Project Reality

[HarryVegas]

You can spout as much b***ks as you want about how stupid leave voters are but you are wrong. There is a clear, easily explained reason why Leave won that you are too stupid to admit. The Leave vote offered hope that things would get better for people that have nothing whereas Remain told them that "this is the best it will get". Despite Leave now being seen as a Tory thing it was Remain that acted like Tories. They campaigned and voted to keep things the way they are because we already have it good (some would call this conservatism). Surely you can recognise the situation as being one that infuriates you when you are on the other side at a General Election.

Remian's arguments were all about what will be lost but they were trying to appeal to people that already have nothing to lose. People talking about the economy as a whole being better with immigration when the people that it directly affects via competition for jobs and stagnating wages only see the negatives. Remain utterly failed to offer any sort of positive reasoning for voting to stay or even any acknowledgment that the current situation could be improved. They tried to sell being an EU member as a utopia that we have already reached which for many is a kick in the nuts when they can see for themselves that their current situation is terrible.

It is not the Leave voters fault that they voted for hope or that Remain were too incompetent to offer any. It is not the Leave voters fault that the people that are responsible for carrying out Brexit have done a bad job of it. The responsibility falls on Parliament, and that includes MPs that wanted to Remain. After the result there should have been no more discussion on whether or not it was the right thing to do, it was decided by the people and that decision should have been respected. When people say it is remainers fault they don't mean you, the remain voter. You are irrelevant, you have no say in any decision. They mean the people in Parliament. Simple maths shows that in Parliament there was a clear majority of remain MPs. It was impossible for Leave to have a majority in anything they did and so it was remainers to blame for getting us into a position where a hard no deal brexit is the only option for getting Brexit at all. The government and the rest of Parliament are solely to blame for a multitude of things. The whole thing was a mess of arrogance where they assumed they'd win and then tried to wash their hands of it when they didn't but left no process in place for Leave to happen.

It was incompetence from the outset from Parliament. They should never have voted to approve the referendum to happen in the first place without an actionable plan to carry out if Leave won. You can blame leavers all you want but parliament voted for the referendum to happen (all except the SNP at least). They should not have voted for the referendum in the first place if they were unwilling to carry out the result. The way they have acted means we will never know what we could have achieved with Brexit because only the worst case scenario (and the one that remainers wanted the least) has been allowed to happen. Co-operation and a united front would have seen negotiations be very different and we may have managed something that was beneficial for us and the EU, if not perfect, but limited any downside. The necessity to be "right" appears to trump what is best.

In addition, since the result I have heard nothing but vitriol from the remainers who have developed some sort of self-appointed superiority complex and decided themselves as the arbiter of who is right and wrong. Suddenly everyone that thinks differently to them has been duped, or they are stupid, racist, selfish or a combination of all of the above. When people say that remainers have caused division and views to be entrenched then this is what they mean. Pre-referendum was fairly civil. Discussions were open and reasoned and there were many people that were unsure right up to the vote but since they ticked that box either way they have dug in and now they can see no benefit from the other side of the fence and it is now purely a defensive or aggressive position in any discussion.

I can see the sense in this argument and actually agree that Remain fought a terrible campaign. Regions that voted to leave, like Teesside, voted for the hope of things improving - and you are right inasmuch as they thought that they had nothing to lose. Sadly they were wrong.

 

[festa5]

I can see the sense in this argument and actually agree that Remain fought a terrible campaign. Regions that voted to leave, like Teesside, voted for the hope of things improving - and you are right inasmuch as they thought that they had nothing to lose. Sadly they were wrong.

They voted for hope. Or as I like to call it "lies".

But Mike is spot on. The lies won the day. If only remain had been as slick in painting a post remain fantasy utopia that was never going to happen and made promises they were never going to keep, the idiots amongst the leave voters might have voted that way instead.

 

[BlindBoyGrunt]

You can spout as much b***ks as you want about how stupid leave voters are but you are wrong. There is a clear, easily explained reason why Leave won that you are too stupid to admit. The Leave vote offered hope that things would get better for people that have nothing whereas Remain told them that "this is the best it will get". Despite Leave now being seen as a Tory thing it was Remain that acted like Tories. They campaigned and voted to keep things the way they are because we already have it good (some would call this conservatism). Surely you can recognise the situation as being one that infuriates you when you are on the other side at a General Election.

Remian's arguments were all about what will be lost but they were trying to appeal to people that already have nothing to lose. People talking about the economy as a whole being better with immigration when the people that it directly affects via competition for jobs and stagnating wages only see the negatives. Remain utterly failed to offer any sort of positive reasoning for voting to stay or even any acknowledgment that the current situation could be improved. They tried to sell being an EU member as a utopia that we have already reached which for many is a kick in the nuts when they can see for themselves that their current situation is terrible.

