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#brexit

HIStory

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I am surprised that this is actually happening. So how do our British members feel about it?
 
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I'm shocked about this, never expected this to happen. I hope the impact of Brexit will not be as severe as projected.

I wonder what will happen to Scotland. Will they have another referendum for independence so they can rejoin the EU? What will happen to the border between ROI and Northern Ireland, which will now be the border between the EU and non-EU? What about the millions of EU citizens residing in the UK and vice versa? We have a lot of British exchange students in Maastricht, will their tuition fees suddenly jump from €1,900 (EU students) to €32,000 (non-EU students) if they study medicine, for example? I have no idea how this will all work in practice. :unsure:
 
I am from Hungary so one of those Eastern European countries that has a lot of people work in the UK (though by far not as many as Poland). I read Eastern European "immagration" (though it wasn't technically immigration - there is a free flow of labor within the EU) was one of the arguments for Brexit. I think every nation has a right to decide about who to take in and who not to but the enomic fact is that without those Eastern Europeans the UK economy would collapse because the Brits aren't doing those kind of lowly jobs for that little money. So I doubt they will send back those people. Unless the UK economy really shrinks drastically and there won't be need for that many workers. But we will see.

I don't think it is good for either side (UK, EU), it seems like a decision more based on emotion than reason, but this is what the people wanted and you have to respect that.

One positive thing that may come out of it for the EU is that it's a warning sign that something has to change because people are not satisfied.

I saw the demographic breakdown of the vote and young people voted for remain overwhelmingly, it were the old voters who were for Leave. I have seen a lot of young people on Twitter saarcastically "thanking" the old folks for ruining their lives. Whether it will really be a negative change or a positive one - no one can really tell yet.
 
I'm surprised by the polling results too and PM Cameron announcing he'll step down by October was an even bigger shock. The stock markets here (US) and abroad responded accordingly, then evened out a bit. While listening to NPR this morning I heard one British man interviewed wanting to make June 23rd a national holiday and call it "Independence Day", lol!
 
Humanity is f*cked but this is absolutely hilarious! :lol:

13512152_688833404582157_2375575009800269733_n.jpg
 
^^^haha-I never ever thought this would pass-but obviously it was extremely close. Anti-immigration/economy seems to be taking over everything anymore. The only people I have seen cheering it have been Trump supporters, so it makes me really wonder about our elections. Now I have a lot of doubt.
 
There is a petition with over 2 million signatures which says they want to vote about it again because the margins were too small, it should at least be 60 % of the votes who said yes or no to EU before the dexision to leave EU is taken.

I heard that Sweden and UK have a close cooperation of high technology and UK is a close ally in other things, for example none of us have euro
 
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MIST said:
There is a petition with over 2 million signatures which says they want to vote about it again because the margins were too small, it should at least be 60 % of the votes who said yes or no to EU
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I hope that happens-here in the US and something is that close, we have run off elections, etc. So maybe it will happen.
I'm not sure if this is true, but this morning the press (different networks) said there were a lot of people googling about it and asking questions AFTER they had voted-
 
MIST said:
There is a petition with over 2 million signatures which says they want to vote about it again because the margins were too small, it should at least be 60 % of the votes who said yes or no to EU before the dexision to leave EU is taken.
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Unless these margins were agreed upon before the referendum, I don't think it's a good idea to have a second referendum. If people are not happy with the outcome, they should have voted Remain the first time. I've seen a lot of comments from people who either didn't vote or who voted Leave because they didn't think their vote would mattter and now they're panicking.

This is why I'm not fond of referenda. It puts monumental decisions directly in the hands of a public that, for the most part, doesn't realise the consequences or uses it as a protest vote against the current governent/the establishment. The morning after the vote, the Leave campaign already admitted that some of the promises they made (such as spending the money they save from EU membership on the NHS) were 'a mistake' even though a lot of older people based their vote at least partially on that. I also think that in this particular case the voting age should have been lowered to 16 because it is the younger generation that is most affected by it. And the younger generation voted overwhelmingly (around 75%) to remain in the EU and is now being dragged out against their will. A referendum clearly exposes the rifts in society between old and young, northern and southern, urban and rural, white and minorities, and that only breeds resentment.
 
