Will Britain vote for Brexit?

Discussion in 'Politics' started by James R, Jun 22, 2016.

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Brexit or Bremain?

Poll closed Jun 24, 2016.
  1. I would support Brexit and I think it will succeed.

    3 vote(s)
    33.3%
  2. I would not support Brexit, but I think it will succeed.

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  3. I would support Brexit, but I think Britain will Remain.

    2 vote(s)
    22.2%
  4. I would support Remain, and I think Britain will Remain.

    3 vote(s)
    33.3%
  5. I have no opinion / don't want to express my opinion on this.

    1 vote(s)
    11.1%
  6. Brexit? Bremain? What 'chu talkin' about, Willis?

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  1. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    22,087
    Non-binding, implementation at the discretion of the standing government, which is due to fall, and distinct from Parliament. Practically irrelevant.

    Opportunity for Cameron to defend his strategy of ego and jus primae noctis with the British proletariat - and fail, pleasantly - for Brit votes to express dissatisfaction and for Germans to act like Germans. Because Germans.
     
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  3. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    22,910
    Yes it is real money. Yes stock markets move up and down, but they don't usually move up and down like that every day, and when they do it is never good news. What happens in the markets directly and immediately affects millions of people across the globe. How many savers have panicked today? The markets today have directly and adversely affected the pensions of millions of retired people across the world. It's very real money for those folks.

    We may get there. But for you to argue that everything is just fine, is more than a little disingenuous. It isn't. This isn't normal and things aren't fine.

    Well, this isn't 2008. The reason there has been some recovery is because the governments across the world an in particular the US took some bold and dramatic steps to fix the problems. There is no guarantee the same will happen again. Politics haven't gotten better in the US. If Republicans should maintain some degree of control over Congress this fall, the US might not be able to pull off another recovery. The US government was barely able to pull off a recovery in 2008.

    As has been previously mentioned, that's a problem. The longer this drags out the worse it is for all parties. Why would businesses invest in the UK when they don't know what the rules will be? They wouldn't, and that's a big problem for the UK.

    And while the UK is trying to figure things out, the world is moving on. The risk and uncertainties continue to mount. Businesses eschew risk.

    This affects the savings of everyone around the globe, not just the UK and not everyone owns an annuity, and annuities are only as good as those who manage those annuities. If they take big losses, the annuity could become completely worthless. Annuities are only as good as the issuer. And you seem not to understand that dragging this out, doesn't help the UK or anyone else. It exacerbates the problem by extending the uncertainty.
     
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  5. geordief Valued Senior Member

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    2,118
    Well the most famous example (Kristallnacht) seems to show that it is the manipulated mob that is most dangerous.

    The mob itself doesn't rule - it follows.
     
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  7. Confused2 Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    609
    IMHO lot's of sensible comments from Sarkus.
    If the Pound has lost (say) 10% against the Euro then labour costs have fallen by 10% from an international perspective - surely good news for Multinationals.
    https://www.theguardian.com/busines...ew-record-of-24bn-pounds-eu-referendum-brexit
    £24bn came from where? Would this flow ever have decreased or reversed? If champagne and BMWs get more expensive - who will suffer most - the rich or the poor?
     
  8. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    22,910
    I guess you didn't get the part about doing business in the UK has just become 10% less profitable for the aforementioned reasons. Name me one business which is excited about the prospect of the UK leaving the EU. As previously mentioned, no one knows what it will cost producers in the UK to produce and deliver goods to the EU, Canada, the US or anywhere else for that matter because the UK has just tossed out the rule book.

    It's more than just BMWs and champagne which will get more expensive. It means oil, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, clothing, aircraft, electronic equipment, and food stuffs including tea, have all become more expensive, and that affects virtually everyone in the kingdom. It's more than just champagne and BMWs.
     
  9. Confused2 Registered Senior Member

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    609
    Oil comes from the EU? Medical equipment - surely not much? Clothing - high fashion perhaps. My electronic equiment doesn't seem to have come from the EU. Aircraft - Boeing, Airbus - I thought they were American companies. Food - certainly some, yes. Tea - I'm pretty sure that isn't grown in the EU.

