@johnv but planning could be done, to prepare for both outcomes, I suppose this is what Pm was doing in China a while back, opening up doors, (well I would like to think). MY Problems is deciphering the truth in all the reports, as some just accuse the others of lies, I had a news paper come through the post the other day, pretty well saying all the positive reasons that XYZ were saying for leaving where untrue, and then their reasons for staying were the same as to others stating the reasons to leave.
obviously i have gone past that kind of reporting but i don't consider that to be politics. its irresponsible at best.
fluffy mundel has mentioned june for the reff. clever eh. just 3 or 4 weeks after the other elections. short campaign v.little truth.
There's been a bit on polling companies in the media recently - how they got the election completely wrong. I studied statistics during my MBA and I remember this: You are meant to use a random sample, based on a random list (like phone numbers, or even postcodes, just so long as all the country's postcodes are in the hat). Then the answer you get is correct within certain parameters which are decided by sample size. The margin of error is several %. If you don't use a random sample, you use the quicker, easier and cheaper "representative sample". The results you get are vastly more inaccurate and the margin of error is several % higher. So all these polls you see which just say "this is the result" are completely misleading. The just aren't anything like that accurate. I bet the 6% quoted is within the margin of error, but you will never be told this. The above holds good for any polls. Anything remotely close is just unreliable. Well worth bearing in mind.
In that case, Cameron's "negotiations" will not conclude until May. Pro-EU propaganda will be drip-fed continually by the government in the meantime with constant press releases hinting at "major breakthroughs" while OUT cabinet ministers will be forbidden from speaking their minds in case they "prejudice" the negotiations. We can expect stage-managing to a level that would make the average African dictator proud.
Who decides to release polls? I can see no purpose to opinion polls unless it is to allow the campaigning sides to focus their tactics to influence the undecided or to galvanise one side or the other if it appears their cause is slipping. Either way there's a bad smell to it all. I wish they'd just shut it and let people vote.
I agree. There should never have been any "negotiations" in the first place. Its a simple enough question. But then this referendum, sorry plebiscite - we are not being asked how we wish our government to proceed, we are being asked to rubber-stamp a settlement which it has already decided upon but doesn't want to put its name to for strategic reasons - isn't about safeguarding the future of the country, its about safeguarding the future of the Conservative Party, preventing it from splitting and spiking the Ukip threat at elections.
Ha-ha. At last the penny has dropped. You have finally realised that the whole purpose and object of the referendum is to prevent the Conservative Party from splitting; that's what it's all about. Well done.
deffo. played a blinder at the GE lab lost their guaranteed 40+seats up here. install fear of snp/benefit junkies down there.(i have seen the billboards and read their material and quotes). offer referendum. hay presto tory for the foreseeable. .
The penny didn't need to drop. I've always known that was the purpose of Cameron's stage managed plebiscite. I've said so many times before, here and elsewhere. That is why I cannot support his party while he remains leader of it. (In fact I haven't voted Conservative since he became leader). The fact his "referendum" is only an imitation does not obviate the need to hold the real thing. In fact it reinforces it. That is why I've supported calls for an immediate and unconditional referendum (no renegotiations) followed by the repeal of the European Communities Act and the invoking of Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty in the event of an OUT vote being returned.
At what point could could we then have boots on the ground? Six months? How long until we capture Paris?
The fact that the EU has a legal framework in place to facilitate the orderly withdrawal of a member state and a means by which its trade relationship with the EU as a non-member can be established, and that Mr Cameron has never so much as mentioned still less proposed making use of this most obvious route tells you all you need to know about his sincerity on the issue. If Mr Cameron really wanted a new relationship with the EU along the (now abandoned) lines he described when he started talking about new deals for Britain he would have offered an unconditional referendum on withdrawal and then renegotiations under Article 50 to set out relations with the EU as an ally and trading partner but non-member. What he tells us he's trying to do now is a legal impossibility without a new treaty, and a treaty that would effectively dissolve the EU at least as it is presently constituted. It was never going to happen while night follows day. He knows it, everyone in Europe knows it and everyone here who cares about the question of Britain's membership of the EU, whichever side of the argument they are on, knows it as well. Cameron is a fraud. Its as plain as can be as always has been.
Very true, and it's becoming more and more evident as time passes. I reckon Cameron wants a Brexit. He can then lose Scotland and say it wasn't his fault. Scotland could possibly become successor state and not have to re negotiate membership terns. Everyone's a winner
Good luck with that then. I think Spain (at least) might have a different view on that "successor state" idea, and membership has to be unanimously agreed by all member states. Anyway, how could they (Scotland) in that imaginary scenario NOT have to re-negotiate terms? There will be the issues of currency, contribution, rebate, Schengen..... to name just a few.
i am told the Spanish are having some issues landing their fish on the west coast at the mo. they will negotiate.
Let's not forget that devolution was Tony Blair's attempt to shore up support for the Labour party in Scotland, and look how that ended. I don't suppose Davis Cameron offered a referendum on the EU unless he thought he could win it, the idea that he secretly wants Brexit to lose Scotland is just not credible.
That is not what I said. I said I believed David Cameron wants to leave the EU. I didn't say he wanted to do so lose Scotland as his priority. That's just a handy, guilt free by product for the Tory and UNIONIST party.
That is not what I said. I said I believed David Cameron wants to leave the EU. I didn't say he wanted to do so lose Scotland as his priority. That's just a handy, guilt free by product for the Tory and UNIONIST party.
I don't understand your logic. Indyref and European ref are different proposals. Indyref would have seen the dissolution of the UK. the EU would most likely have viewed rUK as the successor state as it was not the part proposing the break up. EURO ref with rUK voting to leave and Scotland voting to stay is the exact opposite and Scotland would be viewed as the successor state, given it had voted to remain. Or are you suggesting Europe isn't interested in the country with the largest oil and renewable energy reserves? Spain, does what Germany tells it to do.
