BREXIT - The Aftermath

[jordanneke]

And you don't think the remain campaign 'obviously influenced' people with some of the utter bullshit they were spouting out!?!

Fact is, the remain camp seem to paint a picture that anyone that had an issue with immigration as a racist, which is just simply not true!

You're correct on that. But the central lie about the 350 million a day was utter bullshit, AND that money will not be available for the NHS. The UK will likely have to pay as much, if not more just to have access to the EU markets.

But the point is, this referendum should not have happened in the first place.

[Wiu]

Of course it should of happened. The EU has changed so much from what the public voted to join originally, it had to be voted on sooner or later.

I honestly believe 5 or 10 years from now, the UK will be doing just fine.

[jordanneke]

No way should the public be left to decide such a HUGE decision. That's why there is a representative democracy. We elect people to make those choices for us. The public have NO idea about the short and long term consequences.

The public gets most of its info from The Sun, and Steve is right, what we witnessed was a triumph of people who disregard facts and expert opinion, in favour of catchy nationalistic slogans. Anti-intellectualism.

True democracy worked for the Greeks, because most people weren't able to vote.

The UK may be at war in 5-10 yrs if the EU fails.

[Wiu]

And that there is the point. People voting leave don't believe that most of the 'experts' know the short or the long term consequence. The financial experts offering up all these wild figures were the same ones who wanted to join the Euro and totally failed to see the financial crisis, so you'll excuse me if I don't take their word for it.

It really is sad that the remain voters think so little of our country and that on our own we're going to fail and ultimately destined for disaster. Very sad indeed.

[Planar]

Nobody knows the long term benefits or if there will ever be any. Short term it was obvious things would be rough if leave prevailed, medium term likely as well. Long term is unforseeable and thats what we've got- a punt based on "making Britain great again". We do not and never will have again the global clout we did 100 years ago, it's impossible.

Meanwhile we'll have to pay fuck loads to trade with the EU. Still comply with EU regulations to be able to trade with them. But no longer have any voice at all to influence anything. Likely to have a back-tracking Boris fucking Johnson with unfettered control of the country. The real chance that devolution will dilute the nation further. An incoming shitstorm.

There is lots wrong with the EU and the choice was not trivial. It feels like a lot of people have been extremely gung-ho without the information required to make an informed decision, too many blinded by xenophobia and/or regional neglect from the government. Personally it's less of a risk to try and fix it from within than cut ties and potentially ruin things permanently.

[rktic]

The amount of interviews with people regretting their Brexit vote is quite impressive... I have the impression that the last word isn't spoken.

The actual question is: in what world do you want to live: connected or separated?

[Mono-xID]

When you ask People in 10 years suddenly no one has voted to leave and they'll say the EU is to blame for their situation. Old people flushed away the opportunity for young people to work without hassle in 27 countries. Not bad for a country with theme songs like "Right to work" or "Give us Jobs,not Jails".

Congrats

[Mattias]

This gives the opportunity to rework the EU in its foundation, perhaps, UK might revoke or nullify the decision after some time.

[Wiu]

This gives the opportunity to rework the EU in its foundation, perhaps, UK might revoke or nullify the decision after some time.

But that's the point for a lot of people, the EU will not change. Cameron tried to get changes and barely negotiated anything, and from what the news channels (who were all blatantly remain) were saying would more than likely to be blocked post referendum had we voted to remain anyway. Maybe the EU should of said something along the lines of, by 2020, the European minimum wage has to be £7.20 (just as an example). That alone would stem the flow of unskilled workers flooding into countries with higher earnings, which is a huge issue for a lot of people. Sure, realistically that just isn't a possibility, but if they want to treat the whole of the EU with the same set of rules, there should be an equality across the whole of the EU and something along those lines should be looked into in my dumbass opinion. It's pretty fucking obvious that a country where the average annual income is a quarter of the amount of other EU countries, there's going to be a huge amount of economic migration which saturates certain industries making it an employers market allowing them to just pay minimum wage - which is fine for someone used to working for a quarter of that and more than likely sharing a house with friends etc. It's just an uneven playing field. Factory work used to pay a decent fair wage (I should know I did it for long enough), round these parts it's minimum wage now. About the same as I started my previous job on over 12 years ago. The influx of economic migrants has forced down wages and that's a fucking fact. I'm pretty sure if any of you guys were to lose your job tomorrow, just to find when you look around for a new job you're going to be earning over £10,000 a year less with the constant fear of losing your home, you may of slightly considered voting the other way or emphasizing with people that voted to leave.

