"We want our country back" - This letter to the FT about sums it up for me

[todayitstarts]

twitter.com/IanSanders/status/748786375751708672

Sir, Roula Khalaf has the story roughly right but she’s missed the most injured demographic (“Post-referendum mourning and the millennial vote”, Notebook June 30). It’s us on Facebook posting memes about Little Britain and Pooh and Piglet. We are the 48 — years old as well as per cent.
We have small houses and large mortgages. We went to raves and we stopped fighting at football matches. We got very drunk one night in 1997 then felt betrayed because of Iraq. We like being European and we understand the world is interconnected and complicated. We thought everyone knew that the headlines about Brussels Being Bananas were just jokes. We didn’t realise anyone took The Sun seriously. We can follow an argument and spot a lie. We have friends in other countries and we’re embarrassed. We feel completely disconnected from half our neighbours and felt the need to apologise in person to our Polish friends at the school gate. We’ve explained to our kids that grandad isn’t really a racist and that we’ll still be allowed to go camping in France.

We are lecturers, nurses, systems analysts and engineers. We are the civil service. We run small businesses. We work for large, foreign-owned companies. We aren’t in charge but we are the backbone of the country. We didn’t go to Eton. We are grown-ups. We can’t leave because our kids are at school and our parents are getting old. We wish that we were Scottish, or Irish. We didn’t prepare ourselves for this because we didn’t believe it could possibly happen.

We’d really like an electable opposition. We want a plan B, a climbdown, a compromise. We want common sense to come back into fashion. We are reduced to posting on Facebook because we haven’t worked out what to do yet. We will. We want our country back.

Robert Gross

Twickenham, UK

[WashboardAnkles]

Self indulgent but yes, I agree completely. I work in the public sector, so does dh. We both voted IN as did most of our friends. We are angry and feeling powerless. We loathe Gove, Labour is a shambles and now we have to see what happens with the economy whilst the twats that shouted the loudest about 'independence' now throw their hands up and back away slowly trying not to admit outright that they have absolutely no idea what to do now they've fire-bombed our economic stability.

[todayitstarts]

Brilliant.... this, from facebook this guy

So, let me get this straight... the leader of the opposition campaigned to stay but secretly wanted to leave, so his party held a non-binding vote to shame him into resigning so someone else could lead the campaign to ignore the result of the non-binding referendum which many people now think was just angry people trying to shame politicians into seeing they’d all done nothing to help them.

Meanwhile, the man who campaigned to leave because he hoped losing would help him win the leadership of his party, accidentally won and ruined any chance of leading because the man who thought he couldn’t lose, did - but resigned before actually doing the thing the vote had been about. The man who’d always thought he’d lead next, campaigned so badly that everyone thought he was lying when he said the economy would crash - and he was, but it did, but he’s not resigned, but, like the man who lost and the man who won, also now can’t become leader. Which means the woman who quietly campaigned to stay but always said she wanted to leave is likely to become leader instead.

Which means she holds the same view as the leader of the opposition but for opposite reasons, but her party’s view of this view is the opposite of the opposition’s. And the opposition aren’t yet opposing anything because the leader isn’t listening to his party, who aren’t listening to the country, who aren’t listening to experts or possibly paying that much attention at all. However, none of their opponents actually want to be the one to do the thing that the vote was about, so there’s not yet anything actually on the table to oppose anyway. And if no one ever does do the thing that most people asked them to do, it will be undemocratic and if any one ever does do it, it will be awful.

Clear?

[TattyCat]

The FB post - BRILLIANT. Sums it up nicely

[ErrolTheDragon]

Yeah....

I think there's a huge swathe of what I'll call Middle Britain who have been betrayed by the extremists of either side. If you imagine some sort of distribution of political attitudes, it'd probably be something like a bell curve drawn on a cylinder with the tails partially overlapping. So, it should be the centre which overall has the most support and provides sensible, moderate government, shouldn't it? But our first past the post electoral system means that instead of cutting off the tails, we make a cut down the middle.

