“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?

If your engagement in politics only extends as far as whining and perhaps randomly putting a cross in a box when you can be bothered, then maybe your views on democracy are rather limited.

As dutiful slaves, everyone should just be working for the benefit of our lords and masters (all male incidentally, you aren’t really doing yourself many favours either)?

Go away.

There has to be rewards, just as there has to be a framework for consent and legitimacy in a government and indeed the whole system. The alternative is slavery and force.

If that is what our government, and again, the entire system, wants, then I challenge all involved to openly say so.

Nor do you have a clue how difficult it is to gain skills in a system that makes it clear every day that you are not wanted: that anyone from around the world is wanted first.

Aaah all that money that went to the nhs you mean? Where on earth did that go?

Paying interest on our eye watering debt?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-16/uk-s-reeves-is-set-to-get-a-boost-from-falling-debt-interest

No - people should be working for the good of their country and society generally. They can then start to pay taxes, and contribute to amenities and the economy. Which in turn will benefit themselves in the long run.

You seem full of excuses. If immigrants who may speak English as a 2nd language, can find jobs - you do have to have the skills and actually apply to get a job - then so can the 40-something Dunelmian (disabilities accounted for).

Slavery is a ridiculous comparison. Employment means money, which means food and lodging, which means economic freedom, which leads to wider opportunities. You could argue that those who are wilfully long-term unemployed are slaves to the state, dependent on its crumbs.

Education is free up till the age of 18. Government subsidies are available for college courses. Night schools or lucrative night-shifts are always there (see the Post Office, local hospitals). Learning a language can be done virtually free of charge, with internet resources. Professional qualficiations could be studied for around a schedule. Excuses again.

This is a free market, and it's not on the person to feel wanted enough to get a job. It's on them to prove their worth in order to get a job.

So explain workplaces that only advertise abroad? That shouldn't be allowed but does happen. I remember a friend of mine who was a foreman in a factory. Every time they needed staff they advertised in Poland written in polish language. In the end all the staff were polish and never spoke English in work which made it difficult for him and he only spoke English and Punjabi.

Or Basildon council when they were fitting people's kitchens . Sent out letters says the operatives were unlikely to speak English. They'd recruited them from Bulgaria.

No reason why local people couldn't do these jobs

It's still eye watering even after a reduction!

We have borrowed and borrowed and borrowed since Brexit (but not related to Brexit, much of it because of Covid and because of failing to reduce public spending back to pre Covid levels once Covid was over).

The £350m bus money, which was the question, is more than swallowed up by that.

It's not actually relevant to that fact that debt interest percentage payments will be reducing because inflation is falling. The amount being paid remains eye watering and swamps the spending on several government departments, like double what we spend on defence.

I think you need to take your rose tinted spectacles off. The EU is not doing well. Loads of countries in the EU now have right wing parties in charge, Italy, Finland, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Czech Republic, Netherlands. France and Germany have a huge growth in their right wing parties. The European Union countries are not doing well economically. We can control our borders but no one has the arsehole to do it. Farage is old news. Restore Britain are the party that actually will do something if it is migration you care about. Plenty of areas do get funding, my city does from the levelling up fund. Blaming everything on brexit is nonsense. That shitshow covid hasn't helped the economy either. Instead of looking back and talking down our economy politicians need to get their arse in gear and look forward. We need young people to learn trades. They should also actually employ our British Dr's and nurses once qualified instead of opting to employ oversees nationals. Past posters have been correct that we have an ageing population and having to pay triple lock pensions and social care is crippling. That's got f all to do with leaving the EU. Instead of crying about a decision to take back control we need to actually have a party in that is going to make proper changes.

Quite.

Let Farage fool you once, shame on him. Let's him fool you twice, shame on you.

But it was promised to the nhs!! Its almost as though it was...bull

It will be 3 times. They have a reform council....

OK we agree then. I don't understand why slavery was brought into it. Perhaps that person can explain ... or preferably never mention it again as it makes no sense

@CaptainMyCaptain it was @SerendipityJane who brought slavery into it. She replied ‘So did slavery’ to Industrialisation created huge wealth which the whole country enjoyed.

I would also like to know the relevance to slavery in this context.

COVID happened after that. Cost shitloads

It did
As did the war driving the COL crisis and lots more economic crap
But the money "saved" by brexit was never going to happen. And the resulting impact on the economy

I think the whole “nobody told us” nonsense and the final sentence of the article (“How is it, locals ask, that we've been failed for so long?“) are very telling. No initiative, no sense of responsibility to improve things for themselves, all woe is me and expecting everyone else to fix their problems for them like a bunch of whining toddlers stamping their feet in a tantrum. Just like toddlers, they need to learn that actions have consequences.

