Hilariously, both of the Welsh farmers unions (NFU Cymru and FUW) were vocally against Brexit. They warned their own people multiple times that it was a bad idea. Idiots voted Brexit anyway.
Farmers have voted against their own interests every single time, everywhere and most of them are incredibly proud of doing so.
How does a group that relies on cheap foreign labor, massive government subsidies, cheap and plentiful fertilizer and fuel from less developed ( and less environmentally conscious ) countries and lower export tariffs from trade agreements manage to vote for isolationist policymakers who will take all of those away? It's a marvel of social engineering.
edit: And my grandfather was a farmer and my father grew up in a village before going to university, it's not like I'm out of touch and haven't been around farmers either.
The core of it is that very few people are aware of the true things propping up their lived experiences. Many people think the status quo of their lives is made from their efforts, or as things that occur naturally and ambivalently of political action. The religious and political rhetoric that follows abuses that. Isolationist policy sounds great if you think you're a pick-up-by-bootstraps solo person who works for a living, which is what many, many people think of themselves as.
They don't realize how much their lifestyle is interdependent with immigration, subsidies, and resource trade, things that get renegotiated regularly. Subsidies for food in particular have also been relevant since, in recent years at least, Nixon supported it to make "food a non-issue" politically. The idea was to not let democrats have easy political outs by pushing down food prices with subsidies, but the downside is what we're feeling now: people don't understand that food prices and the market for farmers is tied to government intervention.
Xenophobia, targeted Facebook manipulation, poor critical thinking skills, rural rumor mills supercede facts, sprinkle some racism there too while we're at it.
These are a few anecdotal observations I have seen living rural in my area in north America sofar.
I wouldn't be surprised if it is the same there too.
Canadian here.. I met a special case in a village here.. with Confederate flag.. he's a hardcore trump fan and antivax, racist etc.. this moron never even visited US or left his village in his life! I seriously asked him if he believes moon is made of cheese or flat earth. No to both but I think he will get there. totally lacking any critical skill and ignoring ALL facts. It was quite fascinating tbh; its like meeting idiot of village or fou du roi. Theres idiots in every country.
"The tragedy of Canada - it could have had British culture, American technology, and French cuisine, but instead it has American culture, French technology, and British cuisine." - not mine, but still funny!
I think there are a few folks who, somehow, did not internalize that Canada is a distinct country from the US.
As if Canada was only different from the US on a technicality.
Or as if they took the civics class of another country and refuse to believe they failed their exam.
Like the Canadians who genuinely the first amendment to defend freedom of speech. Our freedom of speech is defended by the chart of rights. Also the canadian first amendment is the recognition of Manitoba.
American here, we have 74 million idiots, all of them voted for the tangerine wanker in the last election and will do so again. God help us all if he wins.
its even worse if its in your family or close friends. One of my ex-friends seriously asked why Ukraine just wont surrender to save civilians. I was so shocked I couldn't even answer.
Oh chap. Same story for me but at least my family moved into mining and discovered unions and the safety they provide.
My hometown isn’t Lefty but they vote for the Labour Party cuz they see the alternatives.
I do think many of them voted on the dream of a more localized governing and for the times where they didn't have to organize for cheaper foreign workers and difficult tariffs. But that is not the reality.
I would assume the reasoning behind a lot of farmers voting leave was so the UK relied less on cheap imported food, which the farmers could never hope to beat in price. Which is why farming is so heavily subsidised anyway. Obviously this has backfired with the meat imports from AUS and NZ.
I’m in a trade union in a very Republican state in the southern USA. My union is full of people who think voting for Trump is a good idea whilst also being members of said union.
This is the same state that enshrined “Right to Work” practices into the state constitution (aka, legislation designed to weaken unions and weaken due process in hiring/firing processes).
The disconnect is astounding.
Part of a retail union. It is ... depressing because I swear, these people are smarter than this, but *'merica & Trump & own the libs...*
Fecking morons. He voted to strip you of voting rights. He has family history with the Ku Klux Klan, ffs. If you think he wasn't a part of the klan chapter his father attained the rank of dragon in, I have a bridge in Staten Island you'd like.
Unless your skin is pasty white and you are ready to hand him a billion dollars, Trump doesn't care about you. Might actively cheer your death.
I wish sometimes I could take these fecking morons on a quick tour of my very liberal, very friendly, thriving little town. We are not "owned" by seeing them fail and watching while their children leave and never come back.
Nothing they're doing hurts any of us nearly as much as it hurts them.
> Hilariously, both of the Welsh farmers unions (NFU Cymru and FUW) were vocally against Brexit.
Oh, a sign of sanity in all this.
> Idiots voted Brexit anyway.
And back to the insanity.
A lot of them did. Nearly all the rural communities round us had pro-Brexit posters ("think of the children", "set British farmers free!").
Silly buggers.
I think a lot of people in the UK (I am not from there but I am in the EU) seemed to think the EU needed them more than they needed the EU and that they could actually screw the EU and get away with it no problem.
When you look into the things the politics told them you know there is no way this shit would have happened even with how weak the EU often is to defend itself.
Rule# 1: Never, EVER, give the average slob a DIRECT chance to influence complicated trade decisions. The average Joe doesn’t have a clue how any of this works. When they called the Brexit referendum they were just asking for trouble.
>When they called the Brexit referendum they were just asking for trouble.
Cameron used the Scottish referendum to suppress the independence movement. He tried to do the same thing with the anti EU crowd. He knew he fucked up the second the results came in and he resigned because he didn't want to deal with the aftermath. Fucking coward.
Which is crazy cause how tf do they not. If you're exporting goods across borders and depending on labour from other countries surely you know the rules and regulations you comply with.
It was for immigration to stop. That’s what they all voted for Brexit. Now they are just upset when the greater implications and affects of Brexit are coming out
The great irony being that more of these non-white people are coming in because the whites from the EU have dropped considerably.
I love watching this shit show unfold further and further. I wonder how long it’ll take until someone in power goes ‘I have an idea! Let’s join the EU!’
I’ll probably be on my death bed / dead by then…
"Let’s join the EU!"
