7 ms·

Brexit is already damaging European science

42 points by okket 8y ago

petercooper 8y ago
Brexit has already damaged a lot of things as well as waste over 2 years of politicans' time, distracting them from working on things the UK needs handling. Leave voters have a lot of dirt on their hands.
- sammydel 8y ago
  Shame on them for choosing the wrong option. We should just stop having elections.
  - sveme 8y ago
    A yes/no referendum without detailing the actual approach to withdrawal is definitely not an election either.
    - denzil_correa 8y ago
      I'm not sure why you have been downvoted. A referendum is a survey of the population. Most rigorous surveys, never ask a simple Yes/No question to the final objective. A survey questionnaire has a detailed set of questions which considers various aspects of the final decision. Ideally, these questions should be discussed and ratified within the parliament. Then, based on answers to these questions - you can have a next round of discussion in the parliament. You can decide to make your final decision for Yes or a No. It's almost as if we are intentionally ignoring all these years of progress made by science to solicit public opinion. Please note, I'm not talking about Brexit but the act of indulging into a referendum in general.
      - sammydel 8y ago
        People voted "yes", which means "get me the hell out of the EU, I don't care how"
        Khol 8y ago
        As someone who has actually interacted with leave voters it most certainly didn't mean that for everyone. Taking such an extreme position and then claiming that it's what the people voted for is farcical.
        icebraining 8y ago
        And that can be criticized even if you support the right to choose. They should have cared how.
        tobltobs 8y ago
        I don't believe this. All those brainwashed Brits have voted for stuff like: - There will be no downside to Brexit, only a considerable upside. (David Davis, 10 October 2016) - The day after we vote to leave, we hold all the cards and we can choose the path we want. (Michael Gove, 9 April 2016) - Getting out of the EU can be quick and easy – the UK holds most of the cards (John Redwood, July 17 2016) - The free trade agreement that we will have to do with the European Union should be one of the easiest in human history (Liam Fox, 20 July 2017) - Let’s give our NHS the £350m the EU takes every week. - A vote for leave will be a vote to cut immigration.
    - debacle 8y ago
      The Friday in me wants to reply with "You need to vote on the bill, to know what's in it." But the actual approach to withdrawal was always going to be incredibly complex. There are obvious, valid reasons for staying in the EU and obvious, valid reasons for leaving the EU. Almost any headline coming from Europe is going to be anti-Brexit; almost every headline about the issue is going to be highly biased. The pro-Brexit arguments assume that the UK was getting less than it was giving to the EU - sacrificing money, border sovereignty, financial sovereignty for economic incentives that the UK is likely able to negotiate for anyway. The anti-Brexit arguments coming from outside of the UK are mostly impassioned moral attacks insulting anti-globalists, or fearmongering. The EU has been on a slow decline, and the Brexit may hasten that decline, along with renewed trade pressure from the US and China. Britain holds more cards than every other EU nation besides Germany. It doesn't make sense for them to lend their weight to non-contributing economies.
      - 7000skeletons 8y ago
        I'm personally hoping that Brexit, combined with a lot of the more nationalist governments that are beginning to pop up across Europe, is going to lead to the EU moving away from the combined European government it's been angling towards and back to the combined economic network it originally began as.
      - CaptainZapp 8y ago
        border sovereignty But here's the rub. The UK never gave that up. England (and by default Ireland) are not in the Schengen accord[1]. You cannot get into the UK from Europe without passing border control and showing your passport (Id for some countries). Even if you stretch that argument (our borders are porous and any EU citizen can move the UK to work) that argument still doesn't wash. You have to be documented and all. The UK never gave up control of their borders. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Area
        growlist 8y ago
        The UK can only deny entrance to EU citizens under very limited circumstances, on pain of being dragged through EU courts. Does that sound like sovereignty to you?
    - SilasX 8y ago
      But the referendum was just approving that some exit should happen and Parliament should work toward it, with no commitment to any particular approach.
  - petercooper 8y ago
    Quite. We shouldn't have had that referendum. We didn't need a referendum to enact the minimum wage, legalise gay marriage, or many other key positive shifts for British society, and nor have we had referenda for populist ideas like becoming a republic, removing the House of Lords, or reintroducing the death penalty.. so why we got a referendum for such a poorly understood and complex concept as EU membership is beyond me.
    - sammydel 8y ago
      So you think people shouldn't have a say on whether the minimum wage should be raised or on whether gays should be able to marry. Because, obviously, whatever the elite chooses is going to be okay for you, right?
      - YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
        Who are the "elite"? I'm guessing they're not the elected representatives of the people, right? Otherwise, there wouldn't be a problem with them making the decisions they've been elected to make.
      - kevinh 8y ago
