'Brexit' wins, UK to leave the EU?

Hmmm...this is interesting Carl, my experience is actually different. If anything, the 'leave' sentiments have deepened. Some remainers now want to leave too but most express a kind of "I don't care, stay or go but just get this BS over with" attitude. My professional circle largely includes the City professionals and working for a consultancy gives me access to quite a wide spectrum of people of all ages, but mostly 30-60. As for my personal friends, remainers mostly include immigrants, many of them are from the EU so they have personal interest in remaining, or Australia and New Zealand so they don't want their travel flexibility to be limited. Many of my friends are in fact millennials, I agree that this particular group is much more 'remain' leaning.

I certainly cannot speak for the rest of the UK - or even London. Just my own milieu. And it's It's not like I can pick up a newspaper and find out what people's sentiments are because news reporting is as factual as the adventures of Peppa Pig.

That is interesting. I could be wrong on this sentiment and the public has been galvanized even more into wanting to just get Brexit done.

Carl really gets on my nerves really despite making some good content. His stance on Brexit shown below is shared by many however - there's certainly a large segment of the population enchanted by ideas of sovereignty and the mighty British people standing up on the world stage once again etc.etc.

 
Apparently Janice Atkinson is writing for Rebel media. She posted this yesterday.

From Wikipedia: "Janice Ann Atkinson is an independent Member of the European Parliament for the South East England region, formerly representing the UK Independence Party. She was elected in 2014, second on the list for the region behind Nigel Farage."

“We will make the Conservatives pay” — Secret documents suggest Brexit will never happen
March 14, 2019
“We will make the Conservatives pay” — Secret documents suggest Brexit will never happen
Janice Atkinson Rebel Commentator

I’ve just seen confidential documents published by the respected think tank, the Bruges Group, set up in the wake of Margaret Thatcher's famous speech.

These documents claim there is a plan to keep us in the EU — a stitch-up between Merkel and May.
The documents have since mysteriously disappeared from the web, but luckily they were reposted at Politicalite.com. They reveal agreements made by Merkel and May last summer. Now that scenario is being carried out by May and her “Brexit In Name Only Parliament,” BRINO.
Whatever Parliament agrees this week, we are not leaving the EU.
Margaret Thatcher famously said:
“We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels.”
She was right then and right now. We will continue to fight in her name.

Joe and Niall called it a year ago.
 
If possible, delaying Brexit every six months could be a way to keep Britain in the EU indefinitely.

Makes me wonder what May and the EU were negotiating anyway since both sides are for remaining.
Theresa May wants to remain in the EU and the EU wants the EU to remain... :cool2:
 
Brexit occurs on March 29 if nothing changes. At this point, people can pretend and say I tried to prevent Brexit but x, y, z stopped me. Who is going to be the one that makes a change, and thus be responsible (and blamed and scapegoated) for postponing Brexit?
 
There's a conspicuous lack of talk of a second referendum from what I can see. It's almost like they want the population to be begging for it, if anything to just stop the nonsense on the news every single day about Brexit, Brexit, Brexit on a never ending loop! We all know its the only sane option by now, and I reckon all but the die-hard brexiters are ready to jump the fence, not to mention the fresh batch of post-millenials that just came of age and will most likely vote to stay as well.


There is a petition on the government site asking for Article 50 to be revoked. It has gathered well over 3 million signatures over a couple of days.



How does that sound as a justification of another referendum becuase people begged for it?

On a different note, I gave your above post and my reply to it quite a bit of thought and I started to wonder whether the difference in our perceptions was a result of me listening to my own echo chamber? It could have been. Although I don't see people changing their mind regarding Brexit in a "it was a mistake way", having spent the past couple of days paying attention to Brexit moods I think the most prominent one among leavers is defeatism. So I guess you were quite right that people just want the issue to go away really.

Meanwhile, Nigel Farage has blamed the number of signatures on Russian bots. :rolleyes:



Questions have been asked about whether a government petition calling for Brexit to be cancelled has been swamped by bots.

Bots are automated programmes which can carry out a command thousands of times.

The BBC spoke to three cyber-security experts about how likely it is that a number of the 3m signatures gathered so far are not genuine.

