Facebook finally hands over leave campaign Brexit ads
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
EDIT: Via [0], I found the docs at [1]. Tech Crunch is a shameful, op-ed joke of a site.
0 - https://twitter.com/DamianCollins/status/1022437025667014656 1 - https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/cultu...
I'd specifically like to highlight these ads in this document: https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/cultu....
2924.jpg
2966.jpg
2968.jpg
The European Commission is not directly elected.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commission
> There is one member per member state, but members are bound by their oath of office to represent the general interest of the EU as a whole rather than their home state.[3] One of the 28 is the Commission President (currently Jean-Claude Juncker) proposed by the European Council[5] and elected by the European Parliament.[6] The Council of the European Union then nominates the other 27 members of the Commission in agreement with the nominated President, and the 28 members as a single body are then subject to a vote of approval by the European Parliament.[7] The current Commission is the Juncker Commission, which took office in late 2014, following the elections for the European Parliament in May of the same year.
Actually, you do - because otherwise what is your objection to them?
Compare with free movement within countries; it would be obviously prejudiced to say e.g. "I don't want Scousers moving to London", and that's not a position which anyone is going to take seriously.
Well we've listed many arguments counter your claim in this thread already, so I guess if you haven't been convinced yet, you won't be...
Not every judgment regarding other countries is "xenophobic." Imagine if Alabama or Mississippi were trying to join the U.S. today. Would it be "xenophobic" of Californians to be skeptical of the impact that would have on shared democratic institutions?
* the UK was one of the biggest proponents for Eastern EU expansion
* the UK did not impose any restriction on labor from the new EU members, which every EU member could do, up to 10 years from the date of the new members joining
* then, surprise-surprise!, when a lot of Poles, especially, moved to the major English speaking country in the EU, the UK decided all of a sudden they're against immigration :)
* the UK, even post-Brexit, but before Erdogan purges, through the voice of Boris Johnson, was pushing for Turkey becoming an EU members
And these ads are from 2016, when public perception of Erdogan wasn't what it was now. The angle was purely: "the Turks are going to swarm us". While the same government was pushing for Turkey in the EU.
Furthermore, the UK could just veto Turkey indefinitely. Absolutely every EU member must agree to accession of a new members.
Which didn’t happen in any country so far nor in UK with the “invasion of the Polish”
Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro population is negligible. Turkey will never get in EU.
I respect the choice of the English people but the ads were pure scaremongering
So whilst you may believe nobody felt under wage pressure, that would be a rather odd belief given the basics of supply and demand, and it wouldn't match the beliefs of quite a few voters.
People with very different beliefs and attitudes exist in the same voting blocs everywhere. Should people in Portland Oregon complain that people in Jon Day get to vote in the same elections? Rural people tend to be far more religious and have very different beliefs and attitudes.
But 2949 is also there. 2963. 2966-68. 2990. 2991-94. 3018-19. etc...
2926 followed by 2927 is pretty funny.
It wouldn't, and that's why claiming "turkey is joining the EU" is highly misleading. Turkey is far from becoming an EU member, a process which was started in "brighter times", and the UK has control over that status ever changing.
You have to remember that a key part of the reason Leave won is that British people don't trust their leaders to be honest or consistent on the topic of the EU.
Politicians across Europe, not just the UK, have a long established track record of promising voters they'll reject further integration or power transfers to Brussels and then turning around and doing exactly that. As the Brexit referendum has helpfully revealed this is because the civil service and many MPs don't actually believe anyone should be allowed to vote against the EU and are busy trying to block implementation of leaving.
Given that, the fact that the UK could theoretically veto Turkey's membership is irrelevant. Politicians can't be trusted to use it. Leaving completely is the only sure way to stop them doing whatever Brussels asks for.
I mean, in the US, the Mexican border is a rather scary place. For a long time, some of the American border towns were the kidnapping capitals of the world mainly due to their proximity to the border. Who you border certainly matters to your country's security.
2924 makes sense to me in the context of the other statistics. It does seem strange to include two countries with such large wage and economic disparities in the same 'federal' system (which is effectively what the EU is).
