I really am bored of waiting now.
I really am bored of waiting now.
Now the clocks have changed, I'm not sure.
"And he pulled the fastest milk cart in the West"
The letter to our dear European friends arrives at 12.30 tomorrow.
Apparently some chap from the FCO took it on Eurostar and it's already in Brussels.
If you're ready to buy, buy. There will always be a reason to wait. Just get on with it. People always worry about buying and then seeing prices go down, but the value of your property is irrelevant unless you want to sell. If you buy and then the market crashes, you just sit tight and wait for prices to recover.
My first house cost £64k. Two years later it was worth about £35k. I sold it 5 years later for £135k :shrug:
It was always going to happen. Things got very entrenched very quickly, which left little or no room for compromise. Had the EU and remainers taken a more accepting and conciliatory stance immediately after the vote, it's possible people might have accepted a more fudged outcome. However, the arrogance, sneering and screaming on one side for it to be stopped simply made people on the other side even more determined for it to go ahead.
It will be interesting, but things were going to be interesting whatever happened. There are huge issues looming over Europe right now with the potential to make Brexit look like a sideshow.
I hope Remainers get this lady in for the moment. She's great.
Attachment 547
I had two thoughts yesterday, one of which is not original but strikes me as sensible, that there should be a threshold for a referendum victory of something that means a 52-48 result does not automatically mean victory for the 52.
The other more original idea is that one solution to all this bickering would be to hold a second referendum on the final Brexit deal with the EU, but only among those who voted Out. Would that not be quite a neat idea?
Yes, I suppose for such a major constitutional issue a threshold margin for victory might be considered sensibel; however, as one wasn't imposed, the point is moot.
To my mind the original referendum was a single, simple question, do you want to stay in, or get out. The 'electorate' voted out. It's now up to our elected politicians to decide how, and under what terms that happens. We can't keep asking hoi polloi to decide on these issues, mainly because most of them are as thick as mince.
1. No. A margin of victory in a popular vote is still a margin of victory. Anywhere else you draw the line is perforce arbitrary and unfair. Equally, such a rule would always favour the status quo. After all, had the vote percentages been reversed, do we think we'd have left the EU? Of course not. We'd have stayed in, meaning that, whichever way the vote went, the Leave voters were effectively disenfranchised.
2. This is a bit retarded. You realise we have a system of secret ballots, yes? And that there is therefore no way of knowing who did or didn't vote to leave?
1. But I don't think there can be anything more arbitrary than a 52-48 vote meaning victory for the 52. Because we know full well that a result of that small a margin is simply no more meaningful than tossing a coin to decide. A 60-40 victory, however, would tell us a lot more.
2. I'm surprised it would have needed me to qualify that OBVIOUSLY my idea would require a new system where you could retrospectively prove which way you originally voted in order to vote in the second referendum.
I think your second point is a good one and too often overlooked. This was at heart actually a very simple issue: do we wish to be governed within the framework of the EU or not? The fact that its ramifications are complex does not alter the essential simplicity of the core issue. To say people didn't know what they were voting for is absurd - they absolutely did. That one may or may not like the various reasons they voted Leave is neither here nor there.
No, I'm sorry, but it's absolutely not arbitrary in a democracy to say that a majority vote should prevail. Moving the margin to 60-40 would simply be to fix the status quo and create the potential to leave a majority feeling rightly cheated and likely to seek recourse by other means.
Right. So in a situation where voters were denied the anonymity demanded by law and the authorities were to openly break the law by tracking individual votes, you think that would be a good plan? Why?
:shrug: I knew that leaving the EU meant ensuring that the laws passed over me and those that pass them would once again be subject to democratic and electoral scrutiny rather than being imposed by diktat by an unelected foreign bureaucracy. I thought - and still think -that principle important enough to be worth protecting regardless of other ramifications.
Indeed. My old dear recovered my dad's remains from the bottom of the garden this morning, after we'd promised faithfully that we were to renounce the grain for a bit. My fault entirely, of course, but I avoided the rod as I at least made it back into the house. Lunch will be a tense affair
:-|