To still be really sad and angry about Brexit

[OptimismvsRealism]

It really reduced the opportunities in my future and has achieved absolutely nothing of benefit for anyone else (besides disaster capitalists who made a mint off the financial manipulation effect). We haven't even avoided those stupid fecking tethers on the bottle lids!

When the extra immigration checks come in in October it's going to make every holiday a tiny bit upsetting.

And the new government won't even try to fix it.

Don't get me wrong I'm not one of those idealists singing ode to joy before breakfast but on a personal level it bloody sucks and seems likely it always will.

No that’s your incorrect assumption

So you believe the EU will be thriving?

but I’m not sure where it will all be in five years

What is “it”? The price of fish? Oh that’s gone up and the quality down

Come on, spit it out, oh cryptic one😁

Why didn’t you just ask in the first post instead of wasting posts on Brexy DFs or whatever

@OptimismvsRealism

brexit has hugely damaged this country.
anyone who says not is literally an idiot.

the uk will have to rejoin the EEA at the very least and will probably pay more than it did in total before for less say.

the immigration issue was never the EU it was empire and wars etc.

bring back freedom of movement

@HappyHolidai The Liberal Democrats are still advocating repairing ties with EU. I'm voting for them because of it. Completely devastated by what we've allowed to happen to our beaches, rivers, trade and farmers. All for that nonce.

I voted remain but that's democracy. Sometimes you win and sometimes you don't.

This continued whining years afterwards achieves nothing.

Time to get on with your life.

Why would anyone vote LibDem? They are utterly self-serving. Tell the relatives of the 150,000 people who died directly as a result of austerity that the LibDems can be trusted.

In the meantime of course, most European countries still have 2 foreign languages compulsory until leaving school at 15/16. And compulsory if they continue to study in the equivalent of 6th Form.

They are very happy to speak English if they are selling. If they are buying- that is a different matter. If they have the choice, they will often choose those selling a product with a good knowledge of their language, and the culture/differences, etc.

So what aren’t you sure of, where it’ll be in the next five years? Failed to answer the basic question i was asking I see.

I predict the U.K. will continue to decline, the effects of isolation due to Brexit will lead us back to a similar sick man of Europe scenario.

Hope I’m wrong, what do you reckon @EasternStandard

I will never forgive the Tories for Brexit. Never.

Omg, this post.... So children lying next to their dead parents is within the acceptable "bad of life" to you, just as your husband's dead colleagues (without forgetting to note that luckily he's around still) but god forbid the absolute HORROR of being unable to retire to Greece!

Are you not self-sufficient enough in your retirement age to move anyway? Would be good if you could make it.

me too OP, not so much for me, more for the opportunities my children will miss out on.

You're clearly one of the rich ones who only care about your holidays and freedom of movement.
Meanwhile us working class types saw our wages been reduced from in the £30k's to low £20k's because EU immigrants from (particularly) Spain, Italy, Poland were willing to undercut UK wages significantly and they did.
The people whinging about Brexit usually suffered no pay cuts due to freedom of movement and don't give a damn about the working class who did suffer.

Can you spell out what opportunities they have lost? There is (or should be) less competition for jobs in the UK now which should benefit working class kids.

Have your wages gone back up now we've left?
This is a genuine question as if so it would possibly be a benefit of Brexit - and knowing that some low paid people are better off would at least be something.

But otherwise I just think the rich got richer.
I will never be OK about or accept Brexit and hope the new govt at least try and minimise the harm rather than just say the inevitable negatives are the EU being awkward (because they actually treat us like the 3rd country we wanted to be!)

And the ironic thing is Cameron called the referendum to try and get rid of the threat of UKIP to the tory party - and here we are 8 YEARS after the vote - and yep - Farage is still a threat to the tories in this election even though we ended up with brexit!

Me too. I live in Europe and have an Irish passport. My British one elapsed earlier this year, I won't renew it.

I think you misunderstood. The hell the previous poster was on about was surely lockdown not the pandemic

The working class benefited from being in the EU.

