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The do actually believe this

Howard Reed says:
November 28 2016 at 11:59 am
In order for democracy to function properly people need to vote on the basis of accurate information. As the Leave campaign spent 3 months lying continuously (I don’t think there was one accurate statement from Leave over the whole campaign), I think we can safely conclude that democracy failed to function properly, because people were misinformed. The fact that the Leave campaign rowed back on every one of their campaign commitments (most obviously £350m per week for the NHS) within a few hours of the result being announced shows that the whole referendum was a farce and anyone in the Remain camp who takes the result seriously has been duped by Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and the rest of the far right.

As they did not vote as I think they should have done, increase the propaganda bugdets comrades!

And seriously, what is all this fuckery about Landsman Economics, Ritchie “creating a narrative”, if it isn’t to get people to vote on less than accurate information?

41 thoughts on “The do actually believe this”

  1. “The fact that the Leave campaign rowed back on every one of their campaign commitments (most obviously £350m per week for the NHS) within a few hours of the result being announced shows that the whole referendum was a farce”

    I didn’t realise the leave campaign were in power?

  2. Mal Reynolds (Serenity)

    Yet another fuckwit Remainer who thinks the vote was around electing the Vote Leave team into power rather than deciding whether to leave the EU.

    Anyway, how is that immediate recession? And thank God there is no EU army being planned. And I don’t know what we are going to do during the 15 year wait for a US trade deal.

  3. Remoaners add lack of reading comprehension to all their other idiocies. I think the wording was… “We send 350 Mill to the EU every week. How about spending that on the NHS?”

    Nuances matter unless you are Juncker fan. Is Spud yet another person with his tongue in J’s arse?

    To which the answer is “yes”. An EU grant with oversight from the blind ones.

  4. I like the theory that the Leave campaign had no intention of anyone actually believing the £350m figure. What they wanted was a big debate on the actual figure to force Remain to treat the admission that we send £280m (or whatever the hell it is) as some sort of victory.

    There was plenty of debate on it at the time, despite the revisionism. Which, as with the claim that Turkey was going to join the EU, was probably what Matthew Elliott wanted.

  5. While we’re on lies uttered in the Brexit campaign, can we have mention of David ‘I will stay on a Prime Minister whatever the outcome’ Cameron, and George ‘A Leave vote will trigger an immediate Emergency Budget’ Osborne?

  6. What Jim said plus umpteen. The Remainers shot themselves in the foot with a string of implausible lies. This is a comment from someone who voted “Remain”.

  7. Bloke in North Dorset

    What Jim said, plus the Remain camp never once gave us a story about why the EU was good, it was always about the dystopia that leaving would create.

    Oh, and referring to us all as ignorant bigots didn’t help their cause either.

  8. I voted Remain for purely cynical reasons. I had a good think about voting Leave and felt guilty after casting my ballot. If a bunch of London lawyers forced a second referendum I’d have to vote Leave.

    It’s easy to be wise after the fact, but I never got the feeling that there was anyone in the Remain campaign who really understood why the mass of people would want to vote Leave. It wasn’t that they thought they were wrong; they barely believed they existed at all.

    Even now, the basic courtesy of accepting that other people might come to conclusions that differ from their own is beyond a hardcore of these people. It has to be that they were hoodwinked, or that Farage is some sort of warlock who cast a spell over them, or Cameron shouldn’t have called a referendum at all, because it’ll all blow over.

    You can’t see Brexit in isolation. The EU has been unpopular in this country since Maastricht and we’ve been voting for large numbers of eurosceptic MEPs for years. There was genuine anger over Brown and Cameron not giving us a referendum over Lisbon.

    In that context, anyone who thinks that people voted to leave because they believed that we were sending £350m a week to the EU, rather than a trivially lower figure, is a grunting moron.

  9. Winning the Remain vote should have been a piece of piss – all they had to do was plaster this image on every billboard, sit back, say nothing, and let the natural status quo bias do its work:

    http://s19.photobucket.com/user/BarryLegg/media/father-ted-careful-now.jpg.html

    Instead they had to promise plagues of locusts, seas boiling with blood, the killing of the first born etc etc, to such an extent it was obvious they were lying through their teeth. I honestly believe thats what swung it – the lies were so blatant that enough people decided that whatever impact Brexit might end up having, it had to be better than outright lies.

  10. – “Howard Reed says:”

    (precis) ‘Everyone is stupid except me.’

    I think Mr Reed should get two votes in future, because of his superior cleverness.

  11. Charlie: There was also the attitude in the Party High Commands of: you’re our voters, you’ll do what we tell you to do. Go and be good LibDem* voters and vote Remain. What? 30% of you voted leave? But… but… but… you’re our voters! You should do what we tell you to!

