To feel extremely depressed about how Brexit is limiting the lives we once knew.

[Persiantrio]

Presumably now, if you want to go shopping in Paris on the Eurostar, you will have to declare, queue and pay customs on any clothes / goods over a given amount at the border. How crap and inconvenient is that?

Same with any holiday purchases from anywhere in the EU? Not worth it.

Also if you order anything online that happens to come from the EU and costs over over £135, you get hit with massive customs charges of about 40%. Companies like Etsy etc are taking a massive hit as a result.

How is this “taking back control?” Its so depressing and backward. The only reason nobody is kicking off about this yet is because nobody could go anywhere anyway. People don’t realise the freedoms they had and that are now gone. What a shit and insular place to live this will be.

And I don’t wait to hear any predictable ‘vaccine nationalism’ waffle either (because that has nothing whatsoever to do with what I’m asking in this instance and we could have done exactly the same within the EU anyway).

@Daphnise

Try not to be so ridiculous- who's going shopping on Eurostar to Covid-ridden France or Europe.

There have been no effects of Brexit on ordinary people.

None of my online orders have attracted any tax or delays.

What world are you living in?

So sorry if your caviar costs a few pence more!

I have experienced a couple of issues, very first world problems but they have occurred. Both involved long delays in delivery from Ireland. A pair of Dubarry boots and a track for my new blinds were stuck with customs for weeks. The blind track was ordered by the curtain company so I didn’t have to deal with that, but I did feel for them as they are a small local business and had a number of similar issues.

I think thankfully that the full effects of Brexit will not be felt until we are out of the Covid crisis, but it is a little disingenuous to assume that because you haven’t experienced any adverse effects that the entire thing is going swimmingly.

I'm not worried about day trips to Paris because that was never within my grasp. But I do look at the drop in food exports with gloom - cheese down 85% in a year, pork down 86%, beef down 92%, salmon down 98% and on and on.

Also I for all the reasons I wanted to Remain filling out a form to go on holiday wasn't one of them.

It doesn't stop us going on holiday to non-EU places does it...

I think picking out these things to talk about makes a bit of a mockery of the whole thing. There are really important things that we have lost...

Arguments on Brexit aside, this thread is indicative that some people struggle to think that there is a world beyond their own town. ‘Oh I never to go to Paris, so quit moaning’. Some expanded horizons would help. You don’t have to go to Paris to know that not being able to go there and bring things back freely is worse than it used to be.

The ‘what’s the big deal filling out some forms, it’s the same as for other countries’ posts are so depressing. Yes, I’ve queued at airports and visited embassies to get visas, and all totally worth it to visit amazing places. But definitely better not to have to. It’s always seen as progress when one country drops its requirements to have another’s citizens need visas or otherwise makes it more convenient and appealing to visit. Increasing admin and charges is not a step forwards.

Yes, realise we aren’t talking about visas here, but it’s an example of travel-related red tape.

I’ve never been on a shopping trip to Paris or bought diamonds (abroad or anywhere else), but I have family in the EU and we’ve sometimes gone clothes shopping and always do a big food shop when we visit. Even if amounts spent mean this is still possible, it will still be in the back of my mind that there is a limit over which it won’t be worth it. Where previously I didn’t need to give that any mind.

Many, many ordinary British people have ties to the eu (though fewer in future, I grant you!) so I don’t think my situation is unusual or makes me ridiculously privileged.

It’s crap. Might register very low on the crapness scale, but crap nonetheless. Adding crapness into our lives is worth it if there’s a pay-off, of course. Here there is none, except the opportunity for people to indulge in the usual diamond shoes, world’s tiniest violin sneering.

I do hope all this is negotiable in future, because putting up barriers like this when the general trend has been taking them (and anyone who travels long haul knows this to be the case, which is why I find the no-big-deal posts so ignorant) is backwards and depressing.

Damn, there go my future diamond purchases from Amsterdam.... Oh, wait....

Given the OP clearly hasn’t travelled to Paris for at least 14 years since the Eurostar moved to St Pancras this is clearly nothing more than a goady thread....

@BiologyMatters - another person that doesn’t pick up on the Monty Python reference but fine.

Farmers won’t pay people more to pick things because supermarkets and customers won’t pay more for the crop. You will get pennies for picking a cauliflower because a cauliflower costs under £2 in the supermarket, as with English strawberries in the summer.

To pay people better wages would increase the price of strawberries, potatoes, cauliflowers. I earn enough that I can afford food at twice the price. The people that will suffer from Brexit won’t. Their health will suffer, to say nothing of all the farmers that will go out of business.

Of course, lots of farmers were only surviving because of the EU subsidies - farming needs a shakeup but a sudden and dramatic shakeup will leave families and businesses destroyed with no time to absorb the impact. That is why COVID has been devastating economically.

