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?

disagree OP.

My dh is dutch.
It isn't about having money to 'enjoy' Europe. It is about my children genuinely possibly being cut off from half of their heritage. About my dh possibly not having an automatic right to remain. About possibly cutting off our chance to ever go and live in The Netherlands.

Nothing I have seen in the last few weeks makes me feel better about Brexit.
I do understand much more about how angry people were/are. But to me voting leave is cutting off your nose to spite your face.
None of the things leave voters wanted are likely to come to pass, but what is pretty certain is a recession, and loads of instability etc to trash our economy.
I am seriously appalled by the racism, and while I know it isn't really leavers who are racist, I am appalled that the whole process has released this racism into our society, and it makes me really angry.

Snowbells, in Germany there are rules about which days you can hang your washing out and rape is only considered rape if you try to fight off your attacker! Don't hold Germany up to be better than here because in many ways it is not.
University costs a lot of money, so of course parents want to assist thrir dc to get it right.

Bertrand, I cannot see what is wrong with my comment that it is the governments job to sort out what happens post Brexit. They are elected to carry out the wishes of the electorate. They asked a question, didn't like the answer then all fucked off and left us to it. I am absolutely furious with Johnson but also with Cameron. Both of them embarked on this process for their own personal reasons and neither vaguely considered getting this result, let alone had a plan for it and have now washed their hands of it entirely.

There was never a plan. They werent supposed to win. This is fuck up. The promises made were actually lies.

History will judge us all harshly I fear.

The 110v link is very interesting. It doesn't say whether it's EU legislation or not, but what it does say, is that for large building sites, it's very much a Health and Safety issue i.e. it is protecting workers against being killed. Well, I don't know about you, but that doesn't sound like 'Red Tape' to me.

Anecdotally I remember a story from years ago about a farm worker having an arm severed in some machinery, and the story was that he bravely carried his arm to hospital where it could be re-attached. What didn't make the news, or only made it in the small print, was that the accident had happened because the safety guard had been removed. Pesky Red Tape, hey?

There was never a plan. They werent supposed to win. This is fuck up. The promises made were actually lies.

History will judge us all harshly I fear.

I spend time summarising the results of Chilcot Inquiry II: Brexit Debacle in my head. They're not good.

Cancelly

The UK occupies third position on the Nanny State Index of all EU countries, and thus has a higher score than the average EU country.

nannystateindex.org/

Germany (often being seen as the driver of the EU) is near the bottom. Do you still think the "nanny state" is all the EU's doing?

Germany has updated its rape laws

Commissioners like Cecilia Malmström "I do not take my mandate from the European people.” ?

There are only 28 of them, but it's 28 too many in my view.

Sovereignty - as an independent nation, we should be able to make our own decisions about our laws, our borders and the way we do things, rather than handing over power to the EU. I think that on a smaller scale, decentralisation is good for meeting the individual needs of communities, and that larger organisations may be more efficient, but the larger they are, the less room there is for addressing individual (national) needs and priorities.

In debate, the sovereignty argument sometimes ends up relying on 'united Europe' or 'EU army' statements which people find hyperbolic, but the truth is that once you give up power it's very hard to get it back. I don't believe for a second that the current EU could seriously propose these things, but when the EU was first formed, nobody could have predicted what it would be like in 2016. It isn't the same organisation, and it'll be different again in 5 years, 10, or 20. Remaining is a vote for the unknown just as much as Leaving is.

I'm curious - as a Remainer, how do you see the future of the EU, and what do you think of Juncker as a leader?

SnowBells I don't believe I ever said the nanny state was 'all the EU's doing.'

"Commissioners like Cecilia Malmström "I do not take my mandate from the European people.” ?

There are only 28 of them, but it's 28 too many in my view."

Why? Do you feel the same about the unelected civil servants in charge of government departments in this country, who do not take their mandate from the people or from the elected officials but from "the Crown in Parliament"? Or the House of Lords?

Not before time Swedish and only after Merkel flooded their country with a bunch of people who have no respect for women.