They all agreed that the petition's email validation process would be a deterrent.

Each signatory has to supply a unique email address to which a verification link is sent before their signature can be accepted. UK-based signatories must also share a valid postcode.

While email addresses are easy enough to set up, doing that in real time at high volume is less straightforward.

Additionally, while it is possible to buy lists of email addresses stolen in various data breaches on the black market, the owner of the list would still need to access those email accounts and retrieve the validation email before being able to sign in the name of somebody else.

The email verification would be likely to deter bots said Lisa Forte, partner at the cyber-security firm Red-Goat.

"Any significant political decision such as this petition is highly likely to attract bots," she told the BBC.

"This particular petition is now employing email verification before signing, meaning it is much harder and therefore much less likely bots are being employed."

'A bit of a pain'
Cyber-security expert Kevin Beaumont said that while it was possible that bots were involved, it would be "a bit of a pain" to build a sophisticated enough programme to cope with the email addresses.

"They would have to make a bot that signs up with unique email addresses, then clicks the unique link to sign," he said.

The House of Commons declined to comment on its security checks but it did say the Government Digital Service uses "a number of techniques" to identify potentially fraudulent signatures and bot activity.

It is not possible to use the same email address more than once to sign the petition.

However, bot activity could still be used to slow down or crash the platform, meaning that people wanting to leave genuine signatures could be prevented from doing so.

This is known as a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack.

How secure is the petition platform?
"I'm not sure the system itself is that sophisticated - it fell over as soon as people started voting in large numbers," said Prof Alan Woodward from Surrey University.

The UK government's petition platform has crashed several times under the weight of traffic in recent days. The petition launched on 20 February, but has now gone viral.

"Is there some gaming going on? I wouldn't be at all surprised," he added.

"It's a petition, it's not a vote - it's not meant to be as secure as an e-voting system."

Twitter post by @HoCpetitions: A lot of people have been asking about numbers. Between 80,000 and 100,000 people have been simultaneously viewing the petition to revoke article 50. Nearly 2,000 signatures are being completed every minute.
Report
According to the rules of the site, anyone can submit a petition. If it gets 10,000 signatures it will receive a government response, and if it gets 100,000 it will be debated in parliament. Beyond that, the numbers don't make a difference, he pointed out.

Is it Russia?
Former UKIP leader Nigel Farage suggested that "Russian collusion" was behind the unprecedented traffic towards the Brexit petition.

While Russia is notorious for seeking to meddle in the politics of the west, on this occasion there is a question mark over what its intentions would be, added Prof Woodward.

"All the evidence is that Russia was supporting the Leave campaign," he said.

"So why would they suddenly be supporting Remain?"

While the petition data (which is currently not updating) reveals that signatures are coming in from all over the world - including small numbers from Russia, China, Iran and one from North Korea where it is unlikely the page can be seen - the UK government said that any British resident or citizen can sign, wherever they are.

The BBC understands that fewer than 4% of signatures are coming from outside the UK at time of writing.

It is however not difficult to disguise or hide a location on the web.

Has it happened before?
In 2016, an earlier petition calling for a second EU Referendum attracted 3.6m signatures, but was hijacked by bots.

In January 2017 a petition calling for the end of "mass signings by bots" was rejected by the Petitions Committee on the grounds that it was unclear what was expected of the government.
 
I think one way to guess how many people in the UK are for or against Brexit is to look at how politicians have acted. I suspect (and the Cs said as much) that the votes for Leave were much more than they expected and the 52-48 figure is just for show. If that had been the actual numbers, all they had to do was wait a month or two after the voting, push lots of propaganda, and then remind the people that the referendum was 'consultative', but that 'conditions were not in place for Brexit', so it would not be done at the time. Instead, they really feared the backlash, so that's why they have been for two years running like headless chickens, telling people 'leave means leave' while at the same time trying not to leave, or to 'leave' while staying at the same time. This tells me that they know that the 'deep Britain' really wants Brexit, even if the remainers are more vocal and apparently get more media exposure.

