So this guy spent weeks reading and fact checking everything re Brexit

[nearlyhellokitty]

medium.com/im-trying-to-fact-check-brexit/fact-checking-brexit-the-conclusion-c1f56ba4cb70#.tp8mvaye4: Basically he expected to find equivalent bullshit but discovered that "Remain appear to be telling the truth, Leave don’t." if you don't believe me look through his stuff.

"I’ve now spent the last three weeks fact-checking every detail on Brexit that I possibly could.

I’ve read 90-page government reports on my way to a wedding. I’ve hacked through academic analyses of the EU when I really should have been promoting my Virtual Reality game. I’ve treated myself to a fun Google search for the accounts of pro-Remain activists to check that they’re not biased. And so on.

At every single turn, I found that the Leave campaign’s arguments were founded on lies. Sorry, it’s as simple as that. I wish it wasn’t.
They lie about how much money we spend on the EU. I’d love to say “they’re misinformed”, or “they exaggerate”, but they don’t. They lie. Outright.

They lie about the business case for Leave. I still have found absolutely no support whatsoever for the figures that are confidently quoted here.
They lie about the state of democracy in the EU. The more I investigate the EU, the more I find out it’s fairer and better set up than the UK’s government. Just today I discovered that the European Commission’s role in legislation is actually far more balanced than I thought.
And the Leave campaign lie a lot more. I haven’t had time to post all the mini-fact-checks I’ve found. As just one example, the Vote Leave website claims

Because of free movement laws, the UK cannot test every EU doctor operating in the UK for whether they can speak English

As proof, they link to an article in the Guardian about a horrible accident thanks to a doctor not understanding English. In that article, it explicitly states:

The GMC, which registers doctors and licenses them to work, has been able to check EU medics’ English since last summer…

In other words, Leave’s statement is absolutely untrue, and that’s proved by an article they themselves use as “proof” of their untrue statement.
I haven’t had time to fact-check every single Leave claim, and some, like the claim that leaving “will make Britain Great again”, aren’t possible to fact-check.

But every single Leave claim I’ve checked has turned out not to be exaggeration, not to be well-meaning misunderstanding, but to be obviously false.

Remain’s campaign has been criticised for being dull, being negative, and being led by people who are thoroughly disliked.

All of those claims are entirely reasonable. Personally I intensely dislike both Cameron and Osborne. I’m about as much of a fan of the current UK government as I am of bowel cancer.

But every claim of theirs I’ve checked — even the ones that had pro-Remain friends shouting about how over the top and ridiculous they were has turned out to be more or less sound."

Sanity I think someone just did that up thread

Nope, it's an actual fact. £350 million sent to the EU.

What the Leave campaign seem not to understand is that saying something is fact, even repeatedly, doesn't actually make it so.

And John Barnes - Gove claimed he was for Leave, so Barnes wrote an article explaining why he was in fact for remain.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/22/john-barnes-gove-says-voting-leave-wrong

Trouble is, no matter how many lies or misrepresentations are exposed, it doesn't seem to make any difference. A lot of people are sticking their fingers in their ears and refusing to listen. I'm really not sure how democracy can work in a climate which shuts down rational debate and rejects any kind of "expert" opinion. It frightens me to think what the future may hold.

I'm not saying there haven't been hyperbole and exaggeration on the Remain side, but I don't think it has been on the same scale at all.

What I keep wondering about is how history will judge the decisions that we make now. I fear for where it all may lead.

"So this guy spent weeks reading and fact checking everything re Brexit"

Sounds like he may have wasted his time reading the wrong stuff, government stuff, taxpayer paid for stuff. Did he read Farage's blog?

at the idea of reading Farage's blog to get facts.

Some people have prejudices - so fact is irrelevant. Sadly

Yeah- don't they just.

I just can't stand this kind of 'looking down nose, I'm better than you" attitude. There is a deluge of infomation to wade though, most people are sifting through, doing what feels right for them through their own experiences.

Your no better than a leave supporter. Get over yourself.

