BBC Interviewing Barnsley people about Brexit on Radio 4

It's interesting that people choose first past the post OR proportional as the best option depending on whether they got the result they wanted afterwards. What could be more fair than 1 vote per person?

 

Parliament have done nothing yet. The High Court have.

 

It's to protect the country from lunacy within the government so they have to, by law, take it to parliament. Imagine them going for a referendum to abolish the NHS but kept it real hush hush so only 5% voted, bye bye, or more likely take Obama and his stance on getting rid of guns. He couldn't just do it, he had to go through congress, ie parliament.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

There isn't a single person who knows much about the workings of Europe / Europe and English Law - and just about anything else who would disagree with you.......however.

I would argue they did. It's just that wasn't on the ballot paper. I knew what I was voting for when I voted remain. I voted for a complete and total restructuring of the failing, bloated corrupt and unworkable EU - but to do it from the inside. Most people who voted to leave also knew what they were voting for. Unfortunatley 35 million people voted differently with a yes or no answer.

That wasn't on the ballot paper. Listening to Nick Clegg this morning because I voted remain I love Europe so much I voted to abolish the English Languarge and allow a German OOmpah band to shag the wife I love them that much. This is just as wrong as the other view of what a leave voter voted for.

In reality - and I'm legally qualified and have read the legislation - we haven't actually voted for anything. (again technical legal point not a moral point)

Having done some soul searching and analysis what I believe we have voted for at best was the triggering of Article 50. Nothing else - and even the timing of that is not clear other than it should be in this Parliament. (i.e. before 2020)

Here I have fundamental technical disagreement with you. Immigration Policy is by definition racist. It has to be - how else do you make the rules other than by race? (or at least nationality).. it is the one area where you will never be able to sue for discrimination on the grounds of race. If the key issue was immigration - then so be it. I too believe this is the key issue and it's the one issue that the Politicians have failed to address for 30 years and the reason UKIP became so popular. Because no political party has done a damn thing about it. We (and again I use this in the loosest possible terms) are a bunch of racists on a overpopulated Island. We have to find a way of coming to terms and dealing with this.

Yep - but now you're saying the referendum should be null and void so these Liars should make the decisions for us......

I'm afraid I'm a little troubled by that.

Whilst I agree with you at an emotiionaly level I'm not sure how else you would do this. Only allow people under 65 to vote - all the time. Deny war veterans who found for our freedom the right to vote... Only those with a University degree or more than 3 O levels A to C can vote.... Only those who pay more than £10,000 in taxes...

Sorry I can't square this circle with anything other than those over 18? (chose your age 12 16 18 21) get 1 vote. It's worht mentioning that the youth couldn't be bothered to turn up - and it wouldn't have taken many to change this decision - so all in all whilst it might make an interesting global debate I can't get over excited in this specific case.

Yes - that's exactly what we did. In fact we didn't even say that - we said. Who wants to get rid of the old car. There wasn't even the prospect of a new car on the table.

However the politicians - Cowards like Dugher and Jarvis - you want these idiots who at no point questioned the wording and formation of the referendum they were so scared of the UKIP vote in their own constituencies that they allowed it to go ahead with the contempt for their voters that we would simply be scared of the unknown - you want these to have more of a say than we did. Sorry NO. NO NO NO NO NO.

What we should do as a nation is now drive the positives. Make the best of a bad job. Work on our strengths. We got ourselves into this mess and we should bloody well make the best of it rather than living in regretsville.

 

I agree with both Parliamentary democracy and proportional representation. But like I said earlier, you can't put every decision to the public, it would never work. So, we should have a Parliament elected by some sensible type of proportional representation (not the stupid system put before the public a few years ago) and let them do the job they are paid for.

 

I voted in but that was mainly because I thought it was better to stick with what we've got rather than vote for the unknown.

 

It was the public that effectively voted for the referendum as it was part of the Tory manifesto.

 

Ahh so what you are saying is if you voted in because you knew the 'facts' if you voted out you didn't know what you were doing just went with the Daily Mails view, how patronising is that?
You could say the same applied to every general election.Lots of people believed passionately that leaving was best and the sensible ones did their best to sift through misinformation from both sides.
You could equally say thousands voted to stay in because the Mirror et al said so.
Personally I voted to remain but I understand how a democracy works and given that nobody knows for sure I'm not arrogant enough to think I know better than the others either.

