Brexit Referendum Superthread

djpbarry

AnGaelach wrote: »

Well, you've already been told the reasons why. Immigration, constant encroachment of the EU, the globalisation of economies.
You're just choosing not to listen to the problems.

They're not problems. They're perceived problems. Or perhaps more accurately, they are perceived to be the causes of problems.

AnGaelach wrote: »

Probably because immigration is why those people feel hard-done by.

No, people feel hard done by for a whole host of different reasons. Immigrants are often blamed as the cause of all of society's ills when there is usually scant evidence to support such claims.

AnGaelach wrote: »

It's not the highly educated who have to compete with mass migration, it's the working class.

Bollocks. Utter bollocks.

There is far, far more competition from immigrants for jobs that demand high levels of skills and education than there is at the other end of the job market. I work in a research institute in Central London and the majority of the staff there are not British - roughly one third are from elsewhere in the EU.

Meanwhile, I still have to pay 100 pounds call-out charge for a plumber, amidst claims that immigrants are driving down incomes for tradesmen.

djpbarry

Rightwing wrote: »

The media repeats what organisations say. If the CIA makes up a pile of shi!e, the media trust them...

The media trust the CIA now? What are you talking about?

Rightwing wrote: »

But mass immigration causes these problems.

Did you even read the post you were responding to?

Rightwing

djpbarry wrote: »

The media trust the CIA now? What are you talking about?
Did you even read the post you were responding to?

Well they told us Hussein had WMD.

Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.

As people have decome more educated, the elites have failed to keep up. What fooled the people before, is no longer fooling them. This is leading to great problems.

ancapailldorcha

Rightwing wrote: »

Well they told us Hussein had WMD.

Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.

As people have decome more educated, the elites have failed to keep up. What fooled the people before, is no longer fooling them. This is leading to great problems.

Sorry but that's nonsense. People haven't just wised up after Blair's disastrous expedition in the Middle East. Tabloids have been blaming immigrants since Gutenberg's day. People are believing it because it's easier to believe a Nigel Farage soundbyte than it is to ask the important question of why something is the way that it is and to actually have to seek answers.

Rightwing

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

Sorry but that's nonsense. People haven't just wised up after Blair's disastrous expedition in the Middle East. Tabloids have been blaming immigrants since Gutenberg's day. People are believing it because it's easier to believe a Nigel Farage soundbyte than it is to ask the important question of why something is the way that it is and to actually have to seek answers.

No.
Each time there is a bullshi! report out, it just does damage. People question their Governments more. They don't believe everything they are told. There is a credibility issue, and as far as I see, the Governments are failing, and failing badly.

ancapailldorcha

Rightwing wrote: »

No.
Each time there is a bullshi! report out, it just does damage. People question their Governments more. They don't believe everything they are told. There is a credibility issue, and as far as I see, the Governments are failing, and failing badly.

I disagree. I think that social media like Facebook and Twitter now enable people to filter out things that they disagree with or find objecitonable with the result being a prevalent form of intellectual laziness where people pick out the easiest answer they like and block out everything else. Consumers have no direct control over what they see in a news broadcast or a newspaper but on social media, they do. Nobel Prize winning Psychologist Daniel Kahnemann calls this "Cognitive ease".

Rightwing

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

I disagree. I think that social media like Facebook and Twitter now enable people to filter out things that they disagree with or find objecitonable with the result being a prevalent form of intellectual laziness where people pick out the easiest answer they like and block out everything else. Consumers have no direct control over what they see in a news broadcast or a newspaper but on social media, they do. Nobel Prize winning Psychologist Daniel Kahnemann calls this "Cognitive ease".

I do accept there is truth in this, but it alone cannot explain why Brexit for instance went through, when Govt and opposition didn't want it to. Cameron totally got it wrong. People didn't trust him.

Similarly with Trump. Not only did he demolish the Democrats, he demolished the Republicans, as they wanted nothing to do with him. It was if people trusted Trump more than the Establishment.

ancapailldorcha

Rightwing wrote: »

I do accept there is truth in this, but it alone cannot explain why Brexit for instance went through, when Govt and opposition didn't want it to. Cameron totally got it wrong. People didn't trust him.

