A Bitter Turf War is Raging on the Brexit Wikipedia Page (wired.co.uk) 379
Wikipedia editors are battling to tell the story of Brexit as it happens. And on such a hotly-debated page, every edit is controversial and suspicions run wild. From a report: Editors are parrying death threats, doxxing attempts and accusations of bias, as the crowdsourced epic has become the centre of a relentless tug-of-war over who gets to write the history of the UK as it happens. Originally posted in January 2014, what began life as "Proposed referendum on United Kingdom membership of the European Union" has bloated into a 11,757-word behemoth. But the article's vast size is the least of its problems. In private, and on discussion pages, editors tell tales of turf wars, sock puppet accounts, and anonymous figures hellbent on stuffing the article with information that supports their point of view.
"I was heavily involved with the Brexit page, but gave up more than a year ago because the level of bias on it proved impossible to address and the aggravation of trying to deal with that was not worthwhile," says EddieHugh, a Wikipedia editor who has made 186 edits on the Brexit page -- making them one of its most prolific contributors. Since leaving the page behind, EddieHugh now specialises in editing entries about obscure mid-century jazz musicians. For the dedicated cabal of Wikipedians who are still editing the page, the battle against bias is never-ending. [...] One sentence Snoogans added to the page's opening paragraphs is particularly divisive. Early on the article refers to a "broad consensus" among economists that Brexit will damage the UK economy. Soon after he added the sentence, other editors tried to remove the edit, arguing that economists aren't reliable enough to be included in Wikipedia articles. Wikipedia's rules don't contain specific guidelines about economists, but recommend that "academic and peer-reviewed publications, scholarly monographs and textbooks" should be used as sources where possible.
"I was heavily involved with the Brexit page, but gave up more than a year ago because the level of bias on it proved impossible to address and the aggravation of trying to deal with that was not worthwhile," says EddieHugh, a Wikipedia editor who has made 186 edits on the Brexit page -- making them one of its most prolific contributors. Since leaving the page behind, EddieHugh now specialises in editing entries about obscure mid-century jazz musicians. For the dedicated cabal of Wikipedians who are still editing the page, the battle against bias is never-ending. [...] One sentence Snoogans added to the page's opening paragraphs is particularly divisive. Early on the article refers to a "broad consensus" among economists that Brexit will damage the UK economy. Soon after he added the sentence, other editors tried to remove the edit, arguing that economists aren't reliable enough to be included in Wikipedia articles. Wikipedia's rules don't contain specific guidelines about economists, but recommend that "academic and peer-reviewed publications, scholarly monographs and textbooks" should be used as sources where possible.
better on the web then on the street! (Score:2)
better on the web then on the street!
I will take the IRA only editing Wikipedia then then doing stuff on the street
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better on the web then on the street!
Doing it on the web ensures there are almost no detrimental consequences, and therefore it will go on forever. If anyone's face was threatened, it might stop at some point.
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This is a stupid street fight, just on the pages of Wikipedia. Here is how it works, you can not play umpire unless there are two sides, in this case for Brexit and anti Brexit, so common sense means you create three headings. The Pro-Brexit heading, the Anti-Brexit heading and the Neutral Brexit heading, completely separate pages and let them squabble on two of them and force the neutral one to be properly referenced facts and just the facts, no opinions.
The only way to handle problematic topics, instead
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This is a street fight that people fund thinking they are helping create the best source of knowledge. That's an issue. People are fighting on Wikipedia because they know its potential to spread propaganda.
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Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie!"... till you can find a rock.
The history of edits is itself history (Score:5, Interesting)
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but can the victors also write the history of history?
Easily. The victors can even substitute a whole new Wikipedia if it becomes necessary and relevant to them.
Problem lies with concept of an Encycloped itself. (Score:2, Interesting)
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Well, there are things for which there is only one version of truth, at least if you state them carefully. But I admit that there are a lot of things where "the truth" has a lot of "it appears to me" in it.
Re: Problem lies with concept of an Encycloped its (Score:5, Insightful)
The postmodernist idea that there are multiple contradictory versions of "truth" is the most insidious ideology in the modern world. The idea that "history is written by the victors" is likewise a particularly pernicious lie.
Truth is truth regardless of who writes it, or what their opinions are. History is an amalgam of beliefs informed by evidence written by people striving to understand the past. Your glib talking points are just an attempt to subvert established beliefs by appealing to emotion and other cognitive biases.
There is no wikipedia turf war on Brexit! (Score:2)
Just the normal arguments that go on in Wikipedia. Look at the Talk.
Now, if you want to see a turf war, have a look at Damore's diversity memo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
And try to get any discussion of the memo itself included on the page!
