The UK Politics and EU Referendum thread - merged

[RED-DOG]

Dictators don't ignore what the people want because they think the people are stupid - they ignore them because they prioritise what is best for them personally rather than what is best for their country.

Most of the general public can barely scrape together a handful of GCSE's and a few might know how to fix an engine - is that really the talent base you'd trust to run the country?

Or, to give a specific example, a significant proportion of the population think that if there is a second referendum and they vote for 'no deal' then it will mean we'll stay in the EU - I'm pretty sure a second referendum won't help to any meaningful extent.

So, according to you, who should have the power and how should they acquire it?

PS- Wouldn't it be great if I were to stumble across you one day sitting in a car that has broken down on the way to a very important meeting?

If people know how to fix an engine I'd want them if an engine needed fixing - if someone needed to know what the possible fiscal, monetary and trade implications would arise from a hugely complex legal treaty I'd want a group of people with a group of advisors - their expertise would probably cover such subjects as economics, statistics, diplomacy and the law etc.

Is it really so difficult to think the right people to do a job are the ones with the most qualifications and experience in it?

And the qualifications for the average person in the UK is a handful of GCSE's - do you think that is a high enough level of qualification to make complex economic and legal decisions which affect the whole country?


As suggested above - the power should be by a representative democracy, we vote for people because we roughly agree with what they believe (either that the government should do little and only step in when they're needed, or that the government should do a lot to actively interfere and try improve things proactively) - once they're in they represent everybody in the country and do what they think is best for everybody in the country based on the advice of experts. i.e. what they system we basically have now.



EDIT: to put it another way - if you were in a broken down car, or train - would you want a barrister or economist to fix it?

No, but I wouldn't want that to deprive them of an opinion or a vote.

[Jon MW]

character, ethics and integrity don't stem from qualifications.

MP's are apparently the best qualified and they are all self-serving, doing what's best for them.

Why should us stupid folk trust the wizards to do what's best for us?

What about if people want to trade some economic prosperity for a bigger sense of freedom or justice?

Voting for the Green Party isn't economically viable so why bother?

What a bunch of crap mate.

What's best for the country doesn't always have to be what is economically best - like when we banned slavery and policed it on the high seas for example.

But economics is still pretty important in the long term.

[nirvana]

Dictators don't ignore what the people want because they think the people are stupid - they ignore them because they prioritise what is best for them personally rather than what is best for their country.

Most of the general public can barely scrape together a handful of GCSE's and a few might know how to fix an engine - is that really the talent base you'd trust to run the country?

Or, to give a specific example, a significant proportion of the population think that if there is a second referendum and they vote for 'no deal' then it will mean we'll stay in the EU - I'm pretty sure a second referendum won't help to any meaningful extent.

So, according to you, who should have the power and how should they acquire it?

PS- Wouldn't it be great if I were to stumble across you one day sitting in a car that has broken down on the way to a very important meeting?

If people know how to fix an engine I'd want them if an engine needed fixing - if someone needed to know what the possible fiscal, monetary and trade implications would arise from a hugely complex legal treaty I'd want a group of people with a group of advisors - their expertise would probably cover such subjects as economics, statistics, diplomacy and the law etc.

Is it really so difficult to think the right people to do a job are the ones with the most qualifications and experience in it?

And the qualifications for the average person in the UK is a handful of GCSE's - do you think that is a high enough level of qualification to make complex economic and legal decisions which affect the whole country?


As suggested above - the power should be by a representative democracy, we vote for people because we roughly agree with what they believe (either that the government should do little and only step in when they're needed, or that the government should do a lot to actively interfere and try improve things proactively) - once they're in they represent everybody in the country and do what they think is best for everybody in the country based on the advice of experts. i.e. what they system we basically have now.



EDIT: to put it another way - if you were in a broken down car, or train - would you want a barrister or economist to fix it?

What you say is broadly true of course but that same bunch of clever types turned out to be keen to know what we felt in our collective gut, or, since we know that isn't true, pretty fkn stupid in referring it to us for the final (albeit not final) say

[RED-DOG]

BTW- I would be interested to know who all these brilliant, well qualified people are and why they have got us into this mess.

[nirvana]

character, ethics and integrity don't stem from qualifications.

MP's are apparently the best qualified and they are all self-serving, doing what's best for them.

Why should us stupid folk trust the wizards to do what's best for us?

What about if people want to trade some economic prosperity for a bigger sense of freedom or justice?

Voting for the Green Party isn't economically viable so why bother?

What a bunch of crap mate.

What's best for the country doesn't always have to be what is economically best - like when we banned slavery and policed it on the high seas for example.

But economics is still pretty important in the long term.

Quite

[RED-DOG]

I think clever people should be clever enough not to tell stupid people that they are stupid.

[teddybloat]

A democracy is protection from the extremes

In a voter pool the preferences of the median voter are catered for. In theory they are exactly catered for.

Imagine 3 voters:

A wants £100 to be spent on X

B wants £1000

C wants £10000

Here £1000 will always be spent on X

A prefers 1000 to 10000 and c prefers 1000 to 100.

