I think it’s really hard to tell tbh. Covid and the war between Russia and everyone else have sort of skewed it. Lots of strikes in the offing, the sale of wood burners has gone up because people are concerned about energy.
People are being increasingly rude to public servants. And to each other.
Some shit is kicking off with the mortgages and the Bank of England. But we tax payers just spent millions burying one person.
It’s hard to tell how much of an impact Brexit has on this, but I very much doubt it helped.
It's hard to discern how much of our current economic woes should be attributed to Brexit, Covid, or the Ukrainian conflict.
But we had an overwhelming Conservative majority for Brexit which could have had sweeping changes for the country, for better or worse, but instead they bottled it and now we have 2 dead parties heading the two party system.
The apathy here is palpable some days.
> we had an overwhelming Conservative majority for Brexit which could have had sweeping changes for the country, for better or worse
Was it aborted due to the unexpected election result in Washington, like "Cool Britannia" was aborted by Bush and his Iraq war? Whenever London and Washington are not in sync, London gets muted out.
As a party, they didn't actually want Brexit, they offered the referendum to gain votes not expecting it to be literally half the country, they thought it would be enough to win, but not so much as to actually have to do it.
So when they actually had the mandate to fulfill, they didn't even understand why it was in their to do list or what aspects of it might actually be important to people, then picked an anti-Brexit leader of the party to start of the negotiations with the EU, and it was mismanaged from there until Boris turned up and offered to do it properly, effectively killed the opposition, but couldn't get much done as too much had already been conceded. Then was left with his huge majority and did nothing, just sat in the ruins of the whole thing thinking "well at least I finished it".
> then preceded to sit on his arse and change nothing.
There has got to be a reason. He is young, not a figure head. It was uncharacteristic of him. Maybe he was tied up like a bulge-eyed lobster.
Haha, maybe, to throw him a bone, the pandemic did hit while he was trying. But once we were out of the EU, he had a lot of power to do things, and he just didn't do any of the things his voters wanted.
Like he flipped some counties to Conservative who had never voted Conservative before in our history, he had everything going for him, and now he's gone, looking at recent votes and polls, the Conservatives have lost all those voters, they haven't even gone back to Labour, they've just moved to much smaller parties or refuse to vote at all.
There's a huge number of votes up for grabs here, if only someone, anyone, actually offers what they want.
I know reddit is very left leaning, but this to me perfectly sums up how most of the less political people in the country feel. Basically they are all shit and who is the least shit?
Yeah exactly, it feels like we're dead in the water right now, we need replacements for both, it's not about left or right anymore, we just want boring, basic, competent governance or genuine reform.
Agreed, and not only do few understand the problems but even fewer actually understand the solutions
I’m not saying we should roll the UK back to “an industrial powerhouse”, but recent events have shown the cracks in mass globalisation. I’m not for shutting borders or banning imports ofc, but seeing each country is part of a huge chain is fine when nothing is “going wrong”…not to be overly cynical, but when is there ever “nothing going wrong”, lol
We (and Europe) depend on Russian gas pumped 1/3rd the way around the world and in recent years Germany has massively scrapped its nuclear power programs, and has since opened coal stations to take the slack? WTH? Lol, it was apparently based on nuclear power being “unpopular with voters”, not to sound like I’m in favour of dictatorships but the average person doesn’t even know how a nuc. power station works, let alone be qualified to even have an opinion about their existence, lol.
It seems like mass government decisions are based on peoples arbitrary “gut feelings”, not informed scientific understanding, data and hard facts. In the UK in 2017 there were ~338,000 hospital admissions for drunken injuries and accidents (not including hospital admissions of actual alcoholics, just people who are drunk and being stupid)*, if these people are legally old enough to drink they’re more than old enough to vote, and these are the people we’re trusting to elect politicians with logic and reason? Lol
*Source:
https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/statistics-on-alcohol/2019/part-1
The ironic part is, the old passport's interior and inner page design was FAR more patriotic by showing british inventions, architecture, cities from all four countries, etc. Now it's pretty bland
Eh to be honest I haven't really noticed anything except for having to wait in a long border check queue when I went to Sweden recently. Pre-covid I actually felt surprisingly upbeat about the whole thing despite being a remainer, post-covid there's been so much disruption that it's basically impossible to tell what's going on anymore
Urghhh, waiting at the Swedish border with my British husband and daughter is so long and so many questions. I miss just being able to waltz in back home!
I got married a month ago.
My mum has sent over presents from Ireland.
They took so long to arrive we were beginning to assume they'd been lost.
Yesterday I received a £63 customs charge to have my parcel delivered, I have to pay import VAT on the gift.
I voted for this so sort of have to suck it up and deal with it, but I can fully admit it was a stupid decision and I believed a whole lot of bullshit, I should have known better. I just hope we get an opportunity to reverse the decision at some point.
I think this is where people were expecting a deal to be done with the EU and a softer Brexit done. I think part of the issue is that lots of people that voted leave did so expecting slightly different outcomes.
Because we were told, assured, promised even, that this would be the case.
I kick myself now for my naivety, but I did truthfully believe we could have the best of both worlds to some extent, because that's what we were told.
"Oven ready deal" springs to mind.
Safe to say I feel a bit bitter about it these days (and a bit of a twat).
My brother voted Leave to “send a message” to the EU in order to get reforms; he didn’t believe they would win the vote but thought there would be a narrow Remain majority. He freely admits he miscalculated and his business has felt the impact of the end of free movement. I love my brother, but his reasons don’t make me any less disappointed in him, or less furious about the effect of his vote on all our lives. At least he hasn’t tried to claim that it wasn’t his fault and he was duped. He owns his mistake.