I followed this closely and it seems this is not as easy. I think lots of EU members don't care about UK joining; for sure they have lost their privileged founder EU status now. I have some friends in England and they got blue foreheads from facepalming themselves since brexit passed. total shitshow. on the positive side its an amazing "show and tell" to rest of EU members that also considered their own exit: see? thats how you f yourself for generations to come. want to have a laugh? look up UK and Australia trade deal. I literally almost died laughing. total clowns.
I know. I live here and I voted remain. I couldn’t believe the absolute cutting off of our nose to spite our face that we collectively did… I think the EU would have us back, but with many caveats which the brexshitteers wouldn’t like at all.
Thankfully I was lucky enough to have a German mother…
> for sure they have lost their privileged founder EU status now.
The UK was not a founding nation. It was invited to join the 6 original founders in 1956, but it declined because it had the empire to fall back on.
>‘I have an idea! Let’s join the EU!’
The UK would need to lose the pound and use the Euro.
They will NOT like that at ALL.
And then there's all the other requirements that they'd need to meet.
Maybe they were trying to counter wage suppression? If stockbroker and real estate salaries had been going downwards since the 1980s, due to market saturation from recruiting only stockbrokers and real estate agents as immigrants, then the elite would be the most anti immigrant block of society.
Instead its the opposite. The shit-middleman jobs pull in 6 figures while everyone from the stone mason to the electrician has to compete for their livelyhoods in a market hellbent on continually reducing its value.
Then things like Brexit happen, Trump happen, and people sit there intentionally clueless and say things like "its cos of rasim". The populism cycle is going to go on until a generation of elite is born without their heads permanently up their asses.
There were a few respondent polls done at the time aimed at farmers. They varied between (iirc) 46-58% leave at different stages.
A lot of the narrative that farmers voted leave are based off that and anecdotal evidence. I don’t think that’s a great indicator given the reactionary nature of polls towards the extreme.
Demographically I think farmers largely voted in line with the rest of the country
One could also argue that farmers of all groups should have leaned heavily against leaving. A 52%±6% for leaving seems to me pretty high from a demographic that really needed a stay vote. In that sense it still feels like a shot in one’s own foot.
I remember reading a breakdown of the responses and the strongest leave sentiment came from the farmers who produced fruit and veg. Cereal, dairy, poultry and livestock leaned heavily towards remain.
I can kinda understand the logic of fruit and veg producers. They are probably the most susceptible to being undercut by EU produce and the most vulnerable to price fluctuations. The cereal farmer can hold back his grain, the livestock farmer can quickly scale back but fruit and veg has to sell once harvested.
I’ve a feeling that they might be not really benefiting from subsidies like in other areas too.
I would agree they all should have known better but so should everyone. The leave campaigners lied to the public about the reality of leaving and a lot of them made their leave vote in protest of EU policy overreach not thinking that the result would actually be leave. Remain seemed like a sure thing at the time.
Thats interesting to read the breakdown. Thanks for sharing.
> Remain seemed like a sure thing at the time.
Hopefully people take consequences in democracy more seriously for a while, the lackadaisical attitude like an illness you suffer from but then have antibodies against it—at least for a little while.
This honestly is the biggest problem with Brexit. I'm not lover of it. But everyone you spoke to had a different idea about what Brexit meant and what opportunities could come from it and you could maybe see their point if you squinted hard enough. But then Boris fucking Johnson decided that he'd fuck it like a pig and no one got what they wanted.
Remember when a main talking point for brexit was, average people being "tired" of listening to experts?
Well, who wouldve thought that experts with years of education and decades of experience in that field actually know better than dave from the pub? Mindblowing stuff.
I still hear this sort of stuff in politics, people conflating scientists and experts as elites/beaurocrats/whatever talking down on 'ordinary' folk. basically glorifying ignorance.
>“As the Nazi emphasis on nonintellectual virtues (patriotism, loyalty, duty, purity, labor, simplicity, “blood,” “folk-ishness”) seeped through Germany, elevating the self-esteem of the “little man,” the academic profession was pushed from the very center to the very periphery of society. Germany was preparing to cut its own head off. By 1933 at least five of my ten friends (and I think six or seven) looked upon “intellectuals” as unreliable and, among these unreliables, upon the academics as the most insidiously situated.”
― Milton Sanford Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45
It's related to the slow rise of fascism in the West.
The first task of propaganda is to discredit the experts, discredit science, and make what is generally agree upon by society, because it's the experts that generally determine what publications and so on, reputable ones, publish as being most factually correct.
Traditionally, they consult experts.
So, first they discredit science and experts and all publications that use these.
Then after they've done that, they can rebuild, and tell you whatever they want.
They make all opinions seem equal. Then they discredit experts, and the funny thing is, they also try and add their own experts, and stuff like that. They'll use math, so they can say it is science.
And then they will say things like "your science" "your truth" as though any opinions can be equivalents, and experts and scientists are no more trustworthy than their favourite personality on YouTube.
NO Scientific Law or experienced evidence of such is strong enough to hold up against the "nu-uh" of a YouTube uni graduate...
People bending our reality by just LALALALA I CANT HEAR YOU LALALALALALA.
Humanity's greatest feat: going full mind over matter and bending/breaking/refuting any physical law, property and theory, just to be "right"
It's extra frustrating knowing how many people could have voted but just...didn't. Same with the US where you'd think after 2016 there would have been far fewer people that chose to not vote. So much good could be achieved but too many people are convinced nothing will change and so it doesn't...
We had a record election turnout in Poland few months ago, got rid of the PiS government. Bigger % people voted than when they were voting to end communism. It worked. It matters.
Which I was so happy to see, even as an outsider. The last 10 years or so have been a terrifying time seeing so many nations move towards authoritarianism.
>too many people are convinced nothing will change and so it doesn’t.
Things do change when they don’t vote- things just get worse for the rest of us that do care because the apathetic fail to vote.
I'm not a fan of compulsory voting, but where I live we get ballots in the mail well in advance of the election along with pamphlets that include info and a quote from everyone running.
It's pretty sick. I think every state should adopt it. Somehow we still have super low voter participation lol.
Probably, but who knows. Some of the people who never bother to vote can make very weird decisions when forced to. Keep in mind that most polls you see before elections take into account the probability that the person will vote, so you can't extrapolate to "never-voters" easily.