LindavG said:
Even at a time like this, you can always count on Donald Trump to put a smile on your face, lol:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/746272130992644096?ref_src=twsrc^tfw

I laughed so hard at the replies, how on earth do Scottish people come up with these insults :rofl:
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LOL @ Trump's ignorance.

LindavG said:
The morning after the vote, the Leave campaign already admitted that some of the promises they made (such as spending the money they save from EU membership on the NHS) were 'a mistake' even though a lot of older people based their vote at least partially on that.
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They also backtrack on immigration from the EU: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36628894
 
A sharp spike in racist incidents reported after the Brexit vote

After Thursday's referendum on a "Brexit," a wave of racist incidents have been reported to British police and documented in widely shared social media posts. Through the weekend, #Postrefracism has been trending, and its contents provide a disheartening view of how Britain's vote to leave the European Union may be emboldening those who harbor virulent racist sentiments.


Police in west London were investigating what they called a "racially motivated" attack against the Polish Social and Cultural Association. Poles make up the largest foreign-born population in the United Kingdom. The organization's building was apparently defaced with graffiti that said, "Go home."


In Cambridgeshire, leaflets were apparently distributed with “Leave the EU/No more Polish vermin” written in both English and Polish.


Those campaigning for a Brexit offered clear assurances that a new immigration system would not affect E.U. citizens already living in Britain: “There will be no change for EU citizens already lawfully resident in the UK,” the campaign noted on its website. But despite the assurances, many immigrants to Britain are unsure of their future.


Racism isn't exactly an unexpected outcome of the victory for the Brexit camp at the polls, either. Nigel Farage, the leader of the U.K. Independence Party (UKIP) and the most hard-line proponent of a Brexit, has spoken of the "n----- vote" and told reporters that he would use a racist slang term to refer to Chinese restaurants. But he and other "Brexiteers" have said that their concerns are about increasing immigration flows perceived as coming at the expense of the British-born and have nothing to do with prejudice.


Britain's massively popular tabloids have done little to calm the public's nerves over immigration, often resorting to blatant scaremongering and race-baiting. Below is a compilation of dozens of tabloid fronts doing so.

The message of most of the attacks that have been reported since Friday seems to be simple: A victory for the Brexit camp should herald the repatriation of all non-white, non-Anglo-Saxons in the U.K. Never mind that the official campaign pushing for a Brexit expressly eschewed that sentiment.
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http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world...er-the-brexit-vote/ar-AAhE8xs?ocid=spartandhp

Some examples on FB of the racism people experienced in the UK after Brexit: https://www.facebook.com/sarah.leblanc.718/media_set?set=a.10101369198638985&type=3
 
^ Not really a surprise though considering this was one of the Leave campaign posters:

nigel-farage-eu-brexit759.jpg


I'm not sure if this is what they had in mind when they said they wanted to "take back their borders" though:

EU Brexit referendum: France's Calais seeks border deal changes


The mayor of Calais wants changes to a deal which allows Britain to carry out immigration checks on the French side of the English Channel, after a UK vote to leave the EU.

Natacha Bouchart said Paris must act after Thursday's referendum in which the UK voted to leave the EU.

"The British must take the consequences of their choice," she said on Friday.

Under the 2003 Touquet deal, Britain can carry out checks in Calais to stop migrants trying to get to Britain.

Ms Bouchart said: "We are in a strong position to push, to press this request for a review and we are asking the President (Francois Hollande) to bring his weight (to the issue).

"We must put everything on the table and there must be an element of division, of sharing."

Meanwhile, Xavier Bertrand, the president of Hauts-de-France region where Calais is located, said: "The English wanted to take back their freedom: they must take back their border."

The French authorities had warned before the referendum that a vote for leaving the EU could see a camp with thousands of migrants being moved from Calais to British soil.

The British authorities have made no public comments on the issue.
_90087078_francecalaisuk4640514.jpg


In February, clashes broke out as French demolition teams dismantled huts in part of Calais's migrant camp known as the Jungle.

