not about any racial or ethnic group.
Please do not join Jim in making smears and false accusations about me.
Let's stick to issues and what people actually say.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Sep 15 - 09:25 AM

That isn't generally what you do, unfortunately. But I'm perfectly willing to watch you try it.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Sep 15 - 10:47 AM

Farage's racism
Jim Carroll

I don't care who Dan Hodges is or is liked by - he lays out his case well

That he does Jim, old boot, that he does.

Dan Hodges on Jeremy Corbin

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: akenaton
Date: 13 Sep 15 - 11:10 AM

Thanks for that GUEST.....well Jim?

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Sep 15 - 01:34 PM

"well Jim?"
Well what?
Hodges puts an articulate case for Ukip's racism And so do dozens of other journalists and politicians
If he were the only one, you might have a point, but he is far from being and you choose to to ignore all the other opinions.
But the main point is that Ukip's policies speak for themselves.
One more time - "Ukip is an extreme Nationalist party based on ridding Britain of foreigners and closing its borders to more - its policy is to blame foreigners for all Britain's ills - it is an extreme racist-based nationalist party - and has no other tangible policies to offer.
Anybody supporting it is supporting extreme British Nationalism based on racism."
Show that his is not the case and your argument is in the bag - if not, you are advocating voting for a Neo-Fascist party - that's what their policy represents
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Sep 15 - 01:46 PM

I thought I'd posted this an hour and a half ago but I see it isn't here! It really should precede Jim's, but I won't waste it. Here goes:

Call me Mr Picky, Guest and akenaton, but I tend to try to read posts a little more accurately than you two appear to do. The case that Jim said Hodges laid out well was to do with Farage's racism (not too difficult a case to make as it happens). I did not read into that that Hodges lays out every case well on every topic.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Sep 15 - 01:54 PM

Confirmation bias, also called myside bias, is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one's beliefs or hypotheses while giving disproportionately less attention to information that contradicts it. It is a type of cognitive bias and a systematic error of inductive reasoning.

Wiki

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: akenaton
Date: 13 Sep 15 - 01:55 PM

Bollocks!... The guy's a Tory hatchet man!

UKIP were a danger to the Tories, and Socialism is a danger to the Tories, so in with the hobnailed boots.

You really are scraping the bottom of the barrel.

What paper does he write for?   Oh! "The Telegraph"   maybe I was wrong then   :0)

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 13 Sep 15 - 02:12 PM

Steve,
That isn't generally what you do,

Yes it is.
No false accusations based on years old threads from me.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: akenaton
Date: 13 Sep 15 - 02:32 PM

Jim, Your quotation in red contains at least three deliberate lies or distortions.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Sep 15 - 03:21 PM

No it doesn't show me where they are incorrect - doesn't hack it just to say they are either deliberate or distorted.
Ukip's racism is common knowledge throughjout the country - it offers no other policies
Other parties occasionally play the race card in elections, Ukips policy is the race card.
Jim Carroll   
NEW STATESMAN
Spectator
Guardian
Guardian again
Ukip a racist and bullying party
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Sep 15 - 03:22 PM

You said let's stick to...what people actually say. I said that it would be nice if you did that. You think you do. All I've got to say to you is Geoffrey Wheatcroft. Oh, I forgot. When you misquoted him you were only "speaking generally". We have long memories, Keith.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: akenaton
Date: 13 Sep 15 - 04:02 PM

To my knowledge, UKIP have never said they would remove all foreigners from the UK even if it was remotely possible.
To my knowledge, UKIP have never said that they want to stop all immigration into Britain.
UKIP has many other policies most of which I disagree with. None are "racist" as that would be illegal.

They also have another policy which I do agree with UK exit from the EU..... That policy is not "racist" either.

Every Party has a small number of "racists", "child molesters", "bigots", "criminals", "Terrorists" in their number.
I don't believe any opinion pieces in newspapers which have a bias.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: GUEST,pete from seven stars link
Date: 13 Sep 15 - 04:50 PM

maybe my memory fails me, but I seem to remember farage was quite amenable to accepting genuinely persecuted from other shores into GB.
steve, as usual cannot resist having a dig at Christians , whether it is applicable to the discussion or not. and if he wants to go there, I am happy to oblige ! why he has to so often bring it up is open to conjecture.....

