BREXIT --->

[Gray]

The unending tension of prolonging and extending is unbearable. It stresses me out to no end. But, to me, it is utterly vital that this is not done the wrong way, my whole future literally depends on it. Like everybody else, I have Brexit fatigue, but I'd hate to see a bad deal being rushed through, only to later realise that I am apparently now an enemy of the nation and will have to be expelled.

To me, the only satisfactory solution would be to cancel the whole damn thing, chalk it up as a massive mistake having costed millions of pounds pointlessly, which is still better than costing us billions each year.

[Edit]

Just for clarification, I'd like to add the following:

To a greater or lesser extent, all politicians will have to lie, whether they want to or not. It comes with the job, They have to make promises they can not possibly keep, or they will never get elected. Much of this is aspirational, what they aim to achieve if elected, then the reality hits and they actually can't. This is generally understood by most of their voters, who will grumble for a while and then forget. But, some politicians take this too far. Way too far. Boris is one of them. He's lied so frequently about so very important things that have been proven factually wrong time and time again, which is why he has lost the trust of so many people now and can never regain it. He's burned all his bridges. He has screwed his own credibility. That is why he always doubles down, and never admits failure, because that would mean some of the stuff he has said in the past may not necessarily have been entirely true, and that he may have exaggerated by just a few hundred billion pounds. As long as he keeps up the pretense, some people who aren't paying attention will probably still believe him. The trouble with this strategy is that it sets you up for a spectacular failure. But then there are some politicians who for some reason appear to be bulletproof, like Boris and Trump, and it doesn't matter how many mistakes, lies, scandals they go through in a single day that would bring down any self-respecting politician, they just keep doubling down, dismissing it, and are somehow inexplicably not called up on all the bullshit. You can NOT chalk this down to charisma, Boris is slightly less charming than a wet mop in a janitor's smelly bucket, despite the very similar hairstyle. So what is it? Smugness? Rich posh twat privilege? A complete narcissistic inability to ever see how they could be wrong? Suppression of actual facts? I don't know, and it baffles me. How can this clown be our PM? What the hell happened? How could he ever have been taken seriously enough to even be considered to stand for PM? Am I the only person paying attention to what a horribly shitty person he was well before Brexit? Why are so many people so easily fooled? "A man of the people?" No fucking way! Not in any of the possible ways you can interpret that sentence. This rich, posh, Eton-educated privileged twat with no connection with the real world can ever even know these supposed "people". Even the word "man" is questionable there, that would suggest he's an actual human. Based on his behaviour, facts do not weigh in his favour.

So in short, I'm not a fan.

[Nameless Voice]

I'm sure I've said it before, but I'll say it again.

Politicians should be held to a higher level than normal people, not a lower one.
A politician intentionally lying to their people should be a crime. Any politician caught lying should be immediately expelled from their office and banned from running or holding any public office for at least a few years.

There is no legitimate reason for a politician to lie to their own people. Politicians are supposed to be representatives of those people and answerable to those people, and lying is always the exact opposite of that.


But, of course, any such laws would need to be introduced by politicians, since they run all our world governments, so the chances of such legislation ever being passed is pretty much zero.



I'm talking about intentional lies here, not so much the "aspirational lies" of someone who promises to do something and then discovers that they can't. But there's no reason for politicians to make such aspirational lies either - they can instead use wording like "I promise to try to ..." in their election pitches, instead of "I will ...".

[heywood]

I think most people want to be lied to. They don't want to know about the complexity of government, or the challenges and tradeoffs involved in solving hard problems. They want the world to be black and white and believe every problem has a right answer, and they want politicians to pander to their desires and not challenge their simplistic assumptions. As Gray indicated, voters are drawn to aspirational leaders who will look into the camera and tell them they can solve any problem if they get enough support. A great example is when interest groups demand pledges, e.g. no new taxes, close gitmo, balance the budget, bring the troops home, appoint certain judges, etc. Even if the people know a promise or pledge isn't realistic, they demand politicians make it anyway.