Now, looking at the pieces on the board, the logical conclusion would be that there will be a hard Brexit, cause Parliament has rejected twice May's deal, and the EU will only accept May's deal. However, I think there's a good chance that they will pull something out of the hat at the last minute - like simple revoking Article 50, for example, because it will be 'too much chaos and we aren't prepared', or extending the limit so there can be a 2nd referendum, cause 'so many people want it'. That's why they have this petition with like 4 million signatures now (which can be easily manipulated, and no, that wouldn't be The Russians, Mr Farage!), and all the hysterical articles about a hard Brexit. Yesterday I was reading that they will be activating a nuclear bunker so the military can manage things from there in case of a no-deal! :rolleyes: You'd think it's the Zombie Apocalypse coming, not leaving an economic block of nations! And that would be why Theresa May not long ago warned that not approving her deal might mean no Brexit at all.

And then, if they do pull something like that out of the hat, lots of people are going to be very upset, and that will be fun to watch. T-May for one will have to 'Leave'. ;)
 
There is a petition on the government site asking for Article 50 to be revoked. It has gathered well over 3 million signatures over a couple of days.



How does that sound as a justification of another referendum becuase people begged for it?

On a different note, I gave your above post and my reply to it quite a bit of thought and I started to wonder whether the difference in our perceptions was a result of me listening to my own echo chamber? It could have been. Although I don't see people changing their mind regarding Brexit in a "it was a mistake way", having spent the past couple of days paying attention to Brexit moods I think the most prominent one among leavers is defeatism. So I guess you were quite right that people just want the issue to go away really.

Meanwhile, Nigel Farage has blamed the number of signatures on Russian bots. :rolleyes:



I don't know if it's defeatism or more like the wolf backed in a corner ready to snap back...I feel like people are really pissed at the EU and the British government. In terms of why people voted Brexit, there is a lot of Britain standing strong in the world stage as noted. But to be honest, there are a few people I know who voted Brexit and admitted to me that they did so because they wanted to get rid of people from Eastern Europe. Someone literally said to me, "everything was fine until they brought the Polish...". And I have an acquaintance who works in HR who told that she had lots of people coming to her and explaining that after Brexit, Eastern Europeans would be forced to leave Britain (read: be carted from the country). I don't know I feel like people have been fooled into thinking Brexit was going to be something it was never going to be.

From the people I directly know, there hasn't been anyone who has been able to give me a serious answer besides give Britain back to the British. What surprised me was is that from the people I know nobody ever mentioned that it would improve the economy and bring back jobs etc. It was more of a racial/ ethnic thing.
 
They’ve had a stop brexit March in London today just saw n a news bulletin and I’m not sure if I heard correctly but now amazingly 10 million signatures. 😮

Last night the signatures were above 4 million. The organizers of the march said the people on the street were a million, which is a lot. Interestingly, the Guardian was reporting the figure as a fact on the headlines, when normally the media tend to estimate demonstrations based on what the police says - not what the organizers say. However, the BBC had aerial footage and it did look totally massive.

On the other hand, most remainers are concentrated in the big cities, particularly in London, so just because a lot of them feel strongly about it and go on the streets, it doesn't mean they are the majority in the country. It's a bit like what we have seen in Venezuela: very large gatherings when Guaidó declared himself president - yet the silent majority is still on Maduro's side (and they are 'silent' because their demos don't get reported on MSM). Or in the US: the anti-Trump crowd are so vocal that you would think everyone hates him. In reality, his base of support is still very strong and unless there's a big game changer, he will win the next elections.

The UK government and/or Parliament may try to use the petition and march to argue that a 2nd referendum is needed, in which case they would get another extension from the EU to organize it, and this time they'll make sure 'remain' wins the vote. Maybe they'll be able to pull that out, but if they do, there will be much resentment and social divisiveness.
 
The European Parliament tweets have been promoted on Twitter this week and they popped up on my news feed a couple of times. A vast majority of responses declare their willingness to vote for the Brexit Party asking why we're still in the EU in the first place.

So much for a successful marketing campaign. And so much for Brexiters changing their mind.




Some responses to the above tweet:





 
Last edited:
Back
Top Bottom