I've not checked mine out, but will do when I get a minute.

Just saw this on the BBC's site:
  So, even after this vote, is it the situation that the European Parliament can veto what we've just decided at the polls?

Not everyone, but about 52% of the population. :C

Edit - Actually, that's an egregious slur, inflated by my disappointment in the results.

However, the people I know and have spoken to about it, who voted out are, for the most part, 50yr+ who are racist.

 

They can veto a proposed new trading (etc) agreement, not the referendum.

Can I come too? :D

The wife actually said she wanted to move to Scotland after hearing the result this morning.

What's your policy on immigration?
 

wow, so glad you all decided to accept the 'democratic will of the people' with such good grace, would hate to see you get all bitter about it

I accept the will of the people, doesn't mean I'm happy about it.

I assume you accepted the will of the people electing Tony Blair as Prime Minister 3 times whilst being overjoyed?
 

Yeah I'm pretty bitter right now. Looks like we're heading for a deep recession, taking down much of Europe with us on that path. My kid's future prospects for just about everything are now adversely affected - education, healthcare, culture, travel. My own immediate prospects also seeing as the company I work for does a lot of work in Europe.

Meanwhile, as I posted on here a day or two ago, I don't believe many of the reasons people voted Leave are at all valid and I don't believe the government we're about to get from it are going to do anything good for those people either. And the main opposition party look like they're about to oust their leader and hop back on the immigration controls bandwagon that already failed them last GE, based on a 4 point gap in this referendum. It's an absolute joke.

I'm not really sure, Jon, what kind of reaction from us you'd be hoping for. Nobody's threatening civil war or to somehow 'undo' it, the vote is done and dusted. At some point in the next few days I wish to progress past grief and bitterness to some kind of hope that somehow we can rescue a good future out of this but right now I am not optimistic so please do share any thoughts you have along those lines, I would truly welcome it.

I genuinely don't understand the whole "grief and bitterness" aspect

I have been hoping for this day for over 20 years and I'm amazed it has finally come

​Do you really think our country is so shit we can't decide things for ourselves any more? are we so dumbed down that we have to be told what to do?

Why will "education, healthcare, culture, travel be  adversely affected" ? we will have more money available for things like that.

​I see a bright new future ahead, we can make our own trade deals deal with the whole world, we can choose our own immigration policy, our fishing, farming, etc will be conducted more fairly. Hopefully our old friends in the Commonwealth won't hold too many grudges for the appalling way we treated them when we joined the EU.

What we had was a shit deal with a shit organisation (even they admit that) - the future may be uncertain but almost anything has to be better.

A few things come to mind about this:

1. Although leave was instigated and led by racist and nationalist scum like Farage and UKIP, I don't believe it is accurate or fair to cast all people with concerns about EU immigration crowding out jobs, housing and benefits, as 'racist'. There's a lot of wealth in Britain, but it was the poorest who bore the brunt of the impact. Due to lack of education, and/or poor information sources, those who are unable to work out who and what is really to blame, but desperate to lash out at anything with a target painted on it for them.

2. There was never a referendum about joining the EU, correct? Nobody got asked.

3. I personally feel, without a shred of evidence, that the result could *also* be interpreted as a referendum on the failed and harmful policies of Cameron and Osborne and predecessor governments (Blair, Brown) and the ruling elites who have benefited handsomely from these same policies. Yeah, the ones who fronted the Remain campaign.  The cycle of general elections has long been a hopeless charade, with lots of people feeling their voices, opinions and votes are considered irrelevant. So this was their one chance to stick it to the man, a populist revolt unfortunately hijacked by sleazy demagogues like Boris.

"I genuinely don't understand the whole "grief and bitterness" aspect"

Seriously? You haven't been paying attention.

2. Kinda - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_European_Communities_membership_referendum,_1975

Told what to do? Well in terms of things like environmental rules to clean up our beaches, probably yes, but otherwise no. The EU doesn't/didn't really do that though? 

Education - requires funding, not austerity
Healthcare - see above plus staffing
Culture - see above
Travel - free movement ring any bells? I hope end up in Schengen as part of the trade deal now. Plus the £ is now worth shit against a lot of it so can we even afford it now.

