Brexit

[AucklandRover]

I voted not to join the European in 1972 and took it on the Chin when we did,now it's the turn of the remain camp to take it on the chin..Dontworry Aucks ,things have a way of sorting themselves out.. We are now able to make our own destiny in our country,without being told what to do by other countries..

Yes - I see that congratulations are pouring in from Fascist groups all across Europe. Great to have them on board.
I also notice that there have been record numbers of British Google searches since Thursday, asking "What is the EU?"
I thought all along many people were not clear what they were voting FOR; now it seems they were not even sure what they were voting AGAINST!

[Despair]

I know what you mean . Even though a democracy is a wonderful thing and should be cherished, its not a little disturbing when the above is happening.
I watched the Nick Robinson piece where the last voter in Middlesborough I think it was, was leaving and Nick asked him over his vote and he declared 'out'. When Nick enquired would he mind giving his reasons, it was a shrug of the shoulders and a 'don't know why'.
I don't know about Champs, but I can truthfully say I was unsure, either way. This after weeks of trying to fully ingest all of the reasons for and against, and I never made it. My inherent instinct was telling me to play safe and stick with the devil I know. But I was equally 'convinced' that the EU elite had had enough chances to better get their act together and they needed a shock.
It has taken our walking out to deliver this shock, so lets just hope it works out in everyone's favour eventually. As that was the overriding reason for my consideration of an out vote.
Encouragingly I am hearing there is a groundswell of wishes for the majority of the EU remainder for the continuation of trading with the UK (or England!) in the easiest ways possible. However this 'plea' is towards the EU hierarchy, who will feel we need to be made an example of. The task for them (just as with Greece) is to tread carefully in venting their spleen whilst not further alienating others.
If nothing else it should be interesting! Oh to be a fly on the wall at the upcoming 'get together' with Camerons first meeting with them post Brexit vote.
I do not believe they can dare to put up the barriers that they will wish to, with the threat of risking a potential further collapse.
I fully know and endorse what Champs says, and it is worrying to witness the huge flow of migrants incoming that I don't believe our island can comfortably absorb. Equally I can see how the contributors make our nation potentially a more prosperous place.
When the fabric of your small town/village is being transformed there is bound to be consternation. This is something they have failed to recognise.

[champs95]

I'm in total agreement with you Despair.
After weeks of having a foot in both camps, I was settling for safe option of staying. But waking up yesterday I was not falling into the scaremongering that was ensuing yesterday. As you've said earlier, now is a time for calm heads.

But regardless of what anyone tries to tell me, I live in Leeds, I have family and friends in Manchester, and Bury.
My links with football bring me to Blackburn occasionally. I visit London 3-4 times a year at least. I see with my own eyes the flaws with immigration. Blackburn is a town for example that will never ever recover. It's decaying beyond recognition. Large parts of that community are not born of the isles. So they won't care one bit, that it decays, remains uninvestable, and The Shires, so often derided on foreign policy couldn't give a toss about a 'northern town'. We have completely forgotten about us as a nation. I care little for all the other policies, one thing that needs to happen here, is we sort out the country.

I'm sorry to keep going backwards here Auks, but if you seriously believe we think it's down to a few Bulgarian workers, then your clearly being fed exactly what certain parts of the media want you to. I can categorically tell you, nobody here is conned into thinking it was a couple of thousand Bulgarian workers that is causing the social destruction of most English towns. We all saw the various articles in the newspapers, most rolled our eyes. Nobody actually felt that way, so this notion being sold to Ex pat Brits, we are all now this media driven nation, hanging on Nigel Farrages every word, couldn't be further from the truth. Me personally, I find it very patronising that my views are being sold to you this way.
Normal, everyday, level headed people who live, work and reside in this country will all be in agreement that Trump is a maniac. Boris Johnson is a public school boy buffoon etc but they will also all tell you how immigration is a huge problem. Getting worse daily. It affects everybody here, and I'm not in agreement that my views in this are being misconstrued as racist, bigotry or whatever else anyone can try label. And certainly at not point am I in agreement anyone here thinks it's about a few Bulgarians. Or the pathetic story in which they was born from.

Regardless of your views, just take a sit back over the next few days and consider the vast majority over here, aren't the football hooligan, Bulgarian hating, Union Jack waving idiots we are increasing portrayed as across Europe and the world. And the majority have spoken. That should send you a message alone, forget the media etc for a moment. There is only one way t move now, and that's together and forwards. After all, we are Blighty, we are different than the rest. For so many different, varied reasons, not all bad.

