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Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

to ask for some actual facts about how shit things are going to be?

228 replies

milkyface · 25/06/2016 09:07

Can someone please tell me exactly what's going to happen in the next year, 10 years, 20 years?

I mean please someone tell me EXACTLY how shit things are going to be.

I must be missing something because everyone seems to know exactly what position we're all going to be in in 1, 5, 10, 20 year plus, and I don't.

How can we be certain on what will happen when we haven't even left yet?

OP posts:
Emmaroos · 25/06/2016 11:57

Currency:
Firstly, people saying that the pound has recovered against the Euro don't understand the currency markets. Certain economies are linked, so (for example) when Sterling tanks that affects Ireland and our closest neighbours with whom we do the most trade. The Irish stock market fell off a cliff when the Brexit was confirmed. As a result, even though we are not in EMU, a tanking pound will, at least in the short term take the Euro down with it. To escape the falling pound investors would flee to the Dollar, and perhaps in a lesser way some of the more stable Asian currencies, so to see where the pound really is one needs to look at the dollar or the Yen. It's bad, and that isn't changing any time soon unless there is an even bigger crisis somewhere else. Although, even if a big US crisis (e.g. Trump being president) would make the comparison exchange rate LOOK better, in reality we wouldn't have improved, they would have sunk, and that means the whole world would feel the pain as in 2008.
A weakened pound is good for exporters, but the reality is that we are completely reliant on imports in our day to day lives - the whole of the UK doesn't produce enough food to feed London - so as well as the cost of travelling shooting up, so does the cost of day to day life, and if it happens in a recession, things get more expensive at the time we can least afford it.

Stocks:
Large companies, especially those likely to be directly affected by any changes to free trade/movement of people will be hit by the uncertainty and probably issue profit warnings damaging the value of their stock. Financial institutions based in the UK are certified by EU regulations, so many of these will possibly have to move some/all their workforce away from the UK. Sudden relocation is a huge cost to a company affecting profits, so the uncertainty will cause some investors to cut their losses and sell off these stocks, which is why some of the sectors seeing the biggest collapses in share price were finance and aviation. There will be others too, but I'm not an equities analyst, and you would need to go through all the losses and gains to see the patterns and try to work out why and whether they are likely to be short or long term losses.
Other than for individuals with share portfolios, for ordinary people in the UK falling stock prices means a whack wiped out of pension pots which in the longer term means later retirement and lower pension incomes. When people say about yesterdays stock market crash that 'it recovered' they need to remember that interest rates are low, so maybe you would hope for steady growth of a few percent per year from a fund...even with the small bounce back, in a single day the equivalent of a full year's growth and more can be wiped out and probably was. Any equities people on here might be able to give you more detail, but in layman terms, anything that affects the profitability of big companies is bad for share prices and pensions.

House Prices:
If big industry such as finance moves then highly paid jobs leave the economy. The people who pay most of the tax aren't super rich semi-resident billionaires, they are highly paid (overpaid?!) PAYE workers in high earning sectors such as finance. These are people who are likely to move to follow their jobs. Apart from the hit to the tax take, these are people who own/rent substantial houses and the laws of supply and demand means that you would expect the prices in this housing sector to take a hit, and this will trickle down and up. An educated guess would expect a fall in house prices which will be great for people trying to get on the ladder, and horrific for those trapped in negative equity. Again, it's very much a wait and see, because until the negotiations are complete nobody really knows anything....although there has already some stagnation and even price falls in this sector as people waited for the result of the referendum. A housing crisis also affects the a wider industry - architects, solicitors, builders as was seen in the Irish property crash in recent years.
Restrictions in free movement and/or a recession hitting jobs might also cause lower paid migrants to move on to other EU countries with better opportunities. Again, falling rents (good for renters, bad for those paying mortgages on rental properties) and lower house prices at entry level housing...good for some, terrible for others. The killer about recessions is that they don't affect everyone equally. House prices in certain parts of the country have been out of control and have probably needed some governmental input to take the heat out of the market for a long time. The difference is that when the adjustment comes about in the less controlled way caused by a recession the effects cannot be controlled and spread out gradually. So as in the Irish property crash I expect some people's lives will be completely destroyed - people already committed to the property market find themselves a decade later raising families in tiny one bedroom flats with negative equity mortgages and childcare bills requiring two professional incomes to service, while others 1-2 decades younger can get onto the housing ladder at half the price with ease. In between was a whole generation of graduates and skilled workers who were forced to emigrate and build lives elsewhere. Many will never return.