Quality of life-boosting standard-setting, European structural funds to pay for economic development programs, Erasmus for those at uni who could never otherwise have afforded to study abroad. Prices are up because of Brexit. Workers are unable to find work because of Brexit. Small business are fucked became of Brexit. The EU was a friend to ordinary people. The UK government was the problem. Refusing to provide British kids with the education they needed to fully benefit. Then slyly blaming Johnny Foreigner.

it's depressing that you still don't understand what you gave away but I guess ignorance is bliss.

I studied languages at university and the year abroad was a vital part of it. My uni friends and I all spent a year in the European country of our choice, immersed in the language and culture. A huge number of young people have done this, Europeans in the UK and British people in Europe, and have had hugely enriching experiences as a result. It has the potential to change the direction of your whole life, as it can impact your career and/or personal life (eg meeting a life partner) and people end up settling in that country or moving countries to make a life with someone from another country. When the UK was part of the EU, it was so easy to do this because no visas were needed, so studying and working in Europe was a readily available option for British people (and vice versa) but it is no longer anything like as easy. If a British and European citizen wanted a relationship, they could live in each other's countries without any trouble, whereas if you happened to fall for someone from the US or Canada or indeed anywhere else outside Europe, you'd have to sort visas pretty quickly (and I know couples who got married VERY early in their relationships for visa reasons!)

Perhaps you'll argue that these lost opportunities are a "middle class" thing and that the working class never did any of it and are not missing out on it... perhaps you think that the Brits have more to gain (in terms of keeping the UK and its jobs to themselves) than they do to lose (in terms of freedom to live, study and work in Europe. But I would argue that visas - with all their financial requirements in terms of the expense of getting one, the need for a certain type of job or level of income, etc - create extra barriers for people from a working class or lower income background who might be interested in those kinds of opportunities.

I guess it depends whether you think that living abroad can be an enriching experience and should be available to people; I obviously think that but perhaps others don't value it the way I do.

Immigration is at an all time high. Ironic that the anti immigration voters chose the opposite of what they believed they wanted.

Kids in the UK are now stuck on this shitty island instead of having the opportunity to freely work, live, love and explore (without limitations) across an entire continent.

Yanbu. It is still appalling.

If you think visas are the main barrier to working-class people accessing opportunities @AnotherEmma you are very badly mistaken.
@OptimismvsRealism i know you feel passionately that Brexit was a terrible mistake but people’s living standards have declined for very many reasons. Zero hours contracts, rising housing costs, lack of access to further and higher education for example. If you ask anyone who has lived experience of really challenging lives in the UK, very few will blame Brexit. And no, it’s not because they are stupid or ignorant as people like you accuse them of being.

How do you keep sane living on an island you describe as ‘shitty?’ It’s certainly not perfect and we are governed by fools but we don’t have the monopoly on that.

There has been no change in relation to the quality of food or choice available where I live in the South East. The only issue I have encountered at the supermarket was in the early 1980s when one could no longer buy a chicken with giblets and that was due to EU rules.

Makes note to write to the next PM to ask when giblets in chickens will be reinstated. Now that has taken too long post brexit.

This thread is quite extraordinary.
For those arguing that the majority vote didn't result in Brexit, blame those who pissed their democratic right to vote up the wall. It wouldn't be very democratic to force people to vote.

Yes, this 100%.

It's really quite arrogant and very foolish indeed to expect that you can deliberately not bother to vote for something for which you have the right, but that those in charge will still magically know - and act on - what you would have voted for, had you bothered.

I wonder if the people who hold this view are the same ones who insist that people who choose not to get married should be forcibly treated as married by the government anyway, if there's any chance that the way they co-habit with another adult might possibly look a bit 'marriage-y'.

If you have a vote where there is one available outcome that you prefer, yet you choose not to use it, you have abstained - and therefore, any feelings or regrets that you may have about the result are your private thoughts only and have no relevance whatsoever in the public sphere of debate.

Just a handy little tip for anybody, regardless of what the options involve, if you're ever offered a choice and there is one option that you prefer, CHOOSE IT.

Its a massive mess. No redeeming features at all. We are going to be paying for Brexit for generations, literally.