I’m starting this thread because it would feel strange to ignore what’s happened today, especially as it has consequences for small businesses. I was going to post this reply to Susannah @curiousseagull in the #folksyfriday thread, but felt I should say it as a separate topic.
This is not an official Folksy view. This is mine. I am very worried about happened today. There are many reasons although this particular one is personal: my mother is Danish but has been living in the UK for over 40 years (although she was not entitled to vote in the referendum). She’s a potter and it now looks like she may have to give up her studio because her pension is paid by Denmark to Danes living in EU countries, and without that she can’t afford it. I really hope that doesn’t happen and that the European nations and Britain find a way of working together to support each other.
My niece will probably also lose her job as she works for an arts organisation supporting designers in the North East which is entirely funded by EU money.
Two personal stories, I know, but two people among many whose livelihoods are in the balance - and both in the creative sector.
I’m with you Camilla.
I had a sleepless night and checked the news every few hours. I woke up this morning a few minutes before the announcement. And I instantly felt an alien in my own country.
That feeling hasn’t gone away. I was born and bred in the north east. And while Newcastle voted to remain- no one else up here (as a whole) did. But I’ve been given faith in every single person I know and I’m friends with as they all voted to remain and are as shocked and as devestated as I am. Like minded people clearly do attract- that gives me some hope!
I always felt like a vote to leave was simply a vote for a significantly right-wing politics in the Uk. Something which I do not agree with in any way.
I am disappointed that we simply didn’t work to fix the problems we felt we had with the EU. Instead people chose to run away. They were swept up in the ridiculous claims without looking into them and what the EU has actually done for us, and they wanted to ‘make Britain great again’ but instead it’s simply divided the population and is clearly in the process of splitting the country up- quite literally. Great Britain will never be great again.
I am moving to Canada at the end of the year- my husband has a job in climate change research. And I feel that coming back here will never be an option now. I think it’s safe to say a significantly right-wing Brexit government will not be putting money into climate change research. Yesterday it was a choice- but today we have been forced to become economic migrants if we wish to persue my husbands career.
A very sad day. I am wandering around today with the TV on just feeling lost, bewildered and angry.
And to add- Boris, Farage and Gove will NEVER speak for me.
I’m still in a state of shock. What makes it worse is that I’m from the Midlands and lots of people around me are happy about today’s result. I can adamantly say that I am not. I feel like a stranger in my own town, even in my own family. Even worse still, a number of people I have spoken to who did vote out, don’t even know why. My boss laughed and said a change is as good as a rest! I live in quite a deprived area and it seems to me that lots of people have been taken in by the lies from Farage.
It is indeed a very sad day with more to come, I think.
From the start of this I believed that a referendum was totally wrong, as the general public do not have the full facts. The politicians have a mandate to make those decisions on our behalf, and so they should have done.
I sincerely hope that we can now move forward positively … now that the vote has been counted that is all we can do … try to make the best of it.
This is not going to help economic growth in the UK, we have Scotland and then proberly N. Ireland who will now be considering no longer wanting to be part of the UK. Maybe even Wales as well.
We have the rise of far right thinking, it has echo’s of Germany pre WWII
Gobsmaked for starters! I feel it’s worrying on many levels. One question I would ask (amongst many others!) is how will this affect the arts? It’s always one of the first to go when funding is cut. Putting up barriers and closing down a means of support and creative exchange is what I feel may be the outcome of this referendum. I know it’s early days to suggest this may happen but I can’t help but feel it will be hit.
My husband works for a gallery and I already know the struggle he’s had just going through the application process for funding grants and there being knock backs left, right and centre due to over subcription and not enough money in the pot.
Anyway I don’t really know what else to say apart from feeling worried and sad for the generation of my kids.
I’m shell shocked - so much so I actually cried! As well as making and selling my jewellery, I also run the business side of my husband’s commercial photography business - which means we’re business to business (so no weddings, portraits etc). We hung on through the recession with a combination of hard work and, to be frank, luck only to find that once the country got back on it’s feet the way companies chose to spend their money had changed - they now want more for less because they learnt during the hard times it was available. The last 5 months things have picked up - now I’m scared the economic uncertainty will mean businesses will tighten their belt again and the money stress will start all over!
I’m angry because this referendum was purely to satisfy the anti Europe MPs on the Tory back bench - it was not about what’s best for the people, we’ve just got caught up in a party battle that was worried about defections to UKIP and by doing this, they’ve legitimized UKIP and it’s anti-Europe stance, not quelled it. I’m also angry because the problems of the NHS and shortage of housing have not been caused by EU immigration but by successive Tory, Labour AND Coalition governments lack of funding and planning - the EU is just a scape goat and people have voted not against Europe but against the politicians who have been so ineffective for the last 25 or so years.
I’m a 20th Century political historian by training and I have to agree with @EileensCraftStudio and @curiousseagull that this move to the far right - not just in the UK but in other parts of Europe and in the US at the moment with the presidential race - is not, historically, a new phenomenon and that last time it happened it didn’t end well.
