So the good times are about to roll....are they?

[herethereandeverywhere]

I wanted to ask on another thread, but they are all bunfight-y.

I am a remainer so I feel very depressed about today. I would like some reassurance from brexiters about what I have to look forwards to.

I'm afraid 'taking back control' isn't clear enough to me, so an explanation of what will be different if that's the theme you will go for.

So far, since the vote, my family has lost £10,000s and my husband's current job/role has been placed in jeopardy. I have probably lost the ability to automatically continue to work in an EU country in under 2 years time (I currently live in Germany, though this was intended to be temporary). I have dear friends relocating out of London since the banks are shifting jobs due to Brexit so I'm not sure who I would be moving back to. My house is worth less and I'm less likely to be able to sell it if I do want to move. I'll need to get the kids Irish passports if I want them to benefit from the EU.

So cheer me up - we're set for a brighter future aren't we? What can I look forwards to?

I think that those figures support the idea that the biggest predictor* for voting leave is Authoritarianism (more so than age, income, education etc). So even those aren't the benefits leavers hope to see from Brexit - its just the things a large proportion of them like in general.
Article from before the referendum:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36043219
And after it:
yougov.co.uk/news/2016/11/16/trump-brexit-front-national-afd-branches-same-tree/

*There is a better word than this but I can't think of it. Very annoying!

Strongest correlation? Predictor is good. Predictive variable? My stats has been sullied by use in the world of commerce, I am afraid.

I haven't found out if that graph is a summary of "from this list of largely terrible things, which do you want?". I rather hope so.

Nice thread here on incandescent lightbulbs and why the EU may have saved us building an extra two Hinkley points twitter.com/DrSimEvans/status/846682795875405825

That yougov article is quite scary, because if believed it makes the direction the government is currently heading in seem sensible (at least in terms of winning votes), so makes the chances of them backtracking or softening their approach unlikely.

They want to be able to kill themselves and other people. Have shit light bulbs and beat kids

Hhmmmm

Marking my place. I'm desperately trying to budget knowing that the next decade (a least) is going to be miserable.

I think that poll is a pretty big indicator of the predominant age groups voting for Brexit. How many 20/30 somethings do you know that care about incandescent light bulbs and pounds and ounces

I know one woman in their 20's who claims to care about those kind of things, but it is quite hard to tell with how much she really believes, and how much she is just saying to wind me up!

Still, if we were to have a referendum on capital punishment, and we were to have that referendum following a couple of years of constant, graphic stories in the press about murderers, rapist, pedophiles living in the lap of luxury courtesy of the tax payer.....

Whose read the Mandibles - Lionel shriver's new book set in 2025-47?

It is based around the idea of a dramatic collapse in US living standards after a hostile devaluation of the US dollar. Don't read it if you are worried about the long-term economic impact of brexit if it goes completely tits up (although ironically, shriver herself is said to be anti-EU).

One particularly scary idea (going down the euthanasia route) is of companies you can pay for your relative - or yourself (!) to be put in a hibernation state for a few months/years.

The issue with people (mostly women) having to give up work and look after aging relatives - setting aside the uncomfortable reality that at present we mostly pay immigrants a low wage to do a difficult and dispiriting job for us - is that the Just About Managing families, which government claim to be prioritising, cannot cope with the reduced income this will cause, and house and rent prices are now such that they cannot be paid on one income.

This isn't only an issue for a subsection of voters who would never vote Tory anyway, and which government might choose to ignore, it's a problem for a lot of the electorate. So either we have fewer people in paid work, less income from tax, and a potential housing crash, or the elderly who are not being looked after overwhelm the NHS, or we as a country accept migration to provide this care, or we all hope that there's a large enough pool of UK nationals who don't currently work in elder care, but who want to do so, and are prepared to accept the low wages currently on offer. Alternatively we pay more for care of elderly people, and also increase taxation to provide local authorities with more income to assist, but that again will hit the JAMs.

What I am expecting in the next months as the scale of the task becomes apparent is the development of a 'stab in the back' rhetoric. As the EU is no longer a convenient scape goat, and many of the Leave campaign promises become first 'ambitions' and then impossibilities, there will be talk of this fifth column of Remainers; it won't be the Leave voters fault they can't deliver what they voted for - the country didn't pull together, that's the problem.

What happens then, I don't know, I can only foresee increasingly bitter divides.

Figment this is how Lionel Shriver feels about Remoaning.

www.express.co.uk/news/uk/750902/Lionel-Shriver-sore-loser-Remain-Brexit-voters-create-divided-UK

This is her view on how the Left should proceed to make Brexit work.

www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/06/after-its-brexit-trump-reversal-heres-what-the-left-must-do

It is perfectly possible to really enjoy a writer's work, whilst disagreeing with their personal opinions, howabout.
If I only read writers who's point of view perfectly aligned with mine, then I would not read very much.