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Sep 15 - 05:45 PM

Context, pete dear fellow, context. Unlike you, I post about Labour, Corbyn, the EU, Ed Miliband, Liverpool FC ( the only true God, as we all know, was Shankly, though, in deference to Musket, I'll allow Clapton to sit on his right hand), my deafness, the Pogues, songs about Fords, the Spanish Civil War, Singing Together, science, jokes, wild flowers, and how silly you and Keith can be. It just so happened that a point about delusion popped up. So of COURSE I mentioned religion. Not specifically Christianity this time as I recall, but I'll allow it if you like in deference to your particular persecution complex.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: akenaton
Date: 13 Sep 15 - 06:49 PM

"In deference" should read, "in remembrance"    :0)

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Sep 15 - 07:07 PM

Which means what exactly?

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Sep 15 - 08:15 PM

"To my knowledge, UKIP have never said they would remove all foreigners from the UK even if it was remotely possible."
Of course they haven't - no party would dare to without totally exposing itself as fascist, but in making immigration their sole selling point, that is their intention - they are an ultra-nationalistic party - they have no other policies - they do what all other parties do when they need support - blame the foreigers.
Of course you don't believe newspapers which have a bias (which is #different from your own extreme right wing one)
You have been given five statements from four newspapers - are you really claiming that they are all biased?
I've said before - denial doesn't hack it - what is actually inaccurate in what they have all said - and where is your evidence to back you up?
I reall can't believe I'm arguing with somebody who describes himelf as a socialist while at the same is defending a neo-fascist party. whose policy is based on race
Totally unreal.
Unbelieve away - you have had the evidence from their behaviour, from their policies and from the fact that it is recognised as the natural home for racists.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Sep 15 - 08:31 PM

Jim

"making immigration their sole selling point" ignores the fact that UKIP stands for the the United Kingdom Independence Party. Their sole selling point is withdrawal from the EU. Control of our borders, or rather or lack of the same, is an argument to support that aim.

Thanks for bringing us back on topic.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Stanron
Date: 13 Sep 15 - 08:41 PM

08:31 was me sans cookie.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 14 Sep 15 - 12:32 AM

It is surely obvious that all the above animadversions against a particular party, even if enshrined in impeccable sources like The Telegraph and the New Statesman and The Speccie et al, and reproduced here in pretty red lettering, represent merely opinionative polemic, and are in no way as conclusive or definitive as the tone of their reproducers would appear to imagine. I still think UKIP's policies the correct way forward, even tho my own sister affected to be shocked!

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 14 Sep 15 - 01:10 AM

... and good old Steve inexplicably goes bwahaha at the very thought of anyone with a cv as "impressive" [his word] as mine could possibly vote so...!

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 14 Sep 15 - 01:11 AM

... or, to avoid anacolouthon, 'very thought that'

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 Sep 15 - 04:28 AM

"making immigration their sole selling point" ignores the fact that UKIP stands for the the United Kingdom Independence Party"
Withdrawing from Europe is a small part of their policy, and ignores the fact that the main thrust of their statements are aimed at immigration - an appeal to Xenophobia - it's what other parties do as a last resort.
They have replaced the B.N.P. as the party of the right.
You were going to show us why you disagree with all those articles you dismiss - or maybe not!!
"opinionative polemic"
No - qualified opinions from a reasonably representative sample of political and neutral spectrum
You are, of course, free to show us where they have all gone wrong - maybe using some of your clever-clever drawings and funny asides in small print! - not to overlook your schoolyard taunting ("pretty red lettering,")
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 14 Sep 15 - 04:34 AM

I'd rather have pretty red lettering than your sesquipedalian luciferous logolepsy any day, Michael.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: akenaton
Date: 14 Sep 15 - 04:53 AM

UKIP are against open borders and unregulated immigration, exit from the EU will solve that problem at a stroke.

Exit from the EU will not mean the end of immigration, but will allow us to control who and how many come into the country.

Seems like bloody good sense to me.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 14 Sep 15 - 04:57 AM

Can't see how my mentioning your use of red lettering constitutes any sort of 'schoolyard taunting', Jim. If that was the worst of the sort of taunting that went on in your youthful playgrounds, then, my, what a sheltered youth it must have been! Just picture it: "Yah yah yah, soppy old Carroll uses a red pen! Yah yah yah!"

Thank you, Steve -- why, what a flattering animadversion, to be sure. But is there not frequently a rebarbative pretentiousness in an affectation of incomprehension of what is in fact entirely hyaline in its connotations?

❤☺❤

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 14 Sep 15 - 05:10 AM

I thought hyaline was the cartilage in my knee...

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 14 Sep 15 - 05:51 AM

"Hyaline!"

"Hiya, Curve!"...

