3 ms·

>Now that the implications are becoming clear, a majority want to return to the EU Why not simply have regional votes to separate from the UK and join the EU?

>Now that the implications are becoming clear, a majority want to return to the EU Why not simply have regional votes to separate from the UK and join the EU? Scotland tried not that long ago.

marcusverus 4y ago
Our legacy governments make this very difficult. Sadly, while many of our governments readily adopted the concept of representative democracy, they retained other oppressive aspects of the ancient systems which they replaced. The old monarchies claimed a right to rule their subject peoples in perpetuity, deriving their power directly from God. Our modern governments claim the same thing! Instead of that divine right flowing directly from God to the state, it flows from God, through your forbears who created the government, to the state. Isn't that slick? They derive their legitimacy from man's divine right to choose his own government, while simultaneously denying that YOU have such a right! It's the 'ole divine right to rule with extra steps. So while you can choose who controls your government via democratic means, you'll have a helluva time choosing a new government, since the old government will waive the crusty old document that your great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather signed and say that you are committing treason. See the Catalan independence movement[0], or the official position of the UK government on the most recent Scottish independence referendum[1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_independence_movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_independence_movement [1] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2022/11/23/uk-court-rules-against-scottish-independence-referendum-without-westminster-approval_6005316_4.html https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2022/11/23/u...
- mtklein 4y ago
  Not saying it's worked out perfectly, but the US Declaration of Independence must count among those crusty old documents, and its preamble explicitly declares that throwing off such a government is the right and duty of the governed (admittedly preceded with some couching from "Prudence, indeed...").
  - marcusverus 4y ago
    True, true! I didn't mean to imply anything negative about old, crusty documents in general! Especially the ones, like The Declaration, that serve to clarify and bolster our common understanding of our natural human rights.
ben_w 4y ago
Because the voting map looked like this, and the UK just can't do that kind of subdivision: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d5/United_Kingdom_EU_referendum_2016_area_results.svg/692px-United_Kingdom_EU_referendum_2016_area_results.svg.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d5/Un... Also, look how narrow the margins are on that scale bar. Most of those regions would need to be further subdivided, and the whole of the UK would end up like Baarle-Nassau: Baarle-Nassau https://maps.app.goo.gl/aRn73rm1cz2fHznt7?g_st=ic https://maps.app.goo.gl/aRn73rm1cz2fHznt7?g_st=ic
- chimeracoder 4y ago
  > Because the voting map looked like this, and the UK just can't do that kind of subdivision The UK has plenty of experience drawing partition lines in other countries. I have full faith that they could manage it here if they tried. Looking at the map, these would even be very clean lines by British standards.
  - ben_w 4y ago
    The British Empire certainly did have a lot of experience of that, but it wasn't exactly good for the people on the ground where that had been done. One of those partition lines led to a 30-year low-intensity civil war that only ended in 1998: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Troubles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Troubles Another now has both sides pointing nukes at each other: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_India

>Now that the implications are becoming clear, a majority want to return to the EU Why not simply have regional votes to separate from the UK and join the EU? Scotland tried not that long ago.

marcusverus 4y ago

Our legacy governments make this very difficult. Sadly, while many of our governments readily adopted the concept of representative democracy, they retained other oppressive aspects of the ancient systems which they replaced. The old monarchies claimed a right to rule their subject peoples in perpetuity, deriving their power directly from God. Our modern governments claim the same thing! Instead of that divine right flowing directly from God to the state, it flows from God, through your forbears who created the government, to the state. Isn't that slick? They derive their legitimacy from man's divine right to choose his own government, while simultaneously denying that YOU have such a right! It's the 'ole divine right to rule with extra steps. So while you can choose who controls your government via democratic means, you'll have a helluva time choosing a new government, since the old government will waive the crusty old document that your great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather signed and say that you are committing treason. See the Catalan independence movement[0], or the official position of the UK government on the most recent Scottish independence referendum[1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_independence_movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_independence_movement [1] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2022/11/23/uk-court-rules-against-scottish-independence-referendum-without-westminster-approval_6005316_4.html https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2022/11/23/u...

mtklein 4y ago
Not saying it's worked out perfectly, but the US Declaration of Independence must count among those crusty old documents, and its preamble explicitly declares that throwing off such a government is the right and duty of the governed (admittedly preceded with some couching from "Prudence, indeed...").
- marcusverus 4y ago
  True, true! I didn't mean to imply anything negative about old, crusty documents in general! Especially the ones, like The Declaration, that serve to clarify and bolster our common understanding of our natural human rights.

ben_w 4y ago

Because the voting map looked like this, and the UK just can't do that kind of subdivision: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d5/United_Kingdom_EU_referendum_2016_area_results.svg/692px-United_Kingdom_EU_referendum_2016_area_results.svg.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d5/Un... Also, look how narrow the margins are on that scale bar. Most of those regions would need to be further subdivided, and the whole of the UK would end up like Baarle-Nassau: Baarle-Nassau https://maps.app.goo.gl/aRn73rm1cz2fHznt7?g_st=ic https://maps.app.goo.gl/aRn73rm1cz2fHznt7?g_st=ic

chimeracoder 4y ago
> Because the voting map looked like this, and the UK just can't do that kind of subdivision The UK has plenty of experience drawing partition lines in other countries. I have full faith that they could manage it here if they tried. Looking at the map, these would even be very clean lines by British standards.
- ben_w 4y ago
  The British Empire certainly did have a lot of experience of that, but it wasn't exactly good for the people on the ground where that had been done. One of those partition lines led to a 30-year low-intensity civil war that only ended in 1998: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Troubles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Troubles Another now has both sides pointing nukes at each other: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_India