EDIT: I find your claims of xenophobia even less compelling after I viewed what the British have to say about Spain (bullfighting), Norway (whale hunting), France (unemployment), Portugal (unemployment), etc. Unless you claim that any kind of criticism of an outside country is xenophobia, the Leave campaign seems quite comprehensive in its criticisms of EU member countries (and potential members).
http://www.aboutimmigration.co.uk/eu-citizens-working-uk.htm...
> Despite the vote to exit the EU, the UK will still remain a member of the EU until Article 50 negotiations have concluded. This means most citizens of countries in the European Union (EU), the European Economic Area (EEA) and Switzerland have the right to live and work in the UK under European law. European nationals may also bring their family with them to live in the UK. However, to exercise the right to live in the UK nationals of these countries must be able to support themselves and their families without having to rely on public funds.
> European nationals with the right to live in the UK are, with certain exceptions, are still entitled to work in the UK and do not need to obtain a visa or work permit in order to do so. European nationals have the same rights as UK citizens in this respect, and employers must treat them equally. An employer who treats an EEA or Swiss worker differently purely because he is not from the UK is guilty of discrimination.
It sounds like if turkey were to enter the EU, Turkish nationals would have some kind of right to enter the United Kingdom.
You were clearly talking about the Turkish border in your previous comment. Entering Turkey doesn't make you an EU citizen, and the UK, not being part of Schengen and having no land border to the mainland, has lots of freedom to police it's own borders against non-EU nationals trying to enter from other EU countries.
Turkish (then EU) citizens would have the right to enter and work in the UK, yes.
The other countries tend to check residence before allowing a job, healthcare or similar.
> I mean... britain wouldn't be the ones policing the border, it would be turkey.
Legally entering an EU country doesn't grant you the right to visit others, and the UK is in a geographically fairly unique position to really make sure people don't slip through.
Stereotype-based criticism of other countries is xenophobia.
You may be confusing the EU with the Schengen area, which is indeed (relatively) physical border less.
While most EU countries are in the Schengen area (including the non-EU members Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Switzerland) the UK was never part of the Schengen accord and manages its own borders.
While you're never asked for identification when you fly from Dusseldorf to Zurich, border controls are quite strict (on both sides) if you fly from Prague to Manchester (or to Manila for that matter).
Taking back control of the borders was always pretty much a bullshit argument, if not an outright lie by the Brexiteers, since britain never gave that up.
When you see ad after ad structured in this way, it really drives home what the playbook is.
I wonder how much similar content I've ingested without noticing.
Generally that type seems very weak on actual arguments instead of what I suppose is intended to be a general feeling of uneasiness, and projecting powerlessness despite UK governments being part of the processes. (Although the latter sadly isn't unique to the UK when it comes to dealing with the EU, governments love to play the victim of decisions they helped decide the way they were decided)
The word unregulated here is both unnecessary (it's not relevant to the sentence it's in) and meant specifically to get the reader to draw a negative connotation.
Even the title, where it says "finally", is doing it's best to give a negative connotation and imply facebook has been stalling turning them over.
AFAIK from the facts they list (i haven't gone looking hard, though), they were requested, they turned them over. There is no "finally". The article does not give any fact to support it. Same with "the company eventually did so, " Again, this is just meant to sound as negative as possible. As far as i can tell from the facts, they responded within the timeline they were asked to respond.
It then goes on to try to draw and invite the reader to draw tenuous inferences (or does so itself - using the meaningless phrase "linked", usually a good sign of smearing) and does its best to assassinate in a subtle way.
This article certainly has facts in it, but it is definitely not unbiased.
(and for the record, i hate facebook, i'm not defending it, i'm just trying to answer your question in as objective a way i can :P)
It's everywhere. I'd rather not enumerate them all. I suppose just list out all the adjectives used in the article and read them. Also, list the point each paragraph is making concisely and read them. Then, the real challenge when it goes into discussing right/wrong, is to see if you can determine what is left out.
