Ashly’s interview

My name is Ashley Tyler and I am 24

Alix: How do you get your information and your news

Most of its through youtube erm Im a redit user aswell, I like using redit erm sorry I need to
start with your question, I didn’t answer your question did I.

Alix: That’s ok don’t worry.

What was your question again?

Alix: Where do you get your information and news?

So I get my information, basically from er youtube and reditt including watchin my news
including BBC, sky… not sky sports, sky news erm I don’t know, Im not much of a news
paper reader er same as most people my generation I will sort of see things through
facebook and just have an opinion on it myself and if something interests me I will later go
into research on it.

Alix: Ok erm yeah, I don’t think a lot of people read newspapers anymore, especially of our
age, erm can you tell me why you voted leave?

So 3 years ago I voted leave because right, let me wrack my brain a bit, I remember there
was talk about the erm the Euro taking over the pound in this country and the pound being
the stronger currency and wanting to keep that. As well as at the time I recall there was a
lot of immigration problems of refugees and illegal immigrants coming in so the ideal is to
strengthen our borders, not to keep them out but if your going to come here legally then
yeah theres nothing wrong with that but turing up on boats and then being housed by our
government, I don’t think that’s fair when in the same as America there are veterans who
cant get housed. There are people who need it more already here than them

Alix: Do you feel like erm, do you feel like your opinions were informed by things you saw
on line or do you think you had your own opinions and then erm the leave campaign
chimed with hat you were already thinking.

Erm that’s a good question actually. Erm so I definitely think I already had my own opinion
on things and when it came to voting it was like weighing out the pros and cons. To me
there was more pros in voting for leave than there was cons for staying erm no pros of
staying. But at the time it was so hard to find information on this stuff, cos it was such a
big thing. I remember people not wanting to stay only talked about the bad things of
leaving and people who wanted to leave only ever spoke about the good thing of leaving.
Now no one really spoke about the benefits of staying and there was very minimal
information about the cons of staying. I remember apart from the BBC showed and what
you could find on the news most of that would be the cons of staying including like I said
the pound and immigration and that sort of thing.

Alix: Yeah definitely, we will just take a second to reframe.

Alix: Ok, so erm do you feel like there was a lack of middle ground?in the political debate,

where it was one or the other. Obviously it was one or the other in the decision but there
was no conversation in the middle of what like might be like what might be a good thing
about staying.

Can you read the question again?

Alix: Do you feel there was a lack of middle ground?

Erm I do think there was a lack of middle ground, like you say it was either stay or leave
and it was a point of people on the far right and the far left were so against each other on
what one to choose. For myself I do agree with a lot of stuff that the EU could have done
for us but I still feel strongly about us being an indipendant country on our own. The same
with the last election being conservative or labour, there were so many more votes on
either side but it was more of an erm social war against people, especially on the internet
and things, there was no middle ground you cant sit on the fence and find out your on
things it was like this is this and that is that sort of thing.

Alix: Yeah it becomes quite tribal doesn’t it?

Yeah it does anad you even see it now, you see it now over the internet all the time like off
camera that banner I said about earlier I read the comments on facebook and its erm a lot
of people who wanted to leave saying your scared, no it was a lot of people who wanted to
stay saying your scared if we have another referendum about us staying but everyone’s
like yeah but its done now, get over it. Its happened but nothings happening with it, we are
3 years down the line we they said it was going to take a gear but its got boosted another
2 weeks and its probably going to get boosted anoter year and its probably not going to
happen.

Alix: Its out to October now

Well there you go so.

Alix: Yeah, erm, so have you got any sort of idea about how the leave campagne used
facebook to target voters.

I do remember a lot of ideals on line, it was very much stuff that I didn’t personally agree
with because it was the Alt right person, oh whats his name..
Alix: Tommy Robinson

Tommy Robinson that kind of group there were constantly posting at the time and they
were sort of trying to ramp up their reputation and convince more people to leave just
simply because of immigration and stuff like that and I feel like a lot of it I can agree with
immigration to a certain extent but I don’t want to be on the same side as them kind of
people because I wouldn’t want to represent myself in that sort of way and the same with
all my friends its just not the way ot do things and on line they were gaining such erm such
an internet body of grouping people together and that getting shared around but it was
sharing the wrong message like people shouldn’t be knowing this sort of stuff. They should
be instead of watching an unintellectual person chatting absolute dog faeces about
technically stuff which is totally irrelevant to what we are talking about and people who
were obviously uneducated saying yeah he says everything right I like him and then voting
leave for that so erm then again if we did go back and that sort fo thing didn’t happen the
election could have been different or could have been the same considering the amount of
older people wanting to leave anyway so.

