4 ms·

I'm amazed at reading British HNers who are presumably mostly rational calling Brexit "evil" and "racist" on this thread. I personally think Brexit is probably

I'm amazed at reading British HNers who are presumably mostly rational calling Brexit "evil" and "racist" on this thread. I personally think Brexit is probably an ill-advised move for the UK, but the feelings provoked here by leaving a historically recent trade and cultural union are far, far out of proportion with the deed itself. If anything actually destroys your country, it'll be the exaggerated emotional response shown by each of the two sides in this debate.

goodhacker 6y ago
The only sensible comment here
tpmx 6y ago
You're writing to people who have been fed The Guardian propaganda for years. It's now equivalent to Fox News in its levels of absurd toxicity. It used to be pretty damned good, just 10-15 years ago. I think the monetization rush made it go toxic/extremely one-sided. From the outside it looks like a series of A/B monetization experiments gone horribly wrong. They have essentially gone all in on writing pieces that resonate well with a particular demographic. No other kind of journalism seems to be interesting or relevant.
hndudette 6y ago
Just compare the economic growth per capita of Norway (not in EU) with Sweden (in EU). It's at best an exaggeration that leaving the EU is going to have a significant deleterious impact on the UK.
- monoideism 6y ago
  In the long run, it may not make much difference, but I suspect there will be an economically rough transition. But honestly, I’m not an economist and haven’t read a great deal about the projections. And many Brits will accept any difficulties in exchange for increased control over their own political destiny.
- smnrchrds 6y ago
  Norway is in EEA. For most (all?) economic purposes, being in EU, EEA, and Switzerland is equivalent. The same rules, procedures, responsibilities, and privileges apply whether the country is a member of EU or EEA.
  - rsynnott 6y ago
    Being in the EEA is somewhat worse than being in the EU; in particular, it's not in the customs union, so a lot of small businesses will not sell direct to Norway, and Norwegian SMEs are less likely to be direct exporters or to directly import their inputs. Being outside the customs union creates opportunities for middlemen, but otherwise isn't great for most people. Norway's arrangement is much more comprehensive than the UK's, though.
- TMWNN 6y ago
  >Just compare the economic growth per capita of Norway (not in EU) with Sweden (in EU). It's at best an exaggeration that leaving the EU is going to have a significant deleterious impact on the UK. It's not quite an equivalent comparison, though; Norway is essentially a Middle East petrostate relocated to the North Sea.
- HeadsUpHigh 6y ago
  Choosing the one European country that has vast amounts of oil and a very solid public investment strategy for it feels like a bad faith argument to me.
AndrewDucker 6y ago
Leaving a trade zone will cause issues. Removing free movement of people is the evil bit.
- monoideism 6y ago
  Really? So borders are evil now? Can you explain why you believe that? Do you think the global (not just European) nation-state paradigm is evil?
- atc 6y ago
  Why on earth is borders and democratic control of immigration "evil"?! HN is _such_ an echo chamber!
matthewmacleod 6y ago
Hello, rational British resident here. The thing is: five years of this process has worked to make me much more pissed off than I was. It might not have been clear from outside just how toxic this all was, and will have driven many of us away from our initial position of "this was merely a bad decision that we will work around". It’s not specifically about the mechanics of the EU membership or "leaving a historically recent trade union". There are rational arguments to support doing these things, and there are ways to do them while not being dicks about it. But the UK's internal political environment has crumbled along with this process. It's become bound up in a "culture war", and many of us reasonably feel that this is just one of the manifestations of a country which is taking a negative and inward-looking approach to situations where we'd much rather take a positive and internationalist one. It’s hard to maintain a dispassionate attitude sometimes when being deliberately provoked. So you’ll see people using the words “evil” and “racist” not to describe Brexit itself, but rather to some of the people it’s inseparable from. Although the campaign itself was explicitly racist, featuring cliché lies about an incoming horde of foreigners. Really grubby stuff that should shame the country, and it's getting worse. I've spent the past five years watching a succession of (primarily government) politicians lying to my fucking face about the great opportunities that await us. Repeatedly compounding a bad decision with completely unjustified rhetoric about it. What we could have seen was a sensible approach that appreciated that Brexit was a democratically-made decision and had to be respected, and then tried to build a national consensus about how best to deliver it. But we instead went for a take-no-prisoners approach and this has left many of us quite angry. Even just from a purely practical level, I'm pretty pissed about this. After years of nonsense the final outcome is that it's going to be much more of a pain in the arse to do a bunch of stuff I did that was easy before. I've lost a set of rights that I had, used, and valued, and gained nothing in return. I could even deal with that a bit better if I didn't have to be constantly lied to about how great it is. So yes. The country won't be destroyed – but it will be permanently weakened, and I think it's okay to be a bit emotionally invested in that.
- monoideism 6y ago
  > The country won't be destroyed – but it will be permanently weakened Oh, I don't know. Keep it up with the overheated rhetoric and I suspect you all will succeed. Just ask your neighbors in SE Europe, where I spent part of the 90s, what that looks like. And don't get me wrong, we're heading in the exact same direction here in the US. By the way, this got a fair number of upvotes, so I'm glad to see that at least a portion of HN agrees.

