Verbal

It seems to a hallmark of those absorbed into the Brexit cult to be unable to distinguish between lies and forecasts that turn out - gosh! - to be wrong. Or worse, to be unable to distinguish between the current relative plain sailing of the economy while still in the EU, and the the fate of the British economy with a 'hard Brexit'. Here are some straightforward fact checks of what are actually demonstrable lies - as opposed to incorrect predictions - on both sides: https://www.buzzfeed.com/jamesball/are-eu-telling-porkies?utm_term=.mqRqR5akv6#.edZVBevK8D

We were all having a perfectly sensible discussion until you trolled along. What a putz. ...and back to the thread.

Indeed they are. The Mail in particular is rabidly, almost violently for hard Brexit, with its repeated banner headlines about saboteurs and gay (therefore suspect) supreme court justices, etc. However, May has to head off a number of huge political and economic problems, including a constitutional crisis that could lead to the break-up of the UK, a growing wave of UK companies and banks setting up EU safe houses, and falling foreign investment (including remerging panic attacks from companies like Nissan). She also learned last week that not one of the remaining 27 in the EU would agree to substantive negotiations on a trade deal without the terms of divorce being known. This is the clearest indication yet that she's up against an increasingly united EU, at least on the issue of Brexit. (Her rather idiotic provocations haven't helped win friends.) So she's going to need political wiggle room to do a deal that's not 'no deal', just to stop several threads all unravelling at once. (The idea that she actually thinks no deal is workable in any way is another Brexiter wet dream that won't see the light of day). His return is a bit of a challenge for me, quite frankly. My multilingual skills are quite tested by having to translate his Irvingisms into Yiddish while having to rabbit with Lord Pony, truly the Di ck Van Dyke of Cockney rhymers. A right pair of kippers in any language.

Laughable of May to offer as an excuse for a snap election that she was being sabotaged in Parliament. The idea that Corbyn is harrying her every move is quite a fantasy, as is the notion that the LibDem troops behind Farron make a damned bit of difference. The reality is May calculates (1) that Corbyn is the worst leader of the Opposition since records began and there's a small danger of his resigning, thus strengthening Labour's position in the country and in Parliament; (2) that she has to outflank the likely CPS prosecutions for electoral fraud in enough Tory seats to wipe out her overall majority; and (3) her real enemy are the hard-Brexiting Tory right, and she needs a majority comfortable enough to deliver a much softer Brexit than they would allow.

Corbyn will bury the Labour party in three stages: first with a disastrous outcome in the 4 May local elections, second by slashing Labour's representation in the Commons the 8 June general election, and thirdly, despite all that, by staying on as leader of the party.

Pipe down. Sir Lynton Crosby, Theresa May's own campaign manager, has warned her she could lose 27 Tory seats to the Lib Dems.

Any links to someone saying the British economy would 'implode' if we didn't join the Euro? I'd really like to see them. As I recall, the debate was more about what was then called a 'two-speed' Europe, and it was more about differing rates of political integration rather than any idea that the wheels would fall off the economy. Besides, even mainstream opinion among what are now called remainers was that joining the Euro was a bad idea - including Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, whose 'tests' for joining were designed not to be met. As for the idea that not joining the Euro is on a par with the economic impact of Brexit that's already being felt - well, Lord Pony has a word for that.

Actually, it's more than perception. In the days after the referendum the Bank of England cut interest rates to the lowest they've been since the 1700s, and reintroduced quantitative easing. Both these measures had the effect of flooding the economy with cash, which was soaked up with the credit binge which has now got out of control. sustained property prices at ludicrous levels; and the crashing pound temporarily boosted share prices of companies with big overseas interests. Basically, therefore, the economy has been held aloft by a series of asset bubbles. Look at the real economy beyond those bubbles, at corporate investment and productivity, and the picture is getting ever grimmer. The economy is going down like the Titanic - imperceptibly slowly at first, but edging towards a dive to the sea floor.

Well I'm not sure there's a cigarette paper's difference between Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Batman - possibly she's a disciple of his? Anyway, they both make the same category error of believing that foundational texts are of the essence of religious actions, when in fact religions are basically (a) what people who call themselves devotees say they are, and (b) what people (see Batman, Ali, passim) who oppose them say they are. Ali-Batman is also wrong to suggest that what distinguishes Christianity from Islam is a separation of religion and state because the majority of very many different strains of Islam do just that. So if Ali-Batman wishes to revise their (note: gender-non-specific) essentialist errors, I'd be...amazed.

So which bits of Islam do you blame. And which bits are ok with you?