It is not the Leave voters fault that they voted for hope or that Remain were too incompetent to offer any. It is not the Leave voters fault that the people that are responsible for carrying out Brexit have done a bad job of it. The responsibility falls on Parliament, and that includes MPs that wanted to Remain. After the result there should have been no more discussion on whether or not it was the right thing to do, it was decided by the people and that decision should have been respected. When people say it is remainers fault they don't mean you, the remain voter. You are irrelevant, you have no say in any decision. They mean the people in Parliament. Simple maths shows that in Parliament there was a clear majority of remain MPs. It was impossible for Leave to have a majority in anything they did and so it was remainers to blame for getting us into a position where a hard no deal brexit is the only option for getting Brexit at all. The government and the rest of Parliament are solely to blame for a multitude of things. The whole thing was a mess of arrogance where they assumed they'd win and then tried to wash their hands of it when they didn't but left no process in place for Leave to happen.

It was incompetence from the outset from Parliament. They should never have voted to approve the referendum to happen in the first place without an actionable plan to carry out if Leave won. You can blame leavers all you want but parliament voted for the referendum to happen (all except the SNP at least). They should not have voted for the referendum in the first place if they were unwilling to carry out the result. The way they have acted means we will never know what we could have achieved with Brexit because only the worst case scenario (and the one that remainers wanted the least) has been allowed to happen. Co-operation and a united front would have seen negotiations be very different and we may have managed something that was beneficial for us and the EU, if not perfect, but limited any downside. The necessity to be "right" appears to trump what is best.

In addition, since the result I have heard nothing but vitriol from the remainers who have developed some sort of self-appointed superiority complex and decided themselves as the arbiter of who is right and wrong. Suddenly everyone that thinks differently to them has been duped, or they are stupid, racist, selfish or a combination of all of the above. When people say that remainers have caused division and views to be entrenched then this is what they mean. Pre-referendum was fairly civil. Discussions were open and reasoned and there were many people that were unsure right up to the vote but since they ticked that box either way they have dug in and now they can see no benefit from the other side of the fence and it is now purely a defensive or aggressive position in any discussion.

In that case, leave voters were stupid for not realising that offering hope to those with nothing is up to individual Governments. That's why there is so much variation between EU countries.

 

[jam69]

there is a clear explained reason why leave won, there's more racists in this country than we thought, and no iam not saying all leave voters are racist, the majority are not, however as we are seeing over the last few months there's i lot more than i and many others thought they was.
you only have to read some of the comments on social media on the BLM threads with their little englander profiles

 

[BoroMart]

Boromike is on my blocked list, not for being the worst type of Tory/brexiteer but for being so dishonest in his debating. I keep having to log out and log back in at the moment, and saw his post. Brexiteers ARE stupid as a set compared to remainers. It's a fact.

Anyone can go and find the evidence and work it through. There are publicly available datasets, for brexit vote by constituency AND separate sets for degree education by constituency. On the old board I correlated these datasets and published the clear correlation between constituancies with high degree education levels and remain, and low degree education and leave. The correlation was very, very strong. I.e. the lowest 20 degree levels were also in the lowest 25 remain votes, and vice-versa for high degree and remain.

Using degree educated as a measure of not being stupid, ie you have proven enough intelligence to pass a degree which needs a Blooms taxonomy of at minimum 3-4 just to scrape through (application and analysis), compared to GCSEs level 1-2 (Knowledge and Comprehension), is as strong an indicator as any. Of course you don't need a degree to be intelligent, but In a population of 100,000+ constituents uber-intelligent but not degree educated will be a negligible factor compared to actual degree educated people. Besides, you need a method of proving intelligence, and actually being prepared to take a degree to further your knowledge is a good way of proving you aren't suffering from Dunning-Kruger.

So in conclusion you have 2 choices go get the data yourself and see the massive evidence of correlation, or take the second choice, just believe hard enough that brexit was the vote of intelligent people and see how that works out.

 

[Cooper671]

Luckily based on that analogy we have some of the most intelligent people delivering brexit in the form of our government.... seen as most were educated at a high level and therefore makes them more intelligent than most. There should be nothing to worry about.

I wouldn’t say the same for the bloke I work with who has a degree in law who is as thick as 2 planks of wood though. Classically thinking AOB on a meeting agenda was a point someone had raised and asked who had wanted to discuss “AOB” as there was no name next to it

 

[BlindBoyGrunt]

Luckily based on that analogy we have some of the most intelligent people delivering brexit in the form of our government.... seen as most were educated at a high level and therefore makes them more intelligent than most. There should be nothing to worry about.

