To think Brexit has robbed us of so much?

[elzober]

A friend of mine from America recently obtained citizenship of an EU country due to family links. She's now ready to look for a job and open to anything as she doesn't have a degree but worked in the family agricultural business back home. She's fluent in English.

A few years ago I would have been able to invite her to stay with me here in the UK, help her get established and set her up to apply for one of the many jobs over here. But now I can't do any of that.

The ridiculous part is I know local businesses that are really struggling to recruit, can't find people locally and have struggled with the lack of EU workers since Brexit. Particularly in hospitality, agriculture and travel.

Why did we close the door to people who filled these vacancies and contributed to society and paid taxes?

She would have been a decent tax payer, nice member of the community but she's not allowed in.

She's probably going to Ireland now as apparently there's lots more opportunities there since we became an isolated island.

I will never forgive the Conservatives for this shambles. Don't get me started on the fact that a British passport is now worthless and we've lost our right to live in 27 countries. Madness.

So eloquent and I agree entirely.

They may have existed in your pub @HinchcliffeandMurgatroyd, but not across the UK as a whole. That's why Google's top search in the UK the day after the referendum was What is the EU?🤦‍♀️

@cigiwi your anger is palpable and I share it.

Bloody hell. Really? That sums it up doesn't it. How can people vote on something when they have no idea what it is, how it functions, what the benefits and costs are?? 😵‍💫🤯 I just cannot understand why they didn't google it beforehand and read one of the many studies available from the various maligned experts in economics who predicted exactly what the effects would be. Project reality indeed.

It was a perfectly ordinary suburban London pub. It wasn’t a literary or political salon. I struggle to believe it was out of the ordinary.

I have heard this subject discussed as long as I can remember. Admittedly I took Politics A level and a lot of did related degrees, but I’ve heard it discussed by people who weren’t students.

Anyway the pub clientele then (90s) was mostly 40+ during the week, so that’s the only detail I can think of that might have a bearing. They would all be 65+ now.

I hesitate to guess what kind of person Google’s “what’s the EU?”. Except to aver that they probably weren’t the older generation (or politics grads).

Now I really don’t believe that many of the people asking Google what the EU was had actually voted. What was the turnout? 70-odd percent? I think it’s a section of the other twenty-something % who sailed on oblivious and then wondered what all the roaring and wailing was about as the results were announced.

The UK is planning on taking the EU to the ECJ (irony or what) over the EU barring the UK from three science projects: Horizon, EuroTom (nuclear) and Copernicus.

I'd bet my house that 99.9% on here had ever heard of all 3 let alone knew what they were in 2015.

Yet the outcome of the vote was to rob of us of billions in research funding and vital cooperation in life sciences.

No loss, we got a trade deal with Panama.

Now I really don’t believe that many of the people asking Google what the EU was had actually voted. What was the turnout? 70-odd percent? I think it’s a section of the other twenty-something % who sailed on oblivious and then wondered what all the roaring and wailing was about as the results were announced.

Well, when their winter fuel bills arrive they can repent their apathy at leisure. They do say a cold environment sharpens the mind.

Before the economically illiterate jump on me again: no the fuel shortage in Europe is not caused by Brexit. However, fuel is priced and imported in USD and we're heavily reliant on imports - yet another failure of UK Government policy - so the fact that Brexit has led to a huge devaluation of GBP against USD and EUR means your fuel bills are approx 25% higher than they would be if it weren't for Brexit but the other global issues we can't control were still going on, purely because of the impact of Brexit on exchange rates.

Anybody like a 25% discount on their fuel bill? Maybe 10-15% off their shopping? Then lobby your MP to rejoin the single market pronto.

The government have told employers not to give pay rises because of the dreadful Inflation.🙄
The Conservative Party have fucked up the UK with their arrogance, incompetence and corruption. And Brexit has and is causing a massive amount of damage.

Only the economically illiterate can say that current inflation is caused by pay rises. There haven't been enough significant pay rises (public or private) that would cause this level of inflation. However fuel prices, to take one example, might. I kept hearing the "wage price spiral" (again, spouted by economically illiterate MPs) a few weeks ago when the strikes were starting up again. Yes, there is an economic phenomenon of that. But you have to have the wages go up first to get the spiral started.

Privatisation of national industries (coal, steal, gas, electricity, telecoms, water, railways) lead to years and years of under-investment. We know where that has lead in terms of quality/price on the railways. Housing shortages etc. We know this. That is the neo-con dream though. Coupled with deregulation of the banking industry (EU not immune to this, btw), the weakening of the unions, opting out of things like the working time directive, and then Brexit have all lead us to where we are now.

