To not have moved on from the referendum result?

[Niamer]

Hi. I am a remoaner. I have bored myself with talking about it online and with a couple of likeminded friends.
I was have never been political, was pretty disengaged before the referendum but a 100% gut-feeling kind of a remainer and really expected the vote to go our way.

Felt devastated at the result; I am a believer in working closely with our neighbours, have lived in other Eu countries, have friends here from other EU countries who feel unwelcome etc etc. AND all the attachment to Europe stuff aside, it just seemed a far safer economic option to stay put. Why go for a bumpy ride when you don't even like where you're going? Also felt really cheated when people's reasons for leaving became clear.
I am amazed that some Remainers have just gone quiet and got weary of it all. As far as Leave voters, there has been plenty of "suck it up" comments and total quiet from others. It hasn't been long but time is not healing for me. In fact the Tory conference seemed to take the grimness up a notch. Still so upset and wanting to protest (and have done in every way that I can think of)

I am currently in groups with staunch Remainers like myself, so I know how they are feeling. Outside of that, it isn't an easy topic to discuss. Remainers, Leavers, non-voters, please could you tell me where you're at? TIA

The RRA 1976 receive Royal Assent in November 1976. It came into law in 1977.

The average length of time for a bill to move from a green paper to law is about a year, incidentally. It can take longer but generally the intention is to move it through as quickly as possible because otherwise the risk is that changes within society make the original proposal outdated or irrelevant.

I cannot "move on" from the referendum because we haven't gone anywhere yet. I, like many British people living in other EU countries, do not have a changed status, merely uncertainty.

Sending kids up the chimneys was an accepted part of society then. They were not unintelligent. This was an era that saw Newton, Darwin, Brunel, Stephenson, Bell.

What will this mean for the Peace Process in Northern Ireland?

I was horrified by the result and as time goes on I'm becoming more and more worried.

I work in the food manufacturing sector and 95% of my staff are from the EU. When I attend conferences with other food businesses they all say the same. I don't discriminate but I can't get non-EU staff to do the jobs. Yes the majority are minimum wage roles, but we can't afford to pay more than that as the margins are so tight.

Since Brexit, recruitment has become much more difficult and some of my best staff have decided to go back to their home countries.

I really, really worry about what on earth we are going to do post Brexit.

What worries me is when all the clever chaps, educated, hard working EU citizens have left we will be stranded with these narrow minds, I am worried about the UK economy if we promote a culture of closed mindedness.

^^ I find this interesting, as there is no filter from the EU immigration to make sure we do get the 'clever, educated hard working chaps. There is some very inward looking about the stance to desperately cling to the EU.

There is a big old world out there. The EU is a small part of it.

I am a remainer. I was gutted at the result, but like all bad news the shock wears off. What can we actually do though as Joe Public to change the result now? Nothing, so we have to live with the fallout and the choices of people who were taken in by false claims of money going to the NHS and controls on immigration, which may not even happen.

wrong thread ignre me

And the ordinary working class are going to be part of that great big world out there just? Really?

Foreigners also have to register in Italy, my German friend told me she had to!
I voted Leave for greater opportunities globally and more fairness. DH has his own business and is very excited at leaving the EU as are a number of friends who include other business owners, a Doctor, student and City worker among many others. The reason I didn't expand earlier is because I don't have to justify myself. I've seen overreaction to political changes before and it's never the end of the world. May I also say how racist and prejudiced I've found people in some other European countries? I probably may not.

Especially as the British people want to be able to decide for all for themselves without interference from the wider world.

Except you can't really do anything without interference from the wider world. It's rather a large part of living on the world.

Essentially his argument was that our identity and cohesiveness is all to do with our nation state and has been built up through centuries and cannot be understood unless you have the heritage

I have absolutely no idea what this means. There are many parts of Britain where I would feel completely and utterly foreign and other parts of the world where I feel at home. I'm pretty sure all my ancestors are your standard Anglo Saxon Celtic mix, but that doesn't mean I necessarily have much in common with other people with the same ancestry.

scatteroflight the post you referred to was a link to a Radio 4 podcast.

I said the people want to hear the Leavers still have the courage of their convictions, not to listen to a podcast.

To me this is the whole problem we're in; Remainers by definition are unhappy with the situation and Leavers can't even tell them what they personally think will be achieved.

OP, you say you want your country back, what does that mean to you? What do you think that means?

I didn't vote, but one of the issues pushing me to the leave side was the argument that the EU gave us workers' rights. That felt like a huge slap in the face, and an attempt to eradicate the hundreds of years of history of ordinary working people in the UK fighting for and winning those rights.

