Brexit or Bremain - Urban votes

[butchersapron]

Where did I say that?

You didn't. That's sort of the point i was making.

 

[two sheds]

Good, that's settled then.

So it's uniquely yours and those that *you* agree with.

 

[Louis MacNeice]

Well yes but I'm not keen on an increase in unemployment either if that were to happen. Is that a purely liberal concern?

Is the concern with unemployment or with the consequences of the loss of income?

Cheers - Louis MacNeice

 

[two sheds]

Unemployment and the loss of income to the people being made unemployed, and the general forcing down of wages that will come with it.

 

[redsquirrel]

Well yes but I'm not keen on an increase in unemployment either if that were to happen. Is that a purely liberal concern?

Does a Leave vote have to lead to an increase in unemployment? What is it about the markets that, supposedly, necessitate that Leave equals job losses? Could it be the same factors that supposedly necessitate higher business taxes equal less productivity/job losses?

 

[DotCommunist]

in work tax credits demonstrate quite starkly that wage levels are already driven so low the govmnt has to gladhand the employers sweating their workers by the gift of tax credits.

 

[Louis MacNeice]

Unemployment and the loss of income to the people being made unemployed, and the general forcing down of wages that will come with it.

What is it about unemployment rather than loss of income that concerns you?

Cheers - Louis MacNeice

 

[two sheds]

Does a Leave vote have to lead to an increase in unemployment? What is it about the markets that, supposedly, necessitate that Leave equals job losses? Could it be the same factors that supposedly necessitate higher business taxes equal less productivity/job losses?

(1) Not that I know of. (2) Major buyers of the UK's exports are in EU countries. (3) Yes (I think). Rich businesses and people should be paying their share of tax - tax avoidance/evasion is a major reason we have the funding crises in the NHS and the attack on benefits.

 

[The39thStep]

Key issues that underpin Norway polls currently showing that 70% are against joining EU :

@kristinels: The39thStep @GoodwinMJ Previously sovereignty, single currency, agriculture & fisheries -lately also EU financial crisis and refugee crisis

 

[two sheds]

What is it about unemployment rather than loss of income that concerns you?

Cheers - Louis MacNeice

Largely the effect on the unemployed - increased depression, inability to feed their family, worry about how they are going to pay their bills.

 

[editor]

Oliver's take:

 

[ViolentPanda]

that you often get asked about what you mean by the word 'liberal' by people who see themselves as having liberal values, and that they aren't wholly satisfied with the definition you give.



No, I got that from "Get back what do you mean by liberal. Help liberals. Get asked question again."



Nope you're being too cryptic for me again.

People who "see themselves as having liberal values", often don't. What they tend to have instead is an adherence to the current consensus, but with perhaps some amelioration of what "the system" does to people. That's not liberal in the original sense, and accepts the behaviour of power.

 

[Dowie]

you've made seven posts on this thread:
View attachment 88648
none of which show any engagement with the issues. you don't know anything about the issues, and i submit it's that which lies behind your reticence and not any affected reluctance to engage with me.

Not I just don't want to get drawn into engaging with the issues, especially with you as you're a tedious, time wasting cunt. The post I initially made isn't relevant to the specific issues as I see them nor is it relevant which side I'm on etc.. that isn't hard to understand yet you continually want to goad me into discussing the issues surrounding the EU referendum which I've been pretty clear in stating that I'm not going to do.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I don't.

You have no sense of smell.

 

[Louis MacNeice]

Largely the effect on the unemployed - increased depression, inability to feed their family, worry about how they are going to pay their bills.

Inability to buy food and pay bills is about loss of income not unemployment; so can you be any more definite on why unemployment is a problem per se?

Cheers - Louis MacNeice

 

[two sheds]

People who "see themselves as having liberal values", often don't. What they tend to have instead is an adherence to the current consensus, but with perhaps some amelioration of what "the system" does to people. That's not liberal in the original sense, and accepts the behaviour of power.

Yes, that's the sense Chomsky seems to use it in. Being open to new ideas as per the non-political definition doesn't preclude that though.

 

[two sheds]

Inability to buy food and pay bills is about loss of income not unemployment; so can you be any more definite on why unemployment is a problem per se?

Cheers - Louis MacNeice

but loss of income accompanies unemployment so you can't separate them. Loss of self respect from being denied the opportunity to work and loss to society (waste) of those peoples' abilities and experience.

Unemployed tend to suffer from depression, have low levels of well-being and life satisfaction, and financial hardship with difficulties paying bills.

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~blnchflr/papers/Bell-Blanchflower.pdf

 

[ViolentPanda]

Hence 'other than theoretical terms'. How and when? It's the skeleton of a concept, not a strategy or a route with probability attached. You could just as well argue that it'll be more effective to change the entity from within, not something I subscribe to but about as tangible.

