This looks worrying for Number 10 and the Tories – politicalbetting.com

TimS said:

bigjohnowls said:

SKS fans please explain why it was OK to condemn Boris for being a liar but you will defend the man who makes him look like an amateur on that front!!
https://twitter.com/Agitate4Change/status/1653338593417482243

So far SKS has mainly lied to his party membership, whereas Boris lied to everyone including the country. I can see that for a Labour member that's one and the same thing, but for non members like me there's a difference.

Now it's quite possible he will go on to lie to us all and not deliver on his winning manifesto, but we're not there yet.

Still, as a Lib Dem I'm very pleased to see him changing his mind on tuition fees. It means nobody can ever point the finger at us again.

Richard_Tyndall said:

kinabalu said:

Sean_F said:

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

TOPPING said:

Leon said:

The big difference between Leavers and Remainers is that Leavers are stupid and Remainers are just as stupid - see @TOPPING et al - but Remainers are haughtily convinced they are much cleverer. This, in a weird way, makes Remainers even stupider - in practise - than Leavers, who are genuinely stupid

Once you understand that, the entire farcical madness of Brexit is explicable, right down to the daily debates on here, still ongoing

Leavers or remainers may or may not be stupid.

People who don't understand that it is perfectly democratic to ask the people about a decision that you previously asked them, nor that parliaments cannot bind successive parliaments, nor that parliament is sovereign are, however, very, very stupid indeed.

You can't step into the same river twice.

2016 was a one-off fork in the road. We can't go back and change our minds, and the previous status quo isn't on offer anyway.

Any new attempt to join the EU needs to start with a party winning an election with a commitment to negotiate accession and everything that comes with it. It doesn't start with rerunning the 2016 vote.

Another Referendum is all it takes.

"Should the United Kingdom remain in no man's land or leave to join every other European country in the European Union?

Tick one box only:

Leave
Remain

The government will implement whatever the majority decide."

You sound like the people who were eagerly waiting for Nicola Sturgeon to give them another referendum on Scottish independence and thought that's all it would take.

I'm saying there's no need to overthink it. Party wins a GE promising an In/Out referendum. Same as last time. The only difference is it's the insurgent IN that triggers the EU negotiation process rather than the status quo of OUT. Instead of an exit deal the mandate is to agree an entry deal. This will happen in the medium term and IN will win comfortably as the country collectively screws its head back on.

Issue one in the campaign: is a vote to rejoin a mandate to join the Euro?

Rejoin would have to say "no" in order to avoid holing their campaign below the waterline, but what if the EU doesn't recreate our opt-outs?

It's Leave (no man's land) not Rejoin. That's number 1. Then to the substantive point. So, fine, just as in all campaigns there'll be issues, questions, truth and lies. It will be for Leave to make their case and Remain (in no man's land) to make theirs.

The bottom line is as before. If the 'change' proposition prevails it then falls on the government to negotiate the best deal with the EU that it can. An entry deal this time rather than an exit one.

Will the details of the deal have to be known before the vote? Nope. Of course not. Did the details of the deal last time have to be known before the vote? I should cocoa.

The lesson of Brexit - to be taken to heart for any other EU referendum or indeed for the Sindy one when it comes - is that for the change campaign to win they must AVOID SPECIFICS.

That would be the big problem for the Rejoin campaign. It would be open to their opponents to pin all manner of charges on the Rejoiners.

And, you'd have a very bemused EU leadership thinking "Why the hell do we want to go through this, all over again?" with perhaps a very fractious set of negotiations to follow a Rejoin vote in the referendum, with the possibility of a change of government in the intervening years.

Nobody's saying it'll be a cakewalk. The fundamentals will be like last time but in reverse. Remain failed to pin Leave down on what Leave meant? Yep. Ok so maybe the same happens again on the details of our refreshed membership. Will the EU want us back if we clearly want back ourselves? I think so. I don't know for sure but neither do you or anybody else know they won't. Much will depend on the circumstances at the time and the UK/EU political leaderships in place. All of this is unknown.

And utterly fanciful. No matter how much you might want it, it isn't happening. No serious politician wants to reopen that can of worms.

And of course time is against you. The same dynamics that made Brexit necessary at the point it happened will only make it all the more difficult to rejoin.

Cut your loses and campaign for something sensible like EFTA membership. That at least has a reasonable chance of happening.

RochdalePioneers said:

TimS said:

RochdalePioneers said:

bigjohnowls said:

SKS fans please explain why it was OK to condemn Boris for being a liar but you will defend the man who makes him look like an amateur on that front!!
https://twitter.com/Agitate4Change/status/1653338593417482243

Not an SKS fan. Not voting for his party. But:
1 Boris was lying to the public. Over and over. As people had their lives upended and saw their relatives died. A big deal
2 Starmer was lying to an electorate of trot entryists knowing that once he secured the leadership most would leave and thus could be discarded.

Starmer lying to you isn't the same as Boris lying to the nation.

But there's an interesting parallel with the Tory right, for whom the will of the paid up membership constitutes a "mandate". Remember Truss and her mandate to govern?

Truss had a mandate to govern as she could command a majority in the Commons. She could not secure a majority for whatever batshit policies the Tory members wanted and she had to go.

What the hard left don't get is that when they screech about "Starmer is a liar" most voters think "only to you" if they even think about it at all.

Look at the tuition fees thing. They haven't committed to maintain the current system, only that they won't just abolish fees. And yet only 28% *of students* supported the abolition of fees. So its not even that he will lose the student vote.

TOPPING said:

On the single market, there is a (very famous? I'm not going to try to find it) clip of all sides saying categorically that Brexit would mean the UK leaving the single market.

As @kinabalu has pointed out, relying on your constituency to be TAPS is evidently a winning strategy.

TOPPING said:

Leon said:

TOPPING said:

Leon said:

TOPPING said:

Leon said:

Roger said:

Leon said:

Anabobazina said:

SirNorfolkPassmore said:

WhisperingOracle said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

I suppose these results with change once Starmer experiences the terrible backlash over hiring Sue Gray.

TheScreamingEagles said:

I suppose these results with change once Starmer experiences the terrible backlash over hiring Sue Gray.

There's little else that people are talking about. In drivetime phone-ins in Lothian, bowling clubs in surrey, and all-night kebab shops in Islington, my first-hand experience is that people are furious.

It's going to change everything, for Sunak.

I've had exactly the same personal experience recently in the youth clubs of Builth Wells, the sushi bars of West Byfleet, and the veterinary surgeons' waiting rooms of Largs. Something is in the air.

The taverns of north London, the houseboats on the banks of the Lea, even the wilds of Epping Forest, are thick with murmur.

Graygate hangs over Starmer like a shroud. If Currygate was the squall, Graygate is the storm.

I’m sipping a martini in a wine bar on soi 8, Sukhumvit and there’s a table of Brits next to me who’ve stopped watching the Liverpool game so - no joke - they can discuss “Greygate”

One guy just said he’s flying home two weeks early to vote Tory when he’s normally Plaid Cymru, just because of Greygate. Another guy said Yeah Starmer’s Ok but Sunak looks so HEALTHY

Bet accordingly

It really makes you want to be there.

Like the tax office in Hartlepool

Soi 8 Sukhumvit is fucking brilliant. Superb restaurants and bars, full of all nationalities, and cuisines, with that intense vivacity of nightlife that only Bangkok delivers

I agree with Janan Ganesh of the FT on the greatest cities in the world - London and Bangkok - I just demur on his third choice: Los Angeles. No

That may be but it looks gopping full of old white blokes drinking Tetleys.

"sipping a martini in a wine bar" sounds très élégant. My arse.

I know you’ve not traveled much so I’ll give you a little tour

Soi 8 is magical because you get such a mix. This is Det 5, a garden bar which dates back to when these were dirt roads in the 1960s and this bar was full of American GIs on RnR. They have the photos in the bogs



Ten yards away is a chic Italian which does great food and is seriously pricey



Yet just across the road locals are cooking up their own food on a brazier



And all of this is surrounded by soaring skyscrapers with rooftop bars full hi-so Chinese Thai billionaire girls

Yes I've been to Bangkok and of all of it you've found the Troppo bar which serves Tetleys on tap.

You’ve never been to Bangkok have you? Or, if you have, it was about 30 years ago and you went to Patpong once and did the ping pong thing

Fair enough. It’s a rite of passage for every slightly dull middle class army type

Mate look at yourself. Sitting in some gopping bar listening to wistful expats opine about politics of the mother country while sipping an ice cold Stella.

And that passes as sophistication for you, now, does it.

Roger said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Leon said:

Pulpstar said:

Leon said:

williamglenn said:

TOPPING said:

Leon said:

The big difference between Leavers and Remainers is that Leavers are stupid and Remainers are just as stupid - see @TOPPING et al - but Remainers are haughtily convinced they are much cleverer. This, in a weird way, makes Remainers even stupider - in practise - than Leavers, who are genuinely stupid

Once you understand that, the entire farcical madness of Brexit is explicable, right down to the daily debates on here, still ongoing

Leavers or remainers may or may not be stupid.

People who don't understand that it is perfectly democratic to ask the people about a decision that you previously asked them, nor that parliaments cannot bind successive parliaments, nor that parliament is sovereign are, however, very, very stupid indeed.

You can't step into the same river twice.

2016 was a one-off fork in the road. We can't go back and change our minds, and the previous status quo isn't on offer anyway.

Any new attempt to join the EU needs to start with a party winning an election with a commitment to negotiate accession and everything that comes with it. It doesn't start with rerunning the 2016 vote.