There is objective news, e.g. "these were released", and there is commentary, e.g. "here's our opinion/commentary on what was released". I'll take the former, and I wish orgs would make it clear the difference between the two. The real irony, since the freaking article on data release thinks it is the place to discuss EU successes/failures to point out irony, is that it masquerades as news while reporting on a commission researching things masquerading as news.
It is a joke, but what's worse is that it is not obvious it is a joke. We should not pretend that we are above FB users that can't tell news from non-news when it's clear we can't either. Or, even more likely, we should assume the alternative side can similarly tell real from fake and that the FB ads had little effect.
I personally have no opinion on brexit or even FB ad targeting for that matter (I'm seriously ambivalent). But I do doubt the size of its effect and I really abhor the smarter-than-thou approach some take when votes don't go their way, especially scapegoating. Those poor gullible masses...
> In the case of Brexit Central/BeLeave, their ad creative was more subtle in its xenophobia — urging target recipients to back a “fair immigration system” or an “Australian-style points based system” but without making any direct references to any specific non-EU countries.
How is arguing for skilled migration xenophobic? TechCrunch has become Buzzfeed.
But it's not surprising really. There has been a persistent anti-EU propaganda campaign running in the UK for years if not decades. I really like this site - https://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/euromyths-a-z-index/ - as it contains links to the original "fake news" stories along with references which refute them.
I don’t understand your first question? Those anti-EU stories were lies pure and simple - all the references are provided on the linked site. Are you in favour of the media publishing lies in order to advance a political viewpoint?
The irony that some of the most resounding leave votes were in regions heavily supported by EU funds was not lost on me. Clearly the UK governments hadn't been doing enough for the people in those regions or they'd not have have been eligible for that support. Clearly the message that the EU was trying to help didn't get to the people concerned.
Both sides lied, both sides ran terrible negative campaigns. No one anywhere seemed to promote the EU as being good in any respect - just it's least worst. Only leave chose to pander to xenophobics, closet racists and suggest a FU to the establishment at every opportunity.
However, leaving the EU does not make the EU go away; even if other countries leave, relations still have to be negotiated with them. Bilateralism at that scale is probably unworkable, so it would end up being done through a different unaccountable international institution.
I'd take the EU over the WTO or TTIP any day of the week.
https://mobile.twitter.com/StuartWilksHeeg/status/4814529276...
Tag line of TDE article* The merciless grip of Brussels on the lives of millions of Britons is laid bare today by the Daily Express.
So merciless. It seems like a lot of the “anti-EU” sentiment expressed amounted to dog whistles for anti-immigrant sentiment. If it’s not that, then I guess Leavers just hate labeling juice. Or maybe cockneys simply can’t enjoy a laundry day that doesn’t positively reek of phosphorous? No, I think it was the immigration issues.
In particular the government spent millions of pounds - more than the entire allowed budget of the remain campaign - on a giant mailshot to the entire country arguing the case to remain. They claim this is OK because it was done just before the time period in which spending was limited began. Yet it was clearly spending on the campaign. They then turned around and claimed Leave broke the rules because of a few hundred thousand pounds.
A lot of this revolves around a supposedly neutral electoral commission that is stuffed with people who openly stated they wanted Leave to lose. There is no credibility to any of the UK's campaign spending controls and they should probably all be scrapped.
As for the "euromyths" site, you've been fooled I'm afraid. It is filled with non-debunkings of "myths" and "lies" (as you put it) that turn out on inspection to be true. It's deeply embarrassing for the EU and shows they don't really understand why a free press exists, and by implication that Leave's arguments about the EU being undemocratic have weight.
For example one of the first stories listed on the page is "EU funding for African acrobats and trapeze artists, July 2015". The newspaper reports were completely true and the EU's response is to complain that they aren't appreciated enough:
https://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/the-european-developmen...
It says:
The articles call funding for deprived communities in some of the poorest parts in the world “frivolous expenditure”
and
Elaborate metaphors and frivolous choice of visuals aside, mastering – to quote the articles – “the art of the trapeze” can open job opportunities for a person in Tanzania (by the way, the same project also provides courses in carpentry and sewing).
