Kevin's Watch

Here is the argument for holding a second [confirmatory] referendum on leaving the EU.

When we voted first in 2016, we did not know that our decision would impact upon the fragile peace which pertained in Northern Ireland. We were not told that the likely sequel to our leaving would be the fracturing of the Union that we had all grown up within, had become used to as part of our extended 'British' family. Neither did we know how hard it would be to secure an agreement that would protect the interests of future generations, without pitching us 'new-born and unprepared' onto the not-so tender mercies of a cold and unforgiving WTO system. There was no talk of shortages of medicine, chaos at the boarders, civil unrest and long term economic readjustment - all aspects of leaving that are explicitly mentioned in the Governments own Yellowhammer Document, not simply the rumours of 'project fear' as some would have us believe.

In the face of this, Corbyn's plan of establishing the actual landing zone for Brexit and then putting it back to the people without attempting to influence their decision one way or the other, does not seem, well - quite so crazy after all.

On the one hand, ignorance is no excuse. On the other, I'm all for informed decisions.

--A

Interesting Av; I've never really got that 'ignorance of the law is no excuse' thing. Ok - if we assume some inherent degree of morality that we are born with - the tabula rasa not being so purely white after all - then maybe, just maybe, some things might qualify......but then you wouldn't be ignorent of them and would qualify as guilty. Most Laws however would be so far removed from this that the maxim simply wouldn't apply. If the Law actually applies this rigidly ...... then it truly is a ass! [sic].

In this particular case however, I agree that the motivation I believe was behind a large part of the leave vote (frankly, a mix between reasonable concern about the effect of untrammelled immigration on our society and good old fashioned racism, to be blunt about it) makes (that latter form) of 'ignorance' to be, yes, no excuse.

Yup ignorance of the law is an accepted and necessary legal fiction ... and it has to be so ... if not everyone would simply raise the excuse "I didn't know better" and they would have to be excused of all liability.

As this is ludicrous ... there is an expectation that most humans have a general understanding of right and wrong and moreso of each member of society's legal obligations.

As to the Brexit vote ... I'd think this could be challenged given the looseness of the language in the referendum, the lack of rigour presented by the governments presenting options to leave or stay ...

and clearly the government has demonstrated its own lack of understanding what leaving might mean ...

The government owe their citizens transparency of their actions ... AND their future planning ... and have a responsibility to INFORM its citizens of perceived consequences.

It was all soo poorly orchestrated paying no heed to public policy principles ... of well researched proposals, the employment of rigorous public consultative mechanisms, impact assessment processes etc.

In this particular case though, it wasn't a law people were ignorant of. At least, not unless we consider the law of unintended consequences...

--A

I don't know, the way that the referendum was conducted was just wrong o so many levels. It came on the back of months and months of media focusing on immigrants flocking to our shores in bats, hiding in lorries, draining our NHS and snapping up our housing. It was conducted on both sides with only the barest responsibility for presentation of a truthful argument being adhered to - and little true thought as to the consequenses of what a leave vote would mean, such that when it happened even the Leave campaigners themselves were shocked.

And ignorance in this context an also mean something other than simply 'not knowing'. It can be the ignorance of the far right meeting, the racist chanting football terraces and the narrow blinkered thinking of intolerance and hatred.

This is the risk of relying on majority rule.

--A

Tis a reflection more of a society that thinks right along the lines of the media campaign.

Anti immigration, pro self, pro nationalist and populist, sad to say.

It's not that simple though.

Why do those types of campaigns exist? They're not aimed at people who are pro-immigration etc. The media sells what we want to buy. It has to, or nobody will buy anything.

Is it the fault of them for providing a commodity that is in demand? Or is the fault with the people who demand those things?

And it works equally for both sides of course.

(Haha, I thought I was in the 'Tank. )

--A

Ugh answered this non Tank post lol

But it dematerialised in some server issue

This post might not even post

Well fuck it posted lol

Lets see if I can do this again

In brief

Yes .. humans are the real issue .. people, society .. we are fed what we want to hear, read ... and cognitive dissonance filters out what we believe and ultimately think.

However, there are also agenda driven media sources whose objective it is to control and manipulate the narrative.

Think BreitBart... they have a specific political viewpoint and deliver and even manipulate news to fit their POV.

Think CNN often a delivery agent of liberal POV .. tho I find them reasonably objective.

Al Jazeera is a news source I enjoy reading.

FOX for example owned and driven by right wing conservatives interests. The examples of misreporting and straight up false reporting is pretty evident of its bias.

But yeah we ARE the market.

There's a reason that the world is the way that it is, and we're the reason. That way is starting to slowly change, and we're the reason for that too.

--A

True that

Britain, having no future, spends its time saying "Look at who we were". America, having no past, spends its time saying "Look at what we are going to be!".

We in the UK, sit with the weight of a dark and heavy past bearing down on a fragile present. America, on the cracked ice of its present, teeters precariously above the abysmal depths of an unknowable future.

peter wrote:America, on the cracked ice of its present, teeters precariously above the abysmal depths of an unknowable future.

That's a very eloquent way of saying that we're ****ed up.

I like it.

Results of the UK election are not yet in in full, but the scene is pretty set for a large Conservative majority with Labour being trounced in its heartland constituencies in the North.

