Damn those pesky kids - if they hadn't been scurrilously encouraged to

[Herbette Chapman - aged 15]

Again, a lack for foresight. Or maybe they're all just thick nowadays.

You appear to be morphing into Berni. Any whose opinion detracts from your own must be thick.

[Peter]

I don't mind them coming out in droves because of the Corbyn offerings, we are allowed to be greedy at times and that is democracy, after all.

It's the fact that they couldn't be bothered to do the same last summer that irritates me. It shows an astonishing lack of foresight. I also find myself wondering what % of these same students have parents who would be hammered by Corbyn's tax changes and whether or not they've considered that and the impact it will ultimately have on them.

Again, a lack for foresight. Or maybe they're all just thick nowadays.

Funnily enough I put the same question to someone the other day but in reverse. He was whining about losing £200 a month under Corbyn's tax hike and that he couldn't afford it as his kids were off to university soon. I pointed out that a Corbyn government would save his kids 27 grand each over their studies. Silence....

He was wrong about the tax anyway. He earns 82 grand, the rise would have cost him pennies. So, selfish and thick, as you said.

[eastgermanautos]

exercise their right to vote we could have continued hoarding our unfairly accrued wealth and contriving to pay little or no tax, and continued exploiting the workforce with zero hours contracts on a pitiful minimum wage - damn them!

Well spoken Ray!

[Pokster]

exercise their right to vote we could have continued hoarding our unfairly accrued wealth and contriving to pay little or no tax, and continued exploiting the workforce with zero hours contracts on a pitiful minimum wage - damn them!

how dare they actuaaly vote for the party who had the best policies..... hence why TM is now doing a massive uturn over all the ****e ones they wanted people to vote for

[IUFG]

... who had the best policies

show your workings, p.

[Pokster]

show your workings, p.

It's all a matter of opinions isn't it... imho the policies Labour came up with did more to help parents with young kids, Uni students and the old and disabled. the fact the Tory party look like ditching a lot of policies makes you think they weren't good in the first place

[World's End Stella]

show your workings, p.

You mean you don't support the nationalization of the railroads, the postal service and the energy industry, IUFG? Don't you remember the nirvana that was the 70s when those industries provided a superb service at virtually no cost to the taxpayer? I bet you also think that high tax/spend plans might have a flaw especially when they don't add up.

You fool.

[taxman10]

All tax changes are good for me!

[Burney]

Lot's there to reply to Ash.

Not sure I accept your differentiating between every vote counting in a Referendum and not in a GE. Ask any MP in a marginal constituency and they will say that every vote counts. If the Brexit vote had been 65-35 either way then the same principle applies. The losing voter's vote is largely meaningless. You'll forgive me if I ignore your football match analogy.

You have very kindly outlined what your understanding of what voting 'leave' meant. I have no doubt that many agree with that point of view. But I also have no doubt that there are people who voted leave who thought differently. I may have phrased it poorly when I said no one really understood what leave meant. It would have been better to say it meant different things to different people.

I completely accept that it is irrelevant why people may have voted the way they did and whatever the reason does not make their vote less valid. I was saying that some referenda, and indeed elections are decided by what might be described as protest votes.

If Remain had won surely none of this debate would be happening. If it had been a narrow victory it would have been hailed by Europe as a resounding victory for the 'European Project' but people like Farage (if not the man himself) would be arguing that you cannot ignore the votes of 48% or so that voted to leave and that these voters are being disenfranchised if their views are not at least taken on board such that the EU would require some serious introspection as to whether it needed reform etc. [I suspect incidentally that UKIP would have won more than 1.8% of the vote in the recent GE too.]

My point regarding the DUP was that it was them who will cause Brexit to be as 'soft' as it now appears may be the case. This is just an accident of the numbers not because the DUP or the Tories have any particular political affinity. [I accept that official name of the Tories may contain the word Unionist in some shape but if they even had any even tenuous link with any party in the North it was with the UUP who have now been obliterated. I may remind you that it was the Rev Ian Paisley who established the DUP in NI only in the 1960s and they have probably never really seen eye to eye with the Tories politically].

Fun Fact: Rev Ian Paisley is an anagram for "VILE IRA PANSY"

I'm always mystified by this assertion that people who voted Leave didn't know what Leave meant. It's always said as if to suggest Remain voters knew exactly what Remain meant - when they knew no such thing.
Most Remain voters feared change and on the whole preferred the status quo. In fact, they'd have got a reinvigorated EU glorying in their endorsement and treating it as a mandate to drive through ever closer Union and the gradual drift of more and more powers to Brussels. That is not what most Remain voters wanted, but that's what they'd have got.
They also would have seen the question of a referendum on membership kicked into the long grass for another generation, with the matter being seen as settled. We had one chance to stop that happening and thankfully, we took it.

[Lar d'Arse]

I'm always mystified by this assertion that people who voted Leave didn't know what Leave meant. It's always said as if to suggest Remain voters knew exactly what Remain meant - when they knew no such thing.
Most Remain voters feared change and on the whole preferred the status quo. In fact, they'd have got a reinvigorated EU glorying in their endorsement and treating it as a mandate to drive through ever closer Union and the gradual drift of more and more powers to Brussels. That is not what most Remain voters wanted, but that's what they'd have got.
They also would have seen the question of a referendum on membership kicked into the long grass for another generation, with the matter being seen as settled. We had one chance to stop that happening and thankfully, we took it.

Do you even know what 'leave' means today? I clarified that what I should have said was that 'leave' meant different things to different people. I still believe that. If it was clear before the vote why is there even any debate about what it should mean now?

I accept what you say would have happened had remain won and said as much.