The Commission not only missed the entire point the journalists were making - that EU member states struggling to pay their own healthcare and welfare bills should not be forced to fund trapeze lessons in Tanzania - but then also engaged in this embarrassing and condescending exercise as well.
Far from the press lying to you, you've been tricked by the EU lying about the press.
Btw. the Leave campaign also received public funding both in direct cash and to cover the costs of public mailings for example.
It's all very well saying the spending limits should be scrapped but they were the rules in place for the referendum. You should campaign for a change in the rules, not covertly abuse the rules through shadowy shell companies and later - when exposed - argue that the rules shouldn't exists.
Regarding the euromyths site, do you really find the newspaper's protrayal of EU foreign aid/development fund spending to be honest? I guess there is a certain subjectivenss to the question but I simply cannot reconsile the content of the the newspaper's stories
"The Commission not only missed the entire point the journalists were making - that EU member states struggling to pay their own healthcare and welfare bills should not be forced to fund trapeze lessons in Tanzania - but then also engaged in this embarrassing and condescending exercise as well." This is where you've veered off from making any sort of reasonable point I could argue with to practicing the same EU-bashing the UK newspapers have been doing for years. The UK government spends about 15B EUR from it's own budget each year on foreign aid. The WHOLE OF the EU spends about 4B a year. The UK contributes NET about 7% of the EU budget, so on a pro-rata basis, the EU development fund costs the UK 250 million a year compared to the 15 billion it spends directly. So your "consern" about healthcare and welfare spendingn is completely misplaced or disingenious.
I hadn't seen the BBC article you link to, but it looks like exactly what I mean. Someone who made a donation to the Leave campaign shipped some tyres to India in 2009? OK, how does that compare to Remain using the entire resources of the civil service in its attempt to win? It doesn't at all, the sums involved are trivial in comparison.
Regarding the euromyths site, do you really find the newspaper's protrayal of EU foreign aid/development fund spending to be honest?
Yes - what have they said that's false? The EU's "rebuttal" doesn't even claim the newspapers are wrong about anything. They just claim it's perfectly reasonable spending instead.
Your last paragraph misses the point entirely I'm afraid. I don't care about foreign aid myself. We were talking about the euromyths site. This particular story is interesting because it shows that the EU is willing to lie to you in order to undermine the press.
One of the purposes of the press is to hold government to account. Publicising spending that looks wasteful is a key part of that. This is civics 101. Does the British government complain that the press is "lying" when they question government spending? No, it doesn't, because it's run by people who know that this is part of the job of the press. Only the EU complains about the press doing their job and attacks them by asserting they're peddling "myths".
But hey, if you want another dodgy Euromyths post, here it is:
https://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/the-eu-is-a-supporter-o...
This is about EU plans to eliminate per-region movie licensing. The EU's response adds nothing to the Independent's article, which is basically a selection of quotes from British movie producers saying they depend on per-region licensing to fund indy/arthouse movies, and if they couldn't do that anymore they feel they wouldn't be able to fund these movies.
Now, maybe these producers are all wrong, maybe they're right, I am not an expert in movie financing so I don't know. But clearly there are some who feel this way. The "myths" response simply re-iterates the EU's position that it'll all be peachy and wonderful. The truth of the underlying article isn't challenged, the EU Commission is just saying they disagree.
Lots of the articles are like that.
Don't get me wrong. I think it's fine for a government to respond to press stories in a candid way and defend themselves. But the EU oversteps the line wildly here, by claiming they're revealing systematic lying by the British press, when just clicking through posts shows they often can't identify anything false about the stories. They just find them inconvenient.
At this point, it's worth it.
Perhaps because it gives established players a big leg up in terms of compliance costs (imagine being a small news site having to create this searchable system etc)
Your right to anonymous free speech does not mean Facebook is obligated to let you express that right, only that the government can't restrict your right to anonymous free speech. No reason you can't set up your own anonymous website.
If laws protect people. more laws = better? What is the downside of passing any law?
In this case I could face discrimination at work if they found out that I was buying ads for my anti abortion website.
