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

cant wait to hear more about the global elite farage and boris are defending us from.

I voted leave. When we moved my children didn't go to school for 12 weeks as we couldn't get them places. The school they finally got into failed it's OFSTED. It is full of EU and non EU citizens (lots of Russians). Out of 30 in DSs there are only 10 or 11 British born children. Is it wrong to resent the poor education my children are getting when it does feel like we are educating half the world?

The issue is the lack of spaces then. And teachers.
I am EU and a teacher now.
So there. It goes both ways

@Fiep well I have had the looks of course, when I am speaking “foreign” to my DC.
Usually followed by “what is that language” so they can quickly identify if I am a “good” one or “another one of those”
Then “I hope he is learning English” “how confusing for a child” “where are you REALLY from?”
Whispers etc. You know...
Or they just bypass me and start engaging with DC in English as to prove a point/ doing a favour.

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

Bah.

Thick racists vote for brexit. What happened to you happened to a friend of mine at work. She is Polish. When the vote was announced there was a guy who started abusing her saying she didnt belong here, we dont want you here anyway. He was a UKIP party member.
Brexit exposes the racists and the idiots.

@curlykaren I've been a member since 2008 or 9. I certainly didn't join up to go on a Brexit thread Shall I link you to the thread I had in 2010 asking for middle name suggestions for my DD? I change my username every now and then, but I've HD this one for a year maybe.

I'm not blaming immigration for the school failing. But I am blaming immigration for the fact the 7 (!) schools closer to us were full. So my children had 12 weeks out of school until places came up at a school 25 minutes drive away.

That is the whole problem. You are looking at the issue exactly how the politicians want you too.
As I said, I am EU and a teacher.
The shortage of places is not because of immigration.
It is lack of funding and priority for education and families.
Government is not investing in schools, libraries, children centres.

Then they try to move the focus to oh! Too many people coming.

So if the issue is too many children, they could also argued some people are having too many children. But that is a massive no no. So you say the school has only 10 British born children per class. How do you even know or want to know that??
It is sad. They are children.

Teachers are leaving the job after 5/6 years. That is not because of immigration. They have to account for every penny and every minute of their life.

Attracting high skills immigrants? I have a degree and 2 postgraduates, fluent in two languages and years of experience. This country is 0 attractive atm with mentalities like this. Completely different game 4 years ago.

So you can blame anything on immigration. Lack of school places, lack of GP appointments, lack of housing... Go ahead. All the lies they tell and all the people that swallow them.

what a shame they didnt realise we could have controlled migration more tightly within the eu and that we desparately need low skilled migrants too. sigh.

Not in the way you suggest. The EU gives member states power to deport immigrants who prove to be a burden on the state. No one is suggesting that fruit pickers are coming to drain the benefit system, but rather that they're making life much tougher for low-paid British workers.

But I get it, you're just here to lecture stupid leavers who've been duped into an act of economic self-harm,

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.

I know because I pick DS up everyday. Because I help at the school and because DS will mention it. Not in a nasty way at all but he will say 'Irini found it really hard today in maths because she didn't understand some of it and said they do it differently in Poland', or 'Anna said it's really cold here, she said she was never this cold at home'. These are 10/11year old children, do you really think they wouldn't be aware/mention things like that? DS will tell you in 7 seconds of meeting that he was in Scotland.

im here to listen incredulously to the reasons leavers give for fucking me, my friends and the country over.

and most of the reasons i hear are incoherent, misguided, absolutely untrue or just dont add up.

and yeah, i find it staggeringly stupid that people are trying to argue that wc people are going to be better off after brexit. who is going to suffer most as companies leave, businesses collapse, environmental and h and s regs are swept away, the nhs is broken up and the price of essentials goes up.
hmm thats a difficult one?
is it the right wing brexiteering, tax-avoiding etonian elite?
oh no, what a surpise, it isnt.