I wouldn’t say the same for the bloke I work with who has a degree in law who is as thick as 2 planks of wood though. Classically thinking AOB on a meeting agenda was a point someone had raised and asked who had wanted to discuss “AOB” as there was no name next to it

A bought education doesn't guarantee intelligence.

 

[Lefty]

Luckily based on that analogy we have some of the most intelligent people delivering brexit in the form of our government.... seen as most were educated at a high level and therefore makes them more intelligent than most. There should be nothing to worry about.

I wouldn’t say the same for the bloke I work with who has a degree in law who is as thick as 2 planks of wood though. Classically thinking AOB on a meeting agenda was a point someone had raised and asked who had wanted to discuss “AOB” as there was no name next to it

Law 2: The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.

 

[Lefty]

Boromike is on my blocked list, not for being the worst type of Tory/brexiteer but for being so dishonest in his debating. I keep having to log out and log back in at the moment, and saw his post. Brexiteers ARE stupid as a set compared to remainers. It's a fact.

Anyone can go and find the evidence and work it through. There are publicly available datasets, for brexit vote by constituency AND separate sets for degree education by constituency. On the old board I correlated these datasets and published the clear correlation between constituancies with high degree education levels and remain, and low degree education and leave. The correlation was very, very strong. I.e. the lowest 20 degree levels were also in the lowest 25 remain votes, and vice-versa for high degree and remain.

Using degree educated as a measure of not being stupid, ie you have proven enough intelligence to pass a degree which needs a Blooms taxonomy of at minimum 3-4 just to scrape through (application and analysis), compared to GCSEs level 1-2 (Knowledge and Comprehension), is as strong an indicator as any. Of course you don't need a degree to be intelligent, but In a population of 100,000+ constituents uber-intelligent but not degree educated will be a negligible factor compared to actual degree educated people. Besides, you need a method of proving intelligence, and actually being prepared to take a degree to further your knowledge is a good way of proving you aren't suffering from Dunning-Kruger.

So in conclusion you have 2 choices go get the data yourself and see the massive evidence of correlation, or take the second choice, just believe hard enough that brexit was the vote of intelligent people and see how that works out.

I slightly disagree with this. I think it's worth more discussion though.

 

[Lefty]

there is a clear explained reason why leave won, there's more racists in this country than we thought, and no iam not saying all leave voters are racist, the majority are not, however as we are seeing over the last few months there's i lot more than i and many others thought they was.
you only have to read some of the comments on social media on the BLM threads with their little englander profiles

I slightly disagree with this. I think it's worth more discussion though.

Reply

 

[Frozen Horse]

"There is a clear, easily explained reason why Leave won that you are too stupid to admit. The Leave vote offered hope that things would get better for people that have nothing whereas Remain told them that "this is the best it will get". "

The are people in the UK who live in extreme poverty, and that must be tackled regardless of our future relationship with Europe.

However, the UK maintains a top 20 ranking on human development and quality of living indices: for the vast majority, life in the UK is generally pretty good.

I don't accept that 52% of the electorate "have nothing" and that this was somehow responsible for the outcome. Nor do I believe those with social conscience who voted with concern for those in poverty swung the vote: most of them voted remain.

As has been said, the "hope" offered by Leave was snake oil. While your reason is clear and easily explained, it is also wrong.

 

[boromike85]

Boromike is on my blocked list, not for being the worst type of Tory/brexiteer but for being so dishonest in his debating. I keep having to log out and log back in at the moment, and saw his post. Brexiteers ARE stupid as a set compared to remainers. It's a fact.

Anyone can go and find the evidence and work it through. There are publicly available datasets, for brexit vote by constituency AND separate sets for degree education by constituency. On the old board I correlated these datasets and published the clear correlation between constituancies with high degree education levels and remain, and low degree education and leave. The correlation was very, very strong. I.e. the lowest 20 degree levels were also in the lowest 25 remain votes, and vice-versa for high degree and remain.

Using degree educated as a measure of not being stupid, ie you have proven enough intelligence to pass a degree which needs a Blooms taxonomy of at minimum 3-4 just to scrape through (application and analysis), compared to GCSEs level 1-2 (Knowledge and Comprehension), is as strong an indicator as any. Of course you don't need a degree to be intelligent, but In a population of 100,000+ constituents uber-intelligent but not degree educated will be a negligible factor compared to actual degree educated people. Besides, you need a method of proving intelligence, and actually being prepared to take a degree to further your knowledge is a good way of proving you aren't suffering from Dunning-Kruger.

