To ask if those panicking about Brexit realise they've been had?

[Growingboys]

Honestly, it's pathetic.

This is Project Fear mark 2, spin designed to stop Brexit happening. Politicians and wonks hope that if they spread enough fear around, which is what all these ridiculous 'prepping' threads are, they will stop us leaving the EU.

Everybody needs to calm the fuck down, stop digging their underground food stores/adding some more tins to the Ocado order, and realise this is spin, pure and simple. The world will continue to turn, and food will continue to be on supermarket shelves, regardless of what happens with Brexit.

I am very sad at the lack of sense and backbone so many people are showing here, regardless of views on Brexit.

I'm off to have a gin and put my feet up. I might even eat something from my freezer tonight rather than save it for armageddon #dicingwithdeath

Treacle it's more the suggestion that the 11,000 people within my company should also just 'retrain' that baffles me. To what? I genuinely want to know.

I have a specialist degree (knowing this was always the field I wanted to work in) and spent years gaining enough experience to get to the level I am now. The same with my colleagues. We're just completely lost and no idea what direction we should be going in.

In the event of a deal, we should hopefully be fine. So we're all debating hanging on as long as possible. I keep lying to myself saying I don't really enjoy my job all that much, but I do.

So you're against the WTO as well then, Aldoot? And international air safety standards? Last I checked we weren't voting on those rules either, but when we crash out of the EU (and the rulesets that we contributed to) we will need to take on new ones.

You can't have free trade without shared rules. And if you make different shared rules with every trading partner, your industries will be inefficient (imagine, making pipes to 27 different standards so you can trade with 27 different countries), so your productivity and wages will stay low.

But hey, you can tell your people that they are "sovereign" so having to rely on their own wiles to get enough food will feel much better.

Remain voters want another referendum and the only way they can see this being a possibility is with aggressive scaremongering.

This is the equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and going "Lalalala".

We have seen how quickly lorries get backed up on the approaches to channel ports when there are strikes, bad weather etc. This will be the opposite - the lorries, which will be full of stuff we need, will be backed up on the other side of the channel because there's no way we can implement effective and efficient means of customs checks by the end of March, even if we knew now what was required. Which we don't.

I reckon that if we crash out with no deal, they'll just let stuff through on the nod for months, or longer, while they sort out new arrangements. Which makes a complete mockery of taking back control of our borders.

And god only knows what will happen with the Irish border, if we end up having to have one. On another forum, an Irish farmer was explaining that their milk tanker crosses the border 30 times a day, collecting milk from farms on both sides.

Hi there everyone,

We're going to be moving this thread over to Brexit.

The "democratic deficit in the EU" argument would have considerably more weight if we didn't have such a democratic deficit in the UK.

There's a massive democratic deficit in the UK, the union is desperately in need of constitutional reform. EU legislative competence presents one obstacle to this, and many with a serious, well-debated and well-researched view to constitutional reform (and some who want to see animal/human rights expanded on) have come to understand this over the years... and may have voted to remove it.

Or you know because they're icky racists and stuff. :)

SlartiAardvark Exactly

There's a massive democratic deficit in the UK, the union is desperately in need of constitutional reform. EU legislative competence presents one obstacle to this, and many with a serious, well-debated and well-researched view to constitutional reform (and some who want to see animal/human rights expanded on) have come to understand this over the years... and may have voted to remove it.

Can you explain exactly how you think our membership of the EU would prevent the UK from reforming its electoral system to something more representative (we had a referendum on switching to an AV system in 2011, remember), or adopting a written constitution (as many other EU member states have)?

So you're against the WTO as well then, Aldoot? And international air safety standards? Last I checked we weren't voting on those rules either, but when we crash out of the EU (and the rulesets that we contributed to) we will need to take on new ones.

I'm against? You're making assumptions about which way I voted, where in fact I was answering a question.

None of this should be news to anybody who gave serious consideration to the vote, whichever side they came down on. This is why reductive statements about the other side being stupid, racist etc leave me cold: everybody who gave the vote adequatd consideration understands why an intelligent good person could have voted either way, and I suspect people who don't understand that, themselves voted without understanding the issues.

Can you explain exactly how you think our membership of the EU would prevent the UK from reforming its electoral system to something more representative (we had a referendum on switching to an AV system in 2011, remember), or adopting a written constitution (as many other EU member states have)?

I don't think I suggested that, in fact because I spent some time looking into this I can say a lot of people concerned with constitutional reform don't seem to consider AV important and indeed there was some antipathy to the idea as the knock-on effects were potentially disastrous for representation of different regions, cultures etc.

