That's pretty childish, but the whole issue is (and has been) in such a deadlock.

The Democrats are in a situation where they can't pass any legislation or plans that would actually work, because they know the Republicans would just halt the bill at all costs. Instead, they're forced to attempt these bite-size "solutions" that they know won't actually matter much because they're fully aware that anything more doesn't stand the slightest chance of passing. At this point, they're basically going for "doing something is better than doing nothing at all".

And just as I get up to head to Brussels, the referendum voting has started. Good luck my friends. This will be an important day.

Quote from: Flee on June 22, 2016, 05:12:21 PM

Quote from: Meta Cognition on June 22, 2016, 04:48:29 PM

Just watched the final debate on Channel 4. Go to r/ukpolitics and look at the discussion thread; everybody fucking hated it. It was awful.

I didn't even know about this debate and I'm glad I didn't. I'm watching some scenes and fucking hell, it does seem brilliant in the saddest sense of the word.

"I'm an artist, and I believe culture has a huge part to play in not just economically, but in the spiritual and-"
- "Oh good god" clearly audible in the background by one of the opposing members.

Top tier British banter.

http://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/682476/EU-debate-Jeremy-Paxman-Nigel-Farage-Brexit

Quote

Most recent polls are giving a surge to Remain, though.

Yeah, Leave appears to have lost a lot of its momentum these last few days.

Have you seen the cabbie banging on about OOBER yet?

I nearly died at that bit.

I haven't, unfortunately. Do you have a link? I'm not finding a good platform to watch it on. The official Channel 4 stuff is UK only so it's blocking me.

Quote from: SpartanT on June 21, 2016, 07:17:46 PM

Quote from: 🚀Lightning🚀 on June 21, 2016, 04:07:28 PM

i dont get it

The game director for Mighty No. 9 responded to the games negative/mediocre reviews saying that getting the game is better than nothing, then the Sonic twitter guy took a jab at them for the bants

Lol fucking seriously?
"We raised 3.2 million to make this, but hey, it's better than nothing.  Don't complain."

The quote is apparently false, from what I gather.

http://kotaku.com/mighty-no-9-s-designer-says-i-will-own-all-the-proble-1782382706

Belgium strong.

libbies dropped this to my door whilst talking about how numbers of the gdp will be slashed off as will 3 million jobs.

The economic consensus appears to be that the UK will definitely be hurting after a Brexit. There's just no telling how much. Some economists and reviews predict that the negative effects will be large in terms of prices, job losses, the strength of the pound and GDP, but others dispute that and expect much smaller losses. The pamphlet doesn't really suggest that 3 million jobs would be lost (which is very accurate of it), but rather that it is the number of British jobs directly related to trade with the EU. That number of jobs would only be lost if trading between the UK and EU would be stopped completely, which is not going to happen. So while it's likely that some jobs will be lost due to a Brexit, it's not going to be 3 million. How many will depend on the negotiations and agreement reached after the UK leaves.

apparently no europol means less we have less security too? (brussels?)

This is probably true, but it's again a balancing exercise. Being part of the EU will allow people to enter the UK more easily, but as the UK is not part of Schengen it still controls its own borders and conduct all the checks and border controls it wants. On the other hand, the EU does have an expanding intelligence and police cooperation network, banking a lot on the exchange of information and sharing resources. That combined with things like the European Arrest Warrant do make it so that the UK benefits from European information and resources in fighting terrorism and organized crime.

Handily he has an entire section on the potential consequences for leaving; I may post some of it later on tonight.

Is it outspokenly pro-Leave? Because you still have to read this one then, and time is running out.

Yeah. I want to say he used to be better, but maybe I'm just getting disillusioned with him. That said, he has a known history of being pro-Brexit. Maybe that's clouding his ability to reason about it properly.

Skimming through his videos, I can kind of tell. His reporting on the UK losing in the Council leaves out crucial facts (which I covered in an earlier post in a different thread), the part about the EU army is based almost entirely on speculation (especially clear in his comment about there being a loophole to smash a British veto without ever elaborating on how the single possible legal basis literally saying unanimity is required somehow contains a loophole that'd force the UK into an army anyways) and his closing comments on how you absolutely have to vote Leave if you don't want to be part of a European superstate where citizens have no say at all.

Not that he doesn't make some decent points every so often, but the general tone is that of biased half-truths and one-sided cherrypicked information to support Leave at all costs. I always thought this guy was supposed to be better than that.

>linking 4chan

Challenger please.

Quote from: Flee on June 22, 2016, 01:08:24 PM

So Belgium tonight?

yea

Sweden a shit.

So Belgium tonight?

Just read up last night that if England decides to leave the EU, Scotland threatened to call another vote for their Independence because they want to stay. Along with the rest of the UK wanting to stay.

And it might actually work this time since it's not just "FREEEEEEEDOM" anymore, but more so "They kicked us out of what we all wanted. Do you still want to be a part of that?"
 Just read up last night that if England decides to leave the EU, Scotland threatened to call another vote for their Independence because they want to stay. Along with the rest of the UK wanting to stay.

And it might actually work this time since it's not just "FREEEEEEEDOM" anymore, but more so "They kicked us out of what we all wanted. Do you still want to be a part of that?"

So there is a much higher chance that if England leaves the EU, the UK will split off as a result. Guess we'll find out if England wants their "freedum" come tomorrow.

Similar concerns exist for Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK but still on the Irish island. The Irish generally favor Remain a lot more than the British, so this could cause some issues too.

Quote from: Flee on June 22, 2016, 05:55:33 AM

- David Cameron has again confirmed that he intends to stay on as prime minister even if the country votes Leave.

The Tories are the party of regicide. It'll be interesting to see if he lasts.

Also, if you haven't already, can you watch this:

YouTube

I haven't yet seen it myself, but the Spectator is a relatively respected conservative publication. I think the audience is pro-Leave by the end, but I want to know your thoughts all the same.

I assume there's no transcripts or written summary available? I'd love to watch it, but I'm currently working on my thesis defense for tomorrow. I have to publicly present my research and defend my findings against the scrutiny of a university panel. I can't really justify spending that much time watching a Brexit debate right now. But I'd be more than happy to look at a transcript or written summary, if that'd even exist.

If people object to having their picture shared like this, it can usually be removed.

Quote from: Flee on June 20, 2016, 08:27:48 AM

Quote from: challengerX on June 20, 2016, 07:28:32 AM

https://edri.org/enditorial-next-year-youll-complain-about-the-terrorism-directive/

EDRi is good stuff, I know people who work there and was in contact with the agency when I wrote my thesis. I've been waiting for LIBE to give its opinion on the proposal myself, so it'll be interesting to see where it goes from here. There's still a long way to go though, and we're still waiting for WP29 and eventually the ECJ if it ever gets to that point.

This is the type of stuff that worries me about the EU, and indeed every government/government agency.

We'll see where it goes from here, but it's troubling stuff to be sure.

I agree. It's part of the global reaction to terror seeking a solution for these attacks by increasing surveillance. Like you said, it's nothing exclusive to the EU, but it is indeed worrying. Though I have to say that I'd rather see something like this come from the EU than other countries. The EU has a strong tradition of supporting human rights and puts a very significant amount of research into its legislative process. That, combined with the public nature of its legislation and close ties to the ECHR, makes it so that I'd rather see such a Directive go through the EU first and then see national implementation thereof than have a few dozen individual countries pass whatever covert surveillance measures they want.

National intelligence and security falls outside of the EU competence and is not what this Directive is concerned with, but I'm still glad we're seeing the issue of combating terrorism discussed at the European level. Still worrying though.

Law is good shit.