They may be assuming that the remaining 57% would have voted the same way but that is one hell of a leap. We have no idea. Maybe some were not voting because it was illegal. We will never know how they would have voted so in my view that weakens the Catalonian's case for claiming independence. Do you know if the votes which were counted were independently verified? It looks like the Madrid Government are backing them into a corner to get them to say exactly whether they have declared independence or not. Difficult times.
They had the UN (I think it was the UN) over there to monitor it. The BBC were interviewing some of them that couldn't believe the police response. I agree it is a leap to take the 43% sample as representative of what would have resulted with a higher turnout and agree that it weakens the Catalonian's case more than significantly.
On another note do you think that we will get no deal with the EU? I've thought it was heading that way for some time as the EU are being so inflexible. They obviously don't want to make it easy for us, so wish to set an example. Will they have the sense to agree something at the final moment? It's not in their interests to just let us go.
Do I think we will get a no deal? That all depends on the EU. They have taken the stance from the beginning that all the pressure is on the UK and have always been quietly confident that we have to have a deal so they can play hardball not conceding anything because we will accept the deal at the end no matter what it is.
Quite obviously that can't be the case. No deal IS better than a bad deal because the EU needs a deal as much as us and if "no deal" ends up being the result the EU will have to come back to the table anyway to make some sort of "not bad" deal.
The main sticking point at the moment is not the money, not the trade deals or their "4 freedoms." It is their insistence that EU citizens should have the ECJ as their highest point of law and that just won't happen. It can't happen. No "sovereign" state in the world would accept that and there is no way that we will keep the ECJ as the highest court for all of our citizens. Talks won;t move on until they concede that we will not have a 2 tier system where EU citizens have access to different courts than our citizens as it would open up a can of worms for citizens of all other countries that live here. US citizens, Australian citizens, ZIMBABWEAN CITIZENS!!!! could pick and choose which legal system gives them the best outcome and that can;t happen. We will be the UK, outside the EU and the UK law system WILL be the legal authority in the UK. Once they concede this silly point I think the money and trade deals will be sorted.
They have wasted so much time sticking to this point when the most important point in this first stage is and always was the Irish border. However the Irish border ties in with trade and can't really be discussed without a semblance of an idea bout what the trade deal would be like. The Irish border will be the hardest part to sort out. Trade sorts itself out.
I think we will probably get to the end of the 2 years with "no deal" but move into an agreed transition period where nothing changes while we try to get to a deal. I have no faith in the EU to actually concede things though and with our own politicans from the remain side continually banging on about wanting a plan out in the public domain it hinders us being able to achieve a "not bad" deal..
If the government were to come out with where they would like to end up it would then become the new opening stance in the negotiation and we would end up much further from that.
For example. We want to reach 50. They want to start at 0, We want to start at 100. Hopefully once the negotiations end we have reached 50, half way between their starting point and ours.
The remainers constant insistence is that the government says "we want to reach 50." Problem then is that the EU will only concede half way and we end up with 75 instead of 50. Business leaders playing this game are lying. They would never open negotiations saying "this is where we want to get to." They would do the same as the government and start asking for everything in order to get to the point where we get half of that.
If we do end up with no deal it will be because of the EU not us. Would you pay £150 a month for Broadband if they refused to negotiate the price down? Would £150 a month Broadband be better than no broadband?
and then kept going on about JAMs 
and I like this subject so don;t need a rest. I still don;t read (much) alt-right stuff other than to get a view of what they are saying/doing.