I Agree with some of what she says:
"The left has to temper its idealism with pragmatism; make the pro-immigration argument on solid economic grounds, and start by advocating a looser, easier, cheaper and more hospitable legal immigration policy that would attract skilled workers in fields with employment gaps to fill."

"Pragmatism would also argue for dropping the fantasy that if we simply taxed the 1% into oblivion and squeezed all those satanic corporations, then the rest of us could have free healthcare, free nursing and home care, free childcare, and a guaranteed universal income from now to eternity. Reducing deficits through higher taxation would have to hit the middle class."

That was why I picked up on Figment's comment Squishy. I think the way to find common ground for the best solution moving forward has to be for the 52 and the 48 to start thinking and coming up with solutions together again.

I think it's worth looking at how many people responded to that Yougov poll.

Who were they?

Nowadays, opinion polling seems to involve people signing up and answering questionaires. Most people don't bother.

None of the Leavers I know would entertain any of those ideas - they'd condemn the very thought.

howabout shriver's conclusions at the end of the Mandibles are pretty Randian and fairly distasteful - a kind of 'Atlas shrugged' for the 21st century. It doesn't really surprise me to see her expressing views like this, although I am a bit surprised to see her wanting to appear in the daily express. It's a great page-turning read though.

howabout you will not get people behind the brexit narrative until someone can build a coherent story as to how it could work - with a confident leadership that reassures people that they can take us there.

We have neither at the moment, and no amount of encouraging people to recognise the importance of 'getting with the picture' can change this.

People don't have to agree with something in order to be able to get behind it, but they do need to be persuaded that objectively, it is a sound idea, at least on some level.

I'm not seeing that.

I think its crucial for the leavers who aren't far right and authoritarian to join forces with the remainers who aren't far right and authoritarian. I guess that includes a whole spectrum of views from moderate Conservative through to left wing.
Even if far right Populist authoritarians are in a minority, if everyone else is too fragmented, they will be the block with the most influence. And I don't want my country heading in that direction!

Rufus , I am not sure it would be 'backing down' though , if there was a comprehensive analysis of why it was a very bad thing indeed for the country as a whole ?

Listening to a man on the radio rejoicing about the fact that he had never voted for a MEP , he could have , just chose not to , couldn't be bothered , so now with Brexit those MEP's wouldn't have any power over his life , forgetting that the 649 MP's that he didn't vote for would have , or even possibly all of the 650 if the one he voted for didn't win .

Oh no i agree with you flump

It would be a really responsible, sensible, adult and brave thing to do

Which is why i dont think they would do it

I am really sorry frumpet

I have flumps on the brain...i know there are some in the cupboard

Could be worse..

Change christians and Athiests for leavers and remainers

you will not get people behind the brexit narrative until someone can build a coherent story as to how it could work - with a confident leadership that reassures people that they can take us there.

I agree. My starting of this thread was a round about way of trying to see a positive in what has been an absolute negative for me to this point. I'm genuinely open to hearing what the positives are going to be, even if they are not positive to me. It looks like we're fixed on the path of Brexit so I want to try to be positive about it. I am struggling to see anything positive because no Brexiters will tell me what the benefits will be.

We've probed immigration control and concluded:
a) May has already said it probably won'r fall
b) We'll likely be left with tax and skills/work deficit if we do
c) The population can't just keep growing but we are out of ideas as to what to do in this
d) It's possible that women will pick up the 'care of the elderly work' as unpaid helpers to their family - this assumes said women live close to said parents. I'm about a thousand miles away from mine at present so that's going to prove tricky....

We might also see a resurgence in incandescent light bulbs.

If we are going to 'pull together' Brexiters are going to have to do a better job of communicating what the plan is and who it will benefit. Anything else is going to further alienate Remainers.

with a confident leadership that reassures people that they can take us there.

Ah, but the Brexiteers are delirious with excitement about how wonderful May and her three stooges are. The question is, how long can they spin the narrative or pass the buck?

Most of the things we need to do, like rebuild our industry could have been done before, and it wasn't the EU stopping us. Will it happen now? With the cost of Brexit likely to be huge, I am not holding my breathe. I am not talking about the amount of money that the UK owes to the rest of the EU either. Any change is costly, so it's money which won't go to the NHS or won't go to improving rail infrastructure. Just think of the money which will need to be spent to provide customs inspections facilities at the ports. Well OK, Davis says with electronic systems incoming loads will be waved through in five minutes (even though the systems don't exist at present), but what happens if the French get stroppy and stop each lorry coming of the ferry? Operation stack in spades. Still the answer is, we stop exporting.

Sorry, I can't yet think of any good times on the horizon.

I've warned people about the Mandibles on another (Remain) thread figment. I found it an absolutely terrifying read in the current climate.