Trump is beyond the remit of his thread so I'll limit my response to the former half of your post.

You're right, that alone doesn't explain Brexit. You also have a variety of other factors in play, namely spats within the Tory party which the referendum was designed to quell, wage stagnation and widening inequality. Some people voted Brexit because they thought it would help the NHS, others believed that it might restore sovereignty in a country where the elected government won 24% of the total vote and others because they thought their incomes might rise (they won't).

Rightwing

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

Trump is beyond the remit of his thread so I'll limit my response to the former half of your post.

You're right, that alone doesn't explain Brexit. You also have a variety of other factors in play, namely spats within the Tory party which the referendum was designed to quell, wage stagnation and widening inequality. Some people voted Brexit because they thought it would help the NHS, others believed that it might restore sovereignty in a country where the elected government won 24% of the total vote and others because they thought their incomes might rise (they won't).

I agree. Many factors involved.

murphaph

Memnoch wrote: »

I have come to realise that, regrettably, the system is only a reflection of human nature.

People are inherently selfish. So they vote for politicians who promise to do something 'for them,' rather than say look for politicians who will act with genuine integrity for the greater good of society or the country as a whole.

This leaves them easily open to manipulation and divide and conquer tactics by a political class, that once it wields power, only looks out for its own self interests rather than for those of the people who elected them.

It's not like this everywhere. Some societies do think about the greater good.

AnGaelach

Memnoch wrote: »

I understand that you feel that immigration is the problem, and many who voted for brexit feel this way.

But is it really immigration that is the problem? Or is it low wages and lack of protection for workers rights that are the problem?

Immigration depresses wages in the sector those migrants are working in - are you really going to blame Google's tax structure for wages in the hospitality sector being depressed?

Memnoch wrote: »

What about pressure on public services and housing? And my question is the same. Are these pressures there because of immigration, or is it because corporations are paying close to 0% tax? Because the government in the UK is cutting back services in order to avoid having to tax corporations and the ultra right?

Again, you're trying to blame Facebook or Apple for the fact that close to 900,000 foreign people moved into Ireland over a 10 year period? No, corporation tax would have very little to do with strain on the public sector or

Memnoch wrote: »

You or I, when we earn over 40k we pay half our income in tax in Ireland. Yet how many countries in the world do corporations pay this kind of tax?

Corporations generate millions in tax revenue, you do not. Wanting them to pay 40% tax is just going to drive them away. Do you want 12.5% of 100 or 100% of 0?

Memnoch wrote: »

This is the great media con that the voting public are falling for. Reducing immigration is not going to raise wages and increase job opportunities, not in any tangible sense. Nor will it make any real difference to the public services in the UK that are being decimated by the Conservative government.

Why are you blaming the media for it? The media was against Brexit the entire way along.

Memnoch wrote: »

It's a red herring. Divide and conquer. Playing working class people against each other while the ultra rich line their pockets.

A red herring is blaming the banks for everything. Immigration plays a key role in the issue of Western societies. Are you going to blame corporations for the fact that immigrants haven't integrated into society in Germany, the UK, France, Netherlands, Belgium?

"It's the economy, stupid!" doesn't really hold true any more. People said Brexit was going to destroy the British economy, yet they still voted to leave rather than remain.

It's immigration, stupid!

AnGaelach

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

Well, behind his chummy 'bloke down the pub' facade, he is a populist at heart (ala Trump and Le Pen) who, along with his party, deceived many foolish people into believing that he was the answer. His rhetoric is deeply jingoistic and his policy essentially seems to be a Little Englander 'Make Britain Great Again'. That's not going to happen, but disillusioned and angry Brits clutched at the straw he was offering. UKIP are toast now because the Little Englander Tories have taken some of their clothes.

To be honest, though I have a lot of English friends and like England and English people in general, I'm beginning to think 'Good Riddance' because of the persistent jingoism.