  12. So Much For Subtlety

    jgh – “But… but… but… you’re our voters! You should do what we tell you to!”

    Is you is or is you ain’t my constituency?

    They are like Marie Antoinette. Their world is falling down around them and they are in denial. This time we get to cut off their heads with a bit of luck

  13. And in the USA, I wonder whether Nixon or Obama assassinated more people without due process.

    Sorry Charlie, for some reason I thought you were channelling bremoan passive aggression

  14. So Much For Subtlety

    Diogenes – “And in the USA, I wonder whether Nixon or Obama assassinated more people without due process”

    Well Obama has killed at least one US citizen without due process. And Nixon killed precisely zero. Does that mean Obama killed 100% more or an infinity more?

    I wonder if the Left is a little bit concerned about precedent now Trump has the right to murder any American he likes by drone strike?

  15. @ PF
    You are a bigoted idiot (or are you suffering from Alzheimers?)
    I was explaining why a substantial minority chose to vote in a way that I did not. I have already stated several times that I accept the majority decision.
    So what is yout excuse for your unjustified insult – you cannot read, you cannot remember or you cannt thonk?

  16. ‘In order for democracy to function properly people need to vote on the basis of accurate information.’

    Not really.

  17. I expect all the “We’ll get you for this, Englisher schweinhund” persuaded a few remainers they’d made a mistake, whereas “Are you sure? We’ll be sorry to see you go” would have had the opposite effect. Of coure, the EU elites, (aka Merkel’s yap pack) know perfectly well membership isn’t in the UK’s interest and can’t be bothered to lie about it.

  18. Charlie Suet:”Even now, the basic courtesy of accepting that other people might come to conclusions that differ from their own is beyond a hardcore of these people.”

    This is classic old-style socialist evil. If you don’t believe in their cockrot then you are 1–a member of those classes to be liquidated or -2 ( say you are working class and think socialism is a crock of evil shite) mentally ill.

    That is the level of their arrogance.

    Also copied from old-style socialist evil is the idea that propaganda is all that matters. The idea people might have thought about and formulated their ideas and values is beyond leftist cunts. If you didn’t vote their way its cos the agit-prop wasn’t up to snuff. Plebs don’t have a thought in their heads that wasn’t put there by their betters.

    It is time treason and sedition charges began to be handed out to the Remainiacs. Unlikely to get convictions but “the process is the punishment” as has been said on the blog before now.

  19. Jim,

    There were lots more than just those. I found dozens of lies about the impact, many of which were transparently bullshit as they included countries like Turkey or Norway.

    The bullshit was when I finally got off the fence. Cam promising we could renegotiate further (which sounded like bullshit) and then Juncker saying we couldn’t the next day. Whatever credibility he had left was totally shot. If he’d never said that, I might have bottled it for remain.

  20. Charlie Suet,

    One problem is that the media and the politicians have become a greater and greater bubble, while at the same time, there’s been this enormous amount of activity going on on blogs, Twitter, Facebook et al.

    You just have to read what media people think when they’re not doing their jobs officially, or when they leave the BBC/C4 and go and work for the Graun. They all live in London which is itself a bubble of certain attitudes.

    For decades, they’ve framed the narrative. It’s only when I got on the internet that I realised how narrow-minded their views were. It’s only then I discovered places like Samizdata, newsgroups and this blog. I got into debates and frankly, got pwned by people who had a lot more facts than I did, who dismantled a lot of “BBC thinking” that I had. Ideas like Adam Smith’s and Milton Friedman’s, ideas I’d simply never had access to as a provincial boy were now brought to me.

    And the shock to the MSM is that they’ve been so used to being the gatekeepers. All this sort of people debating stuff, talking about stuff on all these forums that has gone on without their involvement has finally come to the fore. These people have no idea how huge places like this blog, Guido Fawkes, Delingpole, Con Home are. Not just in terms of readers, but “pointers”. People who can demolish a statement with “well, no actually, let me send you this data”.

  21. Charlie Suet,

    There was some debate about the figure, but it was generally in the minor pages of Channel 4 or the BBC. What they did achieve was that none of the big Remain players (like Cameron) came out with a number, because they knew it was a trap. He’d have said “actually, it’s £280m” and they’d have turned it into an ad: “OK, we concede we’re wrong, it’s £280m we send to the EU. Here’s David Cameron saying so”.