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 Sep 15 - 06:12 AM

"Seems like bloody good sense to me."
It would, as a little Englander.
Personally I have never had any problem with Europe as an economic alliance
I have always been undecided about the EU, politically, but open borders is at the bottom of any concern on my list.
There is basically nothing wrong with European economic co-operation, the problems arise with attempts at controlling political policies, as with Greece - but opening borders can and has been a two-way advantage.
Historically, Britain has always operated an open border policy (in a fashion) - largely one way and enforced armies armies and priests - it was called Empire and ex colonies are still suffering from the fallout.
The west is morally obliged to open its borders to refugees, both economic and those fleeing from war zones.
The propping up of despotic dictators with trade and arms sales is the major contributory factor to what is happening in the world today - Isis is the direct product of our allowing Assad to terrorise his people - friendly relations, trade, arms and equipment sales, and a total failure to act when he was murdering his people on the streets (using equipment sold to him by Britain, to some extent).
Now, despite the refusal to get involved when Assad was doing his worst, we are sending planes to fight on his side - in essence, to prop up a mass-murderer.
Even in relatively stable countries, we fill our shops with goods from firms paying slave-level wages to employed forcef to work in lethal conditions.
Personally I have never had any problem with immigration - it enriched my life and gave me an enjoyment and understanding of cultures I would never otherwise have encountered.
I find your claim of immigration swamping Britain and changing its face utterly offensive - straight out of BNP/Ukip literature.
It took the dragging of a dead child out of the sea to change the minds of some politicians on opening borders, yet minds of claimed "socialists" like yourself remain firmly locked and bolted.
Until the West resolves the mess they have made of the world in the pursuit of oil and invested wealth, borders have to remain open to receive the 'collateral damage'.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 Sep 15 - 06:16 AM

"Can't see how my mentioning your use of red lettering constitutes any sort of 'schoolyard taunting',"
It doesn't - it was a general; summing up of your behaviour in response to your sneeringly dismissive use of a means of assisting the less literate in these arguments.
Your schoolyard beaviour is not unlike trying to carry out a conversation with somebody with an attention-seeking child in the room.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 14 Sep 15 - 06:27 AM

Cut the owld lad some slack, Jim. After all, he has no other outlet for the reapings of his deepest dictionary diggings!

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 14 Sep 15 - 09:03 AM

Steve,
Geoffrey Wheatcroft. Oh, I forgot. When you misquoted him you were only "speaking generally".

We disagreed on whether it is acceptable, having given a full quote, to give a reduced version later.
That is not comparable with you falsely accusing me of holding and expressing racist views when I do not and have not.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 14 Sep 15 - 09:08 AM

Don't start that again. Anyway, if I thought you were expressing racist views I'd call you to your face. As I haven't done that, I suggest you look elsewhere.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Raggytash
Date: 14 Sep 15 - 02:59 PM

Personally Michael I don't care who you are or what you claim to have achieved. However when you berate someone, as you frequently do, for being rude you should take care not to be rude yourself.

I have noticed on several occasions pot calling the kettle black.

If you take ubrage with this I have to say I don't really mind

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 14 Sep 15 - 03:30 PM

Thanks Steve, but you said I was deluded about an ethnic group (13 Sep 15 - 06:25 AM).
To have any view about such a group is racist.
I do not.
Please be more careful with your accusations, or better still do not make them.
Stick to the issue and what is actually said.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 14 Sep 15 - 03:57 PM

Last time I looked, deluded and racist had two completely different meanings. You know me well enough, Keith. I tell you what I think in clear enough English. Now drop it, there's a good chap. Some of us would like to see threads staying live.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Sep 15 - 04:46 PM

All kinds of reasons people voted for UKIP. At our local hustings the UKIP candidate didn't even mention either Europe or immigration. Just went on about how everyone was lovely and ought to help each other and so forth. He was a great big avuncular Yank, doing a sort of Ronald Reagan impression.

Came in third place with a healthy 7,000 votes. I doubt if most of those were particularly racist - more bored with lookalike politics I suspect.

I've seen surveys suggesting former Labour voters who went for UKIP are more likely to move back to Labour with Jeremy Corbyn than they would have with Old New Labour apparatchiks running the party.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: akenaton
Date: 14 Sep 15 - 05:54 PM

Don't underestimate the strength of the New Labour myth Mr McGrath, socialism is an unknown quantity to all generations after ourselves.
Jeremy was elected by the converted.

I think it will take many decades for the message to be received and understood.....and the New Labour dummies are sharpening their knives, I'm sure there will be an attempted coup within a couple of years.......The democratic lie will be exposed.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Sep 15 - 07:32 PM

All benefits are entitlements in a decent society. My disabled daughter hasn't paid in for what she gets in benefits, because she could never work, but she has every right to get it. Every bit as much right as I have, after having paid in for it. I paid in for it because I was fortunate enough to be able to do so, and it was my privilege as well as my duty to do so. And both sets of payments are indeed the benefits of living in a society that still has some decent aspects.