Maybe if Labour or the Conservatives or the Europeans had listened to people's misgivings about mass migration then those people wouldn't have been angry?

If you denigrate someone for being racist, you can't then blame them for turning to someone who doesn't.

AnGaelach

Rightwing wrote: »

YWorking class people feel threatened, if say Polish painters can do an equally good job for say half the price, and they can. I've no issue here, in fact it is to be welcomed. But it is a problem for the working class painter.

Why? Because if you're a business owner you want to pay the lowest wage possible? Because if you're in the political class you want to keep your lobbyists happy and would rather use taxpayer money to fly to France for a haircut than actually having to face up to the issues being presented?

I'm not a libertarian, nor do I hold to the misguided belief that immigration is the cure to all economic evils. I would much rather put Irishmen and Irishwomen first, rather than the desire of a business to extract a higher profit margin at their expense.

AnGaelach

djpbarry wrote: »

They're not problems. They're perceived problems. Or perhaps more accurately, they are perceived to be the causes of problems.

When people are told it's racist to presume immigration brings any problem, and they're denigrated by the media, but still there are increases in opposition to immigration - maybe it's not perceived and maybe there are issues. That seems more likely to be true to me than to think people are just suddenly deciding to become racist.

djpbarry wrote: »

No, people feel hard done by for a whole host of different reasons. Immigrants are often blamed as the cause of all of society's ills when there is usually scant evidence to support such claims.

https://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/gborjas/publications/popular/NR2016.pdf wrote:

The narrative that immigration supporters use to justify freer borders is that “immigrants do jobs that natives don’t want to do” and so have little impact on job opportunities for the native-born. David Card’s study of the Mariel supply shock, published in 1990, stands as a landmark contribution to that narrative. Within a span of just a few weeks, over 100,000 Marielitos arrived in Miami in the spring of 1980. Card compared labor-market conditions in Miami with those in other cities before and after Mariel. He could not detect any impact on the average wage of Miami’s workers, leading to the perception that natives have little to worry about from expanded immigration.
Last spring, as I was writing a book that will be published later this year (more on that below), I decided to revisit the Mariel episode to see for myself what the data actually show. To my shock, within an hour of looking at the publicly available data, my computer was showing that Card was simply wrong — the Marielitos had indeed depressed the average wage of comparable workers. The trick to unlocking the puzzle was to account for the fact that nearly two-thirds of the Marielitos were high-school dropouts, increasing the number of low-skill workers in Miami by 20 percent within a matter of weeks. It seems that if Mariel were going to have an impact, it would have an impact on the low-skill labor market. Remarkably, Card did not look at that market and neither did anyone else in the past 25 years.

djpbarry wrote: »

Bollocks. Utter bollocks.

There is far, far more competition from immigrants for jobs that demand high levels of skills and education than there is at the other end of the job market. I work in a research institute in Central London and the majority of the staff there are not British - roughly one third are from elsewhere in the EU.

Meanwhile, I still have to pay 100 pounds call-out charge for a plumber, amidst claims that immigrants are driving down incomes for tradesmen.

Your personal anecdotes aren't really of merit though, are they?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/12063052/Mass-migration-driving-down-wages-offered-to-British-jobseekers.html wrote:

Economists at the Bank found that increases in immigration have reduced the pay on offer to care workers, waiting staff, and cleaners, as the competition for these jobs has risen.

The Bank calculated that a 10 percentage point rise in the proportion of immigrants would reduce the average pay received in these semi and unskilled service sector roles by 1.9 percent.

The study looked at 23 years of data, running up until last year.
Lord Green, the chairman of the Migration Watch think-tank, said: “For many years the immigration lobby have claimed that there is no evidence that immigration has any significant effect on the wages of British workers.
“This new research by the Bank of England blows their claims out of the water. It has found a significant negative impact on those in the lower skilled services sector in which six million UK born are working. This amounts to nearly a quarter of all British workers.”

