The country is a shit show - why is there so little mention of Brexit's role?

[Neonskytonight]

That's it really.

Surely all our woes can't be placed at the door of covid and war - it is a good political narrative, but is it really true?

I'm amazed how little questioning by the media and public there is about the role of Brexit.

What's really hilarious is that the vast majority of British people who can still work and live in the EU are the ones who didn't vote for Brexit.

A relative of mine who voted Leave is convinced he'll be able to just rock up and get a bar job in Spain, with only a British passport, speaking no Spanish. People like this seem convinced that the rest of Europe are absolutely crying out for unskilled, uneducated, poor, monolingual Brits. It's funny and alarming in equal measure how so many people like this still don't understand their place in the world and how little they have to offer.

Ehhh...the vast majority of people in the UK did not vote for Brexit.

'Increased competition for jobs'? How's that working out, then? From where I'm standing, we've got a desperate shortage of hospitality staff, security staff, and cleaning staff. The wages on offer are through the roof..so where are all these unemployed Brits who were only stopped from doing these jobs by all those pesky Poles and Lithuanians?

I'd also love to know how much you think this 'increased pressure on public services' is coming from EU citizens.

I'll give you a real life example. My son married a Finn. They wanted to move to Finland and for him to study at a university (English language course) there while learning the language. They had to move there before the end of the transition period or he would be paying high foreign national fees which they couldn't afford. Going before exit he pays £0 (and gets €250 per month student support).
He needs to get work experience credits for his degree. He is working in Sweden this summer. He could have a placement for 3months but is having to cut it a week short to ensure he doesn't break the 90 day rule. He has Finnish residency but as soon as he goes to another country he comes under rules applying to Brits. This also means that he cannot visit another EU country before November without getting a visa.

"'Increased competition for jobs'? How's that working out, then? From where I'm standing, we've got a desperate shortage of hospitality staff, security staff, and cleaning staff. The wages on offer are through the roof..so where are all these unemployed Brits who were only stopped from doing these jobs by all those pesky Poles and Lithuanians?"
The wages clearly aren't high enough. If they paid a million pounds an hour do you think there'd be any shortage of applicants? No? So it clearly isn't that people are unwilling to do the jobs, IF the money is right.

pixie5121
Plenty of working class students studied in Europe on the Erasmus scheme

It doesn't take much common sense to realise that children from working class families in the UK are less likely to study European languages to A-level, and therefore less likely to study a European language at degree level - unless of course they already come from a bilingual family. You have to laugh that the British Council chose a Rwandan Belgian national (who studied at Cardiff University and spent some time in the UK during her primary school years) to be their British ambassador for the Erasmus+ Youth Mobility program in 2019. I am sure she is a very personable young woman but couldn't they find a young black British (or Asian) student who had benefitted from Erasmus instead?

The working class and underclass people who voted for Brexit

The "underclass"??
I would argue that the most disadvantaged people in our society probably didn't vote in the EU referendum at all. For example, Glasgow is supposed to be one of the least well-educated cities in the UK - the referendum turnout in Glasgow was 56% - whereas the turnout in Edinburgh was 73%.

Alexandra2001
As for Brexit, as far as i can see, the stupid voted for it...the economically inactive and those on benefits...the majority of tax payers voted to Remain.

2021
The notion that the typical Brexit supporter was a working-class voter “left behind” in a red-wall constituency or dilapidated seaside town has been upended by research that shows half of leave voters were comfortably well off.

www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/apr/19/half-of-brexit-supporters-were-not-left-behind-red-wall-voters

(or Asian)
British Asian

Look at countries like Sweden

we've just come back from Denmark

Some 1,000 SAS (SAS.ST) pilots in Denmark, Norway and Sweden could go on strike from late June over disagreements on wages and ways to cut costs at the struggling Nordic airline

www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/sas-pilots-warn-potential-strike-late-june-2022-06-09/

Scandinavian airline SAS will cancel around 4,000 flights over summer.

The pilot’s union [said] they had warned of staff shortages on multiple occasions.

www.thelocal.se/20220511/sas-to-cancel-4000-flights/

@Florenz, we lost medical professionals, taxi drivers, abattoir and food processing professionals, hospitality workers, carers, vets, teachers, cleaners, agricultural workers and many more. Where do you live that you had a surplus of people to fill those roles?

You say most people were happy to end FOM because they had no interest in using it. Most people have used it.🙈 From the campers taking their dogs away with them, to the au-pairs and builders who sent money home, to the holiday makers swanning through the easy Airport channels. Not to mention the numerous people in NI and Ireland who cross the border daily to get to work.

Knowing no one who benefited from FOM may be representative of your circle. It is certainly not representative of the country as a whole.

we lost medical professionals, hospitality workers

20 May 2022
Hotels and restaurants across Europe are struggling to fill hundreds of thousands of vacancies...
Waiters, cooks, chambermaids and other staff have deserted the sector after being furloughed during the pandemic, sometimes to take other jobs with shorter hours or to leave hospitality altogether.
In France, for instance, an estimated 250,000 posts are vacant in restaurants, cafés and hotels, prompting warnings that the summer influx of holidaymakers could result in chaos.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/staff-shortages-cast-a-cloud-over-europes-summer-season-0z8npv0pl

French ‘medical deserts’: Mayor’s plea over lack of rural GPs,
Up to 8 million people in France live in ‘white zones’ without regular access to a GP...

www.connexionfrance.com/article/French-news/French-medical-deserts-Mayor-s-plea-over-lack-of-rural-GPs

@Clavinova

Oh dear! have your standards fallen so low that you now don't even read the link you posted?