General Recession:
Our economy is entirely dependent on growth...in real terms, Western life (where we all live way beyond the means of what we actually produce) is a Ponzi scheme and the working population needs to consistently grow so each generation can fund the retirement of the generation ahead of them. It helps if the growth is in high earning sectors. If we just keep the workforce at the same size we cannot afford to live as we do. When growth slows (or falls back) it is a double whammy - lost jobs mean that at the same time as tax take income falls, the state has to support more jobless people with benefits. One way of addressing this is to extend the retirement age, another is to cut services (NHS, education, council services), benefits and pensions. Again, all this will take time to occur because of the negotiation period and then the time it takes for the damage to seep through the economy, but it makes it particularly ironic that the largest groups of 'leave' voters were those reliant on benefits and pensioners...

Political Instability:
Scotland could devolve.
Less likely (but possible) is devolution by NI because a new border will have a really negative impact on the daily lives of many who live lives which straddle it. This could trigger bids for independence by the Basques, the Catalans and other European regions, again destabilising Europe while settlements are negotiated and agreed.
Putin is clearly seeking to destabilise the EU - he will doubtless see our own internal wranglings as opportunity....If I lived in Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania I would be very concerned. Cameron was ridiculed for the pointing it out, but a destabilised EU certainly makes war on continental Europe for the first time since the Balkans look like a much more serious risk, and small wars can sometimes turn into much bigger wars as we discovered last century.

Random things:
The EU has many different programmes from which we benefit in Arts/Culture, education, science/medicine and research. Unless the ultimate resolution is that we (like Norway) are not officially a member but continue to make all the payments and permit all free movement then you would have to expect that Erasmus programmes and the like will no longer be open to us and that many current research programmes will no longer be funded. I know of one research programme developing a cancer treatment protocol that expects to be shut down at the end of this year when the current phase ends, despite very promising results, only because someone I know was discussing it recently, but there will be countless others.

There will be some benefits - some of the EU agreements mean that we have suppressed some industry sectors as a trade off to benefit others, or in return for subsidies. We could (if we wanted) disregard things like agreed EU fishing quotas...someone more well up on it could probably list a ream of ways farming and manufacturing will benefit by being freed up, but the reality is that when we start to negotiate trade agreements we will have to make concessions again anyway.

So, right now nobody really knows anything for certain except the initial financial losses as they appear and as recessions are measured in quarters it could be the winter before we know if this initial uncertainty is going to do real damage. It could be a further two years before the negotiations are concluded and we know what the exit terms are and exit changes come fully into force. I imagine it will be 5 years before anyone can say exactly what the effects are, and a decade before we can fully evaluate the effects of the decision.

All of the above probably makes it clear that I voted to stay...a 'leave' voter may be able to provide some positive benefits that will offset some of the above. I'm in a very lucky position in that I have another EU citizenship and will relocate there. We were older parents, so our children are young enough for this crisis to have levelled out before they get to the career stage of their lives. I feel desperately sorry for the current crop of school leavers (and for the future generation of grandparents who may see their grandchildren raised on the other side of the world) and also for those who may find themselves trapped in negative equity if things get grim and recession takes hold.

milkyface · 25/06/2016 11:59

Also someone was asking me what do I consider wrong type of refugees , well fake ones and the economic migrants portraying themselves as a refugees . And it will stop.*

How will it stop troubled? What's the plan, are we going to stop being a few miles off the coast of France? Will the civil war in Syria end when we leave, and ISIS lay down their arms? I assume OP you're as unhappy with Brexiters asserting predictions as facts as you are with Bremainers...*

Yes absolutely.

