On Mon, 4 Jul 2016 08:37:49 -0000 (UTC), Recliner
wrote:

Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 09:01:05 on Mon, 4 Jul
2016, Martin Coffee remarked:
In my view political people do not actually have a mandate to negotiate
any particular "settlement" with the rest of the EU as none was offered
for the electorate to vote on.

There were a whole set of so-called promises, most of which were
retracted the day after the referendum.

Perhaps we should have used a two-stage mechanism like New Zealand did for
choosing its flag? The first stage was a national vote to choose the
favourite one of five alternatives (whittled down from a very long list by
a committee). The second vote was to choose between the existing flag and
the most popular alternative one. The existing flag won.

Dunno how they 'whittled down' the list, but Kiwis ended up choosing
from a miserable group of look-alikes... black and blue and silvery
ferns... and an obsession with retaining four stars, which is the
confusion point with Oz they were trying to break.

At least, amongst kicking and screaming, the Federal Gummint of the
time made a political decision to give Canada the Maple Leaf. You try
to change that now!