Brexit

Yes, that drives me crazy too. People don't seem to realise that the apparently-simple solution they are suggesting has indeed occurred to the people with expertise already, because they're not idiots, and must have been rejected for a reason.



Everyone prefers the cheap and easy solution over the expensive and complex - if the answer is expensive and complex than the apparently cheap and easy solution must not be cheap and easy at all!

Well, this is exactly the problem. When we don't have solid facts, when the best you can say is 'probably', it allows people to pick and choose the evidence that suits their prejudices and ignore the rest. They don't even have to be intending to do that - confirmation bias means we all do it automatically, it's how the human brain deals with conflicting information.

That's why we should all look very carefully at the sources that people base their assertions on when they're making arguments about big, emotive political issues. People don't even have to be intending to lie or deceive to be wrong, and to be misleading us. They can just be ignoring the evidence that contradicts their beliefs.

And, of course, we should all try to stay open to the possibility that we're wrong, and ignoring information that doesn't support our beliefs.

Yes, but they're not paying to advertise on here, per se, they're just advertising generally. Your ads will often reflect what you've been looking at - I get work-related ones, theatre-related ones, and I've recently had both Leave and Remain ads. Sometimes someone odious will turn up, but it's nothing to do with anything TheatreBoard has done, and it's rarely anything that ProBoards has done either.

Years ago, when shortwave radio was a thing, I always made a point of getting my news from a wide variety of different stations around the world. If countries like Argentina, China, the Czech Republic, Germany, the Netherlands, Romania, Russia and the USA were all saying much the same thing then I could be reasonably sure that it was true, with no picking and choosing of sources on my part. On top of that external broadcasters tended to be fairly neutral with their news anyway, as they knew their listeners would simply listen to a different station if there was too much bias. (The sole exception was Radio Pyongyang (North Korea), which proudly revelled in propaganda during its half-hour broadcasts devoted to the wonders of living under the Great Leader. Either they didn't care what people thought of them or they (correctly) assumed that people would listen in just for the novelty.)

Unfortunately the Internet came along and the idea of broadcasting to the world faded out. The big advantage with shortwave was that you listened to whichever station was broadcasting at the time, so you ended up listening to news sources that would never have occurred to you otherwise. These days it's too easy to find the news sources that reflect what you want to hear, and most of those news sources gain nothing from being fair and balanced.

First results about 12.30, we should have projections somewhere between 3 and 4, although if it's very close it could be as late as 7.

www.newstatesman.com/politics/elections/2016/06/what-look-out-european-referendum-results-come

sh*t

I always thought he'd be reason enough to vote "remain".

That's the end of the United Kingdom then. Boris for PM? Oh what a depressing thought.

I feel like those fish at the end of Finding Nemo, where they've used plastic bags to escape from their fish tank to the ocean and are now bobbing in the water, still in the bags, thinking "Now what?"

The Leave campaign has nothing beyond vague assurances that everything will be wonderful. Yes, we won't have to pay money to the EU any more, but the EU didn't pile that money up and burn it. Most of it was used to fund projects that were to our benefit (and most of them right here) and now we'll have to fund those projects ourselves. (I remember someone who worked in transport infrastructure saying that the British government funds transport projects that are popular and the EU funds projects that are necessary.) Some of the money went on administration of those projects, but the need for that administration hasn't gone away. We'll still need to trade with the EU, and to get the same beneficial terms we have now we'll need to make more concessions, not fewer. The Leave campaign has promised that once we free ourselves from all these idiot foreigners who are either plotting against us or just too stupid to do anything right then everything will be rosy, but I'm struggling to see any reality behind those claims.

The remain campaign are just as much to blame. The whole thing has been awful. Childish attacks on the rival team, especially on boris during debates, threats of what may happen (like the leave campaign, no one knows). They didnt highlight the good the EU has done.

I voted remain but do feel the EU is heavily flawed and needs reform, so will be interesting to see how this plays out. Also suspect we wont be the last country to do this.

Sick of politics being left or right, both sides have valid points and there doesnt seem to be any middle ground and this is what happens when you ignore peoples concerns. Also the hatred for eachother, again from both sides, is disgusting.

At the momemt Im more concerned we now end up with Gove or Boris as PM

There is widespread dissatisfaction with the EU, which has pushed into areas that don't really concern it. In most cases that's simply been a matter of forcing countries to do things they'd have done anyway. For example, there are many consumer rights regulations that are based on EU directives, but those directives are eminently sensible and are things that most countries were already doing because they're sensible. All the EU did was harmonise things, but you have to question whether it needed to. It's a bit like a parent telling you to clean your room when you're already cleaning it: you know it needs to be done and that's why you're doing it, and you just want them to let you get on with the job.

Right now I think the best hope for the UK is for a couple of other countries to leave (or come close to it) and trigger a division of the current system into a commerce section and a political section. I think most Britons would be happy to rejoin a commerce-only union given that only the most numbingly stupid person could be blind to the benefits we've already reaped from the past few decades, and the smaller political union could be left to get on with whatever it wants to do. The big question is whether we'd be allowed to rejoin, and I suspect that in the end an agreement would quietly be reached that would allow each side to pretend to have forced the other into submission.