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12 minutes ago, Auld_Reekie said:

I'm expecting an anti-climax to be honest. There is an air of hysteria and I do wonder if in the end, if it doesn't end up being the Black Swan event it's sometimes predicted to be, UK Government come out the other side smelling of roses and Brexit Britain gets off to an unexpected good start. Government and Brexiteers all get to pat themselves on the back and we settle down into a long period of wondering how they pulled it off and why Remainers managed to make a fuss about nothing.

Ultimately, if No-Deal Brexit is going to be as bad as it's being portrayed, I don't think they'd be pursuing it so aggressively. Will finish their careers. It's in their interests to promote a worst-case scenario so that any reality has a decent chance of being compared favourably to the predications.

At this stage, I'm happy for it to happen as soon as possible. Been an utter shambles and we should take our medicine and reflect on the aftermath when it comes.

I suspect you're right.

I noticed a couple of weeks ago the Bank of England massively reduced their 'worst case' No deal estimate from an 8% hit to GDP,  down to 4.5%.

This was due to all the No Deal preparation work the government have done. A few more months of that, plus temporary 'mini-deal' arrangements with the EU, and we could indeed be in millennium bug hysteria territory.

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2 hours ago, Dave78 said:

I suspect you're right.

I noticed a couple of weeks ago the Bank of England massively reduced their 'worst case' No deal estimate from an 8% hit to GDP,  down to 4.5%.

This was due to all the No Deal preparation work the government have done. A few more months of that, plus temporary 'mini-deal' arrangements with the EU, and we could indeed be in millennium bug hysteria territory.

As someone who was working in the software industry at the time, I can assure you that the millennium bug wasn't hysteria, it was a very real problem.  The fact that nothing untoward happened was because the entire industry got its shit together well in advance and sorted out all the potential problems.    

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8 minutes ago, aaid said:

As someone who was working in the software industry at the time, I can assure you that the millennium bug wasn't hysteria, it was a very real problem.  The fact that nothing untoward happened was because the entire industry got its shit together well in advance and sorted out all the potential problems.    

Aye, and that's what i suspect might happen re brexit.

 

edit: specifically a No Deal brexit.

Edited by Dave78
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4 minutes ago, Dave78 said:

Aye, and that's what i suspect might happen re brexit.

 

edit: specifically a No Deal brexit.

From memory, I think we started our Y2K projects in 1996/97 and had the work complete by early 1998, not October 1999.

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17 minutes ago, aaid said:

From memory, I think we started our Y2K projects in 1996/97 and had the work complete by early 1998, not October 1999.

Ahh, now you're taking me back :ok:

I remember seeing ads for Y2K PC diagnostic software, which gets a mention in this brilliant ad...

 

 

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41 minutes ago, aaid said:

As someone who was working in the software industry at the time, I can assure you that the millennium bug wasn't hysteria, it was a very real problem.  The fact that nothing untoward happened was because the entire industry got its shit together well in advance and sorted out all the potential problems.    

😂 Absolute horseshit. It was the biggest con job imaginable. You really do talk a lot of pish.

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3 minutes ago, Dave78 said:

Ahh, now you're taking me back :ok:

I remember seeing ads for Y2K PC diagnostic software, which gets a mention in this brilliant ad...

 

 

Never miss an opportunity to make some money.  Mind you the company I worked for at the time did really well out of it.  All our customers had to upgrade to the latest version to be compliant as as we were producing software for businesses they weren't going to chance it.  That meant loads of upgrade revenue for us, problem was that the usual upgrade cycle was 3-4 years, so 2000 and 2001 weren't so good.

Hogmanay for the Millennium, I was in Espionage in Edinburgh all night.   At each hour the DJ said " and now it's the Millennium in xxx".   I remember when it was "Midnight in Moscow" and thinking, if anything's going to go wrong, it'll be now.

