EU referendum are you in or out

[KlaxonCow]

Well, Trump's backing Boris to be PM.

Which, to my mind, should count as an instant disqualification - if Trump backs something, then it's almost certainly a bad idea.

I reckon it's just some kind of "weird blonde hair" solidarity thing. Like an Alcoholics Anonymous "sponsor", but for stupid-looking barnets and syrups. By normalising one another, they can delude themselves into believing it's not all deeply strange to sport such oddities upon their heads.

[Deckard]

Father and son - let’s face it boris is part American it could have happened...

[tufty]

Oh, you're actually talking about Boris and the Donald. I thought you were talking about their syrups.

[gilesgoat]

Oh, you're actually talking about Boris and the Donald. I thought you were talking about their syrups.

Without Trump it was already the drama/soap-opera of the century ( Brexit ) .. now with Trump supporting Farage/Boris is going to be the farce/drama of the millennium ... ...

I think all this will go down in history as in 'the times when the whole world re-plunged into the Middle/Dark Ages' maybe Devo were right, we are going for de-evolution.

"Science goes up, people go down".

[Ollie]

Well, Trump's backing Boris to be PM.

Which, to my mind, should count as an instant disqualification - if Trump backs something, then it's almost certainly a bad idea.

Given the Tory membership, it'll probably give him a boost.

[Whiteball]

I remember way back when Tony Blair was saying it would be disaster and a betrayal of our national interest if we didn't adopt the euro single currency etc.

We didn't and that turned out ok. Actually, probably better that we didn't.

It's the same sort of thing now. Two sides arguing for and against something and no one really knows how things are going to play out as it hasn't happened yet. All arguments and supposed "evidence" is based on not a lot more than peoples own fantasies and wishes.

Things will change in the short term for sure, but not necessarily for the better or worse. Then things will get back to being 'ok' again.
'ok' is the norm for most.

[gilesgoat]

I remember way back when Tony Blair was saying it would be disaster and a betrayal of our national interest if we didn't adopt the euro single currency etc.

We didn't and that turned out ok. Actually, probably better that we didn't.

It's the same sort of thing now. Two sides arguing for and against something and no one really knows how things are going to play out as it hasn't happened yet. All arguments and supposed "evidence" is based on not a lot more than peoples own fantasies and wishes.

Things will change in the short term for sure, but not necessarily for the better or worse. Then things will get back to being 'ok' again.
'ok' is the norm for most.

In a way it probably would have been better then if you never entered the EU, it would have spared the trouble of leaving it.

The problem is now you are trying to leave something where around 50% of the people don't want to and with men like Farage/Boris/Trump are "behind all this" it does not need me to tell you "how shit it looks all that".

And honestly, you are really not sure what to think at all this, I mean it's really people like Farage and Boris and such that makes you think "WTF is really Brexit about, what are those other 50% of the British people ? Who really are they ? What do they want ?".

To be honest it's "mostly shit" what is happening in ALL the EU, with all this "wave of right parties" and "nationalisms" and stuff like that.

Yes there are some problems everywhere, yes maybe "in all senses" wrong approaches to them been taken and even more wrong approaches are being or willing to be taken

You say 'ok' .. it's a heavvy 'ok' you/we'll have to live with

Beware, it maybe 'ok' for YOU, it's not going to be 'ok' for everyone.

If you think I am 'ok' with things I am NOT, it's just that I really don't know what I could possibly do to make them change but if you think I am just living on thinking 'it's ok' FUCK THAT ! IT'S NOT OK, it's just "a power higher than mine" forcing me to live an 'ok' I don't want !

[Whiteball]

The thing is (and I know there are a lot who do) but not everyone who wanted out of Europe is because of immigration/race issues etc.
The media machines in overdrive don't help, I grant that, but as usual those kind of people will hijack and jump on the bandwagon of anything they can to further their supposed cause. Not everyone voted for those reasons.

There are many reasons to leave and just as many to stay.
But so far no-one, not anybody has come up with any solid 100% valid PROVEN reason for either argument.
Everyone says it will be good or bad but none can tell you explicitly why or what will happen because no-one knows. At this point we are 3 years down the road and it is all still just supposition.

