To those who voted for Brexit

[HappyClappy1]

Are you happy with your decision?

Brexit won’t solve the problems with the UK and people are fools to think otherwise.

@WhoDatDen

One thing Brexiteers always crow about is the vaccine rollout and use phrases like forged ahead and roaring success leaving the EU clouded with masses of red tape. It is true that we in the UK got ahead of the game, but at what cost?

The EU did take ages to remove the red tape and approve the AZ vaccine but then AZ refused to hand over the UK stock. How fair is that? No wonder we romped ahead.

I’ve argued this many times with Brexiteers down the pub and they come up with the most bizarre excuses.

Ok the UK paid to develop the vaccine and open up factories to manufacture it.
OK the UK signed the contract first and approved the vaccines.
OK the AZ vaccine was the only one developed at cost.
OK the UK poured money into Covax

But they don’t see the bigger picture. By not sticking with the EU27 and joining their vaccine programme, we have caused so much trouble by romping ahead and given bad feeling to the EU. We should all have been vaccinated at the same time instead of the UK acting like Billy Big Bollocks. Shame on the UK.

If we had remained in the EU, they would have been perfectly entitled to help themselves to our vaccines but we scuppered that. Our closest friends and neighbours and we used the vaccines to vaccinate our own people first. No wonder they were livid.

The Brexiteers down the pub obviously disagree. You cannot argue with idiots.

If the shoe was on the other foot would they have helped us out? Shared vaccines with us ahead of their own people? But as is always pointed out on here, we could have run our own vaccine procurement and roll out when in the EU anyway.

If the shoe was on the other foot would they have helped us out? Shared vaccines with us ahead of their own people? But as is always pointed out on here, we could have run our own vaccine procurement and roll out when in the EU anyway

Err had we been in the EU procurement program, then yes, thats the whole point of it.

Maybe ask your self what has messing up the relationship with the EU achieved?
Tighter restrictions that EU, far more infections, more seriously ill, no travel , an NHS on the brink of collapse (5m on waiting list) MH services non existent & schools half empty.

Some Vaccine Dividend :(

Another downside is the loss of free movement of people. Brexiteers bleat on about EU people coming here but never think about the other way round.

This affects me because I wanted to move to Italy when I retire and now I can’t – thanks Brexiteers.

I had plans to move somewhere lovely and hot with my pension and benefits (perfectly entitled to them before anyone complains) and enjoy the Italian lifestyle and diet, maybe find a hot toyboy if I was lucky – not so likely now, probably get a pot bellied, white legged Wayne from Bedford lol. I get so upset thinking about it.

FOM is not all about folk living in the UK.

Italy would benefit from my pension pound and I would not be a drain on the UK but Brexiteers argue with me all the time about this.

They say Italy should know who is living in their country especially old people who might be a drain on resources and it’s only fair so they can consider healthcare which is a factor for older citizens.

But….and I have had many arguments over this, if we had stayed in the EU, the NHS would have picked up the bill for healthcare.

The Brexiteers I argued with online kept posting screenshots saying I can still go, still claim my pension, still get the NHS to pay for healthcare. They talk to me like I am stupid.

They just don’t get it. Now I also have to fill out a form if I want to stay or return home after so many months.

Another thing Brexiteers don’t care about is NI. It is so complicated that my small brain cannot comprehend all the rules, but this is my take on it.

The UK is now a third country and that’s our choice. We implemented the NIP and agreed to stick to it. Now Boris says the EU is too strict and causing trouble for NI.

Tough titty Boris. You need to check every single item going into NI as this is the EU’s rules. They are the big empire and we are the small fry. We need to obey their standards and rules.

The Brexiteers I chat to down the pub are a bit quiet on this issue but they say common sense needs to be applied and compromise on both sides. They say a common area agreement should be drawn up where we respect each other with a trusted trader agreement.
They say our standards are higher than the EU’s and spout lots of info at me.

Fair enough but the EU cannot take that chance and we might drop our standards. What would happen if the substandard sausage got into the south of Ireland? I know the EU are also concerned about British mud. If the lorry travelled from NI to across the border, that mud on the tyre could taint Ireland.

As usual the Brexiteers cant debate this point.

I can't agree with the concept that we were selfish to plough ahead with our vaccine rollout ahead of the EU. It has saved the lives of thousands of people in the U.K., allowed elderly people to see their families after a long time on their own, helped get children back to school and finally opened up the beleaguered hospitality sector.

If we continue that thinking, should we have also waited for other parts of the world to procure their vaccines too? Including the less developed nations who are arguably more in need of vaccines than EU countries which have better healthcare systems?

