Brexit: the referendum

Archie Gemmill Goal said:
Is this a joke? Because it's not a very good one.

Incidentally I don't think this incident will have a significant impact on the vote one way or another.
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Only the false flag part is a joke. I definitely think it will sway the vote, though, so let's check back next week.

Remember, the very day before she died there were 3 or 4 polls all showing Leave winning.
 
CapelDodger said:
That was the bind the pro-Europe Tories were in. They could hardly fail to support a manifesto commitment.

It's the 68% of MP's that's the relevant point.

A sound argument, looking past the typos. Parliament is sovereign, not the populace, and a damn' good thing too. Have you met the populace?
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Bloody peasants!
 
Not a Britisher here but I was listening to a podcast on my way to work this morning and Brexit was the topic.

I got the sense that "the elites" are almost all on one side of the issue (Remain) while the other side is mostly supported by those who are not "elites". Is that the general perception? And the main motivation for "leave" is that there is no other way to control immigration. As a member of the EU, Britain cannot independently set its own immigration policy.

Also discussed on the podcast was the Breaking Point poster, which the commenter described as "racist". Is being against unlimited immigration "racist"?
 
Information Analyst said:
The 1950s called - they want their misconceptions back.
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I for one support rationing, rickets, diphtheria, whooping cough, being able to use racially charged language to refer to anyone other than the English and all those other "great" things we "miss" from the 1950s. :rolleyes:

Of course a marginal rate of income tax at 90% would be a bit of a shock for Brexiters as would the tight restrictions on moving money around the world.
 
Puppycow said:
Not a Britisher here but I was listening to a podcast on my way to work this morning and Brexit was the topic.

I got the sense that "the elites" are almost all on one side of the issue (Remain) while the other side is mostly supported by those who are not "elites". Is that the general perception?
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Like voting UKIP (or supporting Trump), Brexit does appear to be the default protest position.

The reason why the "elites" are on the side of Remain is that any group which appears to have given the issue careful consideration has come to the conclusion that "Remain" is best for Britain. There's a spreadsheet doing the rounds which contrasts the politicians, economists, scientists, business leaders, independent think-tanks, foreign leaders and so on on both sides. It's very illuminating.

I suppose in the same way you could describe being anti-paedophilia, anti-animal cruelty or anti-murder is an "elite" position given the people who would be anti- those positions.

That said, like Trump, the leading anti-establishment Brexit campaigners who could hardly be more "establishment". Boris Johnson is an old-Etonian who was a member of the same elite dining society as "call me" Dave, Farage is a privately-educated ex-commodity trader, Ian Duncan Smith lives, rent free, in his father-in-law's spare multi-million pound mansion and Michael Gove (flipping heck. he's the same age as me - I had assumed that he was much older) is the token oik (but an oik who was Oxford educated at the nation's expense).

It really is a case of people thumbing their noses and effectively saying "The experts, with all their book-learning, must be elitist therefore I'm going contrary to their recommendations". A lot of the less well informed Brexit supporters I've talked to around here did't realise that there were no "takie-backsies" and that a decision to leave was a EU was irrevocable.


Puppycow said:
And the main motivation for "leave" is that there is no other way to control immigration. As a member of the EU, Britain cannot independently set its own immigration policy.
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I think different people have different reasons for wanting Brexit. Around here (a rural farming area), farmers believe that post-Brexit they will got far more subsidy and that they will receive far higher prices for their produce.

I'm not sure how realistic this is. The Brexit campaign has promised the net contributions from EU membership many times over. Rural farmers in Wales are already pretty generously subsidised by the EU. Higher farm receipts will presumably be achieved by limiting food imports. While this may help the 1% (well, maybe the 0.1% who actually own the farms, the people picking cabbages may not see the benefit) of the UK population who work in agriculture, the remaining 99% (or 99.9%) will be badly affected by higher food costs and reduced choice (I remember the cruddy food from the 1970's - I don't want to go back to having the only veg choice in winter being between parsnips and turnips - and leathery round lettuce being the salad leaf of choice).

That said, for those for whom immigration is the number one issue, 50% of UK net migration comes from outside the EU. If people really were that bothered then we could tackle that but truth is that the UK economy needs the current levels of immigration to keep going.

