161–170 of 251 posts
I personally think Brexit is probably an ill-advised move for the UK, but the feelings provoked here by leaving a historically recent trade and cultural union are far, far out of proportion with the deed itself.
If anything actually destroys your country, it'll be the exaggerated emotional response shown by each of the two sides in this debate.
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I visit UK often because of family ties. The most frequent answer I get when I ask people why they voted to leave is that foreigners come over and take their jobs and put a strain on NHS, vaguely referencing the influx of Polish immigrants they got when Poland entered the EU. So maybe not racists, but xenophobes for sure.
Does wanting one’s own country to focus on its citizens first make one a xenophobe?
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You got access to the EU's internal market without tariffs (except for financial services). The EU key people stated for a very long time - access to the internal EU market cannot be decoupled from the free movement of people. But still, you won that. All because you gave access to french fishers to some fishing waters. I think this bribe to one of the EU partners has been the key impetus for a lot of renewed EU resi…
This deal is available to most countries. That's the whole Canada deal thingie. Tariffs are usually pretty low anyway in today's world, and not a huge burden. What's unique about the internal market is the absence of paperwork. Regulatory harmonization and recognition of each other's authorities massively simplifies trade. No customs, no immigration, you load stuff on a truck, drive it to where the buyer is, and that…
Little to celebrate here. The main outcome is that it’s now going to be much more of a pain in the arse to perform lots of basic functions that we took for granted. There is now a bunch more red tape involved involved in buying or selling goods or services to other European counties. It’s harder and more expensive to move for work or education, both to and from the UK. The UK now has a customs border inside it’s own…
Wouldn't it be better to replace the EU with an expansive multilateral free trade treaty that encompasses the same states? Why do we need an additional layer of government?
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Since the introduction of the Euro, joining the eurozone is a requirement of being in the EU. My impression is that the UK and Denmark were given opt-out because we were already part of the EU at the time.
cough Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania cough I can assure you there is no way Poland adopts Euro, we will sooner Pexit than let Germany manipulate our currency for their profit. Just look what they did to Greece.
Bailed them out of their own short-sightedness, helping to negotiate on Greece’s behalf to force the people Greece/Greek banks owed money to agree to not get it all back, and still helped them as best as possible even though they rejected the terms of the third bailout?
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t claim to know economics well enough to argue how good the Euro is or what reforms it might need to make “The EU bails out Greece” an equivalent statement to “The USA bails out Alabama”, but politically the EU were good on this one.
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The European identity is not tied to the European union but to a shared culture and history. Or are Swiss and Norse people also not European?
The EU vote in Norway almost 30 years ago was very, very different from the British Brexit affair. Luckily for us Norwegians, we didn't suffer from anyone like Mark Francois, for example. Of course you could say that Brexit has nothing to do with British culture.
It was driven by the same core concerns about national sovereignty.
Time to emigrate from the U.K. to a more enlightened country. What countries would you go to as an English expat for a better life? Where can you change a useless English citizenship for another?
One of you lot recently married an American and moved to Canada. Queen's a bit salty, but they seem to be doing well for themselves. But seriously, I'm an American living in Canada, planning on getting citizenship here. The British immigrants I've met seem to get along pretty well here.
The UK and Canada are quite culturally similar though. I could see CANZUK working pretty well, if the politicians ever get around to implementing it.
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Except the ex-colonies want nothing to do with the UK. We can smell the fear and desperation. There is nothing in it for us. We aren't going to bail out the UK or take the influx of economic refugees.
There are 100K Australians in the UK. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australians_in_the_United_King... There are 900K plus Australians who were born in the UK. Australians who have a British parent or grandparent and can thus get a UK passport would number in the millions. https://www.sbs.com.au/news/almost-30-per-cent-of-the-austra... Two of Australia's last 3 Prime Ministers did part of their University Education in…
Generally speaking, a British grandparent does not get you UK citizenship, only a British parent does. (There are various obscure exceptions to that generalisation, but they don't apply to the vast majority of cases.)
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It was a nonbinding referendum. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to ask why important policy decisions are being made by a simple majority of the voting public.
Didn’t the conservative party win a general election in 2015 in which the referendum was a manifesto pledge? So the conservatives promised a referendum and won that election - that seems like “the consent of the governed”, doesn’t it? And the british public could have voted for labour in 2017 or 2019 if they wanted a softer stance on Brexit, but they didn’t , and the Conservatives won both those elections too, albeit…
OTOH, there was a referendum on changing the voting system (which was also rejected).
I'm amazed at reading British HNers who are presumably mostly rational calling Brexit "evil" and "racist" on this thread. I personally think Brexit is probably an ill-advised move for the UK, but the feelings provoked here by leaving a historically recent trade and cultural union are far, far out of proportion with the deed itself. If anything actually destroys your country, it'll be the exaggerated emotional respons…