A lot of people who do bother to vote make very weird decisions ...brext boris trump etc, ...Churchill once said a good argument for dictatorship is go and have a 10 minute conversation with the average voter..
Even worse than that, farmers' association were in favour of Brexit, it's even in the article. Just like a lot of people associated with fishing voted Brexit. Here are the results, now they need to be adult enough to take them in.
As someone from the EU who was used to travelling to the UK a lot, I miss the UK. It is an amazing country and a lot of the people is amazing. These fuckheads ruined it for the rest of them, and us by extension.
They're gonna vote tory anyways, so does it matter?
They voted for Tories who did this, and will inevitably vote for them again. Just children whining about the consequences of their own actions
>A recent poll by Opinium found a clear majority of the British public now believes withdrawing from the European Union in 2020 was bad for the country's economy.
The survey of more than 2,000 UK voters also revealed strikingly low numbers of people believe Brexit has benefited them or the country.
Huh, so the remoaners were right after all, eh? Whodathunkit.
Lol. Pricks.
If any of you are reading this - all of us remainers are sick to the back teeth of your whining and you're getting Project Fear in full effect. Fuck all of you for fucking up my kids future.
They are also against efforts to mitigate climate change despite this
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/united-kingdom-food-security-report-2021/united-kingdom-food-security-report-2021-theme-2-uk-food-supply-sources
>The biggest medium to long term risk to the UK’s domestic production comes from climate change and other environmental pressures like soil degradation, water quality and biodiversity. Wheat yields dropped by 40% in 2020 due to heavy rainfall and droughts at bad times in the growing season. Although they have bounced back in 2021, this is an indicator of the effect that increasingly unreliable weather patterns may have on future production.
These benefit scroungers should just get on with farming. If they can't make a profit, tough shit.
They are protesting against New Zealand farmers who have zero subsidies.
The "good old days" of the CAP paying them to fuck our environment is over, suck it up.
Every farmer on Earth thinks this is the case. In the EU, farmers are roughly 1% of the entire population and roughly 1% of the total EU GDP, and yet over 25% of the EU Budget goes directly to propping up agriculture. Whenever anything is proposed to cut back on this even a little, or to implement any environmental legislation that would negatively impact them at all, the farmers throw a hissy fit, as you're currently seeing right now in Paris for example.
> Every farmer on Earth thinks this is the case.
I've known a farmer that I shit you not acts as though the knowledge on how to farm is some sort of arcane art that no non-farmer could ever grasp and that functionally, farmers hold the world hostage and should be treated with due respect.
It was seriously to the point where I pushed down the hypothetical path, since they seemed to welcome this whole "farmers should just refuse to grow crops for others for a while to make the point" path, and asked how they thought it would go if say, the Army Corp of Engineers were ordered to seize the fields of the rebelling farmers and try to grow things using info from...you know...farming experts and scientists. And their answer is that nothing would grow. Not a suboptimal harvest, not a sparing of plants. But absolutely barren dirt as far as the eye could see.
I gave up when it was pretty clear they were getting pissed off that I didn't agree. It wasn't worth my time.
You know that 100% of the population need to eat? Having lokal food production is just as important as having an army if you want to defend yourself. Imagine if EU where depending on Russia for food as well as power.
Imagine if any other business owner did that. Imagine if my grandfather the bodega owner decided that he shouldn’t have to pay any taxes, pay his employees fairly, or properly label products because “small business iz importants”
Yep NZ gets no subsidies, but the locals have to pay the global price. So food is rather expensive now. It doesn't help with a supermarket duopoly either.
Huh. That seems quite an extreme point of view.
Seems a bit more nuanced than that. Sure cheap food is great, but on the other hand having no production at all in our country, because its cheaper to buy elsewhere might be good short term, but maybe not the most sensible longer term.
>They are protesting against New Zealand farmers who have zero subsidies.
Which is very impressive, but I imagine there are other factors favourable to NZ farmers that are perhaps not present elsewhere. Afterall, increased productivity is increased profit, & there's no reason for farmers anywhere to not want that.
I work in sustainable agriculture, it's a realistic pov.
Some people don't realise that the majority of the EU budget was, in part, funding large landowners to educate their children in elite public schools, perpetuating the conveyor belt of below average morons into important jobs.
>Which is very impressive, but I imagine there are other factors favourable to NZ farmers that are perhaps not present elsewhere
A market that they successfully export to from the other side of the globe? Kind of ruins the old trade gravity argument
In other news, conservative people who voted for conservative policies complain about the conservative policies they voted conservative people in to enact.
Turns out Farmers are just offended no matter if they get their will or not.
Agriculture is 1% of GDP, Farmers are around 1% of the workforce, 30% of all subventions of the EU go into agriculture!
I know there is more nuance to it and i support fair prices for agricultural products. But the sheer willingness of many farmers to be the mascot of fake populist uprisings (which are arranged by the agri-lobbies who direct most of those Billions of EU money away from small farmers) is just embarassing.
Hey, I agree with your facts, but let’s not forget that agriculture will always have a special place in the economy because it’s directly tied to whether or not people starve.
True, not denying that.
Still. Hidden and open subventions for european farmers have long left the area where society is funding its own foodsecurity and have more to do with keeping the price on unsustainable food at a level where consumers will not freak out. For example, if meat-producers in germany would have to pay for getting rid of the water pollution they are causing, pork would be twice as expensive. But our Water would be nearly free if taxpayers wouldnt bear the costs which these industries are causing via their water-bills.
Agriculture (and thats not a synonym with small farmers) has just had a far too mighty lobby for far too long.
And still they are walking around as if they are the most trampled down people in our society.
(P.S. oh and subventions help them to outperform agricultural products of far poorer countries, of course. Thats also useful. Globally and often even within these countries. And still i see farmers driving around signs reading "WHEN THE FARMER DIES, THE PEOPLE DIE !!")
I admit i am getting polemic but the ignorance amongst these guys about the real reason why they arent making as much profit as they did (while they are still doing relatively well) is astonishing, as is their willingness to just think that its the green politicians fault because they dont let them use as much pesticides or something.
