I think that gal is hot- I don't know what you naysayers are thinking? (I can't understand her but that would be OK). I don't like the fact she seems "itchy"- that can be a possible sign of a hard drug user (meth, heroin, etc). If I knew for sure she was not a junkie, I'd say "hell ya!". I am near 50 so young gals like that don't happen for me anymore. Just my opinion. Jim
Funny, Northern Ireland voted mainly down sectarian lines, Scotland if they had voted to leave the UK would already be in the same situation as Greece totally bankrupt, as the then 1st minister that odious smug toad Salmond was predicting oil at $120 per barrel to fund all of Scotland's spending plans, which within weeks of leaving would have been in tatters as oil tanked. Without England's money Scotland would already be on the scrap heap. If Scotland have another referendum & the people choose to leave fine get on with it that is democracy. Personally I think if they do have another referendum the result will be the same as last time with a bigger majority to stay part of the UK. The ironic thing here is Sturgeon whines about Westminster but at least governments can be got rid of EU dictators cannot, so for Scotland it is more like out of the frying pan into the fire. Another thing to think about what makes you think the EU will want another bankrupt country to sponge from them, I think they have enough takers & very few contributors in the EU especially as the UK who have voted to leave was one on the biggest net payers into corrupt EU coffers.
Notice they are already starting with the people didn't really mean to vote out. I saw six persons anonymously quoted as saying they wished they could reverse their votes. That should be enough to undo several million votes.
I wonder how much noise we would be hearing if the result had gone the other way. The socialists would be outraged! OC
Scotland gets only marginally more money from the UK than it contributes to the UK. With so much economic activity based in the south of the UK, a lot of it would move north to Scotland if it splits from England to remain in the EU. Apart from cozying up to the EU, the first thing Scotland would do if it were to secede would be to get a free trade agreement with the UK (England) because England wants and needs a lot of Scottish stuff and Scotland wants and needs a lot of English stuff. That provides a backdoor to Europe for the English and likewise for the Europeans into England, except it'll all be going via Scotland so Scotland gets to be the middleman and clip the ticket as people and trade pass through. Or to put it another way, one of my businesses is looking to start exporting. Up until last week, we'd been assuming that we'd be dealing with London or somewhere in the south east. As of now, we're looking at Edinburgh. If Scotland stays in the UK, there's not much difference either way. If Scotland leaves, has free trade with the UK and doesn't join the EU, we'd lose access to Europe but keep the UK market, which would be only slightly more annoying than dealing with England directly. If Scotland leaves, has free trade with the UK and does join the EU in it's own right, we get access to everywhere. (The only scenario that would be seriously bad would be if Scotland left the UK without a bi-lateral trade agreement and didn't join the EU, but they're not going to because there's no benefit in doing it.) The south east of England just became a whole lot less attractive as a place to trade. Scotland just became a whole lot more attractive. If I'm thinking that, there's a lot of other people thinking the same thing too and it would only take a small shift to boost Scotland's economy past the UK average and make them better off by themselves.
That sounds interesting....but can the Scots do that? I thought one of the issues was that the UK couldn't make its own trade agreements, so why would the Scots be able to? That said it wouldn't surprise me if the EU made an "exception" for Scotland to make such an agreement so that it is heavily rewarded for breaking off and going pro-EU while simultaneously punishing England at the same time as many businesses look to move from England to Scotland to benefit as you suggest. Surely if the Scots decided to break from the UK then the English may very well take punitive actions against them too.....
Yes, the UK can't make its own trade agreements while it remains in the EU, but once it leaves the EU, it has to make its own trade agreements in order to survive. Now the Scots are talking about their own independence referendum in order to remain in the EU, so if they leave the UK they will need to negotiate their own trade agreements with Britain (since they are no longer part of the UK), as well as being admitted into the EU. It's not clear whether Scotland would have to apply for membership of the EU as a new country, or whether they'd be grand-fathered in on the basis of the existing UK membership - perhaps it's a question of whether they vote to secede in the next two years.
Scotland as a bridge between England and the EU actually works reasonably well for England as much as it does for everyone else. Europe doesn't really want to lose the UK and, apart from the grumpy old age pensioners who want to stick one up David Cameron, stick one up Brussels and tell all the asylum seekers to bugger off, the UK doesn't really want to leave Europe either. The EU has cut special deals with other countries in the past (Norway, Poland, Ireland, Switzerland and the UK as well), so a "reward Scotland, punish England" deal wouldn't be out of the question, especially given the history of the Scottish/English union and the practicalities of separating the two countries.
