On Tue, 5 Jul 2016 18:29:27 +0200
Robin9 wrote:
Mizter T;156696 Wrote:
Monday after the referendum, promising the land at the end of the
rainbow. He was one of the main figureheads for the official Vote Leave

campaign.

Of course I didn't vote directly for a huge reduction in
immigration from the EU. I voted for the means to reduce it,
amongst other things.

I have no interest in anything Boris Johnson writes or says
and I can well believe his column is confused and incoherent.
I'm glad we Londoners are rid of him and I believe Michael Gove
did the nation a great service.

Can't disagree there, though you have to wonder about Goves analytical
abilities if it took him until last week to discover Boris was useless. Most
of London could have told him that years ago (though he's still preferable to
that dirty little weasel Kahn). Also no one trusts a backstabber no matter
how well intentioned so he can kiss his high level political career goodbye.

--
Spud

"Roland Perry" wrote in message
...
In message , at 11:14:44 on Sat, 2 Jul 2016,
tim... remarked:

"Roland Perry" wrote in message
...
In message , at 18:10:48 on Fri, 1 Jul 2016,
tim... remarked:

So Farage's infamous poster had no effect at all? What a waste of
his money.

Which of Farage's posters said "Vote leave and the queues of people
trying to *illegally* enter Britain will disappear?"

The one you claimed not to have seen.

why do you doubt that claim?

I don't doubt the claim, I'm just a bit surprised that someone who is
therefore so out of touch with current affairs feels his opinions should
be taken seriously.

you are being ridiculous

I didn't see the picture, so what?

I did see all the media coverage of it

how does that make me out of touch?

As I said before - one picture is worth 1000 words, and you are clearly
vastly underestimating its impact on the vote.

You have proof of that statement do you?

No, I thought not - you made it up.

I don't believe for one minute that one poster that was shown for one day
made a significant impact on the result.

(I'll give you that the 350 million pound to the NHS poster might have done,
but that poster was show/discussed for the complete duration of the
campaign)

Brexit is all about legal immigrants, the people queuing up at Calais
are illegals

Er, no. Brexit is also about (or so the leave voters were told)
reducing legal immigrants,

Yeah, that's what I said

as well as being able to come down harder on illegal immigrants.

Oh no it's not

See the poster dear Liza.

The discussion was on Brexit's (expected) impact on immigration

see above "Brexit is all about legal immigrants"

Not what the poster said.

It has been claimed many times that some of the posters bore no
relationship to the (overall) argument (often with reason). Why have you
suddenly decided that one of the posters (and the one that got the most
flack) should be taken at face value just because it suits your minuscule
little debating point.

I'm not sure what debating point that is - but it's undeniable that the
main driver for the Leave campaign was immigration,

As seems to have been accepted by the Remainers on the discussion on last
weekend's Sunday Pol (which I have just caught up with)

and not something that I have specifically denied

I think they thought "leave" meant "now all the EU immigrants have to
leave".

Only a small percentage are claiming that

the majority understood it did not mean that

tim

"Martin Coffee" wrote in message
...

I met someone who thought it meant ...
....snip first part...
we had left the EU the moment the election was announced

(I assume you mean "referendum result was announced")

I was chatting with a couple of Danes on holiday last week and they said
"have you actually left yet?"

It seems that the misunderstanding of the process is widespread

I accept that that wasn't the exact point you were making.

tim

"Roland Perry" wrote in message
...
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.

Like the punishment budget, you mean?

tim

"Recliner" wrote in message
...
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.

So, with Brexit, the first vote should have been to choose between several
(legally possible, viable, rather than fantasy Boris-style) alternative
scenarios. There are at least three, and the population could have chosen
whether they preferred immigration control over the single market, etc.

In the second round, the most popular of these would then have been
compared with remaining an EU member. That way, everyone voting to leave
would know exactly which option they were mandating the government to
seek.

The problem with this approach is, what happens if the EU won't offer us the
preferred alternative, after we have committed to leave?

tim

"Mizter T" wrote in message
...




If you want to see a muddle, see Boris Johnson's muddle of a column the
Monday after the referendum, promising the land at the end of the rainbow.
He was one of the main figureheads for the official Vote Leave campaign.

That's because (with the benefit of hindsight) Boris only did what he did
and said what he said to enhance his leadership prospects (and look how that
turned out), he doesn't have an ideological view of Brexit, unlike many of
his colleagues, so what he says can be discarded.

tim

On Thu, 14 Jul 2016 09:59:41 +0100
"tim..." wrote:
"Roland Perry" wrote in message
...
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.

Like the punishment budget, you mean?

