Brexit (merged threads)

[Wheelsup]

So in the news now. Not enough drivers equals fuel shortages at the pumps.  Supermarket shelves  starting to get empty. 20.000 European lorry drivers had gone home. Not enough medical staff to catch up with a backlog of cancer patients. They have gone home to Europe as well.  At least in Shetland the fuel is delivered by sea. But the price is going up.

Its either Brexit and / or government incompetence.

Shortage of gas , so price goes up, conveniently,  at a time when PM promises to cut back on gas consumption.  It looks to me like they are forcing fuel prices up to get us to use less.

It seems hard times are coming ssoon.

 

[Ghostrider]

22 hours ago, Roachmill said:

I would strongly disagree with that; they were voted in to power. It's a bit like handing a set of keys to a well known drunk staggering towards their car and then blaming them when they crash.

Folk can only vote for what's on the ballot. You either vote for whom you feel is the lesser evil, or you don't vote at all and risk other's votes will put in whom you judge to be the worst evil. Not having a Parliament/Government isn't an option, even if nobody voted a Parliament/Government would be appointed for us, one way pr another, even if it only was everything being dumped on the House of Lords instead. Them, we apparently can't get rid of (yet anyway) however bad they are or may become.

At least with the drunk, you can choose to refuse them their keys and leave them to stumble around until they find a ditch to sleep it off in.

[Ghostrider]

23 hours ago, Evil Inky said:

One consequence would be leaving the EU, surely, or would you have been prepared to be flexible on that point?

Nope. Brexit was the act of leaving EU in and of itself, not a consequence of leaving. Had we not left Brexit wasn't something that could happen, and if Brexit happened we had to have left.

The consequences of Brexit are confined to the manner in which we left the EU, and how things got/get set up for our future outwith the EU.

Saying leaving the EU is a consequence of Brexit is a bit like saying being hit in the face by someone's fist is a consequence of being punched in the face.

Edited September 24, 2021 by Ghostrider

[JohanofNess]

2 hours ago, Ghostrider said:

Folk can only vote for what's on the ballot. You either vote for whom you feel is the lesser evil, or you don't vote at all and risk other's votes will put in whom you judge to be the worst evil. Not having a Parliament/Government isn't an option, even if nobody voted a Parliament/Government would be appointed for us, one way pr another, even if it only was everything being dumped on the House of Lords instead. Them, we apparently can't get rid of (yet anyway) however bad they are or may become.

At least with the drunk, you can choose to refuse them their keys and leave them to stumble around until they find a ditch to sleep it off in.

Think we proved one thing at the last election. Boris convinced people to double down on brexit because folk were getting bored of it. Single biggest decision to effect this country in over a generation and folk voted for Boris because he said he would just get on with it.

In years to come I know my bairn will ask how we allowed Boris Johnson and his corrupt band of pals to wreck this country and all I'll be able to say is because folk were getting bored of the debate as to whether or not it was a good idea and if we wanted to work for a better deal.

We've become a nation of halfwits with the attention span of a mayfly. Everything that is happening to us now is because we have become easily manipulated. Nobody bothers to look into sod all anymore.

But yeah brexit, great opportunity missed.

[Davie P]

3 hours ago, JohanofNess said:

We've become a nation of halfwits with the attention span of a mayfly. Everything that is happening to us now is because we have become easily manipulated. Nobody bothers to look into sod all anymore.

I agree, and there's several factors at play, some of which vex me greatly:

• A debasement of the media - the 4th estate of democracy - people no longer expect to pay for news, investigative journalism is on its knees, and news has been replaced by opinion-ised 'infotainment'
• Statistics show that attention spans are going down across the board, particularly amongst younger people (the endless scroll of social media.....)
• Participation in consensus politics and local democracy has been replaced by online echo-chambers and keyboard warrior-ism - everyone has the ability to share ill-informed opinions without consequence, and there seems to be more of a desire to prove everyone else wrong that to actually put our collective heads together to solve problems and build a better future

Brexit was the apex of the above

 

[LGR PATONEXCHANGE]

If Brexit was the apex, why is the 3 points you make (with which I agree) happening across the Western style democracies, the commonwealth..etc...?

[Colin]

4 hours ago, LGR PATONEXCHANGE said:

If Brexit was the apex, why is the 3 points you make (with which I agree) happening across the Western style democracies, the commonwealth..etc...?

Perhaps, because it is a global phenomenon ?  It's the power (and major failure) of social media.  It has become so 'cliquey' that, unless you share an opinion that is common with the majority, you become something of an outcast.

Television News, I don't bother watching it these days.  Far to much 'drivel' and opinion pieces in there. Not enough substance. 

Newspapers, I haven't bought one in years.  As with television, except that they stick 'boobs' on page 3 or something.  They lie more than politicians do.

Politics, I ALWAYS cast my vote.  Generally based on the historic performance of particular candidates.  Still doesn't guarantee that they will not mess it up though.

