Off Topic The Politics Thread
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Why is it that people think stories in the papers about football are made up but anything about Brexit is true?
Project "fear"? So far it looks more like the Remain campaign downplayed the negatives of a Leave vote.
The Observer reports today major UK banks are making plans to move their operations out of the UK early 2017 due retoric from the Government indicating leaving the single European market. Banking being by far the UK's biggest export industry the banks association claim.
The Observer, very pro-remain. The latest group to champion 'remain' is headed by Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg, already heftily rejected by British voters. The 'harbingers of doom' are in their element at the moment but no-one can predict what will happen...
It
It was written in the Observer by the boss of that far left globalist organisation, the British Bankers Association.
It's not a left/right issue. 70% of Labour voters wanted out. Most of the pinstripes in the City and the Miliband North London elite want in
I agree it's not solely a left/ right issue, but in the interest of accuracy, 63% of Labour voters wanted to remain. It seems it's an age and social status issue.
http://lordashcroftpolls.com/2016/06/how-the-united-kingdom-voted-and-why/
Most racists and xenophobes voted out.
Hold that, all racists and xenophobes voted out.
I'm sure I heard 70% leave on This Week, but agree your source looks more accurate, so correction, a third of Labour voters wanted to leave
If you scroll to the bottom of the article and look at the social attitudes results it shows what is really going on. The EU vote was a proxy for the deep divisions between people who want to turn the clock back to sometime before the Windrush arrived from the West Indies and those who are comfortable living in 2016.
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Interesting sb, I don't know how I fit on this because I consider myself to be pro European but against globalization, at least in economic terms. I find it quite horrific the way some of the media and the parliament in Brussels are demonizing the government of Wallonia at the moment, somehow insinuating that the European project is somehow being derailed because of them (Wallonia), whereas the reverse is the case - Wallonia is paving the way for a Europe which, once again, belongs to its citizens. Europe does not want CETA (TTIP by the back door) or any other free trade agreements which strengthen corporate power against democratically elected governments. How can an environmentalist be in favour of increased globalization when what is really needed, to slow down global warming, is a reduction in World trade ?
Why should you fit in? I'd consider not 'fitting in' as a badge of honour. Without knowing you I'd guess that your issue is with capitalism rather than globalisation per se. Movement of people and multiculturalism are facets of, and facilitated by, globalisation. Socialism was originally a global movement. Economic globalisation creates winners as well as losers, people in Wallonia may suffer a bit, but some Vietnamese may benefit. All of these 'forces' have downsides as well as upsides, especially at the extreme ends. Globalisation and a multinational corporation feed me and my family, so I'd be churlish to think it 'evil'. I don't like many things about the Internet, but I wouldn't wish to be without it. I want a safe, clean environment but I also want to be warm and have easy access to Chinese made electronic gadgets.
In my opinion the world is now too complex, fragmented and chaotic for anyone to truly understand, let alone control. Politicians and the media reduce it to simple binary choices between right and wrong, good and evil, in or out of the EU or simply say 'oh dear, nothing we can do about......Yemen/child abuse/the steel industry etc etc, has this issue affected you, we'd like to hear your story, let's have a five year multi million pound inquiry into whatever's bothering you today'. Adam Curtis is very eloquent on this stuff. My fear is, though we have a strong attachment to the concept of democracy, me included, in practice what we have is hopelessly inadequate to cope with the world. And without a well educated, enthusiastic and involved electorate we just elect a series of special interest cabals to try and run things.
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The problem is MASSIVE change over as little as half a generation. People react. Matters like immigration need to be dealt with sensitively to ensure that numbers find their own reasonable level. Too much change can damage. I think we can all agree that the rise on the trade union movement was hugely positive in the 19th and first part of the 20th century. But by the 1960's and 1970's the union bosses had become so powerful and so determined to pull down the edifice in order to rebuild it in their own images, that industry ground to a halt, the bottom dropped out of the country's economy and workers lost out big time. Now unionism seems mostly to have found a workable level, shop floor workers are being represented at board level in enlightened companies, and the country and its working people are thriving.
Assuming that around a third of all Labour voters voted to leave this still leaves us with the problem of not knowing exactly which third. It could have been through fear of immigration, but it could also have been from those a little bit further to the left of the party for whom the EU. parliament has increasingly become little more than a neo liberal club. They will have seen the way that Brussels tried to push TTIP and CETA through without any real democratic debate despite the majority of the people being against these. They will also have seen the forced privatizations in Greece. A future leftish Labour manifesto which included renationalization of the railways and the nationalization of energy concerns could come up against problems with the EU. regulations.
You cannot separate capitalism from globalization sb. Capitalism knows only the concept of unrestricted growth and so what we politely call 'globalization' is simply the expansion of capitalism. Capitalism does not know the concept of such a thing as a post growth society, in which we collectively decide that we already have enough, and that what is now needed is fairer distribution. My starting point is that our biggest problem is that of global warming. In order to combat this it is not enough to wait for governments and global solutions - but rather to think globally, but act locally. It means individuals, communities, towns and regions taking over their share of the responsibility - by saying ' I am responsible for my own emissions'. Communities and regions must be looking towards a fossil free future )independently of what their national government does), and this does not mean by replacing one technology with another. What it does mean is regions freeing themselves from their dependency on global systems (of oil and finance) which could collapse at any time. It means increasing levels of self sufficiency, wherever possible, and, in this context I would be happier if the local firm were locally run (ie. either a small family firm or, even better, a worker's cooperative, than part of a global player. Because then I can have more confidence that their decisions will respect my environment, than if those decisions are made in Beijing etc.
By the way you are wrong in thinking that Socialism/Communism started out as global movements - they are both far older than Marx, and even Marxist theory saw the dissolution of the state as being the final state of Communism.