The alternative vote system proposed for that referendum was not, and is not, the best alternative available. It wasn't one of the many used in other EU countries today (clearly demonstrating that the EU doesn't dictate constitutions). It was another clearly rigged vote: a sop thrown to the Lib Dems which the ruling Tories had no intention of allowing to win. I don't see the point of arguing about it now though.

WrongOnTheInternet

I agree, it wasn't what anyone asked for and it was obviously a stitch up by Cameron to ensure that people didn't bother to vote to change the status quo.

But the point still stands; if our membership of the EU actually prevented us from changing our electoral system, why would we have had a referendum on doing just that?

So I was asking the PP to explain their bizarre post.

I am stunned by how ignorant some people are of the realities here, yet another reason the general public should never have been given a vote on something they don’t understand

A thousand times this, on every single Brexit thread.

Is it wrong for me to that this “Yay Brexit is Grate” public anaesthetic thread (that mysteriously no Leavers demanded be instantly cloistered out of sight) has been moved to the cloister?

or adopting a written constitution (as many other EU member states have)?

So there are two main stumbling blocks to implementing a written constitution for UK reformists, both for the existence of said and importantly for serious changes.

The first is a consequence of parliamentary sovereignty: from this springs the principle that no parliament can bind a future parliament with legislation. A written constitution (One that is not a simple reiteration of existing law: ie reform) will tend to include declarations of rights, perhaps red lines on representation and so on, with the understanding that the state is not to abridge or interfere with those rights. In the UK there is the concept of negative rights, which is to say you only really have the right to do anything because nobody has made a law against it yet, and since parliament can't declare anything that a subsequent parliament can't disappear at will, that means there is not such a thing as "rights" per se. Many who want a written, reformed constitution would like to see this changed so that truly inalienable rights exist for British citizens, and that implementation itself requires direct democracy and some degree of serious reform.

The second is that to reform/declare rights for people and animals within the EU is in effect to reiterate what the EU says is ok. Should you wish, for instance, to write in your constitution new rules that deviate on whether free speech can/cannot be interfered with on the basis of X, or declare that live animals cannot be transported more than 80 miles for slaughter, you can't really do this and stay compatible, indeed it can be overridden in effect without parliament or British judges being able to do much about it. This isn't such a problem with the UN and so on as there is no political union involved.

Now I want to be clear - if you are happy with the status quo then Europe actually underpins existing rights and freedoms quite well by subverting parliamentary sovereignty - that is to say if you are happy to accept those rights the ECHR etc provides an obstacle in itself and helps to enforce them for people, which I see as a good thing and a borderline limiting factor on HMG. However, if you are not happy with the status quo and wish to enact serious reform, these are the two main stumbling blocks that need to be removed before a changed set of inalienable positive rights can be written into a constitution and carry any legal weight.

I don't know Elements.

It doesn't really matter whether they're started by an angry remainer or an idiotic Brexiter, these threads always end the same way. (With the idiot Brexiters insisting, despite all the evidence, that they haven't just had their arses handed to them by people who actually know what they're talking about.)

ImAIdoo most people concerned with constitutional reform may not consider
AV important, but the vast majority think electoral reform is desperately important.

Also the EU commission is not the executive body it is the civil service. I am tired of typing this. In a variety of political structures the body that can suggest legislation is controlled - this is not undemocratic it is just different to how the U.K. works.

The phrase 'external entity' misses the point that it is a democratic body that the U.K. either helps elect or sends elected members to.

Most civil services require loyalty to the body the person works for. Just imagine if EU civil servants were loyal to their member state - this is a totally ludicrous implication.

The EU has a different structure of democracy it is no less valid than ours. In fact the democratic deficit issues within the U.K. - West Lothian question -elective dictatorship - to name two make us look like we live in a glass house and are throwing stones.

Also, on leaving the EU we will still have to adhere to most EU legislation if we want to trade with the EU.

Finally, we will still have to follow the rules of external entities like the ECHR.

www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/british-farmers-worry-who-will-pick-the-fruit-after-brexit/2018/07/28/a597b9ec-7f03-11e8-a63f-7b5d2aba7ac5_story.html?utm_term=.25f4b6ba6382

Aardvark When I see all this panicking and stockpiling my first thought is "Who benefits from this?".

Equating stockpiling with 'panicking' is just gaslighting, isn't it? Does accusing people of 'panicking' make you feel superior, or something?

I'm stockpiling loo rolls, tinned stuff and coffee, not because I'm panicking , or because I think the sky will fall, or that we will be subject to long-term shortages. I'm just taking a common-sense approach in case there's a temporary hiccup in the supply chain for a few days/weeks. If anyone in my family was dependent on medication, I would certainly want to make sure I had good supplies.

