I’m still upset that our nation has voted to leave the EU, and risked financial crisis for no actual benefit.
When I woke to the news I immediately felt sick with worry, worry about the uncertainty to come. The value of the pound had immediately plummeted and I realised that I still needed to buy Euros for our upcoming holiday to Venice. That’ll be more expensive now than a couple of days ago.
I checked Facebook to see what my friends were saying about it. Shock, grief, shame. I felt ashamed too, embarrassed even, that I had a view that was clearly different to 54% of the country. But who were this majority? All my friends were expressing grief. None of them wanted to take this plunge into the unknown.
This graph shows that it was older people who voted leave. This isn’t a surprise, old people tend to be more conservative with their views, and less likely to appreciate other cultures. To put it bluntly, old people are more likely to be racist.
A lot of the chat about the referendum ended up being about immigration, which really annoys me. I like the idea of freedom of movement throughout Europe. But obviously compared to the number of old people who outnumber me greatly, I’m in the minority.
There seemed to be lots of negative things said about immigrants (or as we’d call them if they were British: Ex-pats) in the last few months, and it seemed like this was a major concern for a lot of people – “foreigners coming over here taking our jobs” etc. Immigrants are just being used as scapegoats for all of our problems.
The leave campaign actually made this video which shows how a woman’s doctor appointment is made faster if we were out of the EU.
It’s actually hilarious if you think about it, and how inaccurate this is. I don’t know about you, but if I go to the doctor it’s not immigrants & refugees that fill the waiting room and cause me to wait, it’s old people!
It’ also our aging population that takes such a high percentage of our benefits. Not immigrants or refugees.
A lot of the Leave campaign was about the 350 million that we give to the EU, it was even written on their battle bus. I’m not so good with maths, but I can tell that 350 million really isn’t that significant compared to the 92 BILLION that goes to old people.
And nobody’s saying we should deport all old people are we? Or euthanise them like in the 1973 film Soylent Green, which depicts a world with a population at breaking point (and nor should we, because that would be horrible).
So why is it suddenly okay to hate immigrants & refugees if they’re not actually causing us much of a financial problem?
That’s a question that’s baffled me this entire campaign, but watching Question time, it was always an issue, and the hatred towards migrants & refugees seemed to reach epic proportions. So bad that I thought it’s only time before someone suggested rounding them up into camps and gassing them, Nazi style.
“It’s all about immigration” says the misguided first man in this video.
“Taking back control of our borders” is something I heard a lot. It’s nonsense but I heard it a lot. And I think that’s the reason a lot of people voted to leave.
The Daily Mash has a great satirical article about a racist nan. Read that, it’s brilliant, and also sadly spot on.
I think immigration is great, people bringing their skills from other countries. I think accepting refugees from war torn countries isn’t just great, it’s the right thing to do. Stewart Lee has a great sarcastic sketch about immigration, which mentions the people over the last many thousands of years who’ve come to Britain and improved it:
Anyway surely it’s not immigrants taking jobs, it’s mechanisation and computerisation. If you think we’ve got a problem now, just wait until robots take all our jobs. It’s already happened in some industries. Robots build things like cars, and even do mundane things like pack potatoes:
Self driving vehicles are about to take all the haulage jobs, and combines with apps like Uber, who cares if the car that picks you up has a Human driver or is self-driven?
Drones will replace postmen, Amazon’s already working on this. Anything repetitive WILL be done by robots. So whatever your argument about immigration, it’s nothing compared to what’s to come.
Leave voters have voted to break the United Kingdom apart
Scotland and Northern Ireland both voted to remain in the EU, and are now wanting referendums to leave the UK, just to rejoin the EU again.
Nicola Sturgeon is getting ready for this asap.
If Scotland and Norther Ireland does leave, that would change our country in massive ways – for a start the name, we wouldn’t be the UK any more. We’d also have to change the flag, which is a combination of all nation flags, so keeping the Union Flag as it is would be just weird.
On local news there was footage of this old toothless man, happily saying “I’ve got my country back!”, I’ve no idea what hardships he was facing from the EU but he seemed happy. He then went on to say “I won’t live much longer but I’m glad I have it for now”. Oh great, I thought. Screw up the economy and disband the United Kingdom just so you can live your twilight years how, probably exactly the same way you’d live them if we were IN the EU. Also, we’ll still technically be members of the EU for the next 2 years, so he’ll have to outlive that to see his dream. And what is his dream anyway? The UK being torn apart?
It might have caused the rest of Europe to split from the EU too
Ahh, yeah. Instability for the rest of the world too. Yeah… sorry world.
Regrexit
Today there’s articles of people who didn’t realise their vote would count, or that the consequences would be as bad as they are.
What did they expect?!
I think this decision might have been a bit too complex to leave to the population, who obviously haven’t always though the whole thing through (just listen to some of the comments in the video above).
As Super Hans from Peep Show says:
The patriotic pro-Britain message of the Leave campaign was so strong that I think it misled people to think that leaving would benefit Britain, when really it’s just caused a mess that we now have to sort out.
Now I’ll just have to sit here and watch the country burn around me.