    So food aside, I don't think I personally have bought any EU product within the last five years or more. EU product will almost certainly be more expensive (regardless of the value of the pound) but Joe could give some idea of the EU products (food aside) that you have actually bought recently (a plane perhaps?). Long term trade with the rest of the World (which is quite large) should be unaffected by leaving the EU.
     
    Last edited: Jun 25, 2016
  10. Sarkus Hippomonstrosesquippedalo phobe Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    10,353
    Where have I said everything is fine??? Have you actually read anything I've written, or just looked at a few words and jumped to conclusions?
    Economies of the world will generally do what they need to and reach whatever position and growth they can sustain. It will be no different now. Am I saying everything is fine? No. Just that it's a matter of perspective.
    Long-term as in prepared to take a hit short- and medium- term to be able to benefit in the long-term. Not that the uncertainty of negotiations would drag out to the long-term.
    Let them. The UK will do what it thinks is best for its people, whether its people know what is best for them or not. Yes, businesses eschew risk and the UK knows that trying to sort things as soon as possible is better for all. But they will take their time getting a workable solution that minimises pain for all rather than rush into foolish positions for all. The UK is not a play-thing for the rest of the world. We do not operate solely to give the rest of the world financial benefit. We are a people. We have made a decision, and we now have time to negotiate as good a deal as we can get from it, ideally minimising pain for all. At the very least we have 2 years as given to us by the very treaty we, for whatever reasons, wish to extricate ourselves from. But most know it will be painful, especially for the UK.
    I understand it only too well, thanks. If you had bothered not just reading but actually understanding what I write you may see that. The UK is not making decisions for the rest of the world but for the people of the UK. If people suffer financially because of the decisions the UK make then that is the risk they take with any investment. The same with investments in the US, in China, in any other economy. If the UK feels it wants to get its sovereignty back, and has to leave the EU to do it, then that is what it will do, and has chosen to do. Other people who take a loss as a result simply misunderstood the strength of feeling, and are paying the price accordingly.
    Am I saying everything is fine? Of course not. Global financial issues are never fine. But it is simply the markets working as they should. We got hit by the US issues. We get hit when China slows. Things happen. Markets recover. Deal with it. And at the moment we have a single day's information on which to base how the markets are viewing things. Maybe next week we will see whether it truly is a catastrophe or maybe, just maybe, the markets will realise that they might have initially overreacted. I doubt it, but it's a possibility.

    But don't get me wrong - I voted to remain for all the potential financial issues you and others have cited. I just don't see the knee-jerk reactions on Friday as a catastrophe. Let's just see what next week brings.
     
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  11. Bells Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,270
    Aaaaannnddd here we go..

    The leave campaign has appeared to row back on key pledges made during the EU referendum campaign less than 24 hours after the UK voted for Brexit, after it emerged immigration levels could remain unchanged.

    Leading Brexit figures had disagreed throughout the campaign on issues including immigration, free movement and the cost of the UK’s EU membership.

    But within hours of the result on Friday morning, the Ukip leader, Nigel Farage, had distanced himself from the claim that £350m of EU contributions could instead be spent on the NHS, while the Tory MEP Daniel Hannan said free movement could result in similar levels of immigration after Brexit.

    Hannan said: “Frankly, if people watching think that they have voted and there is now going to be zero immigration from the EU, they are going to be disappointed.”

    His comments came after the leave camp made voters’ concerns about the impact of immigration on jobs, infrastructure and the NHS a key part of their campaigning.

    There had been no suggestions of changing the status of any EU nationals in Britain, Hannan told the BBC, adding that no one had said this might be the case in the event of a leave victory.

    “All we are asking for is some control over roughly who comes in and roughly in what numbers.”

    The issue is the latest area where leave campaigners appeared to be walking away from pledges made during the campaign, following Farage’s admission on Friday morning that the pledge plastered all over the official Vote Leave battle bus to spend money recouped from the EU on the NHS was “a mistake”.