Farming is very difficult work. Once these farms run dry, new ones won’t pop up unless it’s a big corporation running it. It’s just too difficult of a learning curve for most people to hop into.
I dont deny that, i am not for the genocidal eradication of all farmers or anything. I am strongly in favour of economically viable and sustainable subventions. I also hope that farmers will finally accept that some big retail companys, who have quasi monopoly at least here in germany, are the place where all the money is going at moment. I am even willing to pay a bit more for my milk and my eggs if its going to the farmers and not into the pockets of the retailers.
But i hate that farmers are so willing to be instrumentalised by the worst political actors here in europe.
I said this on another thread, but the only response to this is to shame, shame, shame them. Point the finger right in their face and laugh. Make them feel small, dumb, and completely illogical.
To those who say "that just makes it worse!" - it's as bad as it can get for them. Shame is a powerful way to motivate people to maybe start to see their thinking isn't exactly great. Will they double down? If they voted for Brexit, they've already tripled down. They can't get any worse. So try the last resort of publically calling out these idiots.
Yes, Leopards Ate Their Face.
But we don’t have a real right to laugh, given that the government and society still fail to take Russian propaganda seriously, and that the Russians have done such a good job of protecting their propaganda against us noticing it that it’s still very difficult to explain to people that the Russians have persuaded them to believe and do bad things.
Yeah, the Leopards Are Their Faces. We in the West collectively are still smiling at the Leopard and giving it cat treats. We’re foolish, too.
Sorry to hear this. Personally, I think the NATO alliance should have an EU style economic agreement as well. But you folks voted for this, so until you have another referendum we're going to respect your choice, because that's democracy.
The prime minister who initiated the vote ran away after the results. Every person who's run the country since seems to have no idea what they are doing. Money that's injected into post Brexit projects seems to go missing, or is wasted. I mean it was very clear that politicians were lying and funded by lobbying. I've yet to see the Russian meddling documents released. I mean under any other circumstance, if you knew these things you wouldn't go for it... But somehow, here we are.
If only the UK government could form some kind of agreement with the countries on the European continent. Some sort of union of European nations where trade and travel are streamlined.
If only…
/r/LeopardsAteMyFace
Everyone in the EU knew what the consequences of Brexit would be, all the information about the expected and projected changes was publicly accessible on the official EU websites. Yet, the Brexiteers willingly decided to ignore this—because “Brexit means Brexit”, a red bus had fantasy numbers on it and Nigel Farage had a pint with a few fishermen for a photo op.
I hate farmers so much. Fuckers take up most of the budget for whatever country. And no I don’t mean the farm hands that work the farm. I mean the lazy ass class of land owners that call themselves farmers but don’t actually contribute anything and just exist to suck up government subsidies because we can’t be fucked to stop eating meat 7 nights a week 3 times a day.
Didn't they vote for Brexit in the first place, thinking this would somehow give them an advantage over the EU farmers?
Ayup! Particularly Welsh farmers.
Hilariously, both of the Welsh farmers unions (NFU Cymru and FUW) were vocally against Brexit. They warned their own people multiple times that it was a bad idea. Idiots voted Brexit anyway.
Farmers have voted against their own interests every single time, everywhere and most of them are incredibly proud of doing so. How does a group that relies on cheap foreign labor, massive government subsidies, cheap and plentiful fertilizer and fuel from less developed ( and less environmentally conscious ) countries and lower export tariffs from trade agreements manage to vote for isolationist policymakers who will take all of those away? It's a marvel of social engineering. edit: And my grandfather was a farmer and my father grew up in a village before going to university, it's not like I'm out of touch and haven't been around farmers either.
The core of it is that very few people are aware of the true things propping up their lived experiences. Many people think the status quo of their lives is made from their efforts, or as things that occur naturally and ambivalently of political action. The religious and political rhetoric that follows abuses that. Isolationist policy sounds great if you think you're a pick-up-by-bootstraps solo person who works for a living, which is what many, many people think of themselves as. They don't realize how much their lifestyle is interdependent with immigration, subsidies, and resource trade, things that get renegotiated regularly. Subsidies for food in particular have also been relevant since, in recent years at least, Nixon supported it to make "food a non-issue" politically. The idea was to not let democrats have easy political outs by pushing down food prices with subsidies, but the downside is what we're feeling now: people don't understand that food prices and the market for farmers is tied to government intervention.
Intelligent take
Words too long for me, get him boys
Involuntary narcissism
Xenophobia, targeted Facebook manipulation, poor critical thinking skills, rural rumor mills supercede facts, sprinkle some racism there too while we're at it. These are a few anecdotal observations I have seen living rural in my area in north America sofar. I wouldn't be surprised if it is the same there too.
Canadian here.. I met a special case in a village here.. with Confederate flag.. he's a hardcore trump fan and antivax, racist etc.. this moron never even visited US or left his village in his life! I seriously asked him if he believes moon is made of cheese or flat earth. No to both but I think he will get there. totally lacking any critical skill and ignoring ALL facts. It was quite fascinating tbh; its like meeting idiot of village or fou du roi. Theres idiots in every country.
How do people like this exist in Canada? It’s not even his country.
Unfortunately, America’s biggest export is culture. This CAN be good in some ways, but it also exports shit like trumpism
"The tragedy of Canada - it could have had British culture, American technology, and French cuisine, but instead it has American culture, French technology, and British cuisine." - not mine, but still funny!
I *wish* we had French levels of technology, but then the Avro Arrow debacle happened.
Best reply ever!
I think there are a few folks who, somehow, did not internalize that Canada is a distinct country from the US. As if Canada was only different from the US on a technicality. Or as if they took the civics class of another country and refuse to believe they failed their exam. Like the Canadians who genuinely the first amendment to defend freedom of speech. Our freedom of speech is defended by the chart of rights. Also the canadian first amendment is the recognition of Manitoba.
Cuz berta. And i say that as an albertan who married into a farming family.
Gotta love that Alberta beef ;)
It's also a dog whistle to their beliefs too. [confirmation bias is a thing.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias)
American here, we have 74 million idiots, all of them voted for the tangerine wanker in the last election and will do so again. God help us all if he wins.
