What will you be doing on March 29th?

[Tangled Metal]

Here is a page of analysis of the EU budget, as you say if you play around with the different ways of assessing our contribution we can be either the second largest (net contributor) or the smallest (percentage of income).
Unfortunately 10 years out of date.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe ... .stm#start

Was that from the last time the EU balanced their books? Oh! They haven't yet.

[pwa]

It's going to take a long time, but, after actually leaving I expect that we will eventually come to a point where everything seems to be going okay and we are not able to say with certainty whether we would have been better off staying in. It will not be that clear.

[mercalia]

It's going to take a long time, but, after actually leaving I expect that we will eventually come to a point where everything seems to be going okay and we are not able to say with certainty whether we would have been better off staying in. It will not be that clear.

+1. I just hope it dont take too long in order to spike Sturgeons cannons?

[PDQ Mobile]

It’s an interesting question why the Brexit debate has been so divisive.
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We’re left perhaps with Max Planck: “Science advances one funeral at a time.” Perhaps in a generation’s time, as the older Brexit voters die, the younger outward looking generation who overwhelmingly voted Remain will bring a happier, more open, less divided society.

+1
Very nicely put. Well written and a decent, fair, very insightful assessment.
Thank you.

[pwa]

It’s an interesting question why the Brexit debate has been so divisive.
...........
...........

We’re left perhaps with Max Planck: “Science advances one funeral at a time.” Perhaps in a generation’s time, as the older Brexit voters die, the younger outward looking generation who overwhelmingly voted Remain will bring a happier, more open, less divided society.

+1
Very nicely put. Well written and a decent, fair, very insightful assessment.
Thank you.

When I was young I was very pro-EU. When the Euro came into being I wanted us to join. As I got older my views changed. Nobody can say how today's young people will feel when they get older.

[blackbike]

Nobody can say how today's young people will feel when they get older.

I can.

They will become less naïve and idealistic and more sophisticated and conservative.

If they don't then it'll be the first time in human history that people don't change in this way as they age.

Labour and the Greens are keen on votes for 16 year olds precisely because they know that younger voters are essentially clueless and full of all sorts of daft ideas.

[mjr]

Listened to an interesting analysis last night. UK is the second biggest donor of money to the EU, second only to Germany.

Donor? Using that term seems a signal that the analyst is biased. I'm sure what I pay to government isn't called Income Donation, Council Donation, Value Added Donation and so on.

Was that from the last time the EU balanced their books? Oh! They haven't yet.

And has the UK balanced its books since the mid-1980s? The EU's just following another Great British example.

[PDQ Mobile]

My much shortened quote (to save space) of Brian's assessment is being used as the major point here. That is about the generational thing.
But had anyone bothered to read all of what he wrote they would know that it was far more insightful and far reaching than just that last paragraph.
The rest is well worth reading.

[bovlomov]

[Labour and the Greens are keen on votes for 16 year olds precisely because they know that younger voters are essentially clueless and full of all sorts of daft ideas.

You could just as easily argue the same about older people. Of course, most arguments, for or against the wisdom of old age, are self- serving.

For evidence against the idea that old = wise, the Tory Party conference was always a good place to start - being attended by elderly, flag-waving half-wits (these days, not so much, as the flag-waving half-wits are rather younger).

[Boyd]

Sorry would have added my two pennys worth earlier but it appears dancing in the street naked is against the law.

[reohn2]

Now they've been choosing sides for so long but it feels different lately to me. It's like they've dropped any pretense to impartiality and simple news reporting. Everything is now about the side you support. It's that polarity effect again! What's wrong with accepting things impartially. Why can't Brexit be good and bad? It is you know, no matter what spin is being put on it.

It’s an interesting question why the Brexit debate has been so divisive.

The nature of the EU is part of it. Mainland Europeans saw WWII as an unmitigated disaster where everybody lost. Our island story, on the other hand is that our unique national character won the war. The EU is then seen on one hand as a triumph of promoting diplomacy over war and it’s downsides are accepted. On the other hand it’s seen by many here as imposing undemocratic supranational government from across the water.