No this is a question about a specific law. Making it a general point about all laws is disingenuous. Why do anything ever?
In this case there is a widespread view that the referendum was decided by misinformed voters and activists are trying to intervene on that basis to halt Brexit.
I have this notion that EU votes are repeated the number of times necessary to have the 'informed' result win.
https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/our-work/roles-and-re...
> the Electoral Commission found that the youth-focused campaign, BeLeave, had been joint-working with the official Vote Leave campaign — yet the pair had not jointly declared spending thereby enabling the official campaign to overspend by almost half a million pounds. And that overspend went straight to Aggregate IQ to run targeted Facebook ads.
More broadly, we're in a new era of political advertising that we haven't fully grappled with yet. It used to be that all of your advertising was public, so it was possible to see what promises are being made, what kind of terminology is being used, etc. etc. In the Facebook era you can hyper-target your ads to only show to a small subsection of people, without anyone knowing what you're saying. Facebook's recent moves have meant that advertisers have to publicly disclose all the ads they are showing to avoid this issue, but it wasn't retroactive. This data is from before Facebook disclosed that information.
Sadly this kind of "overspending" is effectively legal in the US due to PACs. Good to hear it's illegal in the UK, but seems that isn't stopping people.
If say, before the 1990s, a national candidate sent out targeted mailers to some little town in flyover country, no one would have ever seen them.
We're in a similar but imo potentially not much worse situation because if anything it's easier to publicize that it happens.
It seems strange to you because the person getting a targeted ad is in the next room over instead of next voting district, but it's the same principle.
Later the "legit" advertising could be more effective on those people.
Secondly, the scale and efficiency with which one could target was rather limited. Specifically, the candidate would have a hard time not only “targeting” the right audience but also find it rather impossible to customize the content of the mailer to individual recipient.
It is not based on the same principle - one involves human actors and associated inefficiencies and “unscalability” while other involves mindless robots over zealously bombarding “targeted” audience with deception and lies.
This. Further, digital media has become so effective and audience data so refined that it can be readily and cheaply weaponized by hostile actors to conduct a form of "soft" warfare on the battleground of peoples' news and social feeds that skirts existing broadcast-centric political advertising laws. This is why they are in drastic need of an update via something like the Honest Ads Act [1].
[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/198...
ICO, the UK data protection regulator, has fined groups of both sides for data protection violations.
We have strict laws about the ways elections are run for a reason, and yes, lying about funding is immoral, and is incompatible with Nolan Principles for Public Office.
Distributing online political advertising without an imprint ought to be illegal, although I don't believe it is at the moment.
In this case, President Obama flew over to London in April 2016 and advocated very publicly, that Britain should remain in the EU. This act by a foreign leader was converted into headlines, videos, tweets, etc. which were shared roughly a bajillion times.
President Obama is an extremely popular man. In any list of the world's most popular and influential leaders he ranks in the top 10, probably the top 5. His endorsement, if equated to USD or GBP, would equal roughly several bajillions.
As far as I am aware, existing campaign finance laws do not address this kind of "free media", and that is a problem. Sometimes you need to be able to muster the resources to advocate your position with equal reach to that of your opponent, and that costs money.
A lot of these Facebook ads had no information about the source.
There are plenty of mega corporations whose interest span the entire world, so those are all technically foreign agents.
Sorry, I'll get my coat...
Besides, what would you have happen? All of the people who are actually knowledgable about the topic should exempt themselves from debate? It's a silly argument.
And I still don't understand what you think should have happened. People across the world should have conferred to make sure that representation for both sides was exactly 50/50?
The United States had the view that the UK staying in the EU was in their favour, so their President expressed that view. What's actually wrong with that? Surely it's up to voters to decide whether they think America's opinion is important or not when deciding how they should vote? Business leaders were in favour of Remain because they knew that leaving the EU would be financially perilous. How is that not relevant information for voters?