If you think that’s worth it because people like me are pissed off, you have fallen for the footballification of politics.

I’m an immigrant from a nonEU country, although I have lots of family in the EU. The EU isn’t why I’m here, and Brexit hasn’t made me leave but racism has undoubtedly increased and my european friends have been attacked since 2016. Italians and French.

I voted remain but after the vaccine debacle there's no chance I'd do that again. A PP said we'd have still been able to secure vaccines the way we did - no we wouldn't, the EC prohibited individual EU countries from procuring their own vaccines and how many will lose their lives because of it?

The way people rave about flitting off to Paris for the (mono)culture is pure snobbery. There's infinitely more cultural variety in any major UK city, it's just sneered at because it's familiar. As for whining about flag waving little Englanders, good grief! It's like some people think EU countries would never lower themselves to even have flags and their insular flag waving nationalism is a fantasy.

OP, I notice you said you wrote a dissertation on the effects of EU immigration on poorer UK communities. I'm guessing it didn't get a high mark based on your subsequent incorrect comments.

Presumably now, if you want to go shopping in Paris on the Eurostar, you will have to declare, queue and pay customs on any clothes / goods over a given amount at the border. How crap and inconvenient is that?

How would that work? I often buy stuff in Italy when I visit relatives (eg, a winter coat), wear it for the whole holiday and then bring it back home.

Just another annoying thing to add to my pile of Brexit-related annoyances.

This thread is still fighting a battle that should have been finished in 2016. You lost Brexit has happened, no I don't morn the old life before Brexit but also I don't see it as a sea of roses. But it happened the political cost of freedom of movement of people was just too much and the EU wasn't prepared to compromise so we left. As of you don't like the rules of the club you either try to get them changed or leave.

@wheresmymojo - I’ve just posted something that reads as the exact opposite of your post, but actually I agree to a large extent. This sort of detail didn’t figure in my voting remain, and wouldn’t have put me off voting leave if I really thought it was the right thing to do. It’s small stuff in the larger picture.

But since not even the most trivial benefit has emerged from brexit as yet, I find even this stuff depressing. A vote to make life more limited - the very concept is negative.

I swear this site is turning me Tory one hyperbolic post at a time.

I voted remain and was stunned when the brexiters won. There'll be no food on the shelves, no medicines, and prices will go up said the remainers.

I know that NI have had terrible problems because of dicking about with the border, but here in Scotland there are no visible effects that I can see.

It's like the empty supermarkets didn't come true so now we have to be devastated that some foreign travel has become slightly less convenient.

It's a shame, I get it. But it's just not the apocalyptic collapse of reasonable society is it.

@Darkbrownistheriver Of course they're not! I was being totally ironic by mentioning another reason why Brexiters won't have achieved one of their intended purpose with this vote. I used this example, knowing their hatred of foreigners (wherever they are from).

@Iremembertheelderlykoreanlady

1st post OP? You wouldn't happen to have a thing for importing expensive art and italian glass vases would you?

My first thought exactly.

HoorayforSunshine - Thankyou for coming on as a voice of reason.

Like you, I would point people to read LSE experts who have studied the impact of EU immigration to the UK since the A10 countries acceded EU membership. As you rightly say, J. Portes has much to say on the “lump of labour fallacy” in this regard. Also see extensive research by J. Wandsworth (2016, 2019). The 2016 report by Oxford Economics for the Migration Advisory Committee gives a very accessible explanation of why EU immigration was / is of net benefit to the U.K.

I can’t remember the exact stats, but it used to be the case that the vast majority of EU migrants settled in London / SE. These were migrants from “old member states” (France, Spain etc). What happened after 2004, was that gaps in the U.K. labour market (in construction, agriculture, processing) attracted migrants from new member states (mainly Eastern European) who were prepared to do jobs that U.K. workers simply were not. But the main change was the shift in settlement patterns. No longer contained in London / SE, they moved into more rural (and also culturally homogenous areas) such as Boston, Lincolnshire (the place with the highest Brexit vote).

But these areas have been depressed since the Thatcher era due to the failure of successive governments to invest. Immigrants did not “take your jobs.” If the immigrants has never come, the farms and processing factories would simply have closed - with far more devastating effects on the U.K. economy.

There is no doubt whatsoever that EU immigration has been of net economic benefit to the U.K. This is fact.

Whether people in areas such as Boston didn’t like the fact that their high-streets were changing to include a few more Polish shops etc, is another matter. But feeling uncomfortable about change and economic fact are two very different things.

@coogee and @TheReluctantPhoenix

It is still possible to live and work in the EU if you first get a job and apply for a visa. So not only do you need those skills, but employer must be willing to spend likely thousands on a visa for you rather than a local that can start immediately. Setting up a business will be down to local rules, in many cases requiring investment of hundreds of thousands.