Puppycow said:
Also discussed on the podcast was the Breaking Point poster, which the commenter described as "racist". Is being against unlimited immigration "racist"?
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No, but a lot of the language being used by the Leave campaign is. A poster featuring a queue of brown, male faces with the headline "Breaking Point" seems to be sending a particular message about brown people coming to get us. Likewise repeated comments about Turks coming to rape us (even though there's no prospect of Turkey joining the EU in my lifetime).

A measured discussion about immigration is not racist. Blaming immigrants (and not the government's austerity programme and/or the Labour government spendthriftness) for the squeeze on local services, directly linking immigration and Islamic terrorism (IIRC the 7/7 bombers were home-grown), portraying immigrants as spongers (when they are net contributors to the exchequer - unlike the indigenous population) and so on IS racist.
 
cullennz said:
"90%"?

wholly cow

Sent from my GT-S5660 using Tapatalk 2
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Yep. The highest marginal rate was 95% after the war, dropped to 90% for most of the 50's before going up to 95% again in the 1960's hence the Beatles lyric from Taxman...

Let me tell you how it will be
There's one for you, nineteen for me
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The public perception of the 1950's as some king of halcyon period when taxes were low, summers were long (and darkies knew their place) is a myth.
 
Do you by any chance have a spreadsheet that shows how many of the same 'thoughtful' groups that support Remain also supported joining the Euro?
 
cullennz said:
"90%"?

wholly cow

Sent from my GT-S5660 using Tapatalk 2
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More than that. There was an extra surcharge on investment income, as opposed to wages and salaries, so that
In 1971 the top rate of income tax on earned income was cut to 75%. A surcharge of 15% kept the top rate on investment income at 90%.In 1974 the cut was partly reversed and the top rate on earned income was raised to 83%. With the investment income surcharge this raised the top rate on investment income to 98%, the highest permanent rate since the war. This applied to incomes over £20,000 (£187,970 as of 2015). In 1974 750,000 people were liable to pay the top-rate of income tax.​
 
This morning Farage repeated that the imposition of tariffs on EU supplies was a likely outcome but a price worth paying. This was 2 minutes after he said he wanted out so he could reduce the restrictive tariffs on UK imports from non -EU markets. I am sure prominent Brexit supporter Sir James Dyson would be happy, his production is all in Malaysia.
 
ceptimus said:
Do you by any chance have a spreadsheet that shows how many of the same 'thoughtful' groups that support Remain also supported joining the Euro?
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Do we know for certain that joining the Euro wouldn't have delivered a net benefit to the UK economy ? I know that the accepted thinking is that having been a member of the Euro would have been disasterous

As I recall those against (or at least not pro) included the leaders of most political parties, economists were split (as opposed to being overwhelmingly pro-Remain), business leaders were split (as opposed to being overwhelmingly pro-Remain) and so on.....
 
Lothian said:
This morning Farage repeated that the imposition of tariffs on EU supplies was a likely outcome but a price worth paying. This was 2 minutes after he said he wanted out so he could reduce the restrictive tariffs on UK imports from non -EU markets. I am sure prominent Brexit supporter Sir James Dyson would be happy, his production is all in Malaysia.
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Didn't Bojo repeat the £350 million lie in his speech yesterday as well?
 
Craig B said:
More than that. There was an extra surcharge on investment income, as opposed to wages and salaries, so that
In 1971 the top rate of income tax on earned income was cut to 75%. A surcharge of 15% kept the top rate on investment income at 90%.In 1974 the cut was partly reversed and the top rate on earned income was raised to 83%. With the investment income surcharge this raised the top rate on investment income to 98%, the highest permanent rate since the war. This applied to incomes over £20,000 (£187,970 as of 2015). In 1974 750,000 people were liable to pay the top-rate of income tax.​
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It's my understanding that high marginal tax rates like this spurred on the the wide use of "perks" such as Luncheon Vouchers and company cars which allowed employees to get increased renumeration but because they weren't at the time subject to income tax, they paid no extra tax.

Luncheon Vouchers had their 15 minutes of fame when Cynthia Payne allowed them to be used to pay for the services of her young ladies.
 
When did Cameron last repeat his 'tens of thousands' lie? Not just an ordinary lie, but enshrined in his manifesto.
 
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