News Uk Eu Referendum

[Suzetig]

No offence intended to any of our members
The Scottish devolution referendum was (according to the mainstream) swayed by older voters who were afraid (fear is the main tool of politics) that they might lose their pensions.

I'm not sure I agree with this at all. The SNP failed to answer very basic questions about what an independent Scotland would look like in terms of things like currency, EU membership, NATO membership, fiscal responsibility etc. They basically had no plan for what would happen next and the assumption would be that we would continue to use sterling, remain in the EU, have interest rates set by the Bank of England.

Had the SNP had a decent plan, I think Scotland would have gone independent - in fact the Leave campaign have run a fairly similar campaign in that they have no plan for what happens now but assume we can keep the benefits of the EU without the responsibilities that go with. When it comes down to it the SNP thought that people would be so passionate about independence they would vote for it and figure out the details later and the Leave campaign thought the people would take an analytical view and vote to stay in. It seems both were wrong.

@anthony there are very many reasons for high unemployment in parts of the UK but actually very little of it is about immigration. The places which have high unemployment rates are those where heavy industry and manufacturing were key employers where areas never recovered when those industries were stripped out under Thatcher. We're now looking at 2nd and 3rd generations of people who have never held down a job, not because there aren't jobs for them but because it's not part of their cultural make up to work - they literally don't have any frame of reference when it comes to employment. For immigrants to be taking their jobs, the indiginant population would need to be prepared to work and in some cases (not all) they simply aren't.

 

[Anarchy]

The SNP failed to answer very basic questions about what an independent Scotland would look like in terms of things like currency, EU membership, NATO membership, fiscal responsibility etc. They basically had no plan for what would happen next and the assumption would be that we would continue to use sterling, remain in the EU, have interest rates set by the Bank of England.

You are right there were a lot of questions left un answered, though I'm unsure how many of those were taken into account - half of the population only has a double digit IQ:cp:

Salmond was an oil economist (presumably of the mathematical variety, that's the sort that assumes perfect knowledge). Before 2008, the assumption appears to have been that Scotland would fund a generous welfare state on the proceeds of the oil and financial services sectors:hilarious::hilarious::hilarious:

I'm guessing that the Brexit referendum results now give a picture of where a majority of the Scottish population stands on EU membership.

The other questions are much more politically tricky. I can't see the German electorate being too keen on Scotland joining the Euro, when there are more than enough profligate PIIIGSS in the Euro zone already.

Germany always maintained a backup stock of Deutsch Mark notes so its entire stock of circulating notes could be replaced within 24 hours. AFAIK that option is still in place, and Germany could be out of the Euro in about 24 hours, if it ever needed to be.

Governments like to issue bonds as a way to raise money - it's politically easier for them to do that than it is for them to raise taxes, but to issue bonds on a large scale, they need access to a central bank and printing presses

Central banks either buy the government bonds directly, or accept them as collateral from banks in return for newly created fiat money - it's a way of concealing the fact that money is being printed for government to spend.

The Euro has the problem of being a "tragedy of the commons" where all euro zone government bonds were accepted on an equal footing by the European Central Bank, naturally the banks preferred the higher interest rate paid on dodgy Greek bonds to compared to sounder German ones

This resulted in a redistribution of wealth from Germany to Greece (at least until the ECB began to impose a discount on the now "junk" rated Greek bonds)
Prof Philipp Bagus explains the mechanism here

and in his book; "The Tragedy of the Euro" (he doesn't believe in copyright, so it's free to download)
Dead Link Removed

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What the currency problem means, is:

No one else will want a Scottish state parasitically inflating their currency and transferring wealth to itself

That means that a newly independent Scotland would either have to issue its own new currency, and suffer the problems of its poor international acceptance damaging trade, and the unpopularity of rapid price inflation as the new currency is over printed

or, the independent Scottish state would be limited to circulating someone else's currency - and not be able to print any of it to spend itself.

Given that the Scottish nationalists and their supporters want large state sector spending and welfare state largesse, They're going to be well and truly screwed, they're going to have to choose from:

• tax very heavily (and chase people, business and wealth out of Scotland).
• Introduce a Scottish Zimbabwe dollar:rolleyes: https://justforsneaks.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/zimbabwe-100-trillion-dollar-bill-obverse.jpg
  
• or they're going to have to keep to low tax and low spending.

It looks like it will need to be England that secedes from the united Kingdom;)
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I haven't mentioned Scotland's per capita share of the UK national debt Which is over 80% of GDP. The Stability and Growth pact for entry to the Euro Zone required keeping debt below 60% of GDP - though that was never enforced.
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Regarding defense,
The Irish Republic is constitutionally neutral, and that works well

Going further, Iceland has no standing army and only a very limited defence agency

and further still, Costa Rica has absolutely no army or state sector defense agency
and Liechtenstein has only a police force and SWAT team
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_without_armed_forces

 

[greenleaf]

It isn't even a consensus amongst climatologists
Much of it is scare mongering in an attempt to convinc...

Just because something *could* theoretcially have been manufactured towards the ends the movie clip's fictional characters desire, doesn't mean it *has* been. In my country, owners of media tend to be fossil fuel moguls, the organic food farmers just somehow aren't doing the same financially...:oops::whistling:

In our country, we hear far less about suffering of millions in other countries already impacted by climate change (mostly caused by countries like ours) than we hear about terrorist incidents here that kill dozens. (Not to minimize the suffering of the people impacted by terrorism; suffering is suffering.) We hear virtually nothing about relationships of our small and large economic decisions toward any big picture beyond our local unemployment figures; no one in the media wants to draw climate connections too directly, money might be lost! If you want to look for "conspiracies", please look there, though I personally believe it is not a single orchestrated conspiracy, but rather cumulative results of many millions of individuals -- at all power levels -- with regular human needs, goals, and denial, and the normal limited choices available to do differently.