[RosesareSublime]

what a load of tosh! I could write the same thing from the other bloody side.

and there we go again, the obsession with ". We thought everyone knew that the headlines about Brussels Being Bananas were just joke"


wonky bananas.

No mention of Guns without Borders, or sex trafficking without borders, no mention of the rife corruption which the EU has no system to deal with ( surprise surprise) no mention of the refugees languishing in camps victims of so much plus - the EU inability to form a coherent plan ( unless you count making human trading deals with Erogan counts)...

However if that's all some people think is wrong with the EU ie wonky bananas you can understand the bafflement as to why other people may want to leave the failing state.

[smallfox1980]

Roses,

But no mention from you of the benefits, just lots of the problems, many of which are world problems.

Also the repeated empty rhetoric of corruption, have you proof that it is corrupt throughout?

Yeah, you can't, just keep repeating what you read in the mail eh

[smallfox1980]

No mention of improving human rights, women's rights etc.

No mention of higher levels of saftey in products etc?

No mention of the ability to move freely.

Some of the points you make are about criminals, who would find a way anyway. They certainly manage to move guns into and people into the United States with ease who are no slouch at their borders.

But here's the rub, you think it makes you sound more humanitarian, or gives your argument to leave the EU a morality, it doesn't because its fake morality. Grapsing for reasons to justified your own nebulous opinions.

[Tomtomato]

Sums it up for me too, still heartbroken and really pissed off.

[GreenishMe]

But here's the rub, you think it makes you sound more humanitarian, or gives your argument to leave the EU a morality,

Roses you're so fortunate that there are people who can tell you what you're thinking. Don't you feel blessed?

[Just5minswithDacre]

Smallpox has been polishing her psychic powers for weeks.

[smallfox1980]

Oh nice that you used that again 5minutes, shows your intellectual calibre once again.

And I do think that the humanitarian reasons for leaving are often given for spurious reasons, notice none of the points that I raised were dealt with, you just attacked again.

[Just5minswithDacre]

What?

[Just5minswithDacre]

You DO keep telling people what they are supposedly thinking.

[smallfox1980]

No, I point out when I think certain arguments are being used as a device, not what people are actually thinking.

[Just5minswithDacre]

So "you think" doesn't mean "you think"?

You were telling her what she thought AND telling her that what she thought was that what she thought was that she could get away with cynical insincerity. Nice.

Why calling you out for such lowness is a sign of low intellectual calibre, I can't fathom.

[smallfox1980]

Oh the low intellectual calibre point was the funny "joke" you made with my screen name, again.

The cynical insincerity is there alright, especially as there is a deliberate conflation between things which are criminal and issues that are to do with the EU.

[Just5minswithDacre]

Oh that must have been autocorrect. I'd even gone to the bother of selecting lower case for the 's' so it's overridden me. Sorry.

I suspect it won't be the last time you'll get that with that NN, though.

[TendonQueen]

This is very much how I feel.

[Adidon]

Dear British friends, please do not give up looking at a moment when we can all be (re)united to make Europe a wonderful place. We need you, your hope, your ideas, your energy, your wish to change things that did not work, driven till now by pure political or financial reasons. There were mistakes, we know but, as we know, we can change the system from within and make Europe a better Europe. It is not only a political vision, but cultural and even human. For our chidren and their children. We need to be the ones that prepare a better world for them, our parents did not make the same for us and this is what we have now: nationalism, divisions, policts that think it is not a shame to lie, financial powers that only care making rich people richer, there' s no humanity index in this world. Who should fight for change now? We need you with us, please do not give up. Give a chance to your dream!

[scaryteacher]

Adidon There is no will to change the system from within. That's why some of us voted to leave.

[Adidon]

Good luck with your isolation than...
I hope not everybody thinks as you think.

[WhenSheWasBadSheWasHorrid]

Thanks adidon I like that letter, it reflects a lot of what I'm feeling.

scary I'm very much hoping the EU will change. Not really sure what it should change to but it's clear large sections of people are not happy right now.