From each according to their ability, to each according to their need really is the basic principle we need to accept and live by.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 15 Sep 15 - 02:05 AM

And the Self-Servatives and their slavering dogs in the press should be beaten very hard by every NICs-payer for making 'Benefits' a dirty word.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 15 Sep 15 - 04:17 AM

Last time I looked, deluded and racist had two completely different meanings.

They do, but to say I am deluded about an ethnic group is accusing me of racism.
What else could it mean?

Now drop it, there's a good chap.

You accused me of racism.
I wish you had not.
I am entitled to deny your false accusation.
You chose to make it.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 15 Sep 15 - 05:31 AM

Your attitude is very tiresome. Just drop it. I've said what I said I meant. If you mention it again I'll just ignore you.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Sep 15 - 05:49 AM

Methinks, the lady doth protest too much
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 15 Sep 15 - 09:05 AM

You think it OK to accuse me of being deluded about a race of people, but not for me to repudiate the slander.
A decent person, if they really did not intend to smear, would clarify their intention and meaning.
You choose to ignore.
Despicable.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 15 Sep 15 - 09:13 AM

Leave it, Jim... ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Sep 15 - 10:15 AM

Left it
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: akenaton
Date: 15 Sep 15 - 12:25 PM

I know for a fact and by reading his posts, that Keith is no "racist".

You two are despicable using such tactics to attempt to intimidate another member, just address the issues.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Teribus
Date: 15 Sep 15 - 12:54 PM

A great deal of rubbish talked about on this thread about "free movement of labour" within the EU and Norway. Anyone wants to try and hop on a plane to Norway as an EU Citizen to find work believing what has been stated here is in for one hell of a shock. You have to have the job BEFORE you land, a Norwegian employer has to have sponsored you - and your employer has got argue long and hard that he has to bring you in to do the job as no Norwegian is available to do the work.

Now taking it as read that you have your job in Norway as an ex-pat Brit, you pay less in NI contributions than your Norwegian colleagues for the first four years you are over there because you are actually paying into the UK NI scheme (After four years you join the full Norwegian system and pay full whack) - While you are paying less you you have no call on any "benefits" paid to Norwegian citizens - out of work then you are out of the country. Norway has used thousands and thousands of "visiting" workers this way and their employers all pay the 14% gross salary employment tax to the Norwegian Government - it is this money that forms part of the Norwegian's sovereign wealth fund that is designated for domestic investment in Norwegian jobs and in Norwegian companies. That 14% levy for all those thousands of ex-pat employees are collected knowing full well that not one bit of it will ever have to be paid out to those ex-pats in the form of a pension or in benefits.

I'm with Stanron back in the 1970s I was asked if I wished to remain in the EEC - a commercial trading block/community - it has long since ceased to be that. If a referendum comes up asking if we should be in or out - my vote is for out.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 Sep 15 - 02:44 PM

Being in the EU is like most things, a mixture of pros and cons. At present the balance is on the pro side. If the pseudo negotiations Cameron is carying out end up with his having got rid of some of the things he hates, I can see myself voting to get out, because most of those things would be the very things I value.

I think if I was in a lot of member countries, and I had a vote on whether to keep the UK, or at any rate, England, in the Union, I'd vote for dispensing with its presence.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Teribus
Date: 15 Sep 15 - 05:06 PM

"I think if I was in a lot of member countries, and I had a vote on whether to keep the UK, or at any rate, England, in the Union, I'd vote for dispensing with its presence."

Well actually Kevin England is not a member of the EU - the United Kingdom on the other hand is - a fact that completely escaped the notice of the SNP in last year's independence referendum. For Sturgeon to say that if the people of the UK voted for the UK to leave the EU, irrespective of what Scotland did it would still find itself having to apply for EU membership and signing up for the Euro as its currency - first lie uncovered in the SNPs independence campaign in 2014.

As to dispensing with the presence of the UK in Europe by other EU states - highly unlikely - you don't waltz into a restaurant in a company of 28 then kick out one of the five that actually pays for the meal. The UK is Germany's best customer in the EU so you can bet your bottom dollar that the state described as being the economic powerhouse of Europe would most definitely NOT be too happy to see us depart. Our economy is actually growing that of the Eurozone countries is stagnating - our future is not and should not be tied to Europe - we actually do most of our trade with the rest of the world (Particularly if you correctly attribute the trade through Rotterdam but destined for places outside the EU as "foreign trade).