Maybe you would like to proffer why you think it will be terrible then Giles?
Only valid, provable and explicitly guaranteed reason excepted though.

[tufty]

Maybe you would like to proffer why you think it will be terrible then Giles?
Only valid, provable and explicitly guaranteed reason excepted though.

Pretty much all the predictions are that financially the UK will be significantly worse off for at least the 20 to 30 years following Brexit. and by "pretty much all", I actually mean "all but one". The *only* study suggesting anything other than a long term recession is the one put out by Minford's "Economists for Brexit" group (now Windscaled as "Economists for Free Trade"), whose study is based on the "totally realistic" assumption that even without a trade deal, the EU won't bother to enforce tariffs on trade with the UK. It's not "there are to equally valid points of view", it's "everybody says this, apart from one bunch of highly partisan liars". It's like the "flat earth vs globe" thing. It's not a realistic debate, and it's not one that is worth having.

Oh, but Dyson said it would be great for business … just before moving all his business to Malaysia.

Minford has said that the car industry in the UK will be wound down in the same way that the coal and steel industries were run down. That Brexit would "eliminate" manufacturing in the UK entirely. This is the guy who's *for* Brexit.

It is perfectly true that if you remove protection of the sort that has been given particularly to the car industry and other manufacturing industries inside the protective wall, you will have a change in the situation facing that industry, and you are going to have to run it down.

It will be in your interests to do it, just as in the same way we ran down the coal and steel industries.

These things happen as evolution takes place in your economy. In the long run they are in your interest, but of course you have to deal with the compensation problems along the route.

These people are pushing Singapore as being the new model for the UK. That should worry you if you have a job.

[KlaxonCow]

But so far no-one, not anybody has come up with any solid 100% valid PROVEN reason for either argument.

Well, of course.

If there was a solid 100% valid PROVEN reason - scientifically demonstrable as pure unadulterated fact, which everyone accepted - then there would be no debate here. We'd just simply be doing that thing, whatever it is.

We don't sit around debating whether gravity exists. Because everyone can see that it does, when things fall to the ground.

No-one (much) debates solid 100% valid PROVEN reasons that are empirically demonstrated on a daily basis. Because, you know, why would you?

So, really, what you seem to be saying here is that, as the future is intrinsically unknowable, we should hold off on making any future plans or decisions of any kind whatsoever?

Tax breaks? Increased spending on public services? The latest education reforms?

Well, these are all future things. We can't know the future ahead of time. So we should put off all decisions - all policies - until we do know. Except, of course, if these policies are never tried then we'll actually never obtain the evidence of whether they were or weren't good policies in the first place.

So, in effect, what you're saying is that we should do absolutely nothing - as we couldn't possibly know what effect our actions will have on the future, as the future is intrinsically unknowable - until we already know the results of the thing we're refusing to implement to ever find out what those results could even be.

There's this notion that, between two extremes, the right answer lies somewhere exactly in the middle. Well, not in this case, as what you've compromised down to is, in fact, a logically circular advocacy of total 100% paralysis in all matters.

Don't do anything. Not a single thing. As we can't possibly know how it'll affect the future. So err on the side of caution - never do anything.

[Whiteball]

No, never said we should do nothing.

What I was saying is that everyone talks about 'we don't need or want brexit because...' as if they know exactly whats going to happen if we do go for brexit. When in reality no-one actually knows.

We can all surmise, we can all read/write reports and predictions, but until we start a 'brexit' then we don't know just who, what and how it's going to effect anything in the short or long term.

Obviously we should debate and work out plans for either situation, but those plans can only ever be very loose as we don't know the full impact either way yet.

[Rubisco]

The thing is (and I know there are a lot who do) but not everyone who wanted out of Europe is because of immigration/race issues etc.
The media machines in overdrive don't help, I grant that, but as usual those kind of people will hijack and jump on the bandwagon of anything they can to further their supposed cause. Not everyone voted for those reasons.

There are many reasons to leave and just as many to stay.
But so far no-one, not anybody has come up with any solid 100% valid PROVEN reason for either argument.
Everyone says it will be good or bad but none can tell you explicitly why or what will happen because no-one knows. At this point we are 3 years down the road and it is all still just supposition.

