Originally Posted by Lawless45
I hope we brexit.
The topic is an emotive one and those saying that so-called "emotional arguments" are invalid need a reality check, not least because without fail those remainers that are leveling such assertions are at the minimum comfortable, white collar folk who are forming all their opinions and conducting all their analyses in a hypothetical and intellectual vacuum. Some of those with emotional arguments have been directly affected by real-life consequences of some of the issues around which this referendum debate circulates and I would say their perspective is plenty valid (google the bob geldof/fishing boat/thames fiasco for a fine example).
If you live in a slice of middle England where everybody you are exposed to on a day-to-day basis is a white, professional, English-speaking, jovial face then your opinions on "the immigration issue" are idealist, hypothetical, academic and ultimately vacuous. You can say anything you want so long as it looks good and conforms to a few social, economic and philosophical norms. If the area you live in, the schools your children attend, the hospital you go to etc. are gradually filling with foreign nationals who do not speak the language, do not understand the culture, do not make any attempt to integrate into the local area or the country in general; who have vastly different social norms from you and your family, you might stop and re-evaluate, for "emotional" reasons. And would your opinion suddenly then become that of a heathen? Should we still embrace unbridled movement of people through an unregulated border because it is "always good for the economy" or, even worse, because to speak out against such a thing is automatically branded as racist? For those that think that the only folk that come here, come here to work for low wages and "do jobs Brits wouldn't do", your eyes would be opened.
The strain on our public services is tremendous, and is not being felt in real terms by the comfortable classes so much as it is by the lower, welfare, working and lower-middle classes.
My main gripe with the EU however, by a long shot, remains the fact that they are a foreign, un-elected group of clipboard-grabbing bureaucrats with absolute final say-so over our affairs. This simply cannot be good for our country or our people, there is no more blunt way of putting it. They will not have the best interests of this country at heart, or the people of this country, and will almost certainly not even have a vague notion of what such a thing might be. Instead, like some of the voices on this forum, their only motivation and interest will be the proliferation of big business, the wealthy class who are involved in it, keeping a healthy set of figures on an Excel spreadsheet, and even worse, the proliferation of the EU itself in the name of self-preservation at all costs.
By brexiting we are at least allowing a glimmer of hope that the most vague whiff of a democratic process that operates in our ham-fisted political system might one day allow for a government that puts the concerns of the community, the family, the working man and the country before or on an equal par with those of corrupt FTSE100 organisations and their ilk. By remaining, we are f***ed.