Anyone thinking of leaving the UK following the referendum vote?

[crazyhead]

Just curious really. Me and my husband believe quite passionately in the EU project and it feels as though we don't want to sit here and watch the UK leave. I watched my Mum die last year and I just can't bear the slow motion grief of seeing this as well.

So we're thinking of leaving the UK for a while. DH has an interview on Friday for a US job for starters (we'd prefer EU but fewer relevant jobs - and we've not got the ancestry for EU passports sadly).

Anyone else thinking of leaving?

Wrong, don't blame the tories, this goes all the way back to the 90's and Nu Labour.

Well certainly the gap between the rich and the poor grew under NL. However to say the conservatives bear no responsibility for our present woes is surely being in denial? Thatcherite policies including financial deregulation and big bang, the loss of manufacturing, the right to buy council housing resulting in poorest being unable to afford renting and living in overcrowed conditions. Loss of student EMAs, rises in tuition fees, removal of maintenance grants, DWP sanctions, rise in food banks, bedroom tax, DWP cuts for the disabled, opening up right to buy for HA properties, ensuring council waiting list will get longer, curtailing tax credits, implementing Universal Credit, reducing housing benefit, refusal to limit foreign buying of UK properties, abolishing secure tenancies, selling off the post office to foreign investors at a massive loss, and on and on.......

In fact I would say the fact that David Cameron was pushing for the remain campaign is what guaranteed it's failure. His rob the poor to feed the rich policies were hated and resented.

Quite honestly the riots under his tenure should have served as a warning that frankly, the poor weren't on board with him or his message.

Still doesn't make sense that they voted out the EU though.

Just as it didn't make sense that people didn't march on the city, the banks, and downing street during the riots, but smashed their own communities up.

Wrong target each time.

I structured that paragraph wrong obviously Thatcher was only only responsible for some of those policies the rest are recent policies implemented by the current lot of our 'leaders'

In fact I would say the fact that David Cameron was pushing for the remain campaign is what guaranteed it's failure. His rob the poor to feed the rich policies were hated and resented.

I would agree with this, in large measure.

Wasn't the error with the right to buy policy that the Local Authorities weren't allowed to build replacements with the receipts obtained? Either way, now we have people renting ex-council properties at much higher rents from private landlords so how is that an improvement?

You could also add in Bus deregulation by Thatcher. As one example, in the seventies Sheffield, Barnsley and Leeds Municipal corporations operated a Sheffield - Leeds service via Barnsley between them with one bus leaving on the hour, the next at 20 past and the next at 20 to the hour. So you could turn up at the bus station and never wait more than twenty minutes - a perfectly good cooperative system which got swept away with privatisation dogma. We then had bus wars as operators competed on profitable routes with smaller firms being driven out. The result now is that instead of routes being run either by the national bus company and Local Authorities, they are now principally owned by Stagecoach (lots of nice private profits) or Arriva (part of Deutsche Bahn), Abellio (Nedelands Spoorwek) and other foreign owners. Public ownership is of course bad, unless its a foreign company.

In fact I would say the fact that David Cameron was pushing for the remain campaign is what guaranteed it's failure. His rob the poor to feed the rich policies were hated and resented.

You would have to search very long and hard to find a politician who has done more harm to his own country and his own people than Cameron.

but where will you go? So many countries have racist right wing factions

Hmm........well Venezuela has got a socialist government, plus a great climate and beautiful scenery.

anyone who believes the independent and their biased reporting (re hate crimes) needs to check out the actual figures. According the the independent all 17 million leave voters are closet racists because twitter and other sources of internet aggression have been labelled hate crimes - have you known anyone actually get attacked
the march by the right wing up north - had 30 participants!
there have always been racists and the 'remain' campaign are bigging up the problem to suit their agenda.

because twitter and other sources of internet aggression have been labelled hate crimes shock - have you known anyone actually get attacked

The assaults - mostly verbal and some physical - did not happen on social media but in real life.

uk.mobile.reuters.com/article/idUKKCN1021KC

According the the independent all 17 million leave voters are closet racists

I'm sure you'll be delighted to provide the precise quote where they said that.

Antique

resulting in poorest being unable to afford renting and living in overcrowed conditions

Have you looked at this 1971 film about the brilliance of social housing before the Tories destroyed it. Note, these were council properties.

carol And your point is? That this was representative of the Council housing stock pre the right to buy? It would not have been quite the attractive prospect it was if the housing stock had all been horrendous slums would it?

Or perhaps you agree that the 1970s pre EU was not quite the era of "it was fine when we were not in the EU" that many leave voters were harking back to through rose tinted specs? With a stagnant economy and recession as a result of failing to compete in the global economy and the empire having turned it's back on us?

It's often said that the Luftwaffe is responsible for much of our older cities' slum clearance and it's true in part. Much of the housing of the type shown in the Balsall Heath film was under private ownership. Post war a lot of older housing was bought up by Local Authorities under Compulsory Purchase schemes prior to being demolished.

New built council housing was subject to Parker Morris standards which were quite advanced for their time, and offered much more spacious housing than much new built private housing does now. Which is why a lot of people find that ex-local authority housing of that era is very attractive.

Some of us were alive and already adults during the late sixties and seventies, you know? I remember the absolute furore the film Cathy Come Home created.

It should be noted that the country was virtually bankrupt after the war, and the post war re-construction took some time to get going.

