Brexit bullshit

[touchingcloth]

How has Brexit affected your life to date?

Me? Well I'm moving to Portugal next month, so there has been a lot of admin to deal with. Some of it has been on the Portuguese side (getting fiscal numbers and residency permits and the like) and I've been surprised at how unfailingly polite people in terms various government offices have been. I was anticipating (and wouldn't really begrudge) an air of apathy if not outright hostility to a Brit trying to get registered in the current climate, but more than one official expressed views along the lines that they're more than happy to be joined by educated and employable people who like their country enough to want to live there.

The headaches I've had have all been on the UK side. As one example, I've spent all of this morning getting passport photos and waiting around in the Post Office as someone who has never had to do it before tried to work out the pair of International Driving Permits I'll need after 29 March need to be completed, one of which is a document with its origins in 1949 and the other in 1968. They're such antiquated documents that they're made of brown paper, stamped with ink, and with the photographs literally Pritt Stick-ed in. Like a fucking ration book.

That's just part of the admin I've had to do, when basically none at all would have been required without Brexit. Fuck this country, I hope it burns.

[ToneLa]

https://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,71771.0.html

[Replies From View]

https://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,71771.0.html

Maybe this could be more a thread for discussing people's personal lived realities of Brexit without the endless scream of pro-Leave propaganda and the insistence that people's own experiences are fearmongering.

[touchingcloth]

Maybe this could be more a thread for discussing people's personal lived realities of Brexit without the endless scream of pro-Leave propaganda and the insistence that people's own experiences are fearmongering.

That was my intention. I'd have popped it in the megathread, but the chatter in there is more about the political machinery of the thing.

[ToneLa]

I don't see why that thread can't be a catch all by definition, being a megathread, and not to be rude but I don't like loads of Brexit discussion, I have to be in the mood... And it is useful to have it all in one place. Because a core recurring argument of that thread is indeed how Brexit has affected our real, actual lives!

But who the fuck am I. :)

[shiftwork2]

We have patients concerned that their cancer treatments will be interrupted.  I cannot tell them that it won't.  Therapeutic radioactive material with half-lives short enough that a day's border delay makes them effectively useless.  Continental Europe supplies us 100%.  Anxiety levels are already very high for these people. 

I voted remain, I really don't care if you did or didn't but this is a real life consequence of the 2016 referendum.

[Emma Raducanu]

My partner is having to claim citizenship by doing some ridiculous exams that cost about £1500. We waited half an hour in Waterstones while the assistant tried finding the home office's official study guide. What a waste of our time.

[BlodwynPig]

My partner is having to claim citizenship by doing some ridiculous exams that cost about £1500. We waited half an hour in Waterstones while the assistant tried finding the home office's official study guide. What a waste of our time.

My wife will face the same.

"Which monarch froze a cucumber in Gwent in 1679...and why?"

DENIED CITIZENSHIP

[studpuppet]

So, personal downsides since the referendum (full disclosure - my other half is German):

1. Most of the neighbours who voted for Brexit don't talk to my wife and I (mainly because she keeps posting pro-Remain articles etc. on Facebook). Conversely some talk to us more, especially the couple whose two sons have made careers and lives for themselves in the EU.

2. My wife has become progressively more angry/scared as the process has gone on. She applied for Leave To Remain (£65) a year ago, and then got more concerned and became a British citizen last month (another £1500). The German govt. allow dual nationality if your other nationality is with an EU nation, so with No Deal on the horizon (a transition period would give her more time to apply) she decided to be safe rather than sorry. Needless to say this hasn't done wonders for our relationship, as she gave up a good career to move to the UK and basically I'm the only reason she's here.

3. We visit Germany regularly and are also on holiday in Spain this year, which means two driving permits each if we both want to drive (for unknown reasons my wife only has her British licence these days).

4. My mother-in-law doesn't have a passport, having been able to travel on her German ID card previously. Now she's talking about not visiting rather than apply for a passport [Les Dawson]not sure whether to put that in the debit or credit column[/Les Dawson]. That's some of our child care gone they we'll need to replace at greater expense than a plane ticket.

5. At work, in a department of around twenty we've lost three people in the last six months because they were EU citizens that have been here less than five years, and decided to go back to their respective countries.

6. I've lost contact with an ex who lives in Prague because she voted for Brexit(!) and was/is very unrepentant about it.

7. Having family in Germany, I'm basically their source of on-the-ground reportage etc. and they've become increasingly incredulous at the games being played by our politicians. Whatever the final outcome of all this, we as a nation have suffered a serious loss of reputation and standing in the world, and I feel it personally when I meet acquaintances and they look askance at me.

A couple of positives though:

1. My kids are bilingual, but to all intents and purposes they're outwardly English. In the last couple of years they've begun secondary school and they seem to have gravitated to all the immigrant kids; a a couple of Poles, an Egyptian, an Italian and a half-South African. I take heart that they have a much more tolerant attitude than my generation (or their grandmother, who despite having a German daughter-in-law voted Brexit).

2. I had the honour of attending my wife's citizenship ceremony and it was a genuinely joyful occasion. Seventy people being sworn in, each with a story. Very few of them (maybe ten at most?) were white Europeans, and it was a truly international mix. The woman next to my wife was Algerian and had lived here thirty years, and there were Africans, Turks, Asians, West indians (from their age I'm guessing they were Windrush generation). For my wife it was a bit of paper, some admin. But for most of the people there it was possibly one of the best moments of their lives, to have moved to a new country, decided to settle there and then been accepted (casual racism and Brexit aside). My wife in particular was genuinely moved, and it put all our worries about the future of living in this country into the shade for an afternoon.