What is a fair fight in this context? If there was a referendum to decide whether the country believes in evolution would you make sure the balance of scientists vs cranks in the public sphere was exactly 50:50? The vast majority of people with knowledge in the area knew that Brexit was a terrible idea, so they said so. And reality has proven them right. Or is this a prelude to complaining that the EU isn't being "fair" because it won't give the UK what it wants?
> this the incessant sour grapes from the overwhelming favourite
Remain was obviously not the favourite because it lost. That the winning side continues to paint itself as a victimised minority speaks volumes.
You've lost me entirely with your last comments. Opinion polls showed a narrow Remain victory - that's a matter of fact - and that's the very definition of favourite. To say the result changes the favourite after the fact is frankly bonkers.
And portraying themselves as a victimized minority? I think you got that from the Guardian the other day didn't you? Anyway given that the powers that be keep trying their hardest to subvert the democratic will of the people, it doesn't seem unreasonable.
I have no idea what Guardian piece you're referring to. I'd certainly never claim to be the only person capable of formulating such an obvious conclusion from the evidence in front of me. Won the referendum, have no idea how to actually follow through on the promise, so blame anyone but themselves. That's where Leave is today.
And please, save the "democratic will of the people" guff. A 52/48 vote when people didn't even know what they were voting for. For example, Leave campaigners said we'd stay in the single market, and get £350m for the NHS, yet here we are on the precipice of leaving the single market and NHS budget freefall. You can try to deflect the blame for that all you want, but the reality is that the Leave side didn't think they'd win, made a pile of fanciful promises anyone with their head screwed on knew would never come to fruition, and then sat there and shat themselves for months on end while they were supposed to be negotiating an exit. No one voted for this.
55% of people would prefer to remain in the EU than crash out with a no deal Brexit, so presumably you'd be fine with that "will of the people" too. Or are opinion polls bad when they don't say what you want?
Here's what I said originally:
Point is, citing the overspending by Leave as some massive deal looks a bit rich when virtually the entire establishment, business and media conspired to sway the result towards Remain.
So Remain are Goliath, complaining that David used a catapult (overspend) when David should have just taken his punishment from Goliath's big clunking fists (coordinated conspiracy from powers that be to scare the public into voting Remain). All clear now? It's Remain that are playing the victim which as I said, given Remain's overwhelming advantages in the campaign and apparent incompetence in convincing the public despite that advantage, attracts ridicule. This is all I said. I'm not sure how I can be any plainer.
I don't remember that at all. Plenty of media was pro Brexit.
It’s much more questionable when we start to look at organised funding and lobbying. We have those rules specifically to prevent elections being bought with cash.
I think your questions could be seen as whataboutism[0], but as an answer I do know somebody who was furious that Obama was "telling us what to do" and subsequently voted leave. I don't know anybody who voted remain but was obviously swayed by Obama. Sample size is small but thats what I know.
I get what you're saying but it doesn't really have any relevance here. If you're disregarding legality then any questions about why a criminal investigation happened vs didn't is moot.
> At this point it amounts to fighting very hard to find any reason to undo a democratically determined result.
which is almost entirely a moral point. The "Obama statement" was just a reply to someone suggesting that "ad spending" might have swung the vote.
I mean we literally are. The original premise is about invalidating democratic results. If no one cares if it's right or wrong the conversation is moot in the first place because leave won regardless of circumstance.
>I get what you're saying but it doesn't really have any relevance here.
It actually does. Again the original premise was about mitigating factors of a democratic vote. That is almost entirely a moral/ethical issue. Regardless good laws should follow morals and not the other way around so they're totally inseperable in my mind.
Citing "whataboutism" does not make this go away, it is the essence of the argument.
If Joe is disqualified from his hockey tournament for throwing his stick, but Mike receives an eye-roll from the same referee, it should not be criticized as whataboutism to say "What about Mike?" - it is a legitimate complaint, because there is injustice in the way both incidents are dealt with.
The situation the OP was describing compared illegal, unreported campaign overspending with a foreign politician expressing an opinion. They're not in any way similar.
A foreign politician who is popular will generate free advertising showcasing the merits of his endorsed position through news media coverage of his statements.
