Brexited | the worst threads live the longest

[Oscie]

We know by words, plans and in some cases actions that Brexit will see a huge drop in outside investment in the UK. Is the hope of those allied to Corbyn that a fall in private investment will provide the state an opportunity to step in? There will be a huge opportunity for a hypothetical Corbyn govt to seize effective control of a number of industries as various sectors collapse and are in need of rescue in the post-Brexit economy.

 

[Wibble]

Russians interfering in foreign votes again?

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jun/09/arron-banks-russia-brexit-meeting

 

[Oscie]

Oakeshott isn't a journalist, she's a slime bag who sat on this information for 2 years because it had potential to harm a political cause she supported. Think I've said this on here but she really is the most obnoxious "journalist" in all of Fleet Street. She's the worst in self-entitled, sneering conservatism and a great example of how far looks alone can actually get you. A complete bimbo who makes Katie Hopkins look semi-intellectual.

 

[Oscie]

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[Steven Seagull]

18 months and these pricks still don’t get it. What the feck are they doing all day? It’s not that hard to learn a few things about the EU.

 

[Dobba]

He says austerity is a more pressing issue.
We've had austerity for 8 years and I'd like to know if he thinks brexit won't impact the degree of austerity

What do we want? The same level of austerity we've had for 8 years. When do we want it? Now!

 

[Oscie]

The best way to avoid austerity is to effectively tie yourself to every Tory flagship policy and find yourself pretty much on par with every forecast Tory spending plan. A real alternative.

 

[Dobba]

Na, I reckon if Corbyn comes out against Brexit the Tories will give up being a political party within the next 5 minutes. All those centrists favourite Tories who've consistently voted for every piece of legislation involving cuts, particularly to the most vulnerable in this country, will see the light and become a beacon of empathy.

 

[Paul the Wolf]

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Here is the negotiation in full;

Labour: "Can we please have full access to the internal market without the free movement of people"
EU: "Not in a million years"

End of negotiation.

 

[devilish]

I think that both labour and the tory think that the EU is lead by idiots

 

[JPRouve]

Here is the negotiation in full;

Labour: "Can we please have full access to the internal market without the free movement of people"
EU: "Not in a million years"

End of negotiation.

Or EU:"Okay, you get full access without free movement of goods and capitals."

 

[Cheesy]

I think that both labour and the tory think that the EU is lead by idiots

I think they're both aware they're fighting a helpless battle they're going to get feck all from. Thus far we've seceded on almost every issue to them and that'll likely continue to be the case.

 

[devilish]

I think they're both aware they're fighting a helpless battle they're going to get feck all from. Thus far we've seceded on almost every issue to them and that'll likely continue to be the case.

I think that JC handled this horribly. Early on he should have stated that although labour was anti Brexit, it accepts the will of the people. However, the referendum was won based on a set of promises, given by Brexiteers and which labour will make sure that the Tory party will have to abide too ie project accountability. That will provide JC plenty of ammo to hit the Tory party on and would also attract plenty of sympathy from the likes of James O'Brien, the Lib dem, the guardian and co.

If asked what he could do better JC will limit himself by saying the truth ie that Brexit was not his doing, he's not part of the negotiation team and its up to such negotiation team to dig itself out of what seem to degenerate into a mess. He would then ask if the negotiation team whom may I remind, were all consummate Brexiters are able to deliver what they promised else, or if its high time to consider them either incompetent or worse still liars. Brexit was won by emotions so if labour can transform this 'we stick it up to Brussels' feeling to 'the Tory party had lied to us and had turned us into a colony of the DUP' feeling then he's got a winner.

When asked what he would do if he ends in government then he'll limit himself in saying that he would go to Brussels. He would then negotiate with the EU in total transparency, among those, he insist they are historical allies and partners and he will try to get the best deal possible. Negotiations are a two way street and no one would know how they would end. However, what's certain is that he'll be realistic and won't take the British voter for a ride like the likes of Boris, Davis and Gove seem to have done. Unlike the Tory party who caused all this mess out of a cat fight, labour would be fully committed to put national interest back and deal with politics in a mature way. That stance will attract remainers, soft Brexiteers and possibly sway some of the hard brexiteers back to the fold.

 

[Oscie]

You'd expect Labour to oppose anything that threatened jobs, investment and public services. Corbyn's Labour party has the position that although Brexit will damage public services, harm investment and threaten jobs it must happen anyway. If it wasn't for the current cultism of 'my deeply held political belief is whatever Corbyn says' then there'd be a lot anger on the left. At least there should be.

 

[Sweet Square]

Mr Sensible

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[GloryHunter07]

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Stanley would be proud of that kind of obfuscation.