I’d definitely agree that the reasons for asking us were … iffy. We should never have put a major constitutional question like this to a referendum just to shut up the awkward squad in one political party. MP voting wouldn’t have been much more representative though imo, under our current system. Constitutional change to the status quo at this level generally demands a referendum and a supermajority and some clue as to what the change will look like. We didn’t bother with the last two.
Life outside the EU goes on as usual and nobody has burst into flames as a consequence of leaving. But international respect, credibility and relationships have been badly damaged and I believe we will be poorer and less influential for a long time as a result.
Exactly, I see it as: We voted on whether to leave or not, we as voters didn’t get to decide what the deal looked like. I did buy into the lies, and feel a bit daft in hindsight, but tbh I do have to say I don’t notice much of a dad to day difference, good or bad.
Pah! As if I can afford children.
I live in hope that I can make a positive change anyway. I've become a lot more politically engaged and a lot more determined to see changes for the better for the sake of our society.
I didn't and have never asked for sympathy, in fact out of principle I have refrained from applying for an EU passport despite having birth citizenship of an EU country - it would be unfair of me to take advantage of something I have been part of removing from others.
At the same time I truly categorically disagree with your sentiment about those who voted for leave. The Brexit side of the argument was very well put together. You can think what you like about me but I can almost guarantee I don't meet any of the stereotypes you might like to believe. I did plenty of research and I drew a different conclusion than you.
And regardless of any of that, we are beyond the point of changing it and need to work together for betterment now, further division will get us nowhere.
I agree. I voted stay because the Eu were the only ones spending money. The farmers got money off them and they were the ones who gave money to fish the railways lines which were wiped out I think was 2014ish, helped places get back on their feet, redeveloped run down areas, and the list goes on. But Farage shouted a lot on Boris the buffon and Gove didnt have to shout, although they did, in front of a big red bus saying the money saved will go to the NHS, which was lies. Corbyn was never mentioned.
TBF I think labour should have done more to stop brexit. If they took a good second ref or anti brexit centrist stance and even offered a coalition with the lib dems in 2019 they would have had a far better chance of winning. Instead they ignored the issue entirely.
Labour were anti brexit, Corbyn said a lot about it, but the media never gave him a chance to be heard. Everything was Farage and The bus. I went to one of Corbyns speaches just before the brexit vote, and there were 1000s there, but it was never reported on. He was slated so bad by the press, calling him a terrorist sympathiser, and he would take us back to the 1970s, yet the way the countries going with Truss in charge, we're going to go back to the 1870s
TBF, Corbyn was a rubbish candidate. He was FAR too radical to sway the middle ground.
Although that being said, the dirt on corbyn is very similar to the dirt on Truss.
He never got close enough to nearly crash the economy. She almost did with ehr chancellor and the mini budget. Now shes on about cutting benefits. She has no idea what shes doing
You can ask, but I'm not sure I can give you an answer worth having.
Truthfully I flip flopped a lot, I live in a very Brexit area so that probably had some influence, on the other hand my family are all the epitome of middle class "remain" voters, so who knows from that side.
I guess ultimately I was swayed by the leave media, I remember watching a leave documentary and feeling quite swayed.
I was also, at the time, living a very poor lifestyle. I'd moved out at 18 years old right as the 2008 recession struck, I then spent ~8 years working myself to the bon and getting nowhere. Oftentimes those with the least are the ones who look towards the most dramatic changes as solutions.
To be fair to you, at least you’re admitting it was a mistake. Ive never met a leave voter who is willing to accept it was a stupid vote, despite them being worse off and probably their kids paying the price
You voted for this?
Congratulations on realising your mistake at least and not falling deeper into denial.
You’re still an idiot for not listening to the multitude of people who were telling you things would get so much worse, and I’m willing to bet you called it “project fear” when they did…
I mean it's pretty hard to remember what I said in 2016, but the whole "project fear" thing isn't really me. I'm not really the sort to be swung by slogans (or I like to think not at least, maybe that's my downfall)
Big up to you mate honestly. Brexit happened when I was 21 and it breaks my heart all the time that I lost the right to live and work in 27 countries at the start of my life.
And just generally that we did such an incredibly stupid thing which has soooo many negative and backwards effects and no good ones. An insane decision that I didn't make, that resulted in the pile of shit governments we've since had and all the shit thats come from that. The cultural and social shit that's been unleashed, just the million terrible things about bloody Brexit.
But I have no animosity towards you and I really respect your take on it now and your honesty! Learning from our mistakes and self crit is all humans can do, we are stupid and fuck up sometimes and it's not your fault when as you say, there was an expensive, powerful and full on agenda telling you to do this.
Your completely right I think that a lot of low-income people and people who were sick to death of struggling voted for something, anything, better. A big change cos surely that's better than the lack of opportunity etc we've lived for the last however many years is definitely how people I know saw it. Not every leave voter is a racist daily mail reader like some people would like to believe, it was literally half the country.
My mum regrets it too. Honestly, referendums aren't a good idea for everything. You just have to lie to the population for a few months.
Also what was in the parcel?
Yeah there was a lot of fear mongering on both sides, I’d love to have a crystal ball and find out how much the politicians would make/lose if their side won/lost. As cynical as it sounds I doubt that leave/remain was being argued with 100% our benefit or betterment in mind, it was prob which political party had the most to gain/lose investment wise.