Who needs the humourless homunculus? Conspiracy theories abound around Trump, the arch conspiracy theorist. The one being bandied around most strongly at the moment is that the bombing of the Syrian airfield was in respite to a 'false flag' event - that the chemical attack on civilians in Idlib was a hoax. This piece traces the lineage of the hoax claim, originating with a pro-Assad site in Syria, and then retransmitted by far-right sites like InfoWars. It has also swept up a few ludicrous dimwits among the stop-the-war, Corbynist cult. https://medium.com/dfrlab/how-the-alt-right-brought-syriahoax-to-america-47745118d1c9

As usual, you can't see through the veneer of lies.

I think I may have. Soz. It's so hard to find any unused insults for the Brexit cult that one is drawn to double-negative compliments, because, as all Remoaners know, the cultists' heads will topple over trying to work it out.

Gawdon Bennet! Gawd luv us! Someone point this Cockney Geezer in the direction of some slang words other than pony, pony, pony! The attempt to sound like Bert, the Bobbins from Poppins, is starting to do my crust of bread in.

100,000 jobs to disappear in the City. Who cares? They were just remoaners anyway. And anyway, why did no one warn of this? https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/apr/04/uk-jobs-merkel-juncker-euro-clearing-eu-manfred-weber-brexit

Got a link to show that she's done this? Or is it all cooked up in your head for you to have tantrum with yourself?

Just to bring home what utter numbnuts Brexiteers are, the Telegraph is actually talking this up, saying that even in its 'diminished' state, the Royal Navy could 'cripple' Spain in any war. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/02/britains-navy-far-weaker-falklands-could-still-cripple-spain/ Incredible.

Calm down and stop being such a plotz.

If you want to stop Remainers calling Brexiteers malignantly stupid, it might be an idea to stop handing them the ammunition.

Then you have to read my post - and the link to Professor Curtice's work - more carefully. Those figures relate ONLY to those voters to voted Labour in the 2015 election. The colossal fallacy in arguments about Labour heartlands voting leave is the false assumption that these heartlands don't have any voters other than Labour ones. Even Corbyn - well, also Corbyn - has been guilty of making this error in concluding that some sort of accommodation has to be made to a non-existent majority of Labour voters in the north who voted Leave. The fact is - they didn't.

Nope. By the lowest estimate, 63% of Labour voters in 2015 voted Remain. Lord Ashcroft put the percentage as a little higher than 70%. Broken down by region, 2015 Labour voters also voted Remain: 57% in the north, 60% in the midlands, 67% in the south, 74% in London, 64% in Wales, and 66% in Scotland. In Labour-held seats alone, 63% voted Remain. In Labour-held seats in the north and the midlands, the 'Labour heartlands', 57% of Labour voters voted Remain. http://ukandeu.ac.uk/is-labours-brexit-dilemma-being-misunderstood/?platform=hootsuite

Once a kipper always a kipper. You're a kosher kipper about to be living in the sunny uplands of kipperland, which looks like this... YouGov polled Brexiteers to find out what they most wanted. Top 5: bringing back the death penalty, bringing back dark blue passports, bringing back pounds and ounces, bringing back corporal punishment in schools, and bringing back incandescent lightbulbs. Basically, bringing back the 1950s.

If you're Palestinian, you'd be better off in Lebanon...or Israel. The camps in Amman are desperate. If you're Bedouin-Jordanian, you may have my camel.

You didn't read carefully enough. Those sections of the left who espouse the idea, essentially, of 'kill us, we deserve it', which include you I think, are giving the Islamist murderers a free pass. The argument that the West - especially including the US, the UK and Israel - is 'reaping what it's sown' in attacks like 9/11, 7/7 and the Westminster Bridge murders is also inherently racist and Islamophobic, because it denies agency not just to those Islamists who carry out attacks, but to all Muslims. It's an argument corrupted by the lazy thought that Muslims are so enraged by the injustices meted out to them by the West that they are impelled to attack. It's utter crap. And this racist/Islamophobic subtext is depressingly mirrored in far-right responses. ISIS and Al Qaeda have historically carried out attacks in the West in order to polarise Muslims from non-Muslims in the West - to make them the objects of hate by the majority population. They do this quite explicitly to drive recruitment. Of course, gimps on the far right are brain-dribblingly doing exactly what ISIS wants them to do. - screaming their fury at innocent Muslims. One question, incidentally, which will determine the absurdity of your position: if you were an Arab, where would you rather be a citizen: in Israel or Syria? (Just to help you out with this one, over 94% of civilian casualties during the civil war have been inflicted by the Assad regime itself. And when I say 'casualties', keep in mind what a terrible euphemism that is for being blasted to hell by barrel bombs or being tortured to death in one of Assad's many political jails).

Is making false accusations your way of deflecting from the voice in your head going "I'm no racist but I am actually racist"?