As far as more money - hahaha. 11 years worth of that mythic "£350m weekly payments" has been wiped off our economy today alone. I can't even get my head around figures that size. Where's the 'more money' coming from?

Cornwall, Wales, North East, farmers - massive beneficiaries of EU funding and that's all going now. You reckon the Tories will make that up? 

We could already choose our own immigration policy. We'll now have less say over EU ones (Norway and Switzerland for reference) and exactly the same say over non-EU. 

We had the best deal of any EU member, now we'll get a punitive one to make sure nobody else wants to exit. We gotta hope that we can make some deals with the Commonwealth, USA and China that somehow make up for it, and have pretty much no diplomats with experience of making such deals either.

I absolutely hate this vague 'somehow anything will be better' with apparently no specific clue how that will be.

That was another stay/leave referendum.

we were already in then

and TBH, I didn't like the Blair years, but I didn't like the Cameron years much either, I think it's time to step away for the two party system. 

I think I'd like some system where we are governed by the best people available, wherever they're from. Not the pushiest of a minority group most of us wouldn't want to be seen with. 

I basically agree with this - see Ant's post about point 2.

1. Yep, and I don't do that. I just feel like the racists who make a loud part of that 52% are now emboldened and it's going to get worse. See the wave of far-right anti-immigration party support we're getting today from the likes of Le Pen. Fucking hell! We need infrastructure, we have an austerity government instead.

3. I think so too, I just think the vote this has happened to was so massively far the wrong one to actually do it at. I mean, there's shooting yourself in the foot and then there's firing a cannon at it.
 

"We voted against an entity that we don't understand, to prevent problems it didn't cause, in order to get back to a past that never happened"

"'I never thought leopards would eat MY face,' sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party."

I just wonder if EU expansionism into Eastern Europe (coupled with the reuniting of E. + W. Germany) was its undoing. Also, EU members' participation in US-led NATO middle-east follies fuelled the current massive refugee crisis, which was a huge factor in the leave victory IMO (global warming in the middle east, Africa and East Asia are also big, contributing factors to conflict and economic refugees).

I don't think the expansion into countries that weren't really ready for it was a good idea; ditto for freedom of movement. I don't really know how else they could've expanded, but opening up and forcing the Euro on a country and economy that are a fair bit below your community's doesn't strike me as a great idea.

The participation in NATO activities is, imho, a different kettle of fish. Refugees would've attempted to come anyway, but with lesser freedom of movement they wouldn't have gotten around as much.

Personally I think something similar to... whoever said it further up  :-$ : this wasn't as much a vote for a Brexit as it was a vote against the disappointment due to the recent years of poor Government, cuts, etc. It all got shoved together into one pot, stirred around a bit by both campaigns, and neither debunked nor combated properly by anyone with enough exposure, therefore ending up as a main outlet of people's frustration. I'm not really surprised by the outcome, though I was hoping it wouldn't have been the case.

Do you honestly believe, Jon, that the extreme right wingers who will soon lead the UK government - Iain Duncan Smith, Michael Gove, Boris Johnson, Chris Grayling and John Redwood - will support 'education, healthcare, culture, travel'?  They are ideologically opposed to social welfare and public services.  They actually hate them.  As soon as they're in power, they will return to this government's programme of cutting back public services and privatising public ones with renewed vigour because - in their philosophy - public services are inherently wrong - and closing or privatising them is right.

One of the functions of the European tier of government was that it was a force of moderation of politics, whether of the left or the right.  An extremist government - like the one that the Brexit voters have called down upon the UK - can do incalculable damage because it is driven by ideology, not by the pragmatic needs of the people.

Then, of course, there's the inevitability that Scotland will use the Scottish vote result to justify another UK membership referendum.  Welcome to the end of the United Kingdom.

"The participation in NATO activities is, imho, a different kettle of fish. Refugees would've attempted to come anyway, but with lesser freedom of movement they wouldn't have gotten around as much."

Yeah, I'm not saying refugees targeted Europe because of NATO (though terrorists obviously did), but that NATO helped create the refugee (and terrorism) crisis in the first place (Sadaam, Qadaffi --> ISIS), and Europe is a lot closer geographically, so it was bound to get the lion's share (so to speak).

Of course. Official policy is the more the merrier. And if you want to smoke weed that's fine, as long as you brought enough to share.