Except that *sigh* change imposed by the people is more likely than change from within ever will be. Anyone who's ever worked for a bureaucracy is aware that such organisations don't cede powers, they only accumulate them.
As for "how and when?", when people get angry enough to shrug off the propaganda and the oppression. I can't give you a fixed date or tactical schema, however much you desire them.

We're back to this whole argument where fantasy positive outcomes are used to justify a stance, ignoring that there's a much higher and more tangible chance of enabling the exact opposite.

I'm not looking for an outcome, fantasy or otherwise, and your "much higher and more tangible chance of enabling the exact opposite" is a fantasy of your own. Show the workings that point this up please, if you can.

 

[The39thStep]

Projected votes in Manchester show the three most wealthiest boroughs will vote Remain , the poorest Exit
EU poll: How will Greater Manchester vote in the referendum?

 

[ViolentPanda]

Just to clarify I'm just a foot soldier but thanks for thinking I'm one of the snobby intellectual Metropolitan elite experts. But what do they know facts can prove anything and experts built the Titanic and crashed the banks. A bit of plain common sense over a pint with Nigel will reveal the truth. Another thing I want to know about populists is why you don't step up to the plate to take power from the corrupt elites who are just in it to line their pockets and are so much more lazy and less virtuous than keyboard warriors? At least Nigel is about to next week (Boris has offered Lord Farage of Nuremberg a peerage) with the help of Lexit twats who think this referendum is just a game.

Says the mug who's giving it out that Farage is some kind of Nazi.
You've got the common sense of a dead goat if you think that kind of stupid name-calling has any place. You nail people for what they've done, not for what you believe them to be, idiot.

 

[Red O]

Comrade Mason has deigned to address the hushed ranks of the proletariat, via the Guardian: working class Brexiteers are clowns led by demagogues, the working class is not the best judge of its own interests and is incapable of shaping its own future, and we must unite behind the party that abandoned us: www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/20/brexit-fake-revolt-eu-working-class-culture-hijacked-help-elite

 

[krtek a houby]

That latest UKIP billboard advert has very unpleasant undertones to it.


Nigel Farage EU poster reported to police as it's compared to Nazi propaganda

 

[steeplejack]

I am wavering a bit as the vote approaches. I guess that's the way it goes with such a big decision.

Even if "Leave" wins, especially if it is by a small margin, there is no guarantee that we will actually Leave, as the referendum is advisory rather than legally binding. Ultimately, the decision lies with the government. I can see them arguing that a small Leave win is not mandate enough to leave (not that a narrow remain win would be interpreted in such a way).

I was disgusted by UKIP recycling Nazi propaganda last week, on the same day Jo Cox was murdered; though trying not to let symptoms of right wing fuckwittery overwrite the many decent non right-wing reasons for a leave vote.

The trouble is, no outcome really is very palatable. If Remain wins we are shackled to a neoliberal happy-clappers outfit who in an ideal world would impose TTIP and all kinds of other free-market crap, whilst at the same time sitting and shuffling awkwardly as Hungary and Bulgaria put up razor wire fences and beat up /arrest defenceless and desperate people; as Austria, Croatia and France flirt with electing fascists and neo-Nazis. And, some of our taxpayers cash goes to a rising despot in Turkey who feels so emboldened by our unelected leaders' moral squeamishness that he shoots unarmed migrants on his border and is engaged in an all out war against Kurds in Syria.

If Leave wins, Putin is happy, Farage will be filmed laughing half cut in the pub with Gove and Johnson, and who knows what kind of libertarian fantasists playground the UK will come in a very short space of time. This for me is the trouble with the Lexit platform. There is simply no thinking whatsoever on how to resist the plans of the Farages and Goves of this world, and by what means many of the neoliberal gains of the last thirty years could be reversed in a non-EU Britain. Indeed, it seems likely that those two have a plan to turn the UK into some kind of Singapore off the coast of Europe.

Moreover, the capacity for pro-working class forces to resist such a drive post Brexit is virtually nil. The unions are branded social clubs in the main these days and the few capable thinkers are so politically isolated and without influence that they are effectively howling at the moon. Meanwhile celebrity leftists like Mason and Varoufakis seem more intent on growing their own personal brands and making nonsense calls for pan-European social movements than in contributing anything worthwhile.

It's all very well making calls to "destablise the emergent neo-liberal global order" via a no vote, but it's being written about as an isolated event rather than as a process. Unfortunately it seems about as valuable as a Trot motion of solidarity with Palestine passed by four people in the back room of a pub.

I hope I'm wrong. But it's not pleasant at all being asked to choose which bowl of reeking right-wing shite to eat from this Thursday. Not pleasant at all. Not that not eating is an option either.

