[CommanderData]

This government is for austerity and cutting public services and expenditure. He is no less a reflection of his party.

Next PM's in line: Theresa May: Pro snoopers (spying) charter. I don't like the term police state but her actions are worryingly in line.

Boris Johnson? A very charismatic idiot. His selling point being the golden coloured hairy creature that has permanently occupied his scalp.

Yes. We have a great line up of next potential PM's for Britain.

[fredley]

Theresa May is one of the scariest contenders as far as I've seen. Very pro-surveillance and anti-open internet. She would be a (nother) disaster for UK tech. If there's anybody left who hasn't moved to Dublin/Berlin by October.

[secfirstmd]

People of Ireland speaking here:

-Want to stay in the EU?

-Want to trade in the Eurozone?

-Enjoy low corporate tax rate of 12.5%? Pro-business government?

-Enjoy friendly, well educated, English speaking, Pro-American people, good beer, decent music, nice quality of life, low crime and safe green natural environment? (Look how much fun even our soccer fans are http://www.irishexaminer.com/euro2016/euro2016-banter/10-rea...)

Invest in Ireland -> http://www.idaireland.com This has been a public service announcement from the country next door. #irelandlovesyou :)

[Armchair]

As an Irish person, I would like our country to take the opportunity to welcome British business but say "thanks, but no thanks" to finance and banking.

I want our brightest and best to do more useful stuff, engineering and literature and medicine or whatever. We should consider our education system to have failed every time a bright student goes into finance.

It's the only long term sustainable plan. Convert debt to equity and keep the deposit base low.

[cylinder]

What are your thoughts on this thread? Some really negative anecdotes about Dublin living: https://www.reddit.com/r/IWantOut/comments/4p9r9l/dublins_sk...

[anonymousDan]

My god there is some serious whingey nonsense on that thread. Most of the arguments boil down to accommodation being expensive for students in the centre of a relatively wealthy European capital. Well no shit, as if it's not any worse in most other cities. As a software professional you'd be well able to afford it. I do agree there is a shortage of accommodation at the moment, but that's almost certainly a temporary issue. After the property crash in Ireland a few years ago builders and property developers were cast as the root of all evil. As a result (and because banks were broke and so weren't lending for mortgages), housebuilding ground to a halt even though Ireland has the highest birth rate in the EU and most commentators were warning this would lead to problems down the line. And so it has come to pass that now there is a shortage of cheap accommodation, and in particular social housing. However I expect this to resolve itself over the next few years, and the government has already promised to pump money into public housing.

[SEJeff]

Compare it to say Berlin though, where living is extremely cheap. It seems to help with tech startups quite a bit, and not because of generous tax breaks.

[secfirstmd]

It's not just tax, Ireland also has a good infrastructure for government startup grants etc.

https://www.enterprise-ireland.com

[secfirstmd]

Exactly!

[secfirstmd]

Reddit/r/Ireland is extremely negative about everything. Some of the negativity doesn't make sense. The piece about not living in the city centre and instead the suburb commuter towns is madness. Totally the opposite. The commuter towns to Dublin are boring as hell, housing estates with very little services. Inner City Dublin is rejuvenating very fast, and parts of it feel like a smaller, more intimate version of Shoreditch or Williamsberg (except with better pubs and bars!). You can basically walk across most of the city within 45 mins.

Transport is poor compared to European standards and the cost of living is quite high. But if you live close to the city in Dublin it's not bad and it's a great place to socialise and be within 45 minutes of nature. It's probably one of the few capital cities in world where it's not unusual to strike up a conversation with a random person beside you on a bus.

Also it's a pretty easy place to do business. Our nature is humourously sarcastic and not liking authority which means we are pretty good problems solvers and management tends to be quite flat. The software is also small, so your only ever really a phonecall away from having a pint with whoever you need to speak to in the whole sector - from a graduate you met at a conference to a government Minister.

People also work to live not live to work (like the US) which makes a big difference. Also a big part of worklife is around interactions with colleagues - it's basically an assumption that most offices are full of at least a few characters who like to have the "craic" and banter. When working abroad I found I really missed those tiny interactions you have on a daily basis in Ireland - e.g someone telling you a story and making you laugh. Even in London you don't get that. It's not something you can pickup by getting an MBA but it makes such a big difference to the quality of life - compared to a stale work environment.

