Comment by agd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by agd | Hacker News Reader

The filter bubble/group think is incredible in this thread! You'd think people are fleeing the UK in droves and driven to despair all round based on some of the comments here.

In reality, none of the dire predictions for the economy have come to pass and people are getting on with their lives. None of my friends (all educated, well-off remain voters) are talking about leaving.

Some people in this thread still seem to be in denial about the situation and completely ignore the flaws of the EU. Yes there are costs of leaving, but there are also potential upsides. e.g. having a more interventionist national economic strategy while pursuing more international trade deals. And it's likely that any trade tariffs imposed by the EU will be more than offset by the currency depreciation we've seen since the referendum.

There are risks for the UK going forward but I'm more worried about the EU at the moment. If it doesn't reform, we'll continue to see rising extremism on the continent - look at Holland, Italy, France, Austria where extreme (and anti EU) parties all receive more votes than UKIP does in the UK.

The most immediate prediction of a big FX sell-off has come to pass - and it has already lowered living standards and will continue to do so for the next few years. (Those few hundred quid that I have left over at the end of the month suddenly aren't enough for a holiday in Lanzarote or a new Macbook anymore. Gotta learn to love holidays in Blackpool or Brighton...)

As to living in a filter bubble and "none of my friends are talking about leaving"... It doesn't even take our EU friends leaving to get a shortage of talent. Shortages will occur even if new EU talent stops coming - as is evident in areas like nursing where that sort of thing is tracked [1]. The NHS nurse/doctor shortage is bad and it will get worse and worse year by year due to Brexit.

[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/01/25/number-eu-nurs...

I'm friends with a couple CS professors at a Russel Group university, and they said that since last year the number of EU students applying for funded PhD positions went from hundreds to nearly zero this year - and several students who were going to start studying this year have pulled their applications, quoting brexit concerns. At our company we are trying to recruit for about 10-12 programming positions, and we had two programmers from EU who were deep into the recruitment process and they both resigned citing that they don't want to commit to living in the UK because of brexit.

The process is not even fully defined yet, and it's already scaring people away - but things like less PhD students won't be damaging until 3-4 years from now, and then everyone will blame whatever else but brexit. Things might not be going down the drain right now, but there's no way it will turn into anything positive for years.

I agree. I am in the UK as an EU national, and I am not worried about my residency situation. We have a moderate government who I am confident will not make rash decisions and I am intelligent enough not to equate Europe or European civilisation with something as political as the EU.

Kudos to the Brits for doing what they think is best for them (if only the Greek government did the same). Even after the gnashing of teeth and wailing in Brussels & Strasbourg has died down, the Brits will still remain European.

This is very true, in many respects (apart from the part about the government, but let's not touch that).

The Brits have always been, and will always be European. The difficulty is that lots of the integration that's happened over the past 50 years was predicated on the single market, and disentangling all of that in two years is a very difficult prospect. For instance, what happens to Open Skies? And what happens if Ryanair reduce services (which they may have to, if Open Skies goes away)?

Suddenly some of that stuff starts falling apart, and people are no longer casually exposed to difference, and the learnings that come from that.

And of course none of the young people have the right to live in the EU anymore, which kinda sucks for them.

I'd like to disagree. I work in advertising in London and about 50% of people I work with are from the EU. They're annoyed that they are being used as a bargaining chip for EU discussions. Many of my colleagues are already discussing / planning moving to Amsterdam, Berlin or Madrid. London is expensive enough to live in as it is, now no one feels welcome. And that's just advertising, then there's the NHS.

I don't really understand the 'bargaining chip statement'. The UK government has said publicly, privately, and repeatedly that it would like an agreement on EU citizens' rights ASAP and could do it before article 50. The EU rejected this. In addition, no EU country has unilaterally offered British citizens abroad rights. So the UK has not acted worse in this regard than any other EU country. And it has acted better than those that rejected a deal on this earlier than article 50 (i.e. Germany).

The current government shot down an amendment to the Brexit bill that would have guaranteed the rights of EU nationals currently in the UK. I don't think the onus is on the EU at this point to protect UK citizens. No discussions can be made until Article 50 has been triggered.

Also, you need to take anything the UK government says with a grain of salt. Once upon a time, what looked like a promise to invest 350M into the NHS after Brexit appeared to be nothing but a political ploy.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/sep/10/brexit-camp...

> I don't think the onus is on the EU at this point to protect UK citizens.

Why not? Why do people expect the UK to act unilaterally but not EU countries? It's a double-standard.

> Also, you need to take anything the UK government says with a grain of salt.

I do. None of the EU leaders (or foreign press) has contested the UK's accounting of this. i.e. the UK has tried to have this sorted before article 50, but elements of the EU said no.

> Why not? Why do people expect the UK to act unilaterally but not EU countries? It's a double-standard.

No, it is not a double standard. The UK is the one that will trigger unilaterally the Article 50 and they want the cake and eat it.

> None of the EU leaders (or foreign press) has contested the UK's accounting of this

Why they should? They are not the ones leaving the EU

Ok, look. I'm a Polish citizen living in the UK. I don't have any interest living anywhere else, this is my home, I don't like Poland, I don't want to move back there, I don't want to have anything to do with their government or their ideas.

I pay my taxes in the UK - hence, I want the UK government to guarantee my rights to stay here, to openly say that yes, my work here is appreciated and will be protected.

I do not agree with the sentiment that UK should wait until EU guarantees the same thing for UK citizens - because that's exactly what's turning me into a bargaining chip.

Either I am welcome here, or I am not - it cannot be a conditional thing.

My other concern is that the Polish government has repeatedly expressed hopes that all Poles would come back and work in their home country - so there is a real concern they will be dicks when it comes to offering rights to UK citizens, in hope that UK retaliates and doesn't give Poles in the UK rights to stay.

I totally understand. But there's also a british person living in Poland saying the complete opposite. I.e. don't guarantee them rights and leave me to the whims of the Polish government!

The government has to look after both groups.

Yes, and the way to do that is to not Brexit but that ship appears to have sailed.

Well, most of the dire economic predictions of Brexit would never pan out until Brexit actually happens anyway, so it's way too early to expect that. It's not like things were going to collapse immediately upon the result of the vote (although the drop in Sterling in the immediate aftermath was pretty impressive).

Yes, there are downsides to the EU, but the idea that we can do better by going it alone just seems absurd to me.

We will not know for a while yet but the sample size of this event is 0. We have no historical precedent to learn from.

What we do know is that the specific growth predictions from the government, thinktanks, Bank of England, and independent economists for the immediate aftermath of the referendum turned out to be completely wrong.

Many of my European friends have left or are thinking about leaving. For them the UK is a much less friendly place since the referendum and is seeming less and less like a place where they would want to raise a family.

I myself left a few years ago and Brexit has only solidified my decision to never return. Unlike most Britons in the EU who are being left in limbo, I am lucky enough to also hold an Irish passport.

Agreed. I don't even know any europeans talking about leaving.

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