In fact the pretence that they “didn’t know” is disingenuous anyway. They deliberately trashed things for everyone, repeatedly telling everyone that they “didn’t care if Brexit made us poorer”. Well, they got their wish.

Presumably by making “us poorer” they really meant everyone else but them. Given what their stupidity has inflicted on everyone else I have zero sympathy that their wish to be poorer came true and think Brexit-voting areas should be given no additional Government funding above standard allocations per head of population at all until the losses in areas that didn’t vote for Brexit have been repaid.

The loss to tax revenues annually equates to just a little more than the total tax rises since 2016, so none of those would have been necessary in the absence of Brexit. We’d also have had significantly higher growth, lower administrative costs, and obviously the tax rises themselves have also depressed the economy further compounding the Brexit doom loop.

It’ll continue compounding until this idiocy is substantially reversed but clearly we’ll never get back exactly what we had before, so one tax that should be levied is a Brexit tax to fill the hole in finances, to be paid by all who will admit to voting for it. I wonder how many would come forward to show they will keep their word about “not caring it will make people poorer”? Given they are Farage fans presumably they have no integrity so I doubt a single one would own up and pay it.

Education is free up till the age of 18. Government subsidies are available for college courses. Night schools or lucrative night-shifts are always there (see the Post Office, local hospitals). Learning a language can be done virtually free of charge, with internet resources. Professional qualficiations could be studied for around a schedule. Excuses again.

You sound completely unaware that not everyone is equally able to take advantage of those things.

This is a free market, and it's not on the person to feel wanted enough to get a job. It's on them to prove their worth in order to get a job.

It's not a fair playing field. It's always going to be the brighter and more capable people, who already speak English well and are at the minimum bilingual, who decide that it would be good to take a few years experiencing living in the UK and financing that by working in Costa.

The spotty 18 year old who has few qualifications and no experience of work doesn't have a hope of competing for jobs in that situation. Neither does the frazzled mum with childcare responsibilities, or a whole host of other people.

One of the things I've been happiest about since Freedom of Movement ended is seeing people who are visibly from a different and more diverse background given employment opportunities behind the counter in Costa.

I'm going to be livid if Starmer blights those chances again by agreeing a youth exchange (youth? It's 18-35!!) scheme that the EU is pushing for without strict criteria and limits on numbers.

Like i said, keep digging! its entertaining!

You ve just changed the goal posts, you originally stated "Thatcher was in power when we were IN the EU... nope...

You then claimed we had no anti EU party to vote for, we did, we had 2.

Pre 1993, we voted in the pro EEC Tories, 4 times.... then again in 1992, under the pro EU Major.... Thatcher helped design the SM.... listen to her speeches on the huge benefits to UK business?

On the EEC, we had a referendum, we voted to stay in, based on what Brexitiers say now, we should never have even had a 2nd vote because thats "not honouring democracy"

Looking forward to your next none argument!

Basically this.
We have lost so much manufacturing employment over the decades and no amount of subsidy is going to correct this.

You are obviously reading incorrectly. I never ever said Thatcher was in power while we were IN the EU.. If you are referring to the statement that *Thatcher was in most of the time" then that refers to pre 1993. Before we joined the EU.

The who premise of that was no choice on whether to JOIN the EU in the first place for the general public. The EEC is a different kettle of fish to the EU.

So what you are saying that it's the people who voted for Major that made the decision on us entering the EU then. Which parties at the time were against us joining? I was an adult at that time and don't recall any politicians saying ' no don't join the EU"

Plenty of Tory politicians campaigned against John Major at the time, he called them Bastards and even had a vote of confidence in his leadership, he went on to win the 1992 GE, with 45.5% of the vote, Reform are currently on 24%.

Pre 1990s Labour were against the EEC, they campaigned against joining the EEC or staying in it.
Only when Smith & Kinnock came along did their official stance change.

Post 1993, we had UKIP, Farage himself tried 3 or 4 times to get elected and failed every time.

Even after FOM in the 2000s, Labour still got in another 2 times and then we voted in the very pro LDs and the pro EU Cameron.... UKIP came no-where.

The electorate have had plenty of occasions to have opposed the EEC or the EU.

Yes so politicians against John Major. Nothing to do with EU.

Pre 90s labour against the EEC. That's not the same as the EU.

Post 1993, we had already joined without the population given any choice in the matter

So basically John Major was the only one who got us into EU. .
He didn't ask the electorate

And he was probably simply because the opposition was Neil Kinnock . People probably still remembered the constant 70s strikes from Labour rule and Kinnock was definitely of that ilk. And if as you said Kinnock was probeu then what choice did the people have? Major pro EU or Kinnock pro EU.