The absolute madness of the Euroref 2nd voters can be revealed if you simply game out what would have happened if, say, the Scots had voted YES in 2014 then a bunch of YOON politicians had said Nah, that’s a stupid decision, we’re gonna make Scotland vote again, without even enacting independence in the first place

A small but significant number of Nats would have realised that British/Scottish democracy was a sham, and could never deliver Indy, and they would have turned to violence. Scotland would have become Ireland in 1916-1920

Would the Brits have done the same if the Brexit vote had been overruled and a 2nd vote ordered, without us Brexiting? Probably, possibly, who knows - remember there was violence before the first Brexit vote: an MP was killed

Even if civil strife had been averted, millions of Leave voters would have boycotted the 2nd vote, correctly assuming that the whole thing was a fix, and their will would never be honoured, and democracy was a lie, and what’s the fucking point. Turnout in future elections would have plunged. Basically it would have shattered British democracy for a generation, maybe forever. Utter utter madness

That’s what I mean when I say hardcore Remainers weren’t just stupid, like Leavers, they were dangerously stupid because they thought their ludicrous shenanigans were “clever”

The madness was attempting to have a second vote before the first was implemented.

A second vote is entirely possible now to my mind, precisely because we've left.

The hardcore remainer scenario was the equivalent of say Corbyn winning the GE and then proceeding to have a 'confirmatory vote' before he ever stepped into office.
The equivalent now would be to have a vote after say 4 or 5 years of him having been in office (Say he'd won GE19) which of course is completely democratic.

The key for me is that Brexit has happened as an event. Which makes a vote to rejoin now perfectly democratic. A vote prior to leaving properly (Which was 31st January 2020) would have been unconscionable.

Political reality is it's not going to happen for a while now, but democratically anything after 31st Jan 2020 to rejoin is/was fine.

Yes, of course

We have now brexited. The vote is honoured. British democracy works. It sticks to promises made by the prime minister, no less. Your Vote Will Count. This Is It. So it is still worth voting in future elections and referendums because it makes a difference. it matters. YOU, the voter, YOU MATTER

Now we’ve done that, Remainers/Rejoiners are free to start campaigning for an immediate 2nd referendum to go straight back in. Heck, if they are persuasive enough, I might even vote for them

But we HAD to honour the first vote. Anything else was insane self harm and would have sent us to a terrible place

Rejoin (as in a full rejoin of the EU) is going to become like the Death Penalty. Even if there are consistent polling majorities in favour, no mainstream political party, knowing what a shit show it would cause, is going to be dumb enough to suggest it.

I think you're right but there will be other long term consequences. The most obvious is the slow death of the Conservative Party. The damage they've caused will become ever more apparent-God Knows it's bad enough already-and the public led by the young will over time vent their spleen in the only direction available.

Leon said:

TOPPING said:

Leon said:

TOPPING said:

Leon said:

TOPPING said:

Leon said:

Roger said:

Leon said:

Anabobazina said:

SirNorfolkPassmore said:

WhisperingOracle said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

I suppose these results with change once Starmer experiences the terrible backlash over hiring Sue Gray.

TheScreamingEagles said:

I suppose these results with change once Starmer experiences the terrible backlash over hiring Sue Gray.

There's little else that people are talking about. In drivetime phone-ins in Lothian, bowling clubs in surrey, and all-night kebab shops in Islington, my first-hand experience is that people are furious.

It's going to change everything, for Sunak.

I've had exactly the same personal experience recently in the youth clubs of Builth Wells, the sushi bars of West Byfleet, and the veterinary surgeons' waiting rooms of Largs. Something is in the air.

The taverns of north London, the houseboats on the banks of the Lea, even the wilds of Epping Forest, are thick with murmur.

Graygate hangs over Starmer like a shroud. If Currygate was the squall, Graygate is the storm.

I’m sipping a martini in a wine bar on soi 8, Sukhumvit and there’s a table of Brits next to me who’ve stopped watching the Liverpool game so - no joke - they can discuss “Greygate”

One guy just said he’s flying home two weeks early to vote Tory when he’s normally Plaid Cymru, just because of Greygate. Another guy said Yeah Starmer’s Ok but Sunak looks so HEALTHY

Bet accordingly

It really makes you want to be there.

Like the tax office in Hartlepool

Soi 8 Sukhumvit is fucking brilliant. Superb restaurants and bars, full of all nationalities, and cuisines, with that intense vivacity of nightlife that only Bangkok delivers

I agree with Janan Ganesh of the FT on the greatest cities in the world - London and Bangkok - I just demur on his third choice: Los Angeles. No

That may be but it looks gopping full of old white blokes drinking Tetleys.

"sipping a martini in a wine bar" sounds très élégant. My arse.

I know you’ve not traveled much so I’ll give you a little tour

Soi 8 is magical because you get such a mix. This is Det 5, a garden bar which dates back to when these were dirt roads in the 1960s and this bar was full of American GIs on RnR. They have the photos in the bogs



Ten yards away is a chic Italian which does great food and is seriously pricey



Yet just across the road locals are cooking up their own food on a brazier



And all of this is surrounded by soaring skyscrapers with rooftop bars full hi-so Chinese Thai billionaire girls

Yes I've been to Bangkok and of all of it you've found the Troppo bar which serves Tetleys on tap.

You’ve never been to Bangkok have you? Or, if you have, it was about 30 years ago and you went to Patpong once and did the ping pong thing

Fair enough. It’s a rite of passage for every slightly dull middle class army type

Mate look at yourself. Sitting in some gopping bar listening to wistful expats opine about politics of the mother country while sipping an ice cold Stella.

And that passes as sophistication for you, now, does it.

Amazingly - though this seems to have passed you by - when I said

“ there’s a table of Brits next to me who’ve stopped watching the Liverpool game so - no joke - they can discuss “Greygate”

One guy just said he’s flying home two weeks early to vote Tory when he’s normally Plaid Cymru, just because of Greygate. Another guy said Yeah Starmer’s Ok but Sunak looks so HEALTHY”

…. I was joking. Did you not detect that? Or did you honestly believe there were Brits discussing Graygate and their Plaid Cymru vote and the relative healthiness of the UK prime minister?

I know I correctly labeled you as a “stupid Remainer” earlier on, and this has clearly irked you, but you don’t have to toil away proving me right, with every single comment hereafter

TOPPING said:

Leon said:

TOPPING said:

Leon said:

TOPPING said:

Leon said:

TOPPING said:

Leon said:

Roger said:

Leon said:

Anabobazina said:

SirNorfolkPassmore said:

WhisperingOracle said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

I suppose these results with change once Starmer experiences the terrible backlash over hiring Sue Gray.

TheScreamingEagles said:

I suppose these results with change once Starmer experiences the terrible backlash over hiring Sue Gray.

There's little else that people are talking about. In drivetime phone-ins in Lothian, bowling clubs in surrey, and all-night kebab shops in Islington, my first-hand experience is that people are furious.

It's going to change everything, for Sunak.

I've had exactly the same personal experience recently in the youth clubs of Builth Wells, the sushi bars of West Byfleet, and the veterinary surgeons' waiting rooms of Largs. Something is in the air.

The taverns of north London, the houseboats on the banks of the Lea, even the wilds of Epping Forest, are thick with murmur.

Graygate hangs over Starmer like a shroud. If Currygate was the squall, Graygate is the storm.

I’m sipping a martini in a wine bar on soi 8, Sukhumvit and there’s a table of Brits next to me who’ve stopped watching the Liverpool game so - no joke - they can discuss “Greygate”

One guy just said he’s flying home two weeks early to vote Tory when he’s normally Plaid Cymru, just because of Greygate. Another guy said Yeah Starmer’s Ok but Sunak looks so HEALTHY

Bet accordingly

It really makes you want to be there.

Like the tax office in Hartlepool

Soi 8 Sukhumvit is fucking brilliant. Superb restaurants and bars, full of all nationalities, and cuisines, with that intense vivacity of nightlife that only Bangkok delivers

I agree with Janan Ganesh of the FT on the greatest cities in the world - London and Bangkok - I just demur on his third choice: Los Angeles. No

That may be but it looks gopping full of old white blokes drinking Tetleys.

"sipping a martini in a wine bar" sounds très élégant. My arse.

I know you’ve not traveled much so I’ll give you a little tour

Soi 8 is magical because you get such a mix. This is Det 5, a garden bar which dates back to when these were dirt roads in the 1960s and this bar was full of American GIs on RnR. They have the photos in the bogs



Ten yards away is a chic Italian which does great food and is seriously pricey



Yet just across the road locals are cooking up their own food on a brazier



And all of this is surrounded by soaring skyscrapers with rooftop bars full hi-so Chinese Thai billionaire girls

Yes I've been to Bangkok and of all of it you've found the Troppo bar which serves Tetleys on tap.

You’ve never been to Bangkok have you? Or, if you have, it was about 30 years ago and you went to Patpong once and did the ping pong thing

Fair enough. It’s a rite of passage for every slightly dull middle class army type

Mate look at yourself. Sitting in some gopping bar listening to wistful expats opine about politics of the mother country while sipping an ice cold Stella.

And that passes as sophistication for you, now, does it.

Amazingly - though this seems to have passed you by - when I said

“ there’s a table of Brits next to me who’ve stopped watching the Liverpool game so - no joke - they can discuss “Greygate”

One guy just said he’s flying home two weeks early to vote Tory when he’s normally Plaid Cymru, just because of Greygate. Another guy said Yeah Starmer’s Ok but Sunak looks so HEALTHY”

…. I was joking. Did you not detect that? Or did you honestly believe there were Brits discussing Graygate and their Plaid Cymru vote and the relative healthiness of the UK prime minister?

I know I correctly labeled you as a “stupid Remainer” earlier on, and this has clearly irked you, but you don’t have to toil away proving me right, with every single comment hereafter

You really are having a 'mare here. You are in a bar with sad old ex-pats. Drinking Stella. It doesn't matter what they are talking about but sad old ex-pats tend to opine about the mother country and perhaps they are there to watch the English footie and you are in that bar with them "sipping martinis" and trying to make out, posting to a UK-based internet chat room, that I am the stupid one and that is what makes you sad also.

Sandpit said:

Istanbul. Happy hour.

Sandpit said:

Istanbul. Happy hour.

Leon said:

Anabobazina said:

SirNorfolkPassmore said:

WhisperingOracle said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

I suppose these results with change once Starmer experiences the terrible backlash over hiring Sue Gray.

TheScreamingEagles said:

I suppose these results with change once Starmer experiences the terrible backlash over hiring Sue Gray.