        People's rights shouldn't be up for vote.
        icebraining 8y ago
        That sounds good but is ultimately an empty statement. Which rights are valid in the first place must be decided by vote.
      - petercooper 8y ago
        The people get a say by voting at general elections for parties that present a broad balance of deeply considered positions that reflect their views. This is why we have parties in Parliament and not just a giant bundle of one-issue politicians. People felt strongly enough about progressive politics and the policies that went with that to vote Labour numerous times in the 90s and 2000s. Anyone who felt so strongly about throwing the country into a tailspin by exiting the EU could have quite easily voted for the UK Independence Party in at least 2 general elections.
  - duxup 8y ago
    California and other places have shown referendums can be be a mess. Sometimes you do need people in government who can at least know some of the lay of the land / consequences making decisions rather than the population voting on broad concepts that may not even get them what they want.
- MattBearman 8y ago
  I don't think it's fair to blame leave voters, the whole thing was fundamentally flawed. While it was obvious what remain meant, "leave" was never actually defined, and so open to interpretation. Forgetting for a second the whole thing was just a ploy to win over UKIP voters, it is ridiculous that this far down the line leave still hasn't been defined. A small part of me thinks that maybe May is playing the 4D chess long-con, and deliberately being as incompetent as possible to drive us to a last-minute remain outcome. Ockham's Razor says otherwise though
  - petercooper 8y ago
    I don't think it's fair to blame leave voters They actively chose something that you say was poorly defined but which was widely understood to be a very dramatic and potentially dangerous shift for the country. If you can't blame them for picking a poorly defined option out of some jingoistic notion of what the UK should be, what can you blame anyone for?
    - 7000skeletons 8y ago
      You could probably blame the people responsible for the referendum in the first place, trying to use the notion of a Brexit vote as some sort of political brinkmanship game against the EU and then running for the hills when people didn't vote the way they expected them to. Like that David Cameron clown, for instance.
    - growlist 8y ago
      > If you can't blame them for picking a poorly defined option out of some jingoistic notion of what the UK should be, what can you blame anyone for? How's the view up there on that high horse?
    - YouAreGreat 8y ago
      That's like saying a woman can't leave an abusive marriage until she's secured a new husband.
    - contravariant 8y ago
- emptyfile 8y ago
  >waste over 2 years of politicans' time, distracting them from working on things the UK needs handling. Its actually precisely the opposite. Berxit is distracting the populace so that politicians don't have to fix things have been broken for quite some time.
  - orf 8y ago
    It's nice to postulate that the PM and cabinet are some cabal of highly intelligent villains who decided it was simpler to just leave the EU than fix the NHS, but it doesn't line up with reality. Nobody expected the vote to go the way it did, not the guy who called it and especially not the guy who ran the leave campaign.
    - 7000skeletons 8y ago
      Nonsense, they had a big old battle bus. Anybody with a battle bus clearly knows what they're doing.
    - rleigh 8y ago
      I and many others were not so surprised. The polls were wrong because privately many people are unhappy with the EU, and that wasn't reflected in public opinion polls. If nothing else, the result showed a major disconnect between the policies of the main parties and the wishes of the electorate, and it will be good to have that democratic deficit rectified.
- rleigh 8y ago
  An alternative viewpoint would be that it's entirely the fault of the politicians. Firstly, for not doing any preparation for the consequences of a leave vote prior to the referendum. Secondly for spending over two years prevaricating over implementing the result, leading to a lot of unnecessary uncertainty. Time to stop dithering, grasp the nettle firmly, and get on with it. I don't think blaming voters for their democratically expressed views is fair. The referendum asked the populace if they wanted to remain or leave the EU. And the politicians got the answer, and it wasn't particularly surprising, even if they weren't personally happy with it. They are supposed to represent the electorate democratically, after all.
  - icebraining 8y ago
    Who chose those politicians? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVXekzwkz10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVXekzwkz10
supernova87a 8y ago
Let's face it though. British science was already headed in a downward spiral before Brexit. Decreasing student positions, postdoc positions, selling off shares in research partnerships and observatories, and more. EU consortia were already planning for the UK to be an unreliable partner. Plus, anyone who was capable of applying for research jobs on an international level found the salaries quite pathetic. This whole progression was sadly, not unexpected.
fuscy 8y ago
I guess about 51% of the population didn't see this coming or they didn't care. I remember the propaganda going on around that time... The best scene was a politician rebutting a scientist because "what does an expert know about anything" especially economics. I tend to agree with Aristides or Socrates (rip by vote) that people are idiots and democracy can't work without education.. atleast about the issue that is being voted.