"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”,"
I think it depends on how and where it is done. I admit to finding it extremely rude when I am on buses and there are a number of people having conversations, usually on mobile phones on speaker phone for the duration of the 35-minute journey. Most who do this are foreign (I think Brits tend to hold the phone to their ear so you just hear one side of the conversation).
I wouldn't sit on a bus in a foreign country and rabbit on, I would whisper quietly to my partner if I needed to speak and didn't speak the local language. It's rude. When in Rome and all that.

I don't think talking to your child in your native language at a normal sound level while walking along a street should be a problem.

"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."
Most of us learn a foreign language by starting with a couple of 40 minute lessons per week at school. Surely if you use your native language at home plus when you are out and about (alone) won't that be enough? My friend's 5 year old speaks russian very well.

"I struggle to see how the NHS would run if it was just White British staffed."
Who has even suggested our health service be staffed by white British? You are the one who is white and has mentioned colour. British people aren't white. Many are, but many are black or asian. Asian people have been coming to live in the UK since the1960s and colour has nothing to do with Brexit.

"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?"
Yes, YABU. You are being irrational. Who has mentioned wanting the country to be white?

"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."
Sovereignty or whatever? Did you mean to be so rude?

The UK signed up to being in an economic union, not a political union. I don't get why you don't understand why making our own laws and decisions is important to many citizens. It isn't natural to be sheeple. We can still support and cooperate with other countries where we agree. We just don't want to be told what to do.

There are plenty of other countries outside the EU who trade and interact with the rest of the world.

"I struggle to see how the NHS would run if it was just White British staffed."
I missed this one.

I voted leave because I feel the money we spend to be apart of the European Union would be better if it was invested in our own public services. Did you know the UK pay more than other EU countries to be part of the EU? We spent a small fortune bailing Greece out whilst our own public services are struggling. Our schools are oversubscribed, doctors/hospitals/dentists are overrun and I think that's where we need to spend public money. My vote had nothing to do with 'foreigners' and I know lots like me voted for similar reasons. I do feel like you have a right to feel angry as the vote has affected you in a negative way but please remember that not everyone who voted to leave did so because of immigration. Keep speaking to your child in your home language and ignore those small minded people.

@Helmetbymidnight what makes you think the NHS will break up? Left wing scaremongering again.

We spent a small fortune bailing Greece out whilst our own public services are struggling.

To be fair I think our direct involvement was limited because we very wisely avoided the Euro.

That being said, the EU should obviously have not gone the way of a single currency unless they had plans to create a proper federal government. .

@Helmetbymidnight what makes you think the NHS will break up? Left wing scaremongering again.

IT'S ALREADY HAPPENING.

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.

Who are you talking about here? What's that about manners?? Freedom of movement has nothing to do with being invited, or manners! It's a reciprocal arrangement meaning that all EU citizen (that still includes all Brits) have the same right to live and work across the EU!
Feel free to not use it but don't call others rude for doing something that's also available to you.
If I emigrated to the US or Japan, I'd know at least what the deal is upfront. Bad manners is signing up to something with others and then decades later call them rude for adhering to the very thing you agreed.

@EntropyRising @TheMidasTouch

I didn’t invent the white british thing, the reason I put it that way is because after the referendum, I was doing lots of home visits for patients who were really happy about it, saying there were too many foreign-looking people in the hospitals and that it would be better without. Also because a lot of my colleagues who were British were naturalised and had come from Zimbabwe or Uganda and faced DAILY racism from patients, especially after the referendum. So it didn’t seem to be genuine to say that people wanted to be out of the EU, clearly they wanted to have fewer people like me and my friends regardless of passport. If I naturalise I still won’t be accepted. And @TheMidasTouch, your attitude to language confirms that. Why is it rude if people speak their own language? They might be British you know. Plus there are loads of studies demonstrating that children do no become bilingual unless one parent consistently and fully speaks to them in the other language. Your example of learning foreign languages is a ridiculous analogy because a) it’s not a foreign language, as b) I’m sorry but this is not an effective way of learning languages. I speak five languages (three fluently at native level, one well enough to live there if I wanted, one badly) and the ONLY effective way of learning is immersion. Which is why most people who learn a language in school suck at it. Paradoxically hearing your view has made me want to speak German to my daughter in public more. Why on earth would I want to pander to such a narrow view? Why is it any of your business what language @Autumntoowet or I speak on the bus? Is it because it denies you a chance to eavesdrop?!