There has been equal bollocks from both sides unfortunately!

OP posts:
Butterworthbees · 25/06/2016 11:59

I'm a remainer (just - I voted remain in the end on balance) but I don't think leaving is Armageddon for a couple of reasons.

1: economy - the markets are going crazy today because investors are gambling (and making a killing). If you look at the FTSE 100, stock market and a couple of weeks ago compared to now it's not that different and the pound is recovering. Our economic future was by no means guaranteed by being in Europe either which people seems to be forgetting.

2 immigration - Lots of Eastern European workers being willing to work for less than a 'living wage' has definitely had a negative imact on people who want to make their lives here. I know a lot of polish people my DH works with have no intension of settling here long term, and many of them live 10 to a family size house to cut costs and then send the majority of money back to Poland where they are all building enormous houses to live in once they have done their 10-15 year stint working a minimum wage job in the UK. Meanwhile me and my DH have not got a slim hope of buying any kind of family house, and DH is competing with people who will happily work for a lot less than we can afford him to. Maybe this situation will change now (here's hoping anyway!).

3: - nhs, it was doomed anyway under a Tory government. Perhaps now the rhetoric of 'the EU is ruining our nhs' via immigration/us spending our money on EU membership - which is obviously a complete fallacy - can no longer be used we might actually be able to save it. I don't know, the NHS's future looks bleak in or out of europe

milkyface · 25/06/2016 12:00

And for the record I don't think troubled is right about refugees or Erm... 'Fake ones' Confused

OP posts:
OohMavis · 25/06/2016 12:00

So the purpose of this thread is to make you feel a bit better in the knowledge that nobody really knows what will happen?

If uncertainty makes you feel better about your vote then crack on, because that's all we have. Probably for the next four years.

milkyface · 25/06/2016 12:01

*So the purpose of this thread is to make you feel a bit better in the knowledge that nobody really knows what will happen?

If uncertainty makes you feel better about your vote then crack on, because that's all we have. Probably for the next four years*

No, and I have explained that several times if you had bothered to read the thread.

OP posts:
Madbengalmum · 25/06/2016 12:03

There are an awful lot of people who can see into the future on this thread!

kirinm · 25/06/2016 12:04

Butter - the leave MPs have already said they won't be getting rid of free movement of labour. So nothing changes.

BonerSibary · 25/06/2016 12:04

I don't think anyone does OP, particularly not anyone who knows that the Dublin Regulations are EU law. But if we're going to complain about Bremainers pulling stuff out of their arses, let's do the same for Brexiters.

milkyface · 25/06/2016 12:05

I don't think anyone does OP, particularly not anyone who knows that the Dublin Regulations are EU law. But if we're going to complain about Bremainers pulling stuff out of their arses, let's do the same for Brexiters.

No I agree it is both sides and both sides need to stop.

OP posts:
BonerSibary · 25/06/2016 12:06

2 immigration - Lots of Eastern European workers being willing to work for less than a 'living wage' has definitely had a negative imact on people who want to make their lives here. I know a lot of polish people my DH works with have no intension of settling here long term, and many of them live 10 to a family size house to cut costs and then send the majority of money back to Poland where they are all building enormous houses to live in once they have done their 10-15 year stint working a minimum wage job in the UK. Meanwhile me and my DH have not got a slim hope of buying any kind of family house, and DH is competing with people who will happily work for a lot less than we can afford him to. Maybe this situation will change now (here's hoping anyway!).

Why do you think leaving will change this butter? Did you believe the people who said we'd be able to send them all back if we left, or the people who reckon that we'd have to, as Norway and Switzerland have, concede free movement to have access to the single market?

PhilPhilConnors · 25/06/2016 12:07

Madbeng, if you read newspapers you'll probably see that these are predictions from finance experts, business experts etc, not predictions made on the hop by MN.
Sure no-one can see into the future, but the vast majority of business leaders and financiers recommended we remain.

