Off Topic Politics Thread

Can CNN be trusted? Their polls 6 months after the referendum do not agree with what the Mainstream politicians keep telling us.

One example:
"The UK should have a second referendum once terms of leaving the EU have been established"
Yes 35%, Don't know 13%, No 53%

That's not what Tim Farron, Ed Milliband, Nick Clegg keep telling us the public want. Does that mean that CNN is fake news? Or that printing (or saying on TV) Tim Farron, Ed Milliband or Nick Clegg's statement as if it was fact is fake news?

Quite clearly even allowing for a margin of error that is quite decisively not what the public want. Sorry "people" now that we are allowed to use that term again because the righteous have decided they are "the people" now after spending months saying that t'other lot can't call themselves "the people" because they don't represent everybody.


:
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/12/19/europe/cnn-brexit-poll/index.html

 

I trust CNN more than politicians, if that it is what you are asking.

 

I have deliberately tried to speak about "Trump and those around him" or "Trump and his advisers" but, actually, seeing as Trump signs the orders Trump IS responsible. Doesn't matter if it was all someone else's idea or whether someone else wrote the order. When he signed it he accepted responsibility for its contents. It would be a total disaster for him if he came out and said he didn't read (or understand) what he was signing. That isn't going to happen.

That link really just supports what I've been saying - that Trump and his people aren't able to write clear orders. It supports what I said about Trump's camp rushing out the order (they've almost certainly rushed out the other orders), not considering how what they had written would be interpreted and not writing the Order clearly enough, meaning officials were confused as to what it meant. A clear order would have specified who was and was not affected. This order didn't so nobody really knew what it meant. As I said to begin with, policies aside, I'm concerned he (or they if you prefer) cannot currently do the job to an acceptable standard.

 

I'm saying that Bannon and Miller did this intentionally. They knew what would happen, and they did not care. There was deliberately no exception for green card holders. When DHS and others got it, they interpreted it as NOT applying to green card holders because like, who would do such a thing? Bannon and Miller specifically told them "No, it does." The confusion is mostly a result of those two intentionally keeping others out of the loop because they would have tried to stop it.

 

It's interesting how the "Leave" campaign are furiously rewriting history. It seems that leave voters did so because they knew exactly what was on offer.

I heard the following reasons for voting leave from people's own mouths:

- "I'm getting on a bit and I thought it would be fun to see what happened"

- "I'd had enough of Dave"

And on here (I'm paraphrasing but the truth is in there):

- "I couldn't decide so I tossed a coin."

There was a fourth barking reason but I seem to have expunged it from my memory.

Then add in every single racist in the country (like my ex-mate Tim who just HATES foreigners in all forms and at all times).


Which of those was voting leave because they felt it would be beneficial to leave the Single Market?

I'm not saying Remain voters were perfect either but, in general, their argument for that vote is that they were pretty happy with the way things are so why change it. That seems reasonably coherent to me. Voting for no change is pretty straightforward

Make all the claims you want about the future and how wonderful it will be when we get that trade deal with Burkina Faso, kick out every single foreigner, have bobbies back on the beat and enter the sunlit uplands of life. However, the claim that all leave voters were well-informed and that their vote was a choice to leave the Single Market is utter, utter tripe.

Vin

 

And that's not my substantive point. I'm not saying "Oh that couldn't happen in America." My point, which I've repeated numerous times, is that they appear incapable of issuing clear instructions. It doesn't matter whether they meant X and it was interpreted to mean Y or whether they meant Y and it was interpreted as X. My point is that important orders are not being written clearly and are being misinterpreted.

 

Yeah, and ISIRTP's point appears to be that these guys know exactly what they are doing, and that none of this is happening by accident. They know the effect their orders will have, and they don't care.

I have no idea which of you is nearer to the truth. But I don't think Trump is surrounded by idiots who don't know what they are doing, although he may be just that himself.

 

And his point is irrelevant to mine. Whether they intended to ban green card holders or not, the order is unclear. It's been interpreted at one point as banning them and interpreted at another as not banning them. So at some point it must have been misinterpreted. The order regarding regulations is also unclear.

I find it very hard to believe they are deliberately drafting unclear orders that officials will struggle to interpret because that will ultimately have the effect of paralysing their own government.

 

Steve Bannon is on record as saying that he wants to destroy the whole establishment, so deliberately paralysing the apparatus of state would actually fit very well with those intentions.

The fact the order applied to everyone from the named countries, green card holders included, doesn't appear to have been unclear at all. It's just that, like you, those charged with implementing the order found it very hard to believe any government could issue an order like that. The order may have been unconstitutional; Bannon may have intended it to be, since he clearly has no respect for the constitution.

 

I'm with Archers on this. I think they knew what they were doing and they knew it would cause confusion/chaos. Also, do something totally outrageous and slightly less outrageous things will slip under the radar. Maybe I'm being cynical, maybe not

 

No-one is claiming that "all" leave voters were well-informed, that is you being disingenuous trying to generalise. Equally it ignores the fact that an equal number of remainers will have been ill informed as seen by many young like the one who in a single interview (I assume a student) holding her SWP placard outside Downing street gave the NHS as No1 of her 3 favourite things about the EU.

