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Well, you know what they say… n+1th time is the charm.
I’d like to see methodology. Was that one of a tick list of preconceived questions or did respondents volunteer reasons like this? Because just about everything else the fuckwits blamed on the EU could ultimately come under that catch-all umbrella. So instead of choosing as your number one reason “immigration” or “too much red tape” or anything else - indeed INSTEAD of having to choose any one such reason, you’d just tick this one, if it were offered. I have no faith in any such poll without seeing the methodology. And without seeing it, given Ashcroft’s well known political and economic views, I would suspect the poll was designed to be self-serving.
And for avoidance of doubt, the above is rhetorical. I have no actual interest in seeing anything to do with that bastard, Ashcroft, and am no longer interested in anyone’s rationale for voting Leave. None of them actually knew what they were really voting for or what the consequences would be in the real world, and were mostly thus voting in the dark based on atavistic emotion stirred up by smug chancers who thought it would be good for them personally (Johnson et al) or were motivated by darker reasons (Farage). Don’t anyone tell me it’s important to understand these people and reach out and seek compromise or consensus. Not fucking interested. I hope they all fuck off and die.
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Really? Sausage-making and all that. 
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That is generally referred to as representative democracy.
And that is direct democracy.
Not really. Politically I am a communalist, which uses direct democracy in small communities, which form federations of communities to solve larger scale problems (Libertarian municipalism, with libertarian being in its original left wing sense). A form of this is currently being used by the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria.
The problem with the brexit referendum was that it had one clearly defined option (remain, which was remain in the EU, obviously) and one extremely poorly defined option (leave, which included soft brexit, hard brexit and lexit, all of which are mutually incompatible with each other. There were probably other factions but those are the main ones). Going by the battles between those factions and the many government votes I do not believe that any of the leave factions ever had as much as the 48.11% support that remain had (and remain has more support than that now).
Edited for corrections.
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Yorkshire pudding is delicious
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Yes it is.
But to paraphrase that famous Conservative Conference speech, now that we have the recipe…
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No, as I said, not really.
But you illustrated the “tick list of pre-conceived questions” point perfectly - I’d forgotten that episode. Pure genius. Thanks for linking to it.
THIS!
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Lord Buckethead for Prime Minister!
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Am I the only one who is very confused and concerned about this wording?
The EU isn’t a monolithic bloc. Frankly, I have the impression they are far away from speaking with one voice even in most matters regarding the BREXIT - and that is at the current, in crisis mode.
The term “the bloc” was previously applied to the members of the Warsaw pact.
I see and hear this causal usage often nowadays, and I think it’s harmful for any discussion.
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As of 18.45 local time today.
Sadly, I may not be near a screen when it hits 6,000,000
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Bloc is just french for “group”. It doesn’t mean monolithic, it implies a grouping of individual parts, people, countries. That’s exactly what the EU is. Maybe it’s more about how you’re hearing it. It’s not “borg”. The US is part of lots of blocs, despite never having been part of the Warsaw Pact.
Also, the EU is really not going to be offended if a french word is used to describe their bloc of countries. We use beaucoup french words in our politics.
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French words, outside of the French language, may carry certain connotations.
Bloc does, in Germanic languages, I think. 
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Bordelle de merde about sums it up, je pense.
Except the Germans used it in German too. And the Spanish use it in Spanish. And the English…
I think you’re the only one “concerned” about its “harmful” widespread and common use.
If British xenophobes can convene to parle under the term Parliament, then I’m sure it’s not that big a deal for other Europeans to continue using a word almost everyone’s used for most of modern history.
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Oddly enough, to me this illustrates the peril of not having a strong majority and party discipline when very difficult decisions need to be made. As we saw when May lost control and 8 resolutions were voted on (including my favourite - just drop Brexit) and each failed to get a majority.
Do you really think that a PR system would have produced more coherence in the face of the fact that there is no position that currently has majority support?
Wow. Mass execution for those who disagree with you (and me). I understand the impulse to joke about such things in private. I don’t understand putting it to public forum. It’s ugly when the right does it, and it’s not an attractive look for the left, even in jest.
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It probably would have made a difference in how the referendum was set up, and the questions asked…
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Yes. It’s just that in German, Block, used in a political connotation, would be a in sich geschlossene Gruppe von politischen oder wirtschaftlichen Kräften, in other other words an integrated/uniform group of the same opinion/persuasion presenting a united front. As in monolithic.
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Well, in context, the EU is a bloc when it comes to a lot of trade and political arenas.
It is a political partnership designed to present a united front on some things. That doesn’t imply total monolithic facelessness, any more than “United States” implies that there’s no such thing as state borders or regional cuisines.
It’s not a dirty word just because a couple communists were called it once. It’s a common english political term. Complaining about it seems like objecting to the word “community” because you don’t want to sound “commie”.
(And the only reason we called it the “Eastern Bloc” in the first place was because we were calling ourselves the “Western Bloc”. It wasn’t a foreign word. It was ours.)
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I think the original point (assuming I’m reading @LutherBlisset right) was that although there are many similarities, a bloc(k) is not the same as a union.
My point was that your interpretation of the use of bloc(k) in German is a bit off.
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