E.U: Leave or Stay? Your thoughts.

Nexxo, our area is a small one, that is a part of our MP's constituency. The rest of the area outside ours that makes up her constituency dwarfs ours. I think if more of that constituency had been affected like ours, I'm certain she'd have lost her seat. Maybe there was an element of "I'm alright Jack..." at play in the other constituency areas. They haven't shared the experiences we have, they have no impetus to seek change.

The fact remains, there just weren't enough people in our community to make an impact come polling day. She knew that and used that fact.

Having said that though, if people didn't vote for her, then who would we have voted for? You mention Tory, so they are out. Who's that leave? We had the following choice:

Labour
Conservatives
Independent
The Yorkshire Party
Lib dem

So an independent who was a local laughing stock. The Yorkshire Party who wanted devolution of the region and were virtually unknowns. Labour and Tory..meh. Lib Dem, lying scroats. So who should we vote for Nexxo?

 

We had a choice of Tory/Labour/UKIP/Green....

 

The point is that you vote out the person who doesn't listen. And you keep doing that until they do. So no party can take you for granted.

But voting Leave? How is that going to help?

 

I know that, but you are making assumptions that those in my community voted the same way as they always did, Labour. What I'm saying is that on anecdotal evidence, that wasn't the case, there just weren't enough voters in my area to make a dent in the result. So it didn't matter how we voted, we'd still have ended up with the same MP because she had enough support from the other areas which made up her constituency. The areas she was happy to be seen for photo opps and the like. The areas where she knew she had strong support.

I never said it was going to help, I did say I knew why (at least some) had voted leave. I get why they did because I felt exactly the same as they did, that at least part of the problem was and is the Freedom of movement. I know you say that our government already has options open to it with which to deal with immigrants who are causing problems or break the law etc. but that was and is no solace. People WERE and ARE angry, scared and often confused with all the ******** from both sides. They had every right to be. The fact remains that those who did come here completely unwilling to live civilly and lawfully did so by the rights accorded to them by the FoM. What happened or happens after is retrospective to that fact. Some people saw that as the most pressing issue to them and voted accordingly.

Sure, that may have been naive or a bad decision but they were faced with a stark choice and little wiggle room. You cannot underestimate how desperate that situation is to be in. Rightly or wrongly, people saw leave as being the lesser of two evils. If the vote had been remain, then the FoM would have continued and our problems would have got worse. That's how some viewed it. I sat on the fence because I couldn't commit without a full understanding, which I didn't and still don't. How could I look at my kids in ten years time and say I voted leave/ remain and supported the mess the community they grew up in falling apart more than what it is. Whichever way it went, our community and many others like it are stuffed. It's easy casting judgement when you're sat in an ivory tower as my old ma says.

I've said I abstained from voting, I've said why I would have voted for leave but not said what stopped me. Well, I have a few reasons. One is my business does business with a German printing company, Whitewall. So obviously Brexit could make that more troublesome for me. Then another reason is I lived in Germany for a total of 8 years (2x 4 yr postings) as a child. I enjoy spending time in Europe, I want it to be hassle free and painless. I have kids, I want them to enjoy that too. I have no problems with anyone coming here to live and work as long as they respect our laws and don't make everyone else's lives hell. So I don't buy into the "immigrants taking our jobs" ********. I don't trust the EU but I can see some merits of membership. It still wasn't enough to make me vote though, either way.

 

Tbfh, if everything you've said is on the money about how your community conducted itself, and there's no other factors to consider, it sounds like your MP is on par with every other MP known to man.

IE: Useless, feckless, gimp.

 

This. Thisthisthisthis. I cannot stand this utter BS every single time it's brought up. It was the policies of Tories 3-4 decades ago that allowed situations like the financial crash to develop. Deregulation of the financial markets is directly responsible for the kind of shoddy dealings that led to the banks going pop. Personally I think Gordon Brown did a pretty damn stellar job during that period: he had all the personality and charisma of a housebrick, but he did a lot of work behind the scenes to soften the blow. The merger of HBOS & Lloyds was one of them; if it hadn't been for that, there's a very good chance that HBOS would have been (if not entirely then mostly) dragged down by the weight of its massive sub-prime market exposure.

The Tories haven't stopped capitalising on this narrative and have used it to justify almost every single financially repressive policy they've brought in over the last 8-9 years. When I look at what they've done to public services and this country's infrastructure - welfare support especially - it makes me so angry I cannot think straight.

 

I've given first hand accounts of efforts made by the community, as I was heavily involved in those efforts myself. However, I know you don't know me from Adam, you don't know my community and what happens here so I don't expect or ask you to take what I've posted as gospel by any measure. I respect that. She more than earned her title here, the absent MP! She was more concerned with feel good stories and photo opps than getting her hands dirty :-( The worst is we know she's going to continue winning until the hurt is shared more in her constituency, the hurt we felt and feel. So we're stuck with her. Short of her popping her clogs or retiring, we are stuffed!!

