Cry, our beloved country

I never felt despair like this in the 60 s 70 s or 80s and the various strikes and bad world news, but yes now the country is completely divided and in a VERY dangerous position and anyone who denies this has their head firmly in the sand I can’t believe how anyone can miss it
I m glad you’re not worried Day6 but that doesn’t mean there is nothing to be worried about

I didn't say there was nothing to worry about Bluebelle.

My point is that certain factions (left wing/remainers) have a vested interest in fanning the flames of despair and helplessness.

My point is that most of us are going about our lives as usual. Some may be embroiled in online political discussion, but most aren't and most are not letting Brexit or any other political event cloud the day to day nature of our very ordinary lives.

All I am saying is I wonder if any one this particular discussion are going to sit and brood and feel utter despair because we may be leaving the EU when they switch off their device? Will they go to bed thinking about Boris Johnson? (Now that would be the stuff of nightmares!)

Some here seem to have an agenda. They would have us believe the horsemen of the apocalypse are galloping down the M1 as we type.

I do not dispute that the UK is in the middle of political turmoil but can we be perfectly honest about the way in which Westminster cock-ups impinge upon our day to day lives?

I am wasting valuable minutes of my life being here. Five years from now, if we are still alive, the same old posters will be foaming at the mouth about some other political mess. I'll be there too if a certain Marxist politician manages to get the keys to number ten!

I refuse to foam, that's all. If we could REALLY influence life and politics fair enough, but we can't.

We are all entitled to our opinions and world view. Mine does not involve believing the left wing propaganda that we will never recover from what we are going through now and that the people of these islands are embroiled in political discussion, or despair, or sadness, anger, or rage.

Like me, most people save those draining and extreme emotions for events which directly affect our own family circle.

That's it really. And I stand by it.

Day6 your post is how I feel!!

notspaghetti I think the problem now is that all the situations you list, and I remember everyone, took place within a country with a working government and a longstanding and stable political system.

Now it is the foundations that are slipping. You can have a derelict and damaged house, but on good foundations, and it can be rebuilt and refurbished, but if the foundations are unstable and it is sliding down the side of a hill then all you can do is demolish it. This is the problem, the foundations have gone and we cannot see anything in its stead.

We have seen failing nations over the years, they only cease to fail when they have a stable government system. In the meanwhile everything within the country collapses for years before that can happen.

The situation we are in is that both the great parties that have dominated our government for a century or more have declined to the level found in failing countries, fighting within themselves, they have leaders that are too weak and untrustworthy for anyone to have any confidence or reliance in them.

Nothing that is happening in either party indicates that either of them are prepared to admit how bad things are and how deep is the contempt for them felt by the general public.

That is the difference between then and now - and there is global warming.

Why would factions want to fan the flames of despair?

Day6, I agree, there is no need for concern in regard to the Britains present situation as nothing has yet structurally changed for the UK in regard to its international trading since that very divisive referendum. Thousands of trucks every day still cross the English Channel without delay, and those that have consignments on those vehicles need have no concern regarding tariffs that those consignments could become subject to outside of EU membership. In short, UK businesses trade with their European counterparts in exactly the same way as they have for the last forty years.

However, no one knows how those trading partnerships will fare should Britain leave the EU without a trading/customs agreement, and in that many businesses may find themselves having to trade under WTO rules and tariffs in which they have no experience whatsoever.

In the above workers in Britains vehicle production, food production and road transport industry (to name but three) have every reason to be very concerned in regard to their future employment. Further to that, those workers have lived under that threat for the last three years due to the incompetence of this Tory Government and the ideological divisions within that party.

However, many Brexit supporters demonstrate little or no concern for the future employment of so many and their families in the category of the above, caring only for some fanciful utopia that even the most ardent Brexetiers admit may take very many years to bring forward, if ever.

On social media and forums such as this many of those "leave fanatics" appear to be "retired armchair risk takers" who in reality have little at stake however badly Brexit impacts the UK.

In the above "I shall be alright Jack" seems to be the Brexitiers first prerogative, and to hell with everybody who will lose out badly due to Britain leaving the European Union.

So, in regard to Brexit, great justifiable concern for very many, while there is a great unjustifiable non-concern and selfishness in others.

I notice 52% considered themselves "haves" and 48% "have nots".

It's depressing isn't it. Whatever you do, don't watch the series Years and Years or you'll be frightened as well as depressed.

will Europe be as friendly to us as allies as they were in WW2?

I am failing to understand that question.

Perhaps your knowledge of history is different from mine, EllanVannin.

Eloethan Years and Years is written by Russell T Davis.......who wrote the new Dr.Who series. Time travel, Daleks, Cybermen etc?????? It’s not real!!!!

Day6 you said it all, so I don’t have to
Staring into the abyss ( really folks!) and foaming at the mouth during the day and sleepless at night....really ?!
The OTT ness that is social media just seems to overcome posters at times, the inflamed rhetoric, the nihilistic outlook, the sheer joy of moaning with righteous indignation at the imagined state of the UK......it’s ridiculous.

GG13

Some mixed couples have no idea what lies ahead, and if the family will be split up. Some people with terminal C or children, GCs with same, or rare diseases, do not know if they will get the treatment they will need. Many people in some industries and in agriculture have seen so many jobs go, and don't know if their job will be next. British expats dependent on EU permits and pensions in declining Sterling- do not know what is going to happen to them. Etc, etc, etc .... so you don''t see or understand people's REAL worries, which is why you find them ridiculous. Does not mean those concerns are not really genuine- just because you can't see them.

Russell T Davies is a very imaginative script writer who has been responsible for some excellent fictional tv series.