Brexit has happened and we all have to come to terms with that, or at least learn to live with it. Political leaders need to get a grip of the economy, and one way they can do that is investment in public works. But they can only afford that with an efficient tax system. All the massive corporations squirreling away their profits in offshore accounts, getting tax subsidies are putting a spanner in that works. Another thing that would help is the immediate injection of cash in the pockets of the poorest, and not quite so poor (the just about managing). But again, difficult to afford with an inefficient tax system.

What the country needs isn't the likes of Rees-Mogg saying "well we won the cricket" when asked what benefits Brexit brought us. It needs them to get their heads together to come up with short, medium and long-term solutions for investment in the country. Frankly, given who is in charge - there isn't the calibre of politician who can do that in the UK.

😔

A lot of the people who didn’t understand enough to vote, won’t understand any of it. It’s not always apathy. Somethings it’s capacity. Demographics are very broad. You can’t expect everyone to be bright, politically/engaged and sophisticated.

Sometimes^

But they can only afford that with an efficient tax system. All the massive corporations squirreling away their profits in offshore accounts, getting tax subsidies are putting a spanner in that works.

You're not wrong but it won't happen. Brexit was pushed through quickly precisely to protect the tax havens and ensure our exist date meant we never had to implement the EU Anti-Tax Avoidance Directive which would have required public publication of beneficial owners of all of that money. Which would have made the public in the UK very angry, after years of austerity, and inevitably led to the demise of said tax havens, once people realised the scale of it.

This is why many of the individuals who funded the Brexit campaign happen to be extremely wealthy individuals with all of their money stashed in UK tax havens... the idea that these people who profit from poverty and low regulation here did this to raise the salaries of employees that many on this thread have spouted as the reason for Brexit is naive beyond belief.

As always, follow the money.

So in short, you may be right but that will not happen as our political class is captures by these vested interests. Otherwise they would never have pursued a hard Brexit off the back of a vote that was tied within a margin of error, after a campaign of misinformation and lies.

Anybody remember arch Brexiteers insisting during the campaign that nobody was suggesting leaving the single market, because that would be suicidal? All on video, all over the internet. Repeated assurances on that.

They backtracked from that very quickly after the vote because their wealthy backers realised that if in the single market, the Directive would still have to be implemented.

A lot of the people who didn’t understand enough to vote, won’t understand any of it. It’s not always apathy. Somethings it’s capacity. Demographics are very broad. You can’t expect everyone to be bright, politically/engaged and sophisticated.

I expect our education system to give every citizen a broad understand of political structures and how they operate. The ignorance of this in the UK is far greater than in most countries I have spent time in.

And I expect people - before voting on an issue - to do research and look at data and make informed decisions. Or ask experts, or listen to people who are informed rather than insulting them.

Along with lies and misrepresentation of facts, the Leave Campaign actively encouraged people not to trust experts. It has had repercussions beyond that though with Covid and other things.

@HinchcliffeandMurgatroyd, as I say, it may have been a topic of conversation in your pub 25 years ago (was something happening in the EU at that time?), but a quick look through SM platforms shows little interest in the EU prior to Brexit.

All of that is fair enough, but it doesn’t reflect the reality that our secondary schools do a produce a sub section of leavers who are functionally illiterate. We have a large underclass in this country who scrape along, are more likely to do prison time, more likely to be long term unemployed, highly unlikely to vote…

It would be interesting to see research into who didn’t use their vote.

@HinchcliffeandMurgatroyd, as I say, it may have been a topic of conversation in your pub 25 years ago (was something happening in the EU at that time?), but a quick look through SM platforms shows little interest in the EU prior to Brexit.

Yes, what a mystery eh? Not even in the top 20 voter concerns, at all.

I wonder why extremely wealthy people threw millions and manipulating the referendum?

Oh yes, the tax havens, as I said above. That is the root cause of all of this. They harnessed the so rage about the poverty they were inflicting and directed it at the wrong people - ironically the EU who was doing something to finally expose how the British public were being mugged by implementing this Directive - so that they could maintain their wealth, and have opportunities to increase it further e.g. JRM moving his investment fund to Ireland and advising his investors that GBP would plummet in value due to Brexit, while publicly claiming it would benefit average UK citizens.

I do struggle to understand how anybody can still believe it was for the benefit of "normal" people in the face of such much proof to the contrary. It is cognitive dissonance of the highest order.