I'm challenging the mythical view of the country in the past with a excellent ethnic relations, perfect housing for all, plenty of support for disabilities and the poor, as opposed to a country now where immigrants are shot in the streets, the poor and disabled are run over by braying Tories in Rolls Royces (or 4x4) and all housing has fallen over.

No carol you appeared to be saying that because this example of council housing was bad, then all council housing was bad.

Much has indeed improved since the 1950s and 60s, some of which is due to EEC/EU legislation, and some of which was due to the social contract forged after the war, when committed people, having seen the horrors the war inflicted, wanted to build a better society. They didn't all get it right, but this is a contrast with the Cameron government, where the attitude to the less fortunate seemed to be 'sod you, you don't vote for us.'

Like Pelegrina I lived through the 60s and 70s. Until Maggie came along there was a palpable feeling that not only had we "never had it so good" but that we were on the way somewhere better. Even as Maggie increased inequality and sacrificed our manufacturing base on the alter of the free market you could look to a future where it was possible to have "loadsamoney" if you got on your bike and worked hard enough. What this government have done is to make the least advantaged and the young feel like things are getting much worse, and with the referendum FU, a perfect storm of unprincipled politicians and media, lies and incompetence, it has.

Well What, I was a school girl in the 60s and wasn't particularly aware of the economic/political situation but I do remember the 70s as a student, my first job and living away from home. I certainly don't remember there being a 'never had it so go' vibe in the 70s I remember strike after strike, power cuts, no refuse collections for weeks, 3 day weeks etc. etc. and Maggie didn't come into power until 79.

Before Maggie was Heath's 3 day week, leaving school early due to power cuts, piles of rubbish in the streets, unburied dead --- need I go on.....

Never had it so good?????
I remember my career choices, teach, teach or errrr teach - I was clever but not posh enough to be a lawyer or a doctor.

The 'never had it so good time' was the 1950s and was said by Harold Macmillan: news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/20/newsid_3728000/3728225.stm. The sixties too were still a good time. (Showing my age there!)

It began to go wrong in the seventies. There was an oil crisis in 1973 when OPEC hiked up the cost and then prices began to spiral out of control, which led to wages not keeping up. This led to the miners' strike in 1974, which gave us the powercuts and the three day week. Heath then called an election, with the slogan 'Who governs Britain' to which the answer was 'Not you, chum' and Wilson formed a minority Government but later went to the country and had a small majority. He packed up suddenly, (I believe it was supposed to be that later it was realised he knew he was getting Alzheimers) and Callaghan took over. The rubbish piling up in the street happened during his time, although I don't think this happened everywhere.

However, Heath took us into the Common Market, as it then was, and I remember good things happening like equal pay for women. This often hadn't been the case - I can remember local firms in the sixties advertising the same jobs stating men and women's rates - because men had families to support (even if they were 18 year old single lads), and women didn't, (even if they were 40 year old single parents.) I am not sorry to see those times gone.

Before Thatcher was Heath- exactly, bent on self destruction in the name of dogma.... 1975, in my northern state grammar with all the clever friends from disadvantaged backgrounds, in some cases back to backs still, and who went on to be academics, not just teachers, senior managers in business (admittedly not so many of us - we were a Bolshie left wing lot and I took some flack for selling out to capitalism) and even a few actors, presenters and news reporters who names you would recognise. We debated "things have never been so good" and the hopes of greater fairness and equality (especially feminism) took the debate. Now I really feel for the millennials who have to contend with the resurgence of croneyism, snobbery and misogyny but it is heading the wrong way thanks to the tone set by an elitist government. Just remember those of us who live cheek by jowl with these politicians especially Boris, in London voted for a Labour Muslim mayor and against the privileged misogynist racist that was put up against him by the Tories......

Oh and from one of those northern state grammars that gave us a generation of principled politicians, some of them women.

MissMargie is unfortunately a bit too correct about the careers advice for girls being 'teaching, teaching or teaching' and going to a College of Education. This was then followed with, it seems, monotonous predictability - you went to College, got engaged at the end of your first year, married the summer you finished, taught for two years then had your first baby.

It made me absolutely determined to do something different backed up by the wave of feminism of the late 60s and early 70s.

I don't disagree with that, but it does just show how at odds the older generation are with the younger one. I always understood that my teachers were the women who inherited a respectable way to break the glass ceiling by working at all, first as governesses / teachers then as, in the case of my teachers, getting to Oxbridge and securing degrees. Of course they advocated the same calling. Given their sacrifice, of course their horizons were narrow but we were having none of that, we had feminism, and to be fair our teaches had embraced a precursor to that (and not a few had found a refuge in which they could be gay too - not something I think we especially got or respected as we discovered 70s sexuality) Now I wonder how many of the older generation actually understand why the younger one voted remain , and why some of them are flocking to Corbyn, more in desperation than anything else, and others see their future outside the UK.

I went to Uni in 1978 and am just grateful to my parents for never having constrained my aspirations.

The world was my oyster. I chose not to go and study medicine, as I was never interested on it (but at least two of my female friends - with the same results as me - did so and another one became a vet): I had aspirations of being a translator/interpreter, having deliberately chosen not to study English (the only subject I could have conceived teaching).

As it was, I joined ICI on their graduate scheme, for which my MA Hons (Economics/French) was deemed to be eminently suitable

You lot must have been brainier than me! My choices were nursing or going into the Bank! I did neither. I studied fashion design. My mother left school at 14 but went on to study nursing to degree level and became a chief nursing officer. Not the norm for a woman pre war.