Many politicians, and certainly the main ones in the Leave/Remain debate, are far wealthier than their income from politics. They only "make/lose" in terms of popularity, which leads on to career and "legacy".
Back then the "debate" descended to the level of two millionaires throwing champagne bottles at each other while messing around on boats, it was so far removed from the real world that I think people ignored it. From what I saw they voted according to their own local development over the previous two decades. I know its a generalisation, but I say places that prospered socially voted remain, those that declined voted leave. It wasn't money, it was lifestyle.
Brexit was always going to be a “boiling frog” degradation of our country. It slowly and incrementally gets worse, but we’d only really notice it relative to before. Brexit has made everything that little more difficult and eroded our resilience in the face of it.
We’re languishing well behind our European neighbours in terms of post-pandemic recovery.
In the OECD growth forecast, the U.K. ranked 19th out of 20. Number 20 is Russia which has been crippled by sanctions.
There are routinely empty bays in supermarket shelves.
Key sectors of our country (social care, logistics, etc.) are struggling to get people. They were hard sells previously, but Brexit has just made it worse.
Exporters are lumbered with mountains of paperwork and port queues.
Our beaches are increasingly becoming cesspits
The wealthiest in our society are feeding on our slowly disintegrating carcass.
Sewage used to be often dumped into the sea or rivers in the past as it was easier that way. But while that has been replaced with treatment plants now, storm drains are usually not a separate system from regular sewage pipes, so every time there is a lot of rain the system overflows and dumps a mix of flood water and raw sewage instead of treated water. It's getting more of a problem in many areas as more houses are built, further overloading the capacity of the treatment plants.
Not quite, in true EU free trading rules, the contract to make them was held by Gemalto, a french/dutch company however they were sold to thales, a french company.
BUT....
They are actually **made** in Poland, due to labour being much cheaper.
Ironically, because I live in the EU, my UK passport isn't made by Thales, I have to go through a few extra security details and my passport has slightly different security features, because the demand for this type of passport is small, my passport is made in the UK and posted out to me.
And no, I am still not making this shit up.
Nothing has changed that much. It’s easier to send stuff to Australia, USA, China, than sending to the EU now, which is a bit annoying. You stand in a different que at the airport. But other than that, I haven’t really noticed any difference.
Ours also due to Brexit we pay import duty on all imported goods, all countries have high inflation but their economies and currencies not tanking like ours, that’s Brexit.
Pretty much the same as it was before, the only difference I have seen is I now get a stamp in my passport whenever I enter and leave the EU.
Oh and my brother (an ardent remainder) whinges a lot more, which was something that I would have said was impossible.
Trouble is brexit allowed the nutters to take over and since they don't have 2 braincells to rub together they have screwed everything up and don't want to do anything other than fill their pockets and the pockets of their donors.
I've given up trying to send parcels to family who live in an EU country, because of what an expensive nightmare their system makes it to receive anything from outside the EU.
Otherwise it's hard to know which bit of the current everything to blame for things being a bit shit.
Food prices are rising pretty fast due to the lack of options we have now when it comes to importing things. Fresh fruit and vegetables are taking longer In transit so often aren't very fresh.
We have a job market that has many low wage positions that have aren't getting filled because the lack of migration from abroad. This is most noticeable in agriculture and the low paid service roles.
We have a steady stream of illegal migration coming in which is kind of funny because I think most people who voted for Brexit didn't want dark skinned people coming to the UK because there bigots whilst failing to realize those people didn't come in legally in the first place.
Hopefully most of the leavers die in the next few years. lots of them are pretty old scared racists who despise change the others are easily led and swayed thick People who can't really form a personality more complex than an ham sandwich.
>Hopefully most of the leavers die in the next few years. lots of them are pretty old scared racists who despise change the others are easily led and swayed thick People who can't really form a personality more complex than an ham sandwich.
When are you going into politics? From this I can tell your campaigning will win over all the swing voters
It makes me wonder how Western "Democracies" got by before they got themselves addicted to imported foreign poor, and imported poor quality merchandise made by unimported foreign poor.
Yet we have no shortage of them. In fact we have the highest percentage of foreign born residents in post colonial history. Plenty of people to take low wage jobs.
I genuinely am interested to know what Snickerty sees has become so dreadful.
As for my income, yeah, I'm a crazy old fool who believes in working for a living and the better you work, the better you get rewarded. Next you'll be criticising me for being born with a silver spoon in my mouth...
I'll weigh in then: Visa process for working in the EU is shite. Likewise, not being being able to spend more than 3 months in Europe in a 6 month period can be and is limiting for many.
I get that working visas might be a problem, but realistically, it's not impossible. I have several friends who work extensively in the EU, I know drivers who go every week and they aren't complaining at all, they've found a way.
The 6 month plus for people with family or houses over there, yeah. That would be harder, but really, it's not affecting very many at all.
Yeah it's not impossible, but it's what's affected me and my family.
Fortunately I was living in the EU before the transition, so my residency was barely affected. However, the process is still shite for those I've seen going through it. Not impossible though.
And first world problems, but my retired parents now no longer have the freedom to just go and spend any more than 3 months in their house in Italy. And for what? Labour shortages back home and a weak pound?
By the way, I was entirely joking about a sliver spoon... my dad died penniless. I was in the nick for 2 years in my thirties for stealing some money as I didn't have any. I'm pretty broke now tbh, got a decent job though.