Re: There is no wikipedia turf war on Brexit! (Score:3)
I'm not sure what the relevance of that article is to the discussion at hand, but I went ahead and read it anyway. My impression is that, while it does slightly lean towards the SJW narrative, it is overall fairly balanced and a decent representation of the events surrounding Damore's memo and the subsequent fallout. I didn't (and won't) read the edit history since I suspect it's a shitshow which would be a total waste of my time .... but the article itself is a far better description of the event than any
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Did you look at the talk?
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Truth is truth regardless of who writes it, or what their opinions are. History is an amalgam of beliefs informed by evidence written by people striving to understand the past.
You identified these two independent concepts well but fail to see how they work together in terms of "history is written by the victors". The reality is that history isn't written, history is erased. With the erasure of story from the losing side that piece of now biased history now reflects the "truth" as shown by the only evidence that is now available.
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You identified these two independent concepts well but fail to see how they work together in terms of "history is written by the victors". The reality is that history isn't written, history is erased.
No. History is written, the past is erased. Facts are lost, obscured, destroyed. A narrative remains, and we're forced to second-guess it to determine facts.
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The postmodernist idea that there are multiple contradictory versions of "truth" is the most insidious ideology in the modern world.
You seem to be trying to redefine "truth" as "fact"; it means that sometimes, but it doesn't always mean that.
The idea that "history is written by the victors" is likewise a particularly pernicious lie.
You also seem to be trying to redefine "history" as "fact"
History is the story written about the past which is generally accepted. We hope it aligns with facts, but it often doesn't. Sometimes not until later, sometimes not ever.
Truth is truth regardless of who writes it, or what their opinions are.
Truth most meaningfully indicates "a fact or belief that is accepted as true". A fact is a fact, a truth is an accepted belief. That's how your truth can be different from m
Re: Problem lies with concept of an Encycloped it (Score:2)
Not really. History in the colloquial sense of the word is just a story about the past. It may be based on facts, but it does not have to be "true" in the sense that it describes what actually happened.
We aren't talking about it in "the colloquial sense"; we are talking about the field of study. Otherwise any story anyone tells about the past could be considered history ... and in that case it certainly wouldn't be written by the victors. The losers can tell stories just as well as the victors.
History as an attempt to do "science" is constructing falsifiable hypotheses about the processes that might explain the facts we know from the standpoint of economics or some social "science" theory. It is a lot harder to do, and it is not popular among the unwashed masses, because it involves hard work. From your post above, you've never met this kind of history.
Nice ad-hom. Thanks for agreeing with me, though.
Just look at the way WWII history is taught in the US - the miseducated outcomes of that process believe US won the war almost single-handedly. Many of you even think they fought the Soviet Union AND the Nazis. And this is just a victory in the propaganda war in one single territory :)
What many people believe and what is actually taught are often two different things. Either way, you're an idiot. I've never met a single american who doesn't un
History written by... (Score:5, Insightful)
Makes sense. (Score:3, Insightful)
The politicians who are implementing Brexit are changing the definition of it at a quantum level - every time you attempt to observe it, it means something new.
Which of course always means that you're wrong to criticize it, since your opposition will always be in a position of ignorance. After all, the British public was fully informed of every nuance of Brexit when they voted -and it would be foolhardy to second guess all that, especially with a second vote with more information!
And honestly, listing all the things that Brexit has been and failed at being so far, and listing all the folks that were for it, then quit when asked to agree on what it meant - well, that's just narrow minded thinking, and NOT appreciated!
Because there is emphatically nothing terribly stupid about cutting yourself off from the largest market in your own continent, or more carefully negotiating any of that - when you could just become a figurative and literal isolated island nation by choice!
Ryan Fenton
Re: Makes sense. (Score:3, Insightful)
After all, the British public was fully informed of every nuance of Brexit when they voted -and it would be foolhardy to second guess all that, especially with a second vote with more information!
No population is ever fully informed of every nuance of any topic on which they vote. That fact gives every loser the opportunity to whine and claim that the vote wasn't fair. After all, if only people had been better informed they surely would have voted the same way as me!
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>"No population is ever fully informed of every nuance of any topic on which they vote."
Which is also why we have republics instead of direct democracies and why referendums are rarely used (but can sometimes be helpful).
Of course, the quoted statement, above, often includes the representatives voting on things in a republic, too. At least there is a reasonable chance they will be more informed than people on the street.
Re: Makes sense. (Score:2)
My statement was not meant to be a denunciation of democracy. Humans are imperfect; as such any systems we created will likewise be imperfect. We rule our nations via democracy (or "representative democracy" if you prefer) not because it is a perfect system, but because we have not found any systems which better mesh with our humanity.