    And what was one of the main reasons people voted to leave?

    Polling suggests discontent with the scale of migration to the UK has been the biggest factor pushing Britons to vote out, with the contest turning into a referendum on whether people are happy to accept free movement in return for free trade.

    Public unease has been fuelled by a failure to prevent immigration from piling pressure on jobs markets and public services, and a refusal by politicians to acknowledge the sheer numbers of Europeans making new homes in the UK after the EU’s expansion east in 2004 and 2007.

    Cameron promised before the 2010 election to bring migration down to the tens, not hundreds, of thousands. However, his failure to live up to his promise, repeated in 2015, has undermined trust in his leadership and contributed to a sense that UK politicians are powerless to lower migration from the EU.

    The leave camp tried to make the arguments for Brexit more about the economy and sovereignty than immigration, but quickly found that “taking back control” over immigration was the most resonant message. They also linked immigration to shortages of primary school places, difficulty in getting a GP appointment, and depressed wages.


    And yet, now they are admitting that immigration from Europe won't really be changing that much.

    I'd laugh, if this wasn't so god damn tragic.

    And it seems hindsight is a great thing..

    Meanwhile, Liam Fox cast doubt on the necessity of triggering the article 50 clause of the Lisbon treaty that sets out the legal process for a country’s EU withdrawal.

    “A lot of things were said in advance of this referendum that we might want to think about again and that [invoking article 50] is one of them,” said the Conservative MP.

    “I think that it doesn’t make any sense to trigger article 50 without having a period of reflection first, for the cabinet to determine exactly what it is that we’re going to be seeking and in what timescale.

    They didn't think to have that period of reflection before going out and convincing people that leaving the EU was 'da best thing evaaaa!'?

    So what? Now he says 'oopsie, let's really think about this'? Now he suggests that 'hmmm maaaybe this is a bad idea'? What other things is he saying should be thought about again?

    I would dearly love to know if there is a poll about people regretting voting to leave now. Because the only person from that campaign who is still jumping up and down like he's won something is Farage. Borish Johnson looks like his cat's head exploded in his bowl of porridge and the others simply look shocked and terrified. And now Fox is saying that maybe some more thought should be put into all of it after all.

    And the petition to have a second referendum has reached 1.5 million.

    The crazy train continues on its merry way.

    Anywho, good night!
     
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  12. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    22,910
    No, but it doesn't matter where the UK gets its imported oil. Oil will still be more expensive because the British pound is weaker today than it was a few days ago. Oil is among the UK's major imports and its price affects virtually everything in the country. Oil contracts are normally denominated in US dollars and the British pound has just lost 10% of its value against the US dollar, that means it will cost the UK 10% more to purchase the same amount of oil from whomever it purchases oil from. The British Pound has become an unstable currency and nobody is going to want to do business with British Pounds.

    Yes medical equipment, the UK is a major importer of medical equipment. You don't seem to understand, this is bigger than just the EU. It's not just products imported from the EU. It's products imported from everywhere. Everything the UK imports from anywhere just became more expensive because of UK's currency devaluation.

    Now, if a new trade agreement is reached, that too could add to the costs of imported and exported goods.

    Yeah, you just don't get it. This has nothing to do with the EU. This has everything to the reduced value of the British Pound. The pound sterling no longer purchases as much at it did a few days ago, no matter where the imported good comes from. If the UK purchases medical equipment from the US, that equipment is more expensive today than it was yesterday. If the UK buys oil from Saudi Arabia or Russia, that oil is more expensive today than it was a few days ago because the pound sterling buys 10% less than it did a few days ago.