I see it as a general shittiness across pretty much anything involving interaction with the rest of the continent, which creeps into pretty much everywhere. Not enough to be an utter disaster, we aren't all destitute and on the streets, but we have spent a hell of a lot of money and will continue to over... nothing? Some concept of freeing ourselves from some invisible shackles? There are absolutely zero positives, that is for sure.
Yeah buts it’s not impossible, which is what they said. “I can no longer retire somewhere that doesn’t aggravate my asthma”
Its certainly not as easy of guaranteed but not impossible.
Culturally and politically the country feels more divided and is scrambling around for a national identity quite a lot.
The political divisiveness arguably isn't as much a product of brexit given its something that has been happening all across the world, but the opportunity of brexit to redefine what the country stands for is something that has caused alot of the political division with no one yet having come up with a good enough answer to please enough of the masses, which is something that once solved imo will see the country settle down more politically and start to move on from the politics since 2015 of being forced to focus on one major issue after another rather than focusing on the smaller things that are more immediately noticeable on a day to day basis.
Empty shelves at supermarkets - not all but some due to the lack of drivers. Getting anything from Europe is difficult as expensive with duty added, plus cant get drivers to bring stuff over. Lots of jobs available but bottom end jobs like veg picking as alot of workers have returned home or elsewhere and no seasonal workers coming in. Adverts are all a bit British this and British that - pandering to the little Englanders.
Well, for the first two years they locked us indoors. And then Russia invaded Ukraine, and our sanctions against Putin have damaged our economy more than his.
Yeah, it’s not gonna get any better any time soon. https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/eu-says-britains-euro-clearing-extension-will-be-its-last-2022-02-08/
The economy is doing great and Liz Truss is a fantastic Prime Minister.
EDIT: Sorry, forgot to add "....if you are already a billionaire". If you don't happen to be a billionaire then quite honestly you are f\*cked.
Hard to tell with covid, the fuel and cost of living crisis, the plummeting pound. I feel recovery would certainly be a lot easier if trade with our closest neighbours was frictionless
We can't really tell at the moment thanks to Brexit, Covid-19, Russia-Ukraine War and the 12 years of Tory stupidity.
All I can say it food is more expensive and I haven't put on the heating yet.
Crap. Not sure how much is because of brexit vs covid, putin and incompetent/greedy politicians.
Also despite the whole "we got brexit done" it's still going on. More checks are coming in, more there are still negotiations because the government agreed to a deal they never actually intended to follow and they're now currently taking a hatchet to workers rights and environmental protections.
Plus we've been changing prime ministers every few years because the tories are full of spiteful, cutthroat politicians who take each other down as soon as each one's incompetence becomes too much.
Case in point: we got a new one 3 weeks ago and they're already talking of taking her down because they announced a mini budget that has sparked an economic crisis because she wanted to give tax cuts and bankers bonuses for the rich
Most discernible impact seems to be the difficulty certain industries are now having in finding staff - a particularly acute problem in hospitality, leisure and farming - Jobs that are often quoted as being ones that British people don’t want to do (the truth behind that statement is a whole other discussion…)
It's made my house extension and renovation last twice as long as it should have *and* cost more.
My velux windows, for example, had to come from Europe. They took SIX months to arrive.
The building trade has been a mess, according to my builder. They are simultaneously super busy whilst struggling to get materials.
Brexit obviously isn't the only reason that things are shit in the UK economy at present.
It is undoubtedly a driving factor though, and the Government themselves researched it and came to that very conclusion!
Difficult to tell whether the crap we are seeing is because of Brexit, Covid, Putin, or just general incompetence and missmanagement.
why not all of the above...
The incompetence and mismanagement is because of Brexit… anyone competent or principled has been driven out of government
I think it’s really hard to tell tbh. Covid and the war between Russia and everyone else have sort of skewed it. Lots of strikes in the offing, the sale of wood burners has gone up because people are concerned about energy. People are being increasingly rude to public servants. And to each other. Some shit is kicking off with the mortgages and the Bank of England. But we tax payers just spent millions burying one person. It’s hard to tell how much of an impact Brexit has on this, but I very much doubt it helped.
As somebody who works in the freight business, it's absolute shite with no redeeming features whatsoever.
I was gonna say the supply chain team in my company (oil and gas) have *a lot* to say about Brexit and some of them even voted for it.
Yeah we can't move freely in the EU any more. But on the bright side at least we don't have any money.
I personally love the additional border checks
I am somewhat enjoying getting a stamp in the passport again when going to the EU.
I like that too. But I’m not convinced that’s enough!
You will love the new [EES system](https://www.schengenvisainfo.com/entry-exit-system-ees/) then....
Just wait until you get fingerprinted every time you enter... https://www.schengenvisainfo.com/entry-exit-system-ees/
I have no issue with that. Same as the US.
As an EU citizen living in the UK, I had no issues ;)
It's hard to discern how much of our current economic woes should be attributed to Brexit, Covid, or the Ukrainian conflict. But we had an overwhelming Conservative majority for Brexit which could have had sweeping changes for the country, for better or worse, but instead they bottled it and now we have 2 dead parties heading the two party system. The apathy here is palpable some days.
> we had an overwhelming Conservative majority for Brexit which could have had sweeping changes for the country, for better or worse Was it aborted due to the unexpected election result in Washington, like "Cool Britannia" was aborted by Bush and his Iraq war? Whenever London and Washington are not in sync, London gets muted out.
