“Everybody thought the EU was about people coming into the country … no-one told of us the benefits”.

[MrsMurphyIWish]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm2136jnjx1o

And the response to this very now deprived community is to vote Reform.

“Brexit has removed a key source of funding, which the area desperately needs. County Durham received £154m of EU funding between 2014 and 2020, about £22m a year. Since the UK left the European Union, it receives about half that amount, £12m annually, under the UK Shared Prosperity Fund.”

The story is sad (and typical of deprived areas - I know, I live in one). Towns feeling forgotten and never recovering from closed industry but why can they not see history will repeat itself?

I’m sorry, but most average citizens could not realistically be expected to fully understand the implications of such a massive and complex overhaul as Brexit

Agree it was far too complex to come down to leave or remain vote

The Irish have trialed a form of consultation called citizen assembles, I think this would have been a very good and transparent model to use to debate the issue and make recommendations to the government on leaving or remaining in the EU as opposed to a "leave" or "remain" referendum. It may also have been enough to satisfy the tory backbenchers

https://citizensassembly.ie/about/

I'm talking about BEFORE we joined the EU in 1993. So how could anyone have voted ukip before then?

What ANTI EU parties were there to vote for?

The Scottish independence vote went the wrong way from what was expected - even the Queen was called in to get the right vote, so little was done re Brexit. Should have learned from that.
And the almighty battle after the Brexit referendum-to rerun, etc meant the terms to move forward took forever and that was the pro Brexit lot. In desperation Bojo was voted in that was another 3 wasted years.

The ECC was founded in 1957. The UK refused to join, then when it did want to join, De Gaulle vetoed that in 63 and 67, for reasons not entirely connected with the economy: he thought the UK would a Trojan horse for US influence. He wasn’t entirely wrong as the UK’s influence with the US massively decreased after Brexit.

Yes - people were clearly told this. They just chose not to listen. How come over 40 per cent of those who voted in Liverpool voted for Brexit? What the bloody hell? How on earth did they think the city would be better off under a TORY government outside the EU than within the EU with the clear evidence of EU funding displayed on buildings/sites in the city? You could not miss the EU symbol in the city in the twenty years before Brexit.

I think I am at the point where I have little sympathy with people who voted to deprive their county/city of EU funding. Turkeys voting for Christmas comes to mind.

I am so pleased that the current government is working to get British students back into the Erasmus scheme. It might only directly affect a small number but it is important nevertheless. Hopefully more initiatives will follow to mitigate the disaster that is Brexit.

DH and I have had to be very restrained around our parents when we think what opportunities our DSs have potentially lost. I remember reading a post years ago from a woman who was very angry that her parents had voted Leave apparently without any consideration at all for their DGC who were at uni in the EU/planning to study/work abroad. That resonated with me.

It's not the disagreeing that is the issue.

It's the faulty reasoning (on the rare occasions it's provided) that is the problem.

By all means live your life as if the sun orbits the earth. Just don't expect me to respect any decisions you make predicated on that "fact".

Add in 1979, 1983, 1987 ....

All of which we before the EU . And it wasn't really an issue. None of the parties spkoe about it.

And who could've voted for ukip years before it existsd

But but Brexiteers all did their own research didn’t they?

As far as Brexit is concerned they were warned. They dismissed expert knowledge in favour of lies on the side of a bus. I’m only sorry that their actions will continue to govern the fates of those a damned sight more intelligent.

As far as the deprivation is concerned, this is the ongoing problem of Britains broken economy which we have been talking about for years and where are the answers? Where are the answers when there are no jobs any more in a system governed by hostile elites who threw people off the land into this system 400 years ago and simply do not care whether the serfs live or die? At least train up your own people rather than than import more cheaply, especially in a country so overpopulated and so visibly overpopulated at that, a finite island… but they’ve been going back to that Enclosure mindset for the last twenty years, forcing the new Enclosure that is buy-to-let instead.

How are people supposed to live with no resources, no jobs and no hope?

This is coming for all of us.

It would not have been possible for the UK to enter the EU without having been in the EEC and EC first. And the freedom to leave would have been available at each of those elections.

How are the residents still so stupid? Voting for Brexit, losing EU funding, and now voting for Reform, and now racist attacks against the Nigerian community.

But once more, politics isn't helping. In the past three years, a group of Nigerian families has moved into the area. Most are employed as engineers or health and social care workers, and many have sent their children to Cotsford Primary - of its 182 pupils, as many as 30 are now Nigerian. But they've become embroiled in the country's immigration debate.