 

To be fair though, all parties are exactly the same once they get their foot in the door at N°. 10. It's easier to play the blame game than actually resolve outstanding issues. It's the exactly the same come election campaigns. This is exactly what is wrong with politics.

 

Always the case: MPs pander to the community that gives them good press, not difficult problems. The (BIG) challenge is to present a problem in a way that offers an opportunity for good press, and that is not easy.

You explained your point well, and I can see how it made some sort of sense to your community to vote against FoM in the hope that it would stop the problem getting worse, even though in the long run it will actually not change anything. The problem as always is that misuse of the rules by a few criminal dicks always ends up meaning that we can't have good things... There might have been an opportunity to band together with other areas suffering from the same problem and lobbying government, but of course that has challenges of its own, not least keeping out the BNP crazies from distorting the debate.

 

'I could not believe it. The Leopard swore he would only eat other people's faces. Don't get me wrong, I cheered when the Leopard ate other people's faces. It's just... I never imagined the leopard would eat MY face'

 

We did consider that, we even explored it with other areas but the problem was that the far right groups did get involved here. As soon as that happened we lost a lot of legitimacy. They weren't welcomed and the press coverage showed that but it was still damaging to what we were trying to achieve as a community. It set us back good and proper.

I, as the director of the social enterprise, received a lot of "offers of help" from far right groups when we first started out, offers of event security, some other crap and some were no more than veiled threats. They got told where to go and forcefully too! I hate what they done here, hate them and everything they "stand for". We also had every other nut job and group (far left, far right and everything in between but with an axe to grind) coming here to exploit the situation. I hate them all with equal measure.

 

Proportional Representation please.

 

No they didn't, they could have gone anywhere, Europe is a really big place and so is the UK so they could have gone anywhere, the fact is they either chose to move to your area or were forced to.

Was FoM an enabler, yes.
Was FoM responsible, no.

As an aside a group of people don't decide that they're going to act in an uncivil or unlawful manner, that's probably where the xenophobia accusations stem from, individuals act in an uncivil or unlawful manner. And speaking from personal experience when some polish men rented the house next door for 9-10 months last summer i found talking to just one of them about some rowdy (noisy drunken) behavior outside their front door late at night rather than addressing them as a group worked far better.

 

I pressed show ignored content as I guessed you were replying to me Corky. Well have you read any of my posts properly? We DID try talking to the Roma community. When I say talk, I do mean talk, without recrimination, without finger pointing and without shouting and rawping. We wanted to find some common ground on which we could work together. We WERE stonewalled. The council and police were stonewalled. So thanks for the advice, we figured that out ourselves 5 years ago though and it DIDN'T work.

Also I have said that I wasn't tarring all Roma with the same brush. Some are as fed up as us. However, not one has been prepared to put their head above the parapet and to start conversing with us, the police or the council. You or they can make excuses all you or they want but until we see that happen then there will always be tension and problems here. What exactly could we have done that we didn't?

One of the few initiatives that did have some limited success as far as I can remember was a charity based in Sheffield that done outreach work with teens hanging about on streets. They came into the area and were doing some good work, especially with the Roma kids. I've not seen the workers for a while though so I'm guessing they lost funding or it was a temporary project. I met with some of the charity management through the community meetings and briefings I attended.

We had a similar project running through the enterprise, taking families away for a camping and outdoor activity experience. We ran it with the support of our council's "Stronger Families" initiative. All involved on our end were volunteers, we took no payment for providing the project or taking on families. At times I had to sink some of my own money into the project to keep it afloat. We took families on to the project via referrals from the initiative. They failed to get just 1 Roma family on the project, despite serious efforts. We still got some stellar results but failed in one of our goals.

 

I didn't say you hadn't talked to the Roma community, i said a community doesn't act in an uncivil or unlawful manner, i said individuals do that. Ask yourself how you'd react if someone addressed you as a community instead of an individual, say like if your MP addressed her entire continuance instead individuals within it.

And i hate to tell you but IMO you are tarring all Roma with the same brush, yes you say some are as fed up as us but your treating them as the exception and not the rule. Hint: some = Used to refer to someone or something, Community: A group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common.

You don't like and probably don't respond well to your MP treating you as a group so why do you think other people would?

 

Oh I've no doubt. Labour did the same when they came to power... what was it... 22 years ago. They'd do the same again now - some of it rightly justified, some of it not.But not once have I seen Labour even try to throw this back in the Tories' faces - "The reason we're in this mess is because of the policies of your party, and now you want to use that as an excuse to gut the country!" I don't know, maybe it was deliberate to avoid being seen to blame it on the last guy. But the fact that this hypocrisy within the Tory party exists in the first place utterly infuriates me, and the fact that Labour are rolling over and taking it is even more galling.

Stop the ride, I want to get off now please.

 

In the sense that not one was prepared to get involved in all the efforts that were being made I am tarring them all with the same brush yes. Is that not factually correct? Or am I missing something? All it would have taken was for just one person to stand up and be prepared to engage. That would have been a start.

