Brexit wins: Britain votes to exit the European Union

and these are exactly the few million+ cities I mentioned as good starting points for a job search : )

Yeah, my impression is that more than half are in Munich, which is third in size behind Berlin and Hamburg. Cologne has some media companies, but not much.

What I saw of Berlin was mostly Samwer Brothers companies like Rocket Internet – pretends to be hip, but is a really shitty environment to work in.

edited to correct crappy sentence structure

That’s a long shot. Scotland is part of the UK, and it’s the UK that has EU membership. Scotland would likely have to leave the UK in order to have membership of the EU.
But these are unchartered waters, so nothing’s certain. It would depend on what course of action the EU decides to take and whether any other member states could or would exercise a veto.

for me it would be a very sad outcome if Europe is reduced to a glorified free-trade zone. free movement of only goods and capital is not what the EU is about, an apolitical system like the NAFTA would have left a huge hole in my circle of friends and acquaintances. The EU has democratic deficits (the EP should be able to introduce bills and the goverment-only European Council has too much power), but your hope to replace it with something based only on economic “values” sounds like a threat for me.

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See, this is actually a massive problem in the UK. Entrenched racism. Which I’ve always found oddly funny - given that there is no such thing as purity in race in the UK. We’re a bunch of mutts.

Maybe it’s because the abusive colonial past has never been atoned for? Maybe we need, finally, some truth, reconciliation, and acknowledgment of the impact of the slave trade and so on? So that there is some real soul-searching?

But what’s caught my eye today is this:

If unemployment is so low, how are people disenfranchised? Or is it that the recovery from the 2007 crash is only just kicking in for the under-served?

Also - the level of unemployment illustrated is eerily similar to the late 1970s. Are the numbers being manipulated?

Or maybe is it that the level of unemployment is irrelevant - and people feel they’re being forced into awful jobs for low pay, and they hate that, and need an outlet?

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I respectfully disagree. A trade zone is what Europe needs to return to, and member states could have it replaced with democracy and independence for themselves and their lawmakers.
@peregrinus_bis
To some degree the numbers are being manipulated. Zero-hours contracts and part-time work are being factored in the numbers for those in employment.

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The Brits were brothers-in-arms when it came to the horrible austerity policy - so it’s no wonder Merkel is unhappy…

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Yep. Gordon Brown famously interfered with the Office of National Statistics. Once you start, you just can’t stop.

This is part of why it is so important to have a well regulated, balanced democracy. As soon as you start trying to fool the population, you start poisoning the water. We all have a serious responsibility to get this back on track.

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though they are hit hard by the dropping oil prices

They’ve been fiddling the figures for years. They only count people who are eligible for contributions based JSA, so any long-term unemployed fall off the radar (as do those who have never managed to enter the job market. Plenty of school leavers have experienced this over the last few decades. Especially in the ex-industrial areas outside the South-East).

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Oh, it goes back much further than that.

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I"m developing the feeling that over the years, the disenfranchised were increasingly relied on not to vote. But with the right set of initiators, they did.

It was never a trade zone alone, the ECSC as first treaty and precursor of the current system already included political co-operation. The whole thing of returning to the good old time without a bureaucratic superstructure is a lie.

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It included political co-operation, not political management, oversight and control from a centralised, unaccountable governing body.

you’re cute!

The ECSC was run by four institutions: a High Authority composed of independent appointees, a Common Assembly composed of national parliamentarians, a Special Council composed of nation ministers, and a Court of Justice. These would ultimately form the blueprint for today's European Commission, European Parliament, the Council of the European Union and the European Court of Justice.

The devolepment of the European treaty system was designed and outlined by Robert Schuman after the second world war, and most of the arrangements are still following his ideas. It was mostly Thatcher’s influence that the current system is such a horrible mess between all chairs.

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You too.

Regarding the sentence “Britain has voted to leave the European Union” - please don’t tar us all with the same brush. 17 million (who voted ‘leave’) out of a nation of 61 million is not the whole country.

Thanks to that minority, whose thinking seems to have been along the lines of “my leg hurts so I’ll blow my brains out to stop the pain”, the rest of us have to suffer a compeletely screwed (and increasingly racist) country now. Most people in this country are aghast.

It’s a pity we can’t individually sign up to be in the EU and retain all the benefits we got from it.

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See my earlier comment

It’s not individual membership, but membership by a federation of local councils is the best I can see working. It’s better than one half of the UK hating the other half.

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I was watching her right after the European FMs all made their public statements pressing the UK to act quickly. I expect she had just finished long and difficult discussions among the corresponding national leaders.

I’m sure she want a fast decision, because uncertainty is toxic. But she loses a partner with similar political views and was quoted that the UK can take it’s time for triggering article 50.