It is no longer possible to pitch up in an EU country as of right, and try and set up a business, open a local bank account immediately etc.

There are significant hurdles to these things where previously there were none. Lots of ordinary people have relocated over the years to Spain, Portugal etc and started bars or holiday businesses, or simply got jobs in bars and restaurants. That is now shut down.

And you don’t have any protection from discrimination, which we did before. An Italian couldn’t refuse
To employ you just because you were British.

People working in investment banks however (who pay 45% tax here in the UK) have moved to Frankfurt/ Paris with their firms relocating offices. Those are the skills that it’s worth employing someone on a visa for because the visas tend to not be cheap.

You may not have any desire or wish to move to Europe. But you cannot deny that for lots of people - including lots of ordinary people- it’s now a lot harder than it used to be. Precisely the kind of people who are in the kinds of jobs where an employer is willing to spend thousands on a visa for you. That means highly skilled people are still mobile, but reduced chances for the low skilled Britons.

@wheresmymojo 99% of people have seen no effect! That's an erroneous sweeping statement!
We refurbed a bathroom. All the quality taps and sanitary ware comes from Germany and Switzerland. We priced it in the UK and buying direct from a homewares place in Germany. It made a massive difference. We ordered it from Germany. Quality fixtures and fittings are seen as luxuries in the UK as the markup is horrendous. We no longer have the option to shop around for good value, but are now restricted.
It's just an example. Please don't get too excited.
We also loved going camping in Northern France, which was time and man-power consuming. We would pack a picnic for the long journey and take a fridge with basics for the first 48 hrs, including some pre-prepped pasta sauce for dinner, because it would be very late once we'd arrived and we'd be knackered, so being able to make a cup of tea and everyone something to eat eased the arrival. The children could eat lunch on the way, and we didn't need to waste time and money stopping off at the busy service stations, where it's often very tricky to find easy pull-in/pull-out places for us with a sizeable trailer. The children are fussy and don't eat what's on offer at these places. More so when they were little. But next time we go, we won't be able to take our picnic or our supplies of basics. It's not a huge deal, but it made it easier, and quicker, and less expensive.
But I suppose 99% of the UK population won't be affected, so it's all irrelevant.

And by the way, I never said I go clothes shopping in Paris regularly. People have assumed that. Nor have I mentioned anything anywhere about buying diamonds or glass - that is someone else. Read the thread. People who jump to these sorts of conclusions - that says more about you than anything else.

@MorrisZapp No, you're right, it's not an "apocalyptic collapse" and I don't think I have ever heard intelligent people using this type of hyperbole when referring to the consequences of Brexit. It's just a step back and slow grind economic and cultural impoverishment we are talking about.

When I read posts on here it has the very opposite effect of making me want to vote Tory. The anger towards people who have anything and the glee with which posters are jeered at for it - I remember a poster just after the referendum result mentioning there were in a gite in France at the time and being thoroughly mocked for it - tells me that inequalities in this country are tearing at the fabric of society. I don’t think the Tories are going to help with that.

@Persiantrio

So you’ve never been on holiday to a European country and bought souvenirs or whatever?

I have been on more holidays outside the EU than inside and have never had any issues in bringing a few souvenirs back, so I assume it would be no different.

Fair enough, but I find the business angle hard to swallow from people who think commerce and trade are dirty right wing pursuits when the subject is anything but brexit.

@sst1234

Arguments on Brexit aside, this thread is indicative that some people struggle to think that there is a world beyond their own town. ‘Oh I never to go to Paris, so quit moaning’. Some expanded horizons would help. You don’t have to go to Paris to know that not being able to go there and bring things back freely is worse than it used to be.

Surely the exact same argument could be levelled in reverse though? Those who have habituated Parisian shopping trips and the acquisition of diamonds from Amsterdam ought surely to realise that they are in a tiny minority and their "loss" is minimal in the greater scheme?

@Kazzyhoward

Not Eurpstar, but I live not far from a channel port and we used to go shopping in France every couple of months.

Most people don't live near a channel port or London. That means that for a large proportion of people living "up North", day trips for shopping abroad weren't ever practical as you'd have a very short day in France once you factor in several hours of travel to get to the port or Eurostar station. Hence why they're not remotely interested when a minority can't do their duty free booze cruises any more!

True, but I'd hazard that somewhere between a quarter and a third of the UK population lives in London or the SE, so it's a significant proportion. And it's not just about the shopping. When it's convenient and there are offers on tickets, people go just for fun, in the same way as someone from the midlands might go to London for the day.

Which may go some way to explaining why Brexit was less popular in London and the south. I feel every bit as connected to mainland Europe as I do to the north of England, and I can get there more quickly. I'm sure I'm not alone in that.

It's just a step back and slow grind economic and cultural impoverishment we are talking about.

Exactly the point. Completely agree.