That's just the view of this old, 'racist', 'xenophobic', moron who should of done better at school, gone to collage, got a trade, done better in life. I've made mistakes and bad decisions throughout my life. I really don't consider voting out another one though. Had my idiotic rant, I'll leave you to it.

[Lost to the Void]

The only way England basically clawed through the recession was by importing a cheap labour force.
Wages would have been driven down regardless.
And leaving the EU, wages are not going to suddenly magically rise, especially with a right wing tory parry.
With uk law now being set by government, with no parliamentary discussion, you could quite well see your workers rights eroding.
England needs a cheap labour force, (leaving the eu will have little effect on immigration if we want to maintain trade with europe, so that was a big red herring) if the immigrants go (they wont, we will still need to allow freedom of movement with europe) the cheap labour force will be you, even worse the cost of living will rise.
The uk has nothing to fall back on anymore, we jeed to be a part of europe (because we are) isolationism does no good in a globalised marketplace. You just have no leverage.

[Hades]

But that's the point for a lot of people, the EU will not change. Cameron tried to get changes and barely negotiated anything, and from what the news channels (who were all blatantly remain) were saying would more than likely to be blocked post referendum had we voted to remain anyway. Maybe the EU should of said something along the lines of, by 2020, the European minimum wage has to be £7.20 (just as an example). That alone would stem the flow of unskilled workers flooding into countries with higher earnings, which is a huge issue for a lot of people. Sure, realistically that just isn't a possibility, but if they want to treat the whole of the EU with the same set of rules, there should be an equality across the whole of the EU and something along those lines should be looked into in my dumbass opinion. It's pretty fucking obvious that a country where the average annual income is a quarter of the amount of other EU countries, there's going to be a huge amount of economic migration which saturates certain industries making it an employers market allowing them to just pay minimum wage - which is fine for someone used to working for a quarter of that and more than likely sharing a house with friends etc. It's just an uneven playing field. Factory work used to pay a decent fair wage (I should know I did it for long enough), round these parts it's minimum wage now. About the same as I started my previous job on over 12 years ago. The influx of economic migrants has forced down wages and that's a fucking fact. I'm pretty sure if any of you guys were to lose your job tomorrow, just to find when you look around for a new job you're going to be earning over £10,000 a year less with the constant fear of losing your home, you may of slightly considered voting the other way or emphasizing with people that voted to leave.

That's just the view of this old, 'racist', 'xenophobic', moron who should of done better at school, gone to collage, got a trade, done better in life. I've made mistakes and bad decisions throughout my life. I really don't consider voting out another one though. Had my idiotic rant, I'll leave you to it.

yeah... it's certainly a xenophobic rant, wouldn't call it racist yet.
Yesterday morning, I was bringing my kids to school, and I was talking to this old grandpa type of guy, and he used to work in construction, and he was just infuriated because the school just hired a bunch of construction workers from Lithuania or something, who basically just sleep in their van, crawl out of it in the morning, and go to work...

I was at both sides of this thing though. As a student, during 2 summers I worked in tobacco harvest in Canada, highly underpaid, extremely dirty (and in my case even dangerous) job, working together with poor locals who were just trying to earn a little extra money, hoping (idle hope in most cases) to save up just enough to pay for their college education.
Sometimes co-workers would be seasonal workers, who came from the other side of Canada, just to work into the harvest for 2 months, 7/7 straight.
I slept in a bunk house with no heating. It was so cold on september nights that I slept with a pair of jeans on and a sweater.
In the mornings, I used to microwave my t-shirt and socks at 6AM, just cause those were the only parts of my clothing with no pieces of metal/iron in it. Did that till one day my t-shirt started to catch fire...

