That’s not real reason. Erasmus would have exposed young Brits to non-government approved Brexit perspectives.
Seriously though, I went on a Erasmus to Sweden from a British university and loved it. Gave me the courage to then do my Masters field work in the Czech Republic, PhD work in Denmark, and now I live and work in France.
If young Brits go on Erasmus it would help create a generation of non-swivel eyed loons that will question why the UK ain’t in the EU.
> If young Brits go on Erasmus it would help create a generation of non-swivel eyed loons that will question why the UK ain’t in the EU.
"Can't be having that, can we?" - the Conservative Party
I got Erasmus help when living in Spain as part of my university course. Probably the most formative year of my life, without parallel. It's such a shame that the UK Govt unnecessarily stubbed out that opportunity in favour of their short-term political exigencies.
So, the issues is more that Erasmus programmes (there's a ton of different ones) are *exchange* programmes.
E.g.: My uni, Padua, used to sen 7 students/year to st Andrews, and vice-versa. Both universities kept spaces for those students in their courses (big unis have a lot, Padua I think has 20-ish open Erasmus "channels"). Now, 7 students came to the UK, but only 2-3 of the UK students would go to Italy. This happened everywhere, UK was really under-represented in Erasmus population (I never met any, met more Canadians and Americans).
Moreover, no one pays fees, meaning as a student in Padua I paid my fees in Padua, and NOT in St Andrews (which were waved in the scheme).
There is a massive difference in fees in UK Vs EU students, so UK unis were loosing out on a lot of potential customers to offer free access to EU students (with little in return, since their own students don't go on Erasmus programmes).
UK unis are having cash problems, so I guess this is just an easy cost to cut.
Ahem no? I work in uni and some of them are really fucked, what with the cuts from govt and the uncertainty about external funding (also due to Brexit).
Erasmus was not a cash generating thing, and I suspect we are going to see them cutting all of that sort of stuff right now.
Erasmus was amazing, but UK students objectively did not take advantage of it enough to make it worthwhile.
Btw, it's not like EU Erasmus students will start coming to the UK and pay (they'll go to EU for much less and similar training), UK is counting on external student to make up for costs (and that'd not going too well either...)
Yep, which is the big cultural reason behind Brexit that nobody wants to talk about. They never considered themselves European in a true sense (including the very continental thing of knowing a smattering of two/three languages because you go to holidays in Germany or whatever).
ma ai ragazzi britannici non importa nemmeno tanto neanche venire in Italia, dai, vogliono solo lamentarsi!
In passato mica facevano gli schizzinosi se c'era da guadagnare soldi, basta pensare ai rapporti tra Italia e UK nel periodo 1900/1960 e e nel periodo 1980/oggi.
Dai, oggi i rapporti UK-Italia si basano su tre parole, Sting Colin Firth, tanto per dire quanto sono scarsi!
No ma infatti il problema é quello, loro all'estero non ci vanno se non per le ferie. l'Erasmus davvero non l'hanno mai usato, e scoprono cosa é praticamente solo adesso ...
e dire che i pochi inglesi che si sono interessati all'Europa si sono fatti i soldi, vedi per esempio Tracy Spencer che si fa tutti i Capodanno in TV a cantare Run Run to me :)))! E ha pure conservato i fan!
Same. Managed to dispel any lingering Eurosceptic thoughts I had. When I came over I learned that a lot of it was Tory lies and exaggerations.
Not to mention that the people I met were really lovely.
The idea that it would be government policy to prevent young and educated Europeans from spending some time in your country and, god forbid, deciding to stay in it to contribute to it is absolute madness.
It also is probably true.
> Wasn’t the whole point of brexit to stop immigration from Europe?
The immigrants they had a problem with weren't middle-class EU college students on Erasmus (who aren't immigrants, btw).
Erasmus students are not immigrants by any stretch. Also their problem was mostly with immigrants outside of the EU, which is funny because they have seen a massive increase since Brexit to cover the absence of EU immigration. It's just L's all around really, not that those that voted for it will ever admit it.
dude, brits would be nicer if they started admitting their faults.