 

[Paul the Wolf]

This concept of negotiation is what is the problem in the UK. I don't believe the UK as a whole, that includes Brexiters, Remainers, Labour, Tory, Liberals, journalists or whoever have understood that you cannot negotiate with the EU to change the rules. This is not negotiable.

What is negotiable is what is the price (not just money) to pay for access to certain things. Until that is understood, the so-called negotiations will not go anywhere and the UK have only three or four months left.

 

[Cheesy]

This concept of negotiation is what is the problem in the UK. I don't believe the UK as a whole, that includes Brexiters, Remainers, Labour, Tory, Liberals, journalists or whoever have understood that you cannot negotiate with the EU to change the rules. This is not negotiable.

What is negotiable is what is the price (not just money) to pay for access to certain things. Until that is understood, the so-called negotiations will not go anywhere and the UK have only three or four months left.

Yes, we're trying to negotiate certain aspects of our relationship with the EU when the EU have already stated - many times - that the rules we want to pick and choose come as a package. Somehow people still seem to be ignoring this.

 

[JPRouve]

Yes, we're trying to negotiate certain aspects of our relationship with the EU when the EU have already stated - many times - that the rules we want to pick and choose come as a package. Somehow people still seem to be ignoring this.

I don't think that they are ignoring it per se. I think that there is two problems first some people think that EU members are only playing a game in order to get more out of the UK and a second part think that the EU members are a multinational like IBM or Dell, they see the UK has a big client that should have special perks. What is lost in this is that for most EU countries the EU is essential, it's a way of living and surviving together. In a way, this is an example of why brexit is now a reality, a part of the UK has never been in a EU state of mind.

 

[Adisa]

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The state of that.

 

[Adisa]

I think fundamentally, a lot of people don't understand what the EU is. They think it's a gentleman's agreement where it can just change rules at a canter.They don't understand the EU is a combination of laws.
The fact that labour is too weak to argue the merits of free movements and the overwhelming benefitial trade off, is off putting to be honest.
Labour are doing the same thing we've spent the last 24 months bashing the Tories for.

 

[Adisa]

It's even making me angry. We have not yet started taking brexit seriously. We should be having a national debate about the price we are willing to pay for the access we want.
We are still having pre referendum debates ffs.

 

[afrocentricity]

I think that both labour and the tory is lead by idiots

Fixed that for you...

 

[Oscie]

It's the worst time for the two main political parties to be overrun by zealots and ideologues who don't care what damage is inflicted on the country so long as they 'win'.

 

[Kentonio]

Aaron Banks it turns out apparently had 3 meetings with the Russian ambassador, not just the one coincidental drinking lunch he claimed, also passed the Russians contact details for Trump administration figures. This is about to get interesting.

I also didn’t know his wife is Russian and they’ve visited there many times in the past.

 

[Oscie]

Aaron Banks it turns out apparently had 3 meetings with the Russian ambassador, not just the one coincidental drinking lunch he claimed, also passed the Russians contact details for Trump administration figures. This is about to get interesting.

I also didn’t know his wife is Russian and they’ve visited there many times in the past.

So the government could be midway through implementing the outcome of a referendum that might have been heavily influenced by Russian money and therefore could, if an inquiry was called for, to be found not to be free and fair?

I'm sure if we had an opposition, whoever was in charge of that would be furious.

 

[Raoul]

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[Adisa]

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Unlike America, there is no political will to get to the bottom of this.

 

[Adisa]

Turns out she's been holding on to documents for months.

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[Steven Seagull]

Mr Sensible

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My god o’brien is insufferable. Change the record you laborious twat

 

[matherto]

My god o’brien is insufferable. Change the record you laborious twat

He's spot on, as ever.

 

[Steven Seagull]

He's spot on, as ever.

He hasn’t had an original thought in his life. Should get somebody who knows what they’re talking about on his show for a change

 

[matherto]

He hasn’t had an original thought in his life. Should get somebody who knows what they’re talking about on his show for a change

So because you don't agree with him he's never had an original thought in his life?

Have you ever had an original thought in your life? How would you even know? Did you get the feelings you have about the EU and Brexit through your own exhaustive research or did it come from the people around you, the things you read, the things you heard, the things you watched?

With regards to Brexit and Russia. We all know that Putin's game plan since he was a young, aspiring KGB officer was to destroy the West's influence and power base from the inside out and he's been doing it for as long as he's been in power. With the advent of social media, with internet connectivity at the touch of a button on a phone/tablet/computer and 24/7 news fed to us through the lens of the money men in ownership of the outlets, it means you can spread propaganda and messages non stop. There are more than enough gullible people and more than enough malleable people that don't have a clue how they really feel about anything and won't do any research and they swing elections quite easily by being bombarded by messages telling them to do one thing or another. Sewing discord and whipping up a frenzy to convince a bunch of people to do something without them ever knowing it is as easy as pie nowadays. Perhaps it always was but it's easier now given the way we live our lives. How do you explain people who never see an immigrant in their lives and never interact with or understand them and their lives getting in uproar about immigration policies and subscribing to the notion that Brexit gives us back control that we seemingly never had before? How do you explain them thinking there's been a plan all along and everything was gonna change for the better despite nobody in power ever detailing how we were going to tackle Brexit from day one?

