This whole thing is such a goddamn scary mess. For anyone serious about buggering off out of the whole mess, here are Canada's immigration guidelines: http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/index.asp
yeah, this is going to get interesting before there's any real resolution. there's no good option for anyone who isn't a ukip supporter. that said, I'm dumbfounded by the earlier statement that the referendum "only" had 72% turnout. I'm an elections judge in Texas, and my polling location is one of the busiest in the county and I'm still lucky to see more than 10% turnout in anything that isn't the primary or general election of a presidential year. just. wow. also, your next prime minister will be chosen by less than a million people? by less than a quarter of a million people, even? how do people allow that? I mean, the american electoral college has our entire presidential election decided by a handful of counties in Florida and Ohio, which is fucked up. but the population of those counties combined is a few million, so that's less disproportionate to our total population than what you guys are getting. so, uh, congrats on making the americans look sane for once? credit where it's due, that's a hell of an accomplishment.
Yeah... General elections in Britain are for a party, not a candidate. So since its still a Conservative government, they get to appoint the new prime minister. Same thing happened in 2007 with Blair and Brown. Of course, Cameron only got in in 2015 with 36% of the vote to begin with.
It happened in Canada a few years ago - it's an interesting sort of quirk of the parliamentary system? Basically you elect a party not a person, so you never have a situation like Obama up against a Republican Congress. It's considered dirty pool to switch party leaders when your party is in power, but it's . . . technically legal. And party politics are of course only open to vote from members of the party.
i have no practical input bc politics are hard but one of my classmates walked into class this morning, threw her bag on the floor and screamed "FUCK BRITAIN" so, there's some info for you.
jegus fucking christ. I mean, I knew most of this in theory, but every time I'm reminded of it, it strikes me as terribly open to abuse. I get that you guys have different checks and balances on governmental powers, but it's v weird to me that you would actually trust your legislative body enough to not have the executive office exist specifically to limit their power. seriously, none of that would fly in the states. even the liberals like my family who want government to work don't actually trust legislators not to fuck it all up.
The British system has precious few checks and balances, and the EU was alas one of them. Absolute power rests with the monarch who appoints the government, but since the government needs to be able to pass legislation and only parliament can do that, parliament effectively rules as an absolute monarch except for the EU structure. And the system is actually LESS fucked up than it was. Fucking Cameron should never have promised this vote.
I've been seeing reports that various news outlets are interviewing people that voted leave only to seriously regret that choice within a few hours of the result being announced. People are saying they feel lied to and wish they'd voted differently. No way to know how widespread that is, but still. Also, the 2nd most popular Google search in the UK after the result was called was (and I think remains), 'What is the EU?'
how does your country function? like, I get that mine doesn't. that's old news. but this is like "California asking its voters to raise their own taxes" level of stupid. Spoiler for those who don't know, that's a thing that mercifully hasn't happened since they got rid of Schwartzenegger as governor, but for a long time California was paying anyone who worked for the state, like public school teachers and cops, in IOUs. this happened bc of several different kinds of stupidity all happening at once (some of which I'm too young to remember) that resulted in any plan that raised state taxes requiring a referendum, which meant that taxes never actually increased to keep up w the spending on social services that the v same voters and legislators *did* approve. but seriously, how do you people get anything good done in a system w so little oversight? how do you trust your government not to do what it just fucking did every single day? what keeps your government from running naked off a cliff like it just fucking did?
Mate, why do you think people are so disenfranchised? The rise of protest voting & increased popularity of far right fascists like Farage are a result of people feeling like they have no control or voice in this batshit terrible political situation. One is reminded of the protests pre-Iraq.
A lot of it is just that members of parliament are more accessible, I think, and more directly answerable to their people. There's also a lot less private money involved, a lot less security, and a lot more cultural emphasis on good government. Which also means things like the 2010 student occupation of UK Tory headquarters happens, and the Canadian churches deciding to go on a massive spree shaming Harper. So sometimes the only impact people can have is protest/setting things on fire, but at least that actually impacts our politicians.
While in theory it should be possible for the ruling party to overwhelm the opposition if they have a majority government, in practice it is rather harder as Government backbenchers will often vote in opposition to the party line, as will the Opposition MPs and MPs from other parties. Bills raised and passed in the Commons still have to go to the House of Lords to be discussed, amended and passed as an Act. They can and do reject Bills they deem unsuitable. The Queen's approval, however, is a formality and she has no practical control over the Government. In other news I'm genuinely sickened by the rampaging xenophobia bring demonstrated by people celebrating Leave. Come the fuck on, people, at least pretend you have more complex reasons than naked bigotry.
call me old fashioned, or maybe new fashioned really, but I like being able to protest by voting the fuckwits who do things like this out of office. I'll admit that this hasn't worked for me recently as I live in Texas and the last time we had statewide races we elected a goddamn felon to be our attorney general instead of someone who was actually competent, but still. I can still reassure myself that that year was really terrible for liberals, especially in my state, and that reassurance doesn't ring as hollow in my ears as "at least I can protest." admittedly, protesting is way less effective here. yes, I know how parliamentary systems work in theory, I'm just always amazed that they work in reality. at least, until one of them proves every single flaw w this system by doing the political and economic version of jumping naked off a cliff.
That's the thing, the money in most cases was against exit; it's going to impose a lot more hassle and expense for businesses.
I've just gotta wonder how the laws regarding businesses and infrastructure are going to be impacted, especially regarding cryptography and what levels are 'legal'. Those will change, since I imagine the UK doesn't want anything leaking to the EU.
Dude, this is the country which twice in the space of a week left top-secret confidential terror suspect lists on a fuckin' public train. An MI6 official left his laptop in a taxi after a night out drinking. Cryptography is the least of our problems.
And at the same time wanted to ban Snapchat because they couldn't easily grab all the data from that. Fuck this country.
