So the UK is finished says Theresa Mayhem

[pongo]

1 hour ago, Manximus Aururaneus said:

... Remain Refusenik's and to what extent they will be tolerated.

Dictatorships aside, debate is normally allowed but, on the gavel's decent, the decision is adopted as policy and the whole tribe or team is expected to rally in support of the plan.

Further debate may or may not be permitted, but even where further debate is tolerated, tribe or team members are expected to work to the agreed plan for the benefit (and possibly survival) of the tribe for as long as that is the agreed policy.

Your implication, that further debate or difference of opinion might not be tolerated, is anti democratic and dangerously unhinged.

If further debate had not been tolerated then there would never have been a second referendum on membership, let alone talk today of a third.

Besides which - the sensible debate today is not about about whether or not to leave. It's about the shape of the future relationship. A matter which is clearly not settled. Pro Brexit politicians today are deeply divided over the possible shape of a future relationship.

Clearly the most important thing is that the democratically elected Parliament needs to put the economy first and listen to business and the City.

ETA: Britain is neither a tribe nor a team. You're not part of my tribe, for example. And my tribe is not defined by imaginary lines on maps. Nor for that matter are any of the teams I belong to.

 

Edited January 5, 2019 by pongo

[ballaughbiker]

Quote

only a handful of remoans left now- most have accepted the democratic referendum result.......

absolute tosh

[woolley]

3 hours ago, Chinahand said:

It's interesting, there is very little willingness on the part of Remain supporters to acknowledge there was a philosophical or political justification for wanting to leave.  Freggyragh's post exemplifies this.  It is all about self-serving motives and bigotry.

I was a firm remain supporter, but given the reality of the vote, taking democracy seriously, I accept Brexit, and find the idea that it is the end of the world silly.  Life will carry on.

I also increasingly find it unacceptable to brand Brexit supporters as deluded by half-truths, taken in by misconceptions, lazy bigots and plebs.

Sovereignty is important - whether over regulations for Kettles and vacuum cleaners, farm and fishing subsides, taxation, monetary policy or who and what can freely cross a border.

The EU was becoming over dominant in huge areas of our political life with Sovereignty dissipating into the Euro-superstate at the command of bureaucrats and the Brussels gravy-train.

The political philosophy based in Sovereignty is perfectly respectable.  How it interacts with Globalisation is the issue of our age.

If Remainers are going to continually brand supporters of Brexit as bigots and fools then politics will remain dangerously polarised.

Right-wing ideas can be just as well based within a respectable political framework as left-wing ones.  There are knaves and fools on both extremes, but to so brand all Brexit supporters isn't accurate or useful, but that is all Leave supporters seem to have.  And hence, in my view, they are likely to continue to lose the argument.  Leave is more complex than that, and has deeper and stronger political roots than Remainers believe.

 

Thank goodness. Someone has a brain!

[woolley]

2 hours ago, Barrie Stevens said:

The issue is the skilled and qualified persons who have decided to leave as they feel unable to establish roots post Brexit...Rightly or wrongly...

As regards the number of people working Govt statistics are not the whole truth. Not been so since the early 1980s...

There is much manipulation. Some people have 16 hours of work but receive big Benefits. They do no count as being out of work. Others on schemes do not count. Some are on courses and do not count. Many are "parked" on Job Seekers or whatever they call it. After a while they are "churned" on to a scheme or course or voluntary work...Then when this runs out are "parked" back on Job Seekers or whatever they call then "churned again".

Between the age of 60 and 65 I was paid quite well to stay out if the Job Centre/Market. They said we will keep paying you and you do not need to sign on every two weeks. I had me a paid holiday until I qualified for the "Lloyd George"...

I was not counted as unemployed and many were like me paid to go away and not become added to the statistics.  

Unemployment and Employment are just legal definitions not matter of fact.

Most of the additional jobs created in recent years are full time on full guaranteed hours contracts.

[Barrie Stevens]

55 minutes ago, woolley said:

Most of the additional jobs created in recent years are full time on full guaranteed hours contracts.

What is a full guaranteed hours contract? What is a job?

Try telling that down on my manor! Or better still prove it. I spent most of my time as a portfolio person assembling hours and bolting them together. I have lived the life and worked amongst the people so afflicted. I worked the Benefits/Work system to death over the years from 1986 onwards until 2009 and then some.

Many younger people are not even paid at all when they work (Interns)

No. Many jobs are service jobs and zero hour contracts and odd hours. They look good on paper and help the statistics but one reason for the new Benefits system is to allow people to have varying hours and have their Benefits adjusted quickly whereas under the old system they refused extra hours because the Benefits ceased until things were readjusted and it took too long. 