There's little else that people are talking about. In drivetime phone-ins in Lothian, bowling clubs in surrey, and all-night kebab shops in Islington, my first-hand experience is that people are furious.

It's going to change everything, for Sunak.

I've had exactly the same personal experience recently in the youth clubs of Builth Wells, the sushi bars of West Byfleet, and the veterinary surgeons' waiting rooms of Largs. Something is in the air.

The taverns of north London, the houseboats on the banks of the Lea, even the wilds of Epping Forest, are thick with murmur.

Graygate hangs over Starmer like a shroud. If Currygate was the squall, Graygate is the storm.

I’m sipping a martini in a wine bar on soi 8, Sukhumvit and there’s a table of Brits next to me who’ve stopped watching the Liverpool game so - no joke - they can discuss “Greygate”

One guy just said he’s flying home two weeks early to vote Tory when he’s normally Plaid Cymru, just because of Greygate. Another guy said Yeah Starmer’s Ok but Sunak looks so HEALTHY

Bet accordingly

TOPPING said:

Sandpit said:

Istanbul. Happy hour.

Do they serve Guinness on tap? If not forget it.

Driver said:

Foxy said:

I see that the RCN are going ahead with their strike ballot, with plans to strike late summer or early autumn:

https://twitter.com/HSJnews/status/1653400838210035715?t=1-_y0OE0DsFUYRiT5r8srA&s=19

Unite too:

https://twitter.com/unitetheunion/status/1653392658251804674?t=6DKRcXPHdJh7OLTDpnwigw&s=19

Hang on.

Didn't the unions just accept the pay offer?

Foxy said:

Driver said:

Foxy said:

I see that the RCN are going ahead with their strike ballot, with plans to strike late summer or early autumn:

https://twitter.com/HSJnews/status/1653400838210035715?t=1-_y0OE0DsFUYRiT5r8srA&s=19

Unite too:

https://twitter.com/unitetheunion/status/1653392658251804674?t=6DKRcXPHdJh7OLTDpnwigw&s=19

Hang on.

Didn't the unions just accept the pay offer?

These two unwillingly and against their members vote, so continuing the campaign for the next pay round, no doubt wanting to make up for the real terms pay cut.

Leon said:

Sandpit said:

Roger said:

Sandpit said:

Istanbul. Happy hour.

That's the Swiss hotel isn't it?

Close. The Zebra lounge, across the road from the new cruise port.

How come I’ve walked 25,000 steps today, and all of them have been uphill? I’ve forgotten what living in a hilly city is like!

You have to eat the fish sandwiches down by the Golden ‘Orn

They can be hideously bony but if you get a good one: MMMMMM

Tho this review says the mackerel is now frozen and from Norway. SIGH

Still fun tho


https://eatyourworld.com/destinations/europe/turkey/istanbul/what_to_eat/balik_ekmek_fish_sandwich

TimS said:

bigjohnowls said:

SKS fans please explain why it was OK to condemn Boris for being a liar but you will defend the man who makes him look like an amateur on that front!!
https://twitter.com/Agitate4Change/status/1653338593417482243

So far SKS has mainly lied to his party membership, whereas Boris lied to everyone including the country. I can see that for a Labour member that's one and the same thing, but for non members like me there's a difference.

Now it's quite possible he will go on to lie to us all and not deliver on his winning manifesto, but we're not there yet.

Still, as a Lib Dem I'm very pleased to see him changing his mind on tuition fees. It means nobody can ever point the finger at us again.

Driver said:

Foxy said:

Driver said:

Foxy said:

I see that the RCN are going ahead with their strike ballot, with plans to strike late summer or early autumn:

https://twitter.com/HSJnews/status/1653400838210035715?t=1-_y0OE0DsFUYRiT5r8srA&s=19

Unite too:

https://twitter.com/unitetheunion/status/1653392658251804674?t=6DKRcXPHdJh7OLTDpnwigw&s=19

Hang on.

Didn't the unions just accept the pay offer?

These two unwillingly and against their members vote, so continuing the campaign for the next pay round, no doubt wanting to make up for the real terms pay cut.

Hang on.

"The next pay round" - when is this? If it hasn't happened yet then surely there is no extant industrial dispute in which inflicting pain on the innocent public by choosing to go on strike can be justified?

Foxy said:

Driver said:

Foxy said:

Driver said:

Foxy said:

I see that the RCN are going ahead with their strike ballot, with plans to strike late summer or early autumn:

https://twitter.com/HSJnews/status/1653400838210035715?t=1-_y0OE0DsFUYRiT5r8srA&s=19

Unite too:

https://twitter.com/unitetheunion/status/1653392658251804674?t=6DKRcXPHdJh7OLTDpnwigw&s=19

Hang on.

Didn't the unions just accept the pay offer?

These two unwillingly and against their members vote, so continuing the campaign for the next pay round, no doubt wanting to make up for the real terms pay cut.

Hang on.

"The next pay round" - when is this? If it hasn't happened yet then surely there is no extant industrial dispute in which inflicting pain on the innocent public by choosing to go on strike can be justified?

Barclay has some months to open negotiations before the strike on a longer term pay restoration deal.

TheScreamingEagles said:

Hmmm.

Remember that female officer I mentioned yesterday who was sacked for drink driving....

A high-ranking Scotland Yard officer was allowed to keep his job despite being found to be paying “high-class” prostitutes regularly, it has been claimed.

The middle-aged officer was given a minor rebuke for his behaviour, after the Metropolitan Police’s Professional Standards Unit discovered his activities.

The case, reported last night by the Daily Mail, was said to have come to light after whistleblowers expressed concern at the apparent double standards that allowed him to continue in his post while a more junior officer would probably have been sacked for gross misconduct.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/05/01/senior-met-officer-who-paid-prostitutes-only-given-advice/

SouthamObserver said:

Sean_F said:

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

TOPPING said:

Leon said:

The big difference between Leavers and Remainers is that Leavers are stupid and Remainers are just as stupid - see @TOPPING et al - but Remainers are haughtily convinced they are much cleverer. This, in a weird way, makes Remainers even stupider - in practise - than Leavers, who are genuinely stupid

Once you understand that, the entire farcical madness of Brexit is explicable, right down to the daily debates on here, still ongoing

Leavers or remainers may or may not be stupid.

People who don't understand that it is perfectly democratic to ask the people about a decision that you previously asked them, nor that parliaments cannot bind successive parliaments, nor that parliament is sovereign are, however, very, very stupid indeed.

You can't step into the same river twice.

2016 was a one-off fork in the road. We can't go back and change our minds, and the previous status quo isn't on offer anyway.

Any new attempt to join the EU needs to start with a party winning an election with a commitment to negotiate accession and everything that comes with it. It doesn't start with rerunning the 2016 vote.

Another Referendum is all it takes.

"Should the United Kingdom remain in no man's land or leave to join every other European country in the European Union?

Tick one box only:

Leave
Remain

The government will implement whatever the majority decide."

You sound like the people who were eagerly waiting for Nicola Sturgeon to give them another referendum on Scottish independence and thought that's all it would take.

I'm saying there's no need to overthink it. Party wins a GE promising an In/Out referendum. Same as last time. The only difference is it's the insurgent IN that triggers the EU negotiation process rather than the status quo of OUT. Instead of an exit deal the mandate is to agree an entry deal. This will happen in the medium term and IN will win comfortably as the country collectively screws its head back on.

Issue one in the campaign: is a vote to rejoin a mandate to join the Euro?

Rejoin would have to say "no" in order to avoid holing their campaign below the waterline, but what if the EU doesn't recreate our opt-outs?

It's Leave (no man's land) not Rejoin. That's number 1. Then to the substantive point. So, fine, just as in all campaigns there'll be issues, questions, truth and lies. It will be for Leave to make their case and Remain (in no man's land) to make theirs.

The bottom line is as before. If the 'change' proposition prevails it then falls on the government to negotiate the best deal with the EU that it can. An entry deal this time rather than an exit one.

Will the details of the deal have to be known before the vote? Nope. Of course not. Did the details of the deal last time have to be known before the vote? I should cocoa.

The lesson of Brexit - to be taken to heart for any other EU referendum or indeed for the Sindy one when it comes - is that for the change campaign to win they must AVOID SPECIFICS.

That would be the big problem for the Rejoin campaign. It would be open to their opponents to pin all manner of charges on the Rejoiners.

And, you'd have a very bemused EU leadership thinking "Why the hell do we want to go through this, all over again?" with perhaps a very fractious set of negotiations to follow a Rejoin vote in the referendum, with the possibility of a change of government in the intervening years.

If Rejoin ever happens it will be as the result of bottom up pressure and it will be many years from now. I may be wrong, but I don't think the under-45 demographic on PB is in any way typical of that demographic generally. Attachment to the pound, dislike of freedom of movement, concerns about sovereignty and so on just do not resonate in the way they do, for perfectly understandable reasons, to older generations. That does not guarantee anything, of course, but in 10 years time the voting public will look and feel very different to the one we have now. If growth is sluggish, if living standards are not improving, if public services are not functioning and so on, EU membership on whatever terms may start to look like a solution to deep-seated problems - just as it did in the 1970s. Obviously, if the UK actually starts to move in the right direction, that is far less likely to be the case. In the meantime, we are clearly going to move closer to the EU.

SouthamObserver said:

This is interesting. Further indications of potential tactical voting to come ...

Comparing polls from the last week (n=6) to the same firms' polls at the end of Feb (before the polls started narrowing), we find:

LAB: 43.8% (-3.7)
CON: 28.0% (+1.5)
LDM: 10.5% (+1.7)
GRN: 5.5% (+0.5)

Lead down to 15.8 pts (-5.2 pts), but LD/GRN now benefiting more than Con.

https://twitter.com/Beyond_Topline/status/1653437319066599425

Stark_Dawning said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Well.

Somebody please explain.

Labour leads by 18% in the Red Wall.

Red Wall VI (30 April):

Labour 48% (+1)
Conservative 30% (-1)
Liberal Democrat 8% (+1)
Reform UK 6% (-1)
Green 5% (–)
Plaid Cymru 2% (+1)
Other 1% (-1)


Starmer leads Sunak by 7%.