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 15 Sep 15 - 06:37 PM

Well actually I agree with you that the last thing the EU would want is for the UK to leave. Whilst I disagree with Cameron's making himself a hostage to fortune by promising the forthcoming silly referendum, nothing more than a ploy to derail UKIP before the last election, his trump card in renegotiations is exactly that. I do not agree that the SNP tried to peddle a lie to the Scottish people in the manner you describe, and I think you are utterly up a gum tree in wishing to see us out of the EU. We did absolutely the right thing in not joining the Euro, which was a thoroughly bad concept from the word go. But a little country like us, getting all isolationist in a world consisting of the US, China, India and the EU, well that's just scary. We don't make stuff any more, remember, thanks to your heroine, and we're 60 million among seven billion, so they don't need us as much as you think.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 Sep 15 - 06:56 PM

If Scotland goes independent, that doesn't just mean that they would be leaving the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, it would mean that that country, the country which had joined the EU, no longer existed. One of its constituents, Great Britain, would have reverted to being merely a geographical rather than a political union, the name of an island.

Yes a new country could be set up, perhaps the United Kingdom of Southern Britain and Northern Ireland. And presumably if Scotland was required to reapply to join the EU, so would that new country.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Rapparee
Date: 15 Sep 15 - 07:37 PM

If 51% vote (presumably with their feet) to leave the EU, don't send 'em here! The US and Canada have enough problems!

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 16 Sep 15 - 01:01 AM

"Michael I don't care who you are or what you claim to have achieved" sez Raggybuttox.

Of course he doesn't, nasty abusive little fool that he is. Far too self-satisfied and vain. And far too intent on making sure nobody knows who he is or what he claims to have achieved.

So persist in your evasiveness, hiding your real identity behind that absurd sobriquet instead of coming out to argue in your own person, you pathetic, contemptible buffoon.

Don't trouble to rejoin, unless you wish to waste your efforts on the desert air. I am done with this thread. Time, in fact, for one of my month-or-so breaks from the Cat, which I do when the atmosphere gets too fœtid with the stinking presence of such as the untrimmed-whiskery-one.

And, yes, that was 'rude', wasn't it! I am rude when I mean to be. And boy did I ever mean to be, to that nasty pompous complacent puffed-up arrogant little swine. Who the hell does he think he is, to address me in such terms! Jackanapes...

≈M≈

See you all in a month of so -- maybe.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 16 Sep 15 - 02:37 AM

I should start your retreat with a nice little lie down if I were you, Michael. :-)

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Sep 15 - 03:51 AM

"Jackanapes."
Doesn't that give you a nice, warm feeling to be called that - beats an OBE anyday!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Raggytash
Date: 16 Sep 15 - 04:27 AM

I would consider that he promotes my opinion very well indeed.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 16 Sep 15 - 06:52 AM

You do not like being referred to as a gang, but see how you all gang up on any outsider who crosses one of you.
I was hoping you would take a longer holiday Rag.

Any day all the Muskets will be home from his holiday too.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 16 Sep 15 - 08:14 AM

There have been three brief posts responding to Michael's somewhat intemperate tirade. In no way do the contents or sentiments of those posts amount to ganging up, Keith. You're always trying to up the ante. Well maybe we won't let you do that. Individually, of course. Moving swiftly on...

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 16 Sep 15 - 08:22 AM

More-than-somewhat temperate (and alliterative) tirade [just before I go] ---

You're sadly sometimes a silly sausage Steve...

                      ☠

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 16 Sep 15 - 11:22 AM

Stanron: "Had someone suggested to me in my early years that I would take on a job that didn't pay, that would offer me little choice of what I would actually do and that I could never retire, I would not have been keen.
And then I became a musician."

God Bless You!!!

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 16 Sep 15 - 12:28 PM

And here's me thinking I was talking behind Michael's back after he'd gone on his holidays. Let me know when you've definitely gone so that I can backbite with impunity to my heart's content, Michael!

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Teribus
Date: 16 Sep 15 - 07:22 PM

"But a little country like us, getting all isolationist in a world consisting of the US, China, India and the EU, well that's just scary."

Why precisely does leaving the EU necessarily equate with getting "all isolationist"? The UK did business with the rest of the world before the advent of the Common Market and the EEC and the EU - in fact it still does business with the rest of the world - places where the economy has not stagnated like in the EU. And Steve we make a damn sight more than you seem to think.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 16 Sep 15 - 07:45 PM

Ye gods, man, you're harking back to pre-Maggie now! As I said, just look at the size of us next to those blocs you'd be wanting us to be big hitters alongside. We really don't matter very much at all, in fact, we really only matter now because we're in the EU. Thanks to Maggie wrecking our industrial base for extremely short-term ideological reasons, we now sell insurance and dodgy City financial "products". Germany actually makes stuff to such an extent that they knock us into a manufacturing cocked hat. Cheers for that, Maggie, and all because you were so desperate to crush Arthur. As for doing business with the rest of the world, these days even the US president has to be given a gentle nudge from an advisor in order to recall the name of our PM. They don't need us, do they, Bill. Not really. Maybe it was different in the days of pre-Maggie yore when we actually made stuff...