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13 minutes ago, aaid said:

Never miss an opportunity to make some money.  Mind you the company I worked for at the time did really well out of it.  All our customers had to upgrade to the latest version to be compliant as as we were producing software for businesses they weren't going to chance it.  That meant loads of upgrade revenue for us, problem was that the usual upgrade cycle was 3-4 years, so 2000 and 2001 weren't so good.

What did the software do?

2 years to fix a few date fields? Typical lazy programmers ye's are! :P

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3 hours ago, Auld_Reekie said:

I'm expecting an anti-climax to be honest. There is an air of hysteria and I do wonder if in the end, if it doesn't end up being the Black Swan event it's sometimes predicted to be, UK Government come out the other side smelling of roses and Brexit Britain gets off to an unexpected good start. Government and Brexiteers all get to pat themselves on the back and we settle down into a long period of wondering how they pulled it off and why Remainers managed to make a fuss about nothing.

Ultimately, if No-Deal Brexit is going to be as bad as it's being portrayed, I don't think they'd be pursuing it so aggressively. Will finish their careers. It's in their interests to promote a worst-case scenario so that any reality has a decent chance of being compared favourably to the predications.

At this stage, I'm happy for it to happen as soon as possible. Been an utter shambles and we should take our medicine and reflect on the aftermath when it comes.

Imagine it is not just an anti climax but even perceived as a ‘success’ after all the over selling of its negative consequences? Where does that leave the SNP and their dreams of indyref2... never mind actually winning it? 

I agree. It really has to happen now. Full on, fuck your shit deals BREXIT. Let’s see where the chips fall.

 

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General business, accountancy, manufacturing and distribution software.  I wasn't directly involved in the project thankfully but from what I recall it wasn't a particularly big deal for us, we just had a small team working away at it and the technology we were using was still relatively current.

If we'd ignored it, then it would've been a different matter though.

The problem with dates is they get used in all sorts of ways that aren't obviously apparent.  That said its not that difficult to identify where you use dates, it's then just a matter of analysing if there's any problems, fixing them and testing.   It's a lot of grunt work unfortunately for those involved, not particularly interesting.   For us the actual development and testing effort was minimal compared to the overall work required for our clients as we had thousands of installations and that was a major upgrade. 

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6 minutes ago, thplinth said:

Imagine it is not just an anti climax but even perceived as a ‘success’ after all the over selling of its negative consequences? Where does that leave the SNP and their dreams of indyref2... never mind actually winning it? 

I agree. It really has to happen now. Full on, fuck your shit deals BREXIT. Let’s see where the chips fall.

 

I have said it before and will say it again.

As things stand you probably have a hard core 40% of Yes voters who will vote Yes whenever another IndyRef is called. Probably there are around just under 45% hard core unionists who will vote No whenever IndyRef 2 comes about. That leaves the Yes side to try to convince about 15% of voters to vote Yes. Many of those don't knows/waiverers/overly cautious voters (if we were to have a vote BEFORE Brexit) would want to know the outcome of Brexit before being converted into a Yes voter. They would still hold on to a faint hope that a deal would be signed on Brexit or that it would be cancelled and so would not have the courage to vote Yes. On top of that Bitter Together 2 no doubt would point out that this IndyRef was never really anything to do with EU membership as the Yes side could not even wait to find out the outcome of Brexit. That will only put more potential Yes voters off.

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15 minutes ago, Caledonian Craig said:

I have said it before and will say it again.

As things stand you probably have a hard core 40% of Yes voters who will vote Yes whenever another IndyRef is called. Probably there are around just under 45% hard core unionists who will vote No whenever IndyRef 2 comes about. That leaves the Yes side to try to convince about 15% of voters to vote Yes. Many of those don't knows/waiverers/overly cautious voters (if we were to have a vote BEFORE Brexit) would want to know the outcome of Brexit before being converted into a Yes voter. They would still hold on to a faint hope that a deal would be signed on Brexit or that it would be cancelled and so would not have the courage to vote Yes. On top of that Bitter Together 2 no doubt would point out that this IndyRef was never really anything to do with EU membership as the Yes side could not even wait to find out the outcome of Brexit. That will only put more potential Yes voters off.