Yes, and in fact I mentioned the House of Lords in my post upthread.

Sorry, haven't got time to go on at greater length as I have to go out - but I wanted to say thank you for such a nice, civil conversation even though we aren't in agreement. I was hesitant to post my rationale because I thought I'd attract a lot of insults, but you've restored my faith in the Remain side a bit. :)

Voltage harmonisation 1995. To do a few stupid nannyish things like reduce energy consumption. Aiming for a cross EU standard of 230v. Why did your relatives have to junk all their tools? It was not done by the EU to the UK but was done by the EU including the UK. I thought even most Leave voters didn't object to the trade harmonisation aspects of the EU.

I think Juncker as a leader isn't so terrible. What he probably does embody is some of the inherent tensions in the current EU, which do lead me to being less angry with the leave vote.

Oh, wow, that was some crosspost.

I'm not going to comment on ethelb because I just can't right now. Disappointing.

No.

To an extent I understand why you make the points in your post OP but those same working class people in Sunderland who didn't participate in the Erasmus programme are the ones who will have their benefits cut because the economy has crashed. They will be the ones hit hardest. If they'd chosen to consider the economic impact of Brexit they might have realised this.

I still can't over the fact that my future and my kids has been decided by people that didn't see past the racist and flawed lies penned by our media.

HopeArden

Those rules exist because Germany is different to the UK. 80% of the population rent... most of them in flats. This is to prevent "nightmare neighbours"... which is so common in the UK! I (and many other people in London) used to hate having to tell our neighbour's to be quiet, etc. because that immediately sets you off on the wrong foot. I ended up just sucking it up, but being very grumpy to them the next day!

Having rules that tell you what you can and cannot do helps neighbour relations A LOT.

And it's not just in Germany! Where I live here in the UK (we own our house - nice area), there are rules, too. Weird ones, but they're there. We're not allowed to repair our car in full display in front of our garage, for example. No one is allowed to own a white van/trade vehicle. We have to clean out windows several times a year... and yes, some of the people living in (very nice) flats nearby are not allowed to hang laundry by the window OR on their balconies, nor have flower baskets hanging off the balconies. The list goes on. Not that everyone follows them (I'm not great at cleaning windows ) but most people are quite civilised anyway.

It's not just Germany. I think many people have realised what causes disputes between neighbour's and are actively trying to mitigate against this.

Oh Ethelb arent you just a shining beacon for tolerance? Lovely post. Not.

Jeez ethel that's mighty offensive talk! (She's not with me!)

Heatherbell, your example is very on point, except I went to uni with a girl from Sunderland who got a place on an Erasmus scheme to study in Italy.

She dropped it to stay with her on the dole boyf and move back to Sunderland so she wasn't far from Nan and Grandad. Because deep down, she was a lazy cunt like the rest of her family who most likely voted leave.

They blamed their helpless poverty (which really wasn't that bad) on Thatcher and those stupid southern softies, but its their own fucking fault now.

No more excuses for them.

Ethelb -
Whatever side of the fence people are on I would hope we can all be in agreement and say that is a shockingly insulting post.

metric is not used all over the world, the US uses imperial. Neither system is 'right', but there are benefits in people using the same system. Imperial wouldn't work because US and UK imperial measurements are different (a US gallon is smaller than a UK gallon).
Do we need a law that prevents things being sold in imperial measurements though? Why should a butcher not be able to sell in Imperial if he and his customers want them to?
This just puts up the cost of things imported from the US because they need to re-label products, and may make it more expensive for us selling in the US for the same reason.
Many of the things the EU has introduced over 40 odd years may well have been introduced anyway and in many cases the EU has prevented us from improving things, such as live transport of livestock and pig welfare because we cannot prevent things that meet EU rules being sold in the UK.

So is there another Leaver on here who can address the point I made about unelected senior civil servants?

Oh stop it with the faux horror

I'm not falsely horrified, thanks . I think that sweeping generalisations of people, whoever they are, is (1) rude and (2) unhelpful and (3) pointless.