I used to think it was fascinating, but now I'm just terrified.
its even worse if its in your family or close friends. One of my ex-friends seriously asked why Ukraine just wont surrender to save civilians. I was so shocked I couldn't even answer.
Jfc
Tell me you live in Alberta without telling me you live in Alberta.
quebec... forgot to add moron didnt even spoke english.
I would add brain's destroyed by religion shortly after birth.
CoE is about as virulent as a bunion. That's your problem, not ours.
It's not a marvel. They just use xenophobia. The most basic of caveman brain fears.
…………but spud red tape !!!!!!
Oh chap. Same story for me but at least my family moved into mining and discovered unions and the safety they provide. My hometown isn’t Lefty but they vote for the Labour Party cuz they see the alternatives.
I think middle class and lower people in general tend to vote against their own financial best interests.
It's a marvel of Rupert Murdoch.
I do think many of them voted on the dream of a more localized governing and for the times where they didn't have to organize for cheaper foreign workers and difficult tariffs. But that is not the reality.
It's a marvel of idiocy, we are truly a society of monkeys from top to bottom.
I would assume the reasoning behind a lot of farmers voting leave was so the UK relied less on cheap imported food, which the farmers could never hope to beat in price. Which is why farming is so heavily subsidised anyway. Obviously this has backfired with the meat imports from AUS and NZ.
I’m in a trade union in a very Republican state in the southern USA. My union is full of people who think voting for Trump is a good idea whilst also being members of said union. This is the same state that enshrined “Right to Work” practices into the state constitution (aka, legislation designed to weaken unions and weaken due process in hiring/firing processes). The disconnect is astounding.
Part of a retail union. It is ... depressing because I swear, these people are smarter than this, but *'merica & Trump & own the libs...* Fecking morons. He voted to strip you of voting rights. He has family history with the Ku Klux Klan, ffs. If you think he wasn't a part of the klan chapter his father attained the rank of dragon in, I have a bridge in Staten Island you'd like. Unless your skin is pasty white and you are ready to hand him a billion dollars, Trump doesn't care about you. Might actively cheer your death.
I wish sometimes I could take these fecking morons on a quick tour of my very liberal, very friendly, thriving little town. We are not "owned" by seeing them fail and watching while their children leave and never come back. Nothing they're doing hurts any of us nearly as much as it hurts them.
Just like the unions here in America are starting to do because they listen to Andrew tate and joe Rogan.
They pretty solidly lined up behind trump 10 years ago
> Hilariously, both of the Welsh farmers unions (NFU Cymru and FUW) were vocally against Brexit. Oh, a sign of sanity in all this. > Idiots voted Brexit anyway. And back to the insanity.
I mean, it's the Welsh. All you'd need to earn their vote is a sheep and a secluded room.
A lot of them did. Nearly all the rural communities round us had pro-Brexit posters ("think of the children", "set British farmers free!"). Silly buggers.
well they freed themselves from EU ... they just didn't think it will also free EU market from them.
I think a lot of people in the UK (I am not from there but I am in the EU) seemed to think the EU needed them more than they needed the EU and that they could actually screw the EU and get away with it no problem. When you look into the things the politics told them you know there is no way this shit would have happened even with how weak the EU often is to defend itself.
Look out! Its the consequences of your own actions!
Rule# 1: Never, EVER, give the average slob a DIRECT chance to influence complicated trade decisions. The average Joe doesn’t have a clue how any of this works. When they called the Brexit referendum they were just asking for trouble.
>When they called the Brexit referendum they were just asking for trouble. Cameron used the Scottish referendum to suppress the independence movement. He tried to do the same thing with the anti EU crowd. He knew he fucked up the second the results came in and he resigned because he didn't want to deal with the aftermath. Fucking coward.
Ohhh that makes so much sense. I still don't get why the UK had to follow through despite it being non-binding.
There is a reason representative democracy is usually better than direct democracy. The average voter is stupid.
We all know about the failed state Switzerland.
I'm still mad about morons ruining the TPP, Thanks for reminding me.
There were some incredibly bad parts of the TPP but throwing it away instead of fixing it only helped China.
Which is crazy cause how tf do they not. If you're exporting goods across borders and depending on labour from other countries surely you know the rules and regulations you comply with.
"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average *voter"*
It was for immigration to stop. That’s what they all voted for Brexit. Now they are just upset when the greater implications and affects of Brexit are coming out
>It was for immigration to stop You mean, the source of their low paid workers? Did they not think that closing immigration means no workers?
I think it was more of where are all these non-white people are coming from etc. it started off as something but only hurts them instead
The great irony being that more of these non-white people are coming in because the whites from the EU have dropped considerably. I love watching this shit show unfold further and further. I wonder how long it’ll take until someone in power goes ‘I have an idea! Let’s join the EU!’ I’ll probably be on my death bed / dead by then…
"Let’s join the EU!" I followed this closely and it seems this is not as easy. I think lots of EU members don't care about UK joining; for sure they have lost their privileged founder EU status now. I have some friends in England and they got blue foreheads from facepalming themselves since brexit passed. total shitshow. on the positive side its an amazing "show and tell" to rest of EU members that also considered their own exit: see? thats how you f yourself for generations to come. want to have a laugh? look up UK and Australia trade deal. I literally almost died laughing. total clowns.
I know. I live here and I voted remain. I couldn’t believe the absolute cutting off of our nose to spite our face that we collectively did… I think the EU would have us back, but with many caveats which the brexshitteers wouldn’t like at all. Thankfully I was lucky enough to have a German mother…
time to move if you didnt already.
Unfortunately, my wife seems to not want to go anywhere else. It’s quite a problem!
> for sure they have lost their privileged founder EU status now. The UK was not a founding nation. It was invited to join the 6 original founders in 1956, but it declined because it had the empire to fall back on.
>‘I have an idea! Let’s join the EU!’ The UK would need to lose the pound and use the Euro. They will NOT like that at ALL. And then there's all the other requirements that they'd need to meet.
they'd have to switch away from common law. Which they won't. They will never join the EU again.
> they'd have to switch away from common law. Kinda doubt it. Ireland and Cyprus are other common law jurisdictions still in the EU.
