Xenophobia: Brexit official discourse

[jaws5]

Hearing one minister after another at the Tory conference today has made me feel ill: So foreign doctors are welcome UNTIL more British doctors have been trained in a hurry, foreigners will be treated as second class citizens when applying for a job, and EU nationals are one of the "main cards" in Brexit negotiations. I cannot imagine any other country in the world where the official discourse of the governing party would include these statements without it being condemned as xenophobic. Shame on them.

[GreenandWhite]

Wendy you vote for you MEP. APKA Nigel Farage

[crossroads3]

DH (British) doesn't see any issue at all with all of it and is burying his head in the sand, when he is not getting angry at me pointing out these issues....

Mine. Came home ofter the vote and told dd that he had voted remain however everything points to his having voted leave . Now says rude things about European politicians and how this country know what they are doing . Also tells me I just parrot things I have read on the Internet . There is absolutely no point in talking to him at all.

[jaws5]

Mistigri yes, given that the position of many Leave voters and posters is "you lost, we won, end of" and anyone who dissents on the situation is accused of not respecting democracy. I have been accused of being a racist in real life by a Leave voter, because wanting to remain in the EU means I'm being racist against non-EU migrants, apparently -- the irony being that now non-EU and EU people are all in the same xenophobic boat.

[IamWendy]

Thanks green.... But, we don't get to actually affect anything with our one mep, do we??? The worst we could do was vote in an anti EU mep, which Nigel sure was (,is???) But even then nothing changed. Now, if the electorate gets angry with a government they can vote then out their entirety.

[WrongTrouser]

The abandon with which people seem happy to throw around words like hypocrite and stupid is very depressing. You don't know what all leave voters think, what they thought before the referendum or what their concerns are now. I keep hearing people on these threads asking why leave voters aren't seeming to want to discuss Brexit and why at work etc there is not much discussion. Well isn't it obvious really, when people are so quick to throw insults around and impute motives when they do not know what they are? I genuinely cannot see what is to be achieved, when whatever your views, the country is at a major crossroads and our society has been shown to have huge fault lines running through it, by throwing insults around which are based on guess work and supposition, and shutting down discussion from anyone who doesn't buy in to your whole frame of reference by name calling.

And just as an aside, me and my DH both have several friends and work colleagues who have assumed we voted remain without asking. We have decided, with people who just make this assumption (which I think says a lot about their attitudes to leave voters), not to tell them that we voted leave as particularly with work colleagues, we don't want the possible hassle as we have to work with them. So unless we are oddities, there are a lot of remain voters out there incorrectly assuming that all the middle class sensible people they know voted remain, which I think is adding to this "othering". Just an observation.

I don't think getting to a situation where people can't discuss an issue because of name calling is a healthy situation and I don't think it will help solve the huge problems in this country.

[jaws5]

wendy who is going to make sure every law is debated in Parliament and is passed/rejected? When? Who do you think made those EU laws in the first place? The evil Germans who then forced UK to accept them? Don't you know UK was part of it?

[GreenandWhite]

"But, we don't get to actually affect anything with our one mep, do we???"
You are right Wendy especially seeing that NF took home a full and handsome salary and attended about 10% of meetings. Great work ethic eh? Is this what they mean by making Britain great again? He really didi go all out to effect positive change.

Anyway, he is back as UKIP leader.

[GreenandWhite]

£ lowest in 30 years as a result May's speech. Ms May

[IamWendy]

Hear hear wrong! Personally, if it's OK to vote remain because your university educated child wanted to study abroad and now might have more paperwork, then I can vote leave because of how the EU has affected me.

[Peregrina]

How has the EU affected you Wendy? Tell us something, which is directly EU and not a policy which was laid down by Westminster.

[averylongtimeago]

all about meps
Wendy: there are 73 UK MEPs you know, not just one. And guess what, they do did have a say in what happens and we can vote them out.

[IamWendy]

No. My negative might be your positive. I'm not about to have my life choices shat on by the sneering attitude of this thread.

[RedToothBrush]

Jessica Elgot @jessicaelgot
Biggest cheer for May's attack on "left-wing human rights lawyers." The real enemy. #CPC16

David Allen Green ‏@DavidAllenGreen
Human Rights law is the simple idea there are things nobody with power can lawfully do to you, whatever the legal source of their power.


Remember this.


David Allen Green ‏@DavidAllenGreen
"We want our laws in English like Magna Carta."

- Magna Carta is in Latin.

And the fact that the devil is always in the detail. If you can't get a detail like that right, then its a worry. Do check the detail of the scope of the 'Great' Repeal Bill. It is not JUST about getting rid of EU law. Its real scope should really concern everyone.