Then about 6 months after I graduated, I did the luxury version of this "immigrant job",
I went dispatching in Germany. Had a German mrs, and needed to learn the language.
Graduated with a totally useless degree anyway...So why not, right ?
Shared an apartment with mostly irritatingly stupid and lazy people who I already saw 10 to 12 hours a day at work.
Never even bothered to hang up anything on the walls, and basically lived out of my backpack for 2,5 years.
As if I were purely a ghost.
But hey, payment was decent compared to Belgium, and I certainly had no choice but to learn the language.
Well, actually, that's incorrect, some of my other international colleagues NEVER bothered to learn their German, and just did relatively fine in English.
I thought they were utterly stupid, because apart from the fact that I am a very efficient dispatcher, my languages were exactly my strong point.
When I got totally fed up with the job, I just got up and left, in the middle of a sunday afternoon shift.
Just fucking had it with the boring shit, and the no-futureness of the job.
But yeah, back then I didn't have a family to support, so leaving it all behind was an easy choice.
Got a similar dispatch job in Belgium, only 500X more complex, and way more stressful.
Ended up doing that for another 12 years or so, graveyard shifts, but hey, even though the payment was only 70% of my stupid boring German job, I still preferred it way better, and I had loads of time on my off days to practice my music, take care of my kids, and renovate my big house.
Untill I hit a massive burn-out about a year ago. Total insomnia, lost all sight of what hour, which day, what week or even month I was in...

So yeah, I could actually just call back my old German job, and they'd probably take me back immediately.
And I've been confronted many times with that xenophobic shit when I was working there,
and yet, I feel no pity whatsoever with the Germans who's job I might have been occupying.
You know why ? cause all they had to do was take a language course, just a single one, or even better, two,
and they could perfectly replace me.
And the most ironic part was even that the Germans pretended to treat us more "xenophobic", but in reality treated their Turkish or Italian "born in Germany" colleagues way worse than us...

This whole immigration thing is so complex man, just don't bother to focus on that shit and don't let it influence your opinion on people/race/nationality/borders/... too much.
Yeah, I think there's a serious problem if Lithuanian construction workers can come and do the roof of the school my kids go to. But I feel VERY sorry for those guys having to sleep in their fucking van in front of the school yard, crawling out of it, and starting their job immediately after. I know what it feels like to be constantly away from home, having little to no comfort, trying to waste as little money as possible so you'd have more left for when you get back home...

We should blame the governments for crap like that, and NO, voting a NO will NOT help change that at all.
If anything, it only cuts down all the opportunities for those young people who would like to try and get a decent job abroad somewhere else in the EU.
You can't imagine how much STUPID SHIT I had to deal with when flying over to Canada (via Detroit),
and that was even long before there existed a thing called terrorism.

there, old fuck rant over,
been ordered to babysit the full blown autistic kid of my best friend,
kind of a last minute thing...
and he refuses to sleep, so yeah,
what the fuck is the matter with this world...
(and I don't mean this personally at you Wiu, you know me better than that, right ? )

[gedda]

Thanks a lot for nothing, neoliberalism. It didn't give us SHIT.

[Mslwte]

Went to bed last night after seeing a few results come in, believing that the result would be close, but would come out on the side of Remain.

Was shocked to see the result this morning. Damn.

I'm trying get not to tap into the worry & scaremongering of Sky News.. but it's all a bit up in the air right now and very hard not to watch.

Interesting times ahead.

I'm utterly appalled by the whole situation tbh mate.

[Mslwte]

Funny. So for all the waffle from most here encouraging protests, freedom of speech, that we're ruled too much, that we don't need to be governed, when a positive thing happens, you believe all the frankly ridiculous bollocks spouted by the remain side or just think selfishly about a short term financial hit. The right side won for sure.

I don't think you can say it is a positive thing that has happened. It's the most divisive thing to have happened since world war 2 and could potentially have serious consequences for lots of countries around the world. The riots and protests are yet to come.

