A tiny English village has voted to leave the United Kingdom as a symbolic protest against government plans to house up to 1,200 asylum seekers on a nearby military base.

Others said the campaign had a darker side and stirred up fear of newcomers. Some backers of the Piddington referendum compared their fight against the asylum accommodation to the 1940 Battle of Britain against Nazi Germany.

Villager Herbert Owen, 76, said after voting on Tuesday that the independence referendum “isn’t just about Piddington,” adding: “It means everything our grandparents, our parents fought for. Today is the Battle of Britain.”

Comparing unauthorized immigration to an invasion has become increasingly common among politicians including Nigel Farage of Reform UK, and far-right groups that have been active in organizing and attending anti-immigrant protests.

What a bunch of assholes. From earlier in the article:

Residents of Piddington, which has a population of about 350…

That makes sense. Small town people need to have no say over issues pertaining to classes of people who are “different” from themselves. They’re too insulated and lack exposure to those who aren’t like them to properly recognize that they’re human beings in all the ways that they’d recognize if they knew someone from said class.

Brief story: decades ago, while I was on excellent drugs at a rave, my homophobia (thanks, Mom!) instantly disappeared when I realized the hilarious gay guy, in a group of us smoking cigarettes, was no different from me. “He just wants to take his drugs and have a good time on Saturday night,” I realized. He was no different from me!

Small town people need drugs and a good time with people unlike themselves.

  • Nautalax@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11·
    7 hours ago

    Serious question, if the boys that fought fascism knew the future is where their grandchildren wouldn’t be able to afford a house, would stop having children on masse, and wouldn’t be able to get hired. Do you think they’d still have fought? It made their sacrifice worth it?

    That generation themselves took charge of the new councils that in many cases would then veto further housing development to put upward pressure on the value of the homes they had secured, starting to pull up the ladder after many new homes had been freshly built for them following the destruction of the war. Their direct children who inherited the housing are still profiting quite handsomely with similar incentives, although it’s terrible for the great grandchildren. So the bad part is basically working as they themselves intervened to achieve, and regardless of that now reducing homeownership rates those rates still remain higher than those of when that generation was growing up and the homes are much nicer in quality than the slums of the time which were destroyed.

    People stopped having children en masse because new technology allowed for family planning and for people to do what seemed important to them in life rather than suddenly winding up as parents and being forced to lock in.

    The unemployment rate of 4.9% is much lower than what that war-winning generation had experienced in the interwar period.

    None of this situation seems like it would be helped by becoming the slaves of a self-proclaimed master race who themselves were under the unrestrained despotism of a rabid band of bloodthirsty lunatics.