[MaudGonneMad]

However you voted, the referendum was about in/out of the EU. Not for these unmandated, hateful policies being introduced by an unelected PM. And pretending that 17m people voted for this major lurch to the right is just indefensible. They didn't. People voted Leave for all sorts of reasons, and based on all sorts of assurances (staying in the single market/£350m for the NHS) that have turned out to be false.

It's an extreme-right land-grab. Come back David Cameron, all is forgiven!

[GreenandWhite]

"your university educated child"

Wendy your comment sounds so bitter and envious. Envious of people who want to do something with their lives, who have the guts to go out there and explore and broaden their horizons and contribute to society. Envious of people who speak several languages. What are you trying to protect? What are you holding on to Wendy?

I wonder what May thinks the smarty pants grammar school graduates will do after graduating? Stay in little England and enjoy the narrow mindedness that has taken hold of our country?

[GreenandWhite]

Oh Wendy "sneering"? Are you Teresa May?

"Theresa May to accuse politicians of sneering at Brexit voters
Prime minister will use conference speech to lambast elites and set out a ‘new centre ground’ in which the Tories step in to protect working people"

I am a working people!!!!! Hello!!!!!! Over here, so is my German dh. Please Ms May can you protect us as well or do we not count because we are studied and work in professional jobs high rate tax payers.

[jaws5]

please wendy I am curious too. Oh, that's another put down that Leave Voter threw in my face, about my children's future being less important than his right to sovereignty. You're not alone!

[averylongtimeago]

We moved to live in another EU country last year great timing! and are currently visiting family in the UK.
I am appalled by the casual acceptance of racism at all levels, the general ignorance and hatred. It no longer seems like the fair open society I grew up in.
My neighbours think the uk is barmy - the EU isn't perfect they say, but better than the alternative.

What will happen to the thousands of expats like us if there is a mass deportation of EU nationals? Will we also be "sent home"? We are not rich, by any means - we still have to work and any assets are tied up in property.
At the moment there are reciprocal tax agreements so we are not taxed twice, we can move our possessions freely to and fro with no import duty, we can travel with our pets using a pet passport and when we retire, our uk pension is paid in full and health care is free.
Who knows what will happen?

[jaws5]

"your university educated child", bitter?

[jaws5]

i am still very curious about how EU has negatively affected you Wendy

[smallfox2002]

"" How is it undemocratic for a law made by the EU (who I can't vote out,) to be changed by a government i voted in... And could vote out if i didn't like what they were doing??"

How is using Henry VIII clauses to repeal laws democractic?

How is it being applied by a government who were not mandated to do anything they are stating they will do at general election?

The EU you could elect your MEP, elect your representatives to the council through general elections etc.

I'm going to sneer at your lack of understanding;.

[WrongTrouser]

Okay, I will give an example of how being in the EU has affected people where I live.

Local authorities have to plan for house building to meet local demand. Because of being in the EU and high immigration numbers, the calculated projected figures for the increase in population are very large in this area. Because of this, the local plan for this area (pretty rural, smallish market towns, small villages etc), which is currently being drawn up includes huge swathes of new houses, often in huge estates and often next to fairly small rural villages. Local councils cannot just decide to ignore the projected figures, or set lower house building targets or they will be penalised in various ways by the government. In any case, if you have a large increase in population, you need more houses so that would not solve the need for housing.

So membership of the EU leads, in this area, to a large increase in population which leads to high numbers of new houses which many people consider to be changing their area, very quickly, in a way they do not want.

Someone will no doubt argue that this is the government's fault or the local authorities, but if there was not a large increase in population there would not need to be huge numbers of new houses built.

So this is a concern, which I'm sure is held by many where I live, which is to do with immigration, but I really can't see is racist (please explain how, if it is) and is to do with EU membership.

[Blue4ever]

But I want my country back! I want my pre-olympic bid country, in which diversity was praised as an advange, in which people came together and embraced tolerance. Now, when I go back home (the uk will never be my home, although I have been here for 19 years) my friends and family ask me 'are you really going to stay in a country that so clearly doesn't want you' where as before, they would say 'you live in London? In LONDON! Wow'.

I don't really care about the individual reasons why Brexit voters voted that way but I do care about the impact of that decision on how the people of this country are perceived internationally, and how the future of this country will look like for our children. Because at the moment, it's not looking good...

[Peregrina]

I don't think I have sneered at anyone. It was a straight question - what has the EU done which was to your disadvantage?

OK we in the South East for our sins went and elected Farage as one of our MEPS (Not me, I hasten to add), and in terms of representing us, he has been a completely lazy b*stard, who is happy to claim his salary and a good pension in due course.

[Peregrina]

You could be describing my area WrongTrouser, in terms of house building i.e. lots of small towns and villages and what appear to be huge estates going up around them. We were a strongly Remain area.