Does anyone else find themselves getting more sympathetic to the other side

[whydidhesaythat]

I don't know if this is just another stage in the cycle of grief but I'm starting to feel that:

Those of us who were doing very nicely out of Europe thank you ignored those who didn't

EU money can go into buildings but that's not the same thing as helping people

People outside the urban centres felt the EU was just another siphon of power away from them

London patronises the regions

Not everyone got to go on a gap year to a European country so why should they be bothered about my kids having one?

There actually is a non racist anti immigration argument

I'm not saying any of this right, it may just be another reaction....but does anyone else find themselves empathising with the other side more than they did?

It has been very informative to read views from the "other side". Although I still don't agree that (for the foreseeable future, no bloody clue how things will pan out long term) Leaving the EU is going to be good for us, I have come to some Leave posters with whom I believe I have common ground: namely that we each considered the issues to the best of our abilities and made our choice with the best of intentions for the country. However, I have come to the sad conclusion that there are too many angry, bitter, disruptive and bellicose voices around for us to heal the division for a long time to come.

In terms of the specifics of what exactly we are hoping to achieve "going forward" (ugh), I remain (hah! see what I did there?) unconvinced by what Leave want to achieve and where Leave want us to go apart from away.

Many great comments

I think the venomous insults being hurled in the run up to polling day probably hardened a few stances for a while.

I was on the fence originally (a few months ago) and have softened slightly again now. (But I could see sense on both sides all along, so that's not surprising.)

But I've not softened at all towards the venom-spewers and manipulators, I'm afraid. Nor towards Farage. There was too much of all three in the campaigns.

Remainer here... and no. Just no. I don't agree with many posts on MN - although some arguments are easier to take in than others... looking at you, xenophobes! I don't agree with the Leave people they show on TV either. Did they just cast the dumbest people they could find?!? Seriously?

I'm assuming everyone saw Ian Hislop on Question Time, but just in case

I understand the sentiment, but no. If anything, I feel less empathy and more anger. Not towards the poorest communities where there is a lot of suffering, few prospects and little knowledge of what the EU does. But towards the leavers I know who had access to all the relevant information, and should have known better. Even if we end up a relatively good state (a short recession, staying in the single market, with relatively free movement of labour), I don't think I'll ever be able to forgive them for restricting my children's future in this way.

No I don't.

End of.

I saw people being asked about the concert halls the EU had paid for in their area. They gave a wry laughs, they didn't use them..

Mintjulip maybe they work in them? Someone, presumably local, manages the place, does the admin, cleaning, catering, accounts?

The EU didn't just fund buildings. It funded training, research and jobs. It funded free and subsidised access to facilities. It invested in people when our own Government simply left them to struggle.

The dog-in-the-manger attitude of some Leavers is unjustified.

eurochick

Why is it only uk citizens from poorer backgrounds who can't move for jobs? What makes them so different from e.g. Polish people?

Because apparently, they are too special, need mollycoddling, need to stay with family and friends, while opportunities need to be served to them on a silver platter.

Because apparently, they are too special, need mollycoddling, need to stay with family and friends, while opportunities need to be served to them on a silver platter.

Or because the teaching of English from primary stage is common (and compulsory) in many countries across Europe, whereas UK DC (especially in disadvantaged areas/estates ) are lucky to get five years' high quality language tuition in one European language?

Because we don't have that culture of getting on a coach with £200 and no plan, hoping that it will be possible to find jobs and accommodation in our destination country?

Because our 'trades' training in this country is laughable now?

Because deprived British youth don't have the same international network of contacts and general diaspora to fall back on that, for example, Eastern Europeans do in the UK?

Blaming poor young people for their 'failure' to 'get on their bikes' and cross continental Europe in search of work really is nasty.

Some industries (holiday companies etc) are more accessible to working class youth but it's limited.

Because apparently, they are too special, need mollycoddling, need to stay with family and friends, while opportunities need to be served to them on a silver platter.