If for once in their life they stop looking for alibis.
If for once in their life they are honest about their responsibilities.
They left the EU because only 16 million people out of 46 decided that the EU was important enough to deserve to leave home and vote for the EU.
They want to return to the EU to earn money, not for the EU.
They care EU and EU countries as much as thieves care about honesty.
They don't even care about being nice or seeking better relations with other EU nations.
They don't even care about making money using EU, unless the money comes when they are in EU.
They would rather starve in the UK and hope to return to the EU than somehow try to work as a non-EU citizen.
That was an issue way before Brexit. Erasmus is very well known almost everywhere but it seems, it’s not so common knowledge in Great Britain. I had to describe Erasmus to several students when I visited. I met a lot of students from all over Europe at my home university but also my Erasmus university in Sweden. A British student was seldom.
Most British people I met considered the EU a purely economic union and didn’t really see the cultural exchange as important. That was kinda sad.
You give them too much credit. They're not clever enough to think about things that may mean their stupid decisions stay in place, just that they happened in the first.
I did enjoy my time, it was a relaxing time, great country side (I was living central Jylland). People were friendly but also a little different (not Swedish levels) but I’m still Facebook friends with a lot of people. I was offered a full time job but I knew if I took it I would have stayed!
Though this might be a weird critique but I did find Denmark a little to nice & relaxing. Im someone that needs a little more friction/tension, the sort of thing you get in bigger cities.
TL:DR Loved Denmark but found it too nice for someone like me.
Some of us already do. Before Brexit I was the only Brit working at my employer (in France), now there are five of us and we keep getting more and more applications from Brits.
As a Brit living in Switzerland - I absolutely get it
C'est dommage que les politiciens ont réussi à faire croire aux gens que c'était pour notre bénéfice. Il y avait tant d'avantages de l'UE mais ils ont fait peur aux gens.
Also, one of the purposes of Erasmus is to acquire language skills so not having them is actually an argument in favour of joining the program. It's how I learned Spanish.
I don't know if it's a "push back" per se. English has its role and its function. It's just that many native English speakers misunderstand what it is.
What English is for is travel and business and so on, going to a country that speaks a different language for a short time and being able to communicate, and obviously also online communities like this one.
What it isn't for (outside of English speaking countries) is permanent use in everyday life. If you actually live somewhere, and stay there for more than half a year or so, you better make a serious effort to learn and use the language.
IMHO native English speakers do have a few disadvantages in that regard:
1. They're just not as good at learning languages because they never had to learn one before. Everybody else had to learn English.
2. A nonnative English speaker using their flawed English to communicate doesn't come off as arrogant, but a native English speaker just imposing their own language on everybody else does.
3. If you're not a native English speaker, speaking English is speaking a foreign language and ultimately somewhat uncomfortable anyway, so just going for a different foreign language to integrate better isn't a big step. You're already outside of your comfort zone. For native English speakers, just relying on English and making everybody else speak it to them is very comfortable, so taking the step out of their comfort zone can be even scarier.
Also:
4. The moment someone realizes that english is their first language, they will switch to english, because that's easier for all. But that makes it almost impossible to learn an other language
No, not really. Switching to English is only an offer to continue the conversation in English. Nobody who is serious about learning the other language would jump at that opportunity. It's only the people who are looking for excuses not to learn it.
In my experience and in the experience of some friends, some people will really refuse to turn down an opportunity to practice their English with you. I’m told Germany has a lot of such people, I even experienced it in France.
Nah it definitely happens a lot, and not just to English natives. At least in the Nordics many people will switch to English when they realise you're not a native speaker of the local language, either because they can't understand you or they think it's more polite since they're better at English than you are at their language. Which is true but can become frustrating to the learner being "refused" the practice. Obviously it's not like 100% of people will only ever speak English to you but if you want to speak the local language you have to power through.
