To be scared by our apathy?

[Currywurstmitpommes]

Threads on here discussing how best to stockpile food, the government telling us not to panic but at the same time making the kind of plans we shouldn’t see in peace time.

All of this is self inflicted. Largely down to our politicians worrying more about their parties than the rest of us. Austerity making us feel poorer and running down our services. Now the scary reality of next March is getting closer by the minute.

Countries have managed to royally fuck themselves before up by blindly believing the government will sort it out before. Ask yourself do you really believe that all those 650 MPs in parliament are either competent or working in your best interests?

but... its not too late

Many believe it’s a done deal with no turning back. But it can be stopped. Here’s the proof.

Speaking on the BBC Radio Today programme this morning, French Europe Minister Nathalie Loiseau confirmed that the door “remains open" to the UK, and that we could stay in the EU “on the same terms”.

Commenting, Lord (John) Kerr, the architect of Article 50 and a leading supporter of the People’s Vote campaign, said:
“It’s up to us. There would be no price – political or financial – to pay if we took back the Article 50 letter, as the French Europe Minister today confirmed we can.
“The people should have the right to choose. They deserve their vote, once the present negotiation with the EU ends.”

We all need to making our thoughts and voices heard on this. Please dont’t leave it to others - its all our futures and those of our kids.

So write to your MP, sign the facebook petition and take back control!

I would therefore argue that 80% didn't' vote for a Brexit party
I agree but if they had have been so against Brexit they had another chance to stop it, turns out they weren't that bothered after all.

My thoughts on the election:

TM called it at the right time as there was still some hope/expectation that a good deal was achievable (although her red lines made it unlikely).

Many people who switched to Labour did so because of nasty Tory austerity policies & benefit changes. It was a protest vote and had very little to do with Brexit (perhaps some finger crossing and hoping they’d see the light eventually) but that doesn’t mean that Brexit was unimportant to voters, just that there was no choice.

Given our FPTP system, tactical voting is massive. If large numbers of tactical votes hadn’t been cast, Mrs May would have had her increased majority. I am a Lib Dem campaigner and came extremely close to voting Labour - had it looked closer in my (stick a blue rosette on a pig) constituency, I would have.

Just out of interest peregrina,
Who won Witney in the end then ?
If a reduced Tory majority or maybe a Lib Dem candidate winning, I would be taking those concerns seriously but if just another shoe horned in Tory mp the victor ultimately they’re just token and superficial fears

Cons lost a bit of ground but picked up UKIP voters. LD gained a fair bit.

I think everyone's been guilty of complacency and a degree of naivety. I don't like doomsday scenarios but it's hard to stay positive.
Honestly at this stage all I feel is just homesickness for the country I knew. Yep, miss it.

Honestly at this stage all I feel is just homesickness for the country I knew.

In a way, the whole UK seems to have become another country - which piles on the irony that's it's because some people felt it had changed too much.

But did we know the country we were living in? A lot of people must have had racist tendencies, resentment against the middle/educated classes, etc, but it was kept more or less under wraps?

Maybe or it was dangerously stirred up and planted in their minds, Inception-style (love that movie)

frangdoodle - people are quite justified in feeling uneasy about immigration to the U.K. successive U.K. governments have had policies of importing labour rather than paying for the training of British people. It’s a massive scandal, it is also absolutely nothing to do with the EU.

Yes, we were too complacent. There were a lot of warning signs. I remember being very concerned at the beginning of the Cameron government, and saying to someone that it made me think of the start of the Nazi era (ok I am very ignorant about the Nazi era, but it felt very bad to me). And noticing constant anti-EU, anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim stuff in the gutter press. The start of the trend for everyone to blame the unemployed and poor for being unemployed and poor, and wanting to allow them the minimum of benefits - lots of MN discussions about that. The bashing of the disabled (assumption that they were malingering). That the new intake of Tory MPs was very right wing. It all seemed to happen quite fast, with no real fight-back.

Being uneasy about immigration in certain contexts is not the same as racism. We are seeing a lot of racism and xenophobia.

Not literally of course... but the combined effects of tabloids + targeted ads did the job well. Down to the infamous bus's red colour (stroke of genious : evokes iconic British buses, Labour's traditional colour, traditional English army uniforms, just brilliant)

Who won Witney in the end then ?

A Tory but with a much reduced majority, with the Lib Dems coming a good second. It was Remain; and I believe the only rural constituency to vote Remain. I suspect the proximity to Oxford influenced that.