Shocking comment

Nope. I voted remain. I can't see the other side at all.

Immigration from the EU is far lower than most people think. Most immigrants also do jobs a lot of other people won't do like hardcore manual labour in horrible conditions. Less than 5% claim any kind of benefits.

The pound has plummeted and fucks up my US based business which I'm trying to expand because A large amount of companies here have frozen spending and it's had a huge negative effect on getting work.

I have friends who are being racially abused as it seems to have become more acceptable.

I know several others who are loosing business and clients.

Two friends have lost businesses because they deal in luxuries which people abruptly stop spending on when they start worrying about job security.

Several people I know have redundancy threats.

Nope I can't see how this is good. It will only get worse when we leave as well I fear.

Just5minswithDacre / seagreengirl

Given that I know deprived kids from East Asia (who were seriously deprived and have suffered life-debilitating injuries as kids in an accident that claimed their parents' life) get to the US and get scholarships to UCLA, I am not impressed with people saying that "only the most determined, lucky and persistent" of the poor in the UK will be able to find themselves opportunities in the EU. There are also quite a few examples of undocumented immigrants in the US, where the child had to share a one-bed flat with the whole family... and yet, somehow, they still managed to excel and get scholarships - among others - to Yale.

If THEY can do it... why can't others?

Also, people must be able "Auf Wiedersehen, Pet", right? During the 1980s recession, unemployed British construction workers took flight to Germany and again in the 1990s when German reunification fuelled a building boom as UK construction slumped.

So obviously, once upon a time, the British were like the Polish workers and could up and move. What happened to that?

There is no culture as such of "getting on a coach with £200 and no plan, hoping that it will be possible to find jobs and accommodation in our destination country"! Which country has such a culture please?!? No country has a culture that intentionally brings up nomads. This is just determination and necessity... not a 'culture'.

Given that I know deprived kids from East Asia (who were seriously deprived and have suffered life-debilitating injuries as kids in an accident that claimed their parents' life) get to the US and get scholarships to UCLA, I am not impressed with people saying that "only the most determined, lucky and persistent" of the poor in the UK will be able to find themselves opportunities in the EU

That's comparing apples with oranges.

brings up nomads. This is just determination and necessity... not a 'culture'.

Nonsense. It's long hard centuries of necessity that bring about a work culture in which you can get on a bus or a boat with very little like that and nobody says 'are you crazy?'. Just look at Ireland.

Just5minswithDacre

So you think comparing a seriously deprived kid from East Asia or a deprived kid from a marginalised community in the US with a deprived kid in the UK is "comparing apples with oranges".

Ehm... why? What's so different about the British kid?! What makes him/her so special?!?

Nonsense. It's long hard centuries of necessity that bring about a work culture in which you can get on a bus or a boat with very little like that and nobody says 'are you crazy?'. Just look at Ireland.

I don't think that takes centuries. It's survival instinct. If you were right, and people did not up and move when necessary... and waited centuries, the human race would be extinct by now. And even if you were right, and it takes centuries, as you say, well, the British were one of the earliest immigrant groups to North America (hence, they speak English). You know, back then, prosecution sort of made emigrating a necessity. Had they waited for centuries to move, it would have been THE END.

And as mentioned, much more recently, construction workers famously managed to up and leave to work in Germany in the 80s and 90s?! Have the British now lost that ability somehow? If so... why?!?

I realise more why some communities voted leave, yes. I still think that Brexit will not help them, or any of us, however.

Have zero sympathy for those people in wealthy, conservative with a small c, hardly touched by immigration places that voted leave .

Yes and no. My slightly indulgent feeling for Johnson that he was just a careerist politician doing whatever he had to do to get to the top, has hardened to a white hot fury. That indulged, cosseted, immoral man. I hope he is unemployed for the rest of his life and gets to feel what it's like to be tossed on the scrapheap, and the fact that that won't happen because he is so deeply part of the fetid swamp that is British public life makes me all the angrier.