At this moment, which of the following do Red Wall voters think would be the better PM for the UK? (30 April)

Starmer 39% (+2)
Sunak 32% (-4)
Don't Know 29% (+2)

Changes +/- 16 April

Rishi Sunak's approval rating in the Red Wall is -9%.

Rishi Sunak Red Wall Net Approval Rating (30 April):

Disapprove: 39% (+1)
Approve: 30% (-1)
Net: -9% (-2)

Changes +/- 16 April

Keir Starmer's approval rating in the Red Wall is +4%.

Keir Starmer Red Wall Net Approval Rating (30 April):

Approve: 35% (+1)
Disapprove: 31% (–)
Net: +4% (+1)

Changes +/- 16 April

https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton

The Red Wall seems a dated concept now - all very Brexit, Boris and Farage. I wonder if the Tories will come to regret diverting such a large amount of political capital to it. Matthew Parris made a similar point with his (what became) notorious article about the Tories getting too hung up over Clacton-on-Sea.

Roger said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Leon said:

Pulpstar said:

Leon said:

williamglenn said:

TOPPING said:

Leon said:

The big difference between Leavers and Remainers is that Leavers are stupid and Remainers are just as stupid - see @TOPPING et al - but Remainers are haughtily convinced they are much cleverer. This, in a weird way, makes Remainers even stupider - in practise - than Leavers, who are genuinely stupid

Once you understand that, the entire farcical madness of Brexit is explicable, right down to the daily debates on here, still ongoing

Leavers or remainers may or may not be stupid.

People who don't understand that it is perfectly democratic to ask the people about a decision that you previously asked them, nor that parliaments cannot bind successive parliaments, nor that parliament is sovereign are, however, very, very stupid indeed.

You can't step into the same river twice.

2016 was a one-off fork in the road. We can't go back and change our minds, and the previous status quo isn't on offer anyway.

Any new attempt to join the EU needs to start with a party winning an election with a commitment to negotiate accession and everything that comes with it. It doesn't start with rerunning the 2016 vote.

The absolute madness of the Euroref 2nd voters can be revealed if you simply game out what would have happened if, say, the Scots had voted YES in 2014 then a bunch of YOON politicians had said Nah, that’s a stupid decision, we’re gonna make Scotland vote again, without even enacting independence in the first place

A small but significant number of Nats would have realised that British/Scottish democracy was a sham, and could never deliver Indy, and they would have turned to violence. Scotland would have become Ireland in 1916-1920

Would the Brits have done the same if the Brexit vote had been overruled and a 2nd vote ordered, without us Brexiting? Probably, possibly, who knows - remember there was violence before the first Brexit vote: an MP was killed

Even if civil strife had been averted, millions of Leave voters would have boycotted the 2nd vote, correctly assuming that the whole thing was a fix, and their will would never be honoured, and democracy was a lie, and what’s the fucking point. Turnout in future elections would have plunged. Basically it would have shattered British democracy for a generation, maybe forever. Utter utter madness

That’s what I mean when I say hardcore Remainers weren’t just stupid, like Leavers, they were dangerously stupid because they thought their ludicrous shenanigans were “clever”

The madness was attempting to have a second vote before the first was implemented.

A second vote is entirely possible now to my mind, precisely because we've left.

The hardcore remainer scenario was the equivalent of say Corbyn winning the GE and then proceeding to have a 'confirmatory vote' before he ever stepped into office.
The equivalent now would be to have a vote after say 4 or 5 years of him having been in office (Say he'd won GE19) which of course is completely democratic.

The key for me is that Brexit has happened as an event. Which makes a vote to rejoin now perfectly democratic. A vote prior to leaving properly (Which was 31st January 2020) would have been unconscionable.

Political reality is it's not going to happen for a while now, but democratically anything after 31st Jan 2020 to rejoin is/was fine.

Yes, of course

We have now brexited. The vote is honoured. British democracy works. It sticks to promises made by the prime minister, no less. Your Vote Will Count. This Is It. So it is still worth voting in future elections and referendums because it makes a difference. it matters. YOU, the voter, YOU MATTER

Now we’ve done that, Remainers/Rejoiners are free to start campaigning for an immediate 2nd referendum to go straight back in. Heck, if they are persuasive enough, I might even vote for them

But we HAD to honour the first vote. Anything else was insane self harm and would have sent us to a terrible place

Rejoin (as in a full rejoin of the EU) is going to become like the Death Penalty. Even if there are consistent polling majorities in favour, no mainstream political party, knowing what a shit show it would cause, is going to be dumb enough to suggest it.

I think you're right but there will be other long term consequences. The most obvious is the slow death of the Conservative Party. The damage they've caused will become ever more apparent-God Knows it's bad enough already-and the public led by the young will over time vent their spleen in the only direction available.

TheScreamingEagles said:

Hmmm.

Remember that female officer I mentioned yesterday who was sacked for drink driving....

A high-ranking Scotland Yard officer was allowed to keep his job despite being found to be paying “high-class” prostitutes regularly, it has been claimed.

The middle-aged officer was given a minor rebuke for his behaviour, after the Metropolitan Police’s Professional Standards Unit discovered his activities.

The case, reported last night by the Daily Mail, was said to have come to light after whistleblowers expressed concern at the apparent double standards that allowed him to continue in his post while a more junior officer would probably have been sacked for gross misconduct.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/05/01/senior-met-officer-who-paid-prostitutes-only-given-advice/

SouthamObserver said:

Leon said:

SouthamObserver said:

Sean_F said:

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

TOPPING said:

Leon said:

The big difference between Leavers and Remainers is that Leavers are stupid and Remainers are just as stupid - see @TOPPING et al - but Remainers are haughtily convinced they are much cleverer. This, in a weird way, makes Remainers even stupider - in practise - than Leavers, who are genuinely stupid

Once you understand that, the entire farcical madness of Brexit is explicable, right down to the daily debates on here, still ongoing

Leavers or remainers may or may not be stupid.

People who don't understand that it is perfectly democratic to ask the people about a decision that you previously asked them, nor that parliaments cannot bind successive parliaments, nor that parliament is sovereign are, however, very, very stupid indeed.

You can't step into the same river twice.

2016 was a one-off fork in the road. We can't go back and change our minds, and the previous status quo isn't on offer anyway.

Any new attempt to join the EU needs to start with a party winning an election with a commitment to negotiate accession and everything that comes with it. It doesn't start with rerunning the 2016 vote.

Another Referendum is all it takes.

"Should the United Kingdom remain in no man's land or leave to join every other European country in the European Union?

Tick one box only:

Leave
Remain

The government will implement whatever the majority decide."

You sound like the people who were eagerly waiting for Nicola Sturgeon to give them another referendum on Scottish independence and thought that's all it would take.

I'm saying there's no need to overthink it. Party wins a GE promising an In/Out referendum. Same as last time. The only difference is it's the insurgent IN that triggers the EU negotiation process rather than the status quo of OUT. Instead of an exit deal the mandate is to agree an entry deal. This will happen in the medium term and IN will win comfortably as the country collectively screws its head back on.

Issue one in the campaign: is a vote to rejoin a mandate to join the Euro?

Rejoin would have to say "no" in order to avoid holing their campaign below the waterline, but what if the EU doesn't recreate our opt-outs?

It's Leave (no man's land) not Rejoin. That's number 1. Then to the substantive point. So, fine, just as in all campaigns there'll be issues, questions, truth and lies. It will be for Leave to make their case and Remain (in no man's land) to make theirs.

The bottom line is as before. If the 'change' proposition prevails it then falls on the government to negotiate the best deal with the EU that it can. An entry deal this time rather than an exit one.

Will the details of the deal have to be known before the vote? Nope. Of course not. Did the details of the deal last time have to be known before the vote? I should cocoa.

The lesson of Brexit - to be taken to heart for any other EU referendum or indeed for the Sindy one when it comes - is that for the change campaign to win they must AVOID SPECIFICS.

That would be the big problem for the Rejoin campaign. It would be open to their opponents to pin all manner of charges on the Rejoiners.

And, you'd have a very bemused EU leadership thinking "Why the hell do we want to go through this, all over again?" with perhaps a very fractious set of negotiations to follow a Rejoin vote in the referendum, with the possibility of a change of government in the intervening years.

If Rejoin ever happens it will be as the result of bottom up pressure and it will be many years from now. I may be wrong, but I don't think the under-45 demographic on PB is in any way typical of that demographic generally. Attachment to the pound, dislike of freedom of movement, concerns about sovereignty and so on just do not resonate in the way they do, for perfectly understandable reasons, to older generations. That does not guarantee anything, of course, but in 10 years time the voting public will look and feel very different to the one we have now. If growth is sluggish, if living standards are not improving, if public services are not functioning and so on, EU membership on whatever terms may start to look like a solution to deep-seated problems - just as it did in the 1970s. Obviously, if the UK actually starts to move in the right direction, that is far less likely to be the case. In the meantime, we are clearly going to move closer to the EU.

Again, the impending AI revolution renders all of this fairly meaningless, in an unusually profound way. Human life is about to change. A tsunami approaches which will upend EVERYTHING

It’s like a squabble between pre-Colombian Mexican tribes even as Hernan Cortes marches towards Tenochtitlan

AI will not stop the arguments on here. It will just make them a lot more confusing.

Similarly, it will never be a substitute for live experience. AI can't sit on the beach for you, or stand on that mountain top, or eat that steak, or drink that bottle of wine. AI will never stop Spurs from being Spursy or an England batting collapse. Real life will still matter.

SouthamObserver said:

Leon said:

SouthamObserver said:

Sean_F said:

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

TOPPING said:

Leon said:

The big difference between Leavers and Remainers is that Leavers are stupid and Remainers are just as stupid - see @TOPPING et al - but Remainers are haughtily convinced they are much cleverer. This, in a weird way, makes Remainers even stupider - in practise - than Leavers, who are genuinely stupid

Once you understand that, the entire farcical madness of Brexit is explicable, right down to the daily debates on here, still ongoing

Leavers or remainers may or may not be stupid.