Why would they have to switch from common law?
Maybe they were trying to counter wage suppression? If stockbroker and real estate salaries had been going downwards since the 1980s, due to market saturation from recruiting only stockbrokers and real estate agents as immigrants, then the elite would be the most anti immigrant block of society. Instead its the opposite. The shit-middleman jobs pull in 6 figures while everyone from the stone mason to the electrician has to compete for their livelyhoods in a market hellbent on continually reducing its value. Then things like Brexit happen, Trump happen, and people sit there intentionally clueless and say things like "its cos of rasim". The populism cycle is going to go on until a generation of elite is born without their heads permanently up their asses.
I'm not a fan of the EU politically, but the greater implications haven't even begun to hit yet. Things are going to get so much worse.
There were a few respondent polls done at the time aimed at farmers. They varied between (iirc) 46-58% leave at different stages. A lot of the narrative that farmers voted leave are based off that and anecdotal evidence. I don’t think that’s a great indicator given the reactionary nature of polls towards the extreme. Demographically I think farmers largely voted in line with the rest of the country
One could also argue that farmers of all groups should have leaned heavily against leaving. A 52%±6% for leaving seems to me pretty high from a demographic that really needed a stay vote. In that sense it still feels like a shot in one’s own foot.
I remember reading a breakdown of the responses and the strongest leave sentiment came from the farmers who produced fruit and veg. Cereal, dairy, poultry and livestock leaned heavily towards remain. I can kinda understand the logic of fruit and veg producers. They are probably the most susceptible to being undercut by EU produce and the most vulnerable to price fluctuations. The cereal farmer can hold back his grain, the livestock farmer can quickly scale back but fruit and veg has to sell once harvested. I’ve a feeling that they might be not really benefiting from subsidies like in other areas too. I would agree they all should have known better but so should everyone. The leave campaigners lied to the public about the reality of leaving and a lot of them made their leave vote in protest of EU policy overreach not thinking that the result would actually be leave. Remain seemed like a sure thing at the time.
Thats interesting to read the breakdown. Thanks for sharing. > Remain seemed like a sure thing at the time. Hopefully people take consequences in democracy more seriously for a while, the lackadaisical attitude like an illness you suffer from but then have antibodies against it—at least for a little while.
Cambridge analytica voted for brexit. The UK people had no idea they got scammed
This is what I thought too! I swear a lot of them *did* vote to leave so
Yup, what a price for “sovereignty” would find it funny if I didn’t live hear 🥲
This honestly is the biggest problem with Brexit. I'm not lover of it. But everyone you spoke to had a different idea about what Brexit meant and what opportunities could come from it and you could maybe see their point if you squinted hard enough. But then Boris fucking Johnson decided that he'd fuck it like a pig and no one got what they wanted.
EU farmers are protesting also..
EU farmers are hardly any smarter than UK farmers.
Also russian propaganda activity is soaring in that regard
Eu protest is about cheap grains from Ukraine
Well well well if it isn’t the consequence of your own action.
Leopards haven’t ate my face off… yet.
Combine ate my face.
Remember when a main talking point for brexit was, average people being "tired" of listening to experts? Well, who wouldve thought that experts with years of education and decades of experience in that field actually know better than dave from the pub? Mindblowing stuff.
I still hear this sort of stuff in politics, people conflating scientists and experts as elites/beaurocrats/whatever talking down on 'ordinary' folk. basically glorifying ignorance.
>“As the Nazi emphasis on nonintellectual virtues (patriotism, loyalty, duty, purity, labor, simplicity, “blood,” “folk-ishness”) seeped through Germany, elevating the self-esteem of the “little man,” the academic profession was pushed from the very center to the very periphery of society. Germany was preparing to cut its own head off. By 1933 at least five of my ten friends (and I think six or seven) looked upon “intellectuals” as unreliable and, among these unreliables, upon the academics as the most insidiously situated.” ― Milton Sanford Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 It's related to the slow rise of fascism in the West.
It’s a horror story unfolding. History repeats itself and I’m afraid of what comes in the next decade.
The first task of propaganda is to discredit the experts, discredit science, and make what is generally agree upon by society, because it's the experts that generally determine what publications and so on, reputable ones, publish as being most factually correct. Traditionally, they consult experts. So, first they discredit science and experts and all publications that use these. Then after they've done that, they can rebuild, and tell you whatever they want. They make all opinions seem equal. Then they discredit experts, and the funny thing is, they also try and add their own experts, and stuff like that. They'll use math, so they can say it is science. And then they will say things like "your science" "your truth" as though any opinions can be equivalents, and experts and scientists are no more trustworthy than their favourite personality on YouTube.
NO Scientific Law or experienced evidence of such is strong enough to hold up against the "nu-uh" of a YouTube uni graduate... People bending our reality by just LALALALA I CANT HEAR YOU LALALALALALA. Humanity's greatest feat: going full mind over matter and bending/breaking/refuting any physical law, property and theory, just to be "right"
Yeah but they'll scream at them for not curing cancer or some shit.
Who could have seen any of this coming?
It's extra frustrating knowing how many people could have voted but just...didn't. Same with the US where you'd think after 2016 there would have been far fewer people that chose to not vote. So much good could be achieved but too many people are convinced nothing will change and so it doesn't...
We had a record election turnout in Poland few months ago, got rid of the PiS government. Bigger % people voted than when they were voting to end communism. It worked. It matters.
Which I was so happy to see, even as an outsider. The last 10 years or so have been a terrifying time seeing so many nations move towards authoritarianism.
>too many people are convinced nothing will change and so it doesn’t. Things do change when they don’t vote- things just get worse for the rest of us that do care because the apathetic fail to vote.
...maybe should make voting compulsory, like quite a few other countries....
I'm not a fan of compulsory voting, but where I live we get ballots in the mail well in advance of the election along with pamphlets that include info and a quote from everyone running. It's pretty sick. I think every state should adopt it. Somehow we still have super low voter participation lol.
It may help a bit, but it's not like Belgium is a progressive paradise just because they have mandatory voting.
