INDEPENDENCE DAY!

So what exactly do you mean by the word "Great"? Tell us all how Brexit will make Britain great. What tangible benefits do you want for your country? It's really seems fairly meaningless, but it's over to you now.

I wonder how long this kakistocracy will last.

I'll be celebrating if and when it turns out that things are much better for all of us in 5 years time

So you think all of us have benefitted under the EU - that is implicit in your statement I feel. The problem is that you have an unrealistic expectation. The majority voted to leave the EU because they had not benefitted from 47 years within it. Many of us, and I am uncluded in the number have seen our lives taken down, made worse, made miserable. There was no benefit for us in the EU.

Those who did benefit were in the minority. I would be happy ( and it is more realistic) if the majority of us are better off in five years time. I think that will happen too.

There will always be those who will not do well out of us leaving. Most of them I have met here. The are the rejoin minded of this forum. The miserable ones it seems and I do wonder how much of that misery is a predispositional thing rather than just a result of us leaving the EU.

But the majority DIDN'T vote leave, did they? 37% of the British public voted for it.

I'm still waiting to hear how we will be better off, post Brexit. No one has answered that question yet.

How has the EU made your lives worse & more miserable? Some specific examples please.

I can pinpoint how austerity has made my life worse & more miserable in the last ten years (largely through the impact on my disabled son) & how Brexit has already made my life more miserable (largely via impact on universities which has already started to show) but I can’t think of how the EU has.

I’m actually not remotely miserable. I get described as positive and optimistic all the time (I have a severely disabled person in my life - this gives people the right to frequently comment on your mood it seems & make all sorts of assumptions about how miserable your life must be )

However I am not delusional so am struggling a bit with finding the joy in Brexit.

How has the EU made your lives worse & more miserable? Some specific examples please

I actually addressed this back last October . Strange that I have to be asked this again and again. I am not going into a list. I have done that and it was clearly not enough for some. (is this vote and vote again until we, the minority , get the result we want?) .

I will simply say this time that as far as I and my family are concerned we now have job security ( my job has been insecure for a number of years in the EU and I lost jobs before that due to EU policies and their effects). My husband will also benefit. That means my child can look forward to less austerity too. I know other people like me.

I wasn’t on here very often last October, but weird that you expect everyone to remember a post from 4 months ago.

How did the EU reduce your job security? If that is your criteria (& I think I it’s a fair enough one - just struggling to work out why ), then you’ll understand why me having to shut my business due to Brexit makes me less than enthusiastic about leaving.

Anyway Big Ben Bonged twitter.com/bydonkeys/status/1223384182170275846?s=21

The Bank of England has downgraded growth predictions and knocked more than 20 billion off GDP by the end of 2022. How anyone could think that they will be better off under these circumstances I just can't imagine.

You are completely blinded Aprilrose,. Continued austerity was our own governments reaction to an international catastrophe. The same people would have done the same thing in or out of Europe.

The only thing that has changed is they cannot now blame Europe although, should those political views still run our country I certainly wouldn't put it passed them to find something or someone else and, with the crude reporting of some of the most read papers (mainly by the elderly these days) do the usual "not me gov" bit.

aprilrose It was announced just two days ago that austerity will continue. All departments, including Health and Defence, have been ordered to find ways of cutting their budget by 5%.

One of the main priorities is "levelling up", as Johnson describes it. We have already seen what that means in practice. Local government and schools in wealthier areas are to receive more, while poorer areas are having their budgets cut. That's not scare-mongering; it's actually happening.

Growstuff tried to impress with a big word but no one noticed.
A kakistocracy [kækɪ'stɑkrəsi] is a system of government that is run by the worst, least qualified, and/or most unscrupulous citizens.
Everyone’s entitled to their point of view. However, this country is still ‘run’ by the Civil Service. They provide moderation to the in-Govt desires and then enact the decision.
So bunkum.

And I got up to a new day where we’re not in Europe. Nothing has changed and what might happen will happy so slowly that we’ll barely notice.

And .... to have an appreciation of why austerity was and still is necessary needs a separate thread perhaps. But it’s down to one simple fact - we spent too much on too many things that didn’t really benefit us. Now we’ve got to learn to be more careful. All austerity is a some necessary ‘housekeeping’. Notice that I made no mention of political leaning there..... it’d be so much better if the extreme opinions on these fora tried to understand each other’s viewpoint instead of stamping all over something not in line with their own thinking.

I feel very happy and optimistic about the future of the UK and think the country made exactly the right choice.
The benefits will be long term rather than felt this year of course, but once we have paid ‘our dues’ to the EU we will no longer be spending billions on roads in Lithuania or hospitals in Poland etc but mending our own roads and building our own hospitals.We have been one of the big payer ‘in’ countries which bale out the many other countries to the detriment of our own. The EU started off well but became a huge corrupt vanity project with the aim of being one big power.
The UK will do so much better out of it, but nobody should expect it to happen overnight.

ExperiencedNotOld well said.??

Those of us who have lost our jobs, had problems getting life saving medication, seen our children and grand children leave the UK to live in EU member countries or have seen our businesses collapse because of the huge increase in cost and beaurocracy because of this brexit nonsense have noticed the change already.

Growstuff and GagaJo
Both asking 'what are the benefits of Brexit?' which was answered here yesterday, so maybe find the post yourself or search online, but don't keep asking again and again as if there is no answer. ?

I agree Lemongrove we should be patient, it will take time for changes to happen.

“There is a view out there — so often expressed in The Guardian — that this new age is racist, populist, still sexist. In so many ways shameful. Hugh Grant, bizarrely the go-to source for apocalyptic doomsday quotes, says the 'country is finished'.

Really? Isn't the opposite true? Much of the rest of the world is puzzled by the way that Britain is behaving. But it is also intrigued. The French are REALLY interested in what is going on across the Channel. What is that small island with its extraordinary history up to?

We have been on the right side of history before and I believe we may well be again.”

Not my words but those of John Humphrys (late Radio 4 Today presenter). He voted Remain and has since changed his mind.

Excellent article in the DM today.
?

Are you suggesting Brexit isn’t a populist movement?

And not sure the worlds ‘excellent article’ and ‘Daily Mail’ ever belong together theconversation.com/amp/uk-press-is-the-most-aggressive-in-reporting-on-europes-migrant-crisis-56083

We might not notice, but our grandchildren will. And I'm willing to bet it won't be good for them. Anyway, my neighbour had a great time last night letting off 10 huge bloody rockets just outside my bedroom and woke me and my grandsons up. So pleased he had a good time - selfish man.