Those who wish to subvert that system by complaining that the populace is not perfectly informed have no better alternative to offer. They are merely making excuses for the
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>"My statement was not meant to be a denunciation of democracy."
Oh, I wasn't implying otherwise (nor do I think most would infer otherwise, either... I hope). I was just conversationally expanding on the concepts.
Re: Makes sense. (Score:2)
Gotcha. I thought you were probably trying to expand on what I said, but wasn't sure, and was worried others might not understand it either. Thanks for the clarification.
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>" Actually, what you're referring to is called a Representative democracy [wikipedia.org] not a republic."
Actually, a republic *is* a representative democracy. It even says so on the page you pointed to:
"Nearly all modern Western-style democracies are types of representative democracies; for example, the United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy, France is a unitary state, and the United States is a federal republic."
Re: Makes sense. (Score:2)
No, he's right, which is why the page says "nearly every".
"Republic" just means you're not a monarchy. The USSR was a republic. So is the DPRK. They are not democracies.
Re:Makes sense. (Score:4, Informative)
The politicians are basically evenly divided and not even across party lines. There's really just one sticking point but it's a doozy. So some are champing at the bit hoping this leads to new elections (not new referendums!), others hoping there will be an upset in their own party so they can move up in ranks, and so forth. No one is coming out of this looking pretty.
When it came down it, they had several proposals covering what to do about Brexit that covered all the feasible solutions and all were voted down (some were very reasonable and came very close but they all lost). In short, there is no way forward, there is little confidence in the PM, but having a new PM has zero chance of solving anything. Best bet may be to sack the whole lot.
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Naive question here: why is a bare and indeed questionable majority sufficient to force this onto the large portion of the population that does not want it, and what is up with refusing to put the question a second time? Worried that the majority now wants out of this whole insane thing? What happened to democracy, I thought that was about people being able to vote?
Re:Makes sense. (Score:5, Insightful)
Naive question here: why is a bare and indeed questionable majority sufficient to force this onto the large portion of the population that does not want it,
Well, the majority did. Where do you want to draw the line?
and what is up with refusing to put the question a second time? Worried that the majority now wants out of this whole insane thing? What happened to democracy, I thought that was about people being able to vote?
The issue with the second referendum is that the question will not be the same. The question will be angled as "Do you want to leave the EU and go to this specific hopeless compromise which no sane person would vote for OR remain in?"
The breakdown of the current situation is that the population instructed the government to get us out - and the expectation was that if we couldn't get a decent deal we would simply walk - and then the government went to the EU and asked them politely what their terms were. Strangely, the terms were all good for the EU and shit for us. Parliament then split between those who wanted to take the shit deal, those who wanted to walk away, fantasists who wanted to re-negotiate despite having no leverage, and straight-up Remainers who never wanted to leave. At that point it became impossible to get a majority through and everything stalemated.
The Irish border question is where May sunk Brexit. If the original negotiators had said "Oh, and the backstop will be for 3 years, ok?" no one on the EU side would have blinked an eye. But not having that made it impossible for the Northern Irish DUP to accept the deal (for obvious reasons embedded in their party's name). Once the EU spotted this blunder, it seized it and suddenly the Irish Border became some great big deal that was sacred and we could never ever "go back" to a Hard Border.
Yet the Hard Border never existed. When the Omagh bombers killed 33 people, they were over the Hard Border in maybe 15 minutes. When my friend was blown up and killed by the IRA, they probably were already over the Hard Border and worked the bomb by wire. I've been blown up a few times too, and in each case the people fled over the so-called Hard Border because they knew that the Irish Police wouldn't lift a finger once they were over the Border - half the Garda were IRA sympathisers anyway (or even members).
But now we get this song and dance routine about how going back to a Hard Border would be a betrayal of all that is good and right in the world. Fuck's sake.
Anyway, that's where we are at the moment. The EU and its supporters are pushing the same solution they always do to a vote that goes against them: have another vote, and maybe another, until the people get it into their thick skulls that, like the European Parliament, they're only there to say "yes"; never "no" to the Commission.
I voted Leave specifically because the EU leadership is not only undemocratic, it is actively anti-democractic (a Greek friend recently remarked that the whole Brexit process is, from the RU point of view, "to show you that you have no power, just like Greece"). I'm not interested in the money or the immigration crap. If we don't have democracy, we have nothing.
Re:Makes sense. (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, the majority did. Where do you want to draw the line?
Democracy is not the tyranny of the majority. Considering how narrow the win was, and the dire consequences for people about to lose their rights, citizenship, and potentially their families and livelihoods due to this decision it seems like a compromise should be considered at the very least.