People who don't understand that it is perfectly democratic to ask the people about a decision that you previously asked them, nor that parliaments cannot bind successive parliaments, nor that parliament is sovereign are, however, very, very stupid indeed.

You can't step into the same river twice.

2016 was a one-off fork in the road. We can't go back and change our minds, and the previous status quo isn't on offer anyway.

Any new attempt to join the EU needs to start with a party winning an election with a commitment to negotiate accession and everything that comes with it. It doesn't start with rerunning the 2016 vote.

Another Referendum is all it takes.

"Should the United Kingdom remain in no man's land or leave to join every other European country in the European Union?

Tick one box only:

Leave
Remain

The government will implement whatever the majority decide."

You sound like the people who were eagerly waiting for Nicola Sturgeon to give them another referendum on Scottish independence and thought that's all it would take.

I'm saying there's no need to overthink it. Party wins a GE promising an In/Out referendum. Same as last time. The only difference is it's the insurgent IN that triggers the EU negotiation process rather than the status quo of OUT. Instead of an exit deal the mandate is to agree an entry deal. This will happen in the medium term and IN will win comfortably as the country collectively screws its head back on.

Issue one in the campaign: is a vote to rejoin a mandate to join the Euro?

Rejoin would have to say "no" in order to avoid holing their campaign below the waterline, but what if the EU doesn't recreate our opt-outs?

It's Leave (no man's land) not Rejoin. That's number 1. Then to the substantive point. So, fine, just as in all campaigns there'll be issues, questions, truth and lies. It will be for Leave to make their case and Remain (in no man's land) to make theirs.

The bottom line is as before. If the 'change' proposition prevails it then falls on the government to negotiate the best deal with the EU that it can. An entry deal this time rather than an exit one.

Will the details of the deal have to be known before the vote? Nope. Of course not. Did the details of the deal last time have to be known before the vote? I should cocoa.

The lesson of Brexit - to be taken to heart for any other EU referendum or indeed for the Sindy one when it comes - is that for the change campaign to win they must AVOID SPECIFICS.

That would be the big problem for the Rejoin campaign. It would be open to their opponents to pin all manner of charges on the Rejoiners.

And, you'd have a very bemused EU leadership thinking "Why the hell do we want to go through this, all over again?" with perhaps a very fractious set of negotiations to follow a Rejoin vote in the referendum, with the possibility of a change of government in the intervening years.

If Rejoin ever happens it will be as the result of bottom up pressure and it will be many years from now. I may be wrong, but I don't think the under-45 demographic on PB is in any way typical of that demographic generally. Attachment to the pound, dislike of freedom of movement, concerns about sovereignty and so on just do not resonate in the way they do, for perfectly understandable reasons, to older generations. That does not guarantee anything, of course, but in 10 years time the voting public will look and feel very different to the one we have now. If growth is sluggish, if living standards are not improving, if public services are not functioning and so on, EU membership on whatever terms may start to look like a solution to deep-seated problems - just as it did in the 1970s. Obviously, if the UK actually starts to move in the right direction, that is far less likely to be the case. In the meantime, we are clearly going to move closer to the EU.

Again, the impending AI revolution renders all of this fairly meaningless, in an unusually profound way. Human life is about to change. A tsunami approaches which will upend EVERYTHING

It’s like a squabble between pre-Colombian Mexican tribes even as Hernan Cortes marches towards Tenochtitlan

AI will not stop the arguments on here. It will just make them a lot more confusing.

Similarly, it will never be a substitute for live experience. AI can't sit on the beach for you, or stand on that mountain top, or eat that steak, or drink that bottle of wine. AI will never stop Spurs from being Spursy or an England batting collapse. Real life will still matter.

Sean_F said:

Roger said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Leon said:

Pulpstar said:

Leon said:

williamglenn said:

TOPPING said:

Leon said:

The big difference between Leavers and Remainers is that Leavers are stupid and Remainers are just as stupid - see @TOPPING et al - but Remainers are haughtily convinced they are much cleverer. This, in a weird way, makes Remainers even stupider - in practise - than Leavers, who are genuinely stupid

Once you understand that, the entire farcical madness of Brexit is explicable, right down to the daily debates on here, still ongoing

Leavers or remainers may or may not be stupid.

People who don't understand that it is perfectly democratic to ask the people about a decision that you previously asked them, nor that parliaments cannot bind successive parliaments, nor that parliament is sovereign are, however, very, very stupid indeed.

You can't step into the same river twice.

2016 was a one-off fork in the road. We can't go back and change our minds, and the previous status quo isn't on offer anyway.

Any new attempt to join the EU needs to start with a party winning an election with a commitment to negotiate accession and everything that comes with it. It doesn't start with rerunning the 2016 vote.

The absolute madness of the Euroref 2nd voters can be revealed if you simply game out what would have happened if, say, the Scots had voted YES in 2014 then a bunch of YOON politicians had said Nah, that’s a stupid decision, we’re gonna make Scotland vote again, without even enacting independence in the first place

A small but significant number of Nats would have realised that British/Scottish democracy was a sham, and could never deliver Indy, and they would have turned to violence. Scotland would have become Ireland in 1916-1920

Would the Brits have done the same if the Brexit vote had been overruled and a 2nd vote ordered, without us Brexiting? Probably, possibly, who knows - remember there was violence before the first Brexit vote: an MP was killed

Even if civil strife had been averted, millions of Leave voters would have boycotted the 2nd vote, correctly assuming that the whole thing was a fix, and their will would never be honoured, and democracy was a lie, and what’s the fucking point. Turnout in future elections would have plunged. Basically it would have shattered British democracy for a generation, maybe forever. Utter utter madness

That’s what I mean when I say hardcore Remainers weren’t just stupid, like Leavers, they were dangerously stupid because they thought their ludicrous shenanigans were “clever”

The madness was attempting to have a second vote before the first was implemented.

A second vote is entirely possible now to my mind, precisely because we've left.

The hardcore remainer scenario was the equivalent of say Corbyn winning the GE and then proceeding to have a 'confirmatory vote' before he ever stepped into office.
The equivalent now would be to have a vote after say 4 or 5 years of him having been in office (Say he'd won GE19) which of course is completely democratic.

The key for me is that Brexit has happened as an event. Which makes a vote to rejoin now perfectly democratic. A vote prior to leaving properly (Which was 31st January 2020) would have been unconscionable.

Political reality is it's not going to happen for a while now, but democratically anything after 31st Jan 2020 to rejoin is/was fine.

Yes, of course

We have now brexited. The vote is honoured. British democracy works. It sticks to promises made by the prime minister, no less. Your Vote Will Count. This Is It. So it is still worth voting in future elections and referendums because it makes a difference. it matters. YOU, the voter, YOU MATTER

Now we’ve done that, Remainers/Rejoiners are free to start campaigning for an immediate 2nd referendum to go straight back in. Heck, if they are persuasive enough, I might even vote for them

But we HAD to honour the first vote. Anything else was insane self harm and would have sent us to a terrible place

Rejoin (as in a full rejoin of the EU) is going to become like the Death Penalty. Even if there are consistent polling majorities in favour, no mainstream political party, knowing what a shit show it would cause, is going to be dumb enough to suggest it.

I think you're right but there will be other long term consequences. The most obvious is the slow death of the Conservative Party. The damage they've caused will become ever more apparent-God Knows it's bad enough already-and the public led by the young will over time vent their spleen in the only direction available.

If the Conservatives die, they'll simply be replaced by another right wing party.

Leon said:

SouthamObserver said:

Leon said:

SouthamObserver said:

Sean_F said:

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

TOPPING said:

Leon said:

The big difference between Leavers and Remainers is that Leavers are stupid and Remainers are just as stupid - see @TOPPING et al - but Remainers are haughtily convinced they are much cleverer. This, in a weird way, makes Remainers even stupider - in practise - than Leavers, who are genuinely stupid

Once you understand that, the entire farcical madness of Brexit is explicable, right down to the daily debates on here, still ongoing

Leavers or remainers may or may not be stupid.

People who don't understand that it is perfectly democratic to ask the people about a decision that you previously asked them, nor that parliaments cannot bind successive parliaments, nor that parliament is sovereign are, however, very, very stupid indeed.

You can't step into the same river twice.

2016 was a one-off fork in the road. We can't go back and change our minds, and the previous status quo isn't on offer anyway.

Any new attempt to join the EU needs to start with a party winning an election with a commitment to negotiate accession and everything that comes with it. It doesn't start with rerunning the 2016 vote.

Another Referendum is all it takes.

"Should the United Kingdom remain in no man's land or leave to join every other European country in the European Union?

Tick one box only:

Leave
Remain

The government will implement whatever the majority decide."

You sound like the people who were eagerly waiting for Nicola Sturgeon to give them another referendum on Scottish independence and thought that's all it would take.

I'm saying there's no need to overthink it. Party wins a GE promising an In/Out referendum. Same as last time. The only difference is it's the insurgent IN that triggers the EU negotiation process rather than the status quo of OUT. Instead of an exit deal the mandate is to agree an entry deal. This will happen in the medium term and IN will win comfortably as the country collectively screws its head back on.

Issue one in the campaign: is a vote to rejoin a mandate to join the Euro?

Rejoin would have to say "no" in order to avoid holing their campaign below the waterline, but what if the EU doesn't recreate our opt-outs?

It's Leave (no man's land) not Rejoin. That's number 1. Then to the substantive point. So, fine, just as in all campaigns there'll be issues, questions, truth and lies. It will be for Leave to make their case and Remain (in no man's land) to make theirs.

The bottom line is as before. If the 'change' proposition prevails it then falls on the government to negotiate the best deal with the EU that it can. An entry deal this time rather than an exit one.

Will the details of the deal have to be known before the vote? Nope. Of course not. Did the details of the deal last time have to be known before the vote? I should cocoa.

The lesson of Brexit - to be taken to heart for any other EU referendum or indeed for the Sindy one when it comes - is that for the change campaign to win they must AVOID SPECIFICS.

That would be the big problem for the Rejoin campaign. It would be open to their opponents to pin all manner of charges on the Rejoiners.

