A very English Brexit

By the way, very well said on your post.

Don't they what?

I try not to get involved in political discussions (yes, I know that is exactly what I am doing) I know only what I read about Brexit; what happens there will happen, the country was asked to vote which it did, and we now have to live with the result whatever that is when it arrives. However what has been worrying me over the past months is the sheer volume of HATE which has crept into things, will we ever be able to eradicate this? At the moment the hate brigade seems to be holding it's breath (so I feel), for an onslaught on whatever the outcome of Brexit is. I do not envy those whose job it will be to sort out whatever comes after 31st October.

My only worry with the EU are the continuing murmuring about a,” European Army”, which I am definitely not in favour of.

I don't know where you were living in the 70s, notagrannyyet. However I was a teen in the 70s and had a wonderful life. You can't possibly say that everyone looked poorer. You must have been in a poor area.

I was very fortunate to have reasonably well off parents (yep, people had money in the 70s) and life was good despite all the strikes that were going on.
Fabulous holidays abroad, beautiful clothes which I can assure you were available pre EU.

Joining the EU did not suddenly make us clean and rich.

It's the passage of time. You'd find many countries in the EU in the 70s who really were rather impoverished. I lived in Spain in the late 70s. With a family who had nothing. Now that was poverty. It's absurd to suggest that the EU has made us rich. In fact you could say that we have helped make the EU rich.

All the goods that you mention will not suddenly be unavailable to us either. That's just wrong.

Some people are getting a bit carried away with their ideas of what might happen

Libra10 Turkey can never join the EU while they occupy half of Cyprus. The become a member it has to be 100% in a vote to allow membership but Greece will never give the yes.

Well said!

Notagranyet2 - Brilliantly well said - I could not agree with you more.

Very well put, Notagranyet2.

Minniemoo - argh - I agree and disagree at the same time!

It's absurd to suggest that the EU has made us rich. In fact you could say that we have helped make the EU rich.

The EU has made us rich, simply by our engagement with other people from different cultures, and we have added vale to our European community in the same way.

What a shame we seem to be bent on pulling up the drawbridge, and applying a monetary cost to things we appear to value.

The majority of people in the UK in the early 1970s were not rich, but neither were they in as much poverty as might appear. The average wage at that time was only around £20 to £22 a week - but the explosion of consumerism and "I want it now" on cheap credit in the 1980s and 90s seems to have had adverse - perhaps unintended - social consequences too.

Thank you Notagranyet2

Sometimes it takes someone who has not lived for their whole life here to point out how the UK has done very well as an influential member of the European Union and how crazy it would be for us to throw all that we have away.

Justme67 When you said: the country was asked to vote which it did, and we now have to live with the result whatever that is when it arrives

Does that mean we could never change our minds, and have another vote?

After all, in the 1970s, the Government White Paper, explained specifically about closer social, economic and political union.

We democratically voted for that - why does the 2016 vote matter any more or less I wonder.

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

I appreciate your comment, railman. It's fine to agree and disagree!

I worked in a bank in 1978 and my first wage was £47 a week. Which appears to have been quite a bit more than the national average.

But time has changed so much about how we live. Technology since the 70s has changed society. And that's thanks to USA and the Far East. Not because we joined the EU.

<3 it

Fair points well put Jillybird - I suggest you duck now.....

Yet at the same time, back in the 70’s, it seemed like a poorer place with poorer housing, people looked as if they’d bought all their clothes from second-hand shops and personal wealth was not visible.
I don't think that is true.

Fantasy days of your childhood, like the 70’s when you rightly had no cares in the world? Of course you wouldn’t, you were a child, but your parents would have been well aware of the economic problems around at that time.

I think you may find that many Gransnetters were not children in the 1970s, many would have been young mothers by then with their own homes, furnished in the latest styles, I remember the vibrancy of the 60s and 70s fashions, the sense of optimism.
However, I do remember the three day weeks of the 1970s, the depressing strikes which may have made Britain seem a depressing place to live for a while so perhaps that is what you may recall, Notagranyet2, which is rather a sad memory.
It did seem to me that Britain in the 1960s was a more vibrant, wealthier and happier country than France where I lived for a while in the mid 1960s.

Are you saying the majority of people in England who voted for Brexit are rich Etonians?

Notagranyet2 Spot on!

libra10 Wed 07-Aug-19 11:26:38
A total generalisation by the OP GracesGranMK3!

I'm certainly not a member of the upper claaaaaas, yet decided to vote to leave the EU.

If you read things instead of guessing what they were about you would see I was referring to our Parliament. If you are an MP I apologise. If you are not, you owe me an apology for attacking me personally without a clue what you are talking about.

Yes we pay money in, but get the benefits of membership back, not necessarily in terms of £££. Germany and France put more in than us. You don’t expect to get back every penny you pay into a club if you get reciprocal benefits. You are paying for the services you get. We are only just realising this as we have to shell out billions for extra staff , expertise we don’t have etc which is contributing to the current shambles that is Brexit, you can’t pretend it’s all marvellous any longer. We are not remotely ready as our apology for a government have spent 3 years being smug Brits and relying on fag packet planning which basically means doing nothing.

The reason I voted to leave EU is because there are only 5 countries out of 27 who are net contributors. The other countries just take. Our social care system desperately needs money but we send so much to EU and get back little in return. We get some back but EU dictates what it is spent on. If we stay in our bill will be £18 billion per annum. It is madness channeling so much UK money to EU so they can move from Brussels to Strasberg every month and buy wine costing over €100 a bottle for Junker, not to mention sending a jet to pick up his dog.

What has the EU ever done for us?

What a lot of tosh, GraceGranMK3 . Paperbackwriter Wed 07-Aug-19 12:28:42

I have no idea what you read or where you read it but I certainly didn't write it. Before you start on someone you could just check you have the right person Paperbackwriter It seems, in this instance, the "tosh" is all yours.

newnanny your numbers are a bit out I think - thought this might help?

In 2018 the UK government paid £13 billion to the EU budget, and EU spending on the UK was forecast to be £4 billion. So the UK’s ‘net contribution’ was estimated at nearly £9 billion. Source: fullfact.org/europe/our-eu-membership-fee-55-million/

Or this:
The UK contribution to the EU budget Source: www.ons.gov.uk/economy/governmentpublicsectorandtaxes/publicsectorfinance/articles/theukcontributiontotheeubudget/2017-10-31