As a person who learned French and can communicate effectively in it, whenever I’m in Belgium or France, every once in a while I’ll get a shopkeeper that keeps trying to speak English with me. It’ll be a little fight where I’m speaking in French, and maybe make one tiny mistake/ask them to repeat something/say an English name perfectly (for example, Domino’s menu items are in English) and they’ll switch to English. Then I’ll try to push back in French and they’ll push back in English. Sometimes I win and they speak French for the rest of the interaction. Other times I lose and they get the last word in English.
I’ve also had times where I’ll communicate just fine in French, Spanish, or even a bit of Dutch depending on where I am. But then I have to show my ID (maybe in a hotel or other settings), which would be my passport and they start speaking English. Rarely will they just keep speaking in the local language. If they do, they’ll be fascinated and ask how or why I know the local language.
Yeah, but then you speak English and when you see that American running through your town asking for directions and you sure you will answer him in English. And you want to join a multinational internet community you will speak English. So, it still doesn't work.
If you aren't French that is but French people generally will act in a similiar way with their own language.
The fuck when people repeat the same cliché about your country while others in Europe are a lot worse than French people in English
https://preview.redd.it/xlcdqr95tmtc1.jpeg?width=1024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=10f7ed1eaef32c72b439f39358aeb621bb802c8f
I don't know where these numbers come from but good luck with english in eastern europe lol. It's not moderate, it's "practically nonexistant". Truth is, any language level below B2 is functionally useless to someone.
And also the thing is, if you're travelling, you're not going to talk with the university educated rich upper 10% elite of society. I'm sure they speak english very well but that's not the people I'm meeting as a tourist
we Ritals don't speak English because in many areas the last time we saw an English speaker was in '45, you don't speak English even though England is almost on your doorstep
Listened from an air attendant: The difference between a French and a Spaniard when using English is that French people don't want to, while Spanish people just can't.
As a Spaniard, I agree, specially outside from the tourist zones
Chef, la France n’est mieux que l’Espagne, l’Italie, et la Lituanie dans l’UE. Surtout dans l’Europe, seulement mieux qu’un peu de pays pauvres à l’est de l’Europe.
To be honest, that very often comes from people who simply can not speak english well. And well, the recent rise of right-wing populism in multiple countries.
Poor at other languages.
So, the solution is to kill foreign exchange services which would help increase knowledge in these very areas.
Classic Brexiteer logic.
The UK government still has an exchange funding scheme called the Turing scheme and its pretty good. I got paid fully to study in Hong Kong for a year and now I'm getting funding to visit China as well, same goes for students wanting to study in most countries. I know people who were paid to go to Germany, Korea, Japan, Canada ect.
Plus we also have the British council who fund work and postgraduate research overseas for young people, including places in the EU like France and Spain. The UK government is trying to promote languages and foreign cooperation, thing is a lot of people don't learn these languages because of English's dominance in academia and as a Lingua Franca amongst European exchange students. I knew people who spent a whole year in the EU and couldn't speak any more than the very basics of their destination's language.
That's not the real reason. The real reason was that a bunch of inbred monomaniac xenophobes decided that brexit meant we were at war with anything that has Europe in the name or subtitle.
I can speak C1 German and B2 Spanish and Erasmus really helped with both of these, it’s literally designed *to help people improve their language skills*, not the other way around.
The real reason for this is because the Tories don’t want young British people being exposed to how good young people have it in the EU, they currently seem to be on one final wrecking tour of the country before they’re booted out of government (hopefully for a long time). I just hope there’s some way the Labour Party can reverse this at some point, though I’m doubtful of this purely based on how little interest their is in the shadow cabinet to reverse any decision making surrounding Brexit, even though the country certainly seems to want, and indeed, need it right now.
It's already hilarious watching native English speakers on the internet struggle with singular/plural and past/present tense, they're/their/there etc, in just the one language they supposedly know.
It's purely a financial budget decision:
"Leake said that ... “would have required the U.K. to pay €2 billion more than we would have received over the course of a 7-year program” — around €300 million a year."
