*lies
The markets will rebound. They did the right thing. Day 3 the market bounced back and today day 4 markets are bounding back again.

52% of the people for it. It is a mandate from the people to leave the EU.

Brexit is not a disaster. it is freedom.

Invocations (lies) cannot be called by bobknight33 because bobknight33 is not privileged - sorry.

It is an absolute disaster that is only just beginning.

Glenn Greenwald's (The Intercept) take on the Brexit vote.
https://theintercept.com/2016/06/25/brexit-is-only-the-latest-proof-of-the-insularity-and-failure-of-western-establishment-institutions/

Yes, freedom from having a stable economy and freedom to be racist as fuck.

Good article, but Greenwald is missing one key point:
it's not just the "media elite" who can't understand the Leave vote. Most "normal" people outside England and Wales are perplexed by this too.

Talk to the average person on the street in Ireland, Scotland, France, Germany, etc. and they'll tell you the same things:
a) the leave vote was the wrong decision
b) it was brought about through fear mongering and lies

So that leaves two possibilities:

1. the rest of the EU are media-brainwashed idiots and the people who saw the light were Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson and the kind of people now screaming racist abuse at "foreigners" (aka anyone non-white or with a foreign ancestry even if they were born in the UK).

or

2. it really was a dumb idea.

I don't know what was the right decision. The fear mongering on both sides of the aisle makes it hard to appraise. But I don't get how people can't understand those that voted to leave. It seems like needlessly divisive hyperbole. Welcome to politics, I suppose.

In their shoes I would be concerned with the ongoing erosion of sovereignty over their lives. It seems indisputable that the further removed the decision makers are from the people, the less those people not only feel, and the less those people will actually be in charge. It also seems indisputable that more decisions were being taken by remote decision makers as time went on.

Again, one may have reasons to disagree, but to not understand it seems to say far more about the one failing to understand than anyone else.

I would argue that the UK would still have been better off IN the EU than out of it, but I fully agree that there are valid reasons to question the EU. Read some of @radx's posts... he eloquently outlines some of the fundamental problems with it.

That said, that's not why people voted to leave. Opinion polls show that people overwhelmingly voted to leave based on xenophobia and lies.

Sometimes I find Google hard.

I've only be able to find one pole that actually discusses the underlying reasons for people voting one way or the other, and it used wide categories. It showed that the biggest leave reason was to regain control over immigration policy, and the second most important was to regain control over law-making powers. Those sound like legitimate concerns to me.

I'm guessing their are more polls out there. Maybe you could point me at the ones you're talking about? I watch the related radx post (I could only find the Mark Blyth interview), but it seemed to support my current understanding of the situation.

I know it's Colbert's shtick and I never really got into it, but still...

"I have friends who live and work in London. They said "don't worry,we're very sensible people."

What's sensible for people in London might not be sensible for people in Salford. Or Boston. Or Wolverhampton. London, or the South-East in general, is as representative of the UK as the East/West Coast is of the US.

The hinterland has been drained at the expense of the center, on both a global and a national scale. If you live and work in the City of London, things might look quite ok, and whatever issues there are only need some reforms to no longer be an issue. But if your factory, the factory that provided jobs for the people in your home town, closed down ten, twenty years ago and now the best you can get is zero-hour contracts, then no, things are not ok.

People up top keep telling you that the economy is growing, that everyone's gonna be better off, that it's ok for multinational corporations and rich individuals to optimise their taxes, while they cut your welfare. Banks get a bailout, you get to pay the bedroom tax.

So no, your sensible friends, if they exist, live in a different universe than many of their countrymen. That's the disconnect we've been talking about.

-----
"The British economy is tanking. The pound has plunged to its lowest level since 1985... The Dow lost 611 points."

Again, so what? If the economy is growing and it has no effect on you, why should you give a jar of cold piss about the value of the pound or the stock exchange? Arguably, a drop in the exchange rate of the pound makes it easier for you to export your goods and raises the prices for imports, thereby encouraging you to produce the shit yourself. The UK does have a sovereign currency, unlike the Spanish, the Greeks, the Portuguese or the Italians who have to suffer internal devaluations, because Wolfgang Schäuble says so.

"Equity losses over $2 trillion"

Why should that matter? QE has pushed up stock prices beyond any resonable level, so what meaning do these book values hold? Not to mention that a lot of people made a shitload of money by shorting these stocks, including George Soros against Deutsche.

"There'll be no more money"

QE never trickled down anyway, makes no difference. Corbyn's people call their version "QE for the People" and "Green QE" for a reason: the previous version was only meant to prop up banks and stock values.

--------------

On a more general note, the hatred, the racism, the xenophobia... in most cases, it's a pressure valve. You leash out against someone else, you need someone to blame. The narrative is that we're living in a meritocracy, which makes it your fault that you didn't inherit an investment portfolio. So you start blaming yourself. You're a fuck-up. You worked hard and not only didn't climb the ladder, you actually went down. There's depression for ya. Guess what happens if someone, a person of perceived authority, then comes along and tells you it's not your fault, it's the fault of the immigrants. That narrative is very appealing if history is any indication. Even the supposedly most prosperous country in the EU, Germany, has the very same issue in the eastern parts, where there is no hope for a meaningful job.