We bit the bullet with Brexit. America bit the bullet with Trump. France and the Netherlands avoided it with Le Pen and Wilders and hopefully there'll be more than enough pressure on people to understand who was behind everything. There's ample evidence out there that it's ill gotten Russian money funding it.

Or do you think that's all nonsense and Russia never did anything and you couldn't possibly be influenced?

 

[Sweet Square]

So because you don't agree with him he's never had an original thought in his life?

Have you ever had an original thought in your life? How would you even know? Did you get the feelings you have about the EU and Brexit through your own exhaustive research or did it come from the people around you, the things you read, the things you heard, the things you watched?

With regards to Brexit and Russia. We all know that Putin's game plan since he was a young, aspiring KGB officer was to destroy the West from the inside out and he's been doing it for as long as he's been in power. With the advent of social media, with internet connectivity at the touch of a button on a phone/tablet/computer and 24/7 news fed to us through the lens of the money men in ownership of the outlets, it means you can spread propaganda and messages non stop. There are more than enough gullible people and more than enough malleable people that don't have a clue how they really feel about anything and won't do any research and they swing elections quite easily by being bombarded by messages telling them to do one thing or another.

We bit the bullet with Brexit. America bit the bullet with Trump. France and Holland avoided it with Le Pen and Wilders and hopefully there'll be more than enough pressure on people to understand who was behind everything. There's ample evidence out there that it's ill gotten Russian money funding it.

Or do you think that's all nonsense and Russia never did anything and you couldn't possibly be influenced?

Facebook finds no substantial evidence of Russian meddling in EU referendum
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/01/facebook-evidence-russian-meddling-eu-referendum


Twitter has admitted Russian trolls targeted the Brexit vote (a little bit)
http://www.wired.co.uk/article/twitter-russia-brexit-fake-news-facebook-russia

Twitter provided an update on the activity it had seen from accounts related to the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a propaganda group with links to the Kremlin. UK policy manager Nick Pickles – flown to the US from the UK – said it had found 49 new IRA accounts that posted 942 tweets around Brexit. These were retweeted 461 times and had 637 likes. Twitter didn't provide any data on how many people had seen these tweets or what they contain

Twitter says these accounts make up 0.005 per cent of accounts that tweeted about the referendum. The number of tweets equaled 0.02 per cent of tweets sent about the referendum

 

[matherto]

Facebook finds no substantial evidence of Russian meddling in EU referendum
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/01/facebook-evidence-russian-meddling-eu-referendum


Twitter has admitted Russian trolls targeted the Brexit vote (a little bit)
http://www.wired.co.uk/article/twitter-russia-brexit-fake-news-facebook-russia

Yes, because Facebook and Twitter have been so very transparent, truthful and proactive with making sure their platforms haven't been abused after the fact.

I wouldn't trust either of them to make a truthful statement about the extent of what's happened if their collective lives depended on it.

 

[Sweet Square]

Yes, because Facebook and Twitter have been so very transparent, truthful and proactive with making sure their platforms haven't been abused after the fact.

I wouldn't trust either of them to make a truthful statement about the extent of what's happened if their collective lives depended on it.

What your evidence then ?

 

[Sweet Square]

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[Cheesy]

Obviously it'd be silly to blame everything on Putin, and obviously he isn't solely - or primary - responsible for the current mess of a situation we find ourselves in. Eurosceptism was present long before he was in power, on both sides of the political spectrum. The EU's long been made a scapegoat for British failings.

But at the same time, I don't think it's wise to dismiss out of hand that Putin is rabidly anti-Western, that he's known for using online trolls to try and alter online discourse, and that he's funded causes which he feels benefit him in the West, ie Le Pen in France. He wouldn't have been operating on some grand master plan during Brexit, but I'm sure if the opportunity was available for him to interfere then he'd have been more than happy to grasp the chance, and Banks association with Russian interests here certainly seems suspect. And it should be deeply concerning to consider that a country working against our interests may have influenced a vote that's constantly being defended on the basis of its democratic nature. That's...not good.

So, yeah. We shouldn't blame Putin for everything and use him as some omnipresent bogeyman for when things go wrong. But some people seem way too determined to suggest Russian interference wouldn't have been involved at all when it's highly probable they'd have been trying to aid Brexit online etc.