Unfortunately no attempt to compromise was made by the government, it just keeps trying to ram May's deal through.
the expectation was that if we couldn't get a decent deal we would simply walk
Not it wasn't. The official Leave campaign actually proposed, in their leaflet sent to every household in the UK, that the UK would negotiate a new trade deal BEFORE triggering Article 50 and would be sure to get a good deal, as well as having lots of other trade deals lined up ready to go.
There was never any suggestion from any of the major players on the Leave side that we simply walk away with nothing. In fact emphasis was put on how we would certainly retain a close relationship with the EU.
Strangely, the terms were all good for the EU and shit for us.
Not strange at all. You leave the club, you can't expect to keep all the benefits of the club while not paying anything or obeying the club rules. May ruled out any option to keep some benefits of membership on day 1 with her red lines.
Surely no reasonable person would expect the EU to harm itself just to give the UK a better deal than any other country has. Compromising the single market, which is over 6x larger than the UK market, would be economic suicide.
All the stuff about German car manufacturers demanding the government protect their biggest market was right... It's just that the biggest market isn't the UK, it's the EU's single market.
If the original negotiators had said "Oh, and the backstop will be for 3 years, ok?" no one on the EU side would have blinked an eye.
You really think they would have thought "oh, okay, in three years time we might have an open border with a non-EU country and no plan to deal with it, giving the UK a massive threat to hang over our heads during trade negotiations, that sounds fine"?
Yet the Hard Border never existed.
You forgot about all the attacks on border installations? Or the fact that it was mostly about controlling commercial traffic rather than individuals?
The EU and its supporters are pushing the same solution they always do to a vote that goes against them: have another vote, and maybe another, until the people get it into their thick skulls that, like the European Parliament, they're only there to say "yes"; never "no" to the Commission.
You mean like the European Constitution that they forced us to vote on over and over again... Oh no wait they abandoned it when it proved unpopular, went away and came up with more popular proposals.
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I've been blown up a few times too
I have several questions.
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Well, the majority did. Where do you want to draw the line?
In many democracies a decision of such magnitude is not sufficiently decided on a majority. The decision to fundamentally alter the path of a state is often taken by an overwhelming majority (e.g. 70%) or by an absolute double majority of territories (i.e. more than half the people in total, and more than half the people in each voting state to prevent exactly the situation you're now facing with Scotland and Ireland).
This is done to prevent tyranny of the majority as well as tyranny of a populous region an
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why is a bare and indeed questionable majority sufficient to force this onto the large portion of the population that does not want
Because the alternative is to allow a minority to impose something worse on the larger portion of the population.
what is up with refusing to put the question a second time?
I'm happy for a second referendum to take place, offering the options:
1 - May's shit deal
2 - Leave with no deal
I can not support a referendum that includes any options for not leaving for two very clear reasons. One is that one reason for leaving the EU is its very anti-democratic nature which includes insisting on re-running any referendum that goes against the EU, and the second is that having
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It wasn't. I have no idea what you even think you're talking about.
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Not true. Most MPs are remainers by quite a margin.
Paterson, Rees-Mogg and Farage do mention this occasionally. Like every 15 seconds. *froth* 8froth* willothepeople *froth* *froth*
missed opportunity! (Score:5, Funny)
Slashdot, you missed another opportunity to make a great headline!
Brexit Wikipedia Page more of a mess than Brexit
Seriously, life is only going to throw you so many softball pitches.
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Even humorous headlines should have a sense of proportion.
I dare hyperbole to make less sense...
News (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that many editors and contributors seem to think Wikipedia is a news aggregator site. An encyclopedia does not collate the news. It gives a broad overview of many different topics. As it stands the Brexit article reads like a mini-novel. It's several times longer than the article on the Norman conquest of England, an event that changed the island for centuries. It's almost larger than the article on the UK itself.
It should be, maybe, three or four pages with a few sub-pages on the vote itself, and the outcome, AFTER it happens, or doesn't happen.
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An encyclopedia does not collate the news. It gives a broad overview of many different topics. As it stands the Brexit article reads like a mini-novel. It's several times longer than the article on the Norman conquest of England, an event that changed the island for centuries.
That's because they used to be printed on dead tree and the size/weight/cost meant each entry had to be pretty short. I don't mind if the Brexit process is documented in excruciating detail, that's an advantage of Wikipedia as long as it's factual. Just to take a random page like the Wolf [wikipedia.org] it's 20000+ words long with 250+ references. Many of those chapters are again just summaries to new main articles like:
Main article: Subspecies of Canis lupus
Main article: Evolution of the wolf
Main article: Canid hybrid
Mai
Do russian cyberoperatives get overtime pay? (Score:2)
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You get a 'LURK MORE' ribbon though just for participating!