Alix: Yeah definitely

Sorry I rambled on a bit there

Alix: No it was perfect, its exactly what we want

I got a bit excited

Alix: It was great, so erm I think you are probably aware that the leave campaign broke
electoral law

Why? Erm no I wasn’t

Alix: You weren’t aware

No I wasn’t

Alix: So erm the official leave campaign gave big sums of money toer the unofficial leave
campagnes which breaks electoral law because you are not allowed to fund other
organisations which support your cause and so they were found guilty of that.

Ah bloody hell

Alix: So there have been calls for like the referendum to be disregarded because obviously
it wasn’t a legal thing. So now you know about that can you tell me how it makes you feel
about the vote that you cast?
To be honest I think that’s ridiculous that they have done that as well as

Alix: Can I just stop you and can you say that the leave campaign broke electoral law.

Sydney: Can I just adjust. Sorry.

Alix: Trying to get the perfect shot

So the leave campaign breaking the electoral law is absolutely rediculus and I don’t know
about it and thinking about it now it wasn’t what swayed me in the first place to vote leave.
Like I said I done my own research and I had my own reasons on my own back about why
I wanted to vote leaverather than following the stuff on the news cos like I said about the
Tommy Robinson thng most of it I disagreed with. I dunno, where was I going with this?
Erm sorry I have gone blank. No cant think.

Alix: We can just move onto another question, or would you like a bit of time to think.

Hang on let me grab my coffee. *stuff happens ie mike being dropped/ risk assessment
talk*

Can we do a different question then.

Alix: Yeah sure, we are 3 years down the line now, how do you feel about the current
political climate.

I think the current political climate is a nightmare to be honest with you, erm like we said
earlier it’s a tribal thing of one or the other theres no standing middle ground when erm I
myself I do like a lot of the lefts point of views like about equality and things like that. At the
same time I think they are a bit too much to a point of erm like sometimes a lot of left
feminists are like knocking men down but it should be you should be like building yourself
up because like obviously feminism is equality between both sexes not building one down
pushing one back up. It think the same as it is now especially with like social media a lot
of it gets shared around and it does cloud a lot of peoples own opinions because a lot of
the time you can see a celebrity like for example madonna who is upping feminism and a
lot of female actors. People see that and think well they think that way so I need to think
that way rather than doing their own research. And it’s the same with the right side. I
disagree with a lot of things they say cos its right over there. If there was a fence I would
probably have my toe on the top of it just poking over to the left side because I do agree
with them. But at the moment with what’s going on in the houses of parliament, you see
what’s going on with them I do personally find it hard to understand because as a younger
generation we are not educated on it very much erm and I think that would be a good thing
to erm learn in schools or something like that or have it oken about say in late secondary
school when you are like not 11 but 16 or 17, You're going to be voting soon. So you need
that little kick to sort of here's this, here's that you choose what your opinion is, and I don't
think there's enough of that. Going on now. It is the your this all that and and obviously it
comes down the Brexit as well.

Alix: Yeah, the education would be really it's really important and should be like pushed.

Yeah our bond honestly,

Sydney: so do you think a teacher can. Educate a class without

I think

Sydney: including their bias.

Yeah, like that is the problem because obviously if if you're a conservative teacher
because I want to be a teacher and I would like to personally change the education system
because it hasn't changed in something 1920s. and being conservative. If I was to teach
that I would personally like to include both sides because a Young Generation can be
influence so much by just one person. So having a teacher tell them all the good things
about one and the bad things about the other isn't the fair way to do it. At all and they need
to, they need to bloom and sort of figure out their own opinions and stuff. But I think a lot of
money would need to be put into the school systems to do that sort of thing because it will
be either an extracurricular which not I know much about students now like in secondary
schools, but I know when I went if it was extracurricular you just didnt go one really went
and even now at university I don't really go to extracurricular stuff so pretty in a timetable
we see including with like the three main ones science maths and English. Is that a main
one? I

*Sydney explains the school curriculum including citizenship being a class*

see that was the same as religious studies when I was in school. So you have to do that
up until year 9 and then obviously you could choose with me not to because you have your
options and things wow.

*Sydney Explains how RS is now a core subject*

that's actually nah that's ridiculous.

Sydney: The educational system hasn't changed but what they consider important is.

oh right so like religious studies and…

*Sydney, Alix and Ashly have a long discussion on if Atheism can be taught in schools and
why RS is a flawed class when in a school that has a minor religious bias.*
See I think religious study would be more interesting if they added old religions like
paganism and stuff because you can go back into looking at what the Saxons believed in
as well as the North and that sort of stuff. I would have made it a lot better but as a like
interest as a child's point of view, but I also think that it's good that they teach it in a way
but. The same with anything you shouldn't force it Upon a Child. Like you said, they didn't
teach atheist or whether it is Atheism because I was I was I was an atheist for four years
because I was rebelling.