Over the summer months, England flags started appearing on lampposts in the villages, and a group of Nigerian families playing in a local park was attacked with eggs. Some parents, says deputy head Vicky Page, feared for their safety.
"You're talking about people who have legally arrived in the country, who are here to work. And then you talk about a political agenda that's different, looking at people who are coming illegally. They are not in the same ballpark at all, but yet they're being treated as if they are."

Actually I have some sympathy for that view. What jobs there are, we should be training up our own people for and making it worth them working. Showing them that there are rewards for working. Not just continuing to import more mouths to feed.

The argument that more immigrants magically improve the economy is demonstrably false. How many millions have we imported now? Where’s the benefit for these towns, watching the immigrants imported specially to take the health and social jobs their parents and greatparents could have done? Purely there as cheap labour in the failure demand economy of the poverty industry?

We can't wait for people on benefits to work out that having a job is a good thing, we need people in the jobs when they're open. If we're importing immigrants to do the health and social jobs it's because those jobs aren't being filled by natives.

And they're not "more mouths to feed", they're paying taxes and contributing. They're the ones feeding the mouths.

Having a job is not a good thing when it does not buy you anything except the opportunity to work hard, be chewed up, and spat out. What benefit is there for working hard for those of us with no bank of mum and dad?

Show them that work works by bringing back the chance to build their own lives from work.

They have nothing.

Theres a thread on this board by a mother grudging the fact that her teenage sons cook because she can’t afford the fuel costs ffs.

And look up the concept of failure demand.

For the government yes. Not for the people

I didn't vote for Brexit but I had no idea how much funding came from the EU or for what. I've seen signs in other countries, including Wales that say 'this was funded by the EU' but I've never seen them in England. The push of 'information' seemed to be heavily weighted on the side of the pro Brexit lot with the Remainers not really seeming to have much to say or at least only saying it very quietly.

It was much too big a thing for anyone to be able to predict how it would go so the Brexiteers just told everyone what they wanted to hear and people voted for that. The whole thing was completely ridiculous.

Farage, just like Trump, is fabulous at mustering up the populist vote and people fall for it over and over again.

What the signs wouldnt say is that yThe UK was paying more into the EU to get SOME of it back as funding. Cant blame brexit for the lack of funding now as its the UK govt decidimg not to fund stuff

By 2010, less than 9000 people tried to get into the UK via Lorry or Train

I think you mean by 2010 less than 9000 people were caught trying to get into the UK via lorry out train..

That's how centralised payment in-transfer out systems work.

The alternative would be local areas spend only what they can raise/borrow.

The outer London boroughs receive less "back" in spending than they pay in tax, compared to the inner London ones but overall London makes enough surplus that it can subsidise other parts of the country.

Additionally when we were in the EU we were paying for a second lot of bureaucracy but we could also draw on various member-only funding sources.

Or being complacent - thinking the other side were "thick"?

There was no exit mechanism though? It might have been slightly less painful at those points but it certainly wouldn't have been straightforward.

Most likely. People not asked if we wanted to join the eu andseems govt justgot carried along with the other countries. No idea if the people in other countries got a say

BREXIT was as a result of the failure of the political establishment to address the needs of marginalised communuties and communicate how remaining in the EU would help address them, along with a genuine fear of older people of changing cultures within British society. Since it happened all we have had is, first, it wasn't valid because not everyone turned out, then let us vote again to get the right vote, then delay after delay in implementing a democratic vote and watering it down, then an ongoing campaign of how stupid all those voters were and we told you so and my child can not study and work in Paris or passport control in Spain because of you (that will worry those in Salford trying to feed their kids day to day). So instead of trying to implement measures and find opportunuties and leadership the situation offers we just have this continual labelling and 'look what your ignorance has caused'.
And you wonder why people are voting Reform. They are still being ignored by a smug self rightous elite who now can increase their smugness because they think were right all along.
The real failure of BREXIT is the failure of our society and political leadership to address the challenges it poses to us and a proper accepatance of a democratic decision and why it happened, by whole sections of our 'liberal' establishment. There is an absolute poverty of ideas from our leaders and those who voted remain other than 'we told you so'.
There have been plenty of democratic decisions that have impacted dispropotionaly, Miners and Mrs Thatcher springs to mind, but they were the decisions at the time. It has shown democracy is just a theory for certain people that is only acceptable if people vote the right way.

I have done some reading on this and the economy does gain from immigration, but in terms of the people in it, there are winners and losers.

So it can absolutely be true that the economy gained but individuals and groups lost out.

It's evident from the article. What benefit of growth in London and the SE accrues to the remote area? Not much apart from national health and education systems (that didn't keep up with growth anyway) and er, a new rail station - so they can leave the area quicker?!

Yes other countries have had leave campaigns, referenda on membership etc. Norway has had at least one referendum on joining, but has (sensibly imo) stayed out!