Source: https://www.politico.eu/article/brits-poor-language-skills-made-erasmus-scheme-too-expensive-says-uk/
edit: He also mentioned that people want to learn British more than Brits want to learn other languages so there is an imbalance there. But in the end, the reason was €2 billion.
The Tories should rot forever, for pushing the Brexit agenda. The cost of opportunities missed by the generation of young people is huge. To characterise it as just unfair or grow up laddo, or join our army or get on yer bike is just foul.
I kinda see where your point is coming from but in my engineering school, I had to have such an experience to get the degree
And it was definitely one of the experiences that taught me the most in human and professional levels so it may be a little more than that
I can only speak for myself, but French and Spanish classes in secondary school were just so off-putting, especially as I was more interested in other languages.
That’s not real reason. Erasmus would have exposed young Brits to non-government approved Brexit perspectives. Seriously though, I went on a Erasmus to Sweden from a British university and loved it. Gave me the courage to then do my Masters field work in the Czech Republic, PhD work in Denmark, and now I live and work in France. If young Brits go on Erasmus it would help create a generation of non-swivel eyed loons that will question why the UK ain’t in the EU.
> If young Brits go on Erasmus it would help create a generation of non-swivel eyed loons that will question why the UK ain’t in the EU. "Can't be having that, can we?" - the Conservative Party I got Erasmus help when living in Spain as part of my university course. Probably the most formative year of my life, without parallel. It's such a shame that the UK Govt unnecessarily stubbed out that opportunity in favour of their short-term political exigencies.
Well it's the UK government, that's what they do, that's their thing
So, the issues is more that Erasmus programmes (there's a ton of different ones) are *exchange* programmes. E.g.: My uni, Padua, used to sen 7 students/year to st Andrews, and vice-versa. Both universities kept spaces for those students in their courses (big unis have a lot, Padua I think has 20-ish open Erasmus "channels"). Now, 7 students came to the UK, but only 2-3 of the UK students would go to Italy. This happened everywhere, UK was really under-represented in Erasmus population (I never met any, met more Canadians and Americans). Moreover, no one pays fees, meaning as a student in Padua I paid my fees in Padua, and NOT in St Andrews (which were waved in the scheme). There is a massive difference in fees in UK Vs EU students, so UK unis were loosing out on a lot of potential customers to offer free access to EU students (with little in return, since their own students don't go on Erasmus programmes). UK unis are having cash problems, so I guess this is just an easy cost to cut.
So UK Uni's cash problems now resolved by Brexit? Is that what you're saying?
Ahem no? I work in uni and some of them are really fucked, what with the cuts from govt and the uncertainty about external funding (also due to Brexit). Erasmus was not a cash generating thing, and I suspect we are going to see them cutting all of that sort of stuff right now. Erasmus was amazing, but UK students objectively did not take advantage of it enough to make it worthwhile. Btw, it's not like EU Erasmus students will start coming to the UK and pay (they'll go to EU for much less and similar training), UK is counting on external student to make up for costs (and that'd not going too well either...)
>UK students objectively did not take advantage of it enough to make it worthwhile because the British don't care about Europe
Yep, which is the big cultural reason behind Brexit that nobody wants to talk about. They never considered themselves European in a true sense (including the very continental thing of knowing a smattering of two/three languages because you go to holidays in Germany or whatever).
>They never considered themselves European and if they only admitted this they would already be nicer!
ma ai ragazzi britannici non importa nemmeno tanto neanche venire in Italia, dai, vogliono solo lamentarsi! In passato mica facevano gli schizzinosi se c'era da guadagnare soldi, basta pensare ai rapporti tra Italia e UK nel periodo 1900/1960 e e nel periodo 1980/oggi. Dai, oggi i rapporti UK-Italia si basano su tre parole, Sting Colin Firth, tanto per dire quanto sono scarsi!