 

[Davie P]

6 hours ago, LGR PATONEXCHANGE said:

If Brexit was the apex, why is the 3 points you make (with which I agree) happening across the Western style democracies, the commonwealth..etc...?

For me, Brexit was the apex because it represented a tipping point for one of the world's longest functioning democracies (a model upon which many Western democracies are based) and a failure of the classic view of the 4 Estates of Democracy. We are now in a new era in the UK where it is 'acceptable' for the government (the Executive) to ignore Parliament (the Legislature) and the courts (the Judiciary) and use the media (the 4th Estate, which has traditionally had a function to hold the other 3 to account) to manipulate voters into voting for something which would demonstrably make the majority worse off.

Personally, I feel that the move from 'editorial' media to 'social' media has rendered the function of the 4th Estate, to a large degree, obsolete. Mass manipulation seems quite straightforward on Social Media (e.g. Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal). Folk will believe what they want to believe, do very little in the way of fact checking, and seem particularly susceptible to simple false equivalences (e.g. the infamous NHS Bus blaming the EU for government's underinvestment in health services, and the government blaming immigrants for their underinvestment in social services and housing in deprived areas). It all seems very plausible to many people, and Social Media provides the online echo chambers for these manipulations to take hold and become accepted as fact. All the government then has to do is present their latest legislation as the silver bullet to shoot the bogeyman they created, and call anyone who challenges them 'undemocratic' or 'unpatriotic'

[Rasmie]

It appears that Putin has manoeuvred us into leaving the EU. No doubt aided by his oligarchs greasing the palms of the Conservative party. The current clique running the Tory party, and thereby the government, no longer seem to be Unionist, in the way they speak of the smaller nations of the UK.

The EU by comparison seem to have woken up to the world situation and are handling the Ukraine crisis well.

Perhaps its time we rejoined the EU, and for that reason I will vote for Scottish Independence for the first time when next we get the chance.

[George.]

^A referendum was held in Britain on 23 June 2016 which showed a majority of us wanted out of the E.U. That's when we started leaving. Took a while, but that's when we started.

What did Putin have to do with that?

[JohanofNess]

38 minutes ago, George. said:

^A referendum was held in Britain on 23 June 2016 which showed a majority of us wanted out of the E.U. That's when we started leaving. Took a while, but that's when we started.

What did Putin have to do with that?

Lot of where Putin was involved depends how much you believe in manipulating the voting population.

Social media (unfortunately) plays a huge part in where people formulate their opinions and viewpoints. Russians amongst others can create popular social media accounts that appears British and spout "proper British attitudes" that buy into pre-existing opinions and bias. Look how many accounts popped up going on about how British veterans couldn't get a home yet someone who came from another country could. All largely stoness but it started to whip up anti immigration sentiments at a time we were having a vote about continuing to be in a union that promotes unity with others. Our own governments Russia report has been suppressed, I can only imagine because it isn't especially flattering about how much Russia was involved in our government between cash donations to down right manipulation.

If you don't want to see it, you won't see it. If you wonder how this country became the xenophobic, backward thinking cesspool it is then you take more interest in what might have caused it.

Edited March 8, 2022 by JohanofNess
Can't type to save myself

[Wheelsup]

Are you a Tory, now, George? Using Britain and us in the same sentence! Must have had a change of heart.

[Davie P]

This is a fairly comprehensive list of evidence re: Russian interference / influence on Brexit > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_Brexit_referendum 

"....the report leaves open the possibility that Moscow-based information operations, especially through social media and Russian state-funded broadcasters like Sputnik and RT—and backed up by targeted support to influential voices within UK politics—may well have been a significant factor. Crucially, the UK Government is accused of making a deliberate effort not to find out how Russian influence may have affected the June 2016 vote." https://www.csis.org/blogs/brexit-bits-bobs-and-blogs/did-russia-influence-brexit

"the government had reason to suspect a violation of our democratic processes and ignored it. An admission of such a breach would have caused embarrassment" https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/21/russian-meddling-brexit-referendum-tories-russia-report-government

 

[George.]

5 hours ago, Wheelsup said:

Are you a Tory, now, George? Using Britain and us in the same sentence! Must have had a change of heart.

Sorry, I wrote it wrong. It should have read as, "A referendum was held in Shetland, and the rest of Scotland, on 23 June 2016 which showed a majority of us wanted out of the E.U. The English and the rest of them had a wee blether and did what they wanted." Some things never change.

[MuckleJoannie]

Scotland voted overwhelmingly to remain in the EU.

Remain     Leave
1,661,191     1,018,322

https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/who-we-are-and-what-we-do/elections-and-referendums/past-elections-and-referendums/eu-referendum/results-and-turnout-eu-referendum/eu-referendum-results-region-scotland

2 hours ago, George. said:

"A referendum was held in Shetland, and the rest of Scotland, on 23 June 2016 which showed a majority of us wanted out of the E.U. The English and the rest of them had a wee blether and did what they wanted." Some things never change.

 

In Shetland

Remain  Leave

6,907    5,315