This is profoundly depressing news to me. Not so much in terms of Brexit - I always thought it was a mistake, but was never happy that the democratic vote of 2016 was not being honoured. No, this is about more than that - this is about a wave of nationalist populism that has leached into our society and is now finding voice in our leaders as our main governing party is drawn inexorably in the direction of travel that it must move in in order to retain support.

Coming home from work yesterday I spoke to my wife on this and we both agreed about how much more racism, both covert and overt, than we had realised actually pervades our society from top to bottom. I see it in my family members who will use the n word without shame or embarrassment. I see it on a daily basis in places I work, approval for racist chanting on football terraces, diatribes against immigrants "coming over here, taking our jobs and houses." I see it in a prime minister who thinks it funny to refer to Muslim women as looking like "pillar boxes and bank robbers", to refer to the people of Africa as "fuzzy-wuzzies with watermelon smiles". That this core of racist thinking was at the heart of the referendum result n Brexit is a given. Nigel Farage freely states that immigration was the chief cause of this, even given that it has been a net positive of huge proportions to this country.

And now, I fear, that in the coming years this insular thinking, this doctrine of hatred, will only become bolder in showing its ugly face. We are entering a new time - a time of the nature that most of us born in the fifties and sixties thought we would never see again. I close with the words of Bertold Brecht pertaining to the re-emergence of fascism, written at the end of the second world war;

"Rejoice not that the world stood up and beat the bastard because the bitch that bore him is back in heat again."

If Corbyn had wanted to loose the recently held UK Election he could not have done so in a more spectacular and successful fashion. He has left Johnson naked, holding his own steaming turd cupped in his outstretched hands where any ensuing damage will fall to the Tory Party, and Tory Party alone.

He has simultaneously shifted the 'Overton Window' in respect of British left-wing politics back toward it's radical socialist roots where he was always most happy for it to be.

Shortly after the huge defeat that Labour suffered in the general election, a colleague from my last workplace sent me a collective letter to Jeremy Corbyn for my signature, thanking him for his efforts in the election and wishing him well for the future. On the latter I have no problems, but in the case of the former - and behind my decision not to sign the aforesaid letter - I have serious ones.

The position of the Leader of the Opposition in the last election was the single most crucial one of any time in our recent history. That this country had reached a fork in the road, a crucial point in determining the course of our future for decades to come, was clear for all to see. Jeremy Corbyn had a responsibility to present a credible alternative, to iterate it in clear terms to a public worn down by the attrition of years of the Brexit debacle and to preserve the country in the face of Johnson's neo-liberal revolution which he intended to force on the country, by guile, subterfuge and plain outright dishonesty or any other means necessary.

But instead of doing so, of stepping up to the plate with a set of credible policies that would make people think that just possibly there was an alternative to Johnson's one line dogma, he chose instead to present a wishlist from a far-left utoian's wet-dream. A set of policies so out on a limb, so beyond the political pale, that no British electorate in the last fifty years would have touched it with a barge-pole. It was almost as though he was saying "If I can't do the thing my way, then I'm not playing at all". Corbyn cannot be a fool. He must have known, must have been aware that this approach could only lead to disaster - and at the very time when the middle of the road people of this country, the ones who didn't want a revolution to our way of life, either right or left, so despatatly needed a champion to fight their cause against the massed ranks of the Leave support which Johnson was so clearly tapping into.

But instead Corbyn gave us radical socialist visionary thinking, more suited to the smokey atmosphere of a public house tap-room than as a realistic alternative that might catch the public imagination at this most crucial of times. And in doing so, he has left the moderate masses of the country - not to mention the most vulnerable, those least able to survive in the turbulent times to come (and they will be turbulent, mark my words) - high and dry with no credible protection against the second round of Conservative deregulation and dismantling of the institutions of State, that the PM and his tight inner circle have planned.

I hesitate to say that Corbyn's anti EU leanings were behind this almost deliberate lemming like behaviour - but come January 31 and then the end of December 2020 when we cut our final ties with the rest of Europe, I suspect that he will not be entirely dissapointed with the role he played in getting us to that (in my view sad) place. When all was said and done, it was the job of the Labour Leader to win the election. Fine words butter no parsnips, and for all his conference speeches, his smiles in the face of the "Oh Jeremy!" chants, his words didn't amount to shit, and we, the ones who misguidedly placed our faith in him are left naked to count the cost.

So now, as I contemplate the one-party state that my country has effectively become, as I look at our duplicitous clown of a pm with his Machiavellian special adviser who will effectively pull the strings, as I see the wreckage of any credible alternative to the existing party of governance that is Red Jeremy's legacy, I see no reason to thank him, no reason to sugar coat the disaster he has left behind by pretending it was all done in good faith. I see no reason to thank him at all.

Reverting to centrism isn't going to solve anything. There was nothing wrong with the policies, it was Brexit and the media's coverage of Corbyn himself.

Not to me there wasn't anything wrong with the policies Murrin - but the thumping defeat in the election says how out on a limb my thinking is in comparison to the rest of the populace. I agree that Brexit and the media played their parts - and big parts they were - but no, there was more to it than just that. Corbyn was unpalatable to the traditional Labour voter and his policies were too out there for the bulk of people.

And like it or not, it was his and his team's job to read the mood - and to get it right. This they failed to do and failed to do spectacularly when the country most despatatly needed them to do the opposite.