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Brexit: MPs overwhelmingly back Article 50 bill

68 points by gfmio 10y ago

H4CK3RM4N 10y ago
This will have huge implications for tech industry in the UK with drawing employees from the EU becoming a lot harder, as a result of uncertainty over visas if nothing else.
- elastic_church 10y ago
  such that London software engineering salaries will no longer be comparably pitiful to America's?
  - branchless 10y ago
    Take housing costs into account in London and many places are better: http://i.imgur.com/mNsk5oD.jpg http://i.imgur.com/mNsk5oD.jpg
    - fastball 10y ago
      That's what happens when you let your city become an investment vehicle.
      - cletus 10y ago
        The problem with London is not property investment per se. It's that property is essentially used for money laundering [1]. If you're a US tax resident or citizen then you're used to filling out onerous reporting documents (FBAR and possibly 8938 as well) on foreign assets. Real estate holdings has zero reporting requirements. [1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/london-property-market-real-estate-money-laundering-overseas-foreign-buyers-mps-a7138176.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/london-prope...
        elastic_church 10y ago
        Same in the US. The real estate industry lobbied for an exemption from AML/KYC reporting requirements. If you don't need a mortgage, then you show up with a cashier's check or briefcase full of cash, sign papers in the name of an LLC or Limited Company and now you have a house in the anonymous shell companies' name and clean money.
        branchless 10y ago
        You get it. And yes: property speculation is not an investment. The UK allows washing through land only.
  - cletus 10y ago
    Upvote. Not sure why you're getting downvoted because you are correct: London salaries are pitiful even before you factor in the enormous cost of living there (I lived and worked in London for 4 years but did contracting as the salaries even 10+ years ago were and are a joke comparatively). It's one reason I and many others work in the US instead. No idea what Brexit will do to relative incomes. It depends on what happens with the pound, what the visa situation looks like and so on.
    - elastic_church 10y ago
      Simply put, I would not code for other people at the salaries that Romanians accept.
      - kodfodrasz 10y ago
        This basically means you would not code for other people only at a pay lower than what a Romanian would accept, as if a Romanian would accept a pay of X, that also means he/she would accept a pay of X+ε, for all wages from X to ∞. This makes you a pretty cheap labour, and if your hate against Romanian people can somehow be turned to motivation, probably a very productive one! If you are formulating hatespeach against Eastern-Europeans, please be precise!
        elastic_church 10y ago
        How did you extrapolate low wages to hatespeech against Eastern-Europeans? This presupposes quite a lot and suggests a lot more about you. I made a pretty specific and narrowly tailored statement. Your postulate primarily neglects reality.
        wtfishackernews 10y ago
        You implied that Romanians are beneath you.
        kodfodrasz 10y ago
  - untog 10y ago
    That's the optimistic view. The pessimistic view is that a lot of multinational companies will leave London, driving down demand for developers (and, well, everyone else)
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
tetraodonpuffer 10y ago
Leaving the pros/cons of brexit out: if there was a plebiscite where the electorate voted in favor of something, and if we assume that politicians are supposed to be representing the electorate, shouldn't it have been pretty straightforward that the corresponding bill would pass largely unchallenged? If it had failed, how would the politicians have justified to their electors voting against their express intentions?
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  > how would the politicians have justified to their electors voting against their express intentions? Sometimes the electorate requires protection from itself; the idea is not new (below History Stack Exchange answer references James Madison). "It is arguably the most famous of The Federalist Papers [1]. Madison argues that society is undone by faction" defined as "a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.…" "A faction can be a minority, but also a majority, and the majority can work against the good of the whole by abusing its power. The majority simply cannot be trusted not to oppress the minority, given the opportunity." Emphasis mine. The "Tyranny Of The Majority" [2] also comes to mind. "American founding father Alexander Hamilton writing to Jefferson from the Constitutional Convention argued the same fears regarding the use of pure direct democracy by the majority to elect a demagogue who, rather than work for the benefit of all citizens, set out to either harm those in the minority or work only for those of the upper echelon. The Electoral College mechanism present in the indirect United States presidential election system, and the phenomenon of faithless electors allowed for within it, was, in part, deliberately created as a safety measure not only to prevent such a scenario, but also to prevent the use of democracy to overthrow democracy for an authoritarian, dictatorial or other system of oppressive government.[3] As articulated by Hamilton, one reason the Electoral College was created was so "that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications." Some failure scenarios are clearly hard to prepare for. http://history.stackexchange.com/a/5568 http://history.stackexchange.com/a/5568 [1] http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa10.htm http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa10.htm [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority
toyg 10y ago
For all the arguments from brexiters about democracy, this vote was yet another travesty. Somehow a narrow 52% majority of votes became 70%+ in Parliament. And of course the few millions of EU citizens living here went completely unrepresented, again. What a disappointment, this country turned out to be.
- KitDuncan 10y ago
  You are looking at this the wrong way. This vote wasn't supposed to represent the exact percentage of the referendum, just wether or not they want to overule the referendum, which 70% did not want to do, even though many of those MPs did not support the Brexit.
EnderMB 10y ago
Whether you agree with Brexit or not, I think it's safe to say that the way MP's voted will be looked at with as much scrutiny as those that voted for the Iraq war. My Labour MP supported Remain, and our area voted strongly to remain in the EU, but she has backed the bill, leading to a lot of angry people. It's a reasonably safe Labour seat, but with increasing numbers of young people moving here, I can see her struggling next election.

