Really?

Pete, there are people who agree with you on the need to leave now,

But you haven’t given us any arguments.

Many, such as drac, who support brexit are more careful.

With pension funds at breaking point etc etc, this is not an attempt to scare but genuine concern. Even Theresa May, who has so carefully defined Brexit as ,er, brexit, says there may be bad times ahead.

But if you have evidence that this is just stuff and nonsense, please share.

sceptical guy wrote:

Thanks for the info, drac.

It’s interesting that someone such as yourself who writes reasonably should be thinking of voting for FN. I could never vote for those characters, but it’s your right. I also enjoy reading a reasoning argument rather than a rhetorical one for a change, and will respond in kind.

You are welcome, I am not really a fan of rhetorics either. I don’t know who I am going to vote for, but at the moment I am thinking about FN. Although I may choose not to vote at all, I very rarely go to France and it should be an issue for the people that actually live there to decide on.

sceptical guy wrote:

I totally agree with you about teh need to engotiate new trade treaties before leaving, but I’m not sure that is going to be possible. We may be ehading for a hard brexit because of the weird alliance between hardline Brexiteers in Theresa may’s cabinet and angry EU governments. I would expect trouble for us all, maybe very painful trouble.

I think we would at least be able to make agreements with Australia and New Zealand,. Their trade is mostly dominated by China, so I would imagine they would be very willing to open up trading with a more friendly partner. This would at least secure vital products like food. The EU actually has shockingly few external trade deals so anything we get would be an advantage already. The only deals that would cause problems for us are within the EU. Both France and Germany will have different governments before we leave, so it is hard to say what they will do.

sceptical guy wrote:

It’s perfectly legal to campaign for a reversal of the plebiscite. A new plebisicite is not on the cards – i don’t agree with the things anyway – de Gaulle tried to turn France into a plebiscitory democracy at one point – not something I agree with. Plebiscites are easily manipulable, and lend themselves to a debauchment of demoracy as a rsult of scam debates such as in the UK during the summer.

But if Brexit was turning into a disaster and everybody but Pete becmea convinced it would be better not to leave, then there has to be a means of not going ahead. The best bet is a clear general election, fought openly on the issue. Nothing undemoratic about that.

If brexit looked as though it were going to be relatively painless, then the demands for reversal would be restricted to a minority.

It is of course legal, and I wouldn’t want it to be otherwise. I do think however that overturning a referendum would set a dangerous precedent for ignoring future democracy in the country. I see a genuine risk in this regard, an example would be Labour recently allowing the trotskyists back into the party, people who would happily see democracy thrown away.

sceptical guy wrote:

One thing that worries me is that a fair number of Far Rightists have used brexit as a vehicle to overcome their isolation. The number of hate crimes, even murders have taken a spike since the vote, though for how long I don’t know.

I strongly dislike the use of hate crime as a classification of anything, the definition is deliberately vague so that pretty much anything can be a hate crime if it supports the current narrative. And example of this would be part of the increace in hate crime prior to the referendum being people phoning the police to complain about Farrage’s poster (an image that the Guardian had used previously in an immigration article actually). Murder is of course wrong, but I haven’t seen anything would suggest a spike. If you could show me evidence for this then I would be interested to see it.

sceptical guy wrote:

This brings us back to free speech.

I take the tried and trusted approach that speech should be free unless it leads to violence. The fact that you or Pete will disagree wiht me is the reason why you should be free to argue; I should say that teh same goes for me – I should be free to argue without being bullied out. If speech is likely to lead to violence, or is inciting violence (whether ISIS violence or Far Right violence) then it has to be stopped, even made illegal. But the parameters of free speech should be as wide as possible.

The first problem is how would you prove that any individual statement leads directly to violence, other than the obvious “Go and kill X person”, and that person is found dead the next day. And I don’t think banning ISIS propaganda would achieve anything, people who are inclined that way would still view it one way or another, and it would only criminalise legitimate research into how they operate and recruit members.

sceptical guy wrote:

Drac,
on trade agreements. Australia and New Zealand are very eager to make such a agreement with us, but we can’t make any agreement with anybody by law until we have finally left the EU. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to build cars in the UK to seel the to Australia.

I am aware that we cannot legally sign agreements like this, its one of the reasons I wanted to leave the EU. However I see now reason why we can’t start negotiating the deal now, and sign it into effect immediately when we leave. Australia might not be a large export market for cars, but if Germany (with no trade deal) and America can sell cars to them, I see no reason why we couldnt be competitive also.

sceptical guy wrote:

Some enthusiastic Brexiteers have trumpeted the willingness of Canada to have a trade agreement, but were stopped short by the Canadians saying that an agreement with the EU has to come first. Japan and the USA have just read the Riot Act bigtimeto Theresa May, and she is already shifting on immigration.

Canada has a largely incompetent government at the moment. Trudeau seems to be obsessed with womens rights, even though they were already brought into law decades ago. I think that their priorities may change after their next election.