Maybe you would like to proffer why you think it will be terrible then Giles?
Only valid, provable and explicitly guaranteed reason excepted though.

There are no experts. All predictions are based upon an assumption of stability in the rest of Europe and the rest of the world.

As if we're not in the middle of a global existential crisis! Brexit is a distraction from the real issue that there is no coherent ethical basis for what the status quo is trying to achieve.

Having rich countries and poor countries and porous borders between them so that the relatively rich, educated, physically fit people in a poor country can cross a line on the map to gain privilege isn't a utopian vision of the future. Sipping lattes whilst condemning a racist for objecting to a Bangladeshi family getting a council house whilst ignoring the graves of the family who couldn't make the trip.

Fuck us. Fuck all of us. We DO deserve Brexit

[gilesgoat]

Maybe you would like to proffer why you think it will be terrible then Giles?
Only valid, provable and explicitly guaranteed reason excepted though.

*SNIP* ..

Amazing ...

I just wrote about 200 lines ...

Then I deleted them all ..

What is wrong ?

That I really don't feel safe in posting here, or anywhere else on the internet, those 200 lines I just deleted, for real, that's more than sufficient about "what is wrong".

Sorry can't write, maybe talk with you down some pub, with a lot of noise, when/where nobody else can be listening us.

[Cloudane]

If you take a leap off a big cliff, you can't know the future. Maybe you'll land on a soft ledge a little bit below and bounce back, stronger than ever from the experience. Maybe you'll get beamed up by aliens. There's no absolute 100% irrefutable guarantee that you will die. But most sensible predictions suggest that you probably will...

But yes, let's follow the beliefs of people who've told outright lies, like Bojo, and jump off anyway. Dismiss the people saying we'll probably die as Project Fear

[KlaxonCow]

We can all surmise, we can all read/write reports and predictions, but until we start a 'brexit' then we don't know just who, what and how it's going to effect anything in the short or long term.

No, sorry, I still don't get your point here.

What you've given there is basically a summary of the Human Condition itself, as humans are not psychic beings (despite what Derek-fucking-Acorah might say to con a living out of harassing the recently bereaved).

"We can't know the future, until the future becomes the present".

Well, yes, a correct summary of how time works. But this is true for absolutely anything and I don't see why you're singling out Brexit as any more nor less different than any other political decision.

In truth, all political decisions - education reform, universal credit, NHS funding, etc. - carry their "unintended consequences" that'll fuck over someone somewhere. Even when it's the best decision possible.

So I'd say - based on all historical precedent and statistical logic - what we can be sure of is that, in some regards, the future will be shit because of our decisions and, in other regards, the future will be better because of our decisions. You won't ever get 100% good or 100% bad. You'll always get a mix of the two.

Personally, I believe that the underlying root cause of the world's current existential crisis is automation. The machines - not immigrants - are stealing our jobs.

The music industry was eviscerated by Napster. Retail stores are closing everywhere, in the face of Amazon and online shopping. Where you've still got retail stores, they've increasingly got self-service tills. ATMs are disappearing because contactless, not cash, now owns the majority of transaction - eventually, it'll be 100% and then the banks won't really have any reason to be on the high street.

And you might be rightly pissed off that, thanks to globalisation and the advancement of our communication technologies, nearly all customer service is farmed out to Indian call centres.

But, hey, have you seen that Google Assistant demo? The Indian call centres will also soon be out of a job too:



It's a subtle thing. Because, no, you don't show up to work on Monday morning to see "Robbie the robot" sitting in your chair and the boss says "you're fired".

It's that even the largest of corporations no longer need a "mail department" because it's all done by email now. It's businesses no longer needing a "print department" as much, because it's all "paperless office" now. With things like shared calendars and CRM systems - so folks can sort out their own diaries - you don't need personal assistants and secretaries as much.

With the assistance of the machines, a single person now "multi-tasks" what used to be 5 or 6 different jobs.

