The Reconciliation Cafe

[QueerVictoria]

Hello! Shall we try to do this? A place where Leavers and Remainers come in peace and attempt to find a way forward where we drink lager & sancerre and chianti and think of what unites instead of what divides? Terribly idealistic? How about showing our best side?

X-post. We're back to Brexit.

Grumpy
The UK has imported food for over 1000 years
that will not change
and much of what is produced in the UK, Brits do not like so is exported.
T'was ever thus

but Climate Change is a MASSIVE threat
and unless we control waste and energy and travel and heating FAST
all else becomes irrelevant

The UK infrastructure is entirely inadequate to serve the population. It's got nothing to do with EU membership.

Is the argument that, the human population has to rise inexorably to allow the elderly to be cared for? Because if immigrants come to fill the roles we haven't enough home-grown young adults to fill, and settle, and get old in their turn, then what? More immigrants, more people - but if other countries stop having as many children, how will we as a species cope?11

To be honest, I'm more discussing my own concerns about overall global population than Brexit, so perhaps I should leave the café.

Grumpy
Is the argument that, the human population has to rise inexorably to allow the elderly to be cared for?
No, thank goodness.
Only Africa now has a birth rate at above replacement
so as the "baby boomers" die off, the population will gently stabilise and then decline to a more sustainable level
(Japan is already well into the decline phase)

It just has to be hoped that we do not bugger up the environment too badly by the time Greta and co are in charge of the smaller 2070 population

The core point is that Brexit is a distraction
it stops us cooly analysing the important issue of Climate Change

Maybe it would be good to define what a 'value' is. Also a 'perception' a 'belief' and a 'fact'.

England is more densely populated than the Netherlands, but less so than Holland.

Being a small, densely populated land ought to be an economic advantage, but our crumbling legacy infrastructure lets us down.

Many continental tourists, when they are not taking pictures of Big Ben and double-decker buses, marvel at our internet supplied by aeriel telephone lines mounted on wooden poles, like the 19th century in their countries.

Many continental tourists, when they are not taking pictures of Big Ben and double-decker buses, marvel at our internet supplied by aeriel telephone lines mounted on wooden poles, like the 19th century in their countries.
Try America then
makes the UK look space age

Grumpy
Please stay in this cafe.
You are asking sensible questions that need sensible answers
and hopefully if more people stick to that principle the UK will reconcile

@ListeningQuietly I was considering population growth in the UK in the light of freedom of movement, not conflating population density with Brexit.

We agree on climate change. Good. And that a slow population decline, worldwide, is probably a good thing for the environment. How is Japan coping without mass immigration? Because if the human population is, finally, plateauing, we might need to learn from them.

I agree too that our infrastructure is knackered. I live in a rural area, and potholes are probably a bigger day to day issue than the lack of carbon fibre broadband (we generally do okay with phone lines).

Agree. I hope grumpy will continue to chat. I'm sorry if I can be coarse I don't mean to be. I just get frustrated because I believe that so many issues that led people to vote to leave have very little to do with EU membership, but it is a fact that my (and my descendants) rights will be curtailed. I hope you can understand my anxiety.

As you can see, the door did not hit my arse on the way out - I stuck my head back round it for a parting shot and got pulled in again...

And I totally agree about the US, all those traffic lights swinging wildly up amongst the phone wires

UK average internet connection speeds worse than Romania.

We need a massive infrastructure overhaul. That requires long-term economic planning. The market will simply invest more where there is already investment in the M3 & M4 corridors.

Our back and forth Labour-Tory pendulum govt. makes planning difficult. Rather than see coalition govt as weak, we need to recognise its strength of longterm consistent policies based on consensus and effectiveness.

We need PR and a change in political culture and discourse, emphasising what the parties agree on rather than their disagreements.

We also need a statutory obligation for govt to follow evidence-based policy that listens to experts rather than derides them for fighting the populist tide.

@Danetobe, I totally understand your anxiety. I am anxious too. I want my grandchildren (as yet I have none) to inherit a country with, well, countryside. Countryside that isn't chopped up by busy roads, where you can see the stars at night in all their glory. I can see the peril of Europe being divided just as Putin and China flex their muscles.

I'm not sure that I am equal to defining what a value is, but I place considerable faith in consideration for others and honesty about the facts. Both sides were less than honest during the Brexit campaign. BoJo appears to have only a vague perception of the 'truth'.

