Remember "The Life of Brian" outrage? If you don't, then let me recap. A number of offended people got onto their local councils and had the film banned because it offended them. It wasn't enough that they never saw the film what mattered was that other people never got to exercise their rights of freedom because of their outrage of the film trumped other people's freedom*. This is the same thing. People's fear of foreigners is meaning that I can't live with them. And don't give me that line about it being down to the EU: they'll only reciprocate what the UK is going to do. This seems to be the line that a good number of Leavers are coming out with: it's the EU, it's all the fault of Johnny Foreigner. Or, to but it bluntly: this restriction on Freedom of Movement is nothing short of bigotry, ignorance and prejudice. (*Irony alert: the last town in the United Kingdom to have the ban on the film, which may still active today, is Aberystwyth. The mayor of this fine town, about ten years or so ago was the actress who played Judith, Brian's mother in the film).
Think freedom of movement will be one of the biggest losses we will suffer because of Brexit and is likely to result in more upheaval and impact on the economy than anything else that is happening as part of Brexit, including trade tarriffs. Most people focus on Romanian fruit pickers but dont realise how many EU citizens are employed in our high tech businesses. I suspect companies will be less likely to hire and employees less likely to want to come if they have to go through a complex Work Permit and Residence Visa process. Our need for these people arose from the cuts in funding for postgraduate courses in UK so we will have to have a serious look at new investment there to deal with the problem.
Some people who voted to remain appear to think that 100% of the people who voted to leave voted based on racism, xenophobia, bigotry etc. Pretty sure that this percentage would be equivalent to football hooligans percentage in a football ground.
Yes they will be less likely to come but personally think that the majority would still come and rightly so. My cousin resides in Australia and now has permanenet residency but he said that the forms he filled in took about the same amount of time as filling in the student loan application forms when he went to university.
I think that the issues may be that companies will be less likely to hire them due to the time and costs associated with the work permit and residence approvals, although hopefully the government can do something to streamline the system (like they do with footballers). The UK Immigration System is a nightmare to deal with. They are primed to answer no to everything unless you push them.
Well, we had the second world war, didn't we. And if it weren't for the Poles we may not have got through the Battle of Britain. If it weren't for the French army dying in large numbers protecting our retreat off Dunkirk then we'd be stuffed. If it weren't for the Americans supporting us with trade and weapons (which we stopped paying off not too many years ago) then we wouldn't have got through. If it weren't for Churchill diverting food from India to the UK, causing a million deaths due to famine there, then we would have starved. If it weren't for the Commonwealth forces we wouldn't have got off the beaches in Normandy and elsewhere -- the same people whom we sent back with the Windrush fiasco. Yes, we got through Dark Times before. Now, tell me, which people would you wish to throw under the bus this time to save us? How many people are willing to go through all that rationing stuff again? Not just food but fuel. So what if you work twenty miles from home: you can always cycle in and out even through the cold harsh winters. Again, the irony when people go all misty eyed about the wartime spirit, Vera Lynne and all that and sing her songs: do they realise that there have never been bloody bluebirds in Britain, let alone Dover. Darren, you have to accept that racism and fear of the foriegner has played a big part in the Leaving vote. How many times do we hear of people saying "I don't want immigrants coming here and going on the dole". Well, apart from the fact that we in the UK have the right to depart any EU citizen who is out of work after three months and never decided to use that ability is neither here nor there. We have that ability and also we have the ability to choose whom we wish from outside the EU. We have taken control of our borders but people just read in the tabloids about the hordes of Muslims coming from Turkey, millions of them, to settle here and panicked. Well, we have rules in place to stop those who aren't working so what's the problem?
Yeah, people cite the Blitz Spirit. It was admirable for a nation to pull together and put up with suffering (and fears of a possible invasion) back in 1940. But nobody voted for the Blitz! It was generally accepted to be a bad thing that we had to cope with.
