Starting to feel really scared now...

[Crimson72]

I’m feeling incredibly anxious about Brexit, today more than ever. I think it’s because of the new Question Time, where everyone was cheering that Isabelle Oakshotte woman when she advocated no deal.

I’m terrified my home is going to drop into negative equity and I won’t be able to keep up the mortgage payments, and that my business could go under. I know these fears are immaterial when compared with some other people’s, who worry they could lose access to life saving medicine.

Is there anything anyone can say to reassure me even just a little bit - that no deal might end up not being as bad as people are predicting; or even better, that the whole thing is called off or we get a PV and remain wins? What’s the likelihood of that?

I just need a glimmer of hope right now...

I really do not need to take a chill pill.

Nobody has given a shiny shit about unfairness until Brexit happened and the middle-classes realised it could have a negative impact on them.

So many time, THIS. Very well said.

People don't get it. No one has given a shit about the government's housing policy, not building council houses (why is that? Why won't they build them?) introducing universal credit, not financing the NHS properly, allowing zero hours contracts become rife, letting rents rise much quicker than wages have risen, allowing slum landlords to over crowd houses (which does allow people willing to live 10 to a 3 bed house to accept lower wages). This country has had years of austerity and I think lots of people voted for Brexit as a reaction to this. Everyone now moaning about people voting in their own interests - how have you voted over the past 10 years or so? Have you voted in a way that helps those worse off than you? Maybe if more people had have done we wouldn't be here now.

I voted leave because I don't agree with what the EU has become or the direction that it is travelling in but I think a lot voted out of desperation.

smile yes. How dare I attack the middle-class. They are completely beyond reproach and anybody who says a bad thing about them is achippy oik who doesn’t grasp what smashers they all are.

I work in education. My job has always been to help people fulfil their potential. I have seen students from relatively deprived backgrounds obtain worthwhile employment and apprenticeships or go into further or higher education. In the majority of cases, successful education is the pathway out of poverty and deprivation. Yes, it doesn’t work as well as it should, but a lot of that is down to lack of investment from Government, not the obstructive behaviour of the middle classes.
Here’s the important bit. Part of the government’s plan for Brexit is to limit unskilled immigration, while allowing in skilled and highly paid people. This means that low skilled, backbreaking, boring and low paid jobs must be done by the native population. What’s the point of educating people if it’s only to dig holes, pick vegetables and clean toilets? We can buy in all the skills we want with the money we save by not educating them. Result - decline in achievement, aspiration and standards of living for the greatly enlarged working class.

(There are people who think this would be a Good Thing because it would be Like It Used To Be with everyone knowing their place; reality shows, computer games and celeb gossip to entertain the proles and even more privilege for the affluent minority.)

I’m shitting myself too.

Armed forces
Food shortages
Medical shortages
Petrol shortages
Potential deaths
Why is a government wanting to inflict this on their citizens in peace time? Just why?Its fucking insane.

I was feeling a bit better, but then yesterday and today, it appears May has gone back to Europe with an unchanged plan, and wouldn’t move when she was talking to other parties. So if she keeps this up, how will anything change?

It’s just a fucking nightmare. I’m incensed at how this is frightening or terrifying ( in my case) swathes of the citizens in this country. How is that Ok?

I don’t see how parliament can take over.

This isn't really about class.

I suspect some people are fundamentally greedy and stubborn, irrelevant of class, they don't want to accept that we will be worse off out of the eu, whatever happens, that as a tiny island we don't have the same negotiating power as 27 countries in the eu, they want what we have now and better, and don't want to accept it when told it cant happen. They are also stubborn and don't want to admit they were wrong, that they were sold a pig in a poke.

It's got to the stage with some, that no matter how many members of parliament, how many from any political party, how many members of the public working it for critical companies tell them how bad this will be, they simply think they know better.

As said, until it happens, and they are looking round empty super market shelves, realising their pound buys fuck all anyway, that there are no nappies or formula milk, that their beloved can't get a life saving operation due to staff shortages, and think "well why didn't they stop it, how were we to know".

Because you were told. Time and time again.you were told.

And whilst l know that the majority of parliament support blocking a no deal, she is so sly and determined that she will outsmart them in some way so they end up not being able to prevent it.

Plenty of leavers will say "xxxx euramus, my kids will never go study in europe" my response to that is "why not?"

If you can't see the reason why then I suggest that you don't have an understanding of what life is like for many people in this country.

Both of my children have been to university - financially it has crippled us. We were lucky in a way because we had savings and the ability to earn some extra money. We were also able to navigate the process to help them get to university. I can easily see, and have seen, how families for whom simply existing one day at a time the extra capacity to support their child throughout school to the point of university is just too much.

We also have the massive problem of lack of graduate jobs (why would people risk £50,000 of debt with no job at the end of it) and also the high grades that many universities demand - take a look at UCAS tariffs and note how long it takes to find a course looking for less than AAB. Many lower income children are in failing schools and these results are not easy to achieve.

It isn't as simple as send child to school, child applies to university, child graduates and gets a job.

You are showing no understanding about the lives many people live in this country and smacks of the "let them eat cake" mentality.

Pink gin has shocked me. I knew that there were people out there who only vote for what benefits them, but never met anyone who'd admit to it.

I've voted so many times for things that wouldn't benefit me but would benefit others. It's all about living in a caring society and giving a shit about others.

The fallout from Brexit has been all about class.

Yes, it doesn’t work as well as it should, but a lot of that is down to lack of investment from Government, not the obstructive behaviour of the middle classes.

But the government is voted for by the people. Who has been voting in a government intent on under funding education and keeping poor people poor?

Here’s the important bit. Part of the government’s plan for Brexit is to limit unskilled immigration, while allowing in skilled and highly paid people. This means that low skilled, backbreaking, boring and low paid jobs must be done by the native population.

