> F. that, the only viable solution I see for my country is an exit from the EU
Genuine, not loaded question: and then what? What do you expect to happen?
Genuine, not loaded question: and then what? What do you expect to happen?
But hey, happy fishes and being able to flaunt that stylish passport on the massive customs queue
Maybe I should get myself a job in the continent and move there...
The UKs trade swagger is demonstrably worse without free access to the single market. Numerous academic studies have shown that long-term the UK will be worse off.
Trade is the big one.
There are a lot of ways Brexit could have been implemented. One extreme would be to make it so the UK has no special arrangements with the EU. It would be just another non-EU country, like say Mexico or Japan, that trades with the EU. Agreements and treaties would arise eventually to deal with issues as needed.
The opposite way would be to make it more like say Norway. Norway is not a member of the EU but is part of the Schengen area along with many EU countries greatly easing travel. It's part of the European Economic Area, easing trade.
Are politics in the UK stable enough that at the time of the vote one could predict which kind of Brexit would be implemented? I don't think anyone seriously thought that Brexit would be fast, so implementation would be years after the referendum.
I was a poor European who moved to the UK and I've seen first hand the problems that immigration of poor people can cause on crime (from drunks to petty theft to stabbing) and how much the locals dislike it.
I've seen the same happening in Italy and the situation nowadays is so bad I would be genuinely scared to live next to the train station in any major city in Italy.
I think a model based on skills is the best approach: if you want to move in you should be able to prove you're skilled and that we need you. Once you pass the checkboxes the process should also be much smoother than what it is right now, the typical bureaucratic nightmare.
I personally think we should decentralise power even more: country level is still too much. EU level is just ridiculous.
When the Government did do shitty things in the past we used to go out in the streets, we last did that 4-5 years ago. It helps that the main Government building is only two tram stations away from where I'm living and from where I'm writing this comment, so that helps. I wouldn't even know where in Bruxelles to protest against this, never mind that I'd have to take a plane to get to said protest.
Granted, laws like this one are mostly a clear pass-through for any party that holds power, mostly because the "liberal" middle-classes (the ones who usually go out to protest against a Government they don't like) basically support laws similar to this (unless instructed otherwise).
There are people though who do protest against this sort of stuff. I remember joining a protest against electronic IDs about 10 years ago (give or take), organised by a local religious organisation (I was and still am an atheist), which protest was of course derided by member of said "liberal" middle-classes with stuff like "look at these religious n.ts! they think they're going to have the number of the devil imprinted on a chip located inside of their brains" (I'm paraphrasing, but not by much).
Also, the only consistent movement (for lack of a better term) against electronic centralisation (including surveillance, of course) of most of our lives comes from the same religious and traditional fringes. If they will go out in the streets to protest against it, and they might, I'll most surely join them, while, I repeat, I wouldn't even know what European-wide movement to join in order to combat this, to say nothing of its effectiveness (by "joining" I mean physical presence, not only just an online petition thing).