If your thinking about moving, drop me a mail!

[dman]

The inability to talk to people on the bus was one of the first differences I noticed when I moved from India to the US.

[dkns]

On the downside it's hard to find decent place to live in Dublin for sensible price. On the upside Irish are one of the best people in the world.

[secfirstmd]

Also, as it might be relevant to some people on here, a link about how to claim an Irish passport:

http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/travel_and_recreation/t...

[geff82]

The problem we currently have in politics it demography. People get older and older, the baby boomers forgot to "produce" children. Elder people tend to be deeply conservative and anti-technology. And as they are the majority now, they vote for stuff that they think is right ("let's 100% control that freaking thing called internet") and totally strangle the younger generation with their bad taste and shortsightedness.

[siliconviking]

I think a better way to come at this is to assume that on average, most people have given this decision a reasonable amount of thought, young people as well as old people. The debates have been going on for months, and pros and cons have been discussed at great length.

Further, I don't think it's fair to underestimate the experience and historic perspective old people have, that young people don't. After all, many of the older people who voted yesterday where around before the EU came about, and are able to factor in that extra information, plus their historic perspective in their decision, which, by definition, makes for a more informed decision.

You are right that older people tend to be more conservative, but you yourself may end up being more conservative when you are 90, vs. how conservative you are today, and you may only realize the reasons for it once it happens, and perhaps you will think those are actually quite good reasons, who knows.

The bottom line is that if you just attribute the older population's decision to "bad taste" and "shortsightedness", you may not realize the true reason behind their decision, which diminishes your ability to understand and influence others.

[pyre]

> After all, many of the older people who voted yesterday where around before the EU came about, and are able to factor in that extra information, plus their historic perspective in their decision, which, by definition, makes for a more informed decision.

Not necessarily. You'll still end up with people making decisions based on looking at the past with rose-coloured glasses, which isn't necessarily a fact-based decision. I think it's also equally likely that people will draw conclusions from economic conditions that had zilch to do with whether the EU existed or not. Thinking that experience necessarily leads to a informed decision ignores the way that humans works.

[panic]

Blaming people (older people, immigrants, whatever) for our problems isn't productive. Let's figure out what's broken about the systems we're living in instead of alienating the people we should be working with to fix them.

[fredley]

In both the US general election and this referendum, the primary forces at play are emotive campaigning backed by false or at the very least misleading information (in our case: portrayal of immigrants, the '£350m a week' figure that has already had some very serious backpeddling, etc. etc.). We have an electorate that is woefully misinformed for a whole host of reasons. How you address this is beyond me.

[sievebrain]

Simply describing the arguments you disagree with as false and people who listen as idiots is why Remain has lost the referendum.

Are you going to learn from that and change your ways?

There was lots of flatly false and misleading crap coming from the Remain camp as well. Just look at how Cameron see-sawed on the consequences of an exit. Before his negotiation it was "things will be OK even if we leave, the economy is fundamentally strong". Then it was chaos, doom, "economic self harm", permanently worse off etc. Now the vote went against him it's back to "everything will be fine".

When the leader of the campaign can't even stay consistent on such a basic thing, that campaign cannot claim a monopoly on truth.

[fredley]

I'm not saying Remain didn't peddle crap (or even implied that only Leave was doing so). The two issues I've highlighted are demonstrably false. The whole campaign descended into the worst kind of politics on both sides.

[ajuc]

This was also the reason for the voctory of current anti-european and proto-nationalist government in Poland last year.

Misinformation, fear campaign, memes, troll farms. It seems in social media age that's how you do politics. Viral marketing means you never have to say you were wrong.

[jazzyk]

I agree the new government in Poland is an embarrassment.

But you are mistaken in blaming the electorate. The "misinformation, fear campaign, memes..." have always been around. The primary reason people voted out the previous bunch is corruption and tunneling of the wealth created to a narrow group of people (a problem not limited to Poland only)

[panic]

Honestly I think our best bet is to focus on education and childcare, then try to hold on for a generation. Many parents don't have time to raise their children as well as they'd like. Teachers are underpaid, under-respected and have in many cases had their agency taken away by standardized tests. It's no wonder so many people find it difficult to stay informed when they're starting from so far behind.

