Brexit

You'll always have shows to go and see. They won't have as many possible shows to be in, or they won't be paid as much. For a start.

Does anyone know or know,where to look to see the theatres or theatrical/arts festivals funded by the EU and by how much? 

I've had a quick search around and all I can find are mentions of individual projects such as a €199,920 (why not another €80?) grant for audio description in Wolverhampton or a €5m grant to help 38 unspecified arts organisations. It might be impossible to get a comprehensive list because organisations can get grants through many different channels, including direct applications. I tried checking with the Treasury to see if they have figures but the only figures I could find were totals for the public and private sectors, not breakdowns.

The only text we have in Shakespeare's hand, yet so relevant to our position some hundreds of years later. How well he knew us, even though he could never have imagined so.

From Sir Thomas More

"Imagine that you see the wretched strangers,
Their babies at their backs and their poor luggage,
Plodding to the ports and coasts for transportation,
And that you sit as kings in your desires,
Authority quite silent by your brawl,
And you in ruff of your opinions clothed;
What had you got? I’ll tell you: you had taught
How insolence and strong hand should prevail,
How order should be quelled; and by this pattern
Not one of you should live an aged man,
For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought,
With self same hand, self reasons, and self right,
Would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes
Would feed on one another….

....You’ll put down strangers
Kill them, cut their throats, possess their houses,
And lead the majesty of law in line, 
To slip him like a hound. Say now the king
Should so much come too short of your great trespass
As but to banish you, whether would you go?
What country, by the nature of your error,
Should give you harbour? go you to France or Flanders,
To any German province, to Spain or Portugal,
Nay, any where that not adheres to England,
Why, you must needs be strangers: would you be pleased
To find a nation of such barbarous temper,
That, breaking out in hideous violence,
Would not afford you an abode on earth,
Whet their detested knives against your throats,
Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God
Owed not nor made not you, nor that the claimants
Were not all appropriate to your comforts,
But chartered unto them, what would you think
To be thus used? this is the strangers case;
And this your mountainish inhumanity."

Try saying it, a stream of words with barely time to pause.

He was angry when he wrote this, no doubt.

Sounds familiar, we have a guy at work who voted leave because the EU might outlaw vaping.

I feel angry. You should too. I hope I’m not ruining this wonderful reasoned debate, but I really need to get this off my chest, and if this ends up too long (of course), too angry, too one-sided, too vitriolic, I don’t apologise, actually, I feel that after the last three months this needs to be said (albeit by someone smarter, more articulate, more informed and more influential than I – I apologise for my lack of political nous, but not my lack of moderation in my anger). This is no longer a Brexit issue, it’s not a Leave or Remain issue. It’s an issue about how ugly the country’s politics, press and rhetoric have gotten, how insincere and untruthful it is, and how dangerous that is.

I voted Remain, but I spent weeks contemplating Leave, waiting until I was fully confident in my decision before going to the ballot box. Had we left because, as Theatremonkey states, the EU is no longer a simple system of trading partners and hopefully we’ll return to the EEC, great!  Had we left because, as Matthew states, so much of EU policy is common sense we can implement outside, great!  Had we left because, as Steve’s dentist states, EU regulations place sometimes ludicrous limitations on sometimes reasonable technology and developments, great!

But did we? We’ve left because Boris wanted to lose but write on his Prime Ministerial CV: “Good enough public speaker to almost win an unwinnable campaign”. We’ve left because Cameron wanted to keep the coalition going, over-won that bet, then proved so hateful a figure that, for many people, this was a referendum on whether we like Cameron or not, and blimey do people not like Cameron. We’ve left because xenophobic politicians blamed immigrants for the crushed economic situation of the working class, and good and decent non-xenophobic people believed them.

I can believe anyone here who voted Leave did so after a considered appreciation of the facts, an understanding of the economics, and personal experience dealing with issues, but I can’t believe 52% of voters did so.  Headlines of mistruth with back-page corrections. Months of glorious promises broken the morning after. Expertise mocked and anti-intellectualism encouraged by Eton/Oxbridge graduates.  THAT won the election.  The campaign was twisted, manipulated, scapegoating and dangerous; my anger is not at Friday morning’s result but at Friday morning’s inevitable broken promises and multiple instabilities. I’m angry at the headline-makers, the promise-breakers, the Oxbridge graduates clambering over Cameron’s corpse to get to the throne. Leave or Remain, you should be too.