 

A lot of good points well made. I've tried to avoid getting into a leave/remain debate, as I've no idea on that and no time to debate it.

My solution to the age related thing would be something like 18-30: 4 votes, 31-40: 3 votes, 41-50: 2 votes, 51+:1 vote. If we have a vote at all. I think the politicians should decide, that's what they get paid for.

As far as immigration goes, I think the vast majority of immigrants don't want to come to the UK. Most of them want to (and did) go to Germany That's why there were such a tiny number of potential immigrants in the jungle in Calais. The way this is presented in the media ("coming over here, taking our jobs, getting free luxury flats and lots of money for doing nowt") convinces a significant majority of our citizens to believe we are being overwhelmed by "foreigners". You may or not agree with this, and I'm not debating it, but the fact remains that people were making a decision on all our futures based on information which was spurious at least.

Agree with making the best of a bad job though, obviously we can't turn the clock back now. I've still no idea what my view on the outcome is, it's the process that I have a problem with.

 

Can't argue with any of that. The only thing I will say that one side in the debate chose to play the racism card whilst the other side opted for scaremongering. Neither side thought it worthwhile to honestly set out what the real alternatives were. Hence nobody knew what they were voting for and in that situation the only sensible vote was for the status quo - or abstain.

 

This is exactly what the majority of people are doing, but we seem to have wandered in to a position where those trying to have a debate as to whether the best outcome is a hard Brexit or soft Brexit, or what Brexit should look like is told to stop moaning. The 48% who voted to remains' opinion doesn't suddenly cease to be valid on what Brexit should look like, and it shouldn't be assumed that all of the 52% want a hard Brexit (or would leave at all costs even...)

Personally I am glad that parliament will be given the decision. Of course it will vote to trigger Article 50, but it will give the opportunity to consider these issues. I'm also open to the argument that having agreed the terms of Brexit there should then be a referendum but I think it is hugely complicated by the processes associated with Article 50.

 

And herein lies the real issue for me.

The referendum should have always been an empowerment tool - part of the leverage with Europe.

Like a schoolboy Cameron got his negotiations all the wrong way round. The referendum shoudl have been -

" We the British Public wish to revoke X article from the treaty of Rome / Maastricht and Lisbon:

Referendum Question 1. free movement of people

Referendum Question 2. The right to sell in pounds and ounces

Quesiton 3. Stop fecking about with this moving the whole of Parliament to strasbourg once a month.

Etc

Issue 5. Etc

In this situation Cameron would then be able to negotiate with Junkers knowing what they had to do to avoid Brexit and knowing whether we wanted hard or soft Brexit - what the deal breakers were and what the things we didn't really care about.

His negotiating arm would have been much stronger - he could have gained much more support from other nations also wanting to implement similar opt outs and the emphasis would be on europe to keep us - rather than the emphasis on us to leave.

However none of them believed we would vote to leave - so Cameron didn't really have the negiating leverage and all the politicians treat us with contpempt


And now not only have we lost the opportunity to reform Europe - improve the engagement with the population in politics, etc but we continually keep shooting ourselves in the foot by weakening our negotiation position by Parliament wanting May to show her hand before the negotiations have started.

It's all mental.

If only we could turn back time.!

 

The vote to hold a referendum was apparently passed by MPs 544 in favour to 53 (SNP types) against.

So it didn't matter whose manifesto you looked at. People weren't really given a chance to vote against holding a referendum.

 

When do MP's ever make the best decision for the country, most of them are too busy making sure they're alright which is why they vote for their own pay rise.

 

What's the point in having them at all then?

 

Anarchy in the UK......

 

In the information age with mass connectivity - it's a good point.

The arguement that they are dedicated to the task is relatively mute given they don't turn up most of the time and we have many many other people experts in certain fields.

The only arguement is that they are accountable to the people - but when did a labour MP ever get deselected in Barnsley....


You're better off having a president and constant referenda on twitter for me. Or you will be in 20 years.#

If anyone develops apps I've got a great idea for one - so would be interested in talking to some about this kind of thing.

 

******* hell Marc. Not sure why those who voted remain seem to assume intellectual superiority?

I voted against the ongoing political creep towards a federal superstate of Europe. A view that I've held for years before the referendum was announced or Brexit was even thought about.

There's stacks of evidence for that, if you choose to see it.

After all, the EU has steam-rollered the views of the people of Wallonia in the CETA saga. That's the Europe I'm opposed to.