The Brexit referendum thread: potential consequences for GB, EU and the Brits in CH

[fatmanfilms]

	Quote:	Jim2007
	It might have been a great time for you, but it was most definitely not a great time for most you people. Try coming from a farming or mining background in the 80s and see what fun it was not.

Are we talking about the same miners that kept going on strike? Regular power cuts.

Like typewriter engineers, some business's become irrelevant over time.
EU Health & safety laws would have killed the mining towns, it was just a matter of time.

[fatmanfilms]

	Quote:
	So luck was indeed involved, then. It all depends on your circumstances. If you were single and able to move around then, yes, perhaps things were easier, as they probably are today. Not much change. The acid test is when you have a family and are much more rooted to a spot. Yes, you could move somewhere to a new job but it's much harder when you are established with a growing family. Your view of the past is just your own, though. If you were comfortably well off with property in a booming area then cool, you're entitled to enjoy your humble brag. You don't have to be a "higher educated intellectual" to understand that it would have been different for everyone at that time. Same as it is today.

It's not luck but CHOICE.
If you start a family, before you can really afford to, thats YOUR choice, it's not an acid test at all.

	Quote:	fatmanfilms
	It's not luck but CHOICE. If you start a family, before you can really afford to, thats YOUR choice, it's not an acid test at all.

It's probably not your CHOICE if you have made all the right preparations, can afford a family, and life goes and throws you a curve ball.

Redundancy
Illness
Death of partner
Plummeting property price
Add to the list as you see fit

None of that is choice. It's easy to be smug and naive when all your cards have played out and you are calling it CHOICE but luck can change overnight.

[fatmanfilms]

	Quote:
	It's probably not your CHOICE if you have made all the right preparations, can afford a family, and life goes and throws you a curve ball. Redundancy Illness Death of partner Plummeting property price Add to the list as you see fit None of that is choice. It's easy to be smug and naive when all your cards have played out and you are calling it CHOICE but luck can change overnight.

I have experienced 3 out of 4. As I child I was unable to walk due to Perthes disease & born with an eye that hardly worked, then add Dyslexia, so to say all my cards played out is incorrect, I just did the best I could with what I had.

If you want to achieve something, it's easier what would prevent you doing so, spending above your means will likely curtail any dreams. As I said it's a choice & down to how much risk you will take at any time in your life. Leaving School at 16 was a risk, I chose to take it, my brother had just got a scholarship to Cambridge. As it happened he did way better than me, had 4 Children & retired in his early 40's. He has at least 5 degrees now, having been a Don at Cambridge in his early career. So I guess not all teachers are failures

	Quote:	fatmanfilms
	Was Britain better 35 years ago, I would say resoundingly YES for someone who still can hardly read & write. For the higher educated intellectuals in this thread the answer would appear to be NO, which seems very sad to me.

Why? There's more choice today. You focus relentlessly on your perceived divide around formal education. Today there are more ways accepted ways of learning - and indeed support for that learning, things that were clearly distressingly absent when you were enduring school until you could get the hell out at 16. Mind you, dyslexia was not really well supported in the mainstream until the late 90s early 00s, if my brother's experiences are used as a yardstick.

Tangent. Feel free to ignore:

You are very very far from being functionally illiterate - someone who can "hardly" read or write. Dyslexia has little to do with intellect or ability or understanding and application of grammar etc and you of all people should know that. Thinking differently, particularly in creative endeavours is often an advantage. Obviously if coupled with a lower CAT (loosely speaking, an IQ level) score, that can be a different thing entirely. You had a shitty time at school largely because it was the 70s/80s where different learning needs were often ignored/ viewed as the child being disruptive. You keep playing that card, and I wonder why.
Rhetorical qu, btw.

On a serious note, changing font to something like the much-derided but very useful ComicSans and making the background of printed texts anything other than white (pale yellow or blue shades are popular) might be a game changer.

Tangent off.

Higher/tertiary education does not necessarily equal boffin. It does tend to show a certain graft element, but it can also show that you're from the "right" economic/social background to be able to do an Art History degree without your grandad turning in his flat cap and therefore can afford to intern for free rather than having to work two part time jobs while studying. But, as with all things, ymmv.

	Quote:	fatmanfilms
	I have experienced 3 out of 4. As I child I was unable to walk due to Perthes disease & born with an eye that hardly worked, so to say all my cards played out is incorrect, I just did the best I could with what I had. If you want to achieve something, it's easier what would prevent you doing so, spending above your means will likely curtail any dreams. As I said it's a choice & down to how much risk you will take at any time in your life. Leaving School at 16 was a risk, I chose to take it, my brother had just got a scholarship to Cambridge. As it happened he did way better than me, had 4 Children & retired in his early 40's. He has at least 5 degrees now, having been a Don at Cambridge in his early career. So I guess not all teachers are failures

So going back to Brexit - this is relevant how?

So far all we've heard from the Brexiters today is how wealthy they got in the 70s through (sorry!) what inescapably still sounds more like luck than good fortune, oh and the UK is in for a glut of cheap garlic.

Genuine question on this FMF. You seem to have implied earlier that at 21 in the early 80s you were earning over £250k, then you said you earned more than the purchase price of your flat (~£80k). You also said you made double what your dad was making - so let's say he was making between £40k-£150k when the average wage was about £7000, then it sounds like your family was doing pretty well, and you're not quite the down-and-out, pulled-me-up-by-me-own-bootstraps barrow boy you're making out.