Take money out of the equation entirely. I am a rich filthy corrupt CEO who owns a giant media corporation. I contribute 0 dollars to your campaign, but my TV channel has reporters singing your praises daily. My newspapers write about you in positive terms. My interns spend time on social media defending you from critics.
Everything I have done for you has helped get you elected. My news channel and publications are read by millions. You now owe me.
Similarly, a politician from another place who is very popular in your constituency shows up and campaigns for you. You pay nothing for it, but thousands show up to listen to him. His speech is aired to millions in your constituency.
Eventually you are elected, now you owe him.
Not accounting for some money is principly the same as not accounting for an endorsement by the President of the United States. The same negative outcomes that are associated with money in politics can be applied to endorsements too.
Existing laws do not address this, and are thus unjust because they are outdated in the context of how news and discourse works in 2018
But I really think people need to get over both results. It's been two years now. The remoaners are much worse than their american equivalents. But on the other hand - how many variations on the same joke are Stephen Colbert and Trevor Noah going to do? And - more to the point - how many post mortems is Hacker News going to have? No to mention the constant "I'm so woke gaiz" quips about it. Imagine if between 2008-2016 HN had been full of one liners about how Obama had no birth certificate. It would get so tiresome.
Why?
> need to get over both results
The results deliver real harm to real people. The separated immigrant children are probably never going to get over it, for example. And I'm not going to get over a result while I'm still worrying about stockpiling food. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/no-deal-brexi...
> Imagine if between 2008-2016 HN had been full of one liners about how Obama had no birth certificate
Those were obviously false and therefore often flagged to oblivion or deleted by the mods, but they did turn up when he was mentioned.
Because she was incredibly corrupt. Seems likely that foreign intelligence agencies had even more information they could leak.
The separated immigrant children are probably never going to get over it, for example.
It's unfortunate their parents decided to break the laws of the United States and enter the country illegally. Maybe their plight will discourage others from doing the same.
And I'm not going to get over a result while I'm still worrying about stockpiling food.
That seems like more of an issue with paranoia, then anything happening in reality.
Compared to the Trump administration?
> Why?
Well, Republicans, including some in prominent roles, in the House just started trying to impeach the Trump-appointed, Republican Deputy Attorney General for not compromising a series of criminal investigations, so with a small shift in votes giving the same Congress but a Democratic President, just about anything.
But conviction in the Senate would be less likely, because that takes more than a bare majority.
http://www.cityam.com/277767/electoral-commission-has-fined-...
But still, "massively overspending" and "failing to report correct levels of spending correctly" are quite different rule breaches. It's not difficult to see why Leave ads are being examined and Remain ones aren't.
The idea that Remain spent less than Leave is clearly ludicrous if you simply look at what happened. Funding wise there was no competition. The fact that parts of the government are trying to argue otherwise is just another aspect of their attempts to undo the vote by any means possible.
At this point it amounts to fighting very hard to find any reason to undo a democratically determined result.
Important note however - they didn’t have a referendum to join the EU but maybe that’s covered by the one on joining the European Communities?
The UK fwiw has only had three referendums in its history. Precisely because they have a habit of leading to the current fucking stupid situation we now find ourselves in.
So you'd rather have a slim minority decide?
Invoking the "democratically determined result" is begging the question, since we don't really know whether the result would have been the same if the Leave campaign hadn't broken the rules:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/04/vote-l...
When someone wins a sporting competition, and is found to have cheated by using banned substances, they don't get to keep their title by claiming "Well I still would have won even if I didn't cheat".
This is like say ruling out any votes in a presidential election from expats and or military.
There is an intersting criticism of the format in the below link from Chris Patten
“I think referendums are awful. The late and great Julian Critchley used to say that, not very surprisingly, they were the favourite form of plebiscitary democracy of Mussolini and Hitler. They undermine Westminster. What they ensure, as we saw in the last election, is that if you have a referendum on an issue, politicians during an election campaign say: "Oh, we're not going to talk about that, we don't need to talk about that, that's all for the referendum." So during the last election campaign, the euro was hardly debated. I think referendums are fundamentally anti-democratic in our system, and I wouldn't have anything to do with them. On the whole, governments only concede them when governments are weak.”