[fredley]

Agreed, for the Brexit vote, anyone with a degree was much more likely to vote remain (and there was a strong correlation between more education and likelihood to vote remain). This current government has made higher education much less attainable, and much less attractive for many people by raising the fees that students must pay (or loan) up front.

[e12e]

I find it at a little odd to read this characterisation on HN of all places. I mean, it's pretty much run by "old" technologists, right?

[geff82]

You are absolutely right, while I am, too. Of course there are progressive, far thinking elderly people and I enjoy being around them. I recently talked to a 71 year old who is into fractal programming and wants to get into Linux, soon (all while being politically liberal). But the elections and polls show always the same picture: the older people get, the more conservative/right wing they vote, which is often not what the younger need. I don't think it helps the younger UK generation, that has been used to think globally/European, that they now are politically separated from EVERY neighbor they have.

[CM30]

Well, it'd help if the younger generation actually bothered for things instead of complaining about them on social media. Less online petitions, more going down to the ballot box. If they were represented in the vote, more politicians would listen to them.

But they currently don't because the older generations actually show up on voting day.

[ThatGeoGuy]

This is disingenuous. Blaming millennials for not showing up at the poll is a strawman argument, as the vast majority of younger folk did show up (80% turnout ages 18-24)[1]. Sure, it's less than the 95+% of people 60 and older, but there's a hell of a lot more baby boomers than there are millennials. The problem isn't as simple as "young people don't vote".

[1] http://graphics.wsj.com/brexit-whos-voting-what/?mod=e2fb

[munin]

the older generations can show up on voting day because they don't have to work

[ryandrake]

    Truth never triumphs — its opponents just die out.
     - Max Planck

Unfortunately, political progress tends to be the same. For some issues, the only way to move forward is to simply wait for enough old people to die off.

[mooreds]

The demographic problem. Highly recommend reading "The Accidental Superpower" as it explains how this, as well as a few other geopolitical considerations, will shape the next few decades. (Hint: it's not pretty.)

[junto]

No, the problem is that the younger generation is that they don't vote. They whine on Twitter . The only way to take control of the system from within.

Today was a very harsh lesson for young Brits. They'll have to live with the outcome of this decision for three rest of their lives.

The one positive is that those young people might now be encouraged to actually participate.

[yarrel]

And that's how Remain lost.

[DanBC]

> The problem we currently have in politics it demography.

I misread that as "demagoguery", and was going to vigorously agree.

[arethuza]

I'm just back from Sweden - Gothenburg or Stockholm are starting to look pretty attractive if things go horribly wrong in the UK.

[darkr]

> Boris Johnson? A very charismatic idiot.

His persona is that of a charismatic bumbling idiot, but idiot he is not. Underneath this persona lies a highly intelligent, disingenuous, manipulative and calculating operator.

I genuinely think that he didn't believe in Brexit; rather he saw a potential route into number 10 and took a gamble on it.

[Kurtz79]

"he saw a potential route into number 10 and took a gamble on it."

The funny thing is that basically Cameron used a similar gamble to be elected.

Push Brexit referendum, and hope for a Remain outcome.

I mean, it would be funny if the well-being of millions of people would not be impacted by all this gambling.

[mc32]

The main thing is that regardless of who pushed for or against the UK exiting the EU the voters voted to leave.

Neither Boris nor David made a unilateral decision. The people took action and voted against the EU. Lots of people are in shock but should not be.

[mstade]

Well, lots of people also voted for the EU – it was far from unanimous after all.

[mc32]

So when the votes align with the elites, do you see similar hand wringing? Oh, but so many people voted against our position... Not very likely.

[capote]

And it seems many of the leave voters are regretting their choice now.

[Kurtz79]

They both rode (in turn) petty nationalism sentiments to further their own ambitions.

I really don't think people's best interests have been served.

[pc86]

So is it better for a people to have their voice heard, and in that harm many of themselves, or to have their voice ignored "for the greater good?"