Then there’s the changing nature of the world. We are much more interconnected than in the past, and it’s simply impossible to control our own country’s destiny separate from the rest of the world. This makes the development of bodies like the EU, the WTO and the like inevitable, and desirable, to impose control on otherwise unaccountable multinational and cross border companies and other forces.

The poisoning of the well came long before the actual vote there with a long campaign of nationalist propaganda about the EU run by a UK print media controlled by a small number of ideological individuals. The remote and abstruse nature of the EU institutions enabled this, leading to a divisive debate in a fog of ignorance and unreality.

Then we come to the campaign itself with a leave campaign dominated by xenophobia and outright lies: 72 million Turks! £350M a week!

The vote itself reflects a country where many feel entirely disenfranchised from a political establishment delivering economic growth, but no benefit from that growth to the majority of people. This lead to a lashing out through Brexit from those outside the magic bubble which will, ironically, lead to still less wealth for them. The process, driven by extreme free market deregulators will exacerbate this as wealth flows further to the better off.

We therefore end in a position where no-one will be happy. We will leave the EU, but end up with less control over our destiny than we had before, the same level of immigration and less wealth to go around. This will be blamed on the EU “punishing” us and an insufficiently rigorous Brexit by Europhobe ideologues. The better off remainers will blame Brexit, but fail to address the need for wealth redistribution to heal the divisions in the country. They won’t ever accept that Brexit is a good thing, because based on a purely factual analysis, it isn’t.

It’s very hard to see this becoming less divisive in years to come. The leave sentiment is an emotional attachment to a national story which will only become stronger as it fails to deliver in a global world. The remain position was fatally weakened by an economic model leaving the bottom half of society disenfranchised, and that will almost certainly worsen further.

Spot on!

We’re left perhaps with Max Planck: “Science advances one funeral at a time.” Perhaps in a generation’s time, as the older Brexit voters die, the younger outward looking generation who overwhelmingly voted Remain will bring a happier, more open, less divided society.

We can but hope.......

[Tangled Metal]

Listened to an interesting analysis last night. UK is the second biggest donor of money to the EU, second only to Germany.

Donor? Using that term seems a signal that the analyst is biased. I'm sure what I pay to government isn't called Income Donation, Council Donation, Value Added Donation and so on.

Was that from the last time the EU balanced their books? Oh! They haven't yet.

And has the UK balanced its books since the mid-1980s? The EU's just following another Great British example.

Donor was my choice of word not the commentator. Call me biased if you like but I'm a remainer through and through so where does that fit with the bias viewpoint?

You are correct about balancing the books, but that was my fault for using the wrong phrase. I was trying to make the point about the accounts of the EU not being produced for decades if at all. AFAIK the UK governments know where their financial position is even if it's in the red. The last time i paid any attention the EU did not produce any accounts and don't know their position. Of that's wrong it's a common misconception. If it is wrong then it's based on the idea of bureaucracy in a huge organization. There's likely to be few bureaucracies the size of the EU.

[al_yrpal]

[Labour and the Greens are keen on votes for 16 year olds precisely because they know that younger voters are essentially clueless and full of all sorts of daft ideas.

You could just as easily argue the same about older people. Of course, most arguments, for or against the wisdom of old age, are self- serving.

For evidence against the idea that old = wise, the Tory Party conference was always a good place to start - being attended by elderly, flag-waving half-wits (these days, not so much, as the flag-waving half-wits are rather younger).

I thought all the halfwits had joined the Labour Party and it's why they have 500,000 members. At least they are now all in the same place!

Al

[Tangled Metal]

IIRC leave and remain sides stretched the truth. That, I'm afraid, was the nature of a divisive matter. Brexit is only black and white in its most basic way, that is in or out. Everything else was spin to gain the most votes. The worst of that spin was outright and easily fact checked lies. However there was a broad grey area between indisputable facts and outright lies which can only be proven with time. We are in that time now.

[bovlomov]

I thought all the halfwits had joined the Labour Party and it's why they have 500,000 members. At least they are now all in the same place!

My argument wasn't about the relative merits of Party conference attenders. I was giving an example, of a group of people who were older but not wiser.