This otter is poking its tongue out at the Tax Office because its an otter and doesn’t pay tax. Photo from Pacific Southwest Region USFWS on Flickr used under a creative commons licence.
Please feel free to use this thread to natter about anything your heart desires. Is there anything great happening in your life? Anything you want to get off your chest? Reading a great book? Anything in the news that you’d like to discuss? Commiserations, felicitations, temptations, contemplations, speculations?
Categories: arts & entertainment, Culture, Miscellaneous
Otterday! And Open Thread 
Tonight, for something different, it is raining again. It’s going to rain tomorrow too. Possibly Tuesday as well. Potentially on Wednesday. Maybe Thursday. Probably Friday. There may be a large golden disc in the sky on Saturday, but washers are waiting to see it before predicting the drying of any washing.
Well, in two days, Britain’s gone from the world’s fifth largest economy to maybe the seventh. And the politicians campaigning for Brexit have already walked back most of the promises they made.
A petition started for a second referendum on EU membership grew so quickly, it crashed its servers (featuring a ton of comments from people wishing they’d voted to stay instead of leave). It’s reached enough signatures that Parliament is making noises about looking at it. I’d quite like to see this crap undone.
Can that happen Sunlessnick? Will the rest of the EU accept a change of mind?
I was a bit stunned that it actually happened but it seems so are many who protest voted to leave. I wonder if the referendum were held again enough people would change their vote?
Leaving the EU is contingent on a country triggering a legal clause, Article 50. The UK hasn’t done that yet, so if there were a second referendum that voted to stay, the government could simply not do so. (In theory, it could simply not do so anyway – a referendum isn’t legally binding – though I wouldn’t hope for that course).
So, they might not be happy with us in that eventuality, but they’d have to let us stay (I do believe there’s a mecahnism to kick a country out, but there wouldn’t be enough takers to make that happen).
There seems to be a fraction of the Leave contingent who protest voted against the government and/or “elites,” but didn’t expect a a result of actually leaving. And a fraction of those who now regret voting that way, having seen the initial consequences (and, uncharitably, having realised those consequences might affect tthem). Whether that fraction of a fraction would be enough to change the outcome, I don’t know.
The one silver lining to this is that there was a widespread perception in the UK that your vote doesn’t really make any difference. Hopefully, that at least has taken a hit.
On second thoughts, “have to” let us stay is overstating it, but Article 50 has to be triggered by the country intending to leave; the rest of the EU can’t do it for them. If Britain lags on doing it – especially if it does so while using the threat of it – then it will piss away whatever good will we might have left. And there there might be enough takers to kick us out regardless.
Mostly, though, I’m being wishful. We just voted to catastrophically wreck our country (and we did it because of leadership squabble in the Conservative Party), and I’m looking for possible wires to cut to stop the bomb going off.
Hi!
Hi Mat! I just posted an election thread in case that’s what you’re here for.