So in conclusion you have 2 choices go get the data yourself and see the massive evidence of correlation, or take the second choice, just believe hard enough that brexit was the vote of intelligent people and see how that works out.

If you had actually done all that terrific research you would have seen perfectly that education level correlates with age, as does the Leave vote. The older generation didn't go to University whereas these days everyone does. Also, young people tend to live in cities, particularly those with a large student population, which were more likely to vote remain. You are also aware that education doesn't correlate perfectly with intelligence. There are as many ignorant, unintelligent people that voted on either side of the debate and you don't have to look for the "uber-intelligent" that voted the "wrong way" but the fact that most people whether educated or not gather around the middle of the intelligence spectrum and there are as many uber-stupid people with educational attainments as there are uber-intelligent without qualifications.

Your extremely basic assumption shows that young people are more intelligent than old people which is obviously not true. Intelligence isn't measured in any meaningful way by educational attainment. These ignorant views make it very easy to draw the conclusion that remainers cherry pick the data that backs up the beliefs they already have rather that looking at the full picture. (It doesn't but that's how you've done it. I am not stupid enough to think that that is how it works).

Also, thanks for putting me on your blocked list. It is a sign of someone that doesn't like to hear opinions that differ from their own. I distinctly remember making you look stupid on occasion so it is probably this reason that you have blocked me. Showing you that you yourself are not as intelligent as you think you are is obviously something you don't like to have to deal with. It's much easier to only hear the views of people that already agree with you.

Boromart is the worst kind of smug, self-appointed intelligent hypocrite. Someone that has got a qualification and think it makes him better than people that haven't. The socialist that doesn't think they should pay tax because they are a risk-taking contractor, aka a Tory in a Labour costume.

 

[Ironops]

If we are talking about blame and fault then there is only one group to mention, the current government.

Leavers voted to leave based on information they were given and a vision of what leaving would look like. Its very unlikely this vision will come to pass or that leaving will even vaguely resemble what they were sold. They were lied to, but that doesnt nake any of this their fault.

Similarly we can look at people who voted Tory in 2019, again based on a vision of an over ready deal and a comprehensive free trade agreement. Again they appear to have been lied to. Again its not their fault.

If you voted to leave with no trade deal in place, no deal on any of our future relations with our nearest and biggest trading partners and allies, causing likely economic chaos, price rises and job losses then you are getting what you voted for ' some people did vote for that, or knew it wouldbe the case and felt it was a price worth paying to end immigration and take back soverignty.

But its probably a small minority of people in truth, certainly way less than the 52% who voted to leave.

So if we want to apportion blame and talk about whos fault it al is, we just look at the government, Bojo, Gove and Cummings. They are making the decisions and they ultimately will be the ones accountable

 

[boromike85]

"There is a clear, easily explained reason why Leave won that you are too stupid to admit. The Leave vote offered hope that things would get better for people that have nothing whereas Remain told them that "this is the best it will get". "

The are people in the UK who live in extreme poverty, and that must be tackled regardless of our future relationship with Europe.

However, the UK maintains a top 20 ranking on human development and quality of living indices: for the vast majority, life in the UK is generally pretty good.

I don't accept that 52% of the electorate "have nothing" and that this was somehow responsible for the outcome. Nor do I believe those with social conscience who voted with concern for those in poverty swung the vote: most of them voted remain.

As has been said, the "hope" offered by Leave was snake oil. While your reason is clear and easily explained, it is also wrong.

I didn't say it was right. They just won because their campaign was far better. As I said, the remain campaign utterly failed. They were too arrogant and assumed they would win and they failed to offer any positive reason to vote for them. Their entire campaign centered around the other option being bad. It was the same with Trump's win. Everyone knows he's a terrible option but he gave the people that were perpetually ignored something to hope for and the Democrats could only sell continuation which wasn't working for all those people.

Life in the UK is generally good, even the worst off have it far better than many people in the World but people only draw comparisons to what they see and experience. The poorest only see other people doing better than them and want something to blame, even if it is the wrong target.

 

[American_Mary]

One of the dichotomies of Brexit is that hope won the day on leaving the EU but in domestic politics the hope manifesto was pretty heavily rejected at the last election.

Leave never expected to win so as a campaign they could make any promise they wanted suspecting they’d never be in a position to justify it and that’s the situation we are in now, they’re been called to account to make it work, when what it is has never been fully defined

Cameron thought it would quieten the 1922 Committee dissent, solidify Osborne’s position as his successor and propagate a voting split in traditional working class Labour voting areas.