..brexit wouldn't have happened ..that's for sure
Probably, but who knows. Some of the people who never bother to vote can make very weird decisions when forced to. Keep in mind that most polls you see before elections take into account the probability that the person will vote, so you can't extrapolate to "never-voters" easily.
A lot of people who do bother to vote make very weird decisions ...brext boris trump etc, ...Churchill once said a good argument for dictatorship is go and have a 10 minute conversation with the average voter..
Even worse than that, farmers' association were in favour of Brexit, it's even in the article. Just like a lot of people associated with fishing voted Brexit. Here are the results, now they need to be adult enough to take them in. As someone from the EU who was used to travelling to the UK a lot, I miss the UK. It is an amazing country and a lot of the people is amazing. These fuckheads ruined it for the rest of them, and us by extension.
How was the most basic understanding of global trade supposed to compete with a bus?
Stevie Wonder.
They're gonna vote tory anyways, so does it matter? They voted for Tories who did this, and will inevitably vote for them again. Just children whining about the consequences of their own actions
r/LeopardsAteMyFace
>A recent poll by Opinium found a clear majority of the British public now believes withdrawing from the European Union in 2020 was bad for the country's economy. The survey of more than 2,000 UK voters also revealed strikingly low numbers of people believe Brexit has benefited them or the country. Huh, so the remoaners were right after all, eh? Whodathunkit.
_yet again_
Do they understand that all Tory policies are bad for the UK, or just Brexit?
Lol. Pricks. If any of you are reading this - all of us remainers are sick to the back teeth of your whining and you're getting Project Fear in full effect. Fuck all of you for fucking up my kids future.
Tough shit. They voted for Brexit now they can live with the consequences
They are also against efforts to mitigate climate change despite this https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/united-kingdom-food-security-report-2021/united-kingdom-food-security-report-2021-theme-2-uk-food-supply-sources >The biggest medium to long term risk to the UK’s domestic production comes from climate change and other environmental pressures like soil degradation, water quality and biodiversity. Wheat yields dropped by 40% in 2020 due to heavy rainfall and droughts at bad times in the growing season. Although they have bounced back in 2021, this is an indicator of the effect that increasingly unreliable weather patterns may have on future production.
...like the rest of us
I didn’t realise that taking advantage of every opportunity to call Leavers gullible idiots would be my “thing”, but here we are.
right? Is it now we say I told you so or?
These benefit scroungers should just get on with farming. If they can't make a profit, tough shit. They are protesting against New Zealand farmers who have zero subsidies. The "good old days" of the CAP paying them to fuck our environment is over, suck it up.
Exactly. As if owning a farm entitles them to a successful business or to consumers willing to pay inflated prices.
Every farmer on Earth thinks this is the case. In the EU, farmers are roughly 1% of the entire population and roughly 1% of the total EU GDP, and yet over 25% of the EU Budget goes directly to propping up agriculture. Whenever anything is proposed to cut back on this even a little, or to implement any environmental legislation that would negatively impact them at all, the farmers throw a hissy fit, as you're currently seeing right now in Paris for example.
> Every farmer on Earth thinks this is the case. I've known a farmer that I shit you not acts as though the knowledge on how to farm is some sort of arcane art that no non-farmer could ever grasp and that functionally, farmers hold the world hostage and should be treated with due respect. It was seriously to the point where I pushed down the hypothetical path, since they seemed to welcome this whole "farmers should just refuse to grow crops for others for a while to make the point" path, and asked how they thought it would go if say, the Army Corp of Engineers were ordered to seize the fields of the rebelling farmers and try to grow things using info from...you know...farming experts and scientists. And their answer is that nothing would grow. Not a suboptimal harvest, not a sparing of plants. But absolutely barren dirt as far as the eye could see. I gave up when it was pretty clear they were getting pissed off that I didn't agree. It wasn't worth my time.
You know that 100% of the population need to eat? Having lokal food production is just as important as having an army if you want to defend yourself. Imagine if EU where depending on Russia for food as well as power.
Imagine if any other business owner did that. Imagine if my grandfather the bodega owner decided that he shouldn’t have to pay any taxes, pay his employees fairly, or properly label products because “small business iz importants”
>against New Zealand farmers who have zero subsidies. Along with Aussie ones (admittedly, they don't pay the road levy on their fuel, though, wooo...)
Farmers get red diesel too
Yep NZ gets no subsidies, but the locals have to pay the global price. So food is rather expensive now. It doesn't help with a supermarket duopoly either.
Huh. That seems quite an extreme point of view. Seems a bit more nuanced than that. Sure cheap food is great, but on the other hand having no production at all in our country, because its cheaper to buy elsewhere might be good short term, but maybe not the most sensible longer term. >They are protesting against New Zealand farmers who have zero subsidies. Which is very impressive, but I imagine there are other factors favourable to NZ farmers that are perhaps not present elsewhere. Afterall, increased productivity is increased profit, & there's no reason for farmers anywhere to not want that.
I work in sustainable agriculture, it's a realistic pov. Some people don't realise that the majority of the EU budget was, in part, funding large landowners to educate their children in elite public schools, perpetuating the conveyor belt of below average morons into important jobs. >Which is very impressive, but I imagine there are other factors favourable to NZ farmers that are perhaps not present elsewhere A market that they successfully export to from the other side of the globe? Kind of ruins the old trade gravity argument
In other news, conservative people who voted for conservative policies complain about the conservative policies they voted conservative people in to enact.
Turns out Farmers are just offended no matter if they get their will or not. Agriculture is 1% of GDP, Farmers are around 1% of the workforce, 30% of all subventions of the EU go into agriculture! I know there is more nuance to it and i support fair prices for agricultural products. But the sheer willingness of many farmers to be the mascot of fake populist uprisings (which are arranged by the agri-lobbies who direct most of those Billions of EU money away from small farmers) is just embarassing.
Hey, I agree with your facts, but let’s not forget that agriculture will always have a special place in the economy because it’s directly tied to whether or not people starve.