    The US dollar has increased in value, it buys more imported goods and services than it did a few days ago. If you own a dollar today, you can buy more oil today than you could a few days ago. Things just became cheaper in the US thanks to Brexit. And you don't have to buy airplanes to use an airplane, you can purchase a ticket to travel on an airplane. Imports account for about 2o% of the UK's GDP and exports account for another 20% of the UK's GDP. Those numbers should give you serious pause. In contrast imports and exports only account for 23% of the US GDP. A game of high stakes roulette is being played with the British economy, and it's difficult to see how this ends well for the United Kingdom.

    http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/TG.VAL.TOTL.GD.ZS
     
    Last edited: Jun 25, 2016
  13. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    22,910
    You keep downplaying this and you keep assuming everything is just going to get better, because, you know, that's how it's suppose to work. Things don't always get better. Things don't always work. As previously pointed out, the US just barely managed to do the things needed to rescue its economy in 2008. It might not be able to pull it off again. Recovery isn't magic and it isn't automatic. The adverse effects of the Great Depression lasted for more than a decade in the US. WWII finally pulled the US out of the Great Depression. Let's hope we don't have to fight another world war to pull us out of a depression.

    The China event earlier this year was an example of unfounded market hysteria. It happens in markets, and because the hysteria was unfounded, the markets recovered on their own. This isn't that, and for you to equate the two as you have done is either dishonesty or ignorance. This is a solid and legitimate economic concern that could have wide spread adverse economic consequences. It will likely put the UK into recession. It might put the EU into recession and eventually the world into a recession. I don't know if it will get that far, let's hope not. But this has the potential, to put the world into a recession. The tragic part of this is what it will do to the UK and more specifically to the young people there. This is their jobs' and this is their future which is being played with and for very little if any benefit, economic or otherwise.
     
  14. Sarkus Hippomonstrosesquippedalo phobe Valued Senior Member

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    10,353
    I don't assume anything. I hope. Maybe you see absolutely no possibility of things working out okay in the long term. I do.
    I think you've taken the biscuit on overreaction in this thread. Well done.
    It may be 10 years for the UK to get back to a normality. If that's what the long-term is then so be it. It will undoubtedly require some years of austerity measures, higher tax rates, and much lower growth, if not recession. But if this is what happens then so be it. The UK populace seem to think it is worth it, or if it turns out to be worse than they thought it would be then perhaps they'll learn (albeit too late).
    I made no reference to any specific China event earlier this year and certainly didn't equate anything, so please read what I actually write, not what you simply want to disagree with. Any dishonesty is only to be found in your strawman. It is a fact, I'm sure you agree, that our economies get hit when China slows. I simply use this as an example of things that do effect the global economy, whether unfounded or not, and things from which we have, currently, adjusted to, survived, live with.
    None of this I disagree with - it is a genuine concern. It might be better than this, it might be worse. But why overreact now when we simply don't know what the outcome will be. It might be that the UK adopts the Norwegian model in their engagement with the EU for simplicity and stability - although why they would go through the pain of the referendum to be in the same position minus a place at the table, I don't know - and then they spend the following years renegotiating on areas that matter most (free movement etc). I don't know. Noone yet does. That's the point.

    Look, put simply, I don't disagree with the potential issues, the concerns, the dire consequences that may transpire (might even be likely to transpire) in the short and medium term - which is why I voted to remain. But until they become more certain to materialise I simply don't see it as a catastrophe, as originally touted, based on the data of the market movements of 1 day. Next week we'll get a clearer picture. The month after an even clearer one. And it may well be the catastrophe that people think.

    So I'll leave it there.
     
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  15. Sarkus Hippomonstrosesquippedalo phobe Valued Senior Member

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    10,353
    2.3 million and climbing.
     
  16. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    Democracy and Suicide

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    Click to make perfect sense.

    Well, yes. Quite frequently. We've been having a proxy discussion about that question in the U.S. for over twenty years, at least.

    The American saying is that "the Constitution is not a suicide pact", derived from a 1949 Supreme Court decision; Justice Robert Jackson dissented in Terminiello v. Chicago, writing:

    "The choice is not between order and liberty. It is between liberty with order and anarchy without either. There is danger that, if the court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom,it will convert the constitutional Bill of rights into a suicide pact."

    (qtd. in Greenhouse↱)

    I would suggest that, generally speaking, civilized society is not a suicide pact.