On a more positive note, this kind of nationalism doesn’t have to be a bad things - so lets hope we move forward in a positive way
It’s not just the arts @GrainneCC it’s the sciences too. In the past both myself and my husband have worked in research at 2 different universities and know - like the arts - how much EU funding pays for and how much both areas depend on this money. I personally have attended 2 separate training courses - one on SEO, one on Social Media as a marketing tool - both of which were paid for entirely by EU finding. I basically got over £1000 worth of training - which I certainly couldn’t have afforded to pay for - for free.
Yep- this very reason is why I don’t think my husband and I will ever be able to come back- if we wish to persue his career. Which given how valuable his research is/can continue to be, we’d be insane to come back.
I’m wondering given how much of the money that gets spent here in Cambridge has probably originated from some sort of EU research grant if the university could swing it for us to become our own independent EU member state.
Well I feel free,I even feel my cat and goldfish are free,no faceless euro mp telling me if I can afford to feed them or not.
It hurts if you cut out any cancer,for a while,and then things get better.It is not a matter of what we have been told it is a matter of what many of us could see,the future is uncertain but it was definitely certain had we remained.
World war 2 ultimately killed my father,some years later and others died there and then to defend us from dictatorship and Europe wanted to dictate how many fighting age males we should take in,apart from everything else.I am old enought to remember us joining Europe,it was a common market,free trade,not a dictatorship.
I don’t know what level some of you live on but if you come down to street level you could see what was going on,you didn’t have to be told.
On a personal note our council proudly announced how many foreigners they housed,my own son,partner and two daughters can’t even get close to the pecking order and have to pay £700 a month for a private rabbit hutch.
Next on the list,the corrupt politicians and the so called proffesionals that are worth no more than the man who lays the power on to their offices or takes their rubbish away,they studied? If you are to stay alive you have to study every day when you are dealing with 20,000 volts.
Freedom from Europe is just the first step,Britain will be great again.
The future is for my son daughter in law and grandchild not for me so I discussed it with them and voted as they were going to. They have never known life outside the EU and it works for them. We all felt devastated this morning and I felt as if my world has caved in around me. I cross my fingers and toes as we all move forward into the unknown.
Shocked, stunned, worried and dismayed. I feel sorry for the younger generation who voted to remain in the EU and have been out-voted by the older generation. This was a vote for the future - instead we have been plunged back to the past, where most of the older generation had their chance to vote and got their wish. Now they’ve deprived the younger ones of their opportunities in a very different world to the one they seem to think we should go back to. It’s very sad and I fear for our country and our future.
With all the economic uncertainty that this result will unleash, I also fear for my business, which I doubt will survive. I’m going to review it over the next couple of months, but I’m afraid it will have to close, as I’ll have to go back to a more secure way of earning a living. How can this have happened overnight? I’m still reeling from it.
I wonder how all those places and groups in society who are funded by EU funding are going to feel in once we are completely out and those funds no longer come their way.
One thing for certain they won’t get funded by our so called National Leaders.
I didn’t see the EU as a cancer. I had no problem with it. I did not see it as a dictatorship. We vote in the MP’s who stand in Brussels (People including Farage who never bothers to show up).
I think a big problem with this whole debate is people blamed the EU for their circumstances when really they should have been blaming our government. We have a House of Lords who weren’t voted in, but no one on the Leave side seems to think that’s a problem.
People don’t seem to realise what the EU has brought us. And they also don’t seem to realise that it’s far right poltics they’ve voted in.
Thanks to this vote, dozens of children who I work with and others I know have been physically and verbally assaulted on their way to school this morning across the country simply on the bus or waiting at the bus stop in racist outbursts simply due to the colour of their skin or their accent. They have had ‘immigrant’ yelled at them from across the street when they have been walking to school. Their parents all work here in the UK and pay tax and NI like I do. Yet they weren’t allowed to vote. I feel devastated for these young people and their parents. I feel sad for the young people I teach and for their prospects. I feel sad for the 16yr olds I teach who this will effect more than everyone in 2 years time when they turn 18 yet they had no say in this whatsoever.
Our school did it’s own mini EU referendum yesterday- 68% of the students voted to stay in. They have not known life without the EU (nor have I) and we don’t have a problem with it. We don’t feel controlled. We feel we’ve been given rights that may not have been given otherwise. We feel glad when we walk down to our local beach and know it’s a Blue Flag beach thanks to the EU and that sewerage isn’t being pumped into it from further up the river into Newcastle. We feel fortunate to have had all the EU investment along our river and in our city and the local area creating wonderful businesses where once derelict land stood and the remains of the ship-building trade could be seen- we have won European city of culture in the past & were given a lot of money to improve our city. It’s made a world of difference and has created thousands of jobs, including those in the arts and sciences which are still funded and continue to this day.
I realise we cannot all agree. But when the stark truth is that almost 50% of the population didn’t want to leave and in fact don’t agree with what is now happening, this is only the start of the problems! A divide that prominent isn’t easy to fix unfortunately.
Growing up in Northern Ireland during the troubles was difficult. People have worked incredibly hard to make huge differences and a changed nation. I fear now for family that live there that this will become a step backwards and all efforts to change peoples attitudes and accept eachother outside of religious circumstance or race will be hard work gone down the drain.
