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Brexit

Apr 23, 2018Canadian, Female, Life&Food, Scottish, World News

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Preparation
CONSIDER

What is more important, cooperation or independence?

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Transcript

Charlotte Alderdice: And then Brexit happened. So I think some people are a bit like, “What?”

José Cruz: “What the?” Well Brexit, the whole Brexit result was an incredible shock. (Mm) And, where do you think this is going to go now, because there must still be some- I don’t want to say resentment, but still some really interesting feelings now that Brexit-(Yeah) Or Brexit maybe won’t happen. Or maybe Brexit is going to be all screwed up, (Yes) and maybe- What is Scotland thinking?

Charlotte: It’s all very up in the air. Ahh, in all honesty I don’t know, but if you looked at the election results for Brexit, (Mm-hmm) Scotland was almost block (Right) “Remain” in the EU.

José: Yeah right, that’s what I saw. I go, woah!

Charlotte: Um that that’s part of the reason why I was you know a bit pro-independence, because it does feel like, you know, Scotland can block vote one decision and it can still be ignored because elsewhere in the (Mm-hmm) UK- um and you know, I appreciate that’s it more people but it’s more people in a concentrated area (Mm-hmm) um which doesn’t necessarily you know affect them, but it affects us differently (Right) Um so it’s it’s kind of a sticky situation, and I think also a lot of young people were very angry about Brexit because a lot of younger people, not all of them, obviously, but um a lot of younger people voted to remain in the EU (Mmm) because we’ve grown up in the EU (As as Europeans) Yeah and you know it sort of feels like part of our identity. You know were in the continent of Europe, so were in the EU. Um it- it kind of- it makes sense. Um and you know there’s so many perks to it as well, you know you can travel and trade and…

José: I don’t- I really- don’t really get the um, the anti-EU arguments but my friend told me, uh because he’s British and he was- we were talking about it, a lot of the anti-EU vote was basically anti immigration.

Charlotte: I think so. I think so. It was.

José: There’s two things. It’s interesting that you were saying about how Scotland is better governed by uh, Scotland, duh. Uh and it’s- London just doesn’t get Scotland. And in the same way a lot of, uh especially English people were saying, “you Europeans just don’t understand Britain, especially us English”, and England is, or Britain is better governed by the British, so it’s the same argument. Uh but a lot of it too wasn’t just that, it wasn’t about laws that- at least to some people didn’t make sense, But in- You look at it closely it does make sense. It’s about health and it’s about standardization. But a lot of it was just the fact that, “who are all these (I don’t know, what) um Greeks Turks. What are all these Hungarians and these Albanians doing in my backyard?” (Mm) and that kind of fear of the other (Yeah) was really driving, and was being taken advantage of uh very very um you know in a very very dark way by the anti-EU forces: UKIP and Johnson, Boris Johnson and all the rest of them were just basically uh, drumming fear into people.

Charlotte: Yeah. I think that there is so much fear mongering uh going on at the moment and it just- it’s very annoying, because I think a lot of the people who did vote to leave the EU, they were of the older generation and you know not all of them, but a lot of them were, and a lot of these people are people who grew up not being in the EU, so that’s sort of like, “oh yeah, back in my day you know it wa- it was so good” and they have this idyllic view of how it used to be and it sort of you know a lot of people of older generations do find it, and I totally understand that it’s very difficult to sort of move on as people change and culture changes, um but I don’t think it’s beneficial (Yeah) to sort of be stuck in the past like that and cling to, to old ideas.

Consolidation
DISCUSSION

Do you think a country should welcome immigration?

Do you think it was a good idea for Britain to leave the EU?

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Speakers

SpeakerBlurb Charlotte Alderdice Image

Charlotte Alderdice

Scottish

Northeast Scotland

José Domingo Cruz image

José Domingo Cruz

Canadian

Vancouver, British Columbia


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