No-one can predict the future with any certainty, only imagine scenarios of 'what may happen if'.

Too late Eloethan! Terrifyingly possible isn't it.

One of our AC is married to an EU citizen.......fill a form in on line- job done. Splitting families- absolute tosh!!!!!

Oh jura2 you seem to revel in your predictions. It seems famine and pestilence await us. Experts on the other side of your narrative disagree with you.

GG13 - if a British person in the EU cannot remain there, due to being unable to get permit, or insufficient salary- and has to come back to UK with a foreign spouse, and children- they will have to have a job and 18.000 going up to 23.000 and more if children involved - or not bring in spouse and/or children. Even much more complicated if not married. You have no idea.

Day 6 in your post of Sun 16-Jun-19 18:23:34 you keep saying "my point is" but you make no point other than to make disrespectful comments about anyone who doesn't agree with you. But what should we agree with?

You offer no knowledge, no insight into how being out of the EU would change us. Yes, over many posts you have offered a lot of slight and slander to other people, to politicians, to anyone who isn't you but other than unrealistic dreams of us outstripping our current position you offer nothing, nada, nix.

Leaving the EU is going to be both a huge change and an upheaval for all we have grown used to. Once we leave, that day, not sometime later (unless we negotiate that transition) there will be political, legal, economic and social consequences. Any other view is dreamland.

None of this offers us an improved lifestyle. They are now very few who say that would happen. It is just a question of how bad it will be. And you Day 6 simply do not know. For all your pretence at bravura, like the rest of us, you will have to make the best of whatever comes our way.

So, Day6, what happens on Day 1, the day we leave? What will be difficult and what will continue as usual. You, who are so sure we will all be fine, tell me what you know. Add to the sum of my knowledge.

And if things go wrong in any way, big or small, tell me how many people will admit to it being their will the government carried out or how quickly we will hear that "it wasn't them".

And tell me Day6 how you can justify leaving a deep free trade agreement with what will be our largest market for at least the next generation and turn that to trading with them on WTO terms because "that's how we trade with everyone else" while arguing at the same time that we need to get out of the EU to have preferential deals with large parts of the rest of the world, because our current terms with them are not good enough? Explain please - as I do not get it.

And the problem is, neither do you but you would carry out this "experiment" whatever the experts tell you and whatever it does to those who never chose it simply because you don't know what you don't know and will never admit to that fact.

jura2 I have an extremely good understanding actually as this applies to immediate family.

It is not a question about being inflamed by social media. Gransnet apart, I rarely even look at it. I read real paper newspapers.

But this week, my generation of my grandfathers family met for our annual social that happened to be at my house. With spouses there were 20 of us. Age range from 65 - 80.

Usually the conversation is about families, upwards, now deceased, and downwards and more general topics. This year for the first time ever it slid, very eliptically into politics. As far as I could see there was not a single leaver among us and generally there was a deep concern about the current political chaos and fears about global warning.

This is not the first time over recent months I have found in meetings with friends where politics has never impinged, the conversations start sliding that way and people are talking about their fears for the future of this country, for us and our children and grand children.

I am not usually a catastophist, as I said on this thread or possible another. I have always been one of life's Pollyannas, but I think the quality of our political leaders at present is so very, very poor, and the chance that an election will give any party a clear majority so unlikely that I can see political confusion continuing for some years. Enough for any benefits of Leave (if there are any) to be lost in the morass of squabbling parties getting like the Belgians and Israelis and being completely unable to cobble together any kind of working government for months if not years (Belgium managed 589 days without a government recently). More frighteningly the thought that there could be the remote possibility of a majority government, when the leaders and decision makers in both parties are so abjectly inadequate.

Teetime I read your comment "even the sky can't stop crying" this morning and it has stayed with me all day. That feels so true.

Unfortunately even when things go tits up the leavers will still blame Europe and ‘lefties”
Our country is virtually finished now, no I m not having nightmares, I m not wringing my hands, and not holding my head, but I know we are heading towards suicide

Grannygravy13 Much science fiction becomes reality in due course. Picture phones, full body scanners, moon landing, tasers, self-driving cars, robots/replicants, reality TV, Big Brother (constant surveillance), smart homes, antibiotic resistance, illegal organ harvesting, etc, etc, etc, are all themes that can be found in various books and films - some from years before scientists and engineers had even considered them.

Several of the disturbing scenarios portrayed in Years and Years could be seen as an extension of trends that are occurring now - extreme weather causing massive population displacements, draconian measures introduced to deal with refugees, complete dependence on digital communications leading to cyber terrorism, ultra-nationalist political leaders coming to the fore, implantation of chips into the body to replace external gadgets (such as mobile phones), areas of deprivation designated as controlled criminal areas requiring passes to enter and leave, re-criminalisation of certain activities - eg homosexuality, etc, etc.

Of course these trends do not inevitably lead to the sort of dystopia portrayed but there appears to be little recognition of and discussion about the potential dangers.

GG13: 'jura2 I have an extremely good understanding actually as this applies to immediate family.'

and yet you have no sympathy and cannot see how stressful it must be for them, and so many others in such cases.

If a British citizen lives abroad, and is currently married to a non-EU citizen- bringing said spouse to the UK to live is VERY complicated- and for many, just impossible, as they caanot prove they will have an income sufficient to care for wife and children. If they are not married- it is even more difficult.

This will apply to those married to EU citizens soon- I can assure you it is not just the case of signing a few bits of paper.
So how can anyone say this is ridiculous and hysterical

And yes, you can laugh. But those citizens have dogs and other pets, many who have chosen to live in rural areas got horses, etc- that they know they may not bring over if they have to return.