To think that most people voted to leave the EU to stop freedom of movement?

[Moomin8]

The proposed new rules the government have supposedly set out that are designed to keep out 'low skilled' workers seem to me like social cleansing. Most recently , when people moan about 'immigrants' they are always talking about people from Eastern Europe in my experience.

What really annoys me is that almost all leaver voters deny repeatedly that their vote had anything to do with the fact they wanted freedom of movement stopped.

Sorry if this has been done to death. But why won't people just be honest?

We allowed our divisions to get worse. We allowed this ridiculous virtue signalling preoccupation with being "right" to cloud our judgement. What we really need to do is find a way forward not to hope for a "serves you right" catastrophe

Completely agree.

Officially, no but perhaps there should be.

Flame, as a British Asian how would you get on with the sliding scale? Also, does being a higher rate tax payer give you more points?

Which bit? All of it.

Are you calling me a liar Baileys?

*Flame, as a British Asian how would you get on with the sliding scale?

How would I know? It would depend on all sorts of things and as I said, I'm not in charge anyway so what's the point in asking me what the rules are for this fictitious scale that was your idea not mine?

Gawd I'm doing it again, sorry Bins it wasn't you that talked about a scale of foreigness initially.

read somewhere that it's areas LEAST affected by immigration and where people are mostly white British that voted leave. I will have to hunt down the article.

I really enjoy leaver claims being shut down so effectively with actual facts rather than their red top headline statements.Glorious!

The article referred to is here; "Hard Evidence: how areas with low immigration voted mainly for Brexit"
theconversation.com/hard-evidence-how-areas-with-low-immigration-voted-mainly-for-brexit-62138

^"Boston aside, the chart below shows other districts with very high proportions of Leave votes–the majority of which have a low
percentage of the population not born in the UK."^

The chart lists 10 areas with very high proportions of Leave voters - I randomly picked two areas from their list: Bolsover (2.9% non-UK born in the chart - 2011 census data) and Fenland (8.6% non-UK born). Apparently these areas voted Leave with very little direct experience of immigration. However, a quick google reveals that Bolsolver hit the headlines in 2015/2016;

BBC Feb 2016 "Safety concerns in Sports Direct town over 'carved up houses.'

"The council estimates 1,500 people have moved to Shirebrook [controlled by Bolsolver DC] - which has a population of more than 13,000 - in the last four years, with many renting rooms in houses near the company's headquarters."

"Police community support officer (PCSO) Steve Cathcart said: "There's been an influx of Eastern Europeans and the landlords that own the houses are carving these houses up into flats."

"The Sports Direct agency workers, largely employed in the company's warehouse, come mainly from countries such as Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania and Albania."

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-35604776

"The Independent 2016:An investigation by the BBC’s Inside Out programme found that some houses in Shirebrook had been literally split down the middle - with the front room of one property partitioned down the centre of the window – to cope with a surge in workers living there."
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/sports-direct-town-houses-carved-up-police-fire-warning-a6888261.html

The Guardian Dec 2015 "A day at 'the gulag': what it's like to work at Sports Direct's warehouse."

"Step by step, minimum-wage workers are informed of what is expected of them for the headline rate of £6.70 an hour (in reality, many receive less)–including being told they will walk almost 20 miles each day inside the warehouse as they pick products off the shelves."
"These workers do this job for eight hours a day, some chatting away to each other eastern European languages and occasionally managing the odd word in English.“It’s easy,” grunts one young Romanian male, who appears built for heavier lifting. Meanwhile, another new Shirebrook recruit, who had previous experience of working in a more automated UK warehouse, was astonished at the scene: “It is all paper-based.There are no computers or anything.”

www.theguardian.com/business/2015/dec/09/sports-direct-warehouse-work-conditions

Now for Fenland:

"2017 Fenland District Council secures crucial migration funding."
"Almost £800,000 of government funding has been secured by Fenland District Council to advance its work in reducing the impact of migration on local communities."