[ToneLa]

Me out

[Attila]

I teach at a university. Half my dept are people from EU countries. My university went all weak sauce back in 2017 and said they would pay for any of these colleagues who wanted to become British citizens. That went down really well with my Irish colleague.

Anyway, it is a real concern for us, not just because staff are EU -- we have a good percentage of students from EU countries, our Eramus exchange may be fucked, no one knows what's going to happen with European field trip modules or conferences.

I came to the UK to be with Mr Attila, but also to get away from America and to be a part of Europe and that. Two weeks after I got my British citizenship was the Brexit referendum. :(  I'm unhappy and depressed actually to be thinking about stockpiling food and medicine in peacetime in 2019, about issues with fuel shortages -- it is mental that with all of the warnings that continue to come, the PM just blags on like someone who's driving down a road fixated on a distance point that will take the car off the road and over a cliff, ignoring the warnings from the other passengers.

[JohnnyCouncil]

My youngest son is now a month old, we have five weeks of cow and gate formula stockpiled, really should have more. It's ridiculous the country is in such a mess.

[biggytitbo]

The great Brexit tragedy, aka the Ballad of Middle Class, late stage Capitalism Grievance.

Alternatively - https://unherd.com/2019/02/why-wont-remainers-talk-about-family

This is the philosophy that preaches freedom of movement, the Remainers' golden cow. And it is this same philosophy that encourages bright working-class children to leave their communities to become rootless Rōnin, loyal to nothing but the capitalist dream of individual acquisition and self-advancement.

Always on the move, always hot desking. Short-term contracts. Laptops and mobiles – even the tools of modern workplace remind us that work no longer has any need of place. All this is a philosophy that could not have been better designed to spread misery and unhappiness. Human beings need roots for their emotional and psychological flourishing. They need long-term, face-to-face relationships; they need chatting in the local post office; they need a sense of shared identity, shared values, mutual commitment. No amount of economic growth is worth sacrificing all this for.

Because robbed of their most go-ahead young people, working class communities become ghost towns of hopelessness. And care homes for the elderly become ways to warehouse those who cannot be persuaded to make the trip to Dignitas.

[shiftwork2]

Hi bigs

What does my post have to do with class?

[touchingcloth]

People don't become rootless because they've become slaves to capitalist lies, they leave home because there's often no alternative. My dad is from an era when a job for life was a thing. He left school at 16, joined the NHS, stuck there and retired at 55 on a tidy pension, all after looking after a wife and two kids solely on his salary. Could I hope to have that sort of career now, even if I decided to stay where I was raised and do a similar job? Like fuck could I.

[Twit 2]

My life won't be affected by any of this, except perhaps for the better - and I don't care one jot about how any of this affects any one because I have no empathy - but I thought I'd copy and paste some shite that no one gives a fuck about because I'm an obsessive and incorrigible crank with a completely empty life.

Ok great, thanks for letting us know, byeeee.

[touchingcloth]

And for the record I'd love a chat in my local post office, but "local" is a drive away, and chatting would only slow down the glum functionary filling in a Byzantine form on my behalf.

[Buelligan]

Such bollocks.  Generalising about other people so's you can pretend you're helping them by taking away their choices and narrowing their lives. 

I don't hot-desk but when I go into the post office or the bank or the newsagent or the local supermarket, everyone says hello.  I know everyone that lives in my community, I know what their dogs are called.  I am part of my community.  I belong here. 

Oh, and don't try to lecture me on why I left "home", you have no idea and it offends me.  I'm not middle class either.

Trite bollocks.

[Danger Man]

I'm not middle class either.

Upper class?

[touchingcloth]

Such bollocks.  Generalising about other peoples' lives so's you can pretend you're helping them by taking away their choices and narrowing their lives. 

I don't hot-desk but when I go into the post office or the bank or the newsagent or the local supermarket, everyone says hello.  I know everyone that lives in my community, I know what their dogs are called.  I am part of my community.  I belong here. 

Oh, and don't try to lecture me on why I left "home", you have no idea and it offends me.  I'm not middle class either.

Trite bollocks.

I know exactly what you're about. Loyal to nothing but the capitalist dream. Laptops. Mobile phones. Caves. Pornhub. You middle class mother fucker.

[All Surrogate]

Successfully derailed.

[Buelligan]

I know exactly what you're about. Loyal to nothing but the capitalist dream. Laptops. Mobile phones. Caves. Pornhub. You middle class mother fucker.

It's laughable isn't it?  What's better than being a rōnin?  What's better than being someone masterless?  A samurai?  Someone who waits attendance on the nobility?  Someone obliged to kill themselves if they lose their master? 

[Danger Man]

Upper class it is

[Delete Delete Delete]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=nwipdk6-_NY

[pancreas]

Upper class it is

Are you back to haunt us in a more sustained way, or are you dipping in and out at the moment?

[Cuellar]

The great Brexit tragedy, aka the Ballad of Middle Class, late stage Capitalism Grievance.

Alternatively - https://unherd.com/2019/02/why-wont-remainers-talk-about-family

I would absolutely love to live in an episode of Midsomer Murders.

[Cuellar]

Wait is that a real thing written by an actual sentient human being?

[kittens]

i think i'm poor enough and on a low enough wage that brexit will make very little difference to how terrible my life is, unless they decide to lower minimum wage.

[Zetetic]

You might get enjoy all sorts of price fluctuations for a bit - you'll get much more out of the experience if your poor. (Although less, literally.)



Personally, any imminent effects are eminently escapable (thanks to being middle class and the person I most care about having lovely blood).

Professionally, it's notable how much time has been pissed away over the last year or so on contingency planning that might have been spent on helping people. As above, so below of course.

[Urinal Cake]

As someone from a former colony it feels like real end of Empire stuff.

Maybe their ales and Scotch will be finally cheaper?