“The English are feral, and they were fed for years and years off, if you stubbed your toe you got disability living allowance for the rest of your life … The English need to be retrained that, to feed your family, if you have to go and scrub toilets … that’s what you do,” said one female from the west Midlands

So stupid people....

Or and even better.....

“The expectations and hopes for the post-Brexit world among comfortable leavers show a nostalgic optimism that leaving the EU (and the pandemic) might be a catalyst for change, but a change that could restore industries, services and a sense of pride from an earlier era,” concludes the report

Very stupid people....

Then we get to the meat of the research.. 130 took part....

NatCen’s qualitative research came from eight deliberative workshops involving 130 people, 73 of who voted leave, 55 who voted remain and two who did not vote

Stupid research.

LOL.

You cannot be serious. Where is the money supposed to come from?

What are you on about? You didn't need to have studied modern languages at all to do Erasmus. You could be a STEM student and go on Erasmus if you wanted to. If you chose a university somewhere like Sweden or the Netherlands, you didn't even need to know another language.

And plenty of working class students study European languages at A Level. I met loads and loads of them on my own Erasmus year. Working class kids from places like Hull and Doncaster getting an opportunity to live and study in another European country.

This widespread attitude that foreign languages and culture are 'posh' and 'not for us' is precisely why young people here are so cut off and have so few opportunities.

How many pet owners took pets on holidays abroad?

When I took the car across to France in September 2018, I was staggered to see just how many cars had the sticker on their front window showing that they had a pet on board. They had to queue up in a separate lane. At an approximate guess I would say 1/4 of the cars had pets with them.

Pet travel with just Brittany ferries..
Year
Dogs carried
2012 51,500
2013 60,118
2014 66,324

2015 78,966

2016 88,605

2017 91,289

Thats just one x channel ferry company with a handful of sailings per week to France and Spain.

You said people didn't care about FOM or Erasmus or Pet Passports etc but the reality is they believed the Leave campaign who said these things (for us) wouldn't change... Johnson even said it in the HoC.

You cannot be serious. Where is the money supposed to come from?

Perhaps fine Rishi Sunak for wasting taxpayers money and make him dig deep in his pockets. £11 billion today because he failed to take out an insurance policy. £4 billion from fraudulent furlough payments that he had no intention of trying to get back.

I agree that accountants call these sunk costs: once the money has been wasted, it's gone, but if the will is there the money can be found.

Pet travel with just Brittany ferries..

A lot of those are probably the same people going back every year, probably even several times a year. It's not that many people compared to over 17 million people that voted for Brexit.

How many people ever went on the Erasmus scheme? Not that many. Clearly not enough to make a difference.

How many people worked as Au Pairs? How many builders went to the continent to work and send money back? Not that many and it's not like the builders went abroad by choice, it was because they could earn money abroad than they could here.

You have to laugh that the British Council chose a Rwandan Belgian national (who studied at Cardiff University and spent some time in the UK during her primary school years) to be their British ambassador for the Erasmus+ Youth Mobility program in 2019. I am sure she is a very personable young woman but couldn't they find a young black British (or Asian) student who had benefitted from Erasmus instead?

Why is it funny?
You do know E + operated outside of the EU ?

and that the budget for Erasmus 2019 to 2027 is 30 billion euro's, none of which will benefit UK kids, nor we will benefit from top EU students coming here to study, ... people like Gisela Stewart (not Erasmus, not top) but came to a UK Uni, stayed married and then set about making sure no one else could.

Bit like Patel or many other Tory MPs who seek to deny others opportunities they once enjoyed.

@florenz So basically, your going on your feelings? nothing else.

The more you argue the more your support my original statement.

@Florenz, when you add the students, scientists, holiday makers, au-pairs, builders, WC people who retired to sunnier parts of the EU, the casual workers etc together with the million pet owners and the 1.8 million people in Northern Ireland, that is a huge number of people. All negatively impacted by the end of FOM.

Is your vision of the UK so narrow that you cannot see beyond your own experiences and those of your friends and family?

There's a lot more people like me than there are going off to study on Erasmus schemes, taking pets abroad or traipsing around Europe to find work on building sites and feeling happy about it. The vast, vast majority of people do none of those things. Which is why Brexit won the vote. And why there was such a shockwave from people who couldn't conceive of why it happened, they were completely disconnected from the majority of people in Britain, stuck in their middle-class echo chamber of Erasmus, Au-Pairs, and Eastern European tradesmen meaning they could have their kitchen refurbished/extension built at such an "affordable" price. That has come to end and rightfully so.

"Is your vision of the UK so narrow that you cannot see beyond your own experiences and those of your friends and family?"
No, is yours? Clearly more people were negatively affected by Britain being in the EU because Brexit won the vote.

But that is not true. Many Britains were unaware of the benefits and took them for granted and the Leave campaign lied to them about the negative impacts. Brexit won for numerous reasons. Lies and playing on people's prejudice are a couple.

I get that you don't care about students, the middle class or the clever, adventurous and ambitious WC.🙄 Or the people of NI.

To me, it simply depends on what side of the political fence you are on. If you are Tory and read their media, you're right that there is no mention of it (except to occasionally persist in saying 'we're getting Brexit done' in a self-congratulory though empty of meaning way. Though even the Daily Mail is starting to drip comments through now!
However, if you read the Guardian for example, or other left-wing media, it is widely acknowledged. Same with friends - my Tory voting friends/colleagues ignore it completely or refer toi covid, my Labour voting friends frequently refer to how it is impacting the country.

I'm in NI, I know that Brexit is not yet done. It fills our local media everyday. It is an utter shitshow that is severely damaging the UK.