42 points by okket 8y ago

Brexit has already damaged a lot of things as well as waste over 2 years of politicans' time, distracting them from working on things the UK needs handling. Leave voters have a lot of dirt on their hands.

sammydel 8y ago
Shame on them for choosing the wrong option. We should just stop having elections.
- sveme 8y ago
  A yes/no referendum without detailing the actual approach to withdrawal is definitely not an election either.
  - denzil_correa 8y ago
    I'm not sure why you have been downvoted. A referendum is a survey of the population. Most rigorous surveys, never ask a simple Yes/No question to the final objective. A survey questionnaire has a detailed set of questions which considers various aspects of the final decision. Ideally, these questions should be discussed and ratified within the parliament. Then, based on answers to these questions - you can have a next round of discussion in the parliament. You can decide to make your final decision for Yes or a No. It's almost as if we are intentionally ignoring all these years of progress made by science to solicit public opinion. Please note, I'm not talking about Brexit but the act of indulging into a referendum in general.
    - sammydel 8y ago
      People voted "yes", which means "get me the hell out of the EU, I don't care how"
      - Khol 8y ago
        As someone who has actually interacted with leave voters it most certainly didn't mean that for everyone. Taking such an extreme position and then claiming that it's what the people voted for is farcical.
      - icebraining 8y ago
        And that can be criticized even if you support the right to choose. They should have cared how.
      - tobltobs 8y ago
        I don't believe this. All those brainwashed Brits have voted for stuff like: - There will be no downside to Brexit, only a considerable upside. (David Davis, 10 October 2016) - The day after we vote to leave, we hold all the cards and we can choose the path we want. (Michael Gove, 9 April 2016) - Getting out of the EU can be quick and easy – the UK holds most of the cards (John Redwood, July 17 2016) - The free trade agreement that we will have to do with the European Union should be one of the easiest in human history (Liam Fox, 20 July 2017) - Let’s give our NHS the £350m the EU takes every week. - A vote for leave will be a vote to cut immigration.
  - debacle 8y ago
    The Friday in me wants to reply with "You need to vote on the bill, to know what's in it." But the actual approach to withdrawal was always going to be incredibly complex. There are obvious, valid reasons for staying in the EU and obvious, valid reasons for leaving the EU. Almost any headline coming from Europe is going to be anti-Brexit; almost every headline about the issue is going to be highly biased. The pro-Brexit arguments assume that the UK was getting less than it was giving to the EU - sacrificing money, border sovereignty, financial sovereignty for economic incentives that the UK is likely able to negotiate for anyway. The anti-Brexit arguments coming from outside of the UK are mostly impassioned moral attacks insulting anti-globalists, or fearmongering. The EU has been on a slow decline, and the Brexit may hasten that decline, along with renewed trade pressure from the US and China. Britain holds more cards than every other EU nation besides Germany. It doesn't make sense for them to lend their weight to non-contributing economies.
    - 7000skeletons 8y ago
      I'm personally hoping that Brexit, combined with a lot of the more nationalist governments that are beginning to pop up across Europe, is going to lead to the EU moving away from the combined European government it's been angling towards and back to the combined economic network it originally began as.
    - CaptainZapp 8y ago
      border sovereignty But here's the rub. The UK never gave that up. England (and by default Ireland) are not in the Schengen accord[1]. You cannot get into the UK from Europe without passing border control and showing your passport (Id for some countries). Even if you stretch that argument (our borders are porous and any EU citizen can move the UK to work) that argument still doesn't wash. You have to be documented and all. The UK never gave up control of their borders. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Area
      - growlist 8y ago
        The UK can only deny entrance to EU citizens under very limited circumstances, on pain of being dragged through EU courts. Does that sound like sovereignty to you?
  - SilasX 8y ago
    But the referendum was just approving that some exit should happen and Parliament should work toward it, with no commitment to any particular approach.
- petercooper 8y ago
  Quite. We shouldn't have had that referendum. We didn't need a referendum to enact the minimum wage, legalise gay marriage, or many other key positive shifts for British society, and nor have we had referenda for populist ideas like becoming a republic, removing the House of Lords, or reintroducing the death penalty.. so why we got a referendum for such a poorly understood and complex concept as EU membership is beyond me.
  - sammydel 8y ago
    So you think people shouldn't have a say on whether the minimum wage should be raised or on whether gays should be able to marry. Because, obviously, whatever the elite chooses is going to be okay for you, right?
    - YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
      Who are the "elite"? I'm guessing they're not the elected representatives of the people, right? Otherwise, there wouldn't be a problem with them making the decisions they've been elected to make.
    - kevinh 8y ago
      People's rights shouldn't be up for vote.