I'd be calling for a government of national unity, if I thought any of them could be trusted to proceed on the basis of the best result for the largest number, rather on trying to be PM at the end of it.

Thanks or your reply. I agree about the countryside. I hope therefore the politicians are big enough to explain to the population the cost involved (culturally, financially, to public services) if a decreasing working population does result from Brexit. FWIW the Danes have lovely wide open country and expansive forests, great public services and top notch infrastructure. It's fabulous in so many ways. But it comes at an enormous cost. In taxes of course, but more noticeably, culturally the country is homogenous (best way I can describe it, the opposite of vibrant). the danish electorate prioritise maintaining a strong danish society and culture above almost all else, including the cost (and opportunity costs) of doing so. Personally I don't think would happen in the uk, where there is a record of cutting taxes and regulation at the expense of society and culture, but maybe I'll be proven wrong. By the way, I totally love the uk countryside, it's beautiful, and it's great that people want to preserve it.

@Danetobe, interesting about Denmark. Though I have to say I had some of the best Asian food of my entire life in Copenhagen (and I have eaten home-cooked Asian food).

The solution is not to deport people but to build more houses

Build more houses where? On our beautiful countryside? I’m all for building on brownfield sites in towns/cities but not on fields and woodland. We need to protect our environment.

Great idea OP, by the way

Build more houses where?

You are quite right. It is not that simple. The market would want to concrete over the already overheated south-east. We need the investment to go to those areas of the north and midlands where old industries are dying or dead. The problem is the local workforce lacks the necessary skills and in some cases the necessary culture. There is active resistance to academic learning and vocational education is a poor relation with no funding and no status, very unlike Germany and Switzerland we would do so well to emulate.

The case study is Shirebrooke, where the mines closed and Sports Direct built a giant warehouse, which they then filled with agency workers from outside the area, many of them migrants.

This is not the fault of the migrants.

Just dropping off some scones

Neome are any of them gluten-free? If not, I can contribute gluten-free cakes. I make a mean gluten-free Victoria Sponge, could make one in honour of @QueerVictoria for the kind opening of the cafe?

Very interesting thread.

It looks like we all agree on a health service that is free at the point of use. We could probably add a woman's right to choose. If we throw in tight controls on firearms availability and opposition to the death penalty, we end up with a set of values that are very much European (in the sense that they are fairly mainstream in most European countries and not at all in the US, for example).

In the spirit of this thread, I am happy to concede that European values does not mean EU values, and you can share the former without embracing the latter...but it seems to me that one of the aims of the EU project was to foster a common European identity based on those shared beliefs.

..and I'll have a hot chocolate please

Noble attempt OP, worth trying to find consensus.

First, must declare as a remainer but in the spirit of reconciliation worth accepting a few points on the leave side:

• EU is not perfect - various issues - too numerous to list but for example CAP has some perverse incentives (but if we leave then how can UK help fix these?)
• Euro is ill-conceived and was always going to cause problems for poorer performing EU economies (but UK not in Euro so not directly impacted and we didn't join the bail-out fund)
• can empathise with the sense of euro-creep a PP mentioned which think is down to lack of any follow-up referendum since '70s (but UK gov actively and legitimately participated in EU integration since 70s)

On the other hand would ask leavers to accept some key points from the remain side:

• leaving (particularly with no deal) will be economically damaging. Dismissing this as project fear and not seriously engaging with the concerns (short, medium and long term) is not acceptable. If we're to leave, then lets make a realistic achievable plan that's advantageous to the UK (with a ~10 year time-scale not 50) or at least minimise damage with a sensible approach
• please address the NI border issue. Ignoring it or blaming the EU as the one that will have to raise border posts isn't really engaging in good faith.
• please stop trying to demonise the EU - they're not bullying us they are merely protecting the interests of the remaining member states. Our inability to change their terms only exposes the asymmetric nature of the UK/EU economic power relationship and the fact that our no-deal fall back position is v. much worse for UK than EU. If we want to change that economic power relationship then we need to incentivise businesses appropriately.

I share some of the wariness of the EU that leavers have but believe this can be addressed by being at the heart of EU pulling it in the right direction rather than leaving with no real plan to mitigate all the economic (and other) difficulties it will cause.

Given the antics of leave.eu today, I think we are a long way off reconciliation.

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Were fucked, aren't we?