I am just an ordinary person but among the people I know there are a few groups who should probably have had votes in the EU Referendum. And I could almost frame them as "Thatcher's Children" ! My generation left school in the 80s. There were no jobs where I lived - well jobs were hard to come by. Industries were closing. My father worked in an esteemed company designing gas turbines which were installed in power stations worldwide. I can remember him visiting Delhi (as it was called then), Argentina, Colombia, the US, Norway, he nearly had to go to Iraq, Europe and no doubt other places I forget. Those are the ones I remember. But that company was hit by the level of the pound in the 80s and the intransigence of Heseltine to consider investment in a new technology they had invented to use coal more efficiently. They also use the environmentally friendly Combined Heat and Power technology where a town can re-use heat produced in one part eg if freezing an ice rink then heat is produced and you can use that to heat houses. That sort of idea ! Anyway to explain, this esteemed company that was trading worldwide in high tech turbines largely did not survive the 80s. There was a lot of people who lost their jobs. And my generation were just leaving school at that time.
Now this is the reason that most people I left school with moved to England or moved abroad. Certainly most graduates did so. People I was at University with left to work in Europe or elsewhere. But many still have their ultimate home and certainly their citizenship is in the UK ! My friend's brother has worked worldwide as a civil engineer. All with have worked over 15 years away from the UK and did not get a vote in the EU Referendum. Even though the EU will definitely have had an impact either positively or negatively on their own and their family's lifes. As it is the only citizenship many of them had, they should have had a vote. In fact two of them who I know about have decided to apply for Swedish and Germany nationality, so I suspect realistically we have now lost them finally to the UK. But those ones were fairly settled in their countries. The other ones I know are more mobile and work in different countries.
Other people I know literally live in the UK and work abroad staying in hotels or rented apartments. If there were enough jobs in their sector here then they would have taken them. But there weren't.
These are the people who have been largely overlooked in the debate. In that I have two close friends who are working/commuting in this way and two others who did this fairly recently then I would imagine the numbers involved must be higher than the official estimates.
And then there are the UK expats who have retired to live in the sun ! (this does not tend to be my generation as we are not quite at the retirement stage yet - unless you are lucky such as Fred the Shred !! - but I don't really consider that he has retired on his own money ... )
Most of the retired expats we hear about are based in Spain but many are in France, Germany or other countries. Now a very common story we have heard from this group is their ballot papers arrived suspiciously late. I have spoken personally to some and they relate other stories indirectly. One I spoke to had received his paper late and the postmark was for the day of the referendum, so there is no way it could have arrived on time ! Now this was a group who I think would probably have voted Remain ... well possibly not. But someone somewhere might well have thought that ... or was it just incompetence ? But electoral returns officers in those regions should be held to account for this mismanagement - it is disgraceful.
So taking into account these groups - the people over 15 years away and the expats with late ballots - I wonder how many extra votes for Remain there might have been ?
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