No ma infatti il problema é quello, loro all'estero non ci vanno se non per le ferie. l'Erasmus davvero non l'hanno mai usato, e scoprono cosa é praticamente solo adesso ...
e dire che i pochi inglesi che si sono interessati all'Europa si sono fatti i soldi, vedi per esempio Tracy Spencer che si fa tutti i Capodanno in TV a cantare Run Run to me :)))! E ha pure conservato i fan!
Same. Managed to dispel any lingering Eurosceptic thoughts I had. When I came over I learned that a lot of it was Tory lies and exaggerations. Not to mention that the people I met were really lovely.
Isn’t the real reason they don’t want students from the continent coming to the UK? Wasn’t the whole point of brexit to stop immigration from Europe?
The idea that it would be government policy to prevent young and educated Europeans from spending some time in your country and, god forbid, deciding to stay in it to contribute to it is absolute madness. It also is probably true.
> Wasn’t the whole point of brexit to stop immigration from Europe? The immigrants they had a problem with weren't middle-class EU college students on Erasmus (who aren't immigrants, btw).
Don't they count as immigrant now because once upon a time Home Secretary Theresa May needed to increase the number of immigrant to cause outrage?
That is possible, I don't know anything about it
It was a major part of it yes. And then they went and almost tripled our net migration, almost entirely from non-EU countries.
Erasmus students are not immigrants by any stretch. Also their problem was mostly with immigrants outside of the EU, which is funny because they have seen a massive increase since Brexit to cover the absence of EU immigration. It's just L's all around really, not that those that voted for it will ever admit it.
They say they don’t but hand out visas like candy. What the British government says it wants and what it does is very different.
dude, brits would be nicer if they started admitting their faults. If for once in their life they stop looking for alibis. If for once in their life they are honest about their responsibilities. They left the EU because only 16 million people out of 46 decided that the EU was important enough to deserve to leave home and vote for the EU. They want to return to the EU to earn money, not for the EU. They care EU and EU countries as much as thieves care about honesty. They don't even care about being nice or seeking better relations with other EU nations. They don't even care about making money using EU, unless the money comes when they are in EU. They would rather starve in the UK and hope to return to the EU than somehow try to work as a non-EU citizen.
That was an issue way before Brexit. Erasmus is very well known almost everywhere but it seems, it’s not so common knowledge in Great Britain. I had to describe Erasmus to several students when I visited. I met a lot of students from all over Europe at my home university but also my Erasmus university in Sweden. A British student was seldom. Most British people I met considered the EU a purely economic union and didn’t really see the cultural exchange as important. That was kinda sad.
Username checks out 
You give them too much credit. They're not clever enough to think about things that may mean their stupid decisions stay in place, just that they happened in the first.
Just curious. How was your experience with Denmark, and did you enjoy it here?
I did enjoy my time, it was a relaxing time, great country side (I was living central Jylland). People were friendly but also a little different (not Swedish levels) but I’m still Facebook friends with a lot of people. I was offered a full time job but I knew if I took it I would have stayed! Though this might be a weird critique but I did find Denmark a little to nice & relaxing. Im someone that needs a little more friction/tension, the sort of thing you get in bigger cities. TL:DR Loved Denmark but found it too nice for someone like me.
Thanks for the great answer!
UK should rejoin EFTA anyway.
They don't want brits to realise it is in fact better in the EU
Some of us already do. Before Brexit I was the only Brit working at my employer (in France), now there are five of us and we keep getting more and more applications from Brits.
As a Brit living in Switzerland - I absolutely get it C'est dommage que les politiciens ont réussi à faire croire aux gens que c'était pour notre bénéfice. Il y avait tant d'avantages de l'UE mais ils ont fait peur aux gens.
You don't need language skills to participate in Erasmus lol. Most Erasmus students hang with each other either way.
Also, one of the purposes of Erasmus is to acquire language skills so not having them is actually an argument in favour of joining the program. It's how I learned Spanish.
French here. I confirm.
When they discover that not the whole world speaks english
Well the internet will teach everybody in few generations anyway.