Last I looked a full time job was by law defined as 16 hours a week and its been like that since the 1980s/early 90s. If five million people have a 16 hour contract and the law says full time is 16 hours then there are five million full time employed people but who get Benefit top ups because the pay from 16 hours is not enough.

This is why people like me were encouraged to get 16 hour a week jobs...Trouble is that for most of the jobs the employers wanted women who likewise tend to qualify for Benefits.

I am out of touch now but as a cleaner I saw a lot of people doing the few hours and getting "FIS" (Family Income Supplement) top ups. 

One reason for the Brexit backlash was a vast mass of people fed up with being told stories and seeing money being made whilst they competed with migrant labour for low paid minimum wage pay often on zero hours contracts. 

 

 

 

[Manximus Aururaneus]

3 hours ago, pongo said:

Your implication, that further debate or difference of opinion might not be tolerated, is anti democratic and dangerously unhinged.

If further debate had not been tolerated then there would never have been a second referendum on membership, let alone talk today of a third.

Besides which - the sensible debate today is not about about whether or not to leave. It's about the shape of the future relationship. A matter which is clearly not settled. Pro Brexit politicians today are deeply divided over the possible shape of a future relationship.

Clearly the most important thing is that the democratically elected Parliament needs to put the economy first and listen to business and the City.

ETA: Britain is neither a tribe nor a team. You're not part of my tribe, for example. And my tribe is not defined by imaginary lines on maps. Nor for that matter are any of the teams I belong to.

 

Stop twisting my words - you are not so unintelligent as to need to do so are you?

Answer a simple question;

If the final result of the debate is 'Leave' - will you accept the majority decision and support the plan or not?

[ballaughbiker]

4 minutes ago, Manximus Aururaneus said:

Stop twisting my words - you are not so unintelligent as to need to do so are you?

Answer a simple question;

If the final result of the debate is 'Leave' - will you accept the majority decision and support the plan or not?

If, on further information and analysis, we are going to be worse off  then no.

[John Wright]

7 minutes ago, Manximus Aururaneus said:

Stop twisting my words - you are not so unintelligent as to need to do so are you?

Answer a simple question;

If the final result of the debate is 'Leave' - will you accept the majority decision and support the plan or not?

In a democracy there is never a final decision or unchangeable plan.

The debate is continuous and never ends.

The population, team or tribe is ever changing. The U.K. “people” are different today than in 2016. Two million people have moved off the electoral register and two million have joined.

You need to think that in the 118 years since 1900 the average time between general elections is a little over 3 years. ( that’s if you strip out the war years where elections were postponed and not held and remembering that originally parliaments had a theoretical 7 year life.

The clue is in this quote from your earlier post “for as long as that is agreed policy”. 

 You can only know if a policy is agreed, or still agreed, or if views have changed, by having elections and referenda. Those who don’t agree with the original decision must be allowed the right of dissent and opposition and debate AND to be heard. 

Otherwise it’s a totalitarian, centrally controlled 1984, with thought police.

[woolley]

@ Manximus Aururaneus

Of course they won't. Because in their world they are always right and in their tiny minds anyone who disagrees is self-serving/stupid/pleb/racist/gammon/right wing/fascist/bigoted (take your pick). This is hardly surprising seeing as they believe absolutely that they have all of the wisdom on their side and will brook no dissent. They don't look beyond the simplistic view and they cannot see the reality of the true geopolitical situation in Europe and the wider world. The crowd in the King's New Clothes would be allegorical of their enduring mindset.

Chinahand picked this up succinctly in the post I quoted a few back.

[paswt]

9 minutes ago, woolley said:

@ Manximus Aururaneus

Of course they won't. Because in their world they are always right and in their tiny minds anyone who disagrees is self-serving/stupid/pleb/racist/gammon/right wing/fascist/bigoted (take your pick). This is hardly surprising seeing as they believe absolutely that they have all of the wisdom on their side and will brook no dissent. They don't look beyond the simplistic view and they cannot see the reality of the true geopolitical situation in Europe and the wider world. The crowd in the King's New Clothes would be allegorical of their enduring mindset.

Chinahand picked this up succinctly in the post I quoted a few back.

It's sufficient to fail to agree with the views of  one poster to be called a "xenophobic thick as pigshit daily wail reading little englander" ironically the same poster claims to be bullied and on the receiving end of abuse.

[woolley]

53 minutes ago, Barrie Stevens said:

What is a full guaranteed hours contract? What is a job?

Try telling that down on my manor! Or better still prove it. I spent most of my time as a portfolio person assembling hours and bolting them together. I have lived the life and worked amongst the people so afflicted. I worked the Benefits/Work system to death over the years from 1986 onwards until 2009 and then some.