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Teribus
Date: 17 Sep 15 - 11:24 AM

As I said Steve you do not realise how much stuff we still actually do make and export - suggest you go and look it up, as you most certainly would never take my word for it, or credit any source I might put up - you are more interested as someone else observed in arguing for the sake of argument - so I am not going to get pulled into that.

By the way what stuff did we make pre-Maggie that anyone in their right mind wanted to buy? British Steel was crap, our coal was the most expensive in the world, our motor industry geared for the mass market made crap cars - using British Steel's crap product which meant that if you bought a brand new Morris Marina, Austin Maxi or Allegro on a damp still evening you could walk out of your house and listen to the damn thing corroding away. Our shipyards were incapable of making the size and types of ship the world's customers wanted and just to sign a contract with a British yard guaranteed lengthy delays on delivery times and massive cost hikes.

The pre-Maggie days of the three day week with Trades Unions attempting to run the country and force direction on the elected Government, when they clearly demonstrated that they couldn't even run themselves. Where hospital porters decided whether or not you could be admitted to hospital, or whether or not you could be buried - the good old days that she thankfully put an end to - I remember them well.

Isolationist Britain? It never has been in its entire history, but there again you aren't too well up on historical fact be it political, social or economic. Our links with the rest of the world are second to none, for around the last two years about 60% of our trade has been with the rest of the world - not with Europe and the Eurozone which is in a complete and utter mess with absolutely no end of its problems being in sight.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Sep 15 - 04:04 PM

"British Steel was crap"
That is a total distortion of the position Britissh steel was the best in the world until the Tories started to reverse steel nationalisation
A summing up of what happened to the Steel industry in Britain -
"nationalisation was reversed by the Conservative government after 1952. The industry was again nationalised in 1967 under another Labour government. But by then twenty years of political manipulation had left companies such as British Steel with serious problems: a complacency with existing equipment, plants operating below full capacity (hence with low efficiency), poor-quality assets, outdated technology, government price controls, higher coal and oil costs, lack of funds for capital improvement, and increasing competition in the world market."
British Steel was sabotaged by the Conservatives because there was more investment profit in buying abroad.
The same went for the Coal industry - cheaper to buy Polish coal than to continue mining our own.
The "inferiority" of the product was a blatant lie put about by the Thatcher regime - they also argued at one stage that pits were being closed out of concern for the miners' health
You really have swallowed the Tory gospel, haven't you?
The trades Unions never attempted to "run the country" - another piece of Thatcher dogma - they did their job in protecting their members.
The rise in unemployment figures under Thatcher, directly effercted by her systematic destruction og British industry - for profit - vindicates the steps the Unions took in offsetting Tory vandalism - "Labour isn't working" - whoops - one million plus on the dole.
She was a right wing thus who would have echoed the actions of her friend Pinochet if she though she could have got away with it.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: The Sandman
Date: 17 Sep 15 - 04:57 PM

excellent post , Jim

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: akenaton
Date: 17 Sep 15 - 07:09 PM

It is surely obvious that the EU project is imploding...why do you continue to obfuscate?

Teribus is factually correct, but his underlying reasons are wrong, Britain plc failed because of the cyclical nature of capitalism not lazy workers or domineering Unions, tho' I'm sure both existed.
Mrs Thatcher did what had to be done to extend the viability of the system, not to punish the poor. No politician does unpopular things unless they have a bloody good reason, She was an extraordinary politician....just wish the left had someone with her guts and conviction.

What amuses me is that you soft lefties don't want to make that "heretical" connection.....shameless frauds.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Sep 15 - 07:15 PM

The truth is there really is very little manufactured in the UK, and still less that gets exported. There are a few assembly plants putting together cars from kits supplied by Japan, if that counts as manufacturing. In which case I'm a furniture manufacturer on the basis of Ikea flatpacks i've put together.

And of course if we leave the EU the assembly plants will get moved to countries still inside, most likely.

Maggie and her successors, from all parties, have really done a pretty thorough job dismantling manufacturing here.
.................

The flaw to the suggestion that this referendum means giving people a choice is that if Cameron comes back with some deal under which the existing treaty is messed around with by messing up the Social Chapter, noone is going to be able to vote to scrap his "reforms" and keep the things the Tories hate. It will be take it or leave it.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: akenaton
Date: 18 Sep 15 - 04:31 AM

Battering Mrs Thatcher has become a sport for some on this forum who still support the capitalist system in principle....financial aspiration and all that.