    In 1992 two states, Colorado and Oregon, voted on ballot measures intended to impose state-mandated discrimination against homosexuals. In Oregon, voters rejected Measure 9; in Colorado, voters approved Amendment 2. In 1993 the first injunction against Amendment 2 came down from a district court in Denver; on 20 May 1996, Justice Kennedy delivered the opinion of the Supreme Court striking Amendment 2 according to the Equal Protection Clause of Amendment XIV. For the last twenty years, at least, we have been hearing from American conservatives lamentations of "judicial activism", but what they really mean is that they are upset for not getting their way.

    Two questions of "judicial activism", which in turn actually has a different technical definition than we use in the public arena, but much like the term ad hominem, most people don't care, so the corruption becomes the new definition. Still, though:

    • In 2005 the Court ruled against executing convicts who committed their capital crimes as minors. Justice Scalia, of course, pitched a tantrum because it was his decision―okay, you can't execute the developmentally delayed and psychiatrically incompetent, but you can still execute children―overturned. The Court noted that much of their change was rooted in the scientific evidence; neurological data established that the decision-making processes in adult and juvenile brains were strikingly different, and the majority felt this was sufficient cause to refuse to treat two otherwise identical crimes the same. Anecdotally, I picked up on the decision because conservative pundits on msnbc's conservative show―Scarborough Country―spent a lot of breath denouncing the Court's liberal judicial activism in the Roper v. Simmons decision. When I went back to look up the decision, the Supreme Court majority's alleged liberal judicial activism actually upheld the majority decision of one of the nation's most conservative state Supreme Courts. That is to say, conservatives went on television to complain about liberal judicial activism advancing a conservative decision. This is a common pattern in conservative accusations of liberal judicial activism.

    • In 2009, the Roberts Court handed down two strangely contradictory decisions, both undermining regular order and rule of law. In Safford United, the Court ruled that a school district really did break the law when multiple adults forced a child to strip naked; strip searches had already been outlawed. The Court, however, carved out an ignorance as bliss exception for the school district, thus ruling in their favor. Yes it was illegal. No, they didn't know. No, it doesn't matter whether or not they should have. Oh, and we're not setting any precedent today. Days later, the Court handed down its infamous Ricci decision, pertaining to race, hiring, and disparate impacet. In this case, the Court found that the New Haven Civil Service Board did, in fact, follow the law, but carved out an exception for Ricci and fellow petitioners, faulting the public agency for following the law, and by the way, we're not setting any precedent today. Conservatives celebrated these decisions as appropriate, and really disdain discussions of conservative judicial activism.​

    Consider Kim Davis, for instance. At the heart of the question, is whether constitutional rights are inalienable, or to be parceled out by a majority bloc according to how their prejudices determine who deserves what. In other words, Americans are perpetually wrestling between democracy and the mob; between freedom and necessity to the one, and the proverbial suicide pact to the other. There is a reason some people demand the mob mentality; there is a reason they want to put the constitutional rights of homosexuals and women to the ballot box. It's the same reason they wanted to put the constitutional rights of blacks on the ballot. They think they can vote to remove or ward off the constitutional rights of people they don't like.

    The Brexit vote starts to sound like a mob-mentality action on the west side of the Pond for two reasons: The amount of puffery on the front side about how the polling was wrong and people wouldn't really do it, and the small but increasingly loud contingent who are willing to admit they didn't know what they were doing and would much prefer to undo the damage they just did.

    It's not that I am unsympathetic to the vote itself; that's British business to be settled by British people. But it doesn't really assure anyone to watch the Empire twitch and quake like it doesn't know what to do next. And here's a part I will invoke America for, because we have some experience with this: The way Britain gets through this, now, is if everyone else in the world decides to set their own interests aside and do what's best for Britain.

    If Britain undid the vote tomorrow, they couldn't undo the massive economic contraction that occurred in the immediate, predictable reaction.