The French government plans to relocate migrants to reception centres.

Those living in the camp, mainly from the Middle East, Afghanistan and Africa, hope to cross the Channel, often using people traffickers to try to enter illegally.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36626553

 
Theres alot of ignorant uneducated people in the uk. Such a vote should have never been put to the public,such matters should be decided through the elected parliment.thats what they are there for As most people are cluless as to what they are voting about due to the lack of information and the amount of B.S that was thrown from both sides of the argument.
 
Brexit took me by surprise until it was actually happening. We've had so much focus on our own political/racial/immigration stuff that very little was said on the news. I'd actually had the impression that Europe and the UK was welcoming to the immigrants, whereas we were not.
It will be interesting to watch this as we will have a preview of what will happen should Trump become president and more right wing conservatives get elected to congress. My own state seems like an embarrassing disaster.
 
Interms of the immigrants from syria etc the uk has taken very little in. The vote was about people from other EU countries coming to the uk . There have been big influxes since alot of the old eastern euro countries joined the EU over the last ten years.wages in the U.K are very high compaired to the old communist countries so people jumped at the chance. The main argument against the free movement of ppl that the EU brings was because of the U.K been so over populated and stresses on public services
 
barbee0715 said:
Brexit took me by surprise until it was actually happening. We've had so much focus on our own political/racial/immigration stuff that very little was said on the news. I'd actually had the impression that Europe and the UK was welcoming to the immigrants, whereas we were not.
It will be interesting to watch this as we will have a preview of what will happen should Trump become president and more right wing conservatives get elected to congress. My own state seems like an embarrassing disaster.
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There has been a resurgence of right-wing nationalism in recent years. Europe still hasn't fully recovered from the economic recession and combined with the worst refugee crisis since WWII and an increasing number of terrorist attacks, it has provided fertile ground for populism to enter the mainstream. Fortunately, most European countries have a parliamentary system with coalition governments so the influence of any one political party or politician is rather limited. For example, my country has a dozen different political parties in Parliament and the far-right PVV (led by Geert Wilders) is the third biggest one even though it only got 10% of the vote in the last election. On the other hand, the US is essentially a two-party system in which the President holds significant power so you can't really use European politics as a preview to a potential Trump presidency in that sense.

I've always known the US to be very welcoming to immigrants and remarkably good at integrating them into society, with some exceptions here and there. That's why Trump's success came as a surprise to me. But we'll see what happens in November :)
 
LindavG said:
There has been a resurgence of right-wing nationalism in recent years. Europe still hasn't fully recovered from the economic recession and combined with the worst refugee crisis since WWII and an increasing number of terrorist attacks, it has provided fertile ground for populism to enter the mainstream.
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My opinion only, but that's how I see it here now. Since 2008 and the mortgage crash/recession started, there really hasn't been a full recovery. Full time careers replaced with part time jobs. Only people doing well were very rich already.
Tea Party started with Obamas election and racism reared its ugly head again. And the Republican party is probably sorry now that they welcomed the Tea Party with open arms, not realizing they were more or less religious extremists and totally unwilling to compromise.
Essentially we've had a divided congress and nothing has really been done in 8 years.
I wasn't surprised at Trumps success. All he did was spout off the rhetoric that Hannity and Beck spout off on Fox News. Same rhetoric that I was telling everybody reminded me of Hhitler days.
Everybody I know is voting for him.
 
barbee0715;4158904 said:
My opinion only, but that's how I see it here now. Since 2008 and the mortgage crash/recession started, there really hasn't been a full recovery. Full time careers replaced with part time jobs. Only people doing well were very rich already.
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The US probably has the strongest economy in the world right now. You've had 76 months of consecutive job growth. More than 15 million private sector jobs were created since Obama took office. The unemployment rate is under 5%. The deficit has been cut by two-thirds. Fourteen states have increased the minimum wage this year. It's not a full recovery but it's better than most any other country out there.

