As of a handful of hours ago the United Kingdom is officially out of the European Union. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don’t think anyone really knows what that means.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One thing it means is that you shouldn’t ask a large group of people a question unless you already know the answer. (cough: Mr. Cameron, please take note.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyway… I’m not normally a “chat with the person next to you” sort of person on a plane. I’m more of the “we’re both stuck on this flying cigar, let’s ignore eachother and focus on getting to the other end” sort of person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This trip was different. I ended up having a chat with the pensioners next to me. We were flying from LHR to SFO (I had a meeting in the Bay Area before heading to Seattle). From there they’d board a five week cruise to Sydney (as in Australia). She was Irish and had worked for an airline. He was British and had been a printer, working for others before ending up running his own business before he retired.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They were, as they put it, “obviously” Brexit supporters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This put me in the position of being able to play the “I’m just a dumb American living in the UK, please explain this to me” card. You gotta play the hand you’re dealt, so…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I managed to ignore the occasional Euromyth<\/a> (it was the first time someone had asserted to my face that the EU required carrots to be straight – I litterally bit my tongue to avoid laughing out loud), and focused on trying to understand the core of their position. I think it came down to four pillars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We talked about Boris (he’ll be fine and was a far better choice than Corbyn who was “away with the faries”) and Trump (he’s a complete idiot and the comparison to Boris is purely superficial). We talked about the Irish border (there won’t be one, but even if there is, a country has a right to control its borders).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through the conversation I said two things which – I like to think – gave them pause. I argued that by their description Brexit wasn’t that different from one of the large economy states in the US choosing to break away from the union. I came down on the remain side because, “teams are stronger than heroes” (thanks Zach) – we’re stronger together than we are apart. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Staying in the Union, or the EU – I argued, took sometimes uncomfortable compromise, but so did marrage. They had clearly been married for decades, and the glance they shared suggested I might have touched on something. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The other moment they seemed affected was when I said I wondered what impact Brext would have on those in the UK just making ends meet. To me, I said, it would be irritating if imported food stuffs and staples increased in price by 10-20%. Since they were about to check into a floating hotel for over a month, I figured they’d be ok too. But I wondered out loud if their (adult) children, or their grandchildren might be more affected. They had been nodding along in agreement when I mused that they’d be fine. Their nods slowed a bit at the mention of their kids and grandkids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I concluded that maybe their kids aren’t as financially solid as grandma and grandpa are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Guess it’s too late to worry about that now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hope they kept some of their pension fund aside to help their kids. ‘Cause they seemed the sort who’d look down on taking assistance from the state.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As of a handful of hours ago the United Kingdom is officially out of the European Union. I don’t think anyone really knows what that means. One thing it means is that you shouldn’t ask a large group of people a question unless you already know the answer. (cough: Mr. Cameron, please take note.) Anyway… … Continue reading “Not with a bang…”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-london-calling"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":456,"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions\/456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}