 

[Cheesy]

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Surely Putin can be regarded as important alongside those factors though? Putin may not have invented UKIP, but Russian online trolls in recent years will have been helpful to UKIP's general message. And it certainly wouldn't be shocking if there's been plenty of dirty money funneled to political groups like UKIP from Russia over the years.

Brexit (as a specific example) was an incredibly close vote. You don't need to be influencing even 10-15% of the electorate to be swinging the vote. Often it only takes a small portion of the electorate for that to be the case, especially if you're targeting certain areas.

 

[matherto]

What your evidence then ?

An example.

Go to any page on Facebook to do with any kind of news whether it's a major news site or anything else, any kind of political thing, any kind of....actually anything. Same with Twitter.

Have a look through the comment sections of both.

Analyse their comment styles, their phraseology, etc.

Then look at how their profiles are laid out (do they have profile pictures, do they have matching cover photos, do they have any detail whatsoever made public (whilst not a 100% foolproof way of checking, the vast majority of actual people have far too much personal information available to anyone so it's a good indicator) and then look at how they post, how many times, when they post, etc.

Twitter has a very easy indicator by the fact that nigh on every Russian fake profile has a long 8 digit number following a randomly selected name that's been cut off due to handle character limits (for example, a 'David Smith' would have a handle like 'DavidSmi82039400').

There are plenty of twitter profiles for instance dedicated to outing troll farms and 'bots' (they should be called something else because they're real people peddling fake profiles) by analysing the time of day they post, how frequently they post, what they post about and so on and it's enlightening to watch that directed hive mind spread.

How many of those comments are actually coming from real people who are who they say they are on their profile and how many are coming from dedicated troll farms (that we know exist) that comment and tweet from 8am to 8am Moscow time, every day for years on end? We know full well they exist and we know exactly what they do.

Now imagine how often those comments show up whilst people are idly browsing. You take them in subconsciously and then eventually they cement in your head.

Add in the echo chamber that everybody surrounds themselves in, only sharing and liking stuff that they know they'll get positive reinforcement from. We don't like thinking for ourselves too deeply but we'll take in just enough so that it feels solid in our heads and so we can converse about it because we sure as hell don't like being on our own with anything that we might consider our own thoughts.

Add in real people (friends, family, coworkers, acquaintances) actively sharing content (memes, links, videos, etc) that has been curated to garner a reaction and be shared repeatedly, ad nauseum and the propaganda spreads and spreads.

Those messages being seen over and over again, comments being liked and made so that you fit in like a true sheep, then discussed outside of the internet with people close to you to further reaffirm the echo chamber and then suddenly you've got a political agenda that you never thought about. You've been swept up in the hysteria when previously you had no idea whatsoever and no feeling one way or another about it.

Think about all the young people who were never previously interested in politics and how many of them did their research or just agreed with their mates and voted a certain way, how many listened to their parents and voted the same way. How many old people who have lived their lives in an echo chamber and have no hope of changing the way they see the world have had their minds warped and directed to think certain things automatically over years and years?

You might never have given a toss about immigrants for example, might never have met one so you've got no feelings one way or another, you might not work in a job (and there are actually very few) where you're at risk of being undercut by immigrant workers so that aspect of the hatred towards them has no effect on you at all. A personal example is my dad who has probably never met a Muslim in his life save from going on holiday to Abu Dhabi and Dubai once with my mum but he despises Muslims and he's convinced they're taking over Britain despite no factual basis. I've asked him why and he can't tell me. He said today when I remarked about the picture of all the G7 politicians surrounding Trump that Trump was a genius and Merkel is a Nazi. He's got nothing to back it up with but I know full well he's been fed these beliefs on a steady diet for decades. It just happens to people without them ever being aware of it.

Suddenly you're bombarded with messages from online, messages from TV, messages from radio, messages from people around you, messages from everywhere and so you vote Brexit despite having done no research into our sovereign rights whilst in the EU, who decides our immigration policies, where the immigrants generally settle, what jobs they get, what benefits they get and how that might all be changed (or not) due to Brexit and how that in turn affects you and your life and your ambitions and what you're entitled to.

We're very easily manipulated and it happens on all sides. It just so happens that Russia's side won in 2016 because everything since has played perfectly into their hands and their plans. None of this is innocent, it's all a game and we're pawns because we've got no real power. Our only power is voting and that gets hijacked by people with much more to gain or lose doing everything they can to direct our minds to do what they want.

The idea behind it all is why propaganda works and it's exactly the same as advertising. You analyse what people want to see and think they want and appeal to it, even if they have no actual quite what they want to see and what they want, which most people don't.

Brexit was a great example because neither side had a clue what Brexit would look like because it had never happened so they sold it on buzzwords and phrases to appeal to you and get masses of people whipped up in one way or another.

/tinfoiltruth