Meanwhile, in Scotland – which voted strongly to Remain, despite the appalling aftermath of Thatcher and that miserable quisling Blair – the boilers are being stoked for another Leave vote.

The South lied like flat fish about the Good Things that would come to Scotland if they voted ‘Better Together’. Good Things haven’t, and 1320 is not at all forgotten.

Alba gu brath.

Yes Cleangreen, and National has the same ‘crapper’ planned for here – economic Armageddon.

There’s a ballooning debt mountain the Natz and their coalition of the damned are creating, because there are no longer enough state assets to service and this will eventually lead to a Government default, starting in the public service.

Austerity Measures in Aotearoa will be imposed, when China has got NZ’s “ ‘economic balls’ debt in their hands”

Civil servant and contractors, teachers, nurses, super-annuitants won’t be able to be paid because Kiwi assets were hocked off to “mum and dad investors”. Police will still be needed to “maintain lawandorder”. You are right CG, the economic crapper of the South Pacific…

We’re headed towards being the PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain) or worse, Iceland of the South Pacific because of the do-nothing-except-chase-lost-luggage National Party.

When the housing bubble bursts, who will pay? Or the likely scenario by the Natz will be to stall the bubble bursting until after the election 2017. Whoever gets in, will have to CPR the economy and put it on life support for years to come and then institute “austerity measures” for the good of the country.

What’s coming for NZ, will make global warming look like a fart in the bath. Economic Armageddon, seeded by neolibs in 1984 and brought to its culmination in 2017

No Andrew, the Exit Campaigners are the one who cause shock and disbelief with their outrageous claim that upon leaving the EU there would be an “extra 350 million pounds re-invested to the National Health Service.

ref: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/24/nigel-farage-350-million-pledge-to-fund-the-nhs-was-a-mistake/

In a question to Brexit leader Nigel Farage, whether or not the 350 million pounds would be re-invested in the NHS, Farage replied,

“No I can’t, I would never have made that claim.

That was one of the mistakes made by the Leave campaign.”

So if you want to look at “outrageous claims”, Andrew, you can look at that one first.

Yes Castro.

Thank God Key and the Crosby/Textor advisers here have underestimated the TPPA and TTIP sentiment. It’s easy to see that they have over-estimated the desire for the TPPA-style agreements through their polling. It seems that voters in England misoverestimated (to use a Bush-ism) the desire of their kingdom and workers to hand over their assets, sovereignty and human assets (workers) to corporations.

“Richard Tuck argues in `The left case for Brexit` (Dissent Magazine June 6) that EU institutions are unreformable. The European Commission and the European Central Bank (ECB) combined with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) constitutes an austerity machine. The EU equates with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Trans- Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). All three arrangements should be resolutely opposed. Tuck insists that the EU`s social democratic rhetoric has no basis in reality;

` in practice the EU USA subordinates its concerns with workers’ rights to its own concern to maintain the freedom of companies to shop around within the EU TPPA-zone for the weakest regimes of labour protection`”.

With the sentiment here about TPPA, the sooner Key can get it up and running to show some benefits to New Zealand, the less destructive a TPPAdiktat it will seem before the 2017 election. Labour and Greens (like their British Labour party ‘remain and leave’ factions) need a solid and unified position on TPPA, but as other TDB blogs here have hinted, trojan neoliberals within Labour won’t be able to contain their bilious antipathy towards exit -TPPA in an MOU discussion.

It is the best of times and the worst of times in NZ politics, but the flag debate here, was a chilling parallel to the BREXIT vote. Money, All Blacks, Chinese Investors, “Opposing Bishops” and a pro-right media didn’t predict the outcome and anti-Key sentiment. Key and Cameron were figureheads for corporatisation.

The people have had enough. Praise the Lord!

The whole world is inn the crapper, and Italy is near default living non borrowed time now, and all these lame duck countries will drag us down soon.

China has never spoken about using a nuclear bomb.

The USA have many times and having never been under attack since 1945 when they allowed the Pearl harbour event to happen knowing full well it was under way, they are using the bomb as a threat not a deterrent

Our “mates” who would not allow the japan surrender till after they had dropped two bombs.

Elephant in the room is that I can’t see how they will ever move to MMP, or any remotely proportional system; after all we only achieved it as a result of a couple of electioneering mis-statements.

As for forecasting the future – I still reckon odds-on they will not trigger article 50.

Idk. All the EU bonds are held in London so for the EU to lose its secound largest economy and all its finance the EU contract will have to be renogotiated by the time article 50 is negotiated. All in about 2 years. It’s all so over ambitious and super risky.

As for this:
“At present, the Westminster system protects a directionless political class, landed`gentry`, corporate elites and the city of London. Meanwhile a dysfunctional EU awaits the next financial crisis as the United Kingdom slowly unravels.”

I wonder whether we cannot apply this to some degree to much of the world, and also to New Zealand.

We do indeed have technocrats, bureaucrats and a pro business elite run the show, and most have no say in anything, that is in real terms.

I look at Auckland Council, where a Council made up of Councillors that were voted in by only about 34 to 35 percent of all voters (who bothered to vote in 2013) now make decisions about the future of the city, while most ordinary Aucklanders have stuff all knowledge of what the Proposed Auckland Unitary Plan with its many amendments and now also recommendations by a central government appointed, supposedly “independent” hearing panel recommended.

I look at the Central Government itself, where we have a leader that can do whatever he likes, or fail to do whatever he cannot be bothered with, who is convenient with the truth, and has the support of loyal, but largely incompetent or useless ministers. The public know stuff all about the details what the government does, puts into law, and what it will mean for the future, but because Mr Teflon Nice Guy with his smile and casual appeal is just so “convincing”, most go along with, or at least put up with what the government does.

There is no effective management of housing policy, immigration policy, an increasingly Dickensian approach to poverty and welfare, and environmental and economic policies that drive us towards a cliff, but as the MSM does not shine enough light on the issues, apart from housing that is, nobody worries or cares all that much.

They trust the political elite, as most cannot bother reading and informing themselves, let alone bother considering alternatives and actually contributing by constructive, effective discussion and opposition to the madness we see go on.

The ones that hold the pursestrings, business in collaboration with government, they fund the “research”, “polls” and “agendas” we are told we need, and “develop” everything along corporate and SME business lines.

Hence we have private enterprise run ever so more, only reinforcing the disowning of the public, the shutting down of informed media and of community involvement, and certainly any potential challengers and critics.

So we go along with all this, so far that is, in little New Zealand, until the world economy and/or financial sectors may hit a rock again, and we will suddenly have everybody rush around in panic, like headless chickens, then fall for the messenger of one like Donald Trump or so, and demand sudden solutions to the “crisis”.

That leads to new mistakes being made, to create the mess of the future, so that the whole cycle can begin again, and go through full cycle, until the last trees are chopped down, the last minerals are dug out of the earth, the last fish swims in the ocean, the last bird travels in the air, and the last sun rays shine through ever thicker clouds of pollution destroying the remnants of life on this planet.

I despair.