So we have to get angry, and I speak not to embittered Remainers but the lot of you. Don’t get angry at ‘old people’. Don’t get angry at ‘xenophobes’. Don’t get angry at all ‘Leavers’. I’ve read articles blaming all of those, wrongly.  It’s the source. Bad reasons swayed good people.  We must not blame good people.  We must hate the bad reasons.  We have to get angry at the politicians who flat-out lied to procure a victory, and the press with their own agendas. Leavers and Remainers all have to get angry at the Sun and the Mail and the headlines of lies, and at UKIP and at those buses, those posters and those lies.

So the conclusion I’m trying to limp towards is that the lot of us, Leave and Remain, must be angry not at the result, but at how it was gotten.  But this anger has an outlet: Murdoch and Letts and Farage and Johnson – anyone who publishes lies in their papers, anyone who promises lies in their policies, and our country which lets this run unregulated. I don’t know how we demand it, but we must demand a moderated, regulated press, and reasonable, honest politics – in law – before the next general election, otherwise the way the rhetoric is going, we’ll be in an ugly, untruthful place and the consequences, well, turn to history and it’s not hyperbolic to worry about you-know-what.

We need press regulations. We need political regulations. We need campaign lies to be illegal. We need national newspapers to be truthful. How we do this, I don’t know, but given the way this campaign made extremists of us all, has affected futures for present leadership, and pushed people to breaking point and people broke, we can’t have this happen again. However you voted, you have to demand this, and we have to demand this now.

P.S. On the news last night, a man was weeping with joy as he heard the result. “I’m 80, I won’t live long to see it, but I’ve finally got my country back”. Many people my age feel angry at him, an older voter cutting off possibilities for younger Remainers for tenuous reasons. And I was angry. Not angry at him. I felt sorry for him. I felt angry at the people who told him his country, our country, was gone, and who convinced him this was taking it back. If I believed the country I’d fought for belonged to Brussels, the NHS I rely on is being bled dry by the EU, and the jobs and houses my children and grandchildren relied on were taken away by immigrants, there’s only one way to vote. But now he’s got his country back – but he doesn’t. The promises made to him are proven untrue, he’s got no more influence today than he ever had, and the only person possibly with ‘his country’ back is Boris at best. I felt angry not because an 80-year-old man has placed restrictions on my 20-year-old life, but because an 80-year-old man did so out of passion misplaced and manipulated. I didn’t feel angry at him, I felt angry for him, angry on his behalf, sorry for him, and it’s that anger I feel everyone here – smart, well-read, politically conscious people, be you Leave or Remain – needs to feel. He was lied to. He must feel betrayed. He wasted his vote. We can’t let that happen again. We need to control these campaigns.

Nicholas, I couldn't have written this better myself. I have friends who did their own research, read academic papers, looked into constitutional matters, and chose to vote Leave. I have no argument with them. Last night on Newsnight there was a woman from Boston furious about how immigrants take all the jobs, take all the houses and spend all the NHS money. I have profound disagreements with this perspective, but in a way I can't blame her for it, because this is what politicians have been telling her for months and years, and it legitimises the language and the attitude.

There wasn't a proper debate this time round (and there were people on the Remain side using questionable "facts" as well I know) - and if we don't improve the level of political discourse in this country, you end up in a state where someone like Trump becomes electable.

And the ones who had the power to change the outcome, but sat back and did nothing. 

I know it will almost certainly fail. But I'd rather the band played on as our ship of state sinks, so I just signed the petition to trigger another referendum. The idea is that people who voted for Brexit will have had their eyes opened to all the lies by the time there is a second referendum, so may change their mind. 3 million have signed so far:

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/131215

As much as I am unhappy with the result, should we really have another referendum? If the 50% who voted leave aren't happy with that result, do they start a petition and have another referendum? Where does it stop?

The point of a referendum is that both sides supply the facts.

Then there is a vote for a once in a generation decision, a referendum is not about keeping having another one, until you get the result you wanted.

We all know that politicians and newspapers lie but there's no excuse for believing those lies when it's so easy to do our own research. Take the claim of £350m per week that could be spent on the NHS. It only took me a few minutes to find a paper from the House of Commons showing that once the abatement and the money we get back in grants are taken into consideration the actual figure is more like £110m. That still sounds a lot, until you divide it by the adult population and think of it as £2.10 per person per week, or until you compare it to the government's total expenditure of just over £14,000m per week. (Yes, our government spends £2b per calendar day.) Suddenly it looks less like we're being bled dry and more like small change.

Nearly everyone could have done this, and they should have done this. Nobody should take a vote-hungry politician's word for it. Hell, you shouldn't take my word for it. See for yourselves (pages 10 to 11), or go even deeper (paragraphs 32 to 37). With so much information available from the source politicians and newspapers shouldn't be able to get away with this.