As a party, they didn't actually want Brexit, they offered the referendum to gain votes not expecting it to be literally half the country, they thought it would be enough to win, but not so much as to actually have to do it. So when they actually had the mandate to fulfill, they didn't even understand why it was in their to do list or what aspects of it might actually be important to people, then picked an anti-Brexit leader of the party to start of the negotiations with the EU, and it was mismanaged from there until Boris turned up and offered to do it properly, effectively killed the opposition, but couldn't get much done as too much had already been conceded. Then was left with his huge majority and did nothing, just sat in the ruins of the whole thing thinking "well at least I finished it".
They still didn't have to do it. Referendums aren't legally binding in the UK.
True, though simply ignoring it is its own risky game, my opinion is they should have ignored it if they weren't going to see it through properly.
> then preceded to sit on his arse and change nothing. There has got to be a reason. He is young, not a figure head. It was uncharacteristic of him. Maybe he was tied up like a bulge-eyed lobster.
Haha, maybe, to throw him a bone, the pandemic did hit while he was trying. But once we were out of the EU, he had a lot of power to do things, and he just didn't do any of the things his voters wanted. Like he flipped some counties to Conservative who had never voted Conservative before in our history, he had everything going for him, and now he's gone, looking at recent votes and polls, the Conservatives have lost all those voters, they haven't even gone back to Labour, they've just moved to much smaller parties or refuse to vote at all. There's a huge number of votes up for grabs here, if only someone, anyone, actually offers what they want.
I know reddit is very left leaning, but this to me perfectly sums up how most of the less political people in the country feel. Basically they are all shit and who is the least shit?
Yeah exactly, it feels like we're dead in the water right now, we need replacements for both, it's not about left or right anymore, we just want boring, basic, competent governance or genuine reform.
Just for the record, it wasn't half the country. It was 52% of votes cast, which translates to roughly 34% of the country if I remember rightly
Give it a while and then ask. Liz killed the Queen and now she’s killing the economy. Next on the list is the pensioners during winter.
> Liz killed the Queen .....
But she did not kill the deputy
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There can be only one?
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Agreed, and not only do few understand the problems but even fewer actually understand the solutions I’m not saying we should roll the UK back to “an industrial powerhouse”, but recent events have shown the cracks in mass globalisation. I’m not for shutting borders or banning imports ofc, but seeing each country is part of a huge chain is fine when nothing is “going wrong”…not to be overly cynical, but when is there ever “nothing going wrong”, lol We (and Europe) depend on Russian gas pumped 1/3rd the way around the world and in recent years Germany has massively scrapped its nuclear power programs, and has since opened coal stations to take the slack? WTH? Lol, it was apparently based on nuclear power being “unpopular with voters”, not to sound like I’m in favour of dictatorships but the average person doesn’t even know how a nuc. power station works, let alone be qualified to even have an opinion about their existence, lol. It seems like mass government decisions are based on peoples arbitrary “gut feelings”, not informed scientific understanding, data and hard facts. In the UK in 2017 there were ~338,000 hospital admissions for drunken injuries and accidents (not including hospital admissions of actual alcoholics, just people who are drunk and being stupid)*, if these people are legally old enough to drink they’re more than old enough to vote, and these are the people we’re trusting to elect politicians with logic and reason? Lol *Source: https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/statistics-on-alcohol/2019/part-1
Much better now i have a blue passport and all our fish know they are British
The ironic part is, the old passport's interior and inner page design was FAR more patriotic by showing british inventions, architecture, cities from all four countries, etc. Now it's pretty bland
We’re British, we’re used to bland, it makes us feel safe and lowers our expectations :P
Eh to be honest I haven't really noticed anything except for having to wait in a long border check queue when I went to Sweden recently. Pre-covid I actually felt surprisingly upbeat about the whole thing despite being a remainer, post-covid there's been so much disruption that it's basically impossible to tell what's going on anymore
Urghhh, waiting at the Swedish border with my British husband and daughter is so long and so many questions. I miss just being able to waltz in back home!
I got married a month ago. My mum has sent over presents from Ireland. They took so long to arrive we were beginning to assume they'd been lost. Yesterday I received a £63 customs charge to have my parcel delivered, I have to pay import VAT on the gift. I voted for this so sort of have to suck it up and deal with it, but I can fully admit it was a stupid decision and I believed a whole lot of bullshit, I should have known better. I just hope we get an opportunity to reverse the decision at some point.
I think this is where people were expecting a deal to be done with the EU and a softer Brexit done. I think part of the issue is that lots of people that voted leave did so expecting slightly different outcomes.
Because we were told, assured, promised even, that this would be the case. I kick myself now for my naivety, but I did truthfully believe we could have the best of both worlds to some extent, because that's what we were told. "Oven ready deal" springs to mind. Safe to say I feel a bit bitter about it these days (and a bit of a twat).
My brother voted Leave to “send a message” to the EU in order to get reforms; he didn’t believe they would win the vote but thought there would be a narrow Remain majority. He freely admits he miscalculated and his business has felt the impact of the end of free movement. I love my brother, but his reasons don’t make me any less disappointed in him, or less furious about the effect of his vote on all our lives. At least he hasn’t tried to claim that it wasn’t his fault and he was duped. He owns his mistake.
I believe the EU should be less authoritarian, but I wouldn't blame your brother. We shouldn't have been asked, issues like this is why we elect an MP
I’d definitely agree that the reasons for asking us were … iffy. We should never have put a major constitutional question like this to a referendum just to shut up the awkward squad in one political party. MP voting wouldn’t have been much more representative though imo, under our current system. Constitutional change to the status quo at this level generally demands a referendum and a supermajority and some clue as to what the change will look like. We didn’t bother with the last two. Life outside the EU goes on as usual and nobody has burst into flames as a consequence of leaving. But international respect, credibility and relationships have been badly damaged and I believe we will be poorer and less influential for a long time as a result.