    The world tends to get pissy whenever Americans unsettle markets such to damage a measurable and significant share of all the money in the world, and well they should. The world will survive; Britain will, generally, endure, though if things go badly enough this could mark a threshold to substantive imperial decline. Most of the world will get through this just as it would otherwise (it's not time to start self-righteously predicting a wave of Brexit suicides as people's livelihoods are wiped out). Still, though, people at large are generally going to remember this one for a while.

    In the U.S., for instance, the Fed had been planning to finally start raising interest rates again; those plans are now off, and suddenly the proposition of negative interest rates is in play. We wouldn't even do that when we blew things up last decade.

    So, you know, best of luck to Britain; we're all pulling for them to get through. But, yeah, it's weird to say that, since I'm an American and that's usually everybody else's line about us. But as much as I might sympathize with certain valences of nationalistic pride―e.g., while I consider the "one world government" an inevitability, I won't concede to it until it is the clear and necessary path forward as if national divisions themselves are untenable for having finally been convicted of their shortcomings―it really does start to look like mob rule posing as democracy; that is, it would appear some clear potential consequences were ignored at best, or else wilfully disdained for sentiment and aesthetics.

    And, yeah, we Americans know that routine pretty well, too. We've been going through it every general election, now, for twenty-five years, at least, and that's just the Gay Fray. If we throw in the human rights of women, and ethnic and religious minorities, this part has been with us the whole time.

    And no, we haven't ever discovered a good, easy, safe way through.

    Best of luck to our British neighbors.
    ____________________

    Notes:

    Greenhouse, Linda. "The Nation; 'Suicide Pact'". The New York Times. 22 September 2002. NYTimes.com. 25 June 2016. http://nyti.ms/28UXapT
     
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  17. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    22,910
    This isn't an "overreaction". That's the bottom line. This is a reasonable reaction to an adverse macroeconomic event. The response to this event was well planned and worked very well. People were prepared. Circumstances in the UK might get better, they might get worse. If the UK does nothing and continues down this path, it will get worse. If the UK tries to extricate itself from this mess and remains in the Union, things will get better. And the longer it takes to resolve this, the worse it will become.

    By the way, in business an finance, long-term is normally considered a year or more. We are talking potentially at about 2 years or more if the UK goes down this path. That's long term. So there are both near-term, midterm and long-term adverse consequences at stake here.
     
  18. Sarkus Hippomonstrosesquippedalo phobe Valued Senior Member

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    I'm aware of the technical meaning of "long-term" on a company's balance sheet, thanks. But it has other meanings depending on the context of the discussion. In terms of investing in the stock-market, for example, long-term is certainly not as short as merely anything "over 1 year". It would be 5, 10 or more years. But it would depend on the context of the discussion.

    So no, I am not talking about simply beyond 1 year being long-term, and I would have thought the context would have made that obvious. Long-term is however long it takes to get multi-year treaties in place to replace what we are giving up in the EU.
    If it helps, let me clarify: for this discussion I would consider short-term as sub 1-year, and long-term being when things finally settle down into a status-quo with the replacement treaties being in place, however long that is. 5, 10 years etc. Likely 10 years.
     
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  19. Confused2 Registered Senior Member

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    609
    That would make a very fine "Letter from America" - I wish more (many more) people could read it. Thank you.
     
  20. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    8,466
    ........
    old joke?
    Circa 1779-82: A French "revolutionary" is sitting at an outdoor cafe with his private secretary when a boisterous mob goes by. Turning to his secretary he says: "Quickly, find out where the are going so that I may lead them".
     
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  21. Confused2 Registered Senior Member

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    609
    As the counts arrived the BBC rang ? - a member of the government and reported he said something that couldn't be repeated by the BBC followed by "this isn't what's supposed to be happening.".
     
    Last edited: Jun 26, 2016
  22. Dr_Toad It's green! Valued Senior Member

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    2,527
    How do you feel about the whole thing, C2? Will you sell more toothpaste, or less?
     
  23. geordief Valued Senior Member

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    2,118
    Reminds me a bit of the ambulance chasing syndrome (is cynicism the link?)
     

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