When automated vehicles take over the roads - they already exist, it's just the legalities and scale that's still coming - then taxi drivers and delivery drivers will disappear. Bus drivers? Train drivers? There'll even eventually be a tipping point - when most vehicles on the roads are autonomous, it would arguably make things safer for everyone to start banning human drivers. They're unpredictable, where the autonomous vehicles can directly speak to each other wirelessly to coordinate an insane dance between them that no human could reasonably follow.

Okay, this is a sci-fi movie. But when we become able to do this sort of thing for real, there's zero chance that they'll let a human driver join the flow of automated vehicles, as it'd just be too insanely dangerous to allow, as no human could keep up with the machines and remain safe:



And we have a serious problem here.

The grand advantage of the robots - besides their ability to just do everything better than us humans ever could - is that you don't have to pay them anything. Not a penny in wages or food. They don't sleep. They don't take fag breaks. 100% super-human productivity 24 / 7 / 365.

That's such an economic advantage, it's definitely going to happen. Soon you won't have to worry about the Indians or Chinese "stealing your jobs" because they'll do it for a pitiful wage, the machine will do it - far faster, without cease - for absolutely nothing whatsoever.

(Then there's the notion of technologies clashing. One thing you do need to provide for the machines is electricity to run them. But if we have renewables and storage batteries - massive factories where the entire roof is 100% solar panels, generating megawatts - then we're also on the cusp of an energy revolution, where electricity gets so cheap that, like water, we stop monitoring and charging for usage. The factory owns its own power station on the roof.)

If you're optimistically minded, then you might be wondering why I'm calling any of this "a problem".

But let's imagine a chain of robots. Automated drilling machines mine the materials. Automated vehicles deliver them to the factories. Robots at the factories create the products. The products are delivered to the Amazon warehouses by automated vehicles. You order the product online. A drone picks up the box and drops it outside your front door about 15 minutes later.

Let's go further. You no longer need the packaging it came in, so you put it outside and signal for collection with a phone app. An autonomous recycling van comes round and picks it up. The robots reprocess the materials and those also get delivered to the factories.

There is no human being coordinating any of this. The machines coordinate and cooperate perfectly. A human would, in fact, just make things inefficient and get in the way. The mine, the factory, the Amazon warehouse, etc. are all completely unmanned. A machine is even doing all the stock taking and accounts.

And, better yet, they've got solar panels on the factory / warehouse roofs. They've got a wind farm nearby and some tidal lagoon energy - and the tides run like clockwork, twice a day that can be exploited four times daily. For all this, there is no electricity bill. It's all clean and free energy from the Sun, wind and water.

Then you have the notion of exponential growth. Humans build the first factories. But, thereafter, the factories produce the builder robots for building future factories to build more robots to build more factories to build more robots. You power the first "solar panel factory" on fossil fuels - but then it produces all the solar panels for its own roof and you switch to solar. To produce more solar panels to switch more stuff to renewables.

Superficially, this might sound awesome. And, honestly, it genuinely is.

But here's the thing. You're paying none of these robots a wage. Through renewables, you're paying no energy bills. Having negligible costs - "approaching zero" costs - on everything sounds fucking amazing.

But how does any money get into this system? If no humans have a job - and, thus, no wage - then how do they afford to buy any of these products?

The real big grand problem here is that automation is going to - a la the Star Trek "moneyless" future - undermine the very concept of money itself.

Some folks - such as Elon Musk - have mentioned "universal income". But the problem there is that, at some point, you're going to have more humans in receipt of "universal income" than you've got humans remaining paying their taxes to pay for it all. At first, it'll make sense - but then it'll eventually stop working, as the maths doesn't add up.

And the thing is that this is inevitable.

From the moment man discovered fire and the wheel, this is basically what it's all been building up to. And, on the other side of this transition - this "Industrial Revolution 2.0" - then we could well find ourselves living in that Star Trek Utopia of abundance, where folks do stuff because they enjoy it and want to better themselves.

But I have no fucking clue how the Hades we can smoothly manage the transition. This current system works - some shape, anyway - and one can imagine that this future system could conceivably work too. But how on Earth do you logically get from one to the other, particularly in the haphazard random and irregular way that this is happening, with zero planning (or even public acknowledgement that this is even a thing) involved, when the numbers just don't make any sense?