To take Brexit personally?

[Fiep]

I’m preparing to be flamed but I really want to hear views from all sides. Do try to be kind though.

I’m an EU citizen. I’ve lived in the UK for all my adult life and have spent most of that working with NHS patients. I’m a qualified professional and there is a skills shortage - we never manage to fill all our posts.

Most people can’t tell by my accent that I’m from the EU and instead assume I’m from another English-speaking country unless I tel them my name (which sounds foreign) or speak in another language.

Before the referendum I felt the UK was my home. It was the place I’d spent most of my life and I’ve always loved the British humour and quirky way of looking at things.

Nobody ever gave me grief about being foreign and I felt welcome and valued.

Shortly after the referendum, someone verbally abused me on a bus when they overheard me speaking in a European language on the phone. It really upset me. I’m privileged by most measures and I’m white, so I was not used to racist abuse. I now have a baby and struggle to talk to her in my language in public as I feel people are giving me judgemental looks when I’m out and about and speaking “foreign”, especially as I live in a rural place where the majority of shoppers at the big Tesco are White British and I see quite a few Union Jack / St George’s flag tattoos. This denies her the chance to grow up bilingual and I feel guilty about that. I do speak / read / sing to her at home but it’s not enough immersion in the language for it to make a difference.

On the other hand, most of my colleagues in health have always been immigrants too and I struggle to see how the NHS would run if it was just White British staffed.

AIBU to feel really angry about Brexit? To feel it’s just vitriol and wanting the country to be white? To take it personally and to let it affect me in that way? To look around the shops and feel that prejudice has been legitimised?

I’d actually be really keen to hear from Leavers as well as Remainers as I really can’t get my head around how anyone could have thought this was a good idea for something as woolly as “sovereignty” or whatever.

braces self for impact

I think it's awful EU citizens are treated this way by some ignorant people. People voted leave for many reasons, and most hold no animosity towards EU citizens.

Uh why would it bother me that the CBI, and the Trade unions, the NHS, most scientists, academics and environmentalists are against Brexit?

I don't get your point.

Well anyway, they're not really coming here anymore:

www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/28/net-migration-from-eu-at-lowest-level-since-2003-ons-figures-show

They have other options so EU immigration will stop being an 'issue' very soon (and I don't think it ever was in the first place)
The bit that's growing is the controlled immigration. That just shows it's a management issue. The UK needs more infrastructure and a complete overhaul of the immigration system (and the hostile environment is both a human and an objective failure)

I don't get your point.

I don't know what to tell you, Helmet. Do you not understand my example about Mifid II, or how it relates to protecting an incumbent financial services behemoth?

Some reasonable responses from people explaining they reasons to vote leave. It felt good to read and understand.

Then more of this rubbish:

Perhaps if the people we invited into our country came here and showed a bit more manners then we wouldn't be wanting to reduce their numbers.

So you are saying that this is why Brexit is a thing, to reduce our numbers. Do you realise how that sounds? Cruel to say the least.
I wasn’t invited here. I was allowed to work in many countries and I did. I then stayed here because I liked it and I was contributing to society and I met my DH who is British.

Plenty of people are rude. Your comment doesn’t hold.
So people from abroad have no manners and therefore we put the country through 3/4/5 years of money wasting and broken promises.

Because you think foreigners have no manners?

Does it really not bother you that the CBI, which is about as business establishment as it gets, is so vigorously exercised about Brexit?

I genuinely don't understand why that would bother me? Can you explain?

I know there's a lot of things that can be changed for the better with the EU - I don't know details about Mifid II, sorry, nope. But I know many parts of the City are leaving and/or will get hammered by Brexit - I can't understand why anyone would think that's a good thing since it means job losses and tax contributions will do down.

The poster who I was responding to with that quote believes Brexit is a fight against a small global elite who wish to merge into one world govt with no borders. Is that your view then?

I bet that when these people go overseas, they don't see anything wrong in speaking loudly in English, when in Spain, Italy or France? You are speaking a foreign language yourself then.
Ah! But @Lizzie0869 didnt you know that everyone must speak English anywhere you go?
Plenty of British people moving to Spain. Plenty. Some of them taking language lessons, cooking, dancing, learning about local traditions.
The majority moving to places where they mix with English speakers, eat fish and chips and in this very forum I have heard British people complaining about trying to work in Spain and not being able because “they want you to know Spanish”
😱😱😱😱 no Kidding.

I have also lived in 2 other European countries and 2 in other continents.

Not a single time I started a conversation in my own language or expected anyone to know it.