To me that is the history of the British working class. It felt like heaping insult on to injury. To not only have destroyed so many communities in Wales and the North East, but to now also be denying their histories. I was very shocked by those kind of comments, and began to think there is going to be a backlash against that kind of stuff and people will vote leave, which they did.

I also found it disturbing that remainers on FB were simultaneously complaining about racism and calling the Welsh every name under the sun and wishing ill on them.

I know that there are racist leavers, and I think leavers know some of the leavers are racist. I still don't think remainers have really examined the disturbing attitudes of some of the remainers.

There is a big old world out there. The EU is a small part of it.

It's a significant part of the world that values human rights and it is 20 miles away.

It is quite possible to trade with the world and be in EU. Many countries have been doing this for a number of years, including the UK.

Although, (see above), some people voted for Brexit to keep the big old world at a distance. So, again, who knows what will happen.

No, I want it nearer and for the UK to look towards the North too. Everything goes through London partly because it is so near to the EU. And I'm a Londoner.

Justchanged - I'm glad you listened to it and I think your summary is very fair and accurate.

The argument is that nationhood, shared identity and a shared way of doing things are the best model that we have for successful societies. I believe this to be true. Northern Ireland is a good example of what happens when identities and ways of being are no longer shared. Conflict is inevitable and solutions do not easily present themselves.

However the answer is not to refashion the world, against nature, and discard or demonise any sense of identities or belonging. This, granted, has been the aim of the EU which sees free movement as a way of mixing up societies to the point where, hopefully, there won't be any conflict as everyone will feel the same alienating sense of displacement.

Once that has happened we can all be shifted around the continent like the good economic units that we should be. Having no human attachment to anywhere or anything. We see that impulse even in this thread where posters, no longer feeling kinship with their fellow voters or sense of their heritage, assert that they are going to up sticks and move somewhere else. Anywhere else but this British, racist hellhole.

YANBU. I feel like I don't recognise the country I live in and my children's future is less bright.

The world is laughing at the British right now.

Yanbu. I am still upset about it. It really is a stupid decision we are being forced into.

YANBU. I feel bleaker about the situation now than I did on the 24th June.

Hard to be happy about a vote that takes away my children's right to study and work in EU. It was cheaper to go to uni abroad. Not now. And no, we aren't middle class Londoners grumpy at being denied something only a privileged few can access. We are low income Northerners.

Just changed, I know many people who have moved to Britain because they feel an affinity for and interest in British culture and want to be part of it. I have felt the same thing when working in other countries - a connection to those countries.

The lack of identity and society is coming from the fracturing of localities, where people no longer feel a sense of belonging to or responsibility for parts of the country that they do not live in. I really dislike the 'left behind' phrase because it gives those place a sense of unreality, as if they are literally in the past. I don't see how we can run a democracy organised as a nation when people don't feel a relationship to other parts of the nation.

That's kind of how the shock around the result felt - as if people were amazed that people in these places actually existed in the present and got a vote that was worth as much as theirs.

Ok Bearbehind. Here is what you want: I still have the courage of my convictions. I voted Leave. I would vote Leave again and every single day of my life.

"Leavers can't even tell them what they personally think will be achieved."

I'm sure, if you think hard enough, you could write a list of reasons why people voted to Leave (other than that they are, of course, racist thickos). This would include some of the following words: sovereignty, democracy, immigration, laws, trade.

I can write a similar list for Remainers, despite not being one. It would include the words: free movement, economy, progressive, rights, European, multicultural, tolerance.

See it's not hard to put yourself in the shoes of others.

The problem is not that you don't know what Leavers hope for. The problem is you don't agree with it. Don't be disingenuous.

I was an inbetweener and my vote could have gone either way. I feel happy with the result now. The apocalypse that was predicted to start the day after a vote to leave hasn't happened. I hear people speaking about Britain with a bit more pride and I am optimistic about our future again. I really think we are going to come into our own on the world stage instead of being just one voice in the group of 28 that was ignored as and treated as the 'awkward' country.

no longer feeling kinship with their fellow voters or sense of their heritage

Please tell me what a shared sense of heritage is in a way that makes sense. Am I honestly supposed to have more in common with somebody whose ancestors may or may not have fought at Hastings than somebody I went to school with just because their parents were born elsewhere?

Am I supposed to have less in common with a colleague who I see every day and call a friend than somebody who I have never met who lives hundreds of miles away somewhere I have never visited just because they are English?

Are my parents' neighbours who have lived next door for decades less part of my background because they were born in a different country?