I Want Out Of The EU

[AB Editor]

 

This poll is closed.

Recently a popular tabloid has claimed that "Most Want Out" of the European Union, do you?

• Yes! "I Want Out" of the EU - 190 votes
• 77%
• No! I Don't. - 57 votes
• 23%

See final stats

Stats until: 10:45 Thu 21st Nov 2024 (Refreshed every 5 minutes)

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[jno]

well, I suppose that's your prejudice, em: that "aged" means "dotty". Mine is that it doesn't. I'm aged - I can't honestly call myself middle-aged any more, that's a word for 30-35-year-olds and I don't have anything much in common with them - but I'm still fairly sane.

[rojash]

Looking at those stats, jno, it seems to me that the lower your social class, the more likely you are to want to leave the EU.

[jno]

that's also possible, rojash, though I have no idea why it should be so. Perhaps those in lower-paid jobs feel they suffer more from their wages being undercut by immigrants. Or perhaps they just spend more time reading the Express.

[vulcan]

I will be 70 in January and spent the day recently shifting 4.5 tons of gravel into my garden with shovel and wheelbarrow. My father at 80 was climbing the ladder in his local church spire to paint the guttering. Age is all in the mind.

[ladybirder]

Middle-aged 30-35! You must be joking. My friends of that age would be horrified to be called middle-aged. Your having children at that age and later, naturally I might add. I'm 73 and I don't grumble into my Ovaltine, damn cheek. I don't even drink the stuff. I might grumble into my vodka and tonic or glass of wine. And I don't consider myself old and neither does anyone else who knows me. I've asked my 30-40 year old friends at what age do they consider somebody old nowadays and they said 85'ish. I know this wasn't the question but I'm so annoyed. Bloody ageism is rife on this site.

[ladybirder]

BTW I voted to stay IN. But it needs to be changed,

[jno]

so what do you call a 35-year-old? "Young"? I bet they'd be flattered; but as far as I'm concerned, 20 is young and 35 certainly isn't, even if people of that still prefer to spend their evenings getting trolleyed and avoiding commitment. 30ish to 60ish is middle aged.

[jno]

seems to me everyone here has some concept of "age" - they all just prefer to think it doesn't apply to them.

[ladybirder]

Middle aged at 30, ridiculous. How many people of 30 would agree with you I wonder? Did you really consider yourself middle aged at 30? William Hague is the only person that might have been but then he was born middle aged.

[jno]

as I already said, I bet 30-year-olds still think of themselves as in the late teenage years. They aren't.

People used to talk of early middle age and late middle age (very roughly 30-45/45-60) but they don't seem to do so as often these days. The one constant is that *everyone* is desperate not to be thought of as old.

But there is, obviously, no fixed definition.

[ABerrant]

Middle age is the period between youth and old age.

A passage from Muriel Spark's 'The Ballad of Peckham Rye':

"The chief barmaid had a tiny nose and a big chin; she was a middle-aged woman of twenty-five."

However, having been first published in 1960, me must expect a modicum of middle-aged spread.

[rojash]

I don't care whether people call me old or not, but if next January on my sixtieth birthday, someone dares to call me "60 years young", I swear I'll punch 'em in the gob :-)

[emmie]

Rojash, that doesn't seem right either, stats that say those who are down the social scale would be the ones who wish to leave the EU, seems to have discounted any number on here who are well educated, who would want to
either see Britain leave the EU or have the treaty redrawn.

jno, i was referring to how that word has been used, aged, i am not ageist, but i agree with Ladybirder there are some on here who are.

[Coldicote]

I'm all for dumping the Human Rights Act and staying out of the euro currency, but I have uneasy feelings about leaving the EU entirely. A lot more could be explained to help people understand why the PM and others feel that leaving the EU would be such a bad mistake.

[AB Editor]

I'm glad this has really stuck to the issue :)

Another way to look at what Jno is saying is that, as a Q&P site we have a lot of readers of the Daily Mail and Express, both with excellent crosswords. They also both push an anti-EU views across their paper (actually I think they're just generally "anti-", fairly grumpy papers both; slightly more fun than the whine of the Indy and Gruniad though!). As such you'd think that the readership might absorb some of this into their own assessment of the situation, and thus we have the results above.

[bibblebub]

told ya

[VHG]

>Jolly nice as it may be settle down listening to ABers grumbling into their Ovaltine

Jane Fonda, Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Paul McCartney, Ranulph Fiennes Woody Allen, and many many others are all over 60 and you cant see them drinking their ovaltine.

So your comment is rather ageist.

Ranulph Fiennes climbed Everest in 2009 (to the top!)

[AB Editor]

"told ya"

This, you certainly did!

VHG, do you always use outliers as an example for the majority?

[ludwig]

It's a protest vote, like a by-election. People are expressing their concern about the status quo secure in the knowledge that their vote isn't actually going to change it.

If the AB poll was held again, with the outcome being made legally binding, I suspect alot of the 'yes' voters would get scared and change their vote.

[Ankou]

i was 40 at the beginning of september.

in august i would have voted completely differently to what i have done now in my old age.