Even in c dropped down to £1001 a would prefer £1000 exactly.

The Brexit we get will be decided by the median voter. Lucky sod.

[MANTIS01]

You break down and world class mechanic turns up and fixes car but he’s shady and charges you a grand

Less qualified handyman turns up and fixes car just as a favour to a fella in trouble

Anybody glad the best qualified turned up?

[kukushkin88]

BTW- I would be interested to know who all these brilliant, well qualified people are and why they have got us into this mess.

I know some of them (senior(ish) civil servants and people who work for Deloitte and advise the government on nearly everything), it’s safe to say they were all stunned when DC called the referendum.

[kukushkin88]

Used to be the case that MPs were elected by the public to act as public servants and carry out the will of the people

Thought that was democracy

Now we have MPs refusing to exercise the will of the people, seemingly about to force another vote upon the people, squeezing the elected government to bend to their will

Not sure what that is but doesn’t look like democracy to me.

Remain might celebrate this turn of events but it’s a pretty dangerous road to travel, regards democracy, freedom and overall public engagement in politics. But as long as the minority get what they want...

I agree to a point that it's somewhat of a dangerous road to go down having a referendum and then look to go back on it, but on the other hand BREXIT has become one of possibly the biggest political messes in history. There doesn't appear to be any solution on the horizon and options for any resolution look bleak to me, why not let the population decide?  Put a few options together, No - Deal, Medium-soft, Soft and NO Brexit and see which one wins, if the nation wants brexit to go through then surely it'll pass a second vote?

If there was any chance whatsoever of this mess sorting itself out then I'd be strongly against a second ref on principle (even though I voted remain) however not really seeing how it does.

Perhaps I should give the government a bit more credit for being able to sort it, but as I said before I don't think any politician living or dead could handle brexit properly, I think it's just impossible.

Whole thing is a full on debacle, but im fed up of people blaming leave voters or speaking to them like they don't understand what they're doing, really annoys me that, it's not the fault of anyone voting leave that this mess has come, I didn't vote it but i respect why people did.

What if you hold that second ref and only 5m people vote because the rest can’t be fucked to offer an opinion anymore?

Why take time out your day to have your say only to be ignored cos it’s not the right choice? Don’t forget we are ignorant and ill informed. Pretty sure I wouldn’t vote again.

Turns out we are ignorant, less educated, less numerate.

https://files.osf.io/v1/resources/n5r67/providers/osfstorage/5b3baa27fc7cf4000f3b2884?action=download&version=3&direct&format=pdf

It isn’t the voters fault though, at least not to any great extent.

[Pokerpops]

BTW- I would be interested to know who all these brilliant, well qualified people are and why they have got us into this mess.

There is a website with a list of all the MPs and their email addresses. You could start there.

https://www.parliament.uk/mps-lords-and-offices/mps/


Why did they get us into this mess? Well, for one thing, they didn’t do what they were elected to do which is to make decisions.

Then they decided to let us ignorant folks have a vote on something that we now know (because we keep getting told it) was too complicated for our simple minds.
Oh, and both sides of the referendum debate used lies and deceitful tactics to make that decision even harder for us poor innocents.

The big question now, is how do we get out of the mess?

[Doobs]

BTW- I would be interested to know who all these brilliant, well qualified people are and why they have got us into this mess.

I know some of them (senior(ish) civil servants and people who work for Deloitte and advise the government on nearly everything), it’s safe to say they were all stunned when DC called the referendum.

Nobody who is brilliant should have been surprised when Cameron called a referendum.   It was in the manifesto and was well flagged. 

[kukushkin88]

BTW- I would be interested to know who all these brilliant, well qualified people are and why they have got us into this mess.

I know some of them (senior(ish) civil servants and people who work for Deloitte and advise the government on nearly everything), it’s safe to say they were all stunned when DC called the referendum.

Nobody who is brilliant should have been surprised when Cameron called a referendum.   It was in the manifesto and was well flagged. 

It’s really clumsy use of language from me (also stunned was a poorly chosen word). It would be better to just say; everyone I know who works in or near to that world (people who advise the government in some capacity), thought bringing about a situation that resulted in an in/out referendum , was a terrible idea.

It’s a minor point but there is of course a massive difference between pledging something in a manifesto and doing said thing.

[kukushkin88]

BTW- I would be interested to know who all these brilliant, well qualified people are and why they have got us into this mess.

I know some of them (senior(ish) civil servants and people who work for Deloitte and advise the government on nearly everything), it’s safe to say they were all stunned when DC called the referendum.

Nobody who is brilliant should have been surprised when Cameron called a referendum.   It was in the manifesto and was well flagged. 

It’s really clumsy use of language from me (also stunned was a poorly chosen word). It would be better to just say; everyone I know who works in or near to that world (people who advise the government in some capacity), thought bringing about a situation that resulted in an in/out referendum was a terrible idea.

It’s a minor point but there is of course a massive difference between pledging something in a manifesto and doing said thing.

[Sheriff Fatman]

BTW- I would be interested to know who all these brilliant, well qualified people are and why they have got us into this mess.

That one is best answered in song.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2236851439862232