Like many others, I just can't feel as angry with Cameron as I should.

But it took me a while to decide to vote Remain, and that actually surprised me at the time. I wrote a short story a few months ago that involved the EU in a way [great life], and looking at it now it's incredibly negative. I didn't think we would leave, and I think it's the wrong choice, but when we are a run-down, shrunken and dusty little archipelago whose main industry is share-selling boiler room call centres, there will be a few silver linings not being part of the EU.

I was very sympathetic to the Remainers I know post-referendum but the constant warnings of imminent Armageddon on MN are wearing a bit thin.

That said, I can see both sides of the debate.

No longer able to study in Europe, settle in Europe wink they're obviously assuming these options are open to everyone.

My carer (receives carer's allowance and income support) is studying a degree in an EU country via the internet. He lives in a council tower block.

Because he looks after me he needs to study part time, and he is hoping to complete before brexit.

So yes those options were, and for an unspecified time are for everyone.

And as mentioned, much more recently, construction workers famously managed to up and leave to work in Germany in the 80s and 90s?! Have the British now lost that ability somehow? If so... why?!?

No but in the 1980s British workers were cheap, lived in communal accommodation and had families at home. The EU allowed people to take their families with them.

The EU meant they earned the same and paid the same taxes, had the same rights to health care.

And this was before the Berlin wall came down.

I can't afford to "enjoy the best of Europe", if that means going on city breaks to European capitals and continental holidays. It doesn't stop me from appreciating the concept and benefits of the economic and political project which is the EU. The greater good, if you like.
I'm on the fence about the "accessible to all" convo above. As a primary school teacher working in an inner city area where the lived experience of an overwhelming number of pupils is deprivation like you wouldn't believe coupled with an absolute dearth of aspiration, I have still seen enough pupils who, with the odds stacked very firmly against them, have found ways to access education and the employment market in such a way that it would be disingenuous to say that it can't be done. Education is absolutely key, as are schools as institutions (and in many cases teachers, as proxy parents) especially so in areas of deprivation.

I do understand the train of thought laid out in the OP and am less angry now than I was in the immediate aftermath of the vote.

However, the solution to the vast inequality and disenfranchisement of the poor was never leaving the EU - which was actually a (not hugely effective) part of the solution - in order to give more power to Westminster - which will make things worse - and simultaneously trash the economy which will also make things worse.

For decades the EU has been a convenient whipping-boy to blame various ills upon. People prefer simple easy to understand lies to inconvenient and multifaceted truths.

But yes I am less angry. I am resigned to living in this less-sane world that has been democratically voted for. Yes the UK will be poorer and more unequal but on a global scale even the poorest in the UK are better off than the huge majority of people in the developing world. So maybe we go from being better off than 95% of the rest of the world to only being better off than 80% of the rest of the world. I guess on that scale it's not so bad.

And in response to some of the points about how few UK born young people from less wealthy backgrounds leave the UK for work - I guess the main reason is that in most other EU countries the kids are learning English (and learning it well due to a thriving TEFL industry) from a very young age. Meanwhile our children are let down by insufficuent foreign language teaching in primary schools and a gcse syllabus for teaching up to 16 that falls massively short of the level of fluency that you would need to actually try to get a basic job overseas. As the UK economy is further trashed in the post brexit omnishambles though it may well be that the weak pound means that there are more attractive jobs in construction and factory work in EU countries than there are in the UK so perhaps you will get more of an exodus in a decade's time - if we manage to keep hold of the right to free movement in the forthcoming negotiations.

And this was before the Berlin wall came down.

It went on even in the 90s (after the Berlin Wall went down). Still possible now.

There's nothing special about the British... they can do what other nations do! How is it that the Leavers always think is Remainers to foretell doom and gloom, when they don't even have confidence in their fellow compatriots to be able to up and leave?!

Welcome to Schrödinger's New Britain, SnowBells.