2015 Cameron's majority 25155
2016 Courts (Cons) maj. 5702
2017 back to business as usual Courts maj. 21,241 with Labour picking up a lot more votes, as someone has just posted. They didn't campaign too seriously in the by election. The Greens did, but they really hadn't got a hope.

It's Douglas Hurd's old constituency which probably gives you a clue. It did once have a Labour MP but this was when Cameron's predecessor Shaun Woodward crossed the floor to join New Labour.

It's a mixed area - the horsey moneyed set in some parts, the big airbase at Brize Norton which tend to be conservative and Conservative, but some pockets of slightly alternative villages. Basically, it reverted to type and is a stick a blue rosette on a pig and it will win, sort of constituency. Oh and I am pretty sure that Deer Park Surgery did close.

successive U.K. governments have had policies of importing labour rather than paying for the training of British people. It’s a massive scandal, it is also absolutely nothing to do with the EU.

You have to agree with that, hence the Windrush generation, and it will happen again. I can see that the average person doesn't now want to do back breaking work fruit picking or work in a care home for a pittance, but there is a good pool of people who would be willing to train for medicine, nursing and midwifery, and this is an area which we ought to be making much greater attempts to train up our own staff. What have we seen? Nursing and midwifery bursaries cut, which has had a deleterious effect on applications, with a majority there having been mature students.

I expect there’s a much better scientific way of saying this, but I think people have different layers or instincts - one poster interestingly said she recognised her right-wing lizard-brain instincts (?which we all have - I hate cars except when I’m in them) but she expected the government to work on a higher more civilised level. (?Monkey brain.) So the lizard-brain instincts were always there but society said to damp them down most of my life, and now the rightwing media say let them loose. and sections of society are doing so.
www.heysigmund.com/monkey-brain-or-lizard-brain-how-do-you-do-conflict/
Those disgusting Vote Leave Facebook ads were designed to provoke lizard brain.

Did Baumederose ever come up with any facts to prove the nothing will change mantra ? Interesting user me by the way

Project Fear is really in overdrive.

It is this hysteria that prompted so many to vote Leave.

The Remain campaign had millions pumped into it from the government with pro Remain leaflets flooding every household.

We have been stockpiling medical supplies for decades. It's just sensible.

The EU is falling apart - let countries govern themselves; no one voted to be ruled by an EU superstate.

Immigration isn't a problem!!!! We are calling out for immigrants!

Brexit or no Brexit will be a disaster.

How did we get ourselves into this mess? If we had left it as is all would be fine.

Immigration is a serious problem. I am an immigrant, so I feel pretty comfortable identifying immigration as an issue ;)

rosamund so project fear is the government explaining why leaving the EU is a bad thing ? people decided the government were wrong and bad , and yet voted for the government in the next GE ? Brilliant !

The best bit is , if the government completely fucks it up , they can always point the finger at the 'will of the people' and blame them, for

a) believing the complete opposite of what the government were saying prior to the referendum

and

b) the (will of the) people voting them in a second time.

It is a brilliant piece of politics whichever way you look at it. Not so brilliant for all those people who initially thought things would actually improve for them, but hey they all got the leaflet

Oh and rosamund we haven't been stockpiling blood products such as immunoglobulin for decades ( cough, BSE , crisis, cough) , but tut , silly facts eh !

See? See?

I told you all - there would be a switch from "Even talking about stockpiling is dangerous hysterical treasonous scaremongering" to "Well obviously stockpiling is totally the sensible thing to do." Although the additional angle of "And we've been stockpiling for generations, see how amaaaaazing we are" is a whole further development .

I'm wondering if the next step is that Leavers will start saying that they thought of stockpiling first (hence the "decades" thing) and those unpatriotic Remoaners are the ones rubbishing the idea.

It's like that Doctor Who episode Midnight.

^^

I'm wondering if the next step is that Leavers will start saying that they thought of stockpiling

It is just going to become another meme, along the lines of people stating they was moving abroad because of brexit and unironically moving to a country with a points based immigration system, or those trying to virtue signal that their 5 year old was crying because the Tories won the last election.

With regards to legitimate concerns about immigration vs racism I still think Frank Field's piece from 2016 is good. If more people listened to voices like his the extremists would have no followers.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/14/eu-immigration-control-labour-supporters-voters-party