People need work, meaningful work. Wanna guess how many of those "xenophobes" would be out in the street protesting against immigrants if they had a meaningful job with decent pay? Not to many would be my guess.

So the likes of Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson are providing the narrative. But the lack of social cohesion is a result of market fundamentalism, of Thatcherism, of Third Way social-democrats leaving the lower half of the income distribution to the wolves. You can't exclude large swaths of the population from the benefits of increased productivity, etc. Social dividend, they called it. It's what keeps the torches and pitchforks locked away in the barn.

Thanks for taking the time.
I've grown so sick of identity politics and the use of bad names to disqualify other people from having opinions (I'm sure I've done it myself). I appreciate the measured tone.

Radx: true, but the economy IS growing for the polish shop owners in Boston, England.

Its just not growing for the locals who decided 20 years ago that since the factory closed for no fault of their own it was someones duty to take care of them.

Im oversimplifying, obviously, and I do apologize.

The situation in Boston, England will not improve if they chase the Poles out. It will not improve if more local employers find it difficult to sell their produce (they might even find it difficult to find workers once the Poles are gone).

The EU is not great but it is a large accessible market. Im pretty sure Boris is trying to think of a way to stay in right now.

Demanding jobs is the road to hell. If you base your economy on giving everyone a job you end up in North Korea. The Poles in Boston are looking for opportunities, the Brits are looking for a scapegoat.

I'm sorry, but that is an oversimplification too great to just allow you to apologise for and continue on with the point.

To suggest a narrative in which all Thatcher did was close a few factories and blame the communities for being too lazy to fend for themselves or find a new job is not only naive and ignorant of all the facts, but incredibly insulting to people from those areas.

An apology for oversimplifying? I personally think you owe one to the hard working people of northern mining towns that were not only made redundant by Thatcher (with no other jobs available), they were victimised by her and then blacklisted so that they would not be able to find work again - some have only been vindicated in the past few years.

The only redeeming aspect of your frankly disgusting ideas about deprived areas in the UK is that you are clearly not in possession of the facts. Lazyness? The miners were the backbone of this country, the WORKING class - you know? Steelworkers lazy?

To some people in this country there has been no recovery, they are more in debt than ever, they have less job and home security, they are depressed, there is no future and it doesn't even seem like their kids will be able to do any better. David Chameron appears on the TV and tells them we're all doing better and the recovery is going great and they laugh at him... THEY'RE USING FOODBANKS TO LIVE. Their families eat by the grace of generous community members who donate food... in 2016....... in the United Kingdom, ex-fifth largest economy in the world. Recovery!? That's how the recovery was FUNDED!!! By taking money from the poorest and most desperate in the form of cuts and austerity! They're using foodbanks right now so that you can claim the UK had a recovery. Disabled people committed suicide because they felt as if they were a burden, because they were scared and saw no hope, all so that people could claim we had a fucking recovery. But the average person is no better off and the debt that Osborne made such a big deal about has increased. He's missed every target he made for himself and redefined poverty so that the statistics looked better!

And that isn't BECAUSE of brexit - that was before brexit. Many people are blissfully ignorant of how some people have to live their lives in this country, especially those most influenced by the Westminster bubble. Politicians and political commentators have completely misjudged the mood of the nation; that led to brexit, that has led to Corbyn who in fact has been the ONLY man in parliament to be making these points.

And they think he's no leader? When he goes to work every day he has to deal with around 400 people spitting abuse and doubt at him. He stood in parliament with hundreds of them jeering him and faced them down and made the democratic will of hundreds of thousands of people (who were not in attendance) felt. He is the only man who looks like a leader right now, the only one who looks like he knows what the hell to do.

Exactly, danny, all those miners have to find something else to do, because mining coal is no longer viable. I never mentioned laziness. I did not say it was fun or easy or fair. We (the state) could go on paying them to save their lives and dignity but please lets not pay them for useless work mining expensive coal that no-one wants. Lets pay them for requalification, relocation, pensions. I dont blame them for being bitter about Thatcher, I blame them for looking for scapegoats. Polish coal miners and steelworkers are in exactly the same predicament.

Brexit is a knee jerk reaction to the world not being the way some people want it to be, making it worse.

Wow a handful of no polish vermin type signs and that some how sums up the entire vote was due to racism?

But the thousand or EU rules and regulation that burdens everyday citizens have nothing to do with wanting freedom.

Please stop drinking the Kool Aid.

You're right. Those signs would only prove that racist assholes are making themselves more known after the vote.

Yeah, who wants those fucking EU regulations enforcing bullshit like safe food, workers, rights?

Christ bob, can you just TRY for once using you goddamn brain? Or do some fucking research.

The irony of you telling me to stop drinking the kook aid is painful.

Exactly

".. , can you just TRY for once using you goddamn brain?"

Yes YOU try. Quit being so damn stupid.

BWHWHAHHWHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Here, have a charity upvote.