Personally I think the CBI and Directors Institute lost the plot and let a few "bad apples" fuck the economy up - should have done what the TUC did in the 50's
That's an argument against referenda?!
Which position would you consider the "default"? Slavery? Prohibition on gay marriage? Ban on abortion? (All of these were "changed" through history, some very recently.)
None of those were referendums where I live, were any of them referendums where you live?
Referenda are the only mechanism of plebiscitary democracy (which is democracy by plebiscite, which is a synonym for referendum), so calling them someone's favorite form of plebiscitary democracy is vacuous and tautology true.
But neither Hitler nor Mussolini is particularly known as a supporter of democracy, whether plebiscitary or otherwise, so aside from the nullity of the literal reading, the clearly intended implication is false.
It is the politicians who made the REAL decision to trigger brexit.
There is nothing to reverse. You can't cancel a non binding resolution.
Complain to the politicians who made the decision if you don't like what they did. And the politicians were very much voted in democratically.
People can vote them out if they don't like their decisions.
That's democracy for you. If you don't like it then people should vote for someone else.
The fact that these major parties are committed to enforcing brexit IS the democracy.
Both major parties in the UK are commited to a policy that has around 50% support from the electorate. Because there are long-term issues that make the massive sudden support for an alternative party unlikely, this means that roughly half of the population is left without an effective democratic method of expressing opposition to that policy.
Since when in the UK has your ability to voice dissent been denied? Doesn't the UK have freedom of protest? Can't you just protest your government and speak against its policies without fear of repercussion?
At the 1983 general election, the SDP won 25.4% of the popular vote, giving them 23 seats in parliament. Labour won 27.6% of the popular vote, giving them 209 seats. We are a de-facto two-party state, because the design of our electoral system is drastically biased in favour of the established major parties.
We did consider switching to a fairer electoral system in 2011, but ironically enough we decided against it by referendum.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_electio...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_Alternative_Vot...
On the other hand, the countries with the most stable democracies (measured in centuries) (US and UK) have two-party systems. So maybe the choice was less obvious than you allude to.
I'm somewhat sympathetic to that argument, but it places a far greater onus of responsibility on our dominant parties. If our electoral system prevents a diverse range of parties in parliament, then those parties have a duty to represent the diversity of the electorate.
In the case of the EU referendum, they have a duty to represent the interests of both the 52% and the 48%. Totally ignoring almost-but-not-quite half of the electorate is just mob rule dressed up as democracy.
http://uk.businessinsider.com/theresa-may-russia-putin-fake-...
Ultimately it is the job of the British people to decide which claims (in political advertising bought transparently by British people) are misleading. To do this, I think it would be helpful if political campaigns had to also publish in a centralised register, up front, all the political messages they paid for.
There may even be a case for preventing political campaigns from targeting people based on individual psychological profiles, as opposed to geographically focused campaigns, or based on the demographics of a specific newspaper or television channel.
That concept is a hard one to define and precisely why it’s a bad idea to have simple majority referendums on complex technical matters.
“Fairness” in a democratic system is a pretty messy concept. A “fair” vote might require rules (like controlling spending, foreign influence, and truthfulness), it might require clear criteria and outcomes, or it might require a well-informed population.
The UK’s Brexit referendum was a perfect example of how not to run a referendum:
- Billed as advisory but clearly not
- Electoral laws broken
- Shady foreign influence
- No definition of what the outcome of one result would be
- No success criteria beyond a simple majority (like requiring consent from all constituent countries)
- A vote on an extremely technical issue poorly understood by most of the population
I imagine this will be used as a textbook example of a terrible political event for decades.
I voted Remain. I would have reluctantly accepted the result if in the last two years the Brexit proponents had executed any reasonable plan with any degree of competence. They haven't, so I don't.
Two years on, the Brexiteers are still full of lies, misrepresentations and stupid bluster. Just like the premise behind the targeted FB ads that are the subject of this post.