[vec]

There's essentially no such thing as pure democracy at a national level. Even in cases of public referenda and ballot initiatives there's still a small group of (usually) professional bureaucrats of one variety or another that controls what questions are asked, how they are asked, and to whom.

Asking "the people to have their voice heard" on international organizations and trade agreements is particularly ill advised because those are "how" questions instead of "what" questions, and to a first approximation nobody actually cares about how. People care about whether their job is secure, or their groceries are affordable, or their culture is preserved.

Leaving the EU may or may not be a good idea for Britan, but crucially very few people really know whether it would or not. The level of specialized training necessary to reasonably predict the effects of leaving on any of the core interests that people do actually care about is prohibitively high. Directly asking whether to leave the EU is a bad idea because it doesn't capture what "the people" really want and it forces a specific course of action even when there may be safer and more effective methods for achieving the same ends.

[CommanderData]

I agree. I don't quite understand the dynamics of elections and voting but if a candidate looks like a bumbling idiot mixed with charisma and charm, it somehow resonates, at least in the UK and US.

Boris was this before being elected as mayor of London, somehow the image is perpetuated even now. In the run up to his mayoral elections his strong points were hardly discussed and his persona highlighted more than his abilities and skills. People perceiving him as a joke.

This is what eludes most and reinforces the notion that some of the electorate will purely vote on superficial terms.

He is absolutely manipulative and disingenuous who's riding on his buffoonish idiocy image.

[mc32]

Or, it's possible it just so happens his views on a key issue coincided with the views of a majority of the people who voted (and the turnout was large, and it's not as if when things go your way in elections you vacillate by thinking of the opposition who didn't vote).

It feels like this borders on elitism. That the people don't know what they want. I don't often see a similar sentiment when people vote along with the views of the elite (questioning sanity and motives).

[corin_]

Even his choice of idiot persona is an act of genius in terms of how well it has served him.

[junto]

George Bush springs to mind. Though maybe he actually was a patsy.

[oldmanjay]

Let's be fair here. Liberal bias requires people to either believe anyone with conservative leanings MUST be stupid or the received wisdom that liberal philosophies are naturally correct must be incomplete. There's no real choice here, every single person on earth will assume everyone else is stupid before assuming they may be wrong.

[qdog]

That's the exact opposite of liberal, "open to new behavior or opinions and willing to discard traditional values."

There are plenty of intelligent people in all parties, disagreeing with them doesn't make them idiots. Greenspan comes to mind, I think his basic market beliefs are wrong, but don't think he's an idiot, I have read his book. GW is a lot closer to idiot level because of his demeanor AND his actions, but let's be serious few actual idiots make it that far, just not all of them are way above average intelligence.

[SEJeff]

But I don't actually think GW was an idiot by the sheer fact that he surrounded himself with some of the most brilliant conservatives of the time. Cheney is evil incarnate, but few would call him an idiot. The same can be said about his secretary of defense, donald rumsfield. Rumsfield is the shining example of "doing it right" and being a hard charger.That being said, the two of them colluded and it caused badness.

Knowing you're outclassed isn't the mark of an idiot, but of a brilliant mind. Trump thinking he has an excellent memory and is the best in everything is the mark of a true idiot.

[vec]

There are two essential traits I look for in a leader. They should have goals that align with my own, and they should advocate for policies that could reasonably be expected further their goals. At least in American politics, I usually see the term "idiot" applied to politicians who pass the first test but fail the second.

[sangnoir]

I suspect George Bush's bumbling persona was put-on as well (or possibly honed over years) on the basis of this youtube[1] video comparing his oratory style between 1994 and 2004

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvknGT8W5jA

[crdoconnor]

>His persona is that of a charismatic bumbling idiot, but idiot he is not. Underneath this persona lies a highly intelligent, disingenuous, manipulative and calculating operator.

People used to say that about George Bush too. The fact he played off his ridiculous gaffes and wasn't always illucid doesn't mean he wasn't an idiot.

Bojo is conniving and he's managed to acquire a good number of strategic allies but he's still not particularly smart.

[toomanybeersies]

I've always said you don't become the president by being an idiot. Being rich (or your father being rich) only gets you so far.

[dragonwriter]

> Being rich (or your father being rich) only gets you so far.