Why oh please someone explain WHY does it bother anyone if someone else is speaking a different language? Why? Because you can’t be nosy? Because it affects your tinnitus more than English?
WHY?

YANBU.
Speak to your child in whatever language you wish whenever, and wherever, you want. Do not give racist scum the satisfaction of changing you and how you raise your child.
However, can I say that what you experienced is nothing new for a lot of minority Brits who experience racism daily.
Britain has always had a racist element to it but no more or less than most other countries in the world, including, I daresay, your native country. The only difference it has never been directed at you before.

Songsofexperience

The stats in your link are 'experimental estimates'.

Bottom of the article;
"The figures are classed as experimental estimates after the ONS admitted earlier this year it had been underestimating some EU net migration data since 2016."

Yes clavinova, but even as estimates they show a huge drop. It's the trend revealed that is significant here.

YANBU. I can sympathise, I'm Welsh and welsh is my first language and it's also my childrens and we're also completely fluent in English and I've been told to learn english if I want to live here when someone overheard me speak welsh to my kids. And like you I do live here, and i can speak English. It infuriates me, it really does!

Does it really not bother you that the CBI, which is about as business establishment as it gets, is so vigorously exercised about Brexit?

The CBI were 'vigorously exercised' about the UK joining the euro - they got that wrong.The Director-General of the CBI keeps quoting the figure for joint UK-EU customs costs, implying that they are UK-only costs. Either she hasn't realised her mistake, or she is being disingenuous - she is billions of pounds out.

The poster who I was responding to with that quote believes Brexit is a fight against a small global elite who wish to merge into one world govt with no borders. Is that your view then?

There are elites on both sides, so it's a red herring. We all need to accept that.

I think that there is a very strong case to be made that the EU's regulatory regime is so all-encompassing that it favours incumbent giants which the CBI represents.

My work in financial regulation compliance as it relates to software has strongly informed my leave vote. That's not the only reason; I think the Euro reveals the EU's intentions more than anything (they have to have stronger control over disparate economies to make it work - they have to), I think CAP is a disaster, and I think unfettered immigration will ultimately destroy the UK's greenbelt.

YANBU. I can sympathise, I'm Welsh and welsh is my first language and it's also my childrens and we're also completely fluent in English and I've been told to learn english if I want to live here when someone overheard me speak welsh to my kids. And like you I do live here, and i can speak English. It infuriates me, it really does!
Ah! I have had the “sorry I don’t speak Polish” when I was speaking English
Well I don’t speak Polish either 🤔

Another time a lady couldn’t reach the washing powder in the supermarket and asked me to. I handed it over and said “good choice” being friendly. She said “oh, you are not English, no thanks” and left without it
I am still perplexed at that one

Yanbu....it is a hostile country now...which is what the Tories want.

@malificent7

I have a friend who thinks Labour want a hostile country.

I can’t see why any party would benefit from a hostile country.

Apologies if it wasn’t you, ....someone asked why people don’t vote Green, was that you? IIRC the person asking seemed surprised that the Greens aren’t very green.

Perhaps if the people we invited into our country came here and showed a bit more manners then we wouldn't be wanting to reduce their numbers.

I think you are talking to me WRT this post. If so, you are plucking one comment out of what I said. Again, I have been an immigrant in 4 other countries. Whilst there I understood that I was an immigrant, a guest in that country and I never once slagged the place off or called them racists, bigots etc. even though, believe me their immigration processes were a lot tougher and a lot more unfair than ours.

Do you seriously think it is OK to slag off British people for any reason? It's not. When I say it is bad manners, I am actually being polite. Once again, I've been an immigrant, foreign talent, skilled overseas worker, whatever you want to call it. It's not OK to go live somewhere and then turn round and slag them off when things don't go your way and then you wonder why the "locals" aren't happy. The funny thing is, if you lived in another country in Europe or even the US or Australia you probably wouldn't act like this because they would tell you to sling your hook. I've been in Aus and seen their politicians openly and plainly say things like if you don't like it here you can leave. Just because you have the freedom to say what you like here doesn't mean that you should. It's bad form and once again, I think I am entitled to that opinion given my experience. Ask anyone on this board who has been an expat/ immigrant overseas/ foreign talent and they will tell you that it's crap behaviour to slag off your host country and call the locals racists and bigots.

Theresa May's comment about "if you are a citizen of the world you are a citizen of nowhere" is interesting. It was put clumsily, but I think it alludes to the ultimate globaIist aim of a totalitarian one-world government, who cannot be voted out, when all borders and individual autonomy of countries have been erased. Some say the EU as a building block toward this end.

