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‘It all disappeared with Brexit’: Craft beer boom ends as more than 100 UK firms go bust
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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I mean that's hardly fair, given that in the past, constitutional changes weren't done on the basis of an advisory referendum with a tiny majority, and we weren't told prior that the outcome would result in Brexit.
If you're blaming the voters, you're letting the Conservative party get away with it. It is decidedly their fault.
Let's assume for a moment that what you say is accurate. It's just advisory. Not caring if the voters just give the government the "advice" to shoot the country in the foot also seems pretty dumb to me.
Also, between the referendum and actual Brexit there were TWO general elections. In 2019 the conservatives were reelected, with a stunning participation of 67%. You guys HAD to have woken up by then.
No, I'm not. But if you live in a democracy, you share the responsibility for decisions that are made in your name. And the only way they are not made in your name is if you vote against them. You don't get out of that by claiming "they lied" when those lies at the time were constantly debunked in basically all of the media if you just bothered to look.
Let's not. Instead of assuming, we can agree that the referendum being advisory is a matter of fact. I can provide thousands of sources for this if you are unsure.
Two points here. Firstly, an election is not a single issue referendum and the Conservatives winning an election is therefore not equivalent to the voters agreeing on Brexit.
Secondly, in both of these elections the majority of voters voted for anti-Brexit parties. So, if we were to take the elections as referenda, (which, again, we can't) the results would show that the UK voted subsequently against Brexit. Twice.
As for your last paragraph, the fact that "they lied" (not sure why this is in quote marks: they did) does matter. It's not reasonable to expect that the whole populace will have the time, inclination, ability or education to be able to understand the full picture and determine which parts of what they're being told are true and which are lies. This is partly why we elect and pay representatives. A lot of lies were told, some in completely novel ways and some in more traditional ways, but enough to at least confuse the average Joe. Why would you lay the blame at the door of people who made a decision based on the best information that was available to them when that information was bogus?
Outright incorrect here. The majority of the media was pro - brexit in the UK. Owned as it is by disaster capitalists and paid-up Tory supporters. At the very least, the message from the media as a whole was incoherent. I believe it's fair to say that large parts of the mass media embarked on a targeted misinformation campaign for the very purpose of muddying the waters and convincing people to vote against their own interests.
I'm not sure why you overlook all of this. Perhaps you just didn't know. Perhaps you're a Tory supporter. Perhaps you just like nice, neat black-and-white answers. But by doing so, you're blaming a lot of innocent people and letting a lot of guilty ones off without scrutiny. You're literally making it worse.
"Let's assume" in this case means "I'll take your word for it because it's really not important to my point."
I would agree in 9 out of 10 cases, this is the tenth. By that time there was already major controversy about possibly canceling Brexit or having a second referendum, the many difficult issues of the separation and the negotiations were obvious and Johnson was specifically pushing for an early election to gain more leverage for his hard-line position. The matter at hand was one that would change Britain's position in the world for a long time, reversing it could not be easily done and it was basically live or death for parts of your economy. This was apparent, as some companies were already in the process of leaving for other EU countries.
All this considered, nobody who wanted the UK to remain could reasonably justify staying home. Remember, I'm not even talking about conservative voters, the issue is 30% not even showing up.
Yes. "Winner takes all" is fucked up. But that's not my point. 30% stayed home. That's what my first comment was about that you are answering.
See the second to last sentence from my last comment.
Because it's quoting somebody else. Not every quotation mark is insinuating the content isn't true. Politicians lie or only tell certain parts of the truth without context all the time to promote their agenda. It sucks, but none of them have ever been jailed or otherwise punished for it, so as long as that is the case you have to expect it. And it's your job as a citizen to do at least some reading on important issues.
You didn't even have to get the whole picture. You just had to look outside, see the town square that was renovated and freshly paved with EU subsidies (example that my brother in law showed me when we visited - he continued with "they paid for it, now they can gtfo"), or the polish nurse taking care of your grandma 24h, and think for a second. That should have made people doubt.
Also, international news. The internet is a thing, and your mother language happens to be the modern lingua franca.
If you read carefully, you'll notice that not once did I write anything to the effect of what the Tories and UKIP did wasn't bad. All I am saying is that everybody who didn't go out and vote remain had it coming. That includes everybody who didn't vote, and nobody can claim they didn't have access to at least hints about the magnitude of the consequences. The EU publicly told you in advance in pretty simple terms, multiple times. And common sense dictates that no club will ever let you keep the benefits without also sharing the costs (the whole "cherry picking" thing).
You seem unable to differentiate between "Alice did a bad thing" and "Bob is innocent of a different thing" (not the same, not correlated, I said one, not the other). That's sad, but please don't blame me for your false conclusions.
Well it seems you've made up your mind. I can't reason you out of a position you haven't reasoned yourself into.
You seem to assume that a lot of people should or do have your intellect and education. They do not, and that is not their fault. You also make the mistake of simplifying what was an extraordinarily chaotic political landscape between 2016 and 2019. Finally, and most bizarrely, you seem to think it realistic to expect 90+% turnout in a general election which is, at best, astonishingly naïve.
But look, you do you. Obviously you didn't come here to scrutinise your own firmly held beliefs. So have a good one.