Not to mention the dire warnings about the collapse of the pound. Which has
gone down a bit , but nothing like what some were suggesting. Also ironically
Osborne only last year was suggesting that perhaps it would be good if the
pound did drop to aid exports. That god he's gone, useless plank.

--
Spud

I don't think time will be kind to him. I think he will be seen
as one of the biggest failures we've ever had as Chancellor.
Six years wasted, and all those cuts made in order to fail to
balance the books, contrary to all his predictions.

On Thu, 14 Jul 2016 10:01:53 +0100, "tim..." put
finger to keyboard and typed:


"Recliner" wrote in message
...

So, with Brexit, the first vote should have been to choose between several
(legally possible, viable, rather than fantasy Boris-style) alternative
scenarios. There are at least three, and the population could have chosen
whether they preferred immigration control over the single market, etc.

In the second round, the most popular of these would then have been
compared with remaining an EU member. That way, everyone voting to leave
would know exactly which option they were mandating the government to
seek.

The problem with this approach is, what happens if the EU won't offer us the
preferred alternative, after we have committed to leave?

There are, broadly speaking, three post-EU options:

1. Membership of the EEA and EFTA (the "Norway" model).
2. Membership of EFTA, but not the EEA (the "Switzerland" model).
3. No European trade bloc membership at all.

Obviously, all of those have different sub-options, and there are more
variants to option 2 than option 1 and many more variants to option 3 than
options 2 and 1. But they do represent three distinct scenarios which could
usefully be voted on.

What also makes them viable as voting choices is that the EU cannot deny us
any of them. EEA membership is available to any member of either the EU or
EFTA. So if we join EFTA, the EU cannot exclude us from the EEA if that's
what we want. The other EFTA members could, theoretically, veto an
application to join them. But that is vanishingly unlikely to happen. The
UK was actually a founder member of EFTA, but subsequently left when we
joined the then EEC. Returning is unlikely to be a problem (in real life,
we have already been told we are welcome to rejoin; that assurance could
easily have been obtained prior to the vote if necessary). And, obviously,
if we choose to remain entirely unaffiliated, then there's nothing the EU
could do about that either.

In real life, I think it's likely we will end up as members of EFTA. The
benefits are useful, and the downsides of belonging are minimal (membership
carries far fewer obligations than EU membership). Whether we then go for
EEA membership will depend, I think, on whether or not we can negotiate a
suitable set of Swiss-style bilateral treaties with the EU or whether the
only way to get what we want is to join the EEA.

Mark
--
Insert random witticism here
http://www.markgoodge.com

Mark Goodge wrote:
On Thu, 14 Jul 2016 10:01:53 +0100, "tim..." put
finger to keyboard and typed:


"Recliner" wrote in message
...

So, with Brexit, the first vote should have been to choose between several
(legally possible, viable, rather than fantasy Boris-style) alternative
scenarios. There are at least three, and the population could have chosen
whether they preferred immigration control over the single market, etc.

In the second round, the most popular of these would then have been
compared with remaining an EU member. That way, everyone voting to leave
would know exactly which option they were mandating the government to
seek.

The problem with this approach is, what happens if the EU won't offer us the
preferred alternative, after we have committed to leave?

There are, broadly speaking, three post-EU options:

1. Membership of the EEA and EFTA (the "Norway" model).
2. Membership of EFTA, but not the EEA (the "Switzerland" model).
3. No European trade bloc membership at all.

Obviously, all of those have different sub-options, and there are more
variants to option 2 than option 1 and many more variants to option 3 than
options 2 and 1. But they do represent three distinct scenarios which could
usefully be voted on.

What also makes them viable as voting choices is that the EU cannot deny us
any of them. EEA membership is available to any member of either the EU or
EFTA. So if we join EFTA, the EU cannot exclude us from the EEA if that's
what we want. The other EFTA members could, theoretically, veto an
application to join them. But that is vanishingly unlikely to happen. The
UK was actually a founder member of EFTA, but subsequently left when we
joined the then EEC. Returning is unlikely to be a problem (in real life,
we have already been told we are welcome to rejoin; that assurance could
easily have been obtained prior to the vote if necessary). And, obviously,
if we choose to remain entirely unaffiliated, then there's nothing the EU
could do about that either.

In real life, I think it's likely we will end up as members of EFTA. The
benefits are useful, and the downsides of belonging are minimal (membership
carries far fewer obligations than EU membership). Whether we then go for
EEA membership will depend, I think, on whether or not we can negotiate a
suitable set of Swiss-style bilateral treaties with the EU or whether the
only way to get what we want is to join the EEA.

The difficulty is both EEA and EFTA involve paying money to the EU and
accepting free movement of people. An awful lot of people who voted "leave"
we're under the impression these were the things they were voting to get
rid of, and will be pretty miffed if they are retained.

Robin