Emmaroos · 25/06/2016 12:13

georgetteheyersbonnet and jacks11 got their comments in while I was writing my essay...I agree with everything they said.
Someone said that they've lived through recession and it was survivable as justification for kicking off a new one here with a leave vote. Britain had a very small recession. I think if a leave vote was based on that as a worst case economic scenario then they are deluded.

Madbengalmum · 25/06/2016 12:18

Phil, and the vast majority got that prediction wrong!

Nobody knows what will happen,end of.

Butterworthbees · 25/06/2016 12:19

It's not about 'sending them all back' a lot of Eastern Europeans are my friends. Boner it's about changing the culture around so called 'low skilled work' companies shouldn't get away with paying so little, but there is little incentive to value workers by paying them properly if you have a lot of people who will work cheaply.

Fedupagain1975 · 25/06/2016 12:21

Well the NHS won't be getting the £350 million they promised, they have already admitted it.

NoCakeLeft · 25/06/2016 12:23

I don't know the facts and not very good with crystal ball, but I do remember what was going on in Estonia when USSR fell apart.
Have you ever survived on oats with fried onions for a month? I have. It was the only thing we had to eat. We lost our home, my parents lost their jobs and there was no benefits. It took us ages to get back on our feet. Almost 4 years. For 4 years we couldn't afford meat(usually bones with little meat stuck to them for soup) more often than once a week and I didn't have cheese for 4 years. At 10 years old I didn't know what ham is, because we couldn't afford it. Mostly we had bread with milk, as they were the cheapest and boiled potatoes with salt.

I know you might think that this is irrelevant, but UK leaving EU might be the beginning of the end and EU might fall apart because of that. Do you really believe that children should starve just because "Britain needs to take back its borders" and "start to make its own decisions"?

Actually you don't have to answer, because I know what you're going to say.

PhilPhilConnors · 25/06/2016 12:24

Mad, I mean their predictions for what is likely to happen following a leave vote.
Many have given various different projections, none of them are rosy.
Whilst we still don't know if their predictions are right, you certainly can't say they've been proved wrong.

BonerSibary · 25/06/2016 12:25

OK. So how is Brexit going to help with this, particularly if it's not about sending them all back? I don't think you're wrong about cheap labour, but why do you think leaving the EU will mean less of it? Did you see Daniel Hannan being interviewed? He's a pro-Brexit Tory MEP who thinks we may well be keeping free movement despite leaving.

CoteDAzur · 25/06/2016 12:26

"It's not about 'sending them all back'... it's about changing the culture around so called 'low skilled work' companies shouldn't get away with paying so little"

You should have campaigned for minimum wage then. That would be the reasonable course of action for that concern.

gottaloveascamhun · 25/06/2016 12:26

Can anyone predict how this would affect my DPs job... he works for BMW financial services and regularly travels to Europe. Just wondering what Brexit means for the company in your opinions?

soapydopeybubbles · 25/06/2016 12:37

It is already going wrong and we haven't even left yet. You only have to read the other active threads to see how many people have lost their jobs or whose jobs are uncertain.

CoteDAzur · 25/06/2016 12:44

"the markets are going crazy today because investors are gambling"

Is that also why Moody's just downgraded UK's outlook to "Negative", in your learned opinion? Hmm

I don't think you know anything about financial markets. No movement of this size happens without institutional investors, and most of those don't (and can't) gamble because of their administrative constraints and the size of their assets.

The market heavily sold GBP because UK's economic outlook is bleak in a Brexit scenario. That is also why Moody's downgraded UK's outlook. That means your interest rates are now higher. Which in turn means that UK's existing sovereign debt (government bonds or Gilts) significantly declined. That in turn means the value of your pensions just went down.

All of this was foreseeable once turkeys voted for Christmas UK voted for Brexit. And that is why markets went down.

CoteDAzur · 25/06/2016 12:53

"How can we be certain on what will happen when we haven't even left yet?"

There is a field called Macroeconomics where such cause/effect relations are well known for many decades now.

Butterworthbees · 25/06/2016 13:00

Well it depends what happens - no one knows exactly. (Remember I voted remain on balance)

Change is more likely with a leave vote though than a remain one.

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