Her 2nd choice was an eye opener with "Its about everyone being united together and having the same opinion." This notion of everybody"having the same opinion" is one of the real problems we have at the moment because no-one seems to be able to understand that people do have differences of opinion. Some notional, some very different that don't matter much and some on key issues that really do matter but there will never be a day where everybody "has the same opinion" until we are replaced by robots.

She also stated that she would have to pay to go to France now, somehow thinking that travel across Europe was free in the EU and followed that nugget up with "I can't see my world which i live in without paying a lot of money, which I shouldn't have to.the world is free" as if she thinks those of us who have travelled haven't had to fork out a lot of money. Costs me a fortune to take my wife and 3 kids to Portugal just in airfare. She seems to have confused the idea of free market or a free world with not having to pay for something here.

She stated that "Nigel Farage had said that the NHS was going to get £350m" when it was nothing to do with Nigel and even then it is the remain side's false interpretation filling in the gaps to suit that has ignored the fact that it says "let's fund the NHS instead" and not spend the whole EU amount on the NHS.

This statement alone shows that she has got her facts from the skewed narrative on TV or social media where they pushed this narrative with even the gorgeous Susanna Reid having a go at Nigel for something he never said.

Back to the same young voter with her SWP placard she then went onto say "think about our food, it's European. Everything is European and they're going to stop that trade." So she clearly here has bought the line (or imagined it) that trade will stop with Europe.

She stated that "they want to kick people out" which no-one other than some on the remain side ever stated. Nicola Sturgeon for one because that is one of her key tactics to throw a lie and take up her opponents talking time defending themselves.

To cap it off after all this information on why the EU was "great." She was asked to give 5 words to describe Great Britain to which she ummed and ahhed and said "Proud" and then couldn't think of anymore words to describe the country she lived in.

Of course not all remain voters were as "ill-informed" as this student was but you can;t blame many for being ill-informed when the media and remain side seemed determined not just to encourage misleading ideas but in many cases purposefully assisted in promoting them.

So yes I think we can all admit that voters on the leave side may have been ill-informed just as there will equally be as many on the remain side were ill-informed.

Being ill-informed cannot be judged by the use of what the remain side "say" the leave side said when half the time (just like Sturgeon does on every issue) the remain side continually threw misinformation around about what leave people had said. It is a tactic that has been used for a while now where these sort of activists, campaigners and politicians throw out a lie about their opponent in order to make their opponents defend themselves against the lie which then reduces their time to actually give out information.

And now we have the remain side continuing their clutching at straws stance which can easily be cleared up:

1) "It wasn't binding:"
In the government leaflet that was sent to 29 million homes at a cost of £9m to the taxpayer it stated under the heading THIS IS A ONCE IN A GENERATION DECISION"

This is your decision. The Government will implement what you decide.

29 million homes got that nugget through their letterbox let alone politicians continually stating it on the TV.

Add to that they are in there to represent us using their judgement however they didn't use their judgement. They passed that honour on to us to advise and they can;t take the result of that back.


2) "People did not vote to leave the single market"
Well if they watched any news program, watched any debate, watched any of Cameron's and remain's dominance of the TV covering all the major TV channels or read the leaflet that went through 29 million letterboxes then it was pretty clear. The remain side emphasised the point over and over again.



3) "If remain had won they would have been moaning too"

I totally agree but you would not have had the enormitude of entitlement and hatred that is on the streets from those who talk of "peace." It would just be a continuation of what has been going on for the past 40 years with campaigning to leave the EU and not this hatred being spewed out towards leave voters towards their own compatriots. Should we start reporting all these offending statements as hate speech?

Farage would still be moaning, People would still be moaning but they wouldn't have been as "vocal" as the remain supporters are at the moment and the BBC would most definitely not have been reporting on it in a supportive way as they constantly do at the moment. They would have ridiculed the leave side and made sure that leave protestors were nasty 'orrible people to be ignored and derided.

Of course there would be moaning but the "remainiacs" or "remoaners" (who makes up these silly names) are doing much more than moaning. They are throwing their name calling around at anybody who dare not agree with no realisation of the irony in that seeing as they normally spend most of their time complaining about anything that anybody might be offended by (whether anybody actually is offended or not) and yet here they are name calling people because they didn;t agree with them.

So Vin. I accept SOME leave voters as well as SOME remain voters were ill informed or just plain didn't know what they were voting for. However it is disingenuous to continually try to sweep up large parts of the vote under that banner and even more disingenuous to ignore that the other side equally had a portion of ill informed voters within it. It is disingenuous to say people did not know they were voting to leave the single market when it couldn't have been repeated any more than it was by the very side (remain) that now claim that no-one voted for that. How can they say people weren't voting for leaving the single market when they themselves told us that was what a leave vote would mean?

And it is disingenuous to talk of the referendum not being binding when it was made clear that the result of the referendum would be implemented BY THE REMAIN SIDE!!!!

