so you're into retarded amputees?

Absolutely.

But you also have a situation where those policies that are meant to help the rich don't come from the rich, they come from professional managers, politicians, and lawyers. None of those people understand the economy or the issues that are important for market making (real economic growth).

Of course in practice owners don't want it. But in a highly abstract way, some on-paper, Mr. Burnsian billionaire might, and in the crazy pants on head world where neoliberals live, that is a good enough reason to do anything.

Yes, but I don't expect the actual referendum to happen in the next few weeks or anything. I'd give it two years.

....so, Britland has just had two weeks of *ahem* "eventfulness". In case you were wondering wtf has been happening, we've had something like a mash-up of The Thick of It and Game of Thrones:

• The pound tanked immediately upon Brexit being announced and has been limping downwards ever since - currently at lows against the USD not seen in 30+ years.
  
  
• People wondered what the hell was going on because no one told them quite what to expect.
  
  
• Several promises that were made by the Brexit campaign were immediately shown for the lies they were. The best example was a well-publicised campaign bus that claimed leaving would allow us to reinvest £350 million a week into the NHS. .....except this was the full amount we were giving to the EU and didn't include the rebate we got or the other benefits that came back our way (and of course other claims were being made about redirecting this non-existent cash to other causes célèbre). Within hours of the victory for "Leave", pretty much all of its leaders were disowning these claims.
  
  
• The Conservatives:

[INDENT]

• David Cameron, the spineless, dish-faced ****-stain responsible for this mess, didn't want to be the one left with the poisoned chalice of leading the UK through a self-inflicted recession and decided to resign ASAP despite the markets reeeeally needing some sort of stability now.
  
• Michael Gove, prominent leave campaigner, former Education secretary, current Justice secretary and lightbulb-headed wanker announces his candidacy for leader of the conservatives despite having the strength of character and charisma of a wet noodle. He'd campaigned heavily for Leave alongside Boris Johnson who was widely seen as the candidate for future leader of the conservatives and possible prime minister after David Cameron. He opened his speech by stabbing his former ally in the back by claiming "I have come, reluctantly, to the conclusion that Boris cannot provide the leadership or build the team for the task ahead … I have, therefore, decided to put my name forward for the leadership"
  
• Boris Johnson, the floppy-haired, gibbering thunder**** has been aiming to be prime minister for years. He's built a populist image by playing a buffoon and milking too many appearances on popular news-comedy shows in the past. It was pretty clear his plan was to front the Leave campaign and counting on it failing so he could be a populist leader without having to deal with any of the fallout. He seemed completely out of character after Leave won and announced a surprise withdrawal from the leadership competition at the same press conference where Gove effectively stabbed him in the back.
  
• Theresa May, a woman so far to the right I don't have any funny insults for her. She's been home secretary for a while and she blames the human rights act for everything. She's been making life difficult for all immigrants, even the ones we want, and she's got a huge hard-on for spying on the general population. She really, really ****ing hates the human rights act and her being PM scares the crap out of me.
  
• Andrea Leadsom, an otherwise unknown MP, put her name forward as well and was pushed by many supporting Brexit as she was a staunch and vocal supporter during that campaign. Unfortunately she comes from the Jurassic wing of the conservative party and lets her religion leak into pretty much everything. Staunchly anti-gay rights and anti-workers rights. She made a big deal out of being a mother in some horribly mismanaged attempt to score points on the childless Theresa May. She also submitted a heavily embellished CV which the newspapers ripped to pieces. She stayed in the race until it was just her and Theresa May left. Then she claimed the newspapers had run a dirty campaign against her by reporting the things she said and withdrew her candidacy.
  
• And now Theresa May is going to waltz into the top job in the country having been selected only by a handful of MPs and not even via selection by her party's membership. Rather ironic that we now have an unelected PM for the next 4 years after a campaign that complained that the EU was not democratic enough.
  [/INDENT]

• Labour:

[INDENT]

• Labour, the official opposition, have chosen this moment of weakness from the Conservatives not to go on the attack but to eat themselves instead by trying to force out their leader. Jeremy Corbyn, the current old-school left-wing leader was selected by an overwhelming majority of Labour members just 10 months ago but his own MPs have rebelled and are pushing a vote of no confidence against him. Unfortunately Labour is full of Blairite types who fail to realise the general public is tired of spin doctors and politicians who stick to soundbites and change their opinions in line with the tabloids from week to week. Corbyn is a genuine breath of fresh air in responding to questions in long form and holding opinions sometimes that aren't popular but being able to argue his principles for them. He also offers something different from the usual mild differences in flavour of neoliberalism.
• Corbyn's shadow cabinet has been almost completely replaced as his own MPs abandon him en-masse. He now only has a handful of MP supporters.
• He's refusing to step down voluntarily on the basis of the mandate he was given by the general membership.
• The MPs all say he is unable to lead Labour to a victory at another general election (probably true) but the only candidate put forward so far is the incredibly wet Angela Eagle who makes even Michael Gove look charismatic.
• There is some talk about Corbyn not having enough MP nominators to be listed in another leadership contest despite the massive amount of support he has outside of the MPs. If he's not on the ballot, Labour will haemorrhage members and lose a lot of support. If he's on it, he'll likely win again and the party will remain fractious and unable to offer a proper opposition.

[/INDENT]

• Nigel Farage, frog-faced demagogue and the man who has been flying the flag for leaving the EU for the longest, has bailed out from leading the UK Independence Party. He'll continue to be an MEP who never attends parliament for the next two years all while claiming every penny he can from that gravy train.
  
  
• Our bigoted arsehole quotient figured the referendum result meant it's fine to be racist dicks to random people. There has been a 50%+ increase in reports of hate crimes.
  