Fossil fuels give us nice stuff, life-saving stuff, quickly! It's really hard to deal with the reality of impact on huge systems that we only really understand even theoretically if we are scientists; we're not set up as a species to have to deal with a situation like this. The comparisons and choices feel impossible sometimes to me, but I still feel that most people could do a lot better here pretty easily. (You should see the lines of huge SUVs with one person driving to work each morning.)

But yes, making "common cause" with refugees, and acknowledging their trauma as real, maybe supporting programs like ptsd services in languages spoken by groups in our areas, could be done by some of us?

Seaside low-elevation properties in my region, by the way, are quietly decreasing in value and their insurance rates are zooming; if you really don't believe in climate change, sea level rise, etc., go buy up some of that stuff.:whistling::whistling::whistling:

 

[Anarchy]

Just because something *could* theoretcially have been manufactured towards the ends the movie clip's fictional characters desire, doesn't mean it *has* been. In my country, owners of media tend to be fossil fuel moguls, the organic food farmers just somehow aren't doing the same financially...:oops::whistling:

In our country, we hear far less about suffering of millions in other countries already impacted by climate change (mostly caused by countries like ours) than we hear about terrorist incidents here that kill dozens. (Not to minimize the suffering of the people impacted by terrorism; suffering is suffering.) We hear virtually nothing about relationships of our small and large economic decisions toward any big picture beyond our local unemployment figures; no one in the media wants to draw climate connections too directly, money might be lost! If you want to look for "conspiracies", please look there, though I personally believe it is not a single orchestrated conspiracy, but rather cumulative results of many millions of individuals -- at all power levels -- with regular human needs, goals, and denial, and the normal limited choices available to do differently.

I'll refer you to someone who has studied climate science for over 30 years and is Prof of Climate science at Georgia IT; Judith Curry

check out her submission to the us senate enquiry, "Data or Dogma" https://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/curry-senate-testimony-2015.pdf
Curry really does have serious integrity. https://judithcurry.com/about/

as regards conspiracy,
that's been out in the open since the climate-gate data dump. Including the conspiracy to get a journal editor fired for publishing papers which questioned the warmerist dogma.

Climategate also exposed the cosy little hockey team who got to edit each others papers, and to reject any submitted papers which were not on their side.

The extreme flimsiness of the (cherry picked) data and the incompatibility of the proxies for temperature was well known before climategate, in fact Anthony Montford's book, "the hockey stick illusion" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hockey_Stick_Illusion, which explains McIntyre and McKitrick's criticisms and the ongoing debate for the intelligent layperson, hit the bookshop shelves just about the time that the first installment of the climategate data dump came out in late 2010

If you want to turn things which are more valued - into things which are less valued (eg the 9 litres of petroleum required to make 1 litre of bio diesel - to save the planet) feel free to spend your own money.

Incidentally, the climate has always changed
the points of contention are that the change is now:

1. unprecedented
2. catastrophic, and,
   
3. anthropogenic

You'd actually do yourself some good by looking at the criticisms of the warmerist position, rather than repeating warmerist press releases with ever greater fervency.

 

[Anarchy]

But yes, making "common cause" with refugees, and acknowledging their trauma as real, maybe supporting programs like ptsd services in languages spoken by groups in our areas, could be done by some of us?

and spare rooms until they find out where they want to live and work.

 

[Anarchy]

incidentally, remember when the scare wasn't warming, it was an impending ice age

and the BBC was publishing books written by a former editor of New Scientist, to edjumicate us about that danger to our existence?

http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/Sea...&tn=the+weather+machine+and+the+threat+of+ice

 

[Gadgie]

I think immigration was the main point of this referendum, as lot of voters thought that if we left the EU we could control our own borders?

The thing is, what ever we decide to do, it's too late now?

We should have had the same rules that Australia and other countries have, where you have to prove that you can support you and your family financially, and serve a probation period, and be in work before you are accepted into the country.

 

[anthony]

as lot of voters thought that if we left the EU we could control our own borders?

Well... you can, and especially in the near future now the UK is independent again. When the people shout enough noise over an issue, it tends to happen, just because the politicians see an angle for positivity with the voters. Lets be honest... that's what they're all about, and not whether the idea is good or not for a country.

We really need some honest politicians who speak the truth, provide the facts (fore and against) and then arm their populous with as much information as they can to help make decisions.

 

[Deleted member 29920]

It was interesting how they sent us all those little booklets trying to sway the voters decision towards remaining in the EU.

 

[Deleted member 29920]

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploa...ean-union-is-the-best-decision-for-the-uk.pdf

 

[anthony]

I find it interesting now all these fore voters want another go at it, to say no. What is the point of a referendum if you keep getting multiple goes at it?

 

[Anarchy]

I find it interesting now all these fore voters want another go at it, to say no

The pro EU crowd could always continue to send their payments to Brussels and Strasbourg, in the hope that the bureaucrats would send them endless towering stacks of rules and regulations to live their lives by.;)

and for once it would actually be true that those rules and regs were voluntary and consensual (for those who sent their money off) - unless those true believers start issuing fatwas against each other.:eek:

just as government at any level, local toon cooncil to EU superstate, issues fatwas against anyone who breaks any of their endless rules.