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Say hello to Vlad for me, will you?
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"Every Russian who disagrees is an extremist agent with an agenda"
(Russians who agree are dead.)
Russians (Score:3)
One word: Russians. What is bad for the great western democracies is great for the Russian mob.
Re: Russians (Score:2)
Whatever the outcome ... (Score:2)
Let's go meta.. (Score:2)
Someone ought to start a page documenting the drama on the Brexit page.
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They got a prediction wrong. Is that the same as lying? I suspect they assumed a leave vote meant that Brexit would happen sooner than 2 years and hadn't factored in the problem of parliament being unable to agree on which way is up.
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You can't always trust official government stats as well, especially with something this controversial. For example, the British Treasury predicted that a leave vote would cause the U.K. to lose ~500k jobs through 2017;
[citation needed]
I remember lots of predictions of what would happen if we left.
I don't recall anyone predicting that we'd (a) fuck around for 3 years and (b) what would happen if we did.
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That's because people hadn't anticipated both the incompetence of May and the anti-democratic corruption of the rest of parliament.
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It's happening because we haven't left! #willadapeople #sovrinty
Re:One word. (Score:4, Insightful)
Mistake.
It would great fun to change the Wikipedia article on Brexit into a redirect to here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Mistake.
I dunno. It's good to see Wikipedia reenacting Brexit as performance art.
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World wars are also unsustainable. Actually, it's almost like nothing is ever "fire and forget" and everything needs to be constantly tweaked and maintaibed.
Re: One word. (Score:5, Insightful)
The Brexit leaders have been promising more globalism. They avoid the word, but thatâ(TM)s exactly what they mean when they talk of Britain free trading around the globe and free from the EU to strike deals bespoke to UK. Itâ(TM)s one of the contradictions and deceits of this whole thing.
Re: One word. (Score:3)
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Isolationism or tribalism (ie, nationalism) doesn't seem to be the solution either.
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Quite a lot of the Brexit folks do want tribalism; they want the eastern Europeans out, they want to set their own rules by themselves (at the kingdom level that is, they don't want Scotland or Wales to rule themselves). The campaigning during the Brexit referendum was not about nuances, it was about exageration and false promises.
We don't have open borders in the US anyway, and yet that is the politicisation that's going on.
Re: One word. (Score:2, Troll)
Quite a lot of the Brexit folks do want tribalism; they want the eastern Europeans out, they want to set their own rules by themselves (at the kingdom level that is, they don't want Scotland or Wales to rule themselves).
Saying "citation needed" would be a gross understatement in this case. Even the BNP states that England should be composed of "the English, Scots, Irish and Welsh along with the limited numbers of peoples of European descent, who have arrived centuries or decades ago and who have fully integrated into our society". And the BNP is an extremist "party" which has a membership of between 500 and 3,000 out of a population of 66,000,000.
It seems much more likely that you're a far-left snowflake projecting your
Re: One word. (Score:5, Interesting)
Its a difficult topic, and especially difficult to be open and blunt when answering questions without falling into the trap of then being tarred and feathered for your answers, which is why I'm a little trepidatious about the answer I'm about to give.
First off, lets get the obligatory out of the way - I voted remain in the referendum.
But the fact that I voted remain doesn't stop me from seeing what I think many leavers see, only they perceive it as something that needs to be resolved.
The last referendum on membership of what is currently called the European Union in the UK was in 1975, making it a full 41 years of asking the British public about membership in no uncertain terms - national elections go somewhat to that extent, but the UK is generally a 2 party system and the public don't really get to ask the divisive questions that they should...
Since the 1975 referendum, the concept of the EU has changed massively - a key claim by leavers is that the UK needs to control immigration once again, something which was largely taken away from the UK government by the EU. And unfortunately, they are quite correct - Union movement was largely restricted to certain groups in 1975, and today the right to move around the EU and work in all member countries is basically open to every EU citizen.
One of the key moments in EU history within the UK was the 1995 EU membership round - when several former Soviet states joined.
The problem with "freedom of movement" is that you have to buy into the "good for the whole, not just the part" way of thinking - the former Soviet states joining the EU were very poor, and EU membership was a massive boon for them, in that it suddenly gave them access to markets, support and, more importantly, high wage jobs.
In the UK we started to see an influx of eastern European workers, an influx which far outweighed previous waves - and this time the money they earned didn't stay in the UK. Many of them came to the UK, they worked menial, hard jobs, stayed in almost slum like living conditions, and sent a large proportion of their wages back home to their families. But the problem is, people didn't see these immigrants as hard working family people, they saw them as scum because they were willing to live in conditions that weren't fit for animals (almost always illegally, otherwise local housing officers would have shut the places down), work for people willing to work them into the ground, and they never had any money - because they were supporting families back in eastern Europe.
