Oh my friends and countrymen
Jun. 24th, 2016 06:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nineveh_ukI know that in terms of immediate personal threat, the despair that I feel right now is as nothing compared to that of my EU friends and colleagues, and indeed my friends and colleagues from beyond the EU who have been shown the foul xenophobia and racism of the UK, for make no mistake whatever other reasons might be spackled over the top this is sheer vile nationalism, but my sense of betrayal by my country and its politicians is absolute.
This need never have happened. This is a choice made not just by yesterday's voters, but by our political class. It is a choice that comes with an immediate cause, David Cameron's attempt to stave off UKIP at the last election, but it is a longer-term choice that comes from blaming every political ill on a nebulous European demon while systematically failing to address real grievances and driving people to think that the political establishment didn't give a shit for them. This last is sadly true, the terrible thing is that decades of misinformation mean people have targeted the wrong political establishment. If I believed in hell, I'd say Cameron, Gove, Farage, Johnson et al should burn in it. Add in Jeremy Corbyn, too, for an atrocious inability to do any sort of convincing Remain campaign. Unfortunately they're all going to be all right. It's the rest of us who will get hell.
On an immediate economic level I'm all right. My holiday spending will be curtailed*, but my employment protection is strong. If house prices crash, I will even benefit. But the place that I hoped I lived, and for someone who grew up under Thatcherism it was always only a hope, never a belief, is utterly gone.
*I feel incredibly fucking stupid for not thinking last night "book your European holiday now, anywhere at all". I know that this is trivial, but it adds to the surreal element of the morning's feelings.
This need never have happened. This is a choice made not just by yesterday's voters, but by our political class. It is a choice that comes with an immediate cause, David Cameron's attempt to stave off UKIP at the last election, but it is a longer-term choice that comes from blaming every political ill on a nebulous European demon while systematically failing to address real grievances and driving people to think that the political establishment didn't give a shit for them. This last is sadly true, the terrible thing is that decades of misinformation mean people have targeted the wrong political establishment. If I believed in hell, I'd say Cameron, Gove, Farage, Johnson et al should burn in it. Add in Jeremy Corbyn, too, for an atrocious inability to do any sort of convincing Remain campaign. Unfortunately they're all going to be all right. It's the rest of us who will get hell.
On an immediate economic level I'm all right. My holiday spending will be curtailed*, but my employment protection is strong. If house prices crash, I will even benefit. But the place that I hoped I lived, and for someone who grew up under Thatcherism it was always only a hope, never a belief, is utterly gone.
*I feel incredibly fucking stupid for not thinking last night "book your European holiday now, anywhere at all". I know that this is trivial, but it adds to the surreal element of the morning's feelings.
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(no subject)
Date: 2016-06-24 05:16 pm (UTC)Does this mean Oxford's EU students now have to start paying overseas fees?
(no subject)
Date: 2016-06-24 08:31 pm (UTC)Who knows? Not the current bunch, and certainly not in 2016-17 for new starters then, but we've literally no idea beyond the fact that we'll almost certainly lose a big chunk of EU research funding. I was at a meeting this afternoon of dazed and despondent people at which emergency plans were talked about and they basically boiled down to "tell panicking people they don't have to leave (yet), but we really haven't a clue what is going to happen."
Rather annoyingly, I have learned today that I could have had Irish citizenship because Dad is definitely entitled to it through his grandfather, but he'd have had to register it before my birth for me to inherit and I suspect that he wasn't aware of it, either. C'est la vie!
(no subject)
Date: 2016-06-25 07:13 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-06-25 07:32 am (UTC)I can get the theory on why countries don't allow non-nationals to vote, but since nationality and qualification varies so much on where you are from and where you move to, and thus who can become a citizen, you'd think there could be some sort of arrangement whereby an EU citizen who had lived in country Y for X years could obtain the right to vote separate from nationality. It's fair and it's common sense - after all, one of the complaints about 'immigrants' is that they haven't the investment in the future of a place because they don't vote. Well let them!
Fortunately there already is a bilateral treaty with Ireland! Under the Common Travel Area, predating freedom of movement, and with an interesting and rather informal history because it's a successful case of everyone knowing that there is a major interest in expediency over the issue, UK and Irish citizens are entitled to live and vote in all elections anywhere in either country as if they were a citizen. Of course the fate of the CTA is now another question...