Of course, finding what we have in common with people all over the world is important, as are open-mindedness, tolerance, fair trade, fair immigration policies and international co-operation. But this is not best achieved by the erasure of independence and self-determination on an individual basis for each unique country.

Human beings do have a natural sense of localism and belonging to their own home and community. How many people would want to merge their own house with all the others on the street to form a commune? We would soon tire of it and long for our autonomy and own home. That isn't anything to be ashamed of.

Most people want a peaceful existence, but the autocracy proposed by globalism is about control, not real peace. It may lead to less fighting as people become too afraid to challenge those in charge, but that isn't true peace, it's just repression.

The humanity of all of us is what unites us. We don't need world political integration, or even EU integration to formalise it.

Christmas I’ve just woken up after a tranquiliser so I could be wrong 😂 but I don’t think that comment was about you.

I’m off to church now, I’m not religious but in a world of global crazy, I found a local community, which I really needed, because otherwise my life is all over the shop due to commuting to London.

The big world and big commutes is a world some politicians want to see increase.

YANBU. Not at all.

God this thread is so depressing.

Op, as a Brit living abroad in the EU, I apologise for the way you have been made to feel in my home country. Please speak to your daughter in your own language, and do it with pride. Please don't let any malevolent outside influence prevent her from being bilingual. You will be giving her a gift for life.

Did you know the UK pay more than other EU countries to be part of the EU?
This is factually untrue.

And I don't want U.K. laws to come from Brussels
Oh dear. I can't believe people are still saying this after three years.
It is a fundamental misunderstanding of how EU laws are made.
The UK had as much say in making them as the other 27 member states. The laws weren't "imposed" on us. You do know that in many cases the UK were proposing said laws, discussing, amending them, and endorsing them in our own HoP committees before they became EU-wide laws? That is how consensual politics works.

And just like there's only one reason that a house won't sell, there's only one reason that jobs go unfilled. The price is wrong.
UK workers are not prepared to work for the very low pay on offer fruit picking or whatever. The wages are low because supermarkets keep suppressing the real price of food and the labour it takes to produce it. So if you have British workers (if you can find them) to pick the crops, food prices will rise in shops. So you are right that the price is wrong, but it's because we are not paying the correct price for food. The EU recognised this fifty years ago. Brexiteers' solution? Import cheap food from distant countries where workers are exploited even more, the transportation of it is an environmental disaster and we have even less say over food quality and production standards. Bravo!

The UK had as much say in making them as the other 27 member state

I know you meant this as a defense of the EU, but it's not. It's the problem.

And, quite separately from fruit/pickers/Brexit, there is an enormous reckoning in food prices on the horizon. We've been freeloading on the planet, i.e. using methods that are good for humans and bad for everyone else, since the advent of farming and we're reaching the tipping point.

As a result DC is now refusing to speak my language and will understand everything but only speak English

Actually this is a well known issue with bilingual kids. As with all kids, they don't want to stand out so they want to stick with the local language. You really can't pin that one on Brexit. It's sad that it happens and it is such a waste. However, your dc will be able to understand it if you continue speaking it to them, even if they can't speak it very well themselves.

The idea that British people will be isolated on the British Isles with no means of escape are farcical

It really isn't. Unless you have an EU or other passport as well, you will find it very difficult to live/work overseas. Studying probably won't be too difficult and obviously they want the tourist £ so short stays will be ok. But you won't be able to get a job in the EU/EEA unless you have very specialist skills because it will be much easier to recruit from the rest of the EEA.

Non-EU countries are already very difficult to emigrate to.

"The UK had as much say in making them as the other 27 member state"

I know you meant this as a defense of the EU, but it's not.

Do you want the UK to do everything by itself? That strategy is working well for North Korea.

(Any thoughts on foreign labour /fruit-picker issue? )

Theresa May's comment about "if you are a citizen of the world you are a citizen of nowhere" is interesting.

That comment was as insulting as they come, espcially to those of us Brits who spend much of our time abroad defending UK interests.

Most people want a peaceful existence, but the autocracy proposed by globalism is about control, not real peace. It may lead to less fighting as people become too afraid to challenge those in charge, but that isn't true peace, it's just repression.
The humanity of all of us is what unites us. We don't need world political integration, or even EU integration to formalise it.

Eh? The EU is a regional response to STOP domination/globalisation led by major economic powers such as China and the USA. Why do you think Trump hates the EU?