[Gray]

I'm sure I've said it before, but I'll say it again.

Politicians should be held to a higher level than normal people, not a lower one.
A politician intentionally lying to their people should be a crime. Any politician caught lying should be immediately expelled from their office and banned from running or holding any public office for at least a few years.

But, of course, any such laws would need to be introduced by politicians, since they run all our world governments, so the chances of such legislation ever being passed is pretty much zero.

I fully agree, but I strongly doubt this will ever happen, for the reason you mentioned. They are supposed to be our elected leaders, and if they're seen as lying cheating bastards, people will think "well if they're doing it, why should I bother keeping straight?" I find it very disappointing when people who not only lie but actively try to obscure the truth are in power. Then again, power corrupts, and I've never had any power, so I wouldn't even begin to know what it's like. I've never been rich and tried to avoid taxes. Perhaps all my "strong" morals would crumble if I had money and power. I just hope I'm not that kind of a bastard. I guess we'll never know, I'm probably gonna stay poor and insignificant forever.

[SuaveSteve]

Wooo, another extension!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-50205603

[Marecki]

And the clueless working-class English loudmouth bulldogs with their heads up so far up their asses they can't tell when they're being played.

Ah, yes. I actually got told to go back where I'd come from by one of these... You know something is about to end when you find yourself receiving xenophobic slur in the street in Cambridge.

I've very often reminded that I'm part of "the problem that we have to get rid of"

This. Very much this.

But on the upside, the booze is cheaper in the UK and there's more great music, so it's not all bad.

Yeah, I used to like being able to pop over to London for a spot of culture, or just to soak in the ambience and to remind myself of how much I enjoyed living there during my student days... Alas, no more. What London reminds me of now is that as a scientist, I shall never be able to afford living there (no, the outskirts which actually take longer to reach from the city centre by public transportation than it takes to take a train from Cambridge to Kings Cross, do not count).

Oh, and snow. I miss that.

Same here... Even though I had nowhere as much of it as you would have.

Hmm, maybe the racist assholes are right, maybe I should go back to where I came from. Except my home is here now, and my family.

Oh, stop whining and grow a pair!

...I'm sorry, has my inner Piers Morgan shown?

[Nicker]

Yob: Go back where ya' came from, ya' brown bastard!
B.B.: Wot? Liverpool? It's a fookin' shit-hole, Mate!


So elections in December. Yay. Boris' sneaky exit averted.

[Starker]

Well, maybe this new season they finally manage to wrap it up. After the prorogation arc there's been nothing but filler episodes.

[SuaveSteve]

Do you guys think Lib Dems will keep their word and revoke Brexit if they win?

Do you think they will win? They seem to be third in the latest opinion polls. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-49798197

[Vae]

[Nicker]

Boris Johnson is withholding a security and intelligence report about Russian interference in the Brexit vote, despite the requirement that he release it immediately. He will do so after the election even though the report contains critical information needed to make an informed choice.

[Gray]

On one hand, I have to ask "can we have a shittier, worse prime minister than Mr NoPantsFluffyMop", but on the other, I don't think I really want the answer to that. We could actually do worse. We could have Mr NoChinPintInHandHypocriteBastard. :shudder:

All I can do is urge all the voters to do their homework before they yet again vote directly against their own interest. People, please don't be fucking morons yet again. Brexit is a big fat lie. If you're not already rich, you WILL get poorer. Roughly by 9.6%. Says the tory predictive report they prefer to not discuss in public.

The lying cheating bastard politicians annoy the hell out of me, but that is their job. What's much much worse are the morons who believe them. Stop doing that. Either do your homework, or DON'T VOTE, you idiot.

[Nameless Voice]

NV's Cynical Theory of Politics:
In any election, the worst possible candidate is the most likely to get in, with their chances of being elected increasing the worse they are.