yeah, left wing scaremingering by all medical bodies from surgeons, radiographers, midwiives, nurses- brexit will be bad for the nhs- no deal will be catastrophic. even matt hancock said it!

who believes them though eh- farage, johnson and jrm say its fine- and its worth it really to kick out some low skill carees.

YANBU. Of course not Brexit voters are racist. But a great deal of them are and unless you are a foreigner yourself with an accent ( that would be me) you don't really understand how vulnerable it can make you feel.

cant wait to hear more about the global elite farage and boris are defending us from.

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

Just take Mifid II as an example. This EU regulation is a monster, small companies were at a huge disadvantage. The CBI went so far as to say no one really objected to it.

I know a bit about this, because I worked on a compliance project for Thomson Reuters. Of course, they could easily afford it.

The MidasTouch, I live in a cosmopolitan city and I love hearing lots of different languages when I'm out and about. But hey I don't feel threatened by foreign languages as I speak three different ones. You should try it. It's fun.

I think it depends on how and where it is done. I admit to finding it extremely rude when I am on buses and there are a number of people having conversations, usually on mobile phones on speaker phone for the duration of the 35-minute journey. Most who do this are foreign (I think Brits tend to hold the phone to their ear so you just hear one side of the conversation).

My goodness. So it is a non - Brit trait to use the speaker phone.
I don't think talking to your child in your native language at a normal sound level while walking along a street should be a problem.

Oh thank you for that. I should then aim to talk my own language to my DC at a normal level and only when walking down the street.
I should try to go quiet 🤫 if someone approaches just in case I cause offence by not speaking English.

Are you hearing yourself??

The amount of rubbish people come up with

I know because I pick DS up everyday. Because I help at the school and because DS will mention it. Not in a nasty way at all but he will say 'Irini found it really hard today in maths because she didn't understand some of it and said they do it differently in Poland', or 'Anna said it's really cold here, she said she was never this cold at home'. These are 10/11year old children, do you really think they wouldn't be aware/mention things like that? DS will tell you in 7 seconds of meeting that he was in Scotland.

I don’t really care how you know but why you care about that.
It sound to me that your DC is getting a lot of benefits from it, learning about other cultures and how the world outside this island is, maybe picking up some words in other languages, broadening their horizons and learning about the world. If only more people had had this chance perhaps I wouldn’t be reading the amount of xenophobic comments I am coming across in this thread.

To the OP after the referendum result I made a point of speaking very loudly in my language to my kids in public, with a " bring it on" face. No one has confronted me, except one Brexit voter, and he was actually polite. He started by asking what language I spoke, then how I felt about Brexit, before giving his side . Nothing racist really and we parted politely. I am very lucky. I am sorry you and your colleagues have to listen to that crap.
Of course some Brexit voters are genuinely concerned about Brussels etc and not at all with EU citizens.
But you can't deny that the racists out there feel more entitled to air their disgusting views, as if Brexit was giving Carte Blanche.
Sorry for using a foreign term MidasTouch. Although part of me is getting great Schadenfreude from it.

@Fiep you are being VVVU! So are you saying all Leave voters are white British with Union Jack/St George tattoos? As I voted leave and am so far removed from that stereotype it's laughable. Then I do know a white British person with a Union Jack tattoo was is a staunch Remainer!

I think immigration should be capped, Australia has a good blue print for this and I don't want U.K. laws to come from Brussels.

Immigration is good, lots of languages are good. Uncontrolled immigration is not good.

@Autumntoowet I absolutely agree, it's laughable. 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.

Or is it that old idea that there is only English and 'foreign'?