Add to that the fact that during the 1990s and 2000s, the EU wasn't working for the UK a lot of the time - the illegal immigrant camps that the French were more than willing to turn a blind eye to at Calais and other French ports, for example. They were more willing to let those camps exist and the people living in those camps get illegally to the UK than they were willing to deal with them.
Add to that the scaremongering that various newspapers had been spewing for decades, such rags like the Sun or the Daily Mail - I grew up in a Daily Mail household, and I still remember the anti-EU stories that paper ran in the 1990s!
The result of the 2016 referendum had very very little to do with the campaigning in the run up - the outcome was, in my opinion, set much earlier than that, and the "Remain" campaign had utterly no chance against it. It wasn't the "Leave" campaign which won the day, it was the preceding two decades of bullshit that the lower and middle class of the UK had been exposed to which did it.
I have no problems with immigration or freedom of movement in the EU - bettering the whole is a goal which deserves to be held up. My issues with the EU stem from elsewhere, but weren't at all anything to make me consider voting "leave" under any circumstance.
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Sanctuary cities means that they don't waste their resources so that local cops can do immigration enforcement. But this gets blown out of proportions, pointing to oddball cases where someone who was released on a very minor crime ends up killing someone, then suddenly it's proof that immigration is out of control.
We don't have open borders. You can sneak across, certainly. Same with most countries. If you're caught you're often deported, even in San Francisco. No wall is necessary and it wont' do the job
Re: One word. (Score:3, Insightful)
Sanctuary cities means that they don't waste their resources so that local cops can do immigration enforcement.
No, it means that when local cops arrest someone who is in the country illegally, they aren't allowed to contact federal authorities.
Painting it as "wasting resources" is just a far-left talking point meant to make the idea more palatable. No city anywhere is dedicating resources to finding illegals, but even if they were you could pass an ordinance specifically directing your cops not to do it. Declaring your city a "sanctuary city" goes well beyond that; it's a deceleration that not only will you not se
Re: One word. (Score:3)
Richard, I wouldn't dream of "tarring and feathering" you for your answers, and I'm truly saddened that you felt trepidation prior to providing them.
I have no horse in the "leave/remain" race overall. I think you've done an excellent job of explaining the situation from your perspective, though I think your personal biases colour it somewhat (and I think you realize that too). While I certainly sympathise with your magnanimous desire to care for all of the EU, I also sympathize with the UK citizens who ar
Re: One word. (Score:2)
Let's just ignore all of your absurd assumptions and misrepresented studies; even if 100% of what you say us true, it's all just a roundabout way of saying "we shouldn't enforce immigration laws". Which is open borders. "Hey, illegal immigrants commit fewer crimes, so let them all in!"
Re: One word. (Score:2)
Cities aren't responsible for border control. Don't blame sanctuary cities when the federal policies are at fault.
Re: One word. (Score:3)
Cities aren't responsible for border control; they're also not responsible for directly opposing border control. You need to go look up the word "sanctuary" in the dictionary.
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They aren't very bright, then.
Or perhaps you aren't.
Re: One word. (Score:2)
wrong. We enforce immigration laws at a less high priority than enforcing murder, extortion, kidnapping, child abuse, etc. That's what the law is designed to do, and sanctuary cities make it official policy to prioritize those things.
Wrong. Sanctuary cities make it official policy not to enforce immigration law at all. As I've said to the other retard, you need to look up the word "sanctuary".
Fuck it, I'll do it for you:
sancÂtuÂarÂy
noun
1.
a place of refuge or safety.
Re: One word. (Score:4, Interesting)
The only problem is the Scots, Irish and Welsh would like the English to fuck right off, the wee ballbags.
Me, I think it's funny that the English want to be all sovereign and independent now, considering they're the fucking country that tried to colonize the whole fucking world.
There will never be a Brexit. It's bullshit, and except for the BNP and a handful of goddamn neo-nazi types, everyone who voted in favor of Brexit has now sobered up and wished they had never heard of the thing. My guess is that there will be another referendum and the vote will flip.
Re: One word. (Score:4, Informative)
You are mixing up two accession waves. In 1995, only Austria, Finland and Sweden joined.
The enlargement you talk about happened in 2004, when 10 countries (8 former Eastern Bloc plus Cyprus and Malta) joined.