As for Japan, I don’t really understand their comments. They would never join anything like the EU. They are a very conserative country, and have pretty much made practicing Islam illegal.

Again with the USA, they will have a different government in a few months so whatever they say now means effectively nothing. If May does go backwards on immigration then it almost guarantee UKIP wgetting elected in 2020 .

sceptical guy wrote:

It could well be like Suez in 1956. the Brits went in to Egypt on their own one day, and the next day, after the US had had a word, the UK left Egypt. humiliating, but proof that we were no longer a great power.

I honestly don’t know anything about this, I will have to read about it sometime.

sceptical guy wrote:

I see a good solution emerging – not as good as remaining in the EU, but not bad. Remember that brexit means brexit, and if asked what that means i detail, the answer is er brexit. Expect Farage to re-emerge in British politics soon.

Referendums reflect opinion at any one time; at another time opinions may have shifted..I’m srure there won’t be another referendum – let’s leave it at that.

Farage has already said he would go back into national politics if he suspects May of backtracking. I would honestly like to see him return, I don’t agree with some of what he says but he seems to be the only major politician who actually believes in what he is saying.

I would hate to see another referendum, but i think leave would have a clear win if it was re-run. Now that our ecconomy hasn’t collapsed and WW3 hasn’t started. Also a lot of remain voters are annoyed with the constant protests and may vote leave just to silence them.

sceptical guy wrote:

Hate crimes are a term used to describe the attcks and abuse levelled at somebody because they belong to a particular group. The murder of Stephen lawrence is a specatacular example of a hate crime. The attacks on and killing of gays are too regular to be comforatable, and usually reported on the local news. I am not a Crime Watch freak, so have no evidence.

There was a spike in hate attacks on immigrant workers in the aftermath of the referendum, according to police reports across the country. I wold say that the killing of Jo Cox, the Labour MP by some neo-nazi nut, is an example of this – an atmosphere in which people were called traitors was bound to have a nasty effect. Fortunately, after her death, that amtmosphere calmed for a bit. The killing of a Polish worker in Harlow a few days ago seems to hve been a hate crime, as were the attacks on some Polish people who had turned up at his funeral

Finally on free speech. There are some easy cases where horrible views have to be tolerated. Hitler’s mein kampf, along with works of ‘scientific’ racism and sexism from Houston Stewart Chamberlain to Hans Eysenck are wrong, but they must be brought out and critically assessed. The historical writing of David irving, with btheir denials of the holocaust, should be allowed, not banned, despite their horrible arguemnts. Similarly, the writing of the radical islamist al Qutb, who was tortured to death by Nasser, have to be published legally.

At the other extreme, I have seen American nazi party wrirings which are just an incitement to murder. In a charged atmosphere, there are some incendiary works whihc have to be stopped. ISIS is an example – an organisation at war with us, a death cult, it has to be treated in the same way we treated british nazis during the Second World War – lock em up.

I agree with pretty much everything you have said here, although I don’t really see the point in labeling murder as a hate crime. Murder is already bad, everyone knows this.

sceptical guy wrote:

In the middle are the hard cases around which we will always argue. I think Bernard Manning’s humour stinks, but I wouldn’t ban it. I also think PC has gone too far in banning certain words regardless of context.

The progressive left is largely to blame for this, they have inserted themselves everywhere. A lot of primary (elementary) schools in America teach horrific (racist) things in the name of being PC. This is one of the reasons why I feel forced to vote for right wing parties like UKIP and FN, they are the only people who havent been infected by this nonsense.

sceptical guy wrote:

If you or anyone answers this in a way which requires a reply, it will probably have to wait a little while, as I’m very busy. But it will get a reply.

That is fine. It was nice have a conversation about this with somebody that doesn’t automatically label me as a racist homophobic islamophobe and try and report me for ‘hate speach’. Thankyou for your replies so far.

Pete wrote:

The people voted the people decided now get on with it I don’t care about arguments. And leave how we want not how Japan and America say we should.. really pisses me off… if they want to pull out then fuck off I say

Neither Japan or the US has trade deals with the EU, not sure what they are pulling out of. I see a lot of Japanese and American cars, consumer electronics and games around though still, almost seems like you can still trade without having deals in place or something .

Pete wrote:

At the start of the G20 Summit, the Japanese government has taken the unprecedented step of warning of a series of corporate exits, “great turmoil” and harmful effects if Brexit leads to the loss of single market privileges.

An official Japanese government task force on Brexit, has collated views of big Japanese companies from car companies to banks and pharmaceutical companies that invest in the UK.

It has produced a 15-page list titled “Japan’s message to the UK and the EU”, detailing requirements from Brexit negotiations.

fuck em

I know that hey had expressed concerns over Brexit, but I didn’t know that they had published anything about it. I will have a look at it later and see what it’s about.

Edit:
I have read through the first couple of pages, I agree with what they are saying about handeling negotiations in a professional manner. But some of the paper comes off as a bit bizarre to me, Japan claims to speak on behalf of all of Asia. Given the hostilities that still exist between China and Japan this is a strange attitude for them to take.