"The funding will help the authority tackle various migration issues across the district such as homelessness, overcrowding and poor conditions in private sector housing, modern day slavery, discrimination and street drinking - all of which have an impact on local people."
www.fenland.gov.uk/article/12670/Council-secures-crucial-migration-funding

Oct 2019 238 page report published:
"The Impact of Migration in the Fenland Area"
www.rosminicentrewisbech.org/uploads/1/3/4/8/13484456/final_report_on_31_oct_at_13.30.pdf

But of course, the voters in Bolsolver and Fenland had 'very little direct experience of immigration' and were too dim to know what they were voting for...

Correction: Bolsover

read somewhere that it's areas LEAST affected by immigration and where people are mostly white British that voted leave. I will have to hunt down the article.

I really enjoy leaver claims being shut down so effectively with actual facts rather than their red top headline statements.Glorious!

You'd think, wouldn't you, that this is evidence that immigration is just one of a number of pressing issues that have caused people to vote leave, as clearly not everyone in Leave areas has been directly affected by high levels of immigration, so surely it can't be that much of a driver for them, or at least not the only driver?

But no!!!! Not on Mumset. That would be too simple and straightforward a conclusion to draw. The People Who Must Always Be Right totally ignore this as evidence to show that there might be other factors at play, and instead they use it as evidence that people who voted Leave are so stupid and so acist that they'll vote Leave based purely on immigration even when they live in areas where there are hardly any immigrants.

Isn't cognitive dissonance marvellous?

Often in the case of immigration the way immigration affected populations differently was not taken into account. Ten "immigrants" in a nice London Village with good schools, excellent transport and a multi-cultural atmosphere especially when they provided cheap, reliable labour were a definite benefit.

Ten immigrants in a struggling rural village with no jobs to speak of, (so no need for cheap builders, cleaners, nannies and baristas,) limited housing, limited transport and a close-knit community of many years standing - have quite a different impact.

If you are employed in a good, safe job, (banking, government, senior management, professional), then you are not under threat. If you are a cleaner or a man-with-a-van you know that the chances are you will be undercut or that if you slip up, are sick or put your prices up there are a hundred others who'll do your job instead. It's a different standpoint.

Maybe people were voting to protect their jobs or communities when they voted Leave, (those that did it for FOM reasons) - and is that so bad? Isn't that exactly what so many middle classes were concerned about when the vote was announced? Their jobs? (Usually in the form of "DH works in international banking and the company has already decided to relocate to Frankfurt so he will have to move or lose his job")

Brexit is not going to be great by any stretch but we have to work together now to sort this out.

Totally agree with you again Summer

I think there is a depressing lack of empathy and a really nasty contempt actually, among the metropolitan (mainly left wing) elite for the concerns and experiences of working class and lower middle class people they never have to rub shoulders with.

InTheSummerhouse.
We’re in a group of rural villages that are dependent on immigrant labour. We’ve a few wealthy EU citizens but also have farm workers who keep the farms viable, Romanian taxi drivers from a nearby town, the local gastropub is staffed by people with a variety of nationalities.

The carers that support the elderly in their homes are EU nationals.

We voted remain to protect our local rural community as well as to protect our children’s futures.

When you say ‘all have to work together to sort this out’ what do you mean, very specifically? I’m not sure there is anything I can do except campaign for rejoining that is going to help much.

Immigration is here to stay. Global transportation, communication, finance etc has made the world a much smaller place. All we are doing is making it harder for our own children to migrate to our nearest neighbours, reducing their overall opportunities.

Completely agree. I don't understand why some people can't see this.