  
• Plenty of EU migrants living here legally are wondering what's going to happen to them in the longer term. Few of our politicians are willing to offer any assurances to them which is a complete farce.

All of this took place because David Cameron wanted to rein in the Eurosceptic wing of his party by offering them this bone and assuming the British population wouldn't commit economic suicide. No plans were put in place to vote upon; all we had was competitive bull-****ting to compare the options by. We're meant to be a parliamentary democracy so that we elect MPs to do the reading and research on our behalf and have reasoned debates on something as complex and important as our membership of the EU. Instead David Cameron has side-stepped this political hot potato and in doing so wrecked my country's economy and led to the imposition of a borderline fascist prime minister in his stead. This is so ****ed that my main hope is that Scotland leaves the UK and rejoins the EU.

Apologies for the wall of text and puerile name-calling if you've got this far. Any questions?

Recusant, dude, that was a perfect post to sum up everything that has been happening. I do wish Boris stayed the course instead of backing out like a wimp because he, at least, is a buffoon while Gove, Osborne and May are, simply, evil. And I mean that. I truly believe that they are evil individuals with nothing but contempt for the country they're supposed to run.

And Labour... man... absolute morons. Vying for their own convenience despite the fact that the people seem, generally, to appreciate Corbyn. Had they solidified at this moment, they'd have been a viable alternative to the conservative government that everyone knows has now ruined the country. Instead the childish twats have spat their dummies out and whinge and whine. Corbyn would have been an amazing prime minister, if not just for a whole new lease of life he would surely have brought to the government. But, of course, he doesn't have the same Eaton background everyone else has.

Can't agree with Scotland leaving though and there seems to be tell that the EU wouldn't even allow Scotland to join if they left the UK (something about Spain having a similar dependent nation that wants independence so it would encourage a similar manoeuvre there, thus they'd block Scotland entering). I believe we are all better together, both in the EU and as the UK. Should Scotland leave the UK, frankly, there'd be no UK and the whole affair would end up leaving both the remaining UK and Scotland with massive losses. The Scottish think that they'll be free of the political crap that the UK has but the truth is they'll just wind up with political crap all the same - just in their own borders instead of further south. Scotland relies entirely on a nonrenewable energy source for its income and it will, eventually one way or the other, lose those profits and be left with nothing.

All we can do now, really, is pull up our trousers and move on. We're out, and that sucks, but we have to carry on and try to minimise the damage.

I actually hope Trump gets elected in the USA now. That way Britain won't look quite so foolish when we can point back to the USA again and declare we're not quite that bad as we've been doing all these years ;).

Lots of oil countries do quite well keeping the profits from it. The only sure thing is that bring married to an austere country ruled by central finance is not going to help.

The Bregret types sure annoy the hell out of me.

If you vote for something - anything - and regret it later on, you deserve everything that's coming to you. If you believe a politician's lies and then go "What!? IT WAS A LIE!?" when they're exposed (in record time w.r.t. NHS), you really deserve it.

And in this case, while the other half of the country probably doesn't really deserve it, congrats in knowing that the idiots (especially the Bregret types) outnumber you!

I will be bringing this up in November as well, don't you worry.

Is it reasonable to expect average people to have enough understanding of geopolitics to make such judgments?

Personally I think the people passing propaganda and rhetoric that's intentionally misleading are doing something much worse than ignorance.

People here have been offered little other than demagoguery and propaganda from their politicians and news media for years. We have ombudsmen and watchdogs in place that are meant to handle these kinds of issues but they're all completely toothless.

Our Press Complaints Commission was shown to be completely corrupt during the Leveson inquiry (phone hacking scandal etc) and was replaced by another useless voluntary system of self-regulation. Our advertising standards authority is not statutory and only requests that advertisements are removed (often after a lengthy process well beyond the typical shelf life of any advertising) - it cannot and does not apply fines to dissuade similar behaviour. The ASA also gave up trying to regulate political advertising 17 years ago.

Our political campaign ads are completely unregulated and so can get away with the use of deliberately misleading information. A classic one was during the alternative vote referendum where the campaign to keep the FPTP system inflated the cost of an alternative vote by including the cost of that same referendum in the price tag and then suggesting that the cost would be paid by denying our soldiers bulletproof vests or not buying enough incubators for cute newborn babies.

Given all this, it's not surprising that the majority of the population (who aren't going to go out searching for counterpoints to everything they hear) is going to start falling for this bull**** over and over.

Boris' buffoon character hides a fairly ruthless political animal. A sociopathic and bigoted toff who started work as a journalist via nepotism and who gave away the home address of a fellow journalist to a dodgy friend of his so he could be assaulted; he regularly lied about his accomplishments while mayor of London and schmoozed with the banking sector near constantly and always argued strongly to protect their interests. Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson is as much a part of the "nasty party" as the rest of them.


Spain's main contention with Scottish independence has been that it doesn't want to set the precedent of a breakaway state leaving an EU country and then rejoining the EU. It's been using the threat of being left outside the EU as one of its main arguments against the independence movements in Catalonia and the Basque region. If the UK had already left the EU, then this precedent wouldn't be set and it seems unlikely that Spain would veto Scottish entry as it would be that part of the UK that voted strongly to remain in the EU in the first place. There's also the chance (probably slim) that Scotland could leave the UK in time to claim continuing EU state status from the rest of the UK.

Ultimately many of the arguments against Scottish independence in 2014 have since fallen to pieces and the political atmospheres either side of the border seem to be diverging even further. I don't think people expect a land of milk and honey but they are hoping to have a government more in line with something of their own choosing. A Westminster government so strongly captured by the finance industry really isn't doing much for people outside of the London bubble (and I say that as a Londoner who lives in Scotland - the sense of isolation from national politics up here is really strong).

To be fair the government spent several decades pissing most of the profits away on tax breaks.