It’s become quasi-religious, with people on both sides being so entrenched to the point of blindness, the salient point is that the division that was caused was always the real end game of Brexit, not sovereignty, immigration or any other offshoot, divide and rule, divide and rule.

 

[zaphod]

Intelligence is not the opposite of stupidity. It's well observed that highly educated people can behave stupidly. The opposite of stupidity is common sense.

 

[Lefty]

"There is a clear, easily explained reason why Leave won that you are too stupid to admit. The Leave vote offered hope that things would get better for people that have nothing whereas Remain told them that "this is the best it will get". "

The are people in the UK who live in extreme poverty, and that must be tackled regardless of our future relationship with Europe.

However, the UK maintains a top 20 ranking on human development and quality of living indices: for the vast majority, life in the UK is generally pretty good.

I don't accept that 52% of the electorate "have nothing" and that this was somehow responsible for the outcome. Nor do I believe those with social conscience who voted with concern for those in poverty swung the vote: most of them voted remain.

As has been said, the "hope" offered by Leave was snake oil. While your reason is clear and easily explained, it is also wrong.

Boromike is analysing why Leave won and I don't have much disagreement with him on that, though a true analysis needs to go much much deeper.

But I think he is committing the circular argument logical fallacy here.

“The Bible is true; it says so in the Bible”

Sometimes, this argument is not a logical fallacy. It all depends on the issue.

If the question is 'what is your preferred colour out of red or blue' and 52% of people vote red, then we can say that red is the more preferred colour and it is absolutely ridiculous to say those who voted red were stupid.

However, if the question is how widespread is teenage pregnancy and the population reckon it is 16% annually, that doesn't mean it is.*

*The actual number is 3%.

The EU referendum is more complicated than either of these examples because it incorporates elements of both.

If you had actually done all that terrific research you would have seen perfectly that education level correlates with age, as does the Leave vote. The older generation didn't go to University whereas these days everyone does. Also, young people tend to live in cities, particularly those with a large student population, which were more likely to vote remain. You are also aware that education doesn't correlate perfectly with intelligence. There are as many ignorant, unintelligent people that voted on either side of the debate and you don't have to look for the "uber-intelligent" that voted the "wrong way" but the fact that most people whether educated or not gather around the middle of the intelligence spectrum and there are as many uber-stupid people with educational attainments as there are uber-intelligent without qualifications.

Your extremely basic assumption shows that young people are more intelligent than old people which is obviously not true. Intelligence isn't measured in any meaningful way by educational attainment. These ignorant views make it very easy to draw the conclusion that remainers cherry pick the data that backs up the beliefs they already have rather that looking at the full picture. (It doesn't but that's how you've done it. I am not stupid enough to think that that is how it works).

I agree.

Although...

 

[Cardiffdaffs]

"Taking back control" was a total misnomer - we never lost control. The notion that the EU somehow forced freedom of movement on the UK against our will - it didn't. We chose to allow freedom of movement. Then we chose to leave the EU and end freedom of movement. 90% of immigration was from outside the EU.

So at no point did we ever lose control of anything. The whole sovereignty claim is a strawman to make it appear like the UK was a victim of a secret takeover by a foreign power. We were "invaded," by the EU and had authority stripped away from us. But its not true and it never has been. The fact that the treaty contains provisions for a member state to leave the union is proof in itself that we never "lost control."

People in favour of BREXIT just don't like to hear that Britain was a willing member of the EU and went along with all the rules because it wanted to do so. They'd rather pretend it was a war against "them lot"

Its a terrible argument and one that unfortunately a lot of people fell for.

 

[Lefty]

Intelligence is not the opposite of stupidity. It's well observed that highly educated people can behave stupidly.

This is true.

The key is understanding why.

 

[BoroMart]

"If you had actually done all that terrific research you would have seen perfectly that education level correlates with age, as does the Leave vote." <-- Boromike

Ah, but it doesn't "perfectly correlate", degrees have become more and more expensive and thus relative numbers to population have fallen from 30 years ago. I would argue that intelligence and education levels have vastly improved, over the last 50 years. I think everything in your last post was wrong, yet you think you're smart, Dunning-Kruger's finest victim!

"It is a sign of someone that doesn't like to hear opinions that differ from their own. I distinctly remember making you look stupid on occasion"
You see this attitude is the exact reason I blocked this idiot, and he has the gall to call anyone smug, self-appointed intelligent and hypocritical. The lack of self awareness in that bloke is beyond parody or reproach.

I have many qualifications, thanks. I should pay more tax being in the upper earning bracket, but ONLY to improve services for the many, not to subsidise the uber-rich and tax avoiding businesses, but cheers for proving your lack of analytical skills again. Also great to to see how your ego is bruised by being blocked.