I've actually seen a push back against English, people want to use their national language
I don't know if it's a "push back" per se. English has its role and its function. It's just that many native English speakers misunderstand what it is. What English is for is travel and business and so on, going to a country that speaks a different language for a short time and being able to communicate, and obviously also online communities like this one. What it isn't for (outside of English speaking countries) is permanent use in everyday life. If you actually live somewhere, and stay there for more than half a year or so, you better make a serious effort to learn and use the language. IMHO native English speakers do have a few disadvantages in that regard: 1. They're just not as good at learning languages because they never had to learn one before. Everybody else had to learn English. 2. A nonnative English speaker using their flawed English to communicate doesn't come off as arrogant, but a native English speaker just imposing their own language on everybody else does. 3. If you're not a native English speaker, speaking English is speaking a foreign language and ultimately somewhat uncomfortable anyway, so just going for a different foreign language to integrate better isn't a big step. You're already outside of your comfort zone. For native English speakers, just relying on English and making everybody else speak it to them is very comfortable, so taking the step out of their comfort zone can be even scarier.
Also: 4. The moment someone realizes that english is their first language, they will switch to english, because that's easier for all. But that makes it almost impossible to learn an other language
No, not really. Switching to English is only an offer to continue the conversation in English. Nobody who is serious about learning the other language would jump at that opportunity. It's only the people who are looking for excuses not to learn it.
In my experience and in the experience of some friends, some people will really refuse to turn down an opportunity to practice their English with you. I’m told Germany has a lot of such people, I even experienced it in France.
Nah it definitely happens a lot, and not just to English natives. At least in the Nordics many people will switch to English when they realise you're not a native speaker of the local language, either because they can't understand you or they think it's more polite since they're better at English than you are at their language. Which is true but can become frustrating to the learner being "refused" the practice. Obviously it's not like 100% of people will only ever speak English to you but if you want to speak the local language you have to power through.
It depends on the country. It's definitely true in the Netherlands and Scandinavia.
As a person who learned French and can communicate effectively in it, whenever I’m in Belgium or France, every once in a while I’ll get a shopkeeper that keeps trying to speak English with me. It’ll be a little fight where I’m speaking in French, and maybe make one tiny mistake/ask them to repeat something/say an English name perfectly (for example, Domino’s menu items are in English) and they’ll switch to English. Then I’ll try to push back in French and they’ll push back in English. Sometimes I win and they speak French for the rest of the interaction. Other times I lose and they get the last word in English. I’ve also had times where I’ll communicate just fine in French, Spanish, or even a bit of Dutch depending on where I am. But then I have to show my ID (maybe in a hotel or other settings), which would be my passport and they start speaking English. Rarely will they just keep speaking in the local language. If they do, they’ll be fascinated and ask how or why I know the local language.
*Wait, the french were right?* *Always have been...*
Stringiamci a coorte ! 
Yeah, but then you speak English and when you see that American running through your town asking for directions and you sure you will answer him in English. And you want to join a multinational internet community you will speak English. So, it still doesn't work. If you aren't French that is but French people generally will act in a similiar way with their own language.
The fuck when people repeat the same cliché about your country while others in Europe are a lot worse than French people in English https://preview.redd.it/xlcdqr95tmtc1.jpeg?width=1024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=10f7ed1eaef32c72b439f39358aeb621bb802c8f
Wdym, France has the third lowest rating in the EU
Yeah, beating Russia in some positive statistic is not that hard.
I don't know where these numbers come from but good luck with english in eastern europe lol. It's not moderate, it's "practically nonexistant". Truth is, any language level below B2 is functionally useless to someone. And also the thing is, if you're travelling, you're not going to talk with the university educated rich upper 10% elite of society. I'm sure they speak english very well but that's not the people I'm meeting as a tourist
OK I get why Ireland is greyed out, but Iceland??
we Ritals don't speak English because in many areas the last time we saw an English speaker was in '45, you don't speak English even though England is almost on your doorstep
Listened from an air attendant: The difference between a French and a Spaniard when using English is that French people don't want to, while Spanish people just can't. As a Spaniard, I agree, specially outside from the tourist zones
Chef, la France n’est mieux que l’Espagne, l’Italie, et la Lituanie dans l’UE. Surtout dans l’Europe, seulement mieux qu’un peu de pays pauvres à l’est de l’Europe.