We need to move on with this, not keep arguing about the result. We've done that bit. There will be no replay. Public poliing suggests by a large margin that no-one wants a second referendum not even after the deal despite what Tim Farron, Nick Clegg, Ed Milliband or Ken Clarke say and we need to move forward and make it work not try to undermine a decision that has already been taken.

 

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-38813629

Absolutely brillaint performance from Ken Clarke. The Prime Minister should heed the advice of this man and Michael Heseltine and ditch Brexit immediately.

 

Ken Clarke. The politician who said after the Maastricht Treaty had been passed and voted through:

“Now we’ve signed it – we had better go and read it”

 

Trump can hardly read tbf, I still blame him though. But he is far more dyslexic then me, so I can see how he is easily taken advantage off. Add that to him being a narcissist it isn't a good thing.

 

A politician with a sense of humour, eh. Whatever next?

That and he loves jazz, definitely my favourite Tory

 

That was so much better than I was going to post,thanks for saving me.

 

This is an extremely long post analysing one person's view. Even as a staunch remainer I was embarrassed by that student.

The simple fact is that every single person I know that cares slightly about politics, did their researched and looked for a balanced view voted to remain.
Every single person that I know that has no interest in politics, and that I wouldn't trust their opinion; voted to leave.

There are genuine reasons to leave the EU. It may turn out that we prosper - but anyone can see it's a huge, huge risk. IMO the risk FAR outweighs the rewards, but as you say, what's done is done.

I personally believe we are making a horrible mistake, but now the ridiculous referendum has happened, the government have to follow through or there will be outcry. It's "suck it and see" time.

 

Why? He voted for something he hadn't "informed" himself of fully? Since we're on the subject of blasting leave voters (not remain voters though) of being ill informed of what they were voting for. Take some of the (allegedly) pro-remain politicians:

Ken Clarke has openly said: "'It's like a mortgage agreement: you never read the small print.'

Ken Clarke has also openly admitted he never read the Maastricht Treay until over 10 years after the event.

In 2015 when voting on the referendum bill Phillip Hammond said of the original referendum in the 70s "Call me negligent but I didn’t read the treaty" talking of voting as a youngster to enter the common market and not realising that it meant anything more than that.

So the beloved Ken Clarke was un ill-informed on the Maastricht Treaty despite voting for it to go through.

Philip Hammond (who I'll grant is a euro-sceptic and was just supporting his PM in the referendum campaigning for remain.) stated that he was ill-informed when he had voted for the common market as a youngster (not a politician back then of course.)


And then on the Labour benches we have an absolute classic. Caroline Flint another remain campaigner who is one of the first to throw the "ill informed" argument around was the Minister for Europe in 2009 when she had the following passage in a European committee session:

"Mr Francois: Given that the treaty is integral to the documents we are debating this afternoon, I am a little surprised at the continuing vagueness of the Minister's answer. This is a really simple question: has the Minister read the elements of the Lisbon treaty that relate to defence?

Caroline Flint: I have read some of it but not all of it.

Mr Francois: What!

Caroline Flint: I have been briefed on some of it.

Mr Francois: That is an extraordinary answer. The Minister for Europe has not read all of the Lisbon treaty. That is an absolutely extraordinary revelation. It is a bit like the Irish Prime Minister saying that he had not read it before the referendum. That is an incredible answer. If she is Minister for Europe, why has she not read the treaty?"



This from the government's (at the time) minister for Europe 6 months after she had said in the HoC:

"I believe that the Lisbon treaty is good for the United Kingdom and good for Europe."

and

"The Lisbon treaty provides a simpler, more streamlined EU


So in Caroline Flint and Kenneth Clarke's cases we have 2 politicians that were in government in prominent ministerial positions that have admitted they had not read the treaty that they were voting on us ratifying. So they were representing us................yet were not in a position to do so because they had not read the Treaties themselves. In Caroline Flint's case even worse because she was the Minister for Europe and it was her department.

Philip Hammond was just an ill-informed voter at the time of the original referendum and so of course is 'orrible.

How you can put Kenneth Clarke up there shows your opinion. You don't care about ill informed or not. Only if they agree with you.


How can these people be pushing this "giving the benefit of their judgement" reasoning here when Ken Clarke and Caroline Flint could not possibly have given us the benefit of their judgement when making those 2 decisions because they had not read (on our behalf) the treaties they were agreeing to?

It is laughable to then use the ill informed excuse.

 

Sums up why politics and politicians are hated really. They can't even be bothered themselves.

I'm sad to say that my only real interest in politics these days is on a selfish personal level, as I can't stand to read too much into it.

Well; that and standing against the far-right. I'm extremely liberal and open-minded, personally.

I wish more science and research could be applied to politics, and less spin, fake news and exaggerating.

 

We are pretty much in agreement on the last 2 of your 4 sentences although I am reverse on the 2nd sentence. Blame Blair (in a bad way) for getting me into politics a bit and then Obama (in a good way) for getting me very interested.

My interest has increased as the constant spin and misdirection has grown (in the internet/24 hour news age)