[Gray]

I'm a bitter cynical bastard, but yet, I somehow disagree.

I believe a democratic country elects the leader it deserves. Their choice will largely determine the outcome. Morons will elect someone who can manipulate morons. Clever people will elect someone who's actually quite good. You get what you deserve. The trouble is, I'm now living in a country where a large part of the electorate are, to put it as bluntly as I can, fucking morons. This is where my cynicism kicks back in. I do not have high hopes, because I do not trust people to realise just how terrible Boris and Brexit truly are.

[nickie]

I think Tony Blair largely agrees with you.

Former prime minister Tony Blair said on Monday that Britain was in a dangerous mess and that neither his own Labour Party nor Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservatives deserved to win a Dec. 12 election . . .

“We’re a mess,” Blair said at a Reuters Newsmaker event. “The buoyancy of the world economy has kept us going up to now, but should that falter, we will be in deep trouble.”

Blair, Labour prime minister from 1997 to 2007, said both major parties were peddling fantasies, adding that if the opinion polls were accurate, Johnson’s party looked likely to win a majority.

Apart from being stitched up by the Tories in 1988 when I actually had some money, I can't say that I've ever really noticed any difference in my personal circumstances, regardless of who is in power.

Where I live now, I basically have a choice between Lib Dems and Plaid Cymru. There were about 100 votes between them last election - Plaid Cymru booted out the Lib Dem. Everyone else was in the 100s rather than the 1000s so anyone else I voted for would truly be a wasted vote. Both parties are anti-Brexit (last time I looked) which suits me. I don't know what I'm going to do yet.

[Nameless Voice]

Not sure why anyone would quote Tony Blair, a man most-remembered for starting a war and murdering hundreds of thousands based on made-up evidence, against the protests of his population, and under whose leadership the Labour Party swung so far to the right that it was barely distinguishable from the Conservatives.

Of course he doesn't think the current Labour Party deserve to win. They're actually somewhat leftist- something he spent years trying to stamp out in the party when he was leader.

[caffeinatedzombeh]

To be fair he said something sensible for a change and I mostly agree with him.

Thus far all parties seem to be engaged in a competition to see who can tell the most utterly ridiculous lies.

[Nameless Voice]

There seems to be an aggressive push in the UK media to try to make it out that all the candidates are equally awful and that it's pointless to even bother voting, presumably to try to depress people who want to see something change into not bothering.

Not that this is a new strategy.

[Pyrian]

Saying "everybody X" is typically to the benefit of the people who "X" the most and the detriment of those who'd prefer there were less "X".

Basically, "Everybody lies" is pro-lying.

[Renzatic]

[Nameless Voice]

Looks like whatever that image was of, it's been pulled from imgur.

[Renzatic]

It's still popping up on my end. But for the sake of inclusiveness...

[SD]

Where I live now, I basically have a choice between Lib Dems and Plaid Cymru. There were about 100 votes between them last election - Plaid Cymru booted out the Lib Dem. Everyone else was in the 100s rather than the 1000s so anyone else I voted for would truly be a wasted vote. Both parties are anti-Brexit (last time I looked) which suits me. I don't know what I'm going to do yet.

Sounds like Ceredigion? If so then you live in one of the very few four-way marginals in the country

The Welsh Nats won it with 29% last time, but four parties got more than 18%. I'd expect it to be a Plaid-Lib Dem fight again, and a narrow Lib Dem gain, but Labour and the Tories cannot be discounted.

Tactical voting here seems like it would be an impossibility, so I'd say just go with whoever is closest to your thinking.

[nickie]

Clever old you, it is indeed Ceredigion.

I won't vote for Labour at the moment and since the current council has just pissed me off regarding council tax exemption, I'll probably go Lib Dem or Green.

[Nameless Voice]

Why won't you vote for Labour at the moment? Don't they have more chance of getting in than the Greens with the First Past The Post system?