Brexit now leading by 10 points

Unsubstantiated nonsense as usual. Do us all a favor, gturner, and stick to the things you know. If there is a fencing or ancient armor element to global politics, go ahead.

Apparently you don't listen to what our own military and intelligence chiefs say, much less the State Department.

CNN story from 12 days ago.

State Department report finds Iran is top state sponsor of terror

Iran now thinks we're a joke.

War with the US would be no big deal

Brigadier General Hossein Salami, the deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, said in an interview on state-run television that a battle with the US would only serve to highlight Iran’s strengths.

“We welcome war with the US as we do believe that it will be the scene for our success to display the real potentials of our power,” he said, according to a report by the semi-official Fars news agency. “We have prepared ourselves for the most dangerous scenarios and this is no big deal.”​

As they continue to test new rockets and centrifuges and laugh in our face about it, they now do things like this:



They realize that Obama and Kerry are just worthless eunuchs who like to babble, so they have no qualms about threatening to sink our ships.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/mishta...-is-it-flawed/amp/?client=ms-android-verizon#

Tge actual poll numbers are leave with a 3 point margin and the 10 point margin comes from the calculations of who is expected to be a likely voter. The Independent's model assumes elderly people turn out to vote in big numbers while the under 40 people mostly stay home. Is that a good assumption? I guess only time will tell.

NATO had just as much to do with it as the EU. It is amazing how unionifying a common enemy can be while a common military command structure (until de Gaulle scrwwed that up, at least partially) also engenders trust. Hell, both the European Atomic energy community and the coal and steel community had to be rushed because de Gualle was coming into office and he opposed both. When the coal and steel treaty was signed the details had not been finalized but they had to go ahead to get it done jusy days before de Gualle took office so the signing ceremony had people sigbing a big stack of blank papers with just the first page and the last page printed.

No, we had a strong central government from the time the Constitution was adopted but it took the civil war to finally beat the message into the heads of the nay sayers.

This should lower the value of both the Pound and the Euro which will be good for my vacation plans.

While this has an element of truth to it, it's not just boneheaded, xenophobic Daily Mail readers that want out. The EU is a chaotic organisation. People say we should remain in and try to reform from within. Well just recently the EU's biggest supporter - our PM - went to Brussels with a begging bowl and a paltry list of demands, and he got absolute crumbs in return. The delusional fool claimed victoty and is campaigning to stay in the EU despite getting bugger all from the other members. The EU is incredibly difficult to reform. Not even the UK, it's 2nd biggest net contributor can make much headway in this department.
The fact that Leave has so much support should serve as a wake up call to the EU but we all know the stubborn bastards that run the thing won't give a shit. They'll carry on blindly and pursue their idealistic dreams without a care for the wishes of ordinary Europeans.
That's the great thing about democracy. We can get rid off the cunts that run our country, but we can't ever vote out the bureaucrats that run the EU and pass laws that the rest of the members must adopt.

The French wisely refused to let us join the club in the early days because they knew we didn't want to be part of a federal European superstate. And since joining we've continued to resist further integration which the other members have all gone along with, some with disastrous results (Schengen and the Euro, to name two). If the other members of the EU want to continue to erode their national identities and cede more and more power to Brussels - good luck to them. But that's not something the UK wants to be a part of and I think we'll be voting to leave come June 23.

From what I've observed virtually all modern economists are against any kind of barriers between nations. So naturally they would be against U.K. leaving the E.U. with the prospect of increased trade barriers arising.

That's because modern economists are morons.

No, they're correct. The problem is that true open exchange has only ever been tried in the United States. Europe has gotten close in some respects -- free movement of goods, services, and capital. But they still aren't there because the member states do not have free floating exchange rates. The result is a misalocation of capital. The UK was right to skip out on the Euro.

You never know, maybe Labour will pull off a miracle and we'll have socialist hero Corbyn in charge?
I'm sure the economy will take a hit. Nobody really knows how big a hit, there's just too much nonsense being spouted and some of the most ridiculous doomsday scenarios are being dreamt up. I work in a corporate job in the city of London in an industry heavily involved in business between organisations all over the EU. I could be in trouble if things go tits up in the event of a leave vote. So I'm not taking a vote to leave lightly at all. But I see this as a golden opportunity for the UK to get out of an organisation that I think is going to have serious problems in the not too distant future. And I don't want to see the EU take the UK down with it when it sinks.