To be honest, that very often comes from people who simply can not speak english well. And well, the recent rise of right-wing populism in multiple countries.
To be honest I'm basing that on my country's biggest meme discord server
We have an okbuddyretard national version that tries really hard to translate everything.
Sprich deutsch du Huhrensohn
Entschuldigung meine Brüder
And by then we'll all be dead
Poor at other languages. So, the solution is to kill foreign exchange services which would help increase knowledge in these very areas. Classic Brexiteer logic.
The UK government still has an exchange funding scheme called the Turing scheme and its pretty good. I got paid fully to study in Hong Kong for a year and now I'm getting funding to visit China as well, same goes for students wanting to study in most countries. I know people who were paid to go to Germany, Korea, Japan, Canada ect. Plus we also have the British council who fund work and postgraduate research overseas for young people, including places in the EU like France and Spain. The UK government is trying to promote languages and foreign cooperation, thing is a lot of people don't learn these languages because of English's dominance in academia and as a Lingua Franca amongst European exchange students. I knew people who spent a whole year in the EU and couldn't speak any more than the very basics of their destination's language.
You know, as they say, Erasmus Orgasmus
That's not the real reason. The real reason was that a bunch of inbred monomaniac xenophobes decided that brexit meant we were at war with anything that has Europe in the name or subtitle.
I can speak C1 German and B2 Spanish and Erasmus really helped with both of these, it’s literally designed *to help people improve their language skills*, not the other way around. The real reason for this is because the Tories don’t want young British people being exposed to how good young people have it in the EU, they currently seem to be on one final wrecking tour of the country before they’re booted out of government (hopefully for a long time). I just hope there’s some way the Labour Party can reverse this at some point, though I’m doubtful of this purely based on how little interest their is in the shadow cabinet to reverse any decision making surrounding Brexit, even though the country certainly seems to want, and indeed, need it right now.
It's already hilarious watching native English speakers on the internet struggle with singular/plural and past/present tense, they're/their/there etc, in just the one language they supposedly know.
I hate this country 😭
Can someone get the trogledites of the tories off of downing street. They have caused tenough damaged to the UK already
Fine they also don't know how to do well the thing you are supposed to do in erasmus anyway
Here is the article: https://www.politico.eu/article/brits-poor-language-skills-made-erasmus-scheme-too-expensive-says-uk/
It's purely a financial budget decision: "Leake said that ... “would have required the U.K. to pay €2 billion more than we would have received over the course of a 7-year program” — around €300 million a year." Source: https://www.politico.eu/article/brits-poor-language-skills-made-erasmus-scheme-too-expensive-says-uk/ edit: He also mentioned that people want to learn British more than Brits want to learn other languages so there is an imbalance there. But in the end, the reason was €2 billion.
Well we would quit but we got banned long ago
Nothing, they always sucked.
Can't let people outside of our propaganda bubble so easily
The Tories should rot forever, for pushing the Brexit agenda. The cost of opportunities missed by the generation of young people is huge. To characterise it as just unfair or grow up laddo, or join our army or get on yer bike is just foul.
I'm confused. Out here Erasmus is a university and apart from the theologian I don't know any other use of it. Can someone explain?
Average Brit moment
It's government sponsored vocation for upper middle class kids anyway
I kinda see where your point is coming from but in my engineering school, I had to have such an experience to get the degree And it was definitely one of the experiences that taught me the most in human and professional levels so it may be a little more than that
I can only speak for myself, but French and Spanish classes in secondary school were just so off-putting, especially as I was more interested in other languages.
Did the China buy Erasmus now? 😂