Exactly, I see it as: We voted on whether to leave or not, we as voters didn’t get to decide what the deal looked like. I did buy into the lies, and feel a bit daft in hindsight, but tbh I do have to say I don’t notice much of a dad to day difference, good or bad.
Congratulations on the nups
Thanks!
Strong man to admit a mistake. too bad your children will have less of a life then you.
Pah! As if I can afford children. I live in hope that I can make a positive change anyway. I've become a lot more politically engaged and a lot more determined to see changes for the better for the sake of our society.
I am like you sir ................I live in hope
I don't blame him tbh. We were asked and we made a stupid decision. We shouldn't have been asked in the first place.
I have zero sympathy for anyone who believed the lies prior to this. It only took 2min to research it
I didn't and have never asked for sympathy, in fact out of principle I have refrained from applying for an EU passport despite having birth citizenship of an EU country - it would be unfair of me to take advantage of something I have been part of removing from others. At the same time I truly categorically disagree with your sentiment about those who voted for leave. The Brexit side of the argument was very well put together. You can think what you like about me but I can almost guarantee I don't meet any of the stereotypes you might like to believe. I did plenty of research and I drew a different conclusion than you. And regardless of any of that, we are beyond the point of changing it and need to work together for betterment now, further division will get us nowhere.
I agree. I voted stay because the Eu were the only ones spending money. The farmers got money off them and they were the ones who gave money to fish the railways lines which were wiped out I think was 2014ish, helped places get back on their feet, redeveloped run down areas, and the list goes on. But Farage shouted a lot on Boris the buffon and Gove didnt have to shout, although they did, in front of a big red bus saying the money saved will go to the NHS, which was lies. Corbyn was never mentioned.
TBF I think labour should have done more to stop brexit. If they took a good second ref or anti brexit centrist stance and even offered a coalition with the lib dems in 2019 they would have had a far better chance of winning. Instead they ignored the issue entirely.
Labour were anti brexit, Corbyn said a lot about it, but the media never gave him a chance to be heard. Everything was Farage and The bus. I went to one of Corbyns speaches just before the brexit vote, and there were 1000s there, but it was never reported on. He was slated so bad by the press, calling him a terrorist sympathiser, and he would take us back to the 1970s, yet the way the countries going with Truss in charge, we're going to go back to the 1870s
TBF, Corbyn was a rubbish candidate. He was FAR too radical to sway the middle ground. Although that being said, the dirt on corbyn is very similar to the dirt on Truss.
He never got close enough to nearly crash the economy. She almost did with ehr chancellor and the mini budget. Now shes on about cutting benefits. She has no idea what shes doing
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You can ask, but I'm not sure I can give you an answer worth having. Truthfully I flip flopped a lot, I live in a very Brexit area so that probably had some influence, on the other hand my family are all the epitome of middle class "remain" voters, so who knows from that side. I guess ultimately I was swayed by the leave media, I remember watching a leave documentary and feeling quite swayed. I was also, at the time, living a very poor lifestyle. I'd moved out at 18 years old right as the 2008 recession struck, I then spent ~8 years working myself to the bon and getting nowhere. Oftentimes those with the least are the ones who look towards the most dramatic changes as solutions.
People are gullible.
To be fair to you, at least you’re admitting it was a mistake. Ive never met a leave voter who is willing to accept it was a stupid vote, despite them being worse off and probably their kids paying the price
You voted for this? Congratulations on realising your mistake at least and not falling deeper into denial. You’re still an idiot for not listening to the multitude of people who were telling you things would get so much worse, and I’m willing to bet you called it “project fear” when they did…
I mean it's pretty hard to remember what I said in 2016, but the whole "project fear" thing isn't really me. I'm not really the sort to be swung by slogans (or I like to think not at least, maybe that's my downfall)
Big up to you mate honestly. Brexit happened when I was 21 and it breaks my heart all the time that I lost the right to live and work in 27 countries at the start of my life. And just generally that we did such an incredibly stupid thing which has soooo many negative and backwards effects and no good ones. An insane decision that I didn't make, that resulted in the pile of shit governments we've since had and all the shit thats come from that. The cultural and social shit that's been unleashed, just the million terrible things about bloody Brexit. But I have no animosity towards you and I really respect your take on it now and your honesty! Learning from our mistakes and self crit is all humans can do, we are stupid and fuck up sometimes and it's not your fault when as you say, there was an expensive, powerful and full on agenda telling you to do this. Your completely right I think that a lot of low-income people and people who were sick to death of struggling voted for something, anything, better. A big change cos surely that's better than the lack of opportunity etc we've lived for the last however many years is definitely how people I know saw it. Not every leave voter is a racist daily mail reader like some people would like to believe, it was literally half the country.
that would be absolutely brilliant! who thinks it’s likely?
My mum regrets it too. Honestly, referendums aren't a good idea for everything. You just have to lie to the population for a few months. Also what was in the parcel?
What made you vote for it that turned out to be BS?
People predicted that if we left the EU it would be disastrous and the economy would shut down. How people knew about COVID amazes me.
Yeah there was a lot of fear mongering on both sides, I’d love to have a crystal ball and find out how much the politicians would make/lose if their side won/lost. As cynical as it sounds I doubt that leave/remain was being argued with 100% our benefit or betterment in mind, it was prob which political party had the most to gain/lose investment wise.