In Europe it's a mixed bag with countries in Western Europe having mostly recovered to pre-crisis levels while the situation in some Southern and Eastern European countries is truly dire. The unemployment rate in Germany and the UK is at 4-5% while in Spain and Greece it is almost 25% for example. The average monthly wage after taxes is €398 in Romania but €3,122 in Denmark. The Netherlands is #5 on the Human Development Index while Bulgaria is #38. These are all countries within the European Union that provide free movement of people, goods and services - similar to states within the US. Such enormous discrepancies lead to resentment on both sides. In Western Europe, the notion that less developed countries in the South and East are holding us back and immigrants from those countries (esp. Bulgaria, Poland and Romania) are "taking our jobs" is becoming increasingly popular. In Southern and Eastern Europe, many people feel that the West is exploiting them and dictating economic norms that are hindering their recovery. What right-wing populists do is seize those valid concerns and take them to the extreme by arguing we would all be better off if the EU collapsed, which is patently absurd. The answer is more cooperation to solve these issues together, not less.

Also, when it comes to concerns about refugees and terrorism, you just can't compare Europe and the US. Europe has several unstable Muslim countries on its doorstep while the US is separated by an ocean. Most Western European countries have a Muslim population of 5-10% while in the US Muslims comprise less than 1% of the population. Germany registered 1.1 million (mostly Muslim) asylum seekers last year while the US has pledged to accept 10,000 Syrian refugees but has only settled around 5,000 since 2011. France has had 11 jihadist attacks since January of last year, killing 237 and injuring 697, while the US has had 3 jihadist attacks in that same time period, killing 65 and injuring 76. The level of anxiety that reasonably exists within society is just not the same which is why I don't understand why Donald Trump resonates so well with a significant part of the American public. He is in some ways even more extreme than the European far-right with his call to bring back torture, kill family members (grandmothers, children) of suspected terrorists, ban Muslims from entering the country, mass surveillance on mosques, etc.

Tea Party started with Obamas election and racism reared its ugly head again. And the Republican party is probably sorry now that they welcomed the Tea Party with open arms, not realizing they were more or less religious extremists and totally unwilling to compromise.
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Perhaps that's the problem with a two-party system. The Republican Party contains both religious extremists and libertarians, pro-free traders and anti-free traders, fiscal conservatives and big-spending populists, internationalists and isolationists. They can't even find a compromise within their own base, let alone across the aisle.

Essentially we've had a divided congress and nothing has really been done in 8 years.
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I don't agree with that at all but perhaps it's because I have an outside perspective. To me, the past 8 years have been among the most transformative in modern American history. Just look at the progress that has been made with regard to LGBT+ rights, the civil rights battle of our time. Look at the racial issues that are finally being addressed (police brutality did not just start 8 years ago). Look at diplomatic relations with Iran, Cuba and Asia Pacific. Look at the ACA - which while not perfect is a massive improvement to what you had before. Look at the economy: you went from being on the brink of depression to one of the strongest economies in the world. Look at America's standing with its allies under Bush compared to Obama:

GA_2016.06.29_balanceofpower-0-00.png


^ I always have to laugh when I hear Trump talk about how the US is perceived as weak and feckless because of Obama and is no longer respected. The opposite is true. Most Europeans absolutely loathed Bush and were exstatic when Obama was (re-)elected. Don't let Fox News tell you otherwise :cheeky:
 
Europe is a very divided continent Tbh they should have never bothered with the EU in the way it was created because the countries inside the union are so different interms if economies ,wages, how things are done. You have the northern european countries with high wages ,big economies,shopping/buying cultures and the jobs, wealth that is created from that and then you have the southern euro countries with poor wages.lack of consumerison (sp) backwards in many aspects

Im a brit living in spain and its very much a second world country here compaired to the U.k slave labour wages no jobs.bar cortes ingles the shopping sector is like the 80's in the U.K. The north and the south euro countries are so different in the way they view life there was always gonna be problems
 
^ I always have to laugh when I hear Trump talk about how the US is perceived as weak and feckless because of Obama and is no longer respected. The opposite is true. Most Europeans absolutely loathed Bush and were exstatic when Obama was (re-)elected. Don't let Fox News tell you otherwis

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Very true. The usa was seen very much as a laughing stock under bush.there was a saying that it took someone as stupid as bush as president to allow obama to make history
 
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