Well, if you're playing that game, let us not forget the 'unfortunate' remain voters

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVbzrN1MVxc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia4UXNq0RLk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSAU3HdPRkg

you should really read the comments on that video

like really read them and think about if people who type like that are the people you want associated with your belief system

Yeah look at all that misery they're causing, and questionable attitudes like anti-fascism on display. Who knows what they would have done if they'd won? They might even have hugged a Polish person.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34329825
"The UK has opted against taking part in the relocation scheme and has its own plan to resettle migrants directly from Syrian refugee camps."

The UK used its opt out. The UK did not have to accept a single Syrian immigrant/refugee that it didn't want, the EU immigration issue is not related to Syrians.

Well thankfully I am from Britain, so I can have an opinion! And I'm from the poor areas of the north-east - I can fully agree with the ignorant yanks here. Every Leave voter I personally talked to from my area, spanning my generation, my parents', and my grandprarents', wanted to leave because of immigration issues and the cost of staying in the EU.

While a lot of them were perfectly happy to admit they had little knowledge of the wider economic effects of leaving the EU, one thing they all agreed on was that leaving would help us control our borders and that there were far too many people in Britain already.

Immigration was an enormous topic for the referendum, the single biggest from what I can gather both from talking to people and from reading news/opinions online. The people I talked with don't seem to know why they dislike immigrants, but they sure as hell dislike immigrants.

Wow that's actually completed unrelated to the question I asked good job. This does nothing to prove that negative attitudes towards immigration in the UK aren't related to Syrian refugees. Leave voters very well either could have
1) thought that being part of the EU made them obligated to accept Syrian refugees (which it DOES to some extent) and if they left they could stop or
2) been completely unaware of the fact that they were taking refugees in outside of the EU system.

Of course I am going to disagree with a whole heap of racist comments on there, but this is not enough to sway my opinion away from all the many reasons I chose to vote leave. You hear equally absurd and disgusting comments by many others from the remain side, both by individuals and the media in the run-up to this referendum (and beyond).

For what it's worth, I believe we should be able to control immigration a lot more than the EU allows us to, but it was not my primary motivation in voting the way I did.

Immigration was definitely a big part of the discussion, but wanting control over immigration does not mean you are racist. If anything our current immigration policy is racist as a skilled worker from outside the EU would have a harder time coming to this country than somebody without any skills who happens to have an EU passport. Now they will both have to meet the same requirements.

Except it was all over the news here. Anybody who paid any attention to it would have known about it.

What motivation did you have then? Destroy your economy? Pretend that leaving the EU was going to turn you into a Democracy?

The level of ignorance of the average UK voter has been covered previously in some depth. They didn't know, just face it. They probably thought Syrians were going to move into their Nan's spare bedroom.

We're at the point of highest uncertainty.

I think this reaction in markets is natural and likely short-term.

No need for hysteria yet.

And I don't think they can be blamed for being concerned about immigration.

It's undeniable that immigrants compete for jobs with locals as well as things like housing for example. If people are struggling in the face of this, who are we to condemn them for wanting to change it?

I like foreigners more than Brits tbh, but uncontrolled mass immigration is an issue and it should have been addressed by our cowardly politicians a long time ago. Because it wasn't addressed, this has happened.

Personally I don't think 52% of the voters are racist but I am worried that the minority who are racist now think half the country agrees with them.

Britain's housing prices have gone down in recent years (in a trend with much of the world admittedly, but with a higher price fall than most other countries) and so has the unemployment rate for those born in the UK.

The effect has either been functionally irrelevant to existing trends, or possibly actively positive for Britain on the whole. I can't speak on an individual level, but the numbers don't suggest this supposed struggle being widespread. It's just as likely that the void in unskilled labour being filled, and it's positive effects on the economy as a whole, is more than compensating for any increased competition.

Nobody knows at this stage what the real outcomes are going to be, but whatever it is then I am confident it is going to be signifcantly better than what we currently have. At least who we vote for is directly accountable and can be voted out without a cushy role in the European Commission waiting for them despite their failures. The UK still has the House of Lords though, which should also be abolished with any luck.

As for other reasons, a couple include how the Lisbon Treaty and Eurozone bailouts were handled and the beyond lacklustre renegotiation terms from earlier this year which would've passed with a Remain vote. The latter truly reflected just how much influence we really have.

How much coverage did you have of the European parliament in the American media before this referendum? This is not a dig, I'm interested.

Simply not true. There is a massive housing crisis in the UK, there isn't a political party in the UK that doesn't accept there is a housing crisis. The price of an average house compared to an average income is the worst it has ever been in the UK. Housing is less affordable now than it has been for decades.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/apr/30/uk-throes-of--housing-crisis
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/sep/02/housing-market-gulf-salaries-house-prices

"The gap between income and house prices has sky-rocketed so much in the last 20 years that even in the most affordable regions of England and Wales buyers are forced to spend six times their income, a new data analysis reveals.
The situation is most dire in the capital, where the median house now costs 12 times the median London income.