      - icebraining 8y ago
        That sounds good but is ultimately an empty statement. Which rights are valid in the first place must be decided by vote.
    - petercooper 8y ago
      The people get a say by voting at general elections for parties that present a broad balance of deeply considered positions that reflect their views. This is why we have parties in Parliament and not just a giant bundle of one-issue politicians. People felt strongly enough about progressive politics and the policies that went with that to vote Labour numerous times in the 90s and 2000s. Anyone who felt so strongly about throwing the country into a tailspin by exiting the EU could have quite easily voted for the UK Independence Party in at least 2 general elections.
- duxup 8y ago
  California and other places have shown referendums can be be a mess. Sometimes you do need people in government who can at least know some of the lay of the land / consequences making decisions rather than the population voting on broad concepts that may not even get them what they want.
MattBearman 8y ago
I don't think it's fair to blame leave voters, the whole thing was fundamentally flawed. While it was obvious what remain meant, "leave" was never actually defined, and so open to interpretation. Forgetting for a second the whole thing was just a ploy to win over UKIP voters, it is ridiculous that this far down the line leave still hasn't been defined. A small part of me thinks that maybe May is playing the 4D chess long-con, and deliberately being as incompetent as possible to drive us to a last-minute remain outcome. Ockham's Razor says otherwise though
- petercooper 8y ago
  I don't think it's fair to blame leave voters They actively chose something that you say was poorly defined but which was widely understood to be a very dramatic and potentially dangerous shift for the country. If you can't blame them for picking a poorly defined option out of some jingoistic notion of what the UK should be, what can you blame anyone for?
  - 7000skeletons 8y ago
    You could probably blame the people responsible for the referendum in the first place, trying to use the notion of a Brexit vote as some sort of political brinkmanship game against the EU and then running for the hills when people didn't vote the way they expected them to. Like that David Cameron clown, for instance.
  - growlist 8y ago
    > If you can't blame them for picking a poorly defined option out of some jingoistic notion of what the UK should be, what can you blame anyone for? How's the view up there on that high horse?
  - YouAreGreat 8y ago
    That's like saying a woman can't leave an abusive marriage until she's secured a new husband.
  - contravariant 8y ago
emptyfile 8y ago
>waste over 2 years of politicans' time, distracting them from working on things the UK needs handling. Its actually precisely the opposite. Berxit is distracting the populace so that politicians don't have to fix things have been broken for quite some time.
- orf 8y ago
  It's nice to postulate that the PM and cabinet are some cabal of highly intelligent villains who decided it was simpler to just leave the EU than fix the NHS, but it doesn't line up with reality. Nobody expected the vote to go the way it did, not the guy who called it and especially not the guy who ran the leave campaign.
  - 7000skeletons 8y ago
    Nonsense, they had a big old battle bus. Anybody with a battle bus clearly knows what they're doing.
  - rleigh 8y ago
    I and many others were not so surprised. The polls were wrong because privately many people are unhappy with the EU, and that wasn't reflected in public opinion polls. If nothing else, the result showed a major disconnect between the policies of the main parties and the wishes of the electorate, and it will be good to have that democratic deficit rectified.
rleigh 8y ago
An alternative viewpoint would be that it's entirely the fault of the politicians. Firstly, for not doing any preparation for the consequences of a leave vote prior to the referendum. Secondly for spending over two years prevaricating over implementing the result, leading to a lot of unnecessary uncertainty. Time to stop dithering, grasp the nettle firmly, and get on with it. I don't think blaming voters for their democratically expressed views is fair. The referendum asked the populace if they wanted to remain or leave the EU. And the politicians got the answer, and it wasn't particularly surprising, even if they weren't personally happy with it. They are supposed to represent the electorate democratically, after all.
- icebraining 8y ago
  Who chose those politicians? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVXekzwkz10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVXekzwkz10

supernova87a 8y ago

Let's face it though. British science was already headed in a downward spiral before Brexit. Decreasing student positions, postdoc positions, selling off shares in research partnerships and observatories, and more. EU consortia were already planning for the UK to be an unreliable partner. Plus, anyone who was capable of applying for research jobs on an international level found the salaries quite pathetic. This whole progression was sadly, not unexpected.

fuscy 8y ago

I guess about 51% of the population didn't see this coming or they didn't care. I remember the propaganda going on around that time... The best scene was a politician rebutting a scientist because "what does an expert know about anything" especially economics. I tend to agree with Aristides or Socrates (rip by vote) that people are idiots and democracy can't work without education.. atleast about the issue that is being voted.