[fatmanfilms]

	Quote:
	So going back to Brexit - this is relevant how? So far all we've heard from the Brexiters today is how wealthy they got in the 70s through (sorry!) what inescapably still sounds more like luck than good fortune, oh and the UK is in for a glut of cheap garlic.

In the 70's & 80's it was easy to leave home in your 20's, buy a home in London on 1 salary. That is an impossible & a fantasy dream for kids today. It's really laughable if you believe the UK is a better place to live today than 35 years ago.

	Quote:	fatmanfilms
	It's really laughable if you believe the UK is a better place to live today than 35 years ago.

Depends if you mean financially or socially I suppose. It's probably better today if you are a minority or gay. Or a football fan.

[marton]

	Quote:	fatmanfilms
	In the 70's & 80's it was easy to leave home in your 20's, buy a home in London on 1 salary. That is an impossible & a fantasy dream for kids today. It's really laughable if you believe the UK is a better place to live today than 35 years ago.

Well somebody is buying the homes, if they were not then the prices would soon collapse; market forces!

[lewton]

	Quote:	marton
	Google is your friend. But why do you think that is relevant?

Because you are showing a statistic from 2018 to show that not many EU citizens are moving to the UK now, and you use that to discredit what I wrote about the big EU immigration numbers between 2010 and 2015.

Do you have no shame?

	Quote:	fatmanfilms
	In the 70's & 80's it was easy to leave home in your 20's, buy a home in London on 1 salary. That is an impossible & a fantasy dream for kids today. It's really laughable if you believe the UK is a better place to live today than 35 years ago.

Still not conclusively down to the EU, though, is it?

Although the incumbent set of incompetents in government are delighted to have it to hand as a convenient excuse/deflection to palm off on the electorate.

Who knows what they'll blame it on once the EU has shut the door, but by then I guess it'll be someone else's problem and they'll have joined Dave on the beach.

[fatmanfilms]

	Quote:
	Genuine question on this FMF. You seem to have implied earlier that at 21 in the early 80s you were earning over £250k, then you said you earned more than the purchase price of your flat (~£80k). You also said you made double what your dad was making - so let's say he was making between £40k-£150k when the average wage was about £7000, then it sounds like your family was doing pretty well, and you're not quite the down-and-out, pulled-me-up-by-me-own-bootstraps barrow boy you're making out.

I purchased a flat for £40,000 which today is worth £985,000, Urs Max wrote "Adjusted for inflation since 1981 that's less than £250k." is where the £250k came from. My father was earning substantially less than 20K, I was earning more than £40k


Both your assumptions & Ur's assumptions were a long way from the mark.

	Quote:	fatmanfilms
	Are we talking about the same miners that kept going on strike? Regular power cuts. Like typewriter engineers, some business's become irrelevant over time. EU Health & safety laws would have killed the mining towns, it was just a matter of time.

Spoken like someone who doesn't really understand the impact... reaching down generations... of those closed mines.

Why did they strike? Was it to do with pay and conditions perhaps?

	Quote:
	I purchased a flat for £40,000 which today is worth £985,000

That's not what you wrote though, is it?

	Quote:
	The purchase price was £40,000 above the asking Price of £38,500, not the £250,000 speculated.

That means you paid £40,000 + £38,500 = £78,500 - this is pretty basic stuff.

	Quote:
	Both your assumptions & Ur's assumptions were a long way from the mark.

Hardly surprising when you can't keep your story straight.

[fatmanfilms]

	Quote:
	Spoken like someone who doesn't really understand the impact... reaching down generations... of those closed mines. Why did they strike? Was it to do with pay and conditions perhaps?

Please educate me on the alternatives, EU legislation was not going to allow such dangerous dirty work to continue.

	Quote:	fatmanfilms
	Please educate me on the alternatives, EU legislation was not going to allow such dangerous dirty work to continue.

Yeah, cos no EU countries mine coal, do they? Oh wait...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...oal_production

[fatmanfilms]

	Quote:
	That's not what you wrote though, is it? That means you paid £40,000 + £38,500 = £78,500 - this is pretty basic stuff. Hardly surprising when you can't keep your story straight.

I paid £40,000, £1500 above the asking price of £38,500. So I missed out a comma. Would anyone ever pay twice the asking price?

Wasn't it you that said I was illiterate a couple of days ago?

	Quote:
	That's not hugely surprising - this thread alone shows (presumably) millionaire retirees who can neither write decent English nor punctuate to save their lives. Takes all sorts, dunnit?

You could not make it up

[marton]

	Quote:	lewton
	Because you are showing a statistic from 2018 to show that not many EU citizens are moving to the UK now, and you use that to discredit what I wrote about the big EU immigration numbers between 2010 and 2015. Do you have no shame?

From your post wot I quoted in my answer

	Quote:
	Today Germany is practically begging people from Eastern Europe to move here,

How does "today" suddenly become "between 2010 and 2015"?

	Quote:
	I paid £40,000, £1500 above the asking price of £38,500. So I missed out a comma. Would anyone ever pay twice the asking price? Wasn't it you that said I was illiterate a couple of days ago?

And this is why learning punctuation is important.