Your family being rich and extremely well connected politically, both domestically and internationally, gets you much further than your family merely being rich, and you being useful figurehead for people who are quite smart -- and smart enough to realize that you are more useful than them as the public face of leadership -- piled on top of that, gets you even farther.

[Shivetya]

Still trying to understand how austerity can still mean increasing spending. Looking at their expenditures they peaked in 2009 at 51.5% and dropped to lower forties but much of that has been because the economy finally started recovering faster than the government could spend money mostly because of pressure on politicians not to.

However the key here is, they never spent less than the year before, simply reduced the amount they increased spending. Increasing spending is not austerity

[adventured]

Simply put, there never was austerity in most of Europe. That's a propaganda line to simultaneously cover the lack of economic growth for nearly a decade, and to use as an excuse to acquire a larger State through even greater spending.

You can go line by line down the list of European countries and their government expenditures. Only a few of them reduced spending, most have increased spending. In actual fact, only two or three nations experienced any real austerity, but they all pretend to have.

What they're really experiencing, is the total suffocation of economic growth by extreme debt. The exact same thing Japan has been enjoying for a quarter century.

[arethuza]

Boris Johnson is anything but an idiot - that image of a harmless buffoon is a front.

[MagnumOpus]

BoJo was a King's scholar at Eton - meaning he is probably the smartest guy in the room, especially if that room is a Tory party conference room.

Which implies him grabbing the leadership and dismantling the UK is not buffoonery, but deliberate. Scary.

[johnchristopher]

I know next to nothing to Britain and London's politics but I can't trust/don't want to have leaders that have to put up buffoon front to get elected or get traction. Because next time you risk getting a real buffoon. Or worse, it won't matter wether politicians are buffoons or not.

[mikekchar]

Boris Johnson as Prime Minister. Imagine the bicycle lanes... Which is not to say that I disagree with you. As mayor of London he knew what was important and it was not what most people would think is important.

[mtgx]

Theresa May would be a scary successor indeed, and may even top Cameron as the worst UK leader.

UK needs to vote conservatives out, and it needs to reconsider switching the voting system (this time to a proportional representation one).

[tonyedgecombe]

They probably will at the next election, the trouble is the alternative is looking pretty pathetic.

[gadders]

A referendum was held on proportional representation (one method, at least) and was rejected.

[fnord123]

Alternate Voting is not a method of proportional representation. It is another voting scheme. The Liberal Democrats wanted a vote for Proportional Representation and the Conservatives agreed to a referendum, but on the rubbish AV scheme instead. Many many people voted against AV because it wasn't as good as PR and didn't want to change multiple times.

PR is superior to AV and FPTP and should be implemented. It shouldn't even have a referendum. It should just be done.

[dragonwriter]

> Alternate Voting is not a method of proportional representation

Alternative Voting (AV) is a single member district voting system that produces results where the representations of policy views in the elected parliament are more proportional to the views in the electorate than first past the post, and thus is a method of enhancing the proportionality of the election system for a parliament when the status quo is FPTP.

It do so less than Single Transferrable Vote (STV) in multimember districts (AV -- known more often to US audiences as Instant Runoff Voting [IRV] -- is just the single-member-district case of STV, which supports any district size).

Its relationship to other PR schemes where not all candidates are directly elected by-name by general election voters (the most frequent being Party-List Proportional and Mixed-Member Proportional) is complicated -- those schemes optimize for proportionality of partisan composition of the legislature, but provide weaker accountability of individual politicians to the general electorate.

But PR itself isn't a system, its a (continuous valued, not even binary) feature of an electoral system. You can't "implement PR", you can adopt a system that increases (or decreases) the degree to which you have PR.

[tonyedgecombe]

Many people voted against AV because the Liberal Democrats proposed it.

[DonaldFisk]

I'm no fan of hers, but home secretaries seem to get house trained by the security service (MI5) soon after taking office. The home secretaries of the previous Blair/Brown Labour administration were also dreadful. Someone once said that every home secretary since Roy Jenkins has been worse than the previous one.

And Boris Johnson is no idiot. It's part of his act.

[rdsubhas]

And how do all these people get voted in?