All of that is fair enough, but it doesn’t reflect the reality that our secondary schools do a produce a sub section of leavers who are functionally illiterate. We have a large underclass in this country who scrape along, are more likely to do prison time, more likely to be long term unemployed, highly unlikely to vote…

It would be interesting to see research into who didn’t use their vote.

I agree. Imagine what all of those squirelled away tax haven funds could have done to start addressing these issues and improve quality if life across the board?

@HinchcliffeandMurgatroyd, as I say, it may have been a topic of conversation in your pub 25 years ago (was something happening in the EU at that time?), but a quick look through SM platforms shows little interest in the EU prior to Brexit.

I’m thinking about it now you’ve questioned it, having never considered it unusual before.

I remember the single currency being debated quite a bit. That whole debacle rumbled in in the news for some time, didn’t it, so was “current” for a while. I also remember more sensible people trying to talk sense to others about bent bananas and the metric martyrs. No more so than other news stories of the day such as the good Friday agreement, Madonna signing an unknown singer called Alanis zmorrisette, the 1997 general election, Nr blobby in the charts…Just lots of news items big and small being chewed over.

It never struck me as unusual. I’m still not sure that it was.

Yes, we who "can't move on", with our "whining and navel-gazing" ... not at all like those who fully accepted the first UK referendum: that two-to-one democratic decision to remain.

Why can't we accept that the British people have spoken, just as Farage and Johnson and all the other true democrats did over 40+ years post '75?

Oh. Wait ...

No. Sorry. I still can't - won't - forgive. 2016 and its aftermath was as much a betrayal of democracy as of ordinary people like me and my family. Resilience, yes of course. Revision of plans, sure. But forgive the lying scum who organised this shitstorm and those thick enough to vote for it against their own interests? Nope.

Yes, what a mystery eh? Not even in the top 20 voter concerns, at all.

Maybe that’s it. Lots of people had an opinion about Europe but everyone considered domestic concerns to be unconnected and much more important?

@Rosewaterblossom Thing is though that works both ways- I can't just rock up in the USA and live and work regardless of how talented I am unless they specifically require my experience- so whilst this is all well and nice for those in medicine, software, maybe engineering - it's not exactly helpful for those just looking for an office job or are semi retired etc or want to offer dog walking or whatever. With the EU you could do/be whatever without restraint.
'Most ' people coming from EU in recent times were tending to come for a few years and worked in 'hard to fill areas' - most EU professionals were not picking the UK unless very highly paid, highly skilled (surgeons etc) as the general view is that it's expensive in most parts worth living in and you don't get much for your tax money. Yes at the moment wages are going up in lower paid jobs due to shortages, hence why we now partly have higher prices, the costs are passed on to the consumer. I'm pretty sure the Tory's will be soon allowing lots of non EU immigrants in to balance that and making sure anyone who can 'in theory ' work will get benefit reductions if they don't take minimum wage jobs.

Sorry. I still can't - won't - forgive. 2016 and its aftermath was as much a betrayal of democracy as of ordinary people like me and my family. Resilience, yes of course. Revision of plans, sure. But forgive the lying scum who organised this shitstorm and those thick enough to vote for it against their own interests? Nope.

👏👏👏

Neither will I, until and unless they put it right and show some contrition for the damage they have done.

Because they were. The problems in the UK in 2016 which featured in voter's concerns were entirely down to UK Government policy. Nothing to do with the EU.

Many of our current problems are caused by external forces that we can't control. That said, the horrific failures of UK Government policy over the last few decades have compounded these issues and made them much worse for us than they had to be. No energy security strategy, minimal labour market regulation, no food security strategy, no long-term economic strategy for infrastructure or productivity, no investment in education, no overhaul of our abysmal healthcare and pensions, nothing on food security, poor performance on the environment, care system and social services a mess, austerity so people have no buffer to cope with the next economic shock that would inevitably come eventually, Government ignoring advice on pandemic planning, etc etc.

However, these domestically created problems have been hugely compounded by the many, many negative effects of Brexit. Not least the quadrupling of our balance of payments deficit and the plummetting value of our currency, when due to said Government policies, we are heavily reliant on imports priced in USD. We are literally importing inflation as a direct result of Brexit! Then our Government tells employers not to raise salaries domestically so people can afford to live because the Government itself has ramped up our inflation rate with a hard Brexit.

What an absolutely sick joke. I have a black sense of humour and it would be funny if it was in an episode of Monty Python or something but we have to live with this.

It's hard to conclude that anybody still supporting this is not either wilfully ignorant or incredibly thick.

Or, one of the very tiny percentage who are making a fortune out of it e.g. betting against GBP on the currency markets.