Surely it is better to have people in work than paying them a pittance in benefits and keeping them in poverty? Not everyone wants to go to university. Not least it is hugely expensive and nor is it a guarantee for a decent job at the end of it. Why shouldn't the native population train as plumbers or builders or other trades? Jobs that are actually attracting lots of people from the EU who can afford to work for less than people living here.

{If your dc’s school is falling to bits it’s hard to see further than the £13 billion in, £4 billion back figure.}
The net payments to the EU are about 0.7% of GDP.
There is a chart that was posted that shows that social services are somewhere around 35% of GDP I forget the actual figures.
So for a start it is tiny compared to what the UK spends on other things PLUS the state of schools has bugger all to do with the EU, due to the UK's sovereignty.

I think what makes this whole situation so frustrating is that I do think *@weetabix' has a point. There has been complacency if not indifference on the part of everyone better off (middle classes and politicians). HOWEVER, guilty as they may be in that sense, the middle class is not the right target. The current situation is really being manipulated and engineered by the true elite, billionaires for whom a country is just a business venture and not real people. Brexit is only playing THEIR game. That's all. Disaster capitalism will screw everyone apart from the 0.001%.
Just look up other countries and how their working class is faring. Compare, contrast and decide if that's the future you want for you and your kids.

smile The only people with an agenda are the media who love pitching the nice middle-class remainers against the thick selfish uneducated leavers.

Many people don’t bother to vote and who can blame them when our first fast the post systems effectively disenfranchises them? If you live in a safe Tory or Labour seat and you vote the other way your vote will never count. This explains the the two main parties as almost independent of the reality of the lives of most of us, existing solely to propel ambitious individuals to positions of power and influence, spouting sound bites while making little or no effort to actually do anything to make people’s lives better - because they are talkers, not doers.
To improve this country the electoral system needs to be broken. Brexit might help do it. If May calls an election (and she might), people should forget party politics and ask “Is the candidate Remain or Leave?” Then vote your preference, whichever it is, and make sure you let the candidate (and the others) know. (I’m for Remain and will vote LD but in another constituency might choose any party if the candidate was a Remainer and had a chance of winning.)

Quietrebel
But you are expecting people to have the same engagement in politics as you do, to be able to access and understand data, to understand and account for bias...

A lot of people, on both sides to be fair, haven't looked that closely at it. They voted depending on what they saw in the media.

That is the nature of democracy - everyone can vote. There are no restrictions placed on ability to think critically, do research etc and rightly so.

People voted to leave. It was then passed to the government to facilitate that. The situation that we are in now is entirely the fault of government and their poor decisions from the point of the referendum onwards.

Voting leave didn't make the government not make contingencies for drug supply, food supplies, transport and the rest. It doesn't account for us being 70 days away from brexit and May only just having presented her deal to Parliament.

The people had a reasonable expectation that the government would manage the situation that they created.

What surprises me is the amount of people who are pro no-deal brexit even when they are fully aware that they are very likely to be negatively affected by it with a big chance of losing their livelihoods. E.g. farmers.

Weetabix I said that I had helped people enter all forms of employment and further education, including apprenticeships. Indeed, now I’m retired from full time teaching I work in Apprenticeships, delivering Functional Skills and helping people achieve qualifications they did not achieve at school (often, sadly, because their school was not a good one). I’m concerned that you seem to be putting an apprenticeship and similar on a par with genuinely low skilled, unfulfilling and potentially physically damaging work. Young, healthy immigrants are content to come to the UK and pick vegetables because it’s financially advantageous to them to do so. Not so much your or my children or grandchildren.
And your implication that it’s just the middle classes who vote, or that they only vote Conservative, is odd.

Totally agree with your post at 09.28 Bluntness.

The young people who can’t be bothered picking vegetables are like that because they know the cost of living is so high in the UK that it’s pointless. They also know that buying a house is an impossible dream. Who is blame? Greedy buy to let landlords and supermarkets who dominate the grocery market. Throw in crap and expensive public transport too.

I'm MC and have never voted Tory. I'm a remainer. What I've learned from this awful thread is that if people are thick enough to believe Brexit is a good thing, and that the MC are to blame for it, and that voters vote only in their own interests, then ok I fucking give up. I'll vote Tory and kick the poor when they are down and not give a shit about anyone but me and mine, and I'll fucking laugh my head off as the ignorant, selfish and poor get what's coming to us all, glad and smug and complacent that I'm ok while they sink in the shitty mess they have brought upon themselves.

I'm fucking raging. And fucking despairing. What is going on with people?

I’m concerned that you seem to be putting an apprenticeship and similar on a par with genuinely low skilled, unfulfilling and potentially physically damaging work. Young, healthy immigrants are content to come to the UK and pick vegetables because it’s financially advantageous to them to do so.

Not at all. Apprenticeships (well good ones, I've done one at work which was quite simply a joke) are a very good route for some young people but, they are quite new still and very limited in the jobs that they cover. The push in many schools though is still for students to go to university. Apprenticeships are looked down on or barely mentioned. I know that you hate the idea but actually for some people the low skilled jobs are better than no job. Surely all work is of value to society and there in lies the problem. We need people to empty the bins, clean the toilets, work in the shops, pick crops and dig roads. Not matter how aspirational you want society to be we need those jobs doing. Given that they need doing why do you think that it is ok for immigrants to come in and doing the jobs that you are discouraging the native population from doing? Just because they will work for less? That's exploitation surely? What we should be doing is making sure that the people who do those vital jobs are paid a decent wage for doing them not paying a poverty wage and then importing cheap labour from other countries because those people will live 10 to a room on a pittance because it's mire than they would earn at home.