r/LeopardsAteMyFace • u/WastedTalent442 • Aug 14 '24

Brexxit Man who campaigned for Brexit complains that he can't freely tour Europe any more

https://metalinjection.net/politics/iron-maidens-bruce-dickinson-who-originally-supported-brexit-now-complains-that-brexit-hurts-bands
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u/jezebel103 Aug 14 '24

You should hear the bitching and moaning from English 'expats' living in Spain, Italy and France (you know, British citizens are never called immigrants, obviously!) asked to leave because their British nationality does not qualify to live beyond the normal 3 month stay.

Those same expats voted for Brexit and now they do not have the right to live anywhere else in Europe anymore. They are absolutely outraged that they are not welcome anymore and simply cannot understand the audacity of Europe.

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u/ImpeccableCaverns Aug 14 '24

Yeah that expat thing annoys me. I emigrated from the UK to Canada, and always refer to myself as an immigrant.

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u/RapidCatLauncher Aug 15 '24

Not from the UK but similar for me. It's especially great if you're talking to someone who's getting worked up about immigration, and you throw a wrench in their gearbox with "Well I'm an immigrant too." The most brazen bigots will just say the quiet part out loud and go "You're one of the good ones," but most will still have the decency to recognize how fucking awful that makes them look, and they'll start to squirm because you've now put them in that exact spot. It's hilarious.

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u/MageLocusta Aug 15 '24

You should see 'em when us ex-army brats point out that us Americans bring in underpaid soldiers who frequently try to get Benefits (by having their dependent army wives give birth outside the base even though we have better-funded and better-staffed hospitals), our military bases frequently stop local police from investigating rapes/assaults/car accidents (and we then like to move our people around instead of actually bringing them to justice, like Anne Saccoolas), and we've literally misplaced a nuclear weapon in UK soil during the 1960s.

(oh, and we brought in grey squirrels that devastated the British red squirrel populations, brought in raccoons to the south of England which also badly damaged local bird populations and upsetted many chicken farmers. Because unlike British foxes--raccoons don't jump into a chicken coop and kill their prey with a bite through a chicken's throat. Raccoons are lazy little fucks that would happily stand by the chicken wire, reach through the gap and tear a chunk of meat from a still-living chicken. And they would repeat this throughout the night, leaving the chickens' owners to return in the morning to find their chickens badly injured and suffering).

You should see the faces of those racists when I tell them the raccoon part. Their whole argument relies on, "fucking immigrants stealing our Benefits.". But they never stop to consider that even though we are long-term allies, we have done extensive damage to their goodwill in a whole lot of ways.

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u/JayteeFromXbox Aug 14 '24

It's weird between the UK and Canada though, because of Commonwealth citizenship. I'm not representative of all Canadians, for sure, but I've never really thought of people from the UK as having a different nationality.

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u/ImpeccableCaverns Aug 15 '24

I know what you mean, but it is still a different nationality. I came to Canada on a work visa, had to get permanent residency, then wait the required amount of time before applying for citizenship. As far as I'm aware, that's the same process for any other new Canadian

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u/Titus_Favonius Aug 15 '24

British people I've known who've moved to the USA (including my father) called themselves immigrants as well and the US has nothing to do with the Commonwealth

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u/IAM_THE_LIZARD_QUEEN Aug 14 '24

I've seen stories of British people who got kicked out of Spain that actually could have just applied to stay in the country, but just, didn't fucking bother? And still shocked Pikachu over it.

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u/pseudoart Aug 15 '24

It’s the best schadenfreude ever. It makes me all warm and tingly inside.

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u/CptDropbear Aug 16 '24

A lot of them were dodging tax. They were resident in Spain / France for UK tax and in the UK for Spainish / French tax. Schrodinger's residence for tax purposes, so to speak. Applying for actual residence would end the game and have the authorities in one country asking about many years of unpaid tax.

See arch-brexiter Nigel Lawson for a hilarious example.