[Mslwte]

Essentially, this is Cameron's fault. He probably made the worst miscalculation when it comes to political issues in modern time; have a referendum about EU (a gamble) to try to prove a point and make sure his nationalist opponents eats dirt.

I actually think he wanted this result.

Yes I do as well. It's like he was the scape goat for the Tory party. They have won from this. With is coming out of the eu they will have free reign to fuck us some more.

[Mslwte]

Is there any legal ground to annul the referendum?

A referendum is just an opinion poll. It's not legally binding, so it's far from over yet. The fact that the leave campaigners have already gone back on their pledges has scared people. The good thing about this is, because the winning margin is so slim , according to the rules there can be another vote.

[Mslwte]

This gives the opportunity to rework the EU in its foundation, perhaps, UK might revoke or nullify the decision after some time.

That's what I'm thinking at the moment. It's far from over. With other countries considering a vote, the whole thing could collapse. I'm sure negotiations could be opened.

[terryfalafel]

This gives the opportunity to rework the EU in its foundation, perhaps, UK might revoke or nullify the decision after some time.

But that's the point for a lot of people, the EU will not change. Cameron tried to get changes and barely negotiated anything, and from what the news channels (who were all blatantly remain) were saying would more than likely to be blocked post referendum had we voted to remain anyway. Maybe the EU should of said something along the lines of, by 2020, the European minimum wage has to be £7.20 (just as an example). That alone would stem the flow of unskilled workers flooding into countries with higher earnings, which is a huge issue for a lot of people. Sure, realistically that just isn't a possibility, but if they want to treat the whole of the EU with the same set of rules, there should be an equality across the whole of the EU and something along those lines should be looked into in my dumbass opinion. It's pretty fucking obvious that a country where the average annual income is a quarter of the amount of other EU countries, there's going to be a huge amount of economic migration which saturates certain industries making it an employers market allowing them to just pay minimum wage - which is fine for someone used to working for a quarter of that and more than likely sharing a house with friends etc. It's just an uneven playing field. Factory work used to pay a decent fair wage (I should know I did it for long enough), round these parts it's minimum wage now. About the same as I started my previous job on over 12 years ago. The influx of economic migrants has forced down wages and that's a fucking fact. I'm pretty sure if any of you guys were to lose your job tomorrow, just to find when you look around for a new job you're going to be earning over £10,000 a year less with the constant fear of losing your home, you may of slightly considered voting the other way or emphasizing with people that voted to leave.

That's just the view of this old, 'racist', 'xenophobic', moron who should of done better at school, gone to collage, got a trade, done better in life. I've made mistakes and bad decisions throughout my life. I really don't consider voting out another one though. Had my idiotic rant, I'll leave you to it.

I think you should watch the video that Hades posted on page 2 and read some of the EU and immigration related articles on fullfact.org

Just in case you don't bother, the EU and migrants from lower paid parts of Europe are NOT was has been fucking you. If you'd like an explanation, watch the video / look at the website.

[wormcode]

No way should the public be left to decide such a HUGE decision. That's why there is a representative democracy. We elect people to make those choices for us. The public have NO idea about the short and long term consequences.

The public gets most of its info from The Sun, and Steve is right, what we witnessed was a triumph of people who disregard facts and expert opinion, in favour of catchy nationalistic slogans. Anti-intellectualism.

True democracy worked for the Greeks, because most people weren't able to vote.

The UK may be at war in 5-10 yrs if the EU fails.

Britain's Google searches for "What is the EU?" spike after Brexit vote

Hours after Britons voted for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union, they started Googling "What is the EU?" according to Google Trends.
"What is the EU?" is the second top UK question on the EU since the #EURefResults were officially announced http://pic.twitter.com/1q4VAX3qcm
— GoogleTrends (@GoogleTrends) June 24, 2016

According to data from Google Trends, the searches for "what is the eu" and "what is brexit" started climbing across Britain late into the night.

[Chizmata]

as much as i would have liked a united europe with britain, i can also see the decision as a valuable signal against modern, less and less democracy-related politics. but then im glad we live in times where people can make this decision without going to war... and i also dont think were going to war against britain now as theyre not eu anymore