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."

And to the 50% unemployed youth in Greece and other southern European countries. Tell that to Greece brought to its knees and its voters over-ruled by Merkel and her cronies.

viviene the zero hours contracts is the UK govt's responsibility. So it would be great to leave the EU where there is generally a lot of resistance to that idea and head into a Britain where there would be an enormous amount of pressure to 'reduce regulation' by business. IE reduce rights. If we do vote to leave there's going to be a massive and rushed review of all the EU legislation in the UK - there's an enormous risk that a lot of rights could get thrown out in that mess.

Yes, Chalala, it's Trumpolitik I'm afraid of. Where it stops even mattering that someone's lied (or even said something inadvertently untrue).

Can you imagine that famous Paxman takedown of Michael Howard happening under Trumpolitik? A TrumpHoward would just lie brazenly, then scream "The flying monkeys are eating your geraniums!" whenever taxed with the lie.

viviene even Varoufakis thinks we shouldn't leave. And I guess he would be one of the most sceptical voices.

TBH to believe the info given in the OP I would have to do all that research myself or be provided with the relevant links to documentation etc ... surely the Leave camp could also come up with the same story - no disrespect to the OP but really unless you read these 'facts' for yourself, from the original source, then how do you know it's true?

nealryhellokitty I thought so too, but I am told there are ways around that by extending the competencies, it's how the ratchet works.

Bloody Belgium is having a general strike tomorrow, just been announced. So much for the workers paradise! That means I have to drive into Brussels tomorrow night - yeuch.

So, you ignore all the positives I mentioned and bring up zero hours contracts, which were not introduced by the EU anyway .

Greece didn't go down the pan because of EU membership. It was largely because it was understating its deficit for years, with 'creative accounting' by a US bank to support this. It gambled on a bet on complex financial instruments, just before the financial crash, which doubled their existing debts. This added to an endemic failure to pay taxes by the wealthy.

Clearly you have bought into all the rubbish peddled by RIchard Littlejohn and his ilk.

parmalilac all the links are in his blogs.

But I really don't think Leave can in the same way - I'm thinking about the lie on Turkey, on the UK veto, on the 350 million etc etc. There's no equivalent lies from Remain.

scaryteacher I think you would need to clarify exactly how because one conversation on that for me doesn't prove it as such! But any extension of competencies would still need to be agreed by unanimity at a minimum.

scary - any extension of competencies has to be done willingly, with unanimous consent of each Member State, in accordance with their domestic democratic processes. In the UK that means, according to the EU Act 2011, there must be a referendum. So yes, changes like that we could veto.

As to workers striking - isn't it great we can? Being part of the EU means that we can't domestically take that right away. Kind of protects us from a malevolent right wing government here, don't you think?

Also - the 'we never signed up for political union or immigration' thing is a lie too. In Robert Schuman's declaration in 1950, prior to the establishment of the ECSC, he states that it was to establish the "common foundations for economic development as a first step in the Federation of Europe". Political union was always the ultimate goal. Then, the next step, the EEC, in 1957 established the free trade area, which would comprise of four freedoms to facilitate the single market. These freedoms were: movement of goods; movement of capital; movement of services; and the movement of people.

This is what we later signed up to when we joined in 1973, and has contributed to us having the highest living standards (alongside our fellow EU members), with the highest level of consumer protection and workers' rights in history.

So ... it happened.

And funnily enough Farage immediately disowned the 350 million for the NHS and Hannan the idea that immigration would diminish..

Facts schmacts right.?

there's going to be a lot of disappointed Leave voters feeling betrayed when they see the economy go to crap, a new austerity plan, and no less immigration. In fact it's already started - people appear SHOCKED that the pound is plummeting, what did they think was going to happen?

now the Leavers actually have to start delivering on their promises of free kittens for everyone with zero downsides. It'd be entertaining to watch them backtrack on everything they promised, except that they fucked it up for everyone.

Young people today are a lot of woosses.

What a sad bunch.