37.4% of the voting population wanted to leave whilst only 34.7% wanted to remain. Now 28.8% of the voting population couldn't give a fuck whether the UK remained with the EU or not, so I'm not sure where you're getting your data from but clearly, the vast majority of people in the UK did not want to send the message to Downing Street that they wanted to remain. Now as far as Scotland is concerned, they should leave the UK but they should also do what the Brits are going to do and leave the EU Empire.
I'm aware of what the numbers were, I just don't think a lot of the Leave voters realized what they were voting for when they cast their ballots. If the calls for a second referendum get up, I seriously doubt the Leave vote would be carried again. Especially since such an important issue should really have required a super-majority in the first place. For example, I just got an email from a mate in the UK who was just informed that 15% of his company's workforce is going to be cut as and when the Brexit goes through. Those 15% of the employees work on EU projects under EU regional employment quotas. No EU membership, no need for employees to do EU work. The same goes for a lot of people working in the financial services sector: London is a convenient base for EU access, but if a company has to choose between the 600 million customers in Europe or the 65 million customers in the UK, they're going to pull up stumps and move to Frankfurt or Paris or wherever. The Scots would get absolutely no benefit from leaving both the UK and the EU. If they're required to chose, they'd be better off in the EU and would likely vote to remain. The whole of Scotland has only has about 2/3rds the population of Greater London. Any extra business they pick up has a much bigger multiplier effect. Not that I don't appreciate wanting to give a big middle finger to David Cameron and the bureaucrats in Brussels, but doing it via the Brexit referendum was a really dumb move.
What price do you put on independence and sovereignty? The centralisation of political and economic power should be avoided at all cost, for the same reason I'd be happy to see Australia de-federalise or at least the authority to tax incomes returned to the States. There's nothing dumb about a public show of defiance against their political masters and their crony capitalist friends, you may disagree with the outcome, but it's not dumb.
Nailed it shiney. People over here don't seem to understand it. According to many Australians, Brexit is about hating immigration and other far-right isolationism. Such ignorance really is a shame.
The whole reason for the EU existing in the first place was to avoid the fragmentation, protectionism and isolationist attitudes that allowed two world wars to happen. More trade = less conflict. If you want to see a truly sovereign nation, check out North Korea. Everyone else accepts that giving up some power opens the doors to more co-operation and better outcomes for everyone. Its involves give and take. Like I said, there's nothing wrong with expressing dissatisfaction with politicians and bureaucrats, but this was a really bad forum to do it because the Leave voters overplayed their hand. If the UK isn't able to step back from the result, they'll have really screwed themselves.
You don't need big government and beaurocracy to have trade. Decentralisation is the future. All the best technologies and business models are using it....but politics are lagging.
The intro... [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpM8xOFvtSg[/youtube] The denouement (that's a FRENCH word)... [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXSyOlZuYOw[/youtube]
So just keep having referendums until you get the result you want? This question was posed to Cameron had the remain vote only won by a small margin would he entertain the thought of having a second referendum and have a sup-majority with at least a 60% remain victory and he said no. The parameters for the referendum were known well before the vote. Just sour grapes
I don't think a second referendum is a viable option. That's why it (the first one) was a poor forum for expressing frustration with the status quo: if it were 52-48 the other way, there would be a clear result that people weren't happy about certain issues and lot more room for Britain to address their concerns.
If the Aust election ends up with a 52-48 result either way do we disregard that result as unreliable and have another one? Be plenty of "I didnt vote for this" grizzlers...always is. Doesnt entitle them to more elections until they get a result that suits them.
From Boris Johnson : But "Leave" figurehead Johnson downplayed the idea of a new vote. "I'm absolutely clear, a referendum is a referendum. It is a once in a generation, once in a lifetime opportunity and the result determines the outcome," he said. "If we vote to stay, we stay, and that's it. If we vote to leave, we vote to leave, that's it. You can't have neverendums, you have referendums," he added.
That is not reflected in any of our daily business transactions. Every day individuals engage in cooperative behaviour with each other and organisations to enhance their outcomes that meet mutually desirable ends. As a consumer, as a small business owner and even at corporate level, cooperative trading doesn't rest on giving up power, or "give and take" as you argue, the best outcomes are achieved when all parties respect each other. In fact, it's when one side has to concede power to another, or when power is usurped by one party at the expense of another that problems occur. Political solutions not founded upon fundamental economic truths close doors, not open them.