I'm not sure I follow your reasoning here. If you need independent currencies for true open exchange, how do the US have it?

Brexin!

Belgian police alerted to IS fighters en route to Europe

Belgian police have received an anti-terror alert warning that a group of Islamic State fighters recently left Syria en route for Europe planning attacks in Belgium and France, a Belgian security source said on Wednesday.​

Open borders are a problem when an enemy army can use them. But don't worry. John Kerry will fly over to lay a wreath and babble some nonsense about getting tough on misguided individuals of no particular religious affiliation.

I simplified things a bit. The US has a common fiscal policy, so common monetary policy works. The EU lacks a common fiscal policy.

At any rate, the larger point is that somebody can't point to an example of a not free market as evidence that the free market failed.

Isn't one of the problems that has stuck with the EU for years has been the wide disparity in wealth among its member nations?

Wealth disparity that dwarfs anything in the United States from state to state.

Anyone that knows better feel free to correct me if I'm in error.

The closest anywhere in the US comes to a place like Greece is Puerto Rico. Even the poorest states like Mississippi or Arkansas are substantially more wealthy and economically sound. And Greece is just the most extreme example, but quite a few other European countries are closer to Puerto Rico than Mississippi.

Yes, that makes sense. The problem isn't the euro, but the lack of an otherwise unified market.

You realize there is nothing to exchange currency wise with in the Euro Zone while currencies outside the Euro Zone do float, right?

Please explain. Which market is not open to free, fair, and open competition among EU members? I admit many countries over regulate certain industries, especially the southern member states, but I am not currently seeing where the common market is not functioning.

You do realize that valuable currencies don't float, which is why divers are always looking for sunken sailing ships?

I thought they were looking for booty.

Which of course you don't need to dive for. You can try night clubs, college student unions, beaches........

Dayton earned his funny rep with that joke. Well done, sir.

Unequal tax and labour laws apply.

Gee, you mean different countries don't have uniform tax codes and some even have different labor laws?

Guess what? The same it true with US states yet that means exactly fuck all when it comes to the US having a common market. Try again.

Thought I'd pop by to see if there was a Brexit thread - good to see Cap'n Bullshit is still making paddling pools of drivel for the board to splash around in!

The campaign has been surprising. Remain had all the trump cards, had the whole machinery of the UK Government itself (not the party, but the gray-train loving Mandarins who've seen out any number of Cabinets), much of the press and business leaders, and the BBC bias flashing like the fucking Batphone. And fucked it up. Utterly, utterly fucked it up. It's like watching someone run the marathon, be tens of minutes ahead, and then proceed to machine their feet into slop 5 feet from the finishing line, topple forward and spasm on the floor, fingers desperately twitching for the finishing line whilst everyone else jogs past. Leave has been fractured from the start, and is riddled with nationalists and racists, all capable of outshining those who have better rationales than "send t'buggers back t' darkieland and east yurp ah say."

Oh yes, and their public face, BoJo, is doing this for political reasons rather than actually wanting to leave, and a plucky losing campaign would suit him far better.

Remain should be far ahead in the polls. And they're not. It's actually heart-warming and hilarious.

Remain have led one of the most arrogant, high-handed and supercilious campaigns in the history of ever. A chunk of the nation has doubts over the EU, and instead of wheedling and reasoning, they've picked to point fingers and call names, and - shockingly - Sam from Sunderland dosn't respond any better to some snotty twat from Islington, then he does to some Eton toff, when it comes to them acting the superior cunt.

Companies emailing their employees hinting how they should vote hasn't gone down too well either.

Oh, and they then brought out the, er, middling guns of Brown and Miliband, two of least likeable politicians out there in the hope that'd work. The response? Leave went ahead in the polls. Should've left Jonah Brown to stew in his venom, and Miliband... Just best left anywhere away from the media or anything requiring a modicum of capability given his two major achievements of recent years were "ensured fuel bills went up for everyone" and "killed the Labour Party".