Many younger people are not even paid at all when they work (Interns)

No. Many jobs are service jobs and zero hour contracts and odd hours.

 

I appreciate your points about unpaid internships - scandal in my view - and those left behind in the post industrial wastelands of globalisation - yet another scandal.

However I said that most new jobs created are permanent full time positions which are not temporary on zero hours contracts. Despite the hype, such contracts are a declining feature of the labour market. Perhaps you are moving in the wrong circles, Bazza? Some links:

Zero hours: Only 1 in 35 people in employment (2.8%) (and actually declining) is on such a contract and of those, less than a third (so less than 1% of the working population) want more hours. (Link and onward links to spreadsheets.) https://fullfact.org/economy/facts-about-zero-hour-contracts/

Temporary: Only 1 in 18 people in employment (5.5%) (and actually declining) has temporary work and of those, just over a quarter (so less than 1.5% of the working population) (and actually declining) are doing so because they cannot find permanent work. (Link with onward link to ONS spreadsheet)  https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/datasets/fulltimeparttimeandtemporaryworkersseasonallyadjustedemp01sa

 

 

[Max Power]

1 hour ago, John Wright said:

In a democracy there is never a final decision or unchangeable plan.

The debate is continuous and never ends.

The population, team or tribe is ever changing. The U.K. “people” are different today than in 2016. Two million people have moved off the electoral register and two million have joined.

You need to think that in the 118 years since 1900 the average time between general elections is a little over 3 years. ( that’s if you strip out the war years where elections were postponed and not held and remembering that originally parliaments had a theoretical 7 year life.

The clue is in this quote from your earlier post “for as long as that is agreed policy”. 

 You can only know if a policy is agreed, or still agreed, or if views have changed, by having elections and referenda. Those who don’t agree with the original decision must be allowed the right of dissent and opposition and debate AND to be heard. 

Otherwise it’s a totalitarian, centrally controlled 1984, with thought police.

I think this is precisely why the vote was leave the EU John! 

[P.K.]

14 minutes ago, Max Power said:

I think this is precisely why the vote was leave the EU John! 

By the same logic with so much dissent over the Maybot's deal perhaps we should have another referendum?

I see the latest sop to the stupid by the UK right wing press, which is to say pretty much all of it, is the promotion of "a clean break"from the EU or some such nonsense. Of course, it's just trying to put the best possible spin onto a catastrophic no deal exit. Sounds good doesn't it though? A "clean break" from the EU.

Complete and utter nonsense of course. We will still be trading with them and so forth. After all, they grow a great deal of the food we eat! But doesn't it sound good to a brexiteer?

An aspect of the "sovereignty" nonsense made me smile today. The majority stake in an important piece of UK infrastructure, Gatwick Airport, has been sold to a French company. What price sovereignty now eh?

What's even funnier is that all the right wingers on here, you know the ones who bitch and moan about the EU being run by evil Goblins intent on world domination etc etc and they never asked to be part of an "unelected superstate" etc etc - would have voted for Ted Heath!

Now THAT'S funny....

 

[woolley]

49 minutes ago, P.K. said:

 . We will still be trading with them and so forth.

Ah. What is this? Perhaps we are making progress. We will still be trading after all. We don't need the superstate to do so. Says PK.

49 minutes ago, P.K. said:

 What's even funnier is that all the right wingers on here, you know the ones who bitch and moan about the EU being run by evil Goblins intent on world domination etc etc and they never asked to be part of an "unelected superstate" etc etc - would have voted for Ted Heath!

Now THAT'S funny....

I trust you are not including me in this. For one thing I'm not an anything winger and for another you are the only one who bangs on about evil goblins. The rest of us see calculating human beings. As for Ted Heath, I wouldn't have voted for him if he'd stood against Corbyn, Clegg, a monkey and a donkey. It would have been between the monkey and the donkey.

[woolley]

56 minutes ago, P.K. said:

 An aspect of the "sovereignty" nonsense made me smile today. The majority stake in an important piece of UK infrastructure, Gatwick Airport, has been sold to a French company. What price sovereignty now eh?
 

I can well imagine the superior, knowing smirk.

I don't agree at all with the sell off of infrastructure to foreign interests whether it be airports, water and power utilities or the railways for that matter. However, it was a matter of policy to sell them out of public ownership (with mixed results), and once in private hands they can be sold on to the highest bidder anywhere in the world. In the single market you could not bar foreign ownership even if it seemed desirable domestically to do so. At least with an independent UK policy you could reserve certain sectors to home national ownership if desired, or even renationalise them as a monopoly - the main reason Corbyn is an advocate of Brexit.  It is unlikely to happen due to possible reprisal action abroad, so I'm afraid that bird has flown.