[Despair]

First major hurdle being touted to arrive ie the downgrading, this in turn would probably wipe out (in a blink) all of the 'savings', and more?, we were said to be making from the exit. And with that, overall higher costs and simply no surplus to reinvest in the social/welfare/NHS etc. area's.
This simply brought about by uncertainty. Something that maybe only the finalised agreements (? years hence) on trading will 'put to bed'.
It goes without saying, that in addition our incredible 'economy status' will probably also take a hit.
This was the risk, the consequence, the penalty that no one should have been too naïve about.

The question now is; the changes/improvements promised are not likely to be seen for some time, but in the meantime we are going to financially suffer. Just how long are the electorate going to be patient enough to wait to see the new dawn ???
Lets hope its within at the very least 18 months/2 years.

[AucklandRover]

I'm in total agreement with you Despair.
After weeks of having a foot in both camps, I was settling for safe option of staying. But waking up yesterday I was not falling into the scaremongering that was ensuing yesterday. As you've said earlier, now is a time for calm heads.

But regardless of what anyone tries to tell me, I live in Leeds, I have family and friends in Manchester, and Bury.
My links with football bring me to Blackburn occasionally. I visit London 3-4 times a year at least. I see with my own eyes the flaws with immigration. Blackburn is a town for example that will never ever recover. It's decaying beyond recognition. Large parts of that community are not born of the isles. So they won't care one bit, that it decays, remains uninvestable, and The Shires, so often derided on foreign policy couldn't give a toss about a 'northern town'. We have completely forgotten about us as a nation. I care little for all the other policies, one thing that needs to happen here, is we sort out the country.

I'm sorry to keep going backwards here Auks, but if you seriously believe we think it's down to a few Bulgarian workers, then your clearly being fed exactly what certain parts of the media want you to. I can categorically tell you, nobody here is conned into thinking it was a couple of thousand Bulgarian workers that is causing the social destruction of most English towns. We all saw the various articles in the newspapers, most rolled our eyes. Nobody actually felt that way, so this notion being sold to Ex pat Brits, we are all now this media driven nation, hanging on Nigel Farrages every word, couldn't be further from the truth. Me personally, I find it very patronising that my views are being sold to you this way.
Normal, everyday, level headed people who live, work and reside in this country will all be in agreement that Trump is a maniac. Boris Johnson is a public school boy buffoon etc but they will also all tell you how immigration is a huge problem. Getting worse daily. It affects everybody here, and I'm not in agreement that my views in this are being misconstrued as racist, bigotry or whatever else anyone can try label. And certainly at not point am I in agreement anyone here thinks it's about a few Bulgarians. Or the pathetic story in which they was born from.

Regardless of your views, just take a sit back over the next few days and consider the vast majority over here, aren't the football hooligan, Bulgarian hating, Union Jack waving idiots we are increasing portrayed as across Europe and the world. And the majority have spoken. That should send you a message alone, forget the media etc for a moment. There is only one way t move now, and that's together and forwards. After all, we are Blighty, we are different than the rest. For so many different, varied reasons, not all bad.

Champs - I'm honestly not ignoring the impact of unrestricted immigration. The school in my brother-in-law's semi-rural village has students speaking 18 different languages.
My argument is that the problem goes deeper than the EU bureaucracy.
Free-market philosophy brought on the recession, destroyed jobs, widened the gap between rich and poor. Little wonder that people move to try and better their families' lives.
Of course, the EU has got a lot of things wrong; the world has never seen this attempt at a democratic union before, and the regulations have often been ridiculous. To hear the "out" campaign, though, you would think there had been NO benefits.
I'm afraid you can't ignore the racist, xenophobic elements either. I'm not talking about media presentations. I'm talking about the blogs, the web-sites, the interviews that have filled the internet. There IS a lot of hatred involved.
I would also like to repeat the warning that this could give Westminster a permanent right-wing Tory majority. You say there is only one way to move now, but does anyone know what you're moving towards?
All the economic studies ever published on the topic prove that an influx of workers from elsewhere actually improves a country's wealth in the long run. It has already happened here because of all the immigrants who have arrived to help with the Christchurch post-earthquake rebuild.
Finally, you talk about a majority, but it was very narrow, and many people already seem to be having second thoughts.
And you shouldn't get all defensive. The sensible outside world looks beyond the sensationalist stuff; many of us are simply shocked at what looks like a short-sighted, backwards step - no doubt in much the same way that you are shocked that a third of Americans want Donald Trump in the White House.

[Despair]

Utter utter chaos. Far far worse than I feared.
Calm was needed and we're a million miles from it.

'Despair UK' seems quite appropriate currently.

Robin, you could also add 'Despair Footymad login' to that as is it only me that is having issues?