45% hard core unionists seems awfully high. 

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6 minutes ago, Caledonian Craig said:

I did say just under 45% perhaps 43%. It would tally that the figure is around that mark given that all indy polls never puts No vote anything under that in polls.

Less than a third of those who voted No in 2014 were "hard core Unionists" "Union at all costs"

Curtice did a breakdown and warned Unionists in general of that

It was those that were not convinced that made up the highest proportion

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10 minutes ago, Ally Bongo said:

Less than a third of those who voted No in 2014 were "hard core Unionists" "Union at all costs"

Curtice did a breakdown and warned Unionists in general of that

It was those that were not convinced that made up the highest proportion

Hard core perhaps the wrong term then. But those inclined to vote No numbers more than those inclined to vote Yes - not by much but still a difference. The indyref polls tell us that. On top of that the election vote share tells us that with a fractionally higher percentage of voters voting for unionist parties over those backing independence.

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How about:

1. New UK referendum, soft Brexit (single market and customs union) versus No Deal.  

2. New Scottish referendum, with question, should Scotland remain in EU / single market and customs union?  For the purpose of leverage with UK/EU n event of same or similar being granted to NI. Which side would supposedly pro-EU unionists parties campaign for? 

 

 

 

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20 minutes ago, thplinth said:

How about we just leave the EU like ‘we’ voted and see what happens?

There was a referendum, the whole country voted... how about we respect that?

The option 1 just suggested does respect the referendum result. The 2016 vote instructed us to leave the EU, but not how.

The option 2 is just suggested in case "the whole country" is not leaving the EU on the same basis. 

Edited by exile
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4 hours ago, exile said:

How about:

1. New UK referendum, soft Brexit (single market and customs union) versus No Deal.  

2. New Scottish referendum, with question, should Scotland remain in EU / single market and customs union?  For the purpose of leverage with UK/EU n event of same or similar being granted to NI. Which side would supposedly pro-EU unionists parties campaign for? 

 

 

 

The majority of Scots will not care a jot if NI get a differential deal.

If UK leaves on a soft Brexit with no major damage then the cautious no voters from 2014 will be happy to continue with business as usual. 

Trying to make noise about a differential deal for NI being undemocratic to Scotland by not supporting our demands, etc. is just bullshit political spin from the SNP for me. It’s completely different circumstances. Good luck to them with it but I don’t think your average person cares too much. 

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Maybe the SNP know they will not win a referendum and have come to the conclusion that 300 years of brainwashing and enforced cringe wont be beaten for another generation

Therefore the only alternative is to get English Nationalism to dissolve the union for them ...

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3 minutes ago, Ally Bongo said:

Maybe the SNP know they will not win a referendum and have come to the conclusion that 300 years of brainwashing and enforced cringe wont be beaten for another generation

Therefore the only alternative is to get English Nationalism to dissolve the union for them ...

This idea is just mad.

If this sentiment really had any sway among the English establishment, why didn't they offload the 6 counties of Ireland as soon as it became a political and economic drain?

Edited by Dave78
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5 hours ago, thplinth said:

How about we just leave the EU like ‘we’ voted and see what happens?

There was a referendum, the whole country voted... how about we respect that?

Totally agree. I don't gave much sympathy regarding EU referendum. Maybe after this people won't take politics for granted. 

And its worth remembering that any underhand backtracking here is likely to be attempted after a successful #indyref. Its in interests of Yes we don't hand Unionists an out when they need it most. 

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1 hour ago, Dave78 said:

This idea is just mad.

If this sentiment really had any sway among the English establishment, why didn't they offload the 6 counties of Ireland as soon as it became a political and economic drain?

It was tongue in cheek

However it is two different scenarios

Ulster wasn't stifling the wishes of the English electorate

As someone said - This week England realised they are in a Union and they dont like it

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