I still lean towards leave as at least there is a glimmer from a marginally open door, maybe. But people who vote for the safety of the familiar and what they know can't be despised either. My feeling is, particularly in the wake of last Thursday's sickening murder by a fascist terrorist, that Remain will win quite comfortably in the end.

That being the case, what will "business as usual" look like for political and business elites? I would expect at least a fortnight's worth of oleaginous plaudits for choosing the "European course" and the UK to have quite a bit of slack for a while with Brussels. And for us to continue to try and let the Chinese build a nuclear plant in Essex and pay the French ludicrously over the odds to try and do the same. Followed by another decade of economic austerity and "it's just not realistic to expect us to pay for this anymore".

Depressing.

 

[Louis MacNeice]

but loss of income accompanies unemployment so you can't separate them. Loss of self respect from being denied the opportunity to work and loss to society (waste) of those peoples' abilities and experience.

Unemployed tend to suffer from depression, have low levels of well-being and life satisfaction, and financial hardship with difficulties paying bills.

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~blnchflr/papers/Bell-Blanchflower.pdf

Why shouldn't we try to separate income guarantee from employment; it might go some way to dispelling depression and increasing feelings of well being? After all that is what the NHS, state education and the state pension are about in part at least. You've also slipped in the confusion between work and employment; think of all those carers who work very hard, make a massive contribution to our society but don't earn a penny.

Cheers - Louis MacNeice

 

[mauvais]

Except that *sigh* change imposed by the people is more likely than change from within ever will be. Anyone who's ever worked for a bureaucracy is aware that such organisations don't cede powers, they only accumulate them.
As for "how and when?", when people get angry enough to shrug off the propaganda and the oppression. I can't give you a fixed date or tactical schema, however much you desire them.

I'm not looking for an outcome, fantasy or otherwise, and your "much higher and more tangible chance of enabling the exact opposite" is a fantasy of your own. Show the workings that point this up please, if you can.

It's not hard, and we have done this before. The Tories and centre-to-far right are clearly best placed to profit in the short to medium term. Removal of those partial EU protections we've been talking about benefits capital. Further disruption to the economy probably benefits the austerity narrative, broken as it is, and if not that directly, then more broadly in terms of pitting rich against poor.

So lots of ways for it to get worse, and little evidence of how we or any allied entities are poised and ready to exploit it. There's not healthy precedent internationally. Most realistically it's a scorched earth concept that hopes that something better will emerge from total ruin. Well, I can't back this up offhand but I suspect that the majority of modern historical progressive gains took place against a wider background of stability, not turmoil, and having to transition to an independent economy is the latter.

So with all that lurking in the bushes ready to play its part, no tactics and no outcome but a call to do something anyway is just not good enough for me.

 

[agricola]

Except that *sigh* change imposed by the people is more likely than change from within ever will be. Anyone who's ever worked for a bureaucracy is aware that such organisations don't cede powers, they only accumulate them.

Truer words were never typed out.

 

[agricola]

So lots of ways for it to get worse, and little evidence of how we or any allied entities are poised and ready to exploit it. There's not healthy precedent internationally. Most realistically it's a scorched earth concept that hopes that something better will emerge from total ruin. Well, I can't back this up offhand but I suspect that the majority of modern historical progressive gains took place against a wider background of stability, not turmoil, and having to transition to an independent economy is the latter.

Not really; in fact most positive social change has taken place in the aftermath of large scale conflict, disasters or technological advancements that disrupt the usual order of things. Long-term stability usually results in worsening conditions as costs (edit: to business etc) inexorably rise and those in charge seek to bring about means by which they can be reduced.

 

[Pickman's model]

Not I just don't want to get drawn into engaging with the issues, especially with you as you're a tedious, time wasting cunt. The post I initially made isn't relevant to the specific issues as I see them nor is it relevant which side I'm on etc.. that isn't hard to understand yet you continually want to goad me into discussing the issues surrounding the EU referendum which I've been pretty clear in stating that I'm not going to do.

No, all I have sought from you is an enumeration, a list if you will, of the issues for you. If you had simply said immigration or sovereignty or whatnot you wouldn't have wasted so much of your time on this, we'd have moved on. To reiterate afaics you haven't a clue what any of the issues are here. So why the fuck are you posting on the thread in the first place?

 

[two sheds]

Why shouldn't we try to separate income guarantee from employment; it might go some way to dispelling depression and increasing feelings of well being? After all that is what the NHS, state education and the state pension are about in part at least.

Indeed. I'd also like to see a return to the pre-Thatcher post-war social contract: 0 to 4% unemployment for 30 years.

You've also slipped in the confusion between work and employment; think of all those carers who work very hard, make a massive contribution to our society but don't earn a penny.

Cheers - Louis MacNeice

Agreed.

 

[Pickman's model]

Indeed. I'd also like to see a return to the pre-Thatcher post-war social contract: 0 to 4% employment for 30 years.

I'm an abolition of work man too