Why Do British People Think The EU Is Their Enemy?

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I don’t

I think partly because they don’t like people bringing their culture with them when they come over here to do the jobs they don’t do themselves.
There is an attitude of we are better than ‘them’ and they are taking all our social housing, school places and beds in hospitals and so on, even though the truth is that people from EU countries are net contributors to our economy.
Although the video gives many examples of ludicrous reporting people have not bothered to find out for themselves just how much many areas, such as Cornwall and Devon, have benefitted from the EU regional fund.
Maybe it is partly our own fault because there has never been any attempt to show people just how we do benefit from our membership.
It may also because we are an island nation.
There is a tradition of persecuting large groups of incomers, the Irish who came to work as labourers, the Pakistanis who came to work in our mills, the West Indians who came to do social care and drive our buses and now the Europeans who have come to do all the myriad jobs in horticulture, plumbing, social care etc that we desperately need and won’t do ourselves.
In a word it is ignorance.

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That wouldn’t explain why the Italians feel the same as us?

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No but the Corsicans do.
I did say may, islanders are notoriously insular!
Of course with Corsica and Italy it may have something to do with their criminal fraternities.

In Corsica it also has to do with bossy metropolitan Fr people coming to enforce speaking French, telling people what to do, changing ways of doing things.

Corsica exported a disproportionately huge number of people as fonctionnaires to the colonies and dom tom so I think foreigners per se aren’t a problem.

I say this as a person with a Corsican grandmother born in Cho Lón :wink: we still have land in Cargèse.

There’s a website dedicated to correcting these ‘euromyths’ (largely originating in the UK tabloid press) …
https://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/euromyths-a-z-index/
The scariest thing though is not the misinformation itself, but that ‘the EU’ seems to have come to play the same role in extreme right-wing thinking as ‘the jews’ etc did in the past; not just a scapegoat, nor even just a synecdoche for ‘foreigners’, but some kind of cipher for people’s own worst instincts and fears. We didn’t see the problem coming - indeed we treated it as a bit of a joke - precisely because the fear and hate didn’t seem to be directed towards a group of real people, but a distant and pretty abstract institution.

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Terrible. So the tabloids are running the show in UK, so much for democrazy.
With regard to ‘foreigners’ , in every country you have some degree xenophobia, but this is ridiculous. Deciding a country’s future on xenophobia. I have been (and still am) a foreigner in 4 countries and have personally not had any problems, it is astonishing, to say the least.

Thanks for the link!

If we are talking of exporting people then both Ireland and Scotland come into the same category and so probably have a broader outlook than most.

Yes and there are broadminded people in all 3 places, and some who are less so.

Quite so.

Do you think the French have a broader outlook? Many have not left the region they were born in,
You say why does the Uk not like the EU, I think many of the countries do not but their governments have taken them into it.
In the next few years I can see both Italy and Greece leaving, with the debts and forced lack of growth from Austerity by the EU they will crash out.

I think with all the nationalities in the Uk we are a very open society.

Many of my school friends still live close to where their parents lived in England and are married to local people. My two sisters have lived in the same county all their lives, one of them in the same town. Staying close to your roots is hardly confined to the French.

That’s true but we do tend to travel more.
In my village I think of if them are related, I chat to one old lady who tells me where all the family live or have lived.

I have lived within 3 miles in the UK all my life ( but spend when I can in France). I think British people are more inclined to move,although with housing prices being the way they are many graduates are coming home

…supported by 40 years of government collusion.

See Chris Grey’s excellent blog (http://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2018/05/forty-years-of-failed-political.html)

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I agree a lot of made up stories in the press plus you have the ones for the conservative and others for labour, so don’t get a balanced view.

I find the bbc very biased, one site on the internet which seems good is

Also don’t laugh but aljazira news on the Freesat is good, news stories from around the world, a lot you never see on Uk or French tv.

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You may find your answer if you read ‘the Daily Mail’ online …& or the Express…especially now as it looks as though Brexit is being betrayed…

Question time is worth a watch if you want to find out how ordinary people feel & which of the politicians have any credibility…

See Portillo on ‘This Week’ with Andrew Neil…(on now)…