Don't you realise that our days as a mass manufacturing nation had gone and that capital investments were going to other more profitable sources. China was on the cusp of flooding the West with very cheap manufactured products......Mrs Thatcher was a believer in capitalism and personal aspiration.....a bold politician, who in her view had no option but to demolish UK manufacturing and concentrate on financial services and service industries...her "right to buy" scheme made financial aspiration "flavour of the month" even amongst those who thought they would never be allowed to aspire to anything.
A political masterstroke..
Her policies were continued and "improved" by our very own Tony Blair, but proved in the end to be based on a fraud when the financial bubble burst.

The EU project is simply another attempt to get a few more years out of a clapped out system which is ruining our society and destroying the environment......the analogy of a twenty year old car chugging along billowing smoke and fumes is pertinent.

However, even the most politically unaware "liberals" amongst us, must see that the problems created by "free movement" and our military adventures in search of "democracy and freedom" in nations which do not want or even understand the concept, have assisted in the complete downfall of the ill considered enterprise.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, but all we have left is lower less wasteful living standards, less "freedom", fewer personal "rights", more contribution, more sacrifice, to ensure a future for our great grand children....Ake

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Teribus
Date: 18 Sep 15 - 05:28 AM

Tell me Jim if British Steel was the "best in the world" how come nobody bought it? 1967 eh, two years before North Sea Oil really got underway and about six years before major oilfields came on line - yet what did British Steel offer the industry in terms of pipe for the pipelines? Spiral welded pipe that industry had told British Steel that it would never use - hence all the steel pipe used in the North Sea came from abroad - commercial and technical decision - nothing to do with any Government.

The rise in unemployment figures under Thatcher were immediately followed by a fall in unemployment figures - but you won't get Jim mentioning that. Our Employment/unemployment figures are a damned sight better than those of Europe and have been consistently so for quite some time now harking back to the Thatcher era when the ground work was done to make Britain more competitive.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: The Sandman
Date: 18 Sep 15 - 05:43 AM

the problem with sheffield steel and british steel was that it was good the material lasted too long, it is the nature of capitaism ,that things should be replaced so that production of short lasting materials continues , so that a few people can make money.
Then the capitalist press can go shock horror when a bridge collapses because of inadequate material, they sell a few more newspapers at the mock outrage. The capitalist system at the present moment encourages shoddy workmanship, built in obeselence, poor working conditions and bigger profits for the owners, that kind of thing is not for the good of the majority of the community.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 18 Sep 15 - 05:46 AM

The Tories were elected on a "Labour Isn't Working" platform in1979. Within a short time after Thatcher's election, unemployment rocketed. She never got it back down to the 1979 election day level for the whole of her tenure. In fact, she contrived to hide unemployment under the guise of incapacity benefit for hundreds of thousands of workers thrown out of their industries as the unregulated yuppies took over. Government by spiv for spivs. The next time unemployment got back down to 1979 levels, Tony Blair had been in charge for years. There, I've saved Jim having to mention it.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Sep 15 - 12:10 PM

"Tell me Jim if British Steel was the "best in the world" how come nobody bought it? 1967 "
Because it wasn't marketed - more profit in buying poorer quality cheap - a successful nationalised industry would have been an embarrassment
Are you continuing to suggest British Steel was crap?
And they claim the left are anti-British!!!
Comparison with European countries is no indication of how well Britain is doing in the unemployment stakes - right-wing policies have produced a whole series of economic crises which have shoved up unemployment.
Right-wing governments of all persuasions have massaged those figures by withdrawing benefits to force people to take jobs at crap wages, boot camps... and various other schemes.
Despite this, unemployment remains around that at the time of the Great depression.
Thatcher inherited an unemployment figure of 1.4m during her reign it reached over three million during the Thatcher regime it topped 3 million
THE THATCHER YEARS
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 18 Sep 15 - 12:28 PM

Battering Mrs Thatcher is pointless, always was. She acts as a lightning rod, takes the heat off a lot of other people without whom she'd just have bene just another angry person complaining how the world was all wrong, like a lot of us here.

If you engage a demolition expert you don't complain when they smash things up, that's what they were engaged to do.

Ultimate blame is the sizeable minority of people who voted her into power, and kept her in power ( never anywhere like a majority, though people always talk as if it was), and an electoral system that means that can happen - and invarably does in fact.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: GUEST,An Argumentative Apologist
Date: 18 Sep 15 - 02:14 PM

It was as much of a majority as anyone ever gets under our system though, Mr McGrath. The constituency, first past the post, practice that we work by doesn't produce absolute majorities. Do we have to go into all that again?