goodhacker 6y ago

The only sensible comment here

tpmx 6y ago

You're writing to people who have been fed The Guardian propaganda for years. It's now equivalent to Fox News in its levels of absurd toxicity. It used to be pretty damned good, just 10-15 years ago. I think the monetization rush made it go toxic/extremely one-sided. From the outside it looks like a series of A/B monetization experiments gone horribly wrong. They have essentially gone all in on writing pieces that resonate well with a particular demographic. No other kind of journalism seems to be interesting or relevant.

hndudette 6y ago

Just compare the economic growth per capita of Norway (not in EU) with Sweden (in EU). It's at best an exaggeration that leaving the EU is going to have a significant deleterious impact on the UK.

monoideism 6y ago
In the long run, it may not make much difference, but I suspect there will be an economically rough transition. But honestly, I’m not an economist and haven’t read a great deal about the projections. And many Brits will accept any difficulties in exchange for increased control over their own political destiny.
smnrchrds 6y ago
Norway is in EEA. For most (all?) economic purposes, being in EU, EEA, and Switzerland is equivalent. The same rules, procedures, responsibilities, and privileges apply whether the country is a member of EU or EEA.
- rsynnott 6y ago
  Being in the EEA is somewhat worse than being in the EU; in particular, it's not in the customs union, so a lot of small businesses will not sell direct to Norway, and Norwegian SMEs are less likely to be direct exporters or to directly import their inputs. Being outside the customs union creates opportunities for middlemen, but otherwise isn't great for most people. Norway's arrangement is much more comprehensive than the UK's, though.
TMWNN 6y ago
>Just compare the economic growth per capita of Norway (not in EU) with Sweden (in EU). It's at best an exaggeration that leaving the EU is going to have a significant deleterious impact on the UK. It's not quite an equivalent comparison, though; Norway is essentially a Middle East petrostate relocated to the North Sea.
HeadsUpHigh 6y ago
Choosing the one European country that has vast amounts of oil and a very solid public investment strategy for it feels like a bad faith argument to me.

AndrewDucker 6y ago

Leaving a trade zone will cause issues. Removing free movement of people is the evil bit.

monoideism 6y ago
Really? So borders are evil now? Can you explain why you believe that? Do you think the global (not just European) nation-state paradigm is evil?
atc 6y ago
Why on earth is borders and democratic control of immigration "evil"?! HN is _such_ an echo chamber!

matthewmacleod 6y ago

Hello, rational British resident here. The thing is: five years of this process has worked to make me much more pissed off than I was. It might not have been clear from outside just how toxic this all was, and will have driven many of us away from our initial position of "this was merely a bad decision that we will work around". It’s not specifically about the mechanics of the EU membership or "leaving a historically recent trade union". There are rational arguments to support doing these things, and there are ways to do them while not being dicks about it. But the UK's internal political environment has crumbled along with this process. It's become bound up in a "culture war", and many of us reasonably feel that this is just one of the manifestations of a country which is taking a negative and inward-looking approach to situations where we'd much rather take a positive and internationalist one. It’s hard to maintain a dispassionate attitude sometimes when being deliberately provoked. So you’ll see people using the words “evil” and “racist” not to describe Brexit itself, but rather to some of the people it’s inseparable from. Although the campaign itself was explicitly racist, featuring cliché lies about an incoming horde of foreigners. Really grubby stuff that should shame the country, and it's getting worse. I've spent the past five years watching a succession of (primarily government) politicians lying to my fucking face about the great opportunities that await us. Repeatedly compounding a bad decision with completely unjustified rhetoric about it. What we could have seen was a sensible approach that appreciated that Brexit was a democratically-made decision and had to be respected, and then tried to build a national consensus about how best to deliver it. But we instead went for a take-no-prisoners approach and this has left many of us quite angry. Even just from a purely practical level, I'm pretty pissed about this. After years of nonsense the final outcome is that it's going to be much more of a pain in the arse to do a bunch of stuff I did that was easy before. I've lost a set of rights that I had, used, and valued, and gained nothing in return. I could even deal with that a bit better if I didn't have to be constantly lied to about how great it is. So yes. The country won't be destroyed – but it will be permanently weakened, and I think it's okay to be a bit emotionally invested in that.

monoideism 6y ago
> The country won't be destroyed – but it will be permanently weakened Oh, I don't know. Keep it up with the overheated rhetoric and I suspect you all will succeed. Just ask your neighbors in SE Europe, where I spent part of the 90s, what that looks like. And don't get me wrong, we're heading in the exact same direction here in the US. By the way, this got a fair number of upvotes, so I'm glad to see that at least a portion of HN agrees.