There are many reasons and whilst some have perfectly valid reasons or beliefs, that’s not what got this vote over the 50% - I’m afraid we have an awful lot of absolute xenophobes who basically believed it will stop immigration in general, a lot actually said they didn’t have issues with locals who were Polish etc, it’s all those Muslims! They clearly don’t get that this has sod all to with the EU and a lot of Muslims are as British as they are. we have a have a ton of downright depressed, dissatisfied people who needed something ‘to blame’ for the poor state of so many things, rather than focussing on the fact we had a Tory party creating false austerity to fit with their political models and encouraging the anti EU feeling. We had various controls regarding EU immigration that were never used , if I want to move to Denmark I cant just rock up and look for a job. I have to show bank statements , and register within a certain number of weeks etc if I want to work/ remain. I may live somewhere nice now but am originally from a midlands mining town, these places have issues but leaving the EU won’t bake those issues go away. As it is we have simply handed our best business on a plate to the other 27 countries . I wouldn’t invest here so why should others

I take it from that, CherryPavlova that you don't expect your children to be care workers or farm labourers but you need immigrants to do the menial stuff to maintain your lifestyle?

@InTheSummerhouse

So bloody true. My DH used to work in the building trade, but no one cared when his job was lost due to the influx of cheaper labour. The narrative was that he must have been lazy and feckless. It was his own fault people were coming over and undercutting him to an extent he couldn't keep up with.
So quite frankly I couldn't give a toss about "Mr finance in the city" losing his job.
Where were they when we lost ours?

@FieldOfFlameAndHeather

I passport is a commodity, we might not like it but that's the fact of it. They even produced lists of the world's best and worst passports to hold and believe it or not, the colour made absolutely no difference whatsoever. Brexit devalues the British passport hugely because it dramatically shrinks the number of places we can live without having difficult hurdles to get over. This might well please you if having a British passport is less desirable.

HelgaHere1. My children are grown and flown from the villages. They aren’t care workers or farm labourers, no. I’m not sure what your point is though? Should my daughter be a lettuce picker rather than a GP? Should my son revoke his Commission and turn down his next deployment to be a care worker? Why would they? Odd thinking.

I value migrant workers hugely. That’s why I voted remain. I know we cannot recruit enough from our own young people as farm workers, surgeons, hotel staff or GPs. We need EU immigrants.
I do need immigrants, it’s true. Are you suggesting we manage without physiotherapists, dentists, radiographers, nurses, teachers, doctors, taxi drivers, IT experts?

My DH used to work in the building trade

I don't know where you live in the country but theres a massive shortage of trades people, you can't get a builder for love nor money round here, they're all flat out for months in advance and cost a fortune.

Because if your DCs were careworkers they'd be out of work because immigrants would be doing the jobs. And you might, in that case, not be so anti Brexit.

There are plenty of students who want to work in construction and have been in the past so I don't get the nonsense about there not being the skills in the building industry

The construction companies don't want to pay fair wages and it is easier to manipulate people from overseas who are more desperate to send money home etc.

I don't mind people coming here as long as they are paying tax and N.I. rather than being a drain

@KenDodd
I worked in construction for 10yrs as a joiner - left 7 years ago due to a massive decline in wages as migrant workers came in and offered to work for far less. At the time, mortgage, kids, van, tools I literally couldn’t afford to do it. Sold the lot and moved away from construction. 7 years later and I still get calls from previous contractors asking me to come back - they dropped my living overnight and now expect me to come back.No. And not only No, I won’t do work for anyone these days. They can pay the migrants instead. To be fair, life is bliss, no working away, no thieves constantly breaking into my van, no expensive tools to buy and maintain.
Fact is I won’t line migrants pockets if at all possible. Don’t eat take away, I’ll wash my own car thanks and so on and so on. They won’t get a penny of mine. Because of them I was forced out of my job - hence why I voted leave. I’ll never forgive nor forget....not ever.
Yes I am bitter towards them. We very nearly lost our home because of these migrant workers coming in, expecting to be housed undercutting established tradesmen simply because they could afford to. I know a lot more but Ill hold my tongue. Biggest fuck up ever was opening the floodgates.

you can't get a builder for love nor money round here

Theres a reason for that. So many were driven out of the profession years ago. Why would they risk it all to go back now?
The wage still hasn't recovered. My FIL earnt more in the late 80's on the bricks that he does now. How does that make sense

Contentedsoul where did you work in the country ?