  22. I’ve just read The Bad Boys of Brexit by Arron Banks which is greatly entertaining, even if he is a bit paranoid. Recommended. If you look for an index it says: There’s no index. Read the bloody book.” He records that an approach was made to Matthew Eliot to remove the £350 million figure but he refused, as did Gove. Also when they went to the States, and approached the State Department to ask about their contingency plans for Brexit, they were told: There aren’t any. Your Foreign Office has said it won’t happen.

  23. I don’t think there was one accurate statement from Leave over the whole campaign

    That’s the new standard, is it? Not “Some of Leave’s claims were wrong,” not “Leave told some lies,” but “Every single thing Leave said was a lie.” I’m not dignifying this shit by responding to it as if it’s an argument. These people can just utterly fuck themselves.

  24. If you have ever wondered how a totalitarian state could arrive here, just read that quoted text above. There hundreds of thousands, even millions of people in this country who believe that to some extent or other, and would be happy to see it enforced.

  25. What is all this fuckery about Landsman Economics, Ritchie “creating a narrative”, if it isn’t to get people to vote on less than accurate information?

    “Ritchie” and “less than accurate” sit rather harmoniously together, no?

  26. Bloke in North Dorset

    BiW,

    For decades, they’ve framed the narrative. It’s only when I got on the internet that I realised how narrow-minded their views were. It’s only then I discovered places like Samizdata, newsgroups and this blog. I got into debates and frankly, got pwned by people who had a lot more facts than I did, who dismantled a lot of “BBC thinking” that I had. Ideas like Adam Smith’s and Milton Friedman’s, ideas I’d simply never had access to as a provincial boy were now brought to me.”

    Agreed. For me it was also the realisation that I wan’t alone and that there was something to my inchoate thoughts that there must be more to this than we were being told. Having left school at 15 and not had time to read much it was good to be pointed at some good reading material, not all of it easy (I admit not not finishing Road to Serfdom and Wealth of Nations after Tim recommended them, I’ll believe Tim’s interpretations).

  27. In order for democracy to function properly people need to vote on the basis of accurate information

    Impossible. Even if there were a set of correct answers to all economic and political questions, how would you have the time to work them out?

    The mass of the public vote on instinct, and make a better job of it than those of us who are reasonably well-informed

  28. Howard Reed, and his colleagues at TRUK and elsewhere, including Murphy, need to be branded with:

    I am a fascist cvnt and I hate democracy

    on their foreheads

  29. Jack C,

    Yes, this morning I listened to someone on R4’s Today programme argue that employee representation was unequivocally good. The person on the other side demurred and she declared that she was right. The problem with this is that academic evidence is mixed :

    This paper says it is bad
    https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=967445

    Also says it is bad
    https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=245742

    This paper says it is good or at least neutral:
    https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1252645

    Also this one
    http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304405X06001140

    So the woman advocating it was wrong, the evidence is mixed rather than just positive. She lied. Post-truth politics.

  30. John77

    “So what is yout excuse for your unjustified insult – you cannot read, you cannot remember or you cannt thonk?”

    Err… Having read it again: A) – I completely misread what you wrote..!!

    It’s not the first time I’ve half read something at that time of evening with a knee jerk response – slow learner!

    btw, B) and C) too. Lousy memory, and err…

  31. Post-truth politics ….

    If we’ve reached a stage where we can’t even trust politicians and journalists, then I really do fear for the future.

  32. Jack C

    Because reality is complicated?

    Also design of analysis is a gold plated SOB for these things – causation can run from good company -> employee representation and also companies that benefit from having employee representation get it, results in good things, companies that do not need it, it results in bad things.

    The UK has specialised in areas that do not require this, imposing it may have costs that outweigh benefits.

    Sensible experts do not hold out blanket truths. On this one the evidence is mixed at best. I am fairly confident that Brexit will result in a slightly lower growth trajectory, but no more than this. The HMT analysis was just falsehoods.

  33. Surely employee representation is just being touted as another silver bullet solution , mainly by the leftists/BBC .

    Volkswagen had employee representation and a percentage ownership by the state (Lower Saxony) which falls foul of EU competition laws but is overlooked every year .

    The proof of the pudding is in the eating .

    Worker representation , state ownership , thoroughly documented working practices , ISO certifications and compliance officers did nothing to avert Diesel Gate .

  34. Striebs

    The academic studies are trying to show that employee representation in aggregate across many firms has a positive/neutral/negative effect. Much of the left wing nonsense that is spouted is wrong – but it may have a positive effect in some industries in some places. Whether it would be positive in the UK is open to debate.

    If we use single examples we could use:

    John Lewis to prove the superiority of worker representation or
    The Co-op Bank to prove its inferiority.

  35. J77 – And if it’s not obvious (what I meant), my barb above was targeted at the particular content of Reed’s paragraph at the top (that Tim was quoting)…

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