In the sense of Roma causing problems, I know some were fed up and weren't causing problems. I'm not going to argue over that with you because I know that to be true.

Listen Corky, I'm not going to argue with you any more. I'm not trying to play the victim here or anything else. I've posted everything I have honestly and as fully as I can. I've openly admitted I have shortcomings and I'm not scared of doing so either.

I don't need or want to keep having to justify myself or what I or my community has done or said or get into conflated arguments over it. I can sleep at night knowing I tried my hardest, despite everything that was and is happening. I didn't sit at a computer picking apart someone's efforts either. I got up off my arse and got cracking. I'd most likely do it all over again, if I thought it would work, but it won't. Keep apportioning blame, keep making excuses but the fact remains that the Roma community is insular, will remain insular and all efforts to break that thus far have failed.

 

@Corky42 A distinction between group and community often isn't simply though, especially when it comes to immigrants and the tendency of some among them to segregate themselves (even from other immigrants)...
Look at big cities where you'll find things like for example Chinatown, where exactly are you going to draw the line between a loosely organized community and a more closely organized group?
And to what extent do such gatherings encourage an us vs them mentality, discourage integration etc?
And further down the line does it promote a location as a target location for future migrants? i.e. "all of migrant group 1 going to country a while all of migrant group 2 go to country b"
And how do you tie the whole thing together with FOM, the UK technically being outside the Schengen area any way, plus regional inequalities etc...

And then of course we'd also have to open the can of worms about what the purpose of a nation even is any more, how the concepts of nationalism, patriotism all that stuff can fit in with nation states that are far bigger than any one community or culture... what exactly can one expect from migrants and so on (You know how the argument by certain people goes, if the people in Wales want to speak Welsh rather than integrate into UK society that is preserving their culture, but if some migrant speaks lets say Turkish they then try to twist it to portray it as bad) and then we start having to get into the whole racism thing and...
I could keep going, but the rabbit hole ain't got no bottom.

 

You expect them to get involved in something that by its very nature sets them apart as not being part of the community? Put it this way...back in the days of Windrush would you expect Caribbeans to turn up to a meeting setup by the community they've just moved into?

Can't you see how treating them as a group instantly says you (not you personally) see them as not being the same as 'us', that they're different, and that the community they've just moved into don't see them as equals.

If 100 people from your town moved to the same place in Spain and the people from the town you moved to organised a community meeting and invited you all how would that make you feel? Would it make you feel welcome, would it make you feel part of the community you've just moved into? Or would it make you feel like your being singled out, that your a problem that needs to be dealt with.

You're the one who seems to always be arguing, i can understand why to some extent but it really doesn't help matters that you seem to get angry at anyone who doesn't share your viewpoint, that you seem to see everything as them verses us instead of seeing the individual and trying to connect with them on a personal level so you can share opinions while appreciating what makes them different without judging them.

This is exactly what i mean, all you seem to know it attack, attack, attack as IMO I've said nothing that warrants such a reaction, I've not asked for justification from you or your community, I've not said you haven't tried your hardest, I've not been picking apart anything you've said, or any of the other vitriolic attack you've made against myself.

All I'm trying to do is explain why IMO what you've tried so far hasn't worked, if you didn't want people to give their opinion on your situation then sharing it in a public forum may not have been the best idea, and the same goes for getting a response that you may not agree with. As the saying goes if you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen.

@Anfield, I didn't say it was easy or even always possible, what i was tying to explain to Stuartpb is that if you treat people as a group then that's how they'll react, that instead of developing some sort of relationship between one individual and another you pit one group against another, that you automatically give the impression that the group is under attack and they'll likely respond in kind.

Thought experiment: If two tribes keep meeting each other in a jungle a few thousand years ago what do you think the result would be?

Now if one person from each tribe keep meeting each other what would be the result?

Does the former or later have a greater chance of going to war?

 

I don't think that Blair was wrong not to restrict FoM when Bulgaria and Romania joined the EU, in that as a whole the economy benefited from the increased supply of labour. However it was a fatal mistake to choose not to talk about it and just dismiss any objections as being just being from "a sort of bigoted woman" (or man, obviously).

To me it was symptomatic of the general approach to the "European project", that it was best that the lower orders were best off not trying to understand such a higher purpose and shouldn't be allowed to interfere. Of course it allows you to move on faster, but sooner or later the masses are going to get in your way.

Now we have Brexit, which can be dismissed as solving the British problem by allowing the EU to move closer as faster, but I think there's a danger of far more harmful events in the future. The far right and left parties in many European countries are far more sinister that the golf-club bores of UKIP and have far more electoral support. Centrist coalitions can keep them out of power in many places, but that just feeds them support as the only alternative to status quo is the loonies, which has happened in Italy with 5 Star and the League.

Political leaders need to lead, to explain why they want to make whatever choices they thing they need to make and to talk to their electorate as a whole, not to their own supporters. I think they underestimate their electorates' ability to take on a decent proposition made honestly and see them as just blocks of votes who can be expected to line up with in a predictable way.