[seventwo]

I am totally stunned.
I don't know if you realise that - to the rest of the world - this looks on a par with Donald Trump being selected as a Presidential candidate.
And it's no good saying, "The rest of the world doesn't understand."
That's just not true because fear of excessive immigration is rife everywhere - even in New Zealand, where the Chinese are the currently favoured scapegoats.
This decision is just so short-sighted. The immigration problem isn't going to disappear overnight anyway, and what about the lasting damage to other parts of the economy?
In my lifetime, this whine of "They're taking all our jobs" has come up time and again - despite the fact that the incomers usually do the shi**iest jobs for the shi**iest wages!
Have people not taken into account at all the political side of it? After a thousand years of European wars (mainly caused by petty, chest-thumping nationalism), we finally manage to create a union that makes such wars impossible, only to dump it in favour of good old HMS England, bravely taking on the world in the spirit of Queen Victoria and Churchill.
In any case, whatever your views, how anyone would want to be on the same side as Boris, Farage and Gove beats me!
Pathetic.

The pathetic part of this is that, as always, you've picked on one part of a bigger story and run with it. Your ignorance knows no bounds.

The decision to leave was taken in the towns and cities by generally older folk. The gutter press and leave politicians have been feeding them lies for years and immigration is just one part of it. This was the ultimate protest vote.

People are pissed off at the politicians who ran awful campaigns with one side issuing threats and the other constantly telling lies. They are appalled at the state of the NHS and the austerity measures that only hit the poor and infirm. They are still outraged at having to bail out the bankers. This is the result of years of pent up ill feeling.

It is also true that, generally, the vote was won by the least educated of our society. Perhaps if successive governments had invested in areas outside the south east there would be equal opportunities for all in education, health, welfare and employment.

Within hours of the result the leave campaign admitted that the £350m for the NHS didn't exist, it was a lie and that they don't expect immigration to change much. Their whole campaign was a lie but it was something the old folk, ill educated, and little Englanders wanted to hear. Most of all, just once, they wanted to be heard and they have been.

They will reap what they sow and once again the old generation have shat on the youngsters and left them even more impoverished for the future.

[DanRrr]

The pathetic part of this is that, as always, you've picked on one part of a bigger story and run with it. Your ignorance knows no bounds.

The decision to leave was taken in the towns and cities by generally older folk. The gutter press and leave politicians have been feeding them lies for years and immigration is just one part of it. This was the ultimate protest vote.

People are pissed off at the politicians who ran awful campaigns with one side issuing threats and the other constantly telling lies. They are appalled at the state of the NHS and the austerity measures that only hit the poor and infirm. They are still outraged at having to bail out the bankers. This is the result of years of pent up ill feeling.

It is also true that, generally, the vote was won by the least educated of our society. Perhaps if successive governments had invested in areas outside the south east there would be equal opportunities for all in education, health, welfare and employment.

Within hours of the result the leave campaign admitted that the £350m for the NHS didn't exist, it was a lie and that they don't expect immigration to change much. Their whole campaign was a lie but it was something the old folk, ill educated, and little Englanders wanted to hear. Most of all, just once, they wanted to be heard and they have been.

They will reap what they sow and once again the old generation have shat on the youngsters and left them even more impoverished for the future.

I have to agree with Sven here. I've noticed way too many people missing the bigger picture in the wake of the 'result no one expected to happen' (hence the fact no one did even 10 minutes planning for leaving). But so many people look at isolated factors for the result, whilst also crediting other voters with a level of understanding of the issues that they simply do not have. Many are angry and have been given scapegoats by the gutter press, and as it's in the press, why wouldn't it be true? These are not people who are trained to question everything, they are people who have been trained to listen to their betters and follow orders.

There are some wonderful reasons to withdraw from the EU - TTIP's, the fact that it is a capitalist trading club with a long term agenda of complete privatisation and denationalisation. The anti Union stance from the business wing, (looks at the suspension of collective bargaining agreements in Greece, Cypress, Portugal and Ireland to back that one up). However, Brexit did not happen on these issues, it was a chance for everyone who has been completely disconnected from the political system for so long, (and they have been encouraged to be since the 80's); to say F**K OFF for one day to help them make themselves feel a bit better about their own crappy lives.

[alfinyalcabo]

The question is will it ever happen ? After watching TV ,listening to radio And reading different articles ,it's looking more likely we will never ever leave...I wouldn't put it past them to annul the vote or never revoke the article 50..

[seventwo]

The question is will it ever happen ? After watching TV ,listening to radio And reading different articles ,it's looking more likely we will never ever leave...I wouldn't put it past them to annul the vote or never revoke the article 50..

I hate the result Alfi but will hit the streets with everyone else f they don't go ahead.
It was a stupid referendum promised by Cameron to keep his party in line in order to win an election.
It was democratic