Rightwing

AnGaelach wrote: »

Why? Because if you're a business owner you want to pay the lowest wage possible? Because if you're in the political class you want to keep your lobbyists happy and would rather use taxpayer money to fly to France for a haircut than actually having to face up to the issues being presented?

I'm not a libertarian, nor do I hold to the misguided belief that immigration is the cure to all economic evils. I would much rather put Irishmen and Irishwomen first, rather than the desire of a business to extract a higher profit margin at their expense.

Keeping costs down is a sound business idea. Failure to keep costs in check usually results in bankruptcy.

Immigration is a necessity, but it should be done on a visa system, identify what workers will add value, what workers are needed etc.

Consonata

AnGaelach wrote: »

Originally Posted by http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/12063052/Mass-migration-driving-down-wages-offered-to-British-jobseekers.html
Economists at the Bank found that increases in immigration have reduced the pay on offer to care workers, waiting staff, and cleaners, as the competition for these jobs has risen.

The Bank calculated that a 10 percentage point rise in the proportion of immigrants would reduce the average pay received in these semi and unskilled service sector roles by 1.9 percent.

The study looked at 23 years of data, running up until last year.
Lord Green, the chairman of the Migration Watch think-tank, said: “For many years the immigration lobby have claimed that there is no evidence that immigration has any significant effect on the wages of British workers.
“This new research by the Bank of England blows their claims out of the water. It has found a significant negative impact on those in the lower skilled services sector in which six million UK born are working. This amounts to nearly a quarter of all British workers.”

Because I am sure the Daily Telegraph has a sound history of well intentioned and unbiased journalism. :rolleyes:

Water John

And Lord Green is very interested in keeping many millions of UK born people in low skilled, low paying jobs for the rest of their lives.

AnGaelach

Consonata wrote: »

Because I am sure the Daily Telegraph has a sound history of well intentioned and unbiased journalism. :rolleyes:

It's certainly more reputable than the Guardian

Water John wrote: »

And Lord Green is very interested in keeping many millions of UK born people in low skilled, low paying jobs for the rest of their lives.

Ah, it's a conspiracy by the Bank of England. They're merely taking the money out of people's pay and saying it was stolen by immigrants!

Consonata

AnGaelach wrote: »

It's certainly more reputable than the Guardian

Comparing a newspaper which has multiple Pulitzer Prize winners with a newspaper who has blatantly misleading covers like this



But yes. Totally unbiased and consistently honest journalism (/s) :rolleyes:

Consonata

AnGaelach wrote: »

Again, you're trying to blame Facebook or Apple for the fact that close to 900,000 foreign people moved into Ireland over a 10 year period? No, corporation tax would have very little to do with strain on the public sector or

Yet net migration has only become even this year, for the first time since 2009. There has been no influx of workers taking Irish jobs. 920,000 people have emigrated since 2006.

ancapailldorcha

Mod: Let's get back on topic please. Immigration to Ireland isn't relevant to this thread.

Consonata

AnGaelach wrote: »

Immigration depresses wages in the sector those migrants are working in - are you really going to blame Google's tax structure for wages in the hospitality sector being depressed?

Easy to quote Boris Johnson without sourcing your claims. Going to the source of this particular falsehood that was reported around the time of the referendum was the report done by the Bank of England.A report to which Boris then admits he had not read, and was just using it as talking points against remain.

If we go to the actual report we find that that the wage depression can be somewhat accounted for by the influx of lower paid workers, (due to the fact that EU migrant workers get paid around 5% less than native workers do in lower paid fields). That brings the effect down to around 1.3% in purely lower paid fields. In higher paid fields the effect is negligible due to the fact that the compositional change of an influx of lower paid migrant workers mean that there is more people dragging down the average wage.

ancapailldorcha

Post deleted. Anyone wanting a general discussion on the merits and pitfalls on immigration should start another thread. This one is about the Brexit referendum.

steddyeddy

Marcon's victory isn't quite what the Brexiters were hoping for. A vote for sanity finally.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/french-election-latest-emmanuel-macron-who-is-president-france-en-marche-marine-le-pen-a7723286.html

Billy86

steddyeddy wrote: »

Marcon's victory isn't quite what the Brexiters were hoping for. A vote for sanity finally.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/french-election-latest-emmanuel-macron-who-is-president-france-en-marche-marine-le-pen-a7723286.html

On top of Austria & the Netherlands, it seems Europe's taken a look at what's going on across the sea and the ocean and kind of thought to itself, "eehhh, no thanks."

