Yeah, I think you’re right - that was my intention at first.
I think what tipped me over the edge was the fact that as I’ve said, the forum is largely comprised of well-off, middle-aged people (no crime in that whatsoever), but many of whom were hiding their own reasons for voting one way or the other behind claiming to speak for ‘young people’ and therefore myself included.
One of my favourite statistics which serves as more-or-less a total rebuttal to the claim that “Oh but those poor young people have had their opportunties to work abroad taken away! Think of the children!” is the fact that there are roughly 110,000 Brits aged 18-30 are working in EU countries, when there about 11 million people aged 18-30 in Britain. So literally, someone aged 18-30 is 99% likely to be working in good, old-fashioned, unspectacular, boring old Blighty, rather than living the dream in Europe.
Now, granted, I’m quite sure that many of the posters on here harbour ambitions that their kids, several of whom go to private school, will one day be a senior enough position at a large enough corporation to have the chance to work abroad (again, nothing wrong with that whatsoever), but you just have to accep that it simply isn’t an offer on the table for most young people in Britain - and to insist “oh, well, maybe the British kids should be more outward-looking” is just plain old poor-blaming.
So like I say, putting that argument to bed for instance was never going to result in a warm reception.
Just be honest basically. Free movement of labour doesn’t benefit the poor and young. By all means argue for the EU, but be sincere, that’s all I ask really.
Anyway. I’ll head back to the football threads. To the credit of several posters here, most of them are cool with splitting up politics from football and not allowing posts on one to affect their view of the other.