Interestingly, each Member State was allowed to restrict the freedom of movement from the eight former Eastern Bloc countries, for two, then another three and finally another two years. Only the UK, Ireland and Sweden did not choose such a restriction at all, which explains (partly) why so many Polish workers went to the UK from 2004. Spain, Portugal, Finland and Greece opened up in 2006; Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands and Denmark in 2009 and Austria and Germany in 2011.
At that time, the UK was most open to immigration.
I don't see the working conditions as extreme as you. Many workers from Poland ended up working in hotels, small shops, etc. as well. Clearly not for very high salaries, but the ones I saw always seemed very hard-working but not impoverished.
Re: (Score:3)
No, it means that when local cops arrest someone who is in the country illegally, they aren't allowed to contact federal authorities.
Except that is total BS [wikipedia.org]. "In the United States, municipal policies include prohibiting police or city employees from questioning people about their immigration status and refusing requests by national immigration authorities to detain people beyond their release date, if they were jailed for breaking local law."
South Tuscon, Arizona is even on record saying they don't honor ice detention requests "unless ICE pays for cost of detention." Sounds like a financial motivation to me.
Re: (Score:3)
No, it means that when local cops arrest someone who is in the country illegally, they aren't allowed to contact federal authorities.
Sounds like a good idea. People don't report crime or come forward as witnesses or help the police in any way if they are worried it might get them deported.
Imagine if one of your family members was murdered and the only witnesses, the only people who could put the perpetrator away were too scared to help you get justice.
Re: One word. (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
You mean it has been out of the EU in those two last years?
You're somewhat clueless.
Re: One word. (Score:5, Insightful)
The last two years are about only having a divided and unreconciled parliament, it has nothing to do whatsoever with whatever Brexit will or will not bring.
Britain has done extremely well by being in the EU. Being in the EU is hardly "globalism", it's just being good buddies with your next door neighbors. Maybe that's just my American view where we share common interests across three thousand miles, but in Europe people act like someone a mere 100 miles away is an inscrutible foreigner.
There was a time in the California when people from Oklahoma were discriminated against, outsiders coming in to steal jobs because of the dustbowl. Similar to Brits discriminating against Poles today. In the US we can look back though and see that time as shameful. Perhaps one day Brits will look back and look at Brexit differently through the lens of time.
Re: (Score:2)
Britain has done extremely well by being in the EU. Being in the EU is hardly "globalism", it's just being good buddies with your next door neighbors. Maybe that's just my American view where we share common interests across three thousand miles, but in Europe people act like someone a mere 100 miles away is an inscrutible foreigner.
Trade and cooperation is fine, but most of Europe doesn't want to become the United States of Europe neither culturally nor politically. As a result we've created a common market without a common policy, like a common currency witout a monetary policy and open borders without an immigration policy. Germany can let a million immigrants come and Poland zero, it's like California and Texas had completely different rules about Mexican immigrants and yet very soon they'd all be US residents/citizens who can go w
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
The US tried to be a "country comprised of individual States with greatly concentrated local power" - that Constitution was called the Articles of Confederation. It didn't work and only lasted eight years, from 1781 to 1789.
Re: One word. (Score:4, Insightful)
You missed the part about the civil war I think, and the amendments added to the constitution to forbid states rights (ie slavery, which was what state's rights were always about). The only reason loose federation was the original model was precisely because of slavery. We did not have 13 colonies with vastly different cultures, the biggest point of contention was slavery. Today we're more alike than back then anyway.
Re: (Score:3)
You had 13 colonies that where vastly different. The north was brittish/german/swizz, the south was french, he very south spanish (ok, those were not colonies/founding states of the US)
Re: (Score:2)
If "collectivism is a mental illness", what are you doing in a free collective like Slashdot? Are you mentally ill or something? Bootstrap and go into the woods, make your own blog with the kind of blow and hookers YOU like as an INDIVIDUAL. Reject the tyranny of MODERATION!
Ah, but you get lonely, you say?
Re: (Score:2)
all collectivism has to be imposed
You don't say. Who imposed the tribal structure on all those free-roaming and proud hunters of the olden days, John?
Proto-Stalin, the proto-Marxist?
Re: (Score:3)
Collectivism is a mental illness, of-course all collectivism has to be imposed.
It's hard to address your arguments when you say shit that fucking stupid.
You *know* that's stupid, right?
You can't just assign a constraint to something you don't like that doesn't exist, and then use that as proof that it can't possibly exist without that constraint.
You understand that's fallacious don't you?
If you don't, that's forgivable, and you're just a moron.
If you do though, that means you're trying to utilize general ignorance of fallacious arguments to prove a point, which makes you much wo
Re: (Score:3)
If an author of an article loses interest, dies or for some other reason abandons the article, you need other maintainers. You can't have new maintainers on original research, as they weren't the ones researching, they don't have the original results et.al.. So they have to have other sources to go to and check, if the article gets outdated and an update is required. External sources for each item mentioned in the articles are a must to allow for maintenance.