Water John

Yeah, the Brexiteers don't take losing too well.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/07/british-brexit-supporters-insult-emmanuel-macron-after-presidential-win

Very impressed with Macron's speech. Set his own targets high.
Any chance of we getting a good, impressive leader any time soon?

Macron was one of the few politicians who wanted a fair deal for Greece and not see them punished. Hope he brings a balance to Schauble's economics.

BoatMad

Billy86 wrote: »

On top of Austria & the Netherlands, it seems Europe's taken a look at what's going on across the sea and the ocean and kind of thought to itself, "eehhh, no thanks."

Yes, the end of the " whose next " after the uk , nonsense

The uk is clearly the crazy outlier

ambro25

Billy86 wrote: »

On top of Austria & the Netherlands, it seems Europe's taken a look at what's going on across the sea and the ocean and kind of thought to itself, "eehhh, no thanks."

I think that at least some of the vote for Macron (I distinguish that from the vote against LePen) is actually very similar to the vote for Brexit and Trump, ideologically speaking: it's a vote for change from the old left/right politics and the clientelism of same.

The clear difference, of course, is that Macron is pushing that change with a plan :pac:

IMHO the litmus test will be at the Legislatives shortly, wherein we'll see how Macron's ragtag of (for the vast majority-) political newbies under his En Marche banner, fare against the candidates of established parties, regulars or parachuted.

If his party does well there, then I'd say his tabula rasa approach is working well and bedding in with the electorate.

He needs a mandate to go knock at No.10 with the Le Touquet agreements and a large pair of scissors in his satchel

ancapailldorcha

ambro25 wrote: »

If his party does well there, then I'd say his tabula rasa approach is working well and bedding in with the electorate.

Indeed. The Liberal Democrats are still struggling with baggage from their term as coalition partners. A clean break could be a good thing though there would be issues such as branding, infrastructure, etc...

demfad

The great British Brexit robbery: how our democracy was hijacked

(From The Guardian)

'A shadowy global operation involving big data, billionaire friends of Trump and the disparate forces of the Leave campaign influenced the result of the EU referendum. As Britain heads to the polls again, is our electoral process still fit for purpose?'

'It’s not MI6’s job to warn of internal threats. It was a very strange speech. Was it one branch of the intelligence services sending a shot across the bows of another? Or was it pointed at Theresa May’s government? Does she know something she’s not telling us?”
Senior intelligence analyst, April 2017'

There are three strands to this story. How the foundations of an authoritarian surveillance state are being laid in the US. How British democracy was subverted through a covert, far-reaching plan of coordination enabled by a US billionaire. And how we are in the midst of a massive land grab for power by billionaires via our data. Data which is being silently amassed, harvested and stored. Whoever owns this data owns the future.

• Coordination between campaigns is prohibited under UK electoral law.
• Robert Mercer owned Big data firm Cambridge Analytica GAVE a donation in kind to Leave.EU. (worth a 7 figure sum est.) Their services FREE for Brexit
• The article shoes that AggregateIQ is de Facto one and the same as Cambridge, Mercer even controls its IP addressing.
• The other Leave campaigns: Vote Leave, BeLeave, Veterand for Britain, DUP all employed and paid moneys to AggregateIQ. The official Vote Leave campaign contributing over HALF its total payments.
• Steve Bannon was VP of Cambridge Analytica. Cambridge and AggregateIQ also worked on Trump's campaign.

For the last month, I’ve been writing about the links between the British right, the Trump administration and the European right. And these links lead to Russia from multiple directions. Between Nigel Farage and Donald Trump and Cambridge Analytica.