I genuinely cannot imagine the EU extending the same courtesy to us. Their vaccine procurement process was bureaucratic and not commercially savvy (in terms of contract wording). Some countries felt the vaccines weren't distributed fairly across EU members and bought vaccines from Russia and China. There's no way the EU would have shared vaccines with the U.K. if they'd been in our position.

@thecatsatonthewall

If the shoe was on the other foot would they have helped us out? Shared vaccines with us ahead of their own people? But as is always pointed out on here, we could have run our own vaccine procurement and roll out when in the EU anyway

Err had we been in the EU procurement program, then yes, thats the whole point of it.

Maybe ask your self what has messing up the relationship with the EU achieved?
Tighter restrictions that EU, far more infections, more seriously ill, no travel , an NHS on the brink of collapse (5m on waiting list) MH services non existent & schools half empty.

Some Vaccine Dividend :(

So an advantage would have been a slower vaccine roll out in the name of some sort of perceived fairness? Being part of their procurement programme would have sucked, probably the only positive of us leaving was actually forging ahead on our own rather than signing up out of a duty. The latter part of your post implies that the EU is being petty, they aren't, they are treating us like any outsider, but what do schools and mental health services have to do with leaving the EU just a few months after the fact?

I am absolutely not going to agree that the UK should have given up vaccines it developed and paid for, to benefit the EU. I'm all for sharing freely what we have once our own population is in the clear, but not before. And when we share vaccines there are people in the world whose need is greater than the EU! Like fuck would they have shared fairly with us - look at their behaviour over it, raiding factories, threatening blockades! I wonder how many people saying we ought to have given up what we paid for held off receiving the benefit of the UK rollout until they felt that those living in the EU had received theirs. Because I'm thinking most kept their slot.

And I'm also not obliged to vote against what I think is right because WhoDatDen wants to retire to Italy! Cos that should absolutely be my priority

@MrsHuntGeneNotJeremyObviously

I am absolutely not going to agree that the UK should have given up vaccines it developed and paid for, to benefit the EU. I'm all for sharing freely what we have once our own population is in the clear, but not before. And when we share vaccines there are people in the world whose need is greater than the EU! Like fuck would they have shared fairly with us - look at their behaviour over it, raiding factories, threatening blockades! I wonder how many people saying we ought to have given up what we paid for held off receiving the benefit of the UK rollout until they felt that those living in the EU had received theirs. Because I'm thinking most kept their slot.

And I'm also not obliged to vote against what I think is right because WhoDatDen wants to retire to Italy! Cos that should absolutely be my priority

Yes that’s one of the great bastions of the EU – a level playing field. We could all come out of this mess at the same pace. I admit that the UK have first class sequencing and developed, manufactured and paid for the vaccines to be produced at cost but by being first we made the EU suspicious of us. In turn they trashed the AZ vaccine’s reputation.

It’s a massive mess. Why can Brexiteers not see this?

There's also the fact we had to hammer out at the last minute an agreement to let the Joint European Torus (JET) remain in Culham until 2024. We have no idea what will happen next but Brexit is a hammer blot to STEM which has been an inherently international process since antiquity.
How much thought did Brexiteers put into its effects on Science and Technology. I can see the stress it has put many of my colleagues under when they are having to do paper work and pay for things they never anticipated having to do when they moved to the UK.
I understand that Leavers were sold something they thought was solid but turned out to be vapourware - but what did they think would happen under a hard Brexit?

But it's been argued that the EU has no responsibility to the UK and can treat us as outsiders. That being the case, the UK has no responsibility to the EU. Can't have it both ways. I'm not willing to give the EU all our vaccine just so the EU isn't 'suspicious' of us. Might as well have 'doormat' engraved into the white cliffs of Dover!

If the EU had asked for help, the UK would have provided it - it's in all our interests to vaccinate and get out of this mess and it's amazing what asking, rather than threatening and bullying will get you!

All politicians have a responsibility to behave like grown ups and protect their traders and diplomatic relations. We can either have a friendly trading arrangement where we all tick along, and our businesses on both sides of the channel continue to make money. Or a more hostile arrangement where lots of businesses and individuals lose money. That's up to the EU as much as the UK.

Who dat den.

With respect, and the eu has lost sight of this, each government has been chosen and voted (ok usually from a piss poor selection) by the people for the people.

Our government puts us first or it bloody well should.
Of course the UK government did the right thing in protecting us and vaccination us first!!
It's utterly bonkers to make us responsible for the people of Sweden or France!!