68 points by gfmio 10y ago

This will have huge implications for tech industry in the UK with drawing employees from the EU becoming a lot harder, as a result of uncertainty over visas if nothing else.

elastic_church 10y ago
such that London software engineering salaries will no longer be comparably pitiful to America's?
- branchless 10y ago
  Take housing costs into account in London and many places are better: http://i.imgur.com/mNsk5oD.jpg http://i.imgur.com/mNsk5oD.jpg
  - fastball 10y ago
    That's what happens when you let your city become an investment vehicle.
    - cletus 10y ago
      The problem with London is not property investment per se. It's that property is essentially used for money laundering [1]. If you're a US tax resident or citizen then you're used to filling out onerous reporting documents (FBAR and possibly 8938 as well) on foreign assets. Real estate holdings has zero reporting requirements. [1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/london-property-market-real-estate-money-laundering-overseas-foreign-buyers-mps-a7138176.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/london-prope...
      - elastic_church 10y ago
        Same in the US. The real estate industry lobbied for an exemption from AML/KYC reporting requirements. If you don't need a mortgage, then you show up with a cashier's check or briefcase full of cash, sign papers in the name of an LLC or Limited Company and now you have a house in the anonymous shell companies' name and clean money.
      - branchless 10y ago
        You get it. And yes: property speculation is not an investment. The UK allows washing through land only.
- cletus 10y ago
  Upvote. Not sure why you're getting downvoted because you are correct: London salaries are pitiful even before you factor in the enormous cost of living there (I lived and worked in London for 4 years but did contracting as the salaries even 10+ years ago were and are a joke comparatively). It's one reason I and many others work in the US instead. No idea what Brexit will do to relative incomes. It depends on what happens with the pound, what the visa situation looks like and so on.
  - elastic_church 10y ago
    Simply put, I would not code for other people at the salaries that Romanians accept.
    - kodfodrasz 10y ago
      This basically means you would not code for other people only at a pay lower than what a Romanian would accept, as if a Romanian would accept a pay of X, that also means he/she would accept a pay of X+ε, for all wages from X to ∞. This makes you a pretty cheap labour, and if your hate against Romanian people can somehow be turned to motivation, probably a very productive one! If you are formulating hatespeach against Eastern-Europeans, please be precise!
      - elastic_church 10y ago
        How did you extrapolate low wages to hatespeech against Eastern-Europeans? This presupposes quite a lot and suggests a lot more about you. I made a pretty specific and narrowly tailored statement. Your postulate primarily neglects reality.
        wtfishackernews 10y ago
        You implied that Romanians are beneath you.
        kodfodrasz 10y ago
- untog 10y ago
  That's the optimistic view. The pessimistic view is that a lot of multinational companies will leave London, driving down demand for developers (and, well, everyone else)
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

tetraodonpuffer 10y ago

Leaving the pros/cons of brexit out: if there was a plebiscite where the electorate voted in favor of something, and if we assume that politicians are supposed to be representing the electorate, shouldn't it have been pretty straightforward that the corresponding bill would pass largely unchallenged? If it had failed, how would the politicians have justified to their electors voting against their express intentions?

toomuchtodo 10y ago
> how would the politicians have justified to their electors voting against their express intentions? Sometimes the electorate requires protection from itself; the idea is not new (below History Stack Exchange answer references James Madison). "It is arguably the most famous of The Federalist Papers [1]. Madison argues that society is undone by faction" defined as "a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.…" "A faction can be a minority, but also a majority, and the majority can work against the good of the whole by abusing its power. The majority simply cannot be trusted not to oppress the minority, given the opportunity." Emphasis mine. The "Tyranny Of The Majority" [2] also comes to mind. "American founding father Alexander Hamilton writing to Jefferson from the Constitutional Convention argued the same fears regarding the use of pure direct democracy by the majority to elect a demagogue who, rather than work for the benefit of all citizens, set out to either harm those in the minority or work only for those of the upper echelon. The Electoral College mechanism present in the indirect United States presidential election system, and the phenomenon of faithless electors allowed for within it, was, in part, deliberately created as a safety measure not only to prevent such a scenario, but also to prevent the use of democracy to overthrow democracy for an authoritarian, dictatorial or other system of oppressive government.[3] As articulated by Hamilton, one reason the Electoral College was created was so "that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications." Some failure scenarios are clearly hard to prepare for. http://history.stackexchange.com/a/5568 http://history.stackexchange.com/a/5568 [1] http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa10.htm http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa10.htm [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority

toyg 10y ago

For all the arguments from brexiters about democracy, this vote was yet another travesty. Somehow a narrow 52% majority of votes became 70%+ in Parliament. And of course the few millions of EU citizens living here went completely unrepresented, again. What a disappointment, this country turned out to be.

KitDuncan 10y ago
You are looking at this the wrong way. This vote wasn't supposed to represent the exact percentage of the referendum, just wether or not they want to overule the referendum, which 70% did not want to do, even though many of those MPs did not support the Brexit.

EnderMB 10y ago

Whether you agree with Brexit or not, I think it's safe to say that the way MP's voted will be looked at with as much scrutiny as those that voted for the Iraq war. My Labour MP supported Remain, and our area voted strongly to remain in the EU, but she has backed the bill, leading to a lot of angry people. It's a reasonably safe Labour seat, but with increasing numbers of young people moving here, I can see her struggling next election.