Do you think millenials being priced out of London as it became a global money laundering hub had anything to do with it? That's what I hear from my friends there.
If you look at a map showing the breakdown of referendum voting by district you will find that Scotland, London and University towns together with many larger cities voted to remain. Areas of the country that depend most heavily on EU grants (ESF/ERDF) voted to leave. Grant allocation is a reliable indicator of relative lack of investment/development.
I don't live in London so I can't comment on conversations there.
We're being priced out of everywhere. Paying over the odds for a crappy semi that the boomers hoarded for profit surrounded by leave voters outside of London isn't appealing either.
EU was pretty much our lifeline that we could move to somewhere much nicer and affordable in Europe once our careers have been established.
Unlikely. If you look at the age breakdown of the vote, millenials and other assorted youngsters voted overwhelmingly for "Remain", while the older cohort voted for "Leave".
That's not the breakdown of the vote but of exit polls and other opt-in polling such as YouGov surveys. Both of which are biased towards those (1) likely to contribute and (2) not concerned about sharing how they voted.
The actual demographic composition of the vote is unknown, it could be determined ( all UK ballot papers are linked to their voter ) but that would be unprecedented and probably bad for democracy.
Are exit polls not anonymized in the UK? At the last federal election in Germany, I was asked to contribute in an exit poll, and they had their own voting booth and urn set up for that purpose next to the actual voting room.
The ballot was mostly identical, except for additional checkboxes for age group and gender, which they wanted to break down in their analyses. So still reasonably anonymized.
The exit poll for the EU referendum at my local voting station was conducted by a man with a tablet computer! I didn't stop to investigate the process, unfortunately.
There was a huge divide in London too. Places like Camden, Kensington and Barnet overwhelmingly voted remain. Other places like Havering, Barking and Dagenham and Bexley voted to leave. And some areas (like Newham) were extremely close as far as percentages go.
General rule seems to be that places with lots of university students or large businesses tended to vote remain and those with either deeply conservative populations or a lot of immigration tended to vote leave.
> General rule seems to be that places with lots of university students or large businesses tended to vote remain and those with either deeply conservative populations or a lot of immigration tended to vote leave
Doesn't think that is true. Lewisham, Lambeth and Tower Hamlets are some of the places with the most immigrants and remain won in all of these places by obscenely large margins.
Maybe votes were more along racial lines - White English (especially the older ones) voting to leave, but people with a more colourful Asian/Caribbean heritage voting to remain?
Becoming a global money laundering hub like London is a wet dream of every major city on this planet. Plus, as the commenter below mentions, London mostly voted remain.
Well, keep in mind that for every million processed via, say, Credit Suisse in London, several thousand land up in Accenture (or other IT firm), several go to Deloitte (or other consultancy), some more go to Linklaters (or other law firm). Their employees get their salaries that allow then to support their families and then go drink coffee at Nero and eat sandwiches at Pret. Everyone in this chain -- from Credit Suisse via Accenture to Nero are employing people, growing and paying wages.
Now you can go "those high-earning landlord scum" as much as you want, but nobody in their right mind would say that it's better to have a situation in, say, small towns in the Northeastern England where rent is spectacularly low — but so is employment.
If you work in London at all, you get trickle down from the financial services sector. People who work in finance drink in your coffee shop, eat in your restaurant, ride in your bus or taxi, buy things in your shop.
Look at what happened in 2008. Finance caught a cold and the entire global economy including Britain fell flat on it's back. Brexit has the potential to do far more damage over a much longer period of time, but mostly just to Britain. The knock on effect across the country isn't going to be pretty. But hey, if the rest of Britain decides they'd rather like to have a long drawn out recession just in order to stick it to the bankers then fine.
And those same people leech off the public purse in order to bail themselves out of their greedy, malicious fuck ups that end up ruining economies and destroying lives.
Alright, you hate bankers and financiers. I get it. Fair enough, that's your right and I won't argue the point.
However London is a global cultural and trade hub entirely due to it's finance industry. Take that away and what does London or Britain have economically? Every single London resident would suffer from that from lower wages, fewer employment prospects and higher taxes. Property would be less valuable and so rents might fall, but so would earnings to pay for it with.
I fully expect a 'we should be making cars (or whatever) instead of running banks' type argument, but why is that a choice? Anything else we could do to make up for losing Finance we could do anyway. We had a 3 term Labour government. They were in power for 13 years. If anyone was going to dial back the clock and 'save' Britain by turning it into a low-wage, low value jobs-for-the-boys economy they had the chance. Killing finance first then wondering what to do instead is kind of the wrong way to go about something like that.
I get where you are coming from. But, the revolving door/lobbyist economy/power concentration needs to be broken before real reform can begin.
This whole thread makes me wonder what the lowest common denominator is. My bet is brains in jars hooked up to virtual reality. Or perhaps we're all just harvested for our organs by the elite like in unwind https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9snP4HuRsr4
or turned into AI controlled drones like in Ancillary Justice. I dunno, Bro. The future is bleak, and time is running out to take it back.
I don't live in London so I can't comment on conversations there.