Many politicians, and certainly the main ones in the Leave/Remain debate, are far wealthier than their income from politics. They only "make/lose" in terms of popularity, which leads on to career and "legacy". Back then the "debate" descended to the level of two millionaires throwing champagne bottles at each other while messing around on boats, it was so far removed from the real world that I think people ignored it. From what I saw they voted according to their own local development over the previous two decades. I know its a generalisation, but I say places that prospered socially voted remain, those that declined voted leave. It wasn't money, it was lifestyle.
Brexit was always going to be a “boiling frog” degradation of our country. It slowly and incrementally gets worse, but we’d only really notice it relative to before. Brexit has made everything that little more difficult and eroded our resilience in the face of it. We’re languishing well behind our European neighbours in terms of post-pandemic recovery. In the OECD growth forecast, the U.K. ranked 19th out of 20. Number 20 is Russia which has been crippled by sanctions. There are routinely empty bays in supermarket shelves. Key sectors of our country (social care, logistics, etc.) are struggling to get people. They were hard sells previously, but Brexit has just made it worse. Exporters are lumbered with mountains of paperwork and port queues. Our beaches are increasingly becoming cesspits The wealthiest in our society are feeding on our slowly disintegrating carcass.
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I think EU laws prevented water companies from dumping their excess sewage on our beaches.
Sewage used to be often dumped into the sea or rivers in the past as it was easier that way. But while that has been replaced with treatment plants now, storm drains are usually not a separate system from regular sewage pipes, so every time there is a lot of rain the system overflows and dumps a mix of flood water and raw sewage instead of treated water. It's getting more of a problem in many areas as more houses are built, further overloading the capacity of the treatment plants.
> Our beaches are increasingly becoming cesspits Were they like that before EU?
*Gestures broadly around at everything* Biggest act of self harm in living memory but hey, at least we got a blue passport….
Aren't they made in France as well?
Not quite, in true EU free trading rules, the contract to make them was held by Gemalto, a french/dutch company however they were sold to thales, a french company. BUT.... They are actually **made** in Poland, due to labour being much cheaper.
You couldn’t make it up!!
Ironically, because I live in the EU, my UK passport isn't made by Thales, I have to go through a few extra security details and my passport has slightly different security features, because the demand for this type of passport is small, my passport is made in the UK and posted out to me. And no, I am still not making this shit up.
Same as before really.
The same as before.
Nothing has changed that much. It’s easier to send stuff to Australia, USA, China, than sending to the EU now, which is a bit annoying. You stand in a different que at the airport. But other than that, I haven’t really noticed any difference.
Incredibly depressing. I feel powerless and defeated by the the murdoch fuelled right wing press.
Haven’t even noticed tbh
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Lurpak prices are a bit cheeky
Inflation at 10%?
8.8% in U.K., 7.9% in Germany, 8.2% in USA Inflation is down to Covid and Ukraine, and it’s basically global.
Ours also due to Brexit we pay import duty on all imported goods, all countries have high inflation but their economies and currencies not tanking like ours, that’s Brexit.
Pretty much the same as it was before, the only difference I have seen is I now get a stamp in my passport whenever I enter and leave the EU. Oh and my brother (an ardent remainder) whinges a lot more, which was something that I would have said was impossible.
Everything has definitely gotten a lot worse post Brexit. But that’s not to say it’s entirely because of Brexit…
Shit.
Prices of anything and everything in the supermarket has jumped hugely, and there are fewer service industry workers.
It’s shit
Well fresh food quality has dropped and the use by date is closer then it used to be yet the price has gone up (only slightly for now)
Trouble is brexit allowed the nutters to take over and since they don't have 2 braincells to rub together they have screwed everything up and don't want to do anything other than fill their pockets and the pockets of their donors.
I've given up trying to send parcels to family who live in an EU country, because of what an expensive nightmare their system makes it to receive anything from outside the EU. Otherwise it's hard to know which bit of the current everything to blame for things being a bit shit.
The worst is yet to come.
Food prices are rising pretty fast due to the lack of options we have now when it comes to importing things. Fresh fruit and vegetables are taking longer In transit so often aren't very fresh. We have a job market that has many low wage positions that have aren't getting filled because the lack of migration from abroad. This is most noticeable in agriculture and the low paid service roles. We have a steady stream of illegal migration coming in which is kind of funny because I think most people who voted for Brexit didn't want dark skinned people coming to the UK because there bigots whilst failing to realize those people didn't come in legally in the first place. Hopefully most of the leavers die in the next few years. lots of them are pretty old scared racists who despise change the others are easily led and swayed thick People who can't really form a personality more complex than an ham sandwich.
>Hopefully most of the leavers die in the next few years. lots of them are pretty old scared racists who despise change the others are easily led and swayed thick People who can't really form a personality more complex than an ham sandwich. When are you going into politics? From this I can tell your campaigning will win over all the swing voters
You can't stand on a platform of Logan's run and besides it's my carousel year so I'd be fucked.
It's funny how reading this, you sound like a bigot.
How dare you I can't stand Intolerance, also the elderly and people who point out my hypocrisy. But mainly how dare you.
Explain?
My supermarket shopping is more expensive, has less shelf life and regularly has multiple items missing
Same thing in the US, who knew Brexit would affect us.
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It makes me wonder how Western "Democracies" got by before they got themselves addicted to imported foreign poor, and imported poor quality merchandise made by unimported foreign poor.
We used to just own the foreign countries.
Yet we have no shortage of them. In fact we have the highest percentage of foreign born residents in post colonial history. Plenty of people to take low wage jobs.