More than one word. (Score:3)
"...economists aren't reliable enough to be included in Wikipedia articles."
I cannot be the only one to have found humor in this phrase.
Re:It's all rather pointless (Score:5, Insightful)
You complain about bias while citing Breitbart? Doctor, heal thyself....
all those sources ARE right wing (Score:2)
Right wing, right wing, and right wing, respectively. So too is National Pentagon Radio, though you didn't mention them. You seem to have fallen into the common trap of thinking that Democrats/Republicans are left/right, when that's not the case. Not only are the Democrats owned by the same industries that own the GOP, they hate the actual left much more than Republicans do. Case in point: how the party still whines about a handful of Nader vote
Re: (Score:2)
No need to insult me by calling me a right winger. [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:2)
For house wiring. which most people would be familiar with.. (per wikipedia)
Line (L; formerly, live, or phase) Power-carrying core/wire in a typical low-voltage or domestic installation; brown (pre-2004: red).
Neutral (N) Power-carrying core/wire in a typical low-voltage or domestic installation, usually bonded to earth (ground) voltage by the supplier; blue (pre-2004: black).
Earth (E), formally, circuit protective conductor (CPC) Core/wire that provides a connection to earth, for safety and protection pu
Re: (Score:3)
In general, a decent electrician won't rely on the color of wires in an existing installation, anyway. Since they don't know who installed what incorrectly, they should test before doing the work.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
BS 7671 (IET Wiring Regulations) sets the standards for electrical installation in the UK and many other countries.
The IET runs the JPEL/64 committee, (the national Wiring Regulations committee), with representatives from a wide range of industry organisations. The committee takes on board information from international committees and UK specific requirements, to ensure consistency and improve safety throughout the UK electrical industry.
Ever wonder why the UK have completely different plugs from Europe? Its because they have their own standard. If you need an electrician I suggest you don't hire "Big Clive" as he is clearly a cowboy.
The whole "immigrants flooding into the UK" trope was just bog-standard racism used by the same people who promised an extra £350 million per week for the NHS but of course they've gone quiet about that now haven [europeanmovement.co.uk]
Re: (Score:3)
That is simply not true. You're going to need a better source than
Re:Brexit from ground zero (Score:5, Informative)
The UK had one color code for wiring which, upon entering the EU, needed to be changed to match EU standards on wiring.
I present to you the fundamental reason why Brexit happened: A complete lack of understanding of what the EU requires and how standards come to being as well as complete untrue hyperbole blamed on the boogeyman.
The UK most definitely did *not* need to change anything about their wiring when entering the EU. Quite the opposite. The UK has steadily followed the developments by the IEC long before the EU even discussed wiring colour. The UK also adopted a standardised IEC 60446 wiring scheme before the EU did. In addition they proposed amendments to the standard which are actually going to be adopted in the rest of Europe.
Mind you we're talking about a country who is proud that they will be able to get dark blue passports now that they are leaving the EU ... despite the fact that there is zero requirement in the EU for actually having a burgundy passport in the first place. Yay to taking back control you didn't know you already had?
Re:Brexit from ground zero (Score:5, Informative)
The actual change was:
Earth green to green/yellow
Neutral black to dark blue
Live red to brown
This change happened in 1981 and was nothing to do with the EU. It was also of great benefit. It was easy for red/green colour blind people to confuse earth and live on the old system. Also in some parts of Europe red was earth and back then appliances didn't come with plugs fitted as standard, so people used to get electrocuted when travelling.
Re: (Score:3)
We Brits don't want to be lorded over by a bunch of globalist spivs in Brussels.
You're not being. You just make stupid decision entirely by yourself and then pretend it's all the EU's fault. Hence the boogeyman. You're right, it's not about wiring, it's about every stupid decision *you* make.
Re: (Score:3)
WTF? What electrician is dumb enough to work on live wires?
"the left"?? (Score:2)
The EU is neoliberal institution. That means right wing, not left wing.
Re: (Score:2)
Why didn't the British politicians of the Right - the ones who stirred up the whole mess, and who have been in power since the referendum without interruptions, IIRC - leave the EU last month?
What stopped them?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Whaaa, whaaa, whaaa... Shall I call the whaaambulance?
Why didn't your lot WIN the election that May called in 2017? Why didn't you throw her out? Why did your little parties, led by fucktards like Furage fail - all of them without exception?
Please leave, indeed. Europe will be better off without the always whining, impotent Brexitannitards.
But you won't, because all you twats can do is whine, whine, whine.