From a view point of a tax payer, however, I’d like to congratulate the British people. Their decision is like recovering a key to
their own lovely property which has been forced to accept any flatmates from
the EU, whether the owners like them or not. It’s their property which has its
own capacity. They pay council tax, utilities and maintenance costs. Many
flatmates share such burden, but many others don’t. Now the property owner’s budget
is tight and their own space is shrinking.
Britain is a livable and attractive country. That's why as many as 300,000 people
are flooding there each year. They come because the UK is better than their home. The thing is any countries including the UK have their own capacity; they cannot accept
an infinite number of people. The ultimate solution is that these visitors make their home as
good as the UK so that they don’t need to move.
After seeing a BBC documentary in which Jeremy Paxman grills EU bureaucracy, I honestly thought “Thank God, we don’t have such a union in Asia…” As a staffer
in huge bureaucracy myself, I know the more layers and people are in between,
the less efficient, making the essence of work somewhat twisted every time it goes
through each one of them. At the end of the day, we never know what we are doing; what is the
point of the EU regulation that ranks cucumbers according to their length?
I visited the UK for the first time in 1987. At that time,
Brighton was a chic, classy town. It was so memorable that I have visited
there every several years since then. Very unfortunately, though, what I have found over the years is that Brighton has become tacky, losing
its luster. Whenever I share this observation with British people, they agree
with me.
On the other hand, I certainly feel Brits became more open-minded
than thirty years ago. In 1987, a host family in Brighton told me they could
never imagine eating raw fish; now sushi shops are everywhere. In addition, authentic
restaurants run by Italians or many other nationalities in London are really good.
Now that the British people have regained their decision-making
power, I trust they will choose what they want, learning from what went well or
wrong for the past decades. I respect their decision, and would like to applaud democracy.