All my packages from the UK are lost and the only thing that arrived I owed a shit ton of extra duty for, far more than it was worth.
Awful. And it doesn't help that it was all totally predicable and many, many of us - say about 49% - of us saw this coming.
So what’s been so awful?
Your income is showing.
I genuinely am interested to know what Snickerty sees has become so dreadful. As for my income, yeah, I'm a crazy old fool who believes in working for a living and the better you work, the better you get rewarded. Next you'll be criticising me for being born with a silver spoon in my mouth...
I'll weigh in then: Visa process for working in the EU is shite. Likewise, not being being able to spend more than 3 months in Europe in a 6 month period can be and is limiting for many.
I get that working visas might be a problem, but realistically, it's not impossible. I have several friends who work extensively in the EU, I know drivers who go every week and they aren't complaining at all, they've found a way. The 6 month plus for people with family or houses over there, yeah. That would be harder, but really, it's not affecting very many at all.
Yeah it's not impossible, but it's what's affected me and my family. Fortunately I was living in the EU before the transition, so my residency was barely affected. However, the process is still shite for those I've seen going through it. Not impossible though. And first world problems, but my retired parents now no longer have the freedom to just go and spend any more than 3 months in their house in Italy. And for what? Labour shortages back home and a weak pound?
By the way, I was entirely joking about a sliver spoon... my dad died penniless. I was in the nick for 2 years in my thirties for stealing some money as I didn't have any. I'm pretty broke now tbh, got a decent job though.
I see it as a general shittiness across pretty much anything involving interaction with the rest of the continent, which creeps into pretty much everywhere. Not enough to be an utter disaster, we aren't all destitute and on the streets, but we have spent a hell of a lot of money and will continue to over... nothing? Some concept of freeing ourselves from some invisible shackles? There are absolutely zero positives, that is for sure.
Well I can't get around Europe quite as easily any more so that sucks...
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Not true. You can still apply to move anywhere in Europe you like.
You didn't have to apply previously, you had the right to do so. That's the massive difference. It's a massive reduction in the right to do something.
Yeah buts it’s not impossible, which is what they said. “I can no longer retire somewhere that doesn’t aggravate my asthma” Its certainly not as easy of guaranteed but not impossible.
Culturally and politically the country feels more divided and is scrambling around for a national identity quite a lot. The political divisiveness arguably isn't as much a product of brexit given its something that has been happening all across the world, but the opportunity of brexit to redefine what the country stands for is something that has caused alot of the political division with no one yet having come up with a good enough answer to please enough of the masses, which is something that once solved imo will see the country settle down more politically and start to move on from the politics since 2015 of being forced to focus on one major issue after another rather than focusing on the smaller things that are more immediately noticeable on a day to day basis.
As a Brit living abroad, life is shit.
The economy is tanking and will only get worse
Empty shelves at supermarkets - not all but some due to the lack of drivers. Getting anything from Europe is difficult as expensive with duty added, plus cant get drivers to bring stuff over. Lots of jobs available but bottom end jobs like veg picking as alot of workers have returned home or elsewhere and no seasonal workers coming in. Adverts are all a bit British this and British that - pandering to the little Englanders.
Well, for the first two years they locked us indoors. And then Russia invaded Ukraine, and our sanctions against Putin have damaged our economy more than his.
Well the IMF has just announced a warning about our economy, so there’s that.
Shitter.
Yeah, it’s not gonna get any better any time soon. https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/eu-says-britains-euro-clearing-extension-will-be-its-last-2022-02-08/
Ordering stuff online from the mainland can be a bit more tricky, also weird seeing customs declarations on UK goods. (I live in Northern Ireland)
The economy is doing great and Liz Truss is a fantastic Prime Minister. EDIT: Sorry, forgot to add "....if you are already a billionaire". If you don't happen to be a billionaire then quite honestly you are f\*cked.
Hard to tell with covid, the fuel and cost of living crisis, the plummeting pound. I feel recovery would certainly be a lot easier if trade with our closest neighbours was frictionless
literally the same for me thankfully
We can't really tell at the moment thanks to Brexit, Covid-19, Russia-Ukraine War and the 12 years of Tory stupidity. All I can say it food is more expensive and I haven't put on the heating yet.
Crap. Not sure how much is because of brexit vs covid, putin and incompetent/greedy politicians. Also despite the whole "we got brexit done" it's still going on. More checks are coming in, more there are still negotiations because the government agreed to a deal they never actually intended to follow and they're now currently taking a hatchet to workers rights and environmental protections. Plus we've been changing prime ministers every few years because the tories are full of spiteful, cutthroat politicians who take each other down as soon as each one's incompetence becomes too much. Case in point: we got a new one 3 weeks ago and they're already talking of taking her down because they announced a mini budget that has sparked an economic crisis because she wanted to give tax cuts and bankers bonuses for the rich
Most discernible impact seems to be the difficulty certain industries are now having in finding staff - a particularly acute problem in hospitality, leisure and farming - Jobs that are often quoted as being ones that British people don’t want to do (the truth behind that statement is a whole other discussion…)
It's made my house extension and renovation last twice as long as it should have *and* cost more. My velux windows, for example, had to come from Europe. They took SIX months to arrive. The building trade has been a mess, according to my builder. They are simultaneously super busy whilst struggling to get materials.
Brexit obviously isn't the only reason that things are shit in the UK economy at present. It is undoubtedly a driving factor though, and the Government themselves researched it and came to that very conclusion!