Europe was under-funded regions best chance of getting cash for investment.
It’s that simple.
Countless successive UK governments have failed to do that, over many - many - years.
Well done, idiots.
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To paraphrase Mencken, democracy is the theory that even when people don’t know what they want, they are still going to get it good and hard.
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I wonder if the average Brit was still so anti-immigration in the days of empire, when immigration meant them extending their feelers around the globe.
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Well, you could argue that. You’d be utterly, totally and completely wrong, but nobody stops you from arguing.
Those “older generations” you write about know nothing at all about the EU except what they read in the tabloids. I’ve talked to some of them. My father has talked to some of them. I can assure you that the conversations have not revolved around the difference in rulings on State Aids, changes to the CAP, or the details of Maastricht. No, they’ve been “we want our sovereignty back and we want those immigrants sent back where they came from because this country is full. All our laws are made in Brussels. And we have to wait too long to see a doctor.”
Were you around in the 1970s by any chance? Or the 1980s? “Britain” even lost control of its railways, utilities and carelessly lost its computer industry. It lost its car industry. It lost its aircraft industry. We had to be bailed out by foreign ownership of just about everything too complex to be understood by a civil servant with a degree in Classics. Perhaps this time, the Indians, Chinese, Japanese, French, Germans, Americans and others who actually own the more technical bits of the country will simply say “up yours, losers” and walk off. Once Gibraltar has gone, and Jersey and Guernsey demand referendums to become French, we’ll be off battling the Argentines for the Falklands. And this time, we won’t have the ability to defeat them. Because our ruling class - the people who arranged for this entire foul up in a childish battle of Old Etonians for the top job - could not organise a drinks and nibbles party at the Ritz without calling in their PAs.
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I was wondering something similar this morning - what is the lineage that connects colonialism to isolationism? It feels a bit taking-our-ball-and-going-home-ish to me.
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I’m all in favor od Scottish independence. Right down to Hadrian’s wall, preferably. The border is much too far up north, but I live right near Wallsend (clue’s in the name), and I quite fancy being Scottish after today.
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You don’t say…
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Bass really isn’t very good beer though. It’s cheap as shit over here for a reason.
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(comment deleted, etc, etc)
But, you know, I’m sure those wait times will get better when 11% of the country’s doctors leave for another country.
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I have been out doing errands a few times today, and each time I have encountered people blasting talk radio with USian pundits ranting up a storm about how the UK leaving the EU is so much better for everybody. They were laying it on really thick! I caught a few of them discussing how this is a triumph against the evils of socialism (whatever that is supposed to be), and a victory for the forces of individualism (whatever that is supposed to be). A lot of hot air is being used to “interpret” this for people here.
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I’d also throw in that the Owens Valley has water.
For limited definitions of “has”.
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That was the plan all along since well before the UK joined in the first place and after joining the UK consented to every step along the way. I know that parts of the UK establishment used that talking point - partly to assure an electorate that didn’t want to know better and partly to lobby for hijacking the EU into a direction that was more to their liking. However the people could have known better. It was their civic duty to know better.
Fuck everyone who swallowed that bullshit.
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Except that all we’ve heard about is immigrants for the past week.
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I’d like to see Scottish independence down to the M25, if possible.
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The south side of the M25? 
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There is something to be said for age, and I don’t get the age bashing and all. As if older adults don’t care about their children and their children’s children. And there is value in the older voter having “seen it all before.” The young with their combination of naivete and energy seem to be perpetual fodder for political exploitation. But unless one is over a certain age, one wouldn’t have observed this in action- over and over again.
The ideal is that the young keep things fresh, and the old keep the young from throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
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I’d like to see London, South Lakeland, Mendip, Bristol and BANES part of New Scotland. If Gibraltar is part of the UK, I don’t see why that should be a problem (we all voted in, after all.)
Ruth Davidson or Nicola Sturgeon? Either is better than any of the Westminster lot.
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How do you know he was deranged, and not a terrorist or paramilitary making a politically-motivated assassination?
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