We are all talking about economics but the whole deal is way more noble than mere money.
No European ever has never think "woow this shinny $consumer_object is been produced inside the EU so I don't get to pay the import tax" but every single European younger than 50 at least once in its life has open up the Ryanair website and thought "for 30€ I guess this weekend I will be in London/Paris/Berlin/Madrid/Rome".
The whole point of the European union is to be able to watch rugby with the English, get drunk in Berlin with good beer, being lazy at the seaside for a whole day with the Italians, have sex (or at least try to) with smoking hot French girls. And yes I can use the most stupid stereotypes because we all know that those are just stereotype and we can make fun of each other like only good friends can.
The most infuriating thing is that the oldest part of the English population is taking aways these opportunities from the youngest British.
> The most infuriating thing is that the oldest part of the English population is taking aways these opportunities from the youngest British.
I think that's the second most infuriating part of it.
The areas of the country that overwhelmingly voted against "unlimited immigration" from Europe have predominantly the ones that barely received any immigrants. Whilst London, which is destination numero uno for EU migrants, overwhelmingly voted in favour. (the EU migrants themselves didn't get to vote)
Obviously there will be exceptions: rabidly anti-EU Boston, Lincolnshire actually does have more EU immigrants per capita than anywhere else and the British population is genuinely very unhappy about it, but assuming I can find a suitable dataset to run the analysis, I'm expecting areas which disproportionately voted Leave to be almost perfectly inversely correlated with how likely they actually are to be "swamped" with EU migrants
And make no mistake about it, there are plenty of other arguments that have been made for leaving the EU, but it's the one on migration that has got usual non-voters from council estates in Sunderland queuing to place their ballots, not concerns over banana directives, the transparency of EU political processes or enthusiasm about the opportunity to negotiate new bilateral trade deals with the Commonwealth.
TL;DR: "Polling showed the areas that had the most to lose and the least to gain from the Brexit are precisely those where the referendum saw the most support. In other words, the places — the most export-heavy regions —most hurt by the economic disruptions caused by Brexit could be the places that pushed hardest for it..."
Fun fact: Ryanair exists because of EU free trade law. It's an Irish company, and the Irish government wanted to continue to protect it's state owned airline (Aer Lingus) on the lucrative Ireland/UK route, so tried to ban Ryanair from operating it. But EU law required that both countries had to veto the airline or route, and the UK (under Thatcher) were pro-free trade, so allowed it. Hence Ryanair was able to grow.
I think you'll be surprised how many people spend their time traveling around Europe having fun, being lazy, drinking beer and having sex. I mean, it sounds idyllic, but how many people -- particularly working classes -- do that?
I don't buy the idea that people only travel into Europe because of the EU. Freedom to travel is really freedom to work.
Sure, of course... But simply having the possibilities is nice...
Anyway for youngish people, at least in my friend circle, is pretty common.
Yesterday I was having dinner with an English friend, two weeks ago I spend a week in Berlin, pretty much every year we have a family trip somewhere in Europe.
Sure, I am young, with a lot of energy and money are not a huge concern right now; but most of my friends are in my same condition.
And actually I am a pretty cheap folk and I don't spend much money...
What exactly would stop you from doing that after Brexit? Are the borders of Europe suddenly closing to the English now? Are prices of plane tickets going to rise signifcantly?
For me, flying to Florida from Toronto is only $300 - that price is not bad to me but I'm not familiar with Ryanair.
UK has visa free access to 174 countries. EU can tank its tourism industry out of spite if it wants, but it won't be matching the decisions of the rest of the world when it does so. Weekend tourism is not exactly going to be banned unless the EU goes entirely mad and self destructs.
I'm a Canadian who just spent 4 months working in London at the end of last year. I was absolutely stunned at how often my coworkers would travel.
I would be excited on Monday to tell people what I got to see on the weekend, and coworkers would tell me about Barcelona and Greece etc. Just wild. The flight/train prices are so absurdly affordable that it just makes sense, personally and professionally, to travel.
IMHO, the opportunity was taken away by Merkel, not the older English population.
Merkel welcomed migrants/refugees into Germany which ultimately meant EU due to no border control. This opened the flood gate and increased the fear factor in older English people.
I'm not talking about if it was wrong/right. Just stating an event.
Those poor refugees from afghanistan, iraq, syria and libya. All countries recently bombed/invaded on the orders of the older english population. In a messianic quest for security as America's sidekick.
It is still an issue on a practical level. Last year of the 160K asylum seekers in Sweden less than 500 found a job. That's of a country which has a population of less than 10M. How is Sweden's benefit system supposed to cope?
No European ever has never think "woow this shinny $consumer_object is been produced inside the EU so I don't get to pay the import tax" but every single European younger than 50 at least once in its life has open up the Ryanair website and thought "for 30€ I guess this weekend I will be in London/Paris/Berlin/Madrid/Rome".
The whole point of the European union is to be able to watch rugby with the English, get drunk in Berlin with good beer, being lazy at the seaside for a whole day with the Italians, have sex (or at least try to) with smoking hot French girls. And yes I can use the most stupid stereotypes because we all know that those are just stereotype and we can make fun of each other like only good friends can.
The most infuriating thing is that the oldest part of the English population is taking aways these opportunities from the youngest British.