And, you'd have a very bemused EU leadership thinking "Why the hell do we want to go through this, all over again?" with perhaps a very fractious set of negotiations to follow a Rejoin vote in the referendum, with the possibility of a change of government in the intervening years.

If Rejoin ever happens it will be as the result of bottom up pressure and it will be many years from now. I may be wrong, but I don't think the under-45 demographic on PB is in any way typical of that demographic generally. Attachment to the pound, dislike of freedom of movement, concerns about sovereignty and so on just do not resonate in the way they do, for perfectly understandable reasons, to older generations. That does not guarantee anything, of course, but in 10 years time the voting public will look and feel very different to the one we have now. If growth is sluggish, if living standards are not improving, if public services are not functioning and so on, EU membership on whatever terms may start to look like a solution to deep-seated problems - just as it did in the 1970s. Obviously, if the UK actually starts to move in the right direction, that is far less likely to be the case. In the meantime, we are clearly going to move closer to the EU.

Again, the impending AI revolution renders all of this fairly meaningless, in an unusually profound way. Human life is about to change. A tsunami approaches which will upend EVERYTHING

It’s like a squabble between pre-Colombian Mexican tribes even as Hernan Cortes marches towards Tenochtitlan

AI will not stop the arguments on here. It will just make them a lot more confusing.

Similarly, it will never be a substitute for live experience. AI can't sit on the beach for you, or stand on that mountain top, or eat that steak, or drink that bottle of wine. AI will never stop Spurs from being Spursy or an England batting collapse. Real life will still matter.

I’m not arguing with any of that waffle, I’m arguing that the human economic (and hence political) landscape is about to be redrawn in a way which will make debates about EU relationships looks pitifully jejune and insignificant


See here:

“3. IBM plans to replace 7800 jobs with AI

Dropbox first planned to lay off 500 employees and replace them with AI a week ago.

Now, IBM follows with plans to replace 7,800 jobs with AI and pause hiring for roles that could be automated”

“IBM CEO Arvind Krishna says most back-office positions, such as HR and accounting, will be replaced:

“I could easily see 30% of that getting replaced by AI and automation over a five-year period.”

AI is having an insane impact on the job market already.”


https://twitter.com/rowancheung/status/1653291044551680003?s=61&t=GGp3Vs1t1kTWDiyA-odnZg

Like I said, Cortes is marching from Veracruz and Remainers are banging on about the correct methods of Mexica sun worship

Foxy said:

SouthamObserver said:

Leon said:

SouthamObserver said:

Sean_F said:

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

TOPPING said:

Leon said:

The big difference between Leavers and Remainers is that Leavers are stupid and Remainers are just as stupid - see @TOPPING et al - but Remainers are haughtily convinced they are much cleverer. This, in a weird way, makes Remainers even stupider - in practise - than Leavers, who are genuinely stupid

Once you understand that, the entire farcical madness of Brexit is explicable, right down to the daily debates on here, still ongoing

Leavers or remainers may or may not be stupid.

People who don't understand that it is perfectly democratic to ask the people about a decision that you previously asked them, nor that parliaments cannot bind successive parliaments, nor that parliament is sovereign are, however, very, very stupid indeed.

You can't step into the same river twice.

2016 was a one-off fork in the road. We can't go back and change our minds, and the previous status quo isn't on offer anyway.

Any new attempt to join the EU needs to start with a party winning an election with a commitment to negotiate accession and everything that comes with it. It doesn't start with rerunning the 2016 vote.

Another Referendum is all it takes.

"Should the United Kingdom remain in no man's land or leave to join every other European country in the European Union?

Tick one box only:

Leave
Remain

The government will implement whatever the majority decide."

You sound like the people who were eagerly waiting for Nicola Sturgeon to give them another referendum on Scottish independence and thought that's all it would take.

I'm saying there's no need to overthink it. Party wins a GE promising an In/Out referendum. Same as last time. The only difference is it's the insurgent IN that triggers the EU negotiation process rather than the status quo of OUT. Instead of an exit deal the mandate is to agree an entry deal. This will happen in the medium term and IN will win comfortably as the country collectively screws its head back on.

Issue one in the campaign: is a vote to rejoin a mandate to join the Euro?

Rejoin would have to say "no" in order to avoid holing their campaign below the waterline, but what if the EU doesn't recreate our opt-outs?

It's Leave (no man's land) not Rejoin. That's number 1. Then to the substantive point. So, fine, just as in all campaigns there'll be issues, questions, truth and lies. It will be for Leave to make their case and Remain (in no man's land) to make theirs.

The bottom line is as before. If the 'change' proposition prevails it then falls on the government to negotiate the best deal with the EU that it can. An entry deal this time rather than an exit one.

Will the details of the deal have to be known before the vote? Nope. Of course not. Did the details of the deal last time have to be known before the vote? I should cocoa.

The lesson of Brexit - to be taken to heart for any other EU referendum or indeed for the Sindy one when it comes - is that for the change campaign to win they must AVOID SPECIFICS.

That would be the big problem for the Rejoin campaign. It would be open to their opponents to pin all manner of charges on the Rejoiners.

And, you'd have a very bemused EU leadership thinking "Why the hell do we want to go through this, all over again?" with perhaps a very fractious set of negotiations to follow a Rejoin vote in the referendum, with the possibility of a change of government in the intervening years.

If Rejoin ever happens it will be as the result of bottom up pressure and it will be many years from now. I may be wrong, but I don't think the under-45 demographic on PB is in any way typical of that demographic generally. Attachment to the pound, dislike of freedom of movement, concerns about sovereignty and so on just do not resonate in the way they do, for perfectly understandable reasons, to older generations. That does not guarantee anything, of course, but in 10 years time the voting public will look and feel very different to the one we have now. If growth is sluggish, if living standards are not improving, if public services are not functioning and so on, EU membership on whatever terms may start to look like a solution to deep-seated problems - just as it did in the 1970s. Obviously, if the UK actually starts to move in the right direction, that is far less likely to be the case. In the meantime, we are clearly going to move closer to the EU.

Again, the impending AI revolution renders all of this fairly meaningless, in an unusually profound way. Human life is about to change. A tsunami approaches which will upend EVERYTHING

It’s like a squabble between pre-Colombian Mexican tribes even as Hernan Cortes marches towards Tenochtitlan

AI will not stop the arguments on here. It will just make them a lot more confusing.

Similarly, it will never be a substitute for live experience. AI can't sit on the beach for you, or stand on that mountain top, or eat that steak, or drink that bottle of wine. AI will never stop Spurs from being Spursy or an England batting collapse. Real life will still matter.

Indeed. Actual reality beats virtual reality every time.

Who wants to live plugged into The Matrix?

Stark_Dawning said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Well.

Somebody please explain.

Labour leads by 18% in the Red Wall.

Red Wall VI (30 April):

Labour 48% (+1)
Conservative 30% (-1)
Liberal Democrat 8% (+1)
Reform UK 6% (-1)
Green 5% (–)
Plaid Cymru 2% (+1)
Other 1% (-1)


Starmer leads Sunak by 7%.

At this moment, which of the following do Red Wall voters think would be the better PM for the UK? (30 April)

Starmer 39% (+2)
Sunak 32% (-4)
Don't Know 29% (+2)

Changes +/- 16 April

Rishi Sunak's approval rating in the Red Wall is -9%.

Rishi Sunak Red Wall Net Approval Rating (30 April):

Disapprove: 39% (+1)
Approve: 30% (-1)
Net: -9% (-2)

Changes +/- 16 April

Keir Starmer's approval rating in the Red Wall is +4%.

Keir Starmer Red Wall Net Approval Rating (30 April):

Approve: 35% (+1)
Disapprove: 31% (–)
Net: +4% (+1)

Changes +/- 16 April

https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton

The Red Wall seems a dated concept now - all very Brexit, Boris and Farage. I wonder if the Tories will come to regret diverting such a large amount of political capital to it. Matthew Parris made a similar point with his (what became) notorious article about the Tories getting too hung up over Clacton-on-Sea.

Leon said:

SouthamObserver said:

Leon said:

SouthamObserver said:

Sean_F said:

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

TOPPING said:

Leon said:

The big difference between Leavers and Remainers is that Leavers are stupid and Remainers are just as stupid - see @TOPPING et al - but Remainers are haughtily convinced they are much cleverer. This, in a weird way, makes Remainers even stupider - in practise - than Leavers, who are genuinely stupid

Once you understand that, the entire farcical madness of Brexit is explicable, right down to the daily debates on here, still ongoing

Leavers or remainers may or may not be stupid.

People who don't understand that it is perfectly democratic to ask the people about a decision that you previously asked them, nor that parliaments cannot bind successive parliaments, nor that parliament is sovereign are, however, very, very stupid indeed.

You can't step into the same river twice.

2016 was a one-off fork in the road. We can't go back and change our minds, and the previous status quo isn't on offer anyway.

Any new attempt to join the EU needs to start with a party winning an election with a commitment to negotiate accession and everything that comes with it. It doesn't start with rerunning the 2016 vote.

Another Referendum is all it takes.

"Should the United Kingdom remain in no man's land or leave to join every other European country in the European Union?

Tick one box only:

Leave
Remain

The government will implement whatever the majority decide."

You sound like the people who were eagerly waiting for Nicola Sturgeon to give them another referendum on Scottish independence and thought that's all it would take.

I'm saying there's no need to overthink it. Party wins a GE promising an In/Out referendum. Same as last time. The only difference is it's the insurgent IN that triggers the EU negotiation process rather than the status quo of OUT. Instead of an exit deal the mandate is to agree an entry deal. This will happen in the medium term and IN will win comfortably as the country collectively screws its head back on.

Issue one in the campaign: is a vote to rejoin a mandate to join the Euro?

Rejoin would have to say "no" in order to avoid holing their campaign below the waterline, but what if the EU doesn't recreate our opt-outs?

It's Leave (no man's land) not Rejoin. That's number 1. Then to the substantive point. So, fine, just as in all campaigns there'll be issues, questions, truth and lies. It will be for Leave to make their case and Remain (in no man's land) to make theirs.