On the plus side it's killed the career of George "Student Politics at Best" Osborne, whose budget threat to the public has gotten his entire party behind him, albeit so they can shove poisoned daggers into his back.

Remain may as well have had "Hour of the Amateur" as it's campaign motto of late.

Okay lets point out conflating intelligence and/or level of knowledge with level of education is a massive fallacy.

I work and socialise with people with much greater education levels than myself (although not all have reached my career level), and for many their level of general knowledge, understanding of language, current affairs and ability to solve puzzles is shockingly low. Not all, but enough for me to recognise being brilliant at one subject isn't the same as being smart.

They've got the 'Dr' in front of their name, but smart and/or knowledgable they are not.

Although they certainly have me beat when it comes to recognising reality TV stars. Which maybe a modern marker of intelligence I suppose, but I hope not.

Well what do you expect from people who think of Europe as a whole (meaning Brussels) instead of Britain? It is not a structure that selects for competence, skill, incisive logic, and political instincts gained from talking to ordinary people and responding to their concerns. It's based on selling a pie in the sky and kicking lots of cans down the road for as long as the cans can be kicked.

In theory, welcoming millions of new Muslims who will never find a job should show important value signaling and provide stable, indeed, multi-generational, careers for so many in government. In reality it's a circle jerk that's become a cluster fuck which will redefine daily reality for people who don't have chauffeurs.

At this point the EU isn't a proud and might ship of state, it's a disaster at sea and the smart thing to do is row away as fast as possible before the steerage passengers in the water reach the lifeboat and capsize it as they scramble aboard.

As for my stance, I'm voting leave for the following reasons:

1) There's no immediate downside - a leave vote will force the EU to come up with a better offer. Sure they've said "no second chances", but they say that a lot and don't mean it. Germany alone has a lot to lose from a Brexit, and as the current 500lb Gorilla in the EU, they'll force through a better offer.

2) The EU isn't a stable entity. We've seen with the migrant crisis how quickly so-called good European partners put up fences, and the constant can-kicking of problems is generating anti-EU sentiment, driving uncertainty and a resurgence of the far-right.

3) The EU is moving towards a corporatist model - changes are locking in big business to power, in the medium to long term this will not end well, and in the short term will be deleterious to growth and jobs.

4) The EU is ineffective at scale. Schengen is a case in point, after spending years of the EU doing very little in creating a passport-free zone, the Benelux nations went it alone and eventually it was rolled into the EU and hailed as a great EU initiative. Except it wasn't.

5) Most EU nations are inward-looking. Apart from the UK and France, none of the others are particularly internationalist. This doesn't bode well for when Russia and China decide to throw their weight around.

6) Too reliant on the US. From the Balkans to Libya, Europe comprehensively failed. Even with Syria now, instead of being proactive we're cuddling up Erdogan, not out of a sense of realpolitik, but of desperation and inability to act.

If the EU is willing to grow up, take responsibility and act so the Schengen area has it's own grouped border force, the Eurozone ties itself closer together and the free-movement area have a combined minimum wage and social safety net to reduce the desire for economic migration, I'm happy for us to stay.

It won't happen though, and internal pressures will tear the whole european project apart without some proactive efforts on its part.

I'll also point out the whole Brexit issue could've been avoided.

The UK Government has a lot of levers to influence inward migration, and the EU ought to recognise that the problem hasn't been volume of net migration, but rate. Which itself offers a solution in recognising that, until all nations within the single market have roughly equivalent economies and social systems, there may be required an upper limit of % of total host-nation population that can be reasonably absorbed per annum.

France and the UK both have fairly developed economies, so limits either way wouldn't be expected.

Romania and the UK on the other hand... Here it would make sense to have an annual limiter whilst at the same time having a program to bring Romania up to speed in order to remove that limit as soon as feasible.

Instead we have people merging economic migrants and refugees into one demonized basket, when the latter should be viewed with a more charitable eye.

It wouldn't be an easy equation, but it would solve a lot of issue driving Brexit.