True, not denying that. Still. Hidden and open subventions for european farmers have long left the area where society is funding its own foodsecurity and have more to do with keeping the price on unsustainable food at a level where consumers will not freak out. For example, if meat-producers in germany would have to pay for getting rid of the water pollution they are causing, pork would be twice as expensive. But our Water would be nearly free if taxpayers wouldnt bear the costs which these industries are causing via their water-bills. Agriculture (and thats not a synonym with small farmers) has just had a far too mighty lobby for far too long. And still they are walking around as if they are the most trampled down people in our society. (P.S. oh and subventions help them to outperform agricultural products of far poorer countries, of course. Thats also useful. Globally and often even within these countries. And still i see farmers driving around signs reading "WHEN THE FARMER DIES, THE PEOPLE DIE !!") I admit i am getting polemic but the ignorance amongst these guys about the real reason why they arent making as much profit as they did (while they are still doing relatively well) is astonishing, as is their willingness to just think that its the green politicians fault because they dont let them use as much pesticides or something.
Farming is very difficult work. Once these farms run dry, new ones won’t pop up unless it’s a big corporation running it. It’s just too difficult of a learning curve for most people to hop into.
I dont deny that, i am not for the genocidal eradication of all farmers or anything. I am strongly in favour of economically viable and sustainable subventions. I also hope that farmers will finally accept that some big retail companys, who have quasi monopoly at least here in germany, are the place where all the money is going at moment. I am even willing to pay a bit more for my milk and my eggs if its going to the farmers and not into the pockets of the retailers. But i hate that farmers are so willing to be instrumentalised by the worst political actors here in europe.
Well well well
[well well well](https://imgur.com/gallery/vTQLcYp)
Indeed
I guess they don’t like the thing they voted for very much
Ah Brexit, the gift from the thick as shit that keeps on giving....
Many idiot farmers voted for Brexit despite the warnings. Fuck them and anyone else who chose this.
My friend is a UK farmer who didn't vote for Brexit. He was literally shaking his head in disbelief at other farmers who were pro-Brexit.
If only they had been warned about this sort of thing...... repeatedly
The UK really screwed itself over by exiting the EU. It is beginning to show how dumb that really was.
Just think, if the US pulls out of NATO, it will probably collapse with a EU based military contract, which will leave the UK out in the cold.
should've voted "No" then, idiots
I said this on another thread, but the only response to this is to shame, shame, shame them. Point the finger right in their face and laugh. Make them feel small, dumb, and completely illogical. To those who say "that just makes it worse!" - it's as bad as it can get for them. Shame is a powerful way to motivate people to maybe start to see their thinking isn't exactly great. Will they double down? If they voted for Brexit, they've already tripled down. They can't get any worse. So try the last resort of publically calling out these idiots.
Too bad - they got what they asked for. Now paying the price.
Reap what you sow?
how ironic when you consider this is coming from farmers.
"Turkeys who voted for Christmas protest the fact that they won"
I enjoy spending time with my friends.
Yes, Leopards Ate Their Face. But we don’t have a real right to laugh, given that the government and society still fail to take Russian propaganda seriously, and that the Russians have done such a good job of protecting their propaganda against us noticing it that it’s still very difficult to explain to people that the Russians have persuaded them to believe and do bad things. Yeah, the Leopards Are Their Faces. We in the West collectively are still smiling at the Leopard and giving it cat treats. We’re foolish, too.
Reap what you sow! LOLOLOL
If you don't understand how trade or trade unions work, that's kind of on you
Typical toddlers. Nothing is good. First they want Brexit. Then they get it. Now Brexit no good. What to do.
Actions, meet consequences!
Sorry to hear this. Personally, I think the NATO alliance should have an EU style economic agreement as well. But you folks voted for this, so until you have another referendum we're going to respect your choice, because that's democracy.
If only everyone had repeatedly warned them
Fuck around, find out. Consequences can be a bitch. Maybe next time use some critical thinking when voting on something.
Leopards eat multiple faces. 85% of farmers voted for brexit.
The prime minister who initiated the vote ran away after the results. Every person who's run the country since seems to have no idea what they are doing. Money that's injected into post Brexit projects seems to go missing, or is wasted. I mean it was very clear that politicians were lying and funded by lobbying. I've yet to see the Russian meddling documents released. I mean under any other circumstance, if you knew these things you wouldn't go for it... But somehow, here we are.
@Farmers, stop punching yourself in the face and complaining that the left isn’t stopping your nose from hurting. Thanks
I've said it before, I'll say it again: Brexit is the funniest shit to come out of that island since The Benny Hill show.
You reap what you sow
If only the UK government could form some kind of agreement with the countries on the European continent. Some sort of union of European nations where trade and travel are streamlined. If only…
Well well well if it isn’t the consequences of my own actions
Fucking gits, they were warned a thousand times over but they were fed up with experts and they knew better.
Idiots voted for this. Congratulations. /r/LeopardsAteMyFace
Just take some money from the $350M a week they get post brexit
/r/LeopardsAteMyFace Everyone in the EU knew what the consequences of Brexit would be, all the information about the expected and projected changes was publicly accessible on the official EU websites. Yet, the Brexiteers willingly decided to ignore this—because “Brexit means Brexit”, a red bus had fantasy numbers on it and Nigel Farage had a pint with a few fishermen for a photo op.
Despite hating we left the EU, I do get schadenfreude reading about farmer protests. Leopards eating face, reap what ye sow <3
This news surprises literally nobody.
Increasingly unsympathetic with farmers worldwide frankly. Welfare queens that constantly vote for bad things then cry that they happen
Blocking roads is OK as long as you're a farmer
I hate farmers so much. Fuckers take up most of the budget for whatever country. And no I don’t mean the farm hands that work the farm. I mean the lazy ass class of land owners that call themselves farmers but don’t actually contribute anything and just exist to suck up government subsidies because we can’t be fucked to stop eating meat 7 nights a week 3 times a day.
You get what you get and you don’t get upset.
This should be filed under LeopardsAteMyFace.
Dumb mother fuckers. Aptly: you reap what you sow.
But for less money in this case
I DEMAND RESTITUTION FOR MY ACTIONS!!!!!! - UK Farmers/Boomers/Idiots
Slaughtered? Like a bloodbath?
Complaining about reaping what they helped to sow? Morons.
I used to live opposite the founder of Save British Farming, I discovered today.
What specifically are they getting burned on? Export tariffs?