Their government job is to protect them!

Eg Germany breaking from the eu pack to get going.... They chose to move as one huge clumsy train, we chose not too.

WhoDatDen What level playing field in the EU? There is no such thing and don't kid yourself there is. There is a group of disparate nations all doing their own thing, and jostling for influence or money, whilst those in the Brussels bubble look on.

@Lemonmelonsun

You'd like to think so but with a huge death toll especially in Care Homes and failure to limit the ingress of the virus from India, clearly the govt either don't care or don't want to protect us.

Unfortunately, the UK made sure it banned the export of vaccines via water tight contracts and than made vaccines a nationalistic venture. We were never ever going to allow the export of vaccines, we've given none to Covax let alone Spain, the PP who thought the EU asking nicely would get a positive response from the UK is naïve.

I argued to export some vaccine to covax and the long before the EU kicked off and few on MNs wanted to do that, human nature is very selfish.
Plus the hatred toward the EU is very obvious from some posters, when India banned vaccine export that was all fine, when the EU just mentioned they might do it, they were the scum of the earth :(

All politicians have a responsibility to behave like grown ups and protect their traders and diplomatic relations. We can either have a friendly trading arrangement where we all tick along, and our businesses on both sides of the channel continue to make money. Or a more hostile arrangement where lots of businesses and individuals lose money. That's up to the EU as much as the UK

Johnson had the opportunity to negotiate a closer working relationship (Mays deal) but his deal is far from that.

e.g. no Erasmus or Europol both UK choices, we could have a veterinary agreement with the EU on NI, solving almost all the problems.

But all is not yet done, so hopefully, a better working relationship can be negotiated away from the Brexit spotlight.

It doesn't matter what one likes or wants to think though, that is.. The job of any government.

They don't often do it well and we could cover a range of whys and why not.. But I don't trust removed power, why anyone thinks the shawody commission which looses x amount of money each year to corruption is a good thing I'll never understood.

The cat, maybe from a pr point of view it was spun?

Imagine... Free agile brits save the day.. Providing lumbering, arguing inept eu block with vaccines!!

The EU has lots of different countries in it, with very different points of view. My friends family lives in a European country & he told me Brexit is virtually never mentioned where he is, & when it is, it's in factual, brief tones. The mad emotional stuff seems to be reserved for a for particular section of our tabloids who try to pretend there's some big stand off but in reality most people have their own local issues that they find more interesting. He also told me they got very little AZ vaccines as the UK had reserved most of it & problems securing any meant the other vaccines were used mostly instead. I guess it serves anti EU propaganda to pretend it was some kind of evil EU plot instead.

Brexit - if we all just read data reports on whether it'd be logical, noone would have voted for it.

@MrsHuntGeneNotJeremyObviously

But it's been argued that the EU has no responsibility to the UK and can treat us as outsiders. That being the case, the UK has no responsibility to the EU. Can't have it both ways. I'm not willing to give the EU all our vaccine just so the EU isn't 'suspicious' of us. Might as well have 'doormat' engraved into the white cliffs of Dover!

If the EU had asked for help, the UK would have provided it - it's in all our interests to vaccinate and get out of this mess and it's amazing what asking, rather than threatening and bullying will get you!

All politicians have a responsibility to behave like grown ups and protect their traders and diplomatic relations. We can either have a friendly trading arrangement where we all tick along, and our businesses on both sides of the channel continue to make money. Or a more hostile arrangement where lots of businesses and individuals lose money. That's up to the EU as much as the UK.

I get sent overseas articles quite often from my friend (sometimes he has to translate them tho, lol) and it's amazing to see how the UK press (some parts of it) are literally lying. It's probably the case for all countries to some degree but the anti EU propaganda here is quite off the scale at the moment.

@Polkadots2021 - I’m Belgian living in London so also see the international press. My family live in Brussels and DD works for the EU. The British need to open their eyes and don’t believe everything the U.K. politicians and press say.

I think this question may have been asked and answered several times.
Move on.

@Witchgonebad

I think this question may have been asked and answered several times. Move on.

Says those who know it’s a shit show and hope people won’t notice

Yes I think we’ve all heard that argument several times as well

Parker and your suggesting that press from the heart of the mother ship is going to be more neutral

It’s the international press, not the press from the heart of the mothership, whatever that means.

And yes, having lived on the continent and in the UK, it is very noticeable how insular the British press is. Not to mention the fact that most of it has vilified the EU or EEC as it was then since the UK joined in 1973.