You do know the ECHR is not part of the EU don't you?

@twofingerstoEverything "gaslighting " is a very good description of some of the posts on here and elsewhere.

Why would a written constitution require direct democracy? Most representative democracies have constitutions. The two are not mutually exclusive.

I can't think of any constitution that includes the rights of animals. I've no idea where you are going with that. Constitutions do not usually go into details about individual laws ie transporting animals.

The influence judges would have would be part of the written constitution. Some constitutions have more legal oversight than others.

ImAIdoot
I know something about constitutions and constitutional reform and your post is mostly baffling.

ImAIdoot

Interesting point of view but I'm not sure I quite agree.

First of all, you haven't addressed the issue of electoral reform, which I see as being absolutely fundamental to addressing the democratic deficit in the UK. Absolutely nothing in EU law would prevent the UK from adopting a more representative electoral system. For anyone concerned about democracy and accountability, in my view this is what people should have been protesting about and campaigning to change for decades now. Forget the EU for a minute - what the government (and to a lesser extent, parliament) does has a far greater impact on our lives than anything the EU does. If you're serious about addressing a democratic deficit, you should start with the most serious one, and that is the one in Westminster.

Secondly, we could adopt a written constitution if we wanted to. Yes, it would clip the wings of parliament. It would be a profound constitutional change. At the moment parliamentary sovereignty is the bedrock of our constitution. Public discourse seems to accept that this is unambiguously "a good thing". But when you combine parliamentary sovereignty with the first past the post system, this means that in practice, someone voting against the majority in a safe seat has absolutely no meaningful democratic representation at all.

In Ireland they have a written constitution which can only be amended by referendum. This reduces parliamentary sovereignty but gives the Irish people the ability to decide, on a one person one vote basis, on issues of fundamental importance to them, such as whether same sex marriage should be legalised, or whether the constitutional ban on abortion should be removed. It's not a perfect system, but I can't help but feel that in Ireland, the people have more power than they do in the UK.

The animal welfare issue is a tricky one - I don't believe that a significant number of MPs care all that much about reforming animal welfare laws, and this for me highlights the general disingenuousness of the Brexiters. People like Michael Gove are quite happy to blame the EU for why they haven't done things that they never had any intention of doing in the first place, and now we are leaving the EU he can say "now we can have better animal welfare laws because we are taking back control from the EU?"

Can we? Maybe. Will we? I doubt it. Especially if we do a trade deal with Trump. I attended a Q&A session with Michael Gove shortly after he took up his current post and someone did actually ask him this very question. He squirmed out of answering it.

As to your last point, this has been said many, many times before but it bears repeating:

The ECHR has nothing to do with the EU.

It is a completely different legal framework. The only link really is that being a signatory to the ECHR is now a prerequisite for accession countries looking to join the EU.

As things stand, we are not looking to withdraw from the ECHR, although there are many in the Conservative party who would dearly love to do so. As far as I'm concerned, if there is any sign than we are seriously contemplating withdrawing from it, that really will be Worth marching on the streets for.

Human rights laws are largely there to provide people with inalienable rights which cannot be interfered with even by their own elected government. (Especially by their own government, given the nature of the rights in question.)

So this is one area where parliamentary sovereignty definitely should be restricted, and an international legal framework in which people can enforce their rights in an international court is of utmost importance.

@Moussemoose

Two points: the ECHR and the EU are not the same thing. It is fair to say that it is union with the EU that provides the power to the ECHR and the incentive to co-operate, this is why EU membership is instrumental, nobody is confusing the two.

Secondly, it's fine that we might choose to prioritize the role of the European Commission at a lower level and gloss over its lack of democratic representation/accountability, just as it's fine we might choose not to - I was answering a question of whether there was an external entity overseeing proposal/repeal of legislation without democratically elected representatives, which there is in fact. Again it's fine if you don't think that's important, but it is nonetheless the case.

This is an element of self-determination, something for which millions have given their actual lives willingly in the last century or slightly more, so your appraisal of this as less important than employment or the availability of baked beans is a matter for yourself.

Self-determination is wonderful and desirable, but you can't eat it, or inject if you're hypoglycaemic. It's of little practical use in a power cut, too.

I wonder where Maslow placed it on his pyramid?

Russia is subject to the ECHR.

The ECHR was a result of WW2 and was written by mainly British lawyers and legal experts it is entirely separate of the EU. Entirely.

The only link is the European bit.

Attempting to link them in any way merely demonstrates your ignorance.