Trouble is, no matter how many lies or misrepresentations are exposed, it doesn't seem to make any difference. A lot of people are sticking their fingers in their ears and refusing to listen. I'm really not sure how democracy can work in a climate which shuts down rational debate and rejects any kind of "expert" opinion. It frightens me to think what the future may hold

Wow - this statment is exactly true to be said how about each side feels about each other.

Err 350 m is sent weekly to the EU. We get a rebate back,set by the EU, but it is not fixed. I think the real cost is 7 billion

Half the member states are net contributors, like us. The other half are not.

The EU wants everyone to come up to the same standard. Depends on your philosophical reasoning whether you think this is good, or not.

It's fucking expensive though!

So you are happy that young people cannot afford housing, that minimum wage and zero hour contracts are the way to go, that Doctors strike due to over work demands, that most of our hospitals are run by foreigners some with dubious qualifications, that farmers are subsidized to the tune of millions, that Syrians can die daily crossing the Med, yeah, I can see why you are happy the way thing are...

Agree with Kimonono. One of the worst things about all this is how patronising people are being to views they disagree with.

MissMargie - not sure how leaving the UK would help with any of that!

The problem is that people are fed up of things as they are and think this is the way to magically change everything. On my FB someone posted that they are voting leave because they no longer have prayers in their son's school assembly What has that got to do with the EU???

clowns and kimono what I think is patronising is thinking people can't deal with the actual facts so having to lie to make it more dramatic. Thinking people wouldn't get into a substantive debate on the EU.

rooner there is really no debate that the 350 is a lie:
www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36040060
fullfact.org/blog/2016/apr/uk-statistics-authority-350-million-eu-membership-fee-potentially-misleading/

Seriously what message does it send to our children (and teenagers probably more realistically) - we tell them if they lie they should own up and apologise. Meanwhile the Boris bus is still bowling around with a massive howler on it, a defence minister lies repeatedly about a veto etc.

And by the way, the blog I posted is only the tip of the iceberg of the work this guy has done - there's loads of background blogs on his website

Yes I see your point allegretto, that person was far reaching a little. But it's when you start addressing that person as people and assuming every opposition voter has the same silly reasons. That's bigotry in itself - and actually what the remain campaign is actually hell bent on accusing the leavers off. It's really ironic - or hypocritical.

komononono the blog doesn't say that there are no good reasons for wanting to leave the EU - what it says is that the Leave material has been consistently unfounded.

And unfortunately I keep hearing the same lies going around and around - and if people are repeating them it's because they are not listening to the facts. Rooner just did it upthread. I don't know how else to put it.

That's the thing. If the issue was hyperbole from both sides that's one thing but it's not, it's actual lies from Leave so it's not equivalent. That's the message from his blog. Check out the background stuff if you think he's wrong.

By the way, I realise that not every Leave voter believes all of that stuff but a lot of them seem to repeat it on here!

I don't think all leave supporters are as bad as this but I do see an awful lot of wooly argumentation and opinions that "this is the only way to change the status quo and being out of EU will make things perfect" reasoning.

One big fat lie from remain. Is this reformed Europe. Where is this mythical place caalled a reformed Europe. It doesn't exist and never will. We've been told we've been given all we're getting. The EU prison door is only open for this one day. Time to walk out.

I didn't lie. I stated we send 350m a week. We do!
I then explained we get a variable rebate in return. This means we get money BACK so the 350 figure doesn't tell the whole story.

At present the NET figure we send is 250 m a week which I think is 7 billion yearly (the figure I quoted).

Your link confirms this net figure of 250m a week.

The Remain side can say this is lies but it isn't. 250m NET a week!!!!

Good lord - it's simple arithmetic.

You might think this is value for money. I'm horrified by it

vivienne there have been plenty of reforms, so actually it's not a lie. More needed but that's another matter.

I mean sriously - see this if you don't believe me twitter.com/MichaelLCrick?lang=en - that leaflet is an actual pile of b*.

We don't send the 350.

We send 250 but we get more back for other stuff. So still a lie.

And rooner the figures are that overall we get 10 times back. Now that exact figure can be questioned but it's basically an investment of 1 pound for 10 pounds back.
www.facebook.com/BrickwallUK/videos/1172193309466208/

And what is certainly a lie is that 350 could be spent on the NHS since it didn't actually exist in the first place.