In 1995, the median income in London was £19,000 and the median house price was £83,000, meaning that people were spending 4.4 times their income on buying a property. But by 2012-13, the median income in London had increased to £24,600 and the median house price in the capital had increased to £300,000"

Genuine question, how do you think it will be better? We still have to trade with the EU and any trade deal we make is going to be significantly worse than what we have in the EU currently. We've also opened the door to more Tory neo-liberal economics to further redistribute wealth from the poor to the wealthy. What could possibly improve?

Did the people think that the "protest votes" wouldn't count? Smh eu gimmicks

I don't see how leaving the EU is going to make your situation better when you're still going to have to comply with the EU though. Like you guys never explain this part. You just gloss over this bit where the EU still exists and controls all of the UKs biggest trade partners.

and I don't watch the news

I will have to admit I'm wrong there, I didn't check the date on the graph I was using and it stopped at 2012. Regardless, considering how EU immigration into the UK has been at a consistent rise since 2004, while 2007-2012 saw a pretty significant price drop in the average UK home, I really can't see a connection between the two which was my main point and is what's actually relevant in this discussion.

And that still leaves unemployment rates getting better too. There just is no reason to blame immigrants for any problems, when (again) they at worst have no significant impact (or statistical connections to any issue), at best are actively making it better.

I won't pretend to know much about the UK housing market, but didn't most major cities vote Remain, which are the places that would see the most competition for housing from immigrants? Is there a lack of housing in rural areas? Asking seriously here, because in Germany there's a ton of smaller towns bleeding out because of our aging society, which means there's loads of available housing in those parts of the country.

As far as jobs go, correct me if I'm wrong, but immigrants are usually far more likely to move to cities than the countryside, and UK unemployment maps don't seem to correspond to referendum votes in a way that is discernible to me. Besides, the current unemployment rate for the entire United Kingdom is 5.4%, which is as close to full employment as you're going to get anywhere in the foreseeable future. It doesn't sound like people are having much trouble finding work, least of all because it's being taken away by immigrants.

Most people are used to voting in general elections, where a vote for Labour in a Conservative dominant area means absolutely fuck all due to the way the constituencies work. I assume the people "protest voting" simply didn't understand that.

There's a lack of housing pretty much everywhere but it's generally worse in the cities. The employment has to be looked at on a place by place basis. Somewhere like Burnley has around 8% unemployment but 20% youth unemployment so it feels like they've come straight out of school and there's nothing for them in the world. Also the conservative government is a bit shady with employment figures. They say they've created something like 2 million apprenticeships which would count as employment. The problem is the point of an apprenticeship is to learn a trade like plumbing or carpentry but many of these new apprenticeships are things like shop assistance with no chance to learn trade skills and they earn less than minimum wage because it's only an apprenticeship. The trend in the UK is for urban areas to be more left leaning and rural areas to be more right leaning which follows the remain/leave vote.

Of course, leaving the EU is going to change none of those things.

Are you seriously saying you think politicians in the UK don't go on to extremely cushy jobs after being in office? Acoba is a revolving door, lobbying rules are basically non-existent, we have just abolished regulations that make it easier for Parliament to become even more corrupt. Removing another possibility that allows politicians to be career politicians makes them more likely to have their eye on feathering their nest at the exit door. They are going to be more corrupt, as hard as that might be to believe.

its just the older generation here that are conservative's we have a NDP government, if you say publicly to anyone under the age of 35 that your a conservative you'll most likely be shamed and shit

considering your most recent post in the dumpster I don't think being conservative is the only reason people shame you

I don't talk to people about politics irl im not retarded

Well yeah, we're coming off the back of a cataclysmic recession :D

As somebody who lives in a fairly poor Northern city, I know all too well that it absolutely is widespread. Thankfully I'm fortunate enough to live more comfortably.

Alberta is to Canada as southern US is to the US

In the UK the business news goes like this: industrial output in decline, service sector performing well. The service sector is dominated by the financial sector, the whole economy leans on it and the EU is a massive part of that. The FTSE 100 is plastered with international companies because capital they put into Britain can flow freely around the EU.

The free market consists of free movement of goods, capital, services and labour. If we don't get free movement of capital and services our economy is going to burn, all the other established trading blocs have their own financial centers who aren't going to welcome London. Everybody knows that the UK economy needs this, so they will make us pay through the nose.

Financial institutions are already announcing plans to move jobs in the thousands and they haven't even been seriously courted by Paris and Frankfurt yet. I can't imagine any future where we don't give everything to maintain access to the free market and the EU does not negotiate on the individual parts - you have one you have them all. Draw your own conclusions, we've gained nothing.

The notional "democracy and control" we've gained we already had. We just peacefully voted to leave the EU. No EU tanks are turning up at Dover to stop us. We were always in a democracy and we always had control and were one vote away from exercising it. They never have an answer to that either.