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: GUEST,Apologist again
Date: 18 Sep 15 - 02:18 PM

...especially as the whole electorate was invited, by referendum, to say if they wanted to change the system very recently, and decisively voted to keep things as they are

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 18 Sep 15 - 02:21 PM

You spoil your point somewhat with your second post. That referendum on AV was an almighty cock-up of, er, liberal proportions, to say the least. Not the kind of PR that we should have been talking about.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 18 Sep 15 - 02:24 PM

That was my point, it always happens. A system of representative government that invariably means minority rule is not a system of representative government.

We used to have a system under which only a few people were able to vote. It would have been logical to answer complaints about the kind of governments that were elected by saying "This is what always happens with our system of government", without recognising that that was the reason it needed to be changed.

I'm sure many people thought arguing for universal suffrage, or votes for women was boring because it had been said so often before.

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Sep 15 - 03:31 AM

"It was as much of a majority as anyone ever gets under our system though"
Fine, of course, until someone claims that an election result is indicative of the will of "the majority of the people" - which happens a lot, particularly in these arguments.
The situation seems to be that "the majority", certainly in Britain, have become disillusioned with politics and politicians and in practical terms, have been disenfranchised by their appalling behaviour - which doesn't seem to be improving.
Maybe the system is broke and does need fixing.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: GUEST,Apol-again
Date: 19 Sep 15 - 05:47 AM

But the people voted against fixing it. Either you believe in democracy & believe them when they say they want it left; or you are a tyrannical antidemocrat who insists it needs changing because you say so. Can't have it both ways. & all very well for that guy 3 back saying they should have done it differently. Why? To get the result he happens to want?

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: akenaton
Date: 19 Sep 15 - 06:14 AM

"Ultimate blame is the sizeable minority of people who voted her into power, and kept her in power ( never anywhere like a majority, though people always talk as if it was), and an electoral system that means that can happen - and invarably does in fact. "

So when we realised what was happening, a sizable majority voted in a Labour government which took us into a stupid and very costly war and arguably did more damage to socialism than Mrs Thatcher.

The answer does not lie in the UK voting system.
It lies in education(political), media control and time( which is rapidly running out)

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: akenaton
Date: 19 Sep 15 - 06:26 AM

GUEST....
"But the people voted against fixing it. Either you believe in democracy & believe them when they say they want it left; or you are a tyrannical antidemocrat who insists it needs changing because you say so"

It is becoming apparent to all thinking people (right and left), that the present wasteful economic system is unsustainable.
All present political Parties and all of the media support the retention of our present economic system.
The media and partisan politics effect dramatically the results of any "democratic" election in this country, so is our form of "democracy" effective or beneficial?

Or am I simply a tyrannical anti democrat?

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: DMcG
Date: 19 Sep 15 - 06:38 AM

It is no longer out of the question that there will not be a EU to vote ourselves out of, or at least we may be heading much more rapidly to one changed beyond recognition than we are towards the UK vote on the matter. The migrant/refugee crisis is fundamentally changing the EU even without the discussing the rights and wrongs of the people themselves: what it has done is wreck the always rather fragile level of trust between the countries themselves. The Schengen agreement fundamentally relies on each country trusting the others to be as effective at enforcing the borders as they are: lose that trust and all the internal borders come back, which affects not only migrants but all the free flow of people and goods that is in the founding charter of the EU, with a concomitant cost to businesses etc getting through these borders. We have already had the water cannon and tear gas; where does that go if ever larger groups of desperate people keep breaking down fences? And should one country - or more accurately one country's soldiers on the ground and in the unenviable position of having to make snap decisions - resort to actually firing on these people, how will the rest of the EU react? Then throw in the Greek crisis and how that has amplified internal divisions (fallen out of the daily news, but not forgotten, I assure everyone).

What will the EU be after that lot?

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: DMcG
Date: 19 Sep 15 - 06:49 AM

I should say that there will certainly be something called the EU: the difficulties of disentangling the currencies alone will ensure that. The question is how close will that something be to what the EU is now?

Subject: RE: BS: 51% will vote to leave EU
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 19 Sep 15 - 06:57 AM

The turnout for that referendum was tiny. That large majority for keeping the system we've got was only a fraction of the electorate. It shouldn't be seen as a bar to having another look at the arguments for changing the sustem we've got.

They never had any referendum on extending the electorate. The real barrier to change is that many MPs, particularly in "safe seats" recognise that their continued employment as MPs would be likely to be at risk.