The bottom line is as before. If the 'change' proposition prevails it then falls on the government to negotiate the best deal with the EU that it can. An entry deal this time rather than an exit one.

Will the details of the deal have to be known before the vote? Nope. Of course not. Did the details of the deal last time have to be known before the vote? I should cocoa.

The lesson of Brexit - to be taken to heart for any other EU referendum or indeed for the Sindy one when it comes - is that for the change campaign to win they must AVOID SPECIFICS.

That would be the big problem for the Rejoin campaign. It would be open to their opponents to pin all manner of charges on the Rejoiners.

And, you'd have a very bemused EU leadership thinking "Why the hell do we want to go through this, all over again?" with perhaps a very fractious set of negotiations to follow a Rejoin vote in the referendum, with the possibility of a change of government in the intervening years.

If Rejoin ever happens it will be as the result of bottom up pressure and it will be many years from now. I may be wrong, but I don't think the under-45 demographic on PB is in any way typical of that demographic generally. Attachment to the pound, dislike of freedom of movement, concerns about sovereignty and so on just do not resonate in the way they do, for perfectly understandable reasons, to older generations. That does not guarantee anything, of course, but in 10 years time the voting public will look and feel very different to the one we have now. If growth is sluggish, if living standards are not improving, if public services are not functioning and so on, EU membership on whatever terms may start to look like a solution to deep-seated problems - just as it did in the 1970s. Obviously, if the UK actually starts to move in the right direction, that is far less likely to be the case. In the meantime, we are clearly going to move closer to the EU.

Again, the impending AI revolution renders all of this fairly meaningless, in an unusually profound way. Human life is about to change. A tsunami approaches which will upend EVERYTHING

It’s like a squabble between pre-Colombian Mexican tribes even as Hernan Cortes marches towards Tenochtitlan

AI will not stop the arguments on here. It will just make them a lot more confusing.

Similarly, it will never be a substitute for live experience. AI can't sit on the beach for you, or stand on that mountain top, or eat that steak, or drink that bottle of wine. AI will never stop Spurs from being Spursy or an England batting collapse. Real life will still matter.

I’m not arguing with any of that waffle, I’m arguing that the human economic (and hence political) landscape is about to be redrawn in a way which will make debates about EU relationships looks pitifully jejune and insignificant


See here:

“3. IBM plans to replace 7800 jobs with AI

Dropbox first planned to lay off 500 employees and replace them with AI a week ago.

Now, IBM follows with plans to replace 7,800 jobs with AI and pause hiring for roles that could be automated”

“IBM CEO Arvind Krishna says most back-office positions, such as HR and accounting, will be replaced:

“I could easily see 30% of that getting replaced by AI and automation over a five-year period.”

AI is having an insane impact on the job market already.”


https://twitter.com/rowancheung/status/1653291044551680003?s=61&t=GGp3Vs1t1kTWDiyA-odnZg

Like I said, Cortes is marching from Veracruz and Remainers are banging on about the correct methods of Mexica sun worship

TheScreamingEagles said:

Lol, this government is so fecking incompetent.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/may/02/government-puts-inquiry-into-sue-gray-departure-on-hold

turbotubbs said:

kinabalu said:

turbotubbs said:

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

TOPPING said:

Leon said:

The big difference between Leavers and Remainers is that Leavers are stupid and Remainers are just as stupid - see @TOPPING et al - but Remainers are haughtily convinced they are much cleverer. This, in a weird way, makes Remainers even stupider - in practise - than Leavers, who are genuinely stupid

Once you understand that, the entire farcical madness of Brexit is explicable, right down to the daily debates on here, still ongoing

Leavers or remainers may or may not be stupid.

People who don't understand that it is perfectly democratic to ask the people about a decision that you previously asked them, nor that parliaments cannot bind successive parliaments, nor that parliament is sovereign are, however, very, very stupid indeed.

You can't step into the same river twice.

2016 was a one-off fork in the road. We can't go back and change our minds, and the previous status quo isn't on offer anyway.

Any new attempt to join the EU needs to start with a party winning an election with a commitment to negotiate accession and everything that comes with it. It doesn't start with rerunning the 2016 vote.

Another Referendum is all it takes.

"Should the United Kingdom remain in no man's land or leave to join every other European country in the European Union?

Tick one box only:

Leave
Remain

The government will implement whatever the majority decide."

No - the conditions would need to be said too - otherwise when we lose the pound, are forced into the Euro, lose our central bank, pay lots more into the EU budget, have no rebate etc, then the whole shitshow starts again.

Make an honest case of the pros (trade, jobs for those who wish to work in Europe, boost to GDP etc) vs cost (being a net contributer to the budget, no check on Europeans moving to the UK). Otherwise it sets up the next 20 years of arguments.

We're talking practical politics not an exam question. For the Change proposition to win it should stay vague and simplistic and aspirational. It should also avoid engaging with difficult questions. Look at 2016. Would Leave have won if it'd been defined. Nope. And would Leave have won if there'd been a rigorous, informed and intelligent debate? Not a chance. Everybody knows this. THAT is the lesson of the EU referendum, none of this "next time we should be all elevated and thoughtful" wishcasting. That's naive or it's virtue-signalling or (when it comes from unreformed Leavers) it's pure and simple trolling.

But can't you see the issue with the BiB? Do that and you set the future argument up right there.

williamglenn said:

timple said:

Leon said:

williamglenn said:

Scott_xP said:

williamglenn said:

has been mythologised as *nobody* saying that we would leave the single market, even though both Leave and Remain campaigns were clear before the referendum that this is what would happen.

It's not mythology, it's cold, hard fact

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/open-britain-video-single-market-nigel-farage-anna-soubry_uk_582ce0a0e4b09025ba310fce

Thank you for illustrating my point.

Michael Gove says leaving EU would mean quitting single market
- https://www.ft.com/content/0c5c74bc-151e-11e6-b197-a4af20d5575e

Cameron: ‘I’ll pull UK out of the single market after Brexit’
- https://www.politico.eu/article/david-cameron-bbc-andrew-marr-ill-pull-uk-out-of-the-single-market-after-brexit-eu-referendum-vote-june-23-consequences-news/

Cameron knew he would have to resign, immediately, if he lost the Brexit vote (tho he denied it for obvious reasons) so I don’t think his stupid opinion counts for much, as to what he would have done “after Brexit”

Senior Brexiteers like Hannah DID say we would stay in the Single Market. I can’t remember Boris’s position, I imagine it was constructively ambiguous

On this point we disagree. Leavers knew that the vaguer they were, the more votes they would get

But Remainers also told terrible lies: Turkey’s accession was always out of the question, etc etc, and of course the europhiles had to overcome three decades of CONSTANT lies (there is no loss of sovereignty, it’s all a tidying up exercise, we will give you a vote on the Constitution etc)

Below is a great twitter thread from 2019 documenting how the debate moved from membership or not of the SM if we chose to leave the EU being an active issue before the referendum and immediately afterwards to becoming "Both sides said" by January 2017.

https://twitter.com/EmporersNewC/status/1143227136985260039

The video showing David Davies position developing from "its a negotiation" to "both sides said" is probably enough , but there is loads more contemporary evidence besides.

https://twitter.com/EmporersNewC/status/1143227211375362048

Sorry to impose cognitive dissonance on anyone who has "remembered" differently!

The person behind that account is another example of someone who has radicalised themselves beyond recognition. He started out as a Eurosceptic Tory.

Taz said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Taz said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Stark_Dawning said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Well.

Somebody please explain.

Labour leads by 18% in the Red Wall.

Red Wall VI (30 April):

Labour 48% (+1)
Conservative 30% (-1)
Liberal Democrat 8% (+1)
Reform UK 6% (-1)
Green 5% (–)
Plaid Cymru 2% (+1)
Other 1% (-1)


Starmer leads Sunak by 7%.

At this moment, which of the following do Red Wall voters think would be the better PM for the UK? (30 April)

Starmer 39% (+2)
Sunak 32% (-4)
Don't Know 29% (+2)

Changes +/- 16 April

Rishi Sunak's approval rating in the Red Wall is -9%.

Rishi Sunak Red Wall Net Approval Rating (30 April):

Disapprove: 39% (+1)
Approve: 30% (-1)
Net: -9% (-2)

Changes +/- 16 April

Keir Starmer's approval rating in the Red Wall is +4%.

Keir Starmer Red Wall Net Approval Rating (30 April):

Approve: 35% (+1)
Disapprove: 31% (–)
Net: +4% (+1)

Changes +/- 16 April

https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton

The Red Wall seems a dated concept now - all very Brexit, Boris and Farage. I wonder if the Tories will come to regret diverting such a large amount of political capital to it. Matthew Parris made a similar point with his (what became) notorious article about the Tories getting too hung up over Clacton-on-Sea.

The Red Wall should be levelled, not levelled up.

Why ?

Many parts of it are very pleasant. Certainly in the North East.

Punishment for voting for Brexit.

Would anybody really miss places like Stoke?

I’m guessing it’s not top of any football fans list of favourite away days.

noneoftheabove said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Somebody please explain.

Lowest % to answer 'No' and highest % to answer 'Yes' that we've recorded.

Do Britons believe the UK Government is currently taking the right measures to address the cost-of-living crisis? (30 April)

No 57% (-6)
Yes 31% (+6)
Don't know 12% (–)

Changes +/- 23 April

Highest % to answer 'Yes' that we've recorded.

Do Britons believe a UK Government led by the Labour Party would currently be taking the right measures to address the cost-of-living crisis? (30 April)

Yes 45% (+9)
No 34% (-3)
Don't know 21% (-6)

Changes +/- 23 April

https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1653356156591517697

https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1653354101193818112

Longer daylight increasing optimism.

TheScreamingEagles said:

Lol, this government is so fecking incompetent.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/may/02/government-puts-inquiry-into-sue-gray-departure-on-hold

Leon said:

Foxy said:

SouthamObserver said:

Leon said:

SouthamObserver said:

Sean_F said:

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

TOPPING said:

Leon said:

The big difference between Leavers and Remainers is that Leavers are stupid and Remainers are just as stupid - see @TOPPING et al - but Remainers are haughtily convinced they are much cleverer. This, in a weird way, makes Remainers even stupider - in practise - than Leavers, who are genuinely stupid

Once you understand that, the entire farcical madness of Brexit is explicable, right down to the daily debates on here, still ongoing

Leavers or remainers may or may not be stupid.

People who don't understand that it is perfectly democratic to ask the people about a decision that you previously asked them, nor that parliaments cannot bind successive parliaments, nor that parliament is sovereign are, however, very, very stupid indeed.

You can't step into the same river twice.

2016 was a one-off fork in the road. We can't go back and change our minds, and the previous status quo isn't on offer anyway.

Any new attempt to join the EU needs to start with a party winning an election with a commitment to negotiate accession and everything that comes with it. It doesn't start with rerunning the 2016 vote.

Another Referendum is all it takes.

"Should the United Kingdom remain in no man's land or leave to join every other European country in the European Union?

Tick one box only:

Leave
Remain

The government will implement whatever the majority decide."

You sound like the people who were eagerly waiting for Nicola Sturgeon to give them another referendum on Scottish independence and thought that's all it would take.

I'm saying there's no need to overthink it. Party wins a GE promising an In/Out referendum. Same as last time. The only difference is it's the insurgent IN that triggers the EU negotiation process rather than the status quo of OUT. Instead of an exit deal the mandate is to agree an entry deal. This will happen in the medium term and IN will win comfortably as the country collectively screws its head back on.

Issue one in the campaign: is a vote to rejoin a mandate to join the Euro?

Rejoin would have to say "no" in order to avoid holing their campaign below the waterline, but what if the EU doesn't recreate our opt-outs?

It's Leave (no man's land) not Rejoin. That's number 1. Then to the substantive point. So, fine, just as in all campaigns there'll be issues, questions, truth and lies. It will be for Leave to make their case and Remain (in no man's land) to make theirs.

The bottom line is as before. If the 'change' proposition prevails it then falls on the government to negotiate the best deal with the EU that it can. An entry deal this time rather than an exit one.

Will the details of the deal have to be known before the vote? Nope. Of course not. Did the details of the deal last time have to be known before the vote? I should cocoa.

The lesson of Brexit - to be taken to heart for any other EU referendum or indeed for the Sindy one when it comes - is that for the change campaign to win they must AVOID SPECIFICS.

That would be the big problem for the Rejoin campaign. It would be open to their opponents to pin all manner of charges on the Rejoiners.

And, you'd have a very bemused EU leadership thinking "Why the hell do we want to go through this, all over again?" with perhaps a very fractious set of negotiations to follow a Rejoin vote in the referendum, with the possibility of a change of government in the intervening years.

If Rejoin ever happens it will be as the result of bottom up pressure and it will be many years from now. I may be wrong, but I don't think the under-45 demographic on PB is in any way typical of that demographic generally. Attachment to the pound, dislike of freedom of movement, concerns about sovereignty and so on just do not resonate in the way they do, for perfectly understandable reasons, to older generations. That does not guarantee anything, of course, but in 10 years time the voting public will look and feel very different to the one we have now. If growth is sluggish, if living standards are not improving, if public services are not functioning and so on, EU membership on whatever terms may start to look like a solution to deep-seated problems - just as it did in the 1970s. Obviously, if the UK actually starts to move in the right direction, that is far less likely to be the case. In the meantime, we are clearly going to move closer to the EU.

Again, the impending AI revolution renders all of this fairly meaningless, in an unusually profound way. Human life is about to change. A tsunami approaches which will upend EVERYTHING

It’s like a squabble between pre-Colombian Mexican tribes even as Hernan Cortes marches towards Tenochtitlan

AI will not stop the arguments on here. It will just make them a lot more confusing.

Similarly, it will never be a substitute for live experience. AI can't sit on the beach for you, or stand on that mountain top, or eat that steak, or drink that bottle of wine. AI will never stop Spurs from being Spursy or an England batting collapse. Real life will still matter.

Indeed. Actual reality beats virtual reality every time.

Who wants to live plugged into The Matrix?

You should tell that to the 7,800 people just sacked by IBM to be replaced by AI, I’m sure it will be a momentous consolation that “a a machine cannot drink that bottle of wine that they can no longer afford coz they’ve been sacked”

Foxy said:

Leon said:

SouthamObserver said:

Leon said:

SouthamObserver said:

Sean_F said:

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

kinabalu said:

williamglenn said:

TOPPING said:

Leon said:

The big difference between Leavers and Remainers is that Leavers are stupid and Remainers are just as stupid - see @TOPPING et al - but Remainers are haughtily convinced they are much cleverer. This, in a weird way, makes Remainers even stupider - in practise - than Leavers, who are genuinely stupid

Once you understand that, the entire farcical madness of Brexit is explicable, right down to the daily debates on here, still ongoing

Leavers or remainers may or may not be stupid.

People who don't understand that it is perfectly democratic to ask the people about a decision that you previously asked them, nor that parliaments cannot bind successive parliaments, nor that parliament is sovereign are, however, very, very stupid indeed.

You can't step into the same river twice.

2016 was a one-off fork in the road. We can't go back and change our minds, and the previous status quo isn't on offer anyway.

Any new attempt to join the EU needs to start with a party winning an election with a commitment to negotiate accession and everything that comes with it. It doesn't start with rerunning the 2016 vote.

Another Referendum is all it takes.

"Should the United Kingdom remain in no man's land or leave to join every other European country in the European Union?

Tick one box only:

Leave
Remain

The government will implement whatever the majority decide."

You sound like the people who were eagerly waiting for Nicola Sturgeon to give them another referendum on Scottish independence and thought that's all it would take.

I'm saying there's no need to overthink it. Party wins a GE promising an In/Out referendum. Same as last time. The only difference is it's the insurgent IN that triggers the EU negotiation process rather than the status quo of OUT. Instead of an exit deal the mandate is to agree an entry deal. This will happen in the medium term and IN will win comfortably as the country collectively screws its head back on.

Issue one in the campaign: is a vote to rejoin a mandate to join the Euro?

Rejoin would have to say "no" in order to avoid holing their campaign below the waterline, but what if the EU doesn't recreate our opt-outs?

It's Leave (no man's land) not Rejoin. That's number 1. Then to the substantive point. So, fine, just as in all campaigns there'll be issues, questions, truth and lies. It will be for Leave to make their case and Remain (in no man's land) to make theirs.

The bottom line is as before. If the 'change' proposition prevails it then falls on the government to negotiate the best deal with the EU that it can. An entry deal this time rather than an exit one.

Will the details of the deal have to be known before the vote? Nope. Of course not. Did the details of the deal last time have to be known before the vote? I should cocoa.

The lesson of Brexit - to be taken to heart for any other EU referendum or indeed for the Sindy one when it comes - is that for the change campaign to win they must AVOID SPECIFICS.

That would be the big problem for the Rejoin campaign. It would be open to their opponents to pin all manner of charges on the Rejoiners.

And, you'd have a very bemused EU leadership thinking "Why the hell do we want to go through this, all over again?" with perhaps a very fractious set of negotiations to follow a Rejoin vote in the referendum, with the possibility of a change of government in the intervening years.

If Rejoin ever happens it will be as the result of bottom up pressure and it will be many years from now. I may be wrong, but I don't think the under-45 demographic on PB is in any way typical of that demographic generally. Attachment to the pound, dislike of freedom of movement, concerns about sovereignty and so on just do not resonate in the way they do, for perfectly understandable reasons, to older generations. That does not guarantee anything, of course, but in 10 years time the voting public will look and feel very different to the one we have now. If growth is sluggish, if living standards are not improving, if public services are not functioning and so on, EU membership on whatever terms may start to look like a solution to deep-seated problems - just as it did in the 1970s. Obviously, if the UK actually starts to move in the right direction, that is far less likely to be the case. In the meantime, we are clearly going to move closer to the EU.

Again, the impending AI revolution renders all of this fairly meaningless, in an unusually profound way. Human life is about to change. A tsunami approaches which will upend EVERYTHING

It’s like a squabble between pre-Colombian Mexican tribes even as Hernan Cortes marches towards Tenochtitlan

AI will not stop the arguments on here. It will just make them a lot more confusing.

Similarly, it will never be a substitute for live experience. AI can't sit on the beach for you, or stand on that mountain top, or eat that steak, or drink that bottle of wine. AI will never stop Spurs from being Spursy or an England batting collapse. Real life will still matter.

I’m not arguing with any of that waffle, I’m arguing that the human economic (and hence political) landscape is about to be redrawn in a way which will make debates about EU relationships looks pitifully jejune and insignificant


See here:

“3. IBM plans to replace 7800 jobs with AI

Dropbox first planned to lay off 500 employees and replace them with AI a week ago.

Now, IBM follows with plans to replace 7,800 jobs with AI and pause hiring for roles that could be automated”

“IBM CEO Arvind Krishna says most back-office positions, such as HR and accounting, will be replaced:

“I could easily see 30% of that getting replaced by AI and automation over a five-year period.”

AI is having an insane impact on the job market already.”


https://twitter.com/rowancheung/status/1653291044551680003?s=61&t=GGp3Vs1t1kTWDiyA-odnZg

Like I said, Cortes is marching from Veracruz and Remainers are banging on about the correct methods of Mexica sun worship

Certainly easy to replace travel journalism:


"When it comes to watching football in Bangkok, there are few places that can rival the atmosphere of a lively bar. The sound of excited fans cheering for their team, the clinking of glasses, and the smell of pub grub in the air - it's all part of the experience.

As a Liverpool FC fan, I found myself in a cozy bar in Bangkok, with a pint of Stella in hand and the game blasting from the big screen. The energy in the bar was palpable, as fans from all over the world came together to witness the magic of the sport.

In Bangkok, football isn't just a sport - it's a way of life. And for fans like me, there's no better way to experience it than by grabbing a pint, settling in at a local bar, and cheering on your team with fellow British fans while discussing